What’s your superpower?

Tilting at Windmills

My superpower is tilting at windmills.  From Wikipedia –

Tilting at windmills is an English idiom which means attacking imaginary enemies, or fighting unwinnable or futile battles. The word “tilt”, in this context, comes from jousting. (emphasis mine … for … well … emphasis).

I can’t decide if I should pick my battles better, or carry on knowing that I am simply planting the seeds for future winnable battles.  I’m still pondering that …

The three people who are still reading this blog after my long hiatus, know that I have started writing again using a series of blog prompts put on by National Blog Posting Month found by clicking on that link back there.  I found it through one of the writers in my feed reader.  The day (last Monday) she posted, the prompt was this:

Do you owe an apology to anyone? Why?

That’s been rattling around in my head since then.  I did not post anything that day.  I’ve toyed with the idea of back posting ever since because … well … because.

Ready for the Ball

Friday night LightGirl went on her first date.  She and her date went to a dance; the Blumen Ball the dance committee called it.  It was a semi-formal dance put on for homeschoolers.  KidCourageous (as he shall be known here) asked her to go about 10 days before the event.  She accepted and they both were very excited (on a scale of 1 to Christmas morning they agreed it was like going back to Hogwarts).  They had a wonderful time and danced the whole evening.  Their chauffeur for the evening was KidCourageous’ older brother.  LightGirl was presented with a wrist corsage and KidCourageous was a perfect gentleman all evening.  She is still (Sunday morning) walking on air.  If you are friends with me on FaceBook you can see photos there.

There was only one small snag.  Several of the young men in LightGirl & KidCourageous’ group of friends thought it would be fun and funny to play games with them during the dance.  These young men would surround them and separate the two of them regularly throughout the evening.  It might have been funny had it only happened once or twice, but as young men are wont to do, they carried it on for too long and too far.  LightGirl and KidCourageous became frustrated with the situation.  But they handled it graciously and kindly without creating any fuss.

The next night, the ringleader of the young men was chatting with LightGirl on FaceBook (which they do regularly).  She was still pretty upset with him for the antics of the previous evening.  I encouraged her to let him know that she was unhappy, but to be kind about it.  I guess she must have because he attempted to apologize.  It was a rusty attempt because I’m not certain he does this very often.  But all the ingredients were there … he acknowledged that he had behaved badly, he empathized that it was hurtful, and he agreed that he shouldn’t have done it.  The only thing lacking were the specific words, “I’m sorry.”  But those are the least important words in an apology; he included the more important ones.  I haven’t been able to convince LightGirl that this is in fact an apology yet.  She (at the time) was still too upset and hurt by past interactions with this young man to be objective.  But I was really proud of him for taking that risk.  She will come around and be able to see it in a day or so.  My hope is that he will not be feeling rejected by then and their friendship will be restored.  I think it will … they seem to practice this sort of thing on each other regularly and are getting better and better at it every time.

The whole incident pointed out some things about apologies to me that I’ve been reflecting on for some time now.

The first thing is this … an apology is a risky business.  The person apologizing puts themselves in a vulnerable position vis a vis the person (or group) they are apologizing to.  They are giving power and/or control over to that person/group.  Forgiveness is a form of acceptance and redemption gives one re-entry to the relationship.  When one apologizes one acknowledges both wrongdoing and that the other person may or may not offer grace in return.  The restoration of the relationship is entirely in the hands of the person to whom one has apologized in that moment.

A proper apology consists of several necessary ingredients – an acknowledgment of wrong/bad/hurtful behavior, empathy with the person/group who was harmed by the behaviour, and agreement both that it should not have happened and that one will endeavor to prevent it from happening again.

Apologies cannot be demanded or manipulated.  They can only be offered free and clear by the person who is apologizing.  If they are not offered, but instead are made in response to a demand or as a result of manipulation they will be useless or empty.  One cannot acknowledge wrong/bad/hurtful behaviour when one doesn’t know what one has done.  This happens when an apology is demanded or manipulated as a condition to restore one’s relationship.  One can only be mournfully sorry about general malfunctions if an apology is demanded or manipulated.

Most often, though, between adults (and near adults), apologies run in both directions.  It is extraordinarily rare among two parties to a dispute to have only one which needs to apologize.  When wrongs have been done they often have been committed by both parties.

If you’ve been around here for any length of time, you may recall an ugly leave-taking with my CLB back in early-ish 2007.  It was hard.  It was hurtful.  It was/is permanent.  It was a long drawn out process, during which an apology was demanded of me in order that my relationships in the church might be restored.  I had no idea what apologize for so it was empty and meaningless.  But I was trying to do anything I could to restore balance and harmony to relationships that had strayed badly off course.

I’m now apologizing to the people in question here.  I still have no idea what the instigating issues were (though I have been told many times that I do).  However, I can apologize for my very poor behavior during that months long process.  I was defensive, angry and embattled.  I was also very depressed.  In the words of Paul the apostle, what I wanted to do, I could not do and I knew that I was doing what I did not want to do.  Call it arrogance (certainly), call it tunnel vision, call it depression, or some of all of that  and some other things that I have yet to identify, but I could not see any other path at the time than the one I/we traveled.  I know that did damage to the people I was close to.  I know our abrupt departure was frightening, upsetting, and painful.  I apologize for that.  I wish it could have been different.  I wish I were different; stronger, better, wiser.  But I’m not.  I’m zealous, over-protective, and type A-high maintenance.  In an attempt to preserve feelings and group unity, I kept secrets I should not have kept.  Revealing them here, or now would not be profitable.  But keeping them at the time proved ultimately harmful to everyone, including me.  They seemed harmless.  But secrets never are.  All things kept in the dark ultimately prove to be harmful.

I know that I am in a much healthier frame of mind now.  I have more tools at my disposal for communicating my difference of opinion with others without being as confrontational as I’ve been in the past.  Do I think that any of this will or would change anything?  I don’t know.  All I know is that I need to do this for my own peace of mind.  How it is received and what is done with it is out of my hands.   If I had been healthier at the time there is a chance I might have been able to exit with less damage.  Maybe.  But … I’d hate to speculate now.  What happens now … who knows?

Well, this is awkward.  Today’s prompt from NaBloPoMo is –

Tell us about your first kiss.

So.

Just how personal (read vulnerable) do I want to be here in internet land?  How much of my past do I want to reveal?  And the larger question, do I even remember my first kiss?

The answer to the last question is, “No. No, I do not remember my first kiss.”  I do however, remember my first boyfriend.  And I remember a much later boyfriend and a first kiss that mattered much more.  I’ll tell the story of the first boyfriend, but not the story of the later boyfriend (no, it was not LightHusband) … it’s only the interesting people who have a checkered past, you know 😉 .

I have a theory about the eighth grade and being 13.  It is the year one is at one’s most stupid/foolish during adolescence.  That is the year when we engage in the silliest behaviors. Some children chose a path that year which will make all of adolescence and highschool difficult.  Others manage to regain their footing and continue through the teen years on a more even, yet still turbulent, keel.  I was part of the latter group.  I have several friends from eighth (and even seventh or sixth grade) who I maintain contact with.  We all shake our collective heads regretfully when recalling eighth grade.  It was not a good year.

In particular, my one of my very best friends (maid of honor in each other’s weddings, etc.) and I both “went out” with boys when we were in eighth grade.  This begs the question, where did we go?  We grew up in the hills of Vermont.  It was a 20 minute drive to our highschool (grades 7-12 and it drew from 5 towns).  How, exactly, do 13 year olds go on a date?  It was crazy.  Mostly we were in love with an idea.  So, here is the sad, embarrassing story of my eighth grade romance.

He was in ninth grade and an older boy.  Blonde hair, blue eyes … the only blonde I would ever date.  He played saxophone in the band, and I played flute, so I expect that is how we knew one another.  He gave me his ID bracelet to wear as a pledge of his daily troth and short-lived like.  I don’t remember much about our relationship except that when it was over, I was embarrassed by it.  What was I thinking?  There are three events in our relationship that stand out.  The first is that one day he came over to my house to “hang out” for a while.  We disappeared into the hayshed to “make out.”  It was a huge disappointment to me.  Neither one of us knew what we were doing, so it was just kissing (this was good), but the kissing was bad (this was probably also good).  I remember thinking that if this was all there was to kissing and making out, I didn’t see what the big deal was; it was sort of boring.  [Never fear, I found out otherwise later in life ;-)]

The second event was a time when my brothers and I were going to see Young Frankenstein (with Gene Wilder).  The 8GBF and I tried to turn it into a date.  This was quashed.  I was furious with my mother.  But the movie was so funny, I got over it quickly.

The last event was breaking up.  I was free.  I ran to tell my friends.  Here was something that I had wanted so badly, but it had become a shackle around my neck.   I never regretted breaking up with him.  Oddly, I was always slightly embarrassed by the relationship until writing this blog post.  Now, I’m inclined to think that perhaps we were necessary to each others’ growing up.  Maturing is hardly ever easy, sometimes we are assisted by the mostly unlikely of people.

For today’s snack, we have a walk down memory lane:

If you could go back in time and meet your 16-year-old self, what three things would you tell yourself?

Well … now.  Things just got really heavy, didn’t they?  And sort of existential or something like it.  I’m bleary-eyed this morning because I stayed up too late watching the Chicago Blackhawks win Lord Stanley’s Cup last night.  This might be more raw than ordinary because I am less guarded than usual … so here goes.

I would tell my baby girl self (even though she would not listen) that time is a finite resource.  When you are sixteen your life stretches out before you in an almost limitless road with countless possibilities.  Choose.  Pick something, anything and do it well.

I would also tell her to enjoy herself more and be responsible less.  That it’s okay to have fun once in a while and be less serious all the time.

Last, I would tell my LightGirl self that all the world really is her oyster.  She really is that smart, that good and she really can make it.  She really is the sort of girl who can make it out in the world; there’s nothing to be afraid of.  When the time comes (and it will) she should just jump in with both feet and swim.

The prompt for today –

Japanese lore suggests that if you fold 1,000 paper cranes, your wish will come true. What would your wish be, and what would you be willing to do 1,000 times to get it?

I remember reading about this legend when I was a young girl.  I read a book about the bombing of Hiroshima.  The book focused on one girl and how the nuclear blast had affected her.  As I recall, it killed most of her family and left her very ill with radiation poisoning.  She lived out what remained of her life in a hospital folding paper cranes in a quest to get to 1,000 because she wanted to live.  She died.  It was one of the most gut-wrenching books I had read up to that point in my life.  War is a terrible waste.

So what wish do I have that is worth spending my life on to achieve the folding of 1,000 paper cranes?  If I did one every day it would take 2 years and 9 months (approximately) to attain my goal.  I guess that folding a paper crane would take about 20 minutes (averaged out over the span of 1,000) to complete.  That’s 20,000 minutes, or 333.33 hours, or 14 days – 2 weeks (round the clock) to make a wish come true.  If you divide 333.33 hours by 9 hours a day (to account for eating, sleeping, etc.) that’s 37 days – or just over a month to make a wish come true.  Five weeks (more or less).  A lot of time … time to think, meditate, and dream about a solution/resolution for my wish.

But now here I am … still pondering what I would wish for.  The possibilities are endless and huge … world peace, eradicate hunger, wipe out diseases and all of the good ideas to make life better for everyone.  Those are the huge ideas.  But I think if I’m going to make a wish upon which to spend that amount of time, I have to recognize that changing the world ultimately begins with changing myself.  So I think the question then becomes who do I want to be?  And I’m left with this … I want to be more of the me I was meant to be.  So my wish is that I would be able to embrace myself; the who I am becoming and the where I need to go.  I suppose that’s a rather small wish, but I guess it’s enough for now.

What about you?  What would you wish for if you did something 1,000 times to get there?

So … my fingers have been itchy and I want to write again.  I find myself daydreaming about blog posts … again.  It must be time to come back and write.

Thanks to the Holly, I found this site where they are posting a blog prompt every day for a month.  I don’t know if I will be that dedicated … maybe I will manage every OTHER day or something like that.  But at the very least I will be writing regularly again.  Here is today’s prompt:

You’ve just been given a million dollars. You are not allowed to keep it or give it to anyone you know personally. What do you do with it and why?

My first response is that I cannot imagine what a million dollars really is.  Really.  Can you?  What IS a million dollars?  What can you buy with a million dollars?  What can you do with a million dollars?  I simply find myself in the place that I cannot understand the reality of having a million dollars all at the same time.

So I’m trying to daydream about some less concrete.  I’m trying to daydream about simply having piles and piles of money that I cannot keep and I cannot give to anyone I know personally.  Here are some of the things I would like to do with it …

–> Start a micro-finance program for inner city women, especially single moms, here in the States.  I love the idea of Kiva and I think it’s doing huge amounts of good in the world, but I’d like to focus my efforts on women and single mothers, so that they can achieve some level of security and perhaps even raise their level of education, so that the cycle of poverty stops with their generation.

–> Along the same lines, use the money to seed loans and work projects so that those who currently live in inner city projects can participate in regentrifying their own neighborhoods.  I love the idea of renewing our inner-city neighborhoods, but not at the expense of those who already live there.

–> Seed money to educate women and girls.  There are scores of studies right now showing that the more a woman is educated, the less likely she is to ______ … fill in the blank with all of the ills of poverty, particularly those relating to addiction and sexual abuse.

–> Renew art programs for young people in need.  We cannot live by industry alone, children need to exercise their imaginations and creative gifts as well as learn to read, write and ‘rithmetic.

Those are all the things I can think of to do with my million dollars.  What would you do?