It's raining where I live. I mean a steady rain, a soaker. Prior to the present rain, this morning, the rain had been sporadic and light, meaning enough moisture on the plants you can notice, see, measure, the wetness, but underneath the fir needles on the ground I could see dry dirt. Oh, and prior to this morning the last measurable rain was back in March, I believe.
I have instituted two daily walks with Lizzie down to the Little North Fork river, which borders my property. I listen to the river. I turn and look up the river. I anticipate what will come. I do not know what will come. I live in anticipation of what will come. I rejoice knowing the future will flow to me at its own rate or, perhaps, at a rate I can handle. Then I look down river. I see my past flowing away from me. I can say goodbye and rejoice knowing I lived in that past.
Yesterday the river was quite low. I must admit I have no strong observational reference point, because I have only lived here just over 2 years. I know my neighbors across the river have lived here over 40 years.
I will remember, in the future to come, how much of the hard rock(granite?) river bed was exposed during the drought of 2015.
This evening Lizzie and I took our second stroll of the day down to the river. As I left the house it had just started to rain and I could tell it wasn't going to let up(a native's intuition?). I grabbed a rain coat from the truck and slipped it on. By the time I reached the second, or middle, tier of my property the rain was coming down hard enough I zipped up the rain jacket and pulled the hood more snugly over my head. I continued on down to the river.
I looked up stream. I saw the river bed had a layer of water over what had been exposed this morning. Now there was a layer of debris on a long upstream pool. The river was flowing so slowly it seemed the debris wasn't moving at all, as if it were a lake not a stream. The debris was a result of high wind conditions.
The rain intensified and I felt I needed to get inside as I had on sweatpants. I could feel those sweatpants soaking up the rain. As I was leaving I remembered I hadn't stopped to listen to the river talk. I turned back toward the river and listened for only a moment. I realized I could not hear the river talk. The rain was drowning the ripples out.
I looked down stream and saw the bigger rocks and knew when the fall rains come the river will talk there.
I turned and walked quickly up the two inclines I must traverse to get back to my house. The rain was really coming down, the soaking rain I mentioned previously.
And then I remembered doing something similar with Marcia her first year at seminary. California had been suffering with a long drought when we arrived. It seems to me we arrived in August, so it was another two plus months before the first soaker rain came.
I came home from work. Marcia had finished her classes. I cannot recall what the boys were doing, but they were not a factor in our evening's plan. We decided to go out to eat. We walked from our seminary apartment down to Shattuck Avenue where there was quite a choice. We chose Thai. It may have been my first Thai meal. I've led a sheltered life.
When we left the restaurant it started to rain. It was a soaker rain. And we didn't care. We had brought rain coats, a hat for me, Marcia had an umbrella, so we were prepared. We walked back up the hill toward our apartment in the rain.
We came up to another apartment building the seminary owned and wondered whether our friends from Reno, Nevada were home and receiving visitors. We knocked and the husband opened the door, took one look at us, and immediately invited us in. "You are soaked. Why are you out in this downpour?" We both smiled. "It's just rain," we said.
Once again I am out in a soaker rain at what might be the end of a drought for Oregon. The rains will come and the Oregon country side will be green again. I say 'green again' because the drought has caused many deciduous trees to turn color and drop their leaves. Most lawns and meadows are brown. It has been more of a California fall and chronologically fall ain't here yet.
I recall having negative thoughts about rain growing up. You couldn't go outside and play. Rain probably has a more negative impact on the young than the old, but for different reasons. As an adult one usually has to go out in the rain as opposed to not being able to go out. Now I appreciate and look forward to the rain.
Lizzie in the mean time had taken off as fast as she could go to my neighbor's house. My neighbor is Lizzie's bestie and they hadn't seen each other for over a week as the bestie had been in Alaska. I wasn't aware she had returned home until I followed Lizzie's sprint and saw her car. I left Lizzie to say hello and elected to go home and put on dry sweats. Lizzie's bestie gets to dry off a soaked dog.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Situational Value & Situational Ethics
When I first returned to my beloved state of Oregon I was invited by a dear friend to attend a bi-weekly dinner gathering consisting of my friend's work colleagues. I was welcomed into the group even though over time as various colleagues who were not present at my first dinner would look at me and their facial expressions would lead me to think they were wondering who the hell am I? Since then I have been a reasonably consistent attendee at the dinners and feel reasonably well accepted.
The last dinner brought up an interesting concept I would like to present and discuss as best I can. It is a philosophical issue and a life issue. The conversation during the most recent dinner led to one attendee(prognosticator) bringing up a comment made at a previous dinner the stock market was due to make a nose dive. At the time of the present dinner the market had dropped around 800 points, give or take. Kudos were offered to the prognosticator in an email. The prognosticator replied, "You see, the biggest problem with the markets is what they are based on. There is no earthly reason why they are as high as they are. There's no value to support it other than masked inflation." I responded to the message agreeing with the prognosticator's point of view and dropping the term 'situational value' into the conversation. I am not aware of any following comments or questions to the email comment I made. Although I did state I would be blogging about the concept of 'situational value.'
Thinking about the term 'situational value' led me to consider what I know about situational ethics. I was first introduced to the idea of situational ethics while Marcia was in seminary doing her chaplaincy internship at Stanford Hospital.
Can we really talk about situational ethics without first laying the foundation, what is ethics?
Following are some precepts, rules, I am going to attempt to follow in the subsequent presentation regarding ethics and situational ethics. I will attempt transparency, to be clear, at all times. Clarity/transparency is owning a personal bias, for instance, or indicating just how ignorant I really am(and I know it?!). Yes, I feel I am wading into uncharted waters and the water is up to the bottom of my feet. Here goes.
Ethics is, to my way of thinking, the development of a moral code for a body of people, a community, a country, a culture. I think the Ten Commandments is an excellent example of a moral code. The purpose of the moral code is to facilitate people living together including all it may entail, such as, intangibles, right versus wrong and, the great mystery.
The moral code then affects our behavior. Thou Shalt Not Kill so we don't, mostly, but those times we do there are consequences for violating the moral code. And begins, a great body of knowledge.
Every document is a reflection of the culture from which it came and the culture's moral code. And the culture's people behave accordingly, which is their understanding of the "code."
And now it becomes situational. Thou Shalt Not Kill above indicates the situation. Our culture's consequence for murder is death. Wait, that's killing and the commandment says don't. Well, it's OK if everybody says it's OK. And we do. The combat soldier facing the choice of imminent death or kill his enemy is another example. And that's situational ethics in a nutshell.
Now we have a rudimentary, crude, understanding of situational. How does situational apply to value? To answer the question I believe it necessary for me to apply my understanding of value. My thinking is shaped by Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A great teaching story.
Imagine I am walking across my floor and I step on to something. I stop, because it hurts and I want to remove it. I bend down and pick up a piece of Lizzie's kibble. What is the value of Lizzie's kibble? Apparently a lot, as I was willing to stop and check it out. So what we invest is our time and effort, work, and is a measurement of value. Money is a measurement of our time and effort. The following might be an example(the book is not available to me right now) Pirsig used to illustrate value. He visited a friend's place many times and noticed, right away, a leaky faucet. It was always leaking when he visited. I cannot recall if someone complained about the drip drip or not. He certainly noticed. The dripping faucet has at least two differing values. The homeowner does not ascribe a whole lot of value to the dripping and can live with it. Pirsig sees it as a small effort fix. No more water waste and no more annoying drip drip. Does one perception have an intrinsic higher value? It would seem to rest on one's perception. The homeowner seems to be able to live with the drip drip. Pirsig, if I recall correctly(and probably don't), can live with it while there, knowing he doesn't have to live with it on a permanent basis. Pirsig's underlying value, it's a simple fix, regarding the drip drip doesn't change but his value while at his friend's house does shift to a 'I can live with it value.' Situational. In the same regard I am walking across my living room floor after the above incident and feel a piece of kibble. I ignore it and go get the vacuum and vacuum the rug. My reaction to stepping on the kibble a second time is situational.
August 27, 2015
The idea of taking on a subject, situational value, especially as it might relate to economics intimidates me. I have let it simmer on the back burner for three days. I am not anymore confident I can present my thoughts about the subject than three days ago. I do not pretend to be an economist, nor have I had any predilection to explore the subject in the past. Yet here I go.
August 29, 2015
Two more days have passed and instead of writing about situational value I have chosen to spend time rewriting a 10 minute play and going on a hike to a grove of old growth Doug Firs and competing in my first cyclocross race of the season and attending the 50th reunion of my high school class. Pretty good avoidance behavior, don't you think?
The whole idea of the stock market is situational. And the value today versus the value tomorrow can be manipulated. Ethically speaking I don't think value should be manipulated. My moral code finds the idea of monetary value being subject to manipulation repellant. The stock market's value is tracked on a daily basis. Every news source provides information on the stock markets current value. The measure of how one might feel on any given day can be reflected in the current value of the stock market.
And we wonder about people with a Bipolar diagnosis, yet don't think twice about how the current status of the stock market affects our daily perceptions and pursuit of life. The stock market goes up, we feel ebullient. The stock market goes down, we feel depressed.
One might proffer how we feel is a choice we make, yet our perceptions, values, experiences, are influenced by the culture in which we grew up. We value Christian influences greatly as witnessed by our reaction to Christmas time, no matter what we profess as our faith or not. I have grown up in a Judeo Christian culture. The Ten Commandments in my culture have a phenomenal influence on our perceptions, our way of life, whether or not we see ourselves as Jewish or Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or any of our world's other faiths.
One thing I want to make clear is I am not offering up one religion being better than another. As stated above one's choice of religion is as much a matter of where one was born and who their parents were than any superiority of one religion over all others.
If I have presented my thinking cogently then it should be clear if I have any biases.
Returning to situational value as it relates to the stock market then the influences on the markets current value are wide and fluctuating. I think of the movie Trading Places as an excellent example of a story where the market is manipulated. What drives the two opposing forces in the movie? A caveat, I haven't seen the movie in several years. The two brothers seem to be driven by greed. The characters Akeroyd and Murphy play, by revenge. The comeuppance for the bad guys, the rich brothers, is a Hollywood ending. The bad guys lose and the good guys win. Both sides manipulate the market to their own desired ends. The results justify the means in this movie. Situational values and situational ethics on display in a grand Hollywood story.
One point I believe I am making is situational ethics and situational value travel hand in hand. It is hard to separate the two in our lives. I certainly do not believe I have created any new insights to how the stock market works other than its fluidity and fluctuation is due to many, many, influences and manipulation. I believe it is hard to separate influence from manipulation or vice a versa. Our society will consequent manipulation of the stock market if it can be proven. To my perspective, easier said than done.
One last point relates to my stating I find the manipulation of the stock market's value as repellant. Repellant is a personal value. I justify its use as it seems to me any one entity manipulating such a behemoth as the stock market has evil intention, another personal value. Does anyone have the right to manipulate all of us? I understand the opportunity to do so is available to anyone desiring to manipulate all of us, but it is not a right as defined in our constitution. It is simply a choice one can make. How the rest of us react to the choice is based on our personal ethics. How our culture, our society, reacts is also based on our collective ethics and values. Evil intent is not something we as a culture proscribe to. And yet, how we think about any issue can be manipulated so evil intent may be presented as good for the culture.
Thank you for reading.
The last dinner brought up an interesting concept I would like to present and discuss as best I can. It is a philosophical issue and a life issue. The conversation during the most recent dinner led to one attendee(prognosticator) bringing up a comment made at a previous dinner the stock market was due to make a nose dive. At the time of the present dinner the market had dropped around 800 points, give or take. Kudos were offered to the prognosticator in an email. The prognosticator replied, "You see, the biggest problem with the markets is what they are based on. There is no earthly reason why they are as high as they are. There's no value to support it other than masked inflation." I responded to the message agreeing with the prognosticator's point of view and dropping the term 'situational value' into the conversation. I am not aware of any following comments or questions to the email comment I made. Although I did state I would be blogging about the concept of 'situational value.'
Thinking about the term 'situational value' led me to consider what I know about situational ethics. I was first introduced to the idea of situational ethics while Marcia was in seminary doing her chaplaincy internship at Stanford Hospital.
Can we really talk about situational ethics without first laying the foundation, what is ethics?
Following are some precepts, rules, I am going to attempt to follow in the subsequent presentation regarding ethics and situational ethics. I will attempt transparency, to be clear, at all times. Clarity/transparency is owning a personal bias, for instance, or indicating just how ignorant I really am(and I know it?!). Yes, I feel I am wading into uncharted waters and the water is up to the bottom of my feet. Here goes.
Ethics is, to my way of thinking, the development of a moral code for a body of people, a community, a country, a culture. I think the Ten Commandments is an excellent example of a moral code. The purpose of the moral code is to facilitate people living together including all it may entail, such as, intangibles, right versus wrong and, the great mystery.
The moral code then affects our behavior. Thou Shalt Not Kill so we don't, mostly, but those times we do there are consequences for violating the moral code. And begins, a great body of knowledge.
Every document is a reflection of the culture from which it came and the culture's moral code. And the culture's people behave accordingly, which is their understanding of the "code."
And now it becomes situational. Thou Shalt Not Kill above indicates the situation. Our culture's consequence for murder is death. Wait, that's killing and the commandment says don't. Well, it's OK if everybody says it's OK. And we do. The combat soldier facing the choice of imminent death or kill his enemy is another example. And that's situational ethics in a nutshell.
Now we have a rudimentary, crude, understanding of situational. How does situational apply to value? To answer the question I believe it necessary for me to apply my understanding of value. My thinking is shaped by Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A great teaching story.
Imagine I am walking across my floor and I step on to something. I stop, because it hurts and I want to remove it. I bend down and pick up a piece of Lizzie's kibble. What is the value of Lizzie's kibble? Apparently a lot, as I was willing to stop and check it out. So what we invest is our time and effort, work, and is a measurement of value. Money is a measurement of our time and effort. The following might be an example(the book is not available to me right now) Pirsig used to illustrate value. He visited a friend's place many times and noticed, right away, a leaky faucet. It was always leaking when he visited. I cannot recall if someone complained about the drip drip or not. He certainly noticed. The dripping faucet has at least two differing values. The homeowner does not ascribe a whole lot of value to the dripping and can live with it. Pirsig sees it as a small effort fix. No more water waste and no more annoying drip drip. Does one perception have an intrinsic higher value? It would seem to rest on one's perception. The homeowner seems to be able to live with the drip drip. Pirsig, if I recall correctly(and probably don't), can live with it while there, knowing he doesn't have to live with it on a permanent basis. Pirsig's underlying value, it's a simple fix, regarding the drip drip doesn't change but his value while at his friend's house does shift to a 'I can live with it value.' Situational. In the same regard I am walking across my living room floor after the above incident and feel a piece of kibble. I ignore it and go get the vacuum and vacuum the rug. My reaction to stepping on the kibble a second time is situational.
August 27, 2015
The idea of taking on a subject, situational value, especially as it might relate to economics intimidates me. I have let it simmer on the back burner for three days. I am not anymore confident I can present my thoughts about the subject than three days ago. I do not pretend to be an economist, nor have I had any predilection to explore the subject in the past. Yet here I go.
August 29, 2015
Two more days have passed and instead of writing about situational value I have chosen to spend time rewriting a 10 minute play and going on a hike to a grove of old growth Doug Firs and competing in my first cyclocross race of the season and attending the 50th reunion of my high school class. Pretty good avoidance behavior, don't you think?
The whole idea of the stock market is situational. And the value today versus the value tomorrow can be manipulated. Ethically speaking I don't think value should be manipulated. My moral code finds the idea of monetary value being subject to manipulation repellant. The stock market's value is tracked on a daily basis. Every news source provides information on the stock markets current value. The measure of how one might feel on any given day can be reflected in the current value of the stock market.
And we wonder about people with a Bipolar diagnosis, yet don't think twice about how the current status of the stock market affects our daily perceptions and pursuit of life. The stock market goes up, we feel ebullient. The stock market goes down, we feel depressed.
One might proffer how we feel is a choice we make, yet our perceptions, values, experiences, are influenced by the culture in which we grew up. We value Christian influences greatly as witnessed by our reaction to Christmas time, no matter what we profess as our faith or not. I have grown up in a Judeo Christian culture. The Ten Commandments in my culture have a phenomenal influence on our perceptions, our way of life, whether or not we see ourselves as Jewish or Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or any of our world's other faiths.
One thing I want to make clear is I am not offering up one religion being better than another. As stated above one's choice of religion is as much a matter of where one was born and who their parents were than any superiority of one religion over all others.
If I have presented my thinking cogently then it should be clear if I have any biases.
Returning to situational value as it relates to the stock market then the influences on the markets current value are wide and fluctuating. I think of the movie Trading Places as an excellent example of a story where the market is manipulated. What drives the two opposing forces in the movie? A caveat, I haven't seen the movie in several years. The two brothers seem to be driven by greed. The characters Akeroyd and Murphy play, by revenge. The comeuppance for the bad guys, the rich brothers, is a Hollywood ending. The bad guys lose and the good guys win. Both sides manipulate the market to their own desired ends. The results justify the means in this movie. Situational values and situational ethics on display in a grand Hollywood story.
One point I believe I am making is situational ethics and situational value travel hand in hand. It is hard to separate the two in our lives. I certainly do not believe I have created any new insights to how the stock market works other than its fluidity and fluctuation is due to many, many, influences and manipulation. I believe it is hard to separate influence from manipulation or vice a versa. Our society will consequent manipulation of the stock market if it can be proven. To my perspective, easier said than done.
One last point relates to my stating I find the manipulation of the stock market's value as repellant. Repellant is a personal value. I justify its use as it seems to me any one entity manipulating such a behemoth as the stock market has evil intention, another personal value. Does anyone have the right to manipulate all of us? I understand the opportunity to do so is available to anyone desiring to manipulate all of us, but it is not a right as defined in our constitution. It is simply a choice one can make. How the rest of us react to the choice is based on our personal ethics. How our culture, our society, reacts is also based on our collective ethics and values. Evil intent is not something we as a culture proscribe to. And yet, how we think about any issue can be manipulated so evil intent may be presented as good for the culture.
Thank you for reading.
Saturday, August 22, 2015
Soulmate
A friend wrote me an email in response to my last two blog entries. He was particularly taken by my comments regarding my relationship with Marcia. His wife passed away a few years prior to Marcia's passing. He had spent 40 years with the same woman. He addressed her as his soulmate.
I never addressed Marcia as my soulmate. Why not, you might wonder? Before Marcia I had been in several relationships and during one of those relationships the term soulmate had been bandied around by both parties. Eventually I broke off the relationship. You broke off the relationship with your soulmate? Yes I did and then had questions in my mind regarding what constitutes a soulmate? If I was in a relationship with my soulmate then why would I want to end the relationship?
The obvious answer to the last question is you were not really soulmates. But why would one refer to their mate as their soulmate if there is a chance one is wrong? I believe the answer lies in what constitutes a soulmate.
A soulmate, in my humble opinion, is someone whom you love deeply. Life is more complete. One feels whole, feels completed by the mate. The first syllable of the term implies a deeper connection, a vibrant connection of two souls.
My ability to feel a 'vibrant connection' was stunted due to my own hangups about what love really is. One cannot casually bandy around the term soulmate with whomever they are having a relationship. I had enough sense to realize casual use of a term undermines its true meaning, thus why I did not drop the term into conversations with Marcia. And Marcia never dropped soulmate into our conversations.
The other reality for me is I never comprehended the true meaning of 'soulmate' unless one cites the above mentioned 'humble opinion.' The above stated opinion may be more due to life experience and how life's experiences can whup you up side the head until the lesson the universe, or God, wants us to learn finally takes. My head is a veritable pile of lumps from all the lessons I needed to learn. And I'm still being 'whupped up side the head.' Dang, life never seems to stop teaching.
Coming back, full circle, to my friend's comments, I speculate why his departed beloved was his soulmate. He entered into a monogamous 40 year relationship. There were no other relationships to bandy around the term soulmate. All healthy relationships grow, mature, roll with the changes life presents(resilience) and provide fertile ground to grow and mature. Roots are established. New growth is created every springtime of our lives. And when the winter of our lives approaches the fertile ground is prepared and we can deal with the changes.
We may not anticipate the final separation from our loved one, but I firmly believe the relationship work accomplished prepares us for the future.
A friend wrote me an email in response to my last two blog entries. He was particularly taken by my comments regarding my relationship with Marcia. His wife passed away a few years prior to Marcia's passing. He had spent 40 years with the same woman. He addressed her as his soulmate.
I never addressed Marcia as my soulmate. Why not, you might wonder? Before Marcia I had been in several relationships and during one of those relationships the term soulmate had been bandied around by both parties. Eventually I broke off the relationship. You broke off the relationship with your soulmate? Yes I did and then had questions in my mind regarding what constitutes a soulmate? If I was in a relationship with my soulmate then why would I want to end the relationship?
The obvious answer to the last question is you were not really soulmates. But why would one refer to their mate as their soulmate if there is a chance one is wrong? I believe the answer lies in what constitutes a soulmate.
A soulmate, in my humble opinion, is someone whom you love deeply. Life is more complete. One feels whole, feels completed by the mate. The first syllable of the term implies a deeper connection, a vibrant connection of two souls.
My ability to feel a 'vibrant connection' was stunted due to my own hangups about what love really is. One cannot casually bandy around the term soulmate with whomever they are having a relationship. I had enough sense to realize casual use of a term undermines its true meaning, thus why I did not drop the term into conversations with Marcia. And Marcia never dropped soulmate into our conversations.
The other reality for me is I never comprehended the true meaning of 'soulmate' unless one cites the above mentioned 'humble opinion.' The above stated opinion may be more due to life experience and how life's experiences can whup you up side the head until the lesson the universe, or God, wants us to learn finally takes. My head is a veritable pile of lumps from all the lessons I needed to learn. And I'm still being 'whupped up side the head.' Dang, life never seems to stop teaching.
Coming back, full circle, to my friend's comments, I speculate why his departed beloved was his soulmate. He entered into a monogamous 40 year relationship. There were no other relationships to bandy around the term soulmate. All healthy relationships grow, mature, roll with the changes life presents(resilience) and provide fertile ground to grow and mature. Roots are established. New growth is created every springtime of our lives. And when the winter of our lives approaches the fertile ground is prepared and we can deal with the changes.
We may not anticipate the final separation from our loved one, but I firmly believe the relationship work accomplished prepares us for the future.
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Addiction is for Everybody
How would you react to learning someone you know has an addiction? What would you do? How would you do what you think needs to be done?
I became aware several years ago my youngest son is addicted to meth-amphetamine. How did I become aware? First, noticing the weight loss. Second, his speech patterns and the thinking errors demonstrated by him when he talked. Third, his emotional responses to his perception of stressful situations. Fourth, his behavior patterns. The four reasons are not prioritized. They are just four reasons in no particular order. And then I put it all together to come to an irrefutable conclusion he was addicted.
Knowing your son was addicted and doing something about it was a much longer time frame. First and all requests suggesting treatment to him got the emotional/cognitive juices flowing and the thinking errors flowed. Absolutely not.
My studies in my master's program and my professional life as a Child and Youth Care counselor provided me with addictive behavior patterns, thinking errors and emotional responses.
The hardest aspect of dealing with an addict is waiting for them to hit 'bottom.' 'Bottom,' for those who are not familiar with the term is the point in the addict's life when they realize they absolutely do not want to live the rest of their life as an addict. It is a crucial time point in the addict's life. The person realizes their quality of life as it is being experienced is horrible, yucky, stinky, and generally all around bad. The X factor in predicting one's hitting 'bottom' is it is different for each individual addict. We all have a 'bottom.' As an example imagine someone smoking some pot then walking into a grocery store and suffers an anxiety attack, which leads them to swear off all drugs forevermore. The other end of the 'bottom' spectrum is death.
I recently asked my youngest son to move out and not come back. He, of course, counted this as rejection of him the person rather than the addict. The addict is not the person. We, who have personally experienced addiction, all can attest to the change we witness as the addict succumbs more and more to the addictive lifestyle. My personal experience with former addicts is they can overcome their disease and recreate their lives more positively. Oh yes, I must mention there are false 'bottoms, too. The addict says, "oh yuck, I hate my life" and they seek treatment, but it doesn't take, and x amount of time later they are using again. I pray, and look forward to my youngest son hitting his bottom and seeking help, but I hold fast to the reality his bottom may not be life affirming. He could die.
Having my son around for a few months gave me the chance to observe him and the way he lived his life. One thing looming large in his lifestyle was how chaotic his bedroom was. It was a physical manifestation of his internal organization. Really it was a mess. The worst example of an adolescent's bedroom. My son is 36. His older brother and I cleaned out the bedroom. We learned more as we cleaned, finding court documents and arrest records. His arrest record was for very minor offenses, but there was a court record regarding possession of a packet of methamphetamine. The arresting officer did not show for court so the charges were dropped. I hope this court experience does not lead him to think he can continue to get away with criminal activity in the future, but criminal thinking errors are insidious
Addiction, though, can present a very different face than my son's addictive lifestyle. Recently, while cleaning out my youngest son's bedroom, I came across a packet of a prescription drug. Somehow holding the packet in my hand brought to mind the behavior of another friend. Since my first encounter with my friend I had always been in awe and at the same time suspicious of their ability to go to bed late and get up early. All the behavior patterns I noted above with my son came to mind as I stood there holding the packet. And there were significant deviations from those patterns. My friend is a professional in a stressful job. They get up and go to work each day, sometimes staying late to catch up on the day's' demands. My friend had mildly complained about their sleep patterns, going to bed late and waking early. I thought they were one of those people who can get by on minimal sleep. I am not one of those, I generally need between 6 and 8 hours and sometimes 9 or 10 when good quality sleep has not been available to me the past few days. I recall one morning I woke up early with some issues hot in my brain. I decided to seek an outside opinion regarding my early morning wake up call. I composed a message to my friend. It was just after 5 AM. My iPad tells me when someone is reading a message. I was surprised. I expected a response sometime later, but they indicated they had awakened around 4:45 and were 'coasting' until get out of bed motivation hit them. I was somewhat astounded by their early wake up call. I know their work schedule allows them to arrive at work anytime between 7 and 9 AM, but waking up so early after going to bed so late makes me a bit suspicious.
My friend as indicated previously is a professional. Their life style presents as fairly normal. In this particular instance my perception, looking from the outside in, was they led a very busy life. Almost every evening after work was spent being somewhere, various kinds of activities or standing weekly dates spent with friends. The weekends were just as busy, going here and going there. The chaos my son's room was in did not apply to my friend. Their home was clean and comfortable. No obvious indication of an inner chaos.
The major clue for me was the sleep pattern. The current nickname for people who use methamphetamine is 'tweaker.' The derivation of the nickname was a mystery to me until my oldest son gave me some insight. As I understand what was explained to me, the term 'tweaker' refers to how they sleep. When using dangerous stimulants the brain is super charged and the body follows what the brain tells it. What happens to tweakers is the body tires after many hours and they lay down to rest. The brain continues to be stimulated while the body rests. Deep sleep is rare as the brain keeps working and what is achieved is a false rest, so to speak. My friend's reference to 'coasting' after the alarm went off says to me the brain is working, stimulated, while the feeling of weariness keeps them in bed until the moment when they have to get up or the brain's function is so hyper they simply cannot rest any longer. Another factor is tweakers often sleep with lights on and music playing in the background. Either one of those can keep me awake not to mention both.
Years ago I became familiar with the term maintenance drunk. It describes the person who could drink all night, get up and go to work, have a 3 martini lunch, go back to work until quitting time and then continue drinking all evening, repeating the sequence over and over for years on end. My friend is a maintenance tweaker. I do not know how long they have been operating as a maintenance tweaker, but their description of their previous life indicates it may have started as far back as high school. Possibly sometime in their life they realized they could get by with minimal doses of a stimulant parsed out in specific doses. My friend's source is a doctor who has prescribed Sudafed for a sinus issue. I cannot speak definitively about prescribed dosages, but I believe the 12 hour capsule is standard issue. Take a pill in the morning and the sinuses are not plugged for the next 12 hours. Suppose one decides the sinuses are clogging up again before the 12 hours have elapsed. A second pill is taken and the evening's activities are met with a full head of steam and breathing is ostensibly not a factor. Oh sure, they are stimulated well into the evening and tiredness is not felt until midnight or so, but deep, restorative sleep is not to be achieved.
During the time of our friendship I have never noticed my friend having a sinus problem. One morning I stopped by and they stated their sinuses were clogged up and they needed to take a Sudafed. My inner response was, really, I hadn't noticed any indication their sinuses were clogged at all. You know, the voice pitch is changed because the sinus cavity is full and the sound cannot resonate as fully as normal, or the afflicted person is blowing their nose vociferously, or some other indicator the nose has a problem. My friend seemed normal to my ear.
And now I ask the original questions again. What would you do? How would you do what needs to be done? My son's situation has been handled. I asked him to leave. He has not communicated with me since the day we dropped him off where he had parked his broke down car. My other friend, the maintenance tweaker, is a totally different course of action. If I were to confront them they can easily refute my allegations. All they need do is point out they are meeting their obligations. My evidence is circumstantial at best. I see patterns of prescription abuse where they do not. I could take the issue to the immediate family. I wonder about my credibility with the immediate family. The family members are best positioned to monitor use. Checking the prescription to see how fast the pills are being used would be a concrete way to determine if my perceptions have any validity. How receptive would the family be to hearing my allegations let alone doing the follow up to determine their validity?
And thus is how one deals with proven addiction and suspected addiction, maybe.
I became aware several years ago my youngest son is addicted to meth-amphetamine. How did I become aware? First, noticing the weight loss. Second, his speech patterns and the thinking errors demonstrated by him when he talked. Third, his emotional responses to his perception of stressful situations. Fourth, his behavior patterns. The four reasons are not prioritized. They are just four reasons in no particular order. And then I put it all together to come to an irrefutable conclusion he was addicted.
Knowing your son was addicted and doing something about it was a much longer time frame. First and all requests suggesting treatment to him got the emotional/cognitive juices flowing and the thinking errors flowed. Absolutely not.
My studies in my master's program and my professional life as a Child and Youth Care counselor provided me with addictive behavior patterns, thinking errors and emotional responses.
The hardest aspect of dealing with an addict is waiting for them to hit 'bottom.' 'Bottom,' for those who are not familiar with the term is the point in the addict's life when they realize they absolutely do not want to live the rest of their life as an addict. It is a crucial time point in the addict's life. The person realizes their quality of life as it is being experienced is horrible, yucky, stinky, and generally all around bad. The X factor in predicting one's hitting 'bottom' is it is different for each individual addict. We all have a 'bottom.' As an example imagine someone smoking some pot then walking into a grocery store and suffers an anxiety attack, which leads them to swear off all drugs forevermore. The other end of the 'bottom' spectrum is death.
I recently asked my youngest son to move out and not come back. He, of course, counted this as rejection of him the person rather than the addict. The addict is not the person. We, who have personally experienced addiction, all can attest to the change we witness as the addict succumbs more and more to the addictive lifestyle. My personal experience with former addicts is they can overcome their disease and recreate their lives more positively. Oh yes, I must mention there are false 'bottoms, too. The addict says, "oh yuck, I hate my life" and they seek treatment, but it doesn't take, and x amount of time later they are using again. I pray, and look forward to my youngest son hitting his bottom and seeking help, but I hold fast to the reality his bottom may not be life affirming. He could die.
Having my son around for a few months gave me the chance to observe him and the way he lived his life. One thing looming large in his lifestyle was how chaotic his bedroom was. It was a physical manifestation of his internal organization. Really it was a mess. The worst example of an adolescent's bedroom. My son is 36. His older brother and I cleaned out the bedroom. We learned more as we cleaned, finding court documents and arrest records. His arrest record was for very minor offenses, but there was a court record regarding possession of a packet of methamphetamine. The arresting officer did not show for court so the charges were dropped. I hope this court experience does not lead him to think he can continue to get away with criminal activity in the future, but criminal thinking errors are insidious
Addiction, though, can present a very different face than my son's addictive lifestyle. Recently, while cleaning out my youngest son's bedroom, I came across a packet of a prescription drug. Somehow holding the packet in my hand brought to mind the behavior of another friend. Since my first encounter with my friend I had always been in awe and at the same time suspicious of their ability to go to bed late and get up early. All the behavior patterns I noted above with my son came to mind as I stood there holding the packet. And there were significant deviations from those patterns. My friend is a professional in a stressful job. They get up and go to work each day, sometimes staying late to catch up on the day's' demands. My friend had mildly complained about their sleep patterns, going to bed late and waking early. I thought they were one of those people who can get by on minimal sleep. I am not one of those, I generally need between 6 and 8 hours and sometimes 9 or 10 when good quality sleep has not been available to me the past few days. I recall one morning I woke up early with some issues hot in my brain. I decided to seek an outside opinion regarding my early morning wake up call. I composed a message to my friend. It was just after 5 AM. My iPad tells me when someone is reading a message. I was surprised. I expected a response sometime later, but they indicated they had awakened around 4:45 and were 'coasting' until get out of bed motivation hit them. I was somewhat astounded by their early wake up call. I know their work schedule allows them to arrive at work anytime between 7 and 9 AM, but waking up so early after going to bed so late makes me a bit suspicious.
My friend as indicated previously is a professional. Their life style presents as fairly normal. In this particular instance my perception, looking from the outside in, was they led a very busy life. Almost every evening after work was spent being somewhere, various kinds of activities or standing weekly dates spent with friends. The weekends were just as busy, going here and going there. The chaos my son's room was in did not apply to my friend. Their home was clean and comfortable. No obvious indication of an inner chaos.
The major clue for me was the sleep pattern. The current nickname for people who use methamphetamine is 'tweaker.' The derivation of the nickname was a mystery to me until my oldest son gave me some insight. As I understand what was explained to me, the term 'tweaker' refers to how they sleep. When using dangerous stimulants the brain is super charged and the body follows what the brain tells it. What happens to tweakers is the body tires after many hours and they lay down to rest. The brain continues to be stimulated while the body rests. Deep sleep is rare as the brain keeps working and what is achieved is a false rest, so to speak. My friend's reference to 'coasting' after the alarm went off says to me the brain is working, stimulated, while the feeling of weariness keeps them in bed until the moment when they have to get up or the brain's function is so hyper they simply cannot rest any longer. Another factor is tweakers often sleep with lights on and music playing in the background. Either one of those can keep me awake not to mention both.
Years ago I became familiar with the term maintenance drunk. It describes the person who could drink all night, get up and go to work, have a 3 martini lunch, go back to work until quitting time and then continue drinking all evening, repeating the sequence over and over for years on end. My friend is a maintenance tweaker. I do not know how long they have been operating as a maintenance tweaker, but their description of their previous life indicates it may have started as far back as high school. Possibly sometime in their life they realized they could get by with minimal doses of a stimulant parsed out in specific doses. My friend's source is a doctor who has prescribed Sudafed for a sinus issue. I cannot speak definitively about prescribed dosages, but I believe the 12 hour capsule is standard issue. Take a pill in the morning and the sinuses are not plugged for the next 12 hours. Suppose one decides the sinuses are clogging up again before the 12 hours have elapsed. A second pill is taken and the evening's activities are met with a full head of steam and breathing is ostensibly not a factor. Oh sure, they are stimulated well into the evening and tiredness is not felt until midnight or so, but deep, restorative sleep is not to be achieved.
During the time of our friendship I have never noticed my friend having a sinus problem. One morning I stopped by and they stated their sinuses were clogged up and they needed to take a Sudafed. My inner response was, really, I hadn't noticed any indication their sinuses were clogged at all. You know, the voice pitch is changed because the sinus cavity is full and the sound cannot resonate as fully as normal, or the afflicted person is blowing their nose vociferously, or some other indicator the nose has a problem. My friend seemed normal to my ear.
And now I ask the original questions again. What would you do? How would you do what needs to be done? My son's situation has been handled. I asked him to leave. He has not communicated with me since the day we dropped him off where he had parked his broke down car. My other friend, the maintenance tweaker, is a totally different course of action. If I were to confront them they can easily refute my allegations. All they need do is point out they are meeting their obligations. My evidence is circumstantial at best. I see patterns of prescription abuse where they do not. I could take the issue to the immediate family. I wonder about my credibility with the immediate family. The family members are best positioned to monitor use. Checking the prescription to see how fast the pills are being used would be a concrete way to determine if my perceptions have any validity. How receptive would the family be to hearing my allegations let alone doing the follow up to determine their validity?
And thus is how one deals with proven addiction and suspected addiction, maybe.
Sunday, August 16, 2015
It has been over 2 years since I posted to this blog. Below are my thoughts about resolving a current issue.
August 15, 2015
I'm 68 going on 69. Why am I back, reliving, a kind of teenage romance thing? It has been over 40 years since I was in a dating scene. And believe me the repeat performance has been just as painful as whichever romance I experienced in my young adult years.
I suppose I could blame it on Marcia. She said she wouldn't abandon me and in the end she did. My reasoning(blaming Marcia) is as follows:
I was 27 when we got married. Marcia was 20. Little did she realize what a fruitcake she had partnered.
I was carrying a lot of baggage up in my little cranium. What did you do when you learned nothing was permanent? I decided nothing was permanent and built my set of crude walls to filter my experience.
I decided it was hard to trust people because they were impermanent.
When I fell in love it was always head over heels, full steam ahead, in my own way, which looking back, could be seen as plodding. (out of flow, possibly, but it will fit down the way)
Marcia was a smart person and picked up on the primary issue. Abandonment!! Yep, I said it. Young as she was she didn't have the life experience to have some good tools at hand. She certainly did later. Abandonment and trust have a symbiotic relationship. She was trustworthy early during the beginning years. And for the remaining of our time together. So if you trust someone then you will believe them when they say, "I will not abandon you." And I did.
We were married 37 years. To me a long time to trust and to not be abandoned.
And now the reasoning for blaming Marcia has been presented. As you can see pretty weak.
And now back to the primary question. Why am I reliving the pain of romance? The idea of romance seems a bit absurd when you have reaped the payoff, joy, of a romance becoming a relationship. A relationship committed to growing, changing, evolving, into something new and different.
I believe myself to be a mature adult. Wise in his years.(although, the challenge of romance being added to the mix is daunting to say the least) I am therefore looking at relationship more than romance, although intimate romance is certainly what has gotten me to this current state.
What am I gonna do about it? I'm doing the best way I know how.
If it, love, is about relationship more than sex, which to me has been the cherry(not a maraschino) on top. And right now I'm trying to make the distinction between the early time when the drive to procreate love(young adult) motivates and the later time when love is more relationship oriented. My preference is for relationship.
So, what have I taught myself if relationship is what I value more than sex? To me, then it is pretty easy to understand why I wasn't chosen for a long lasting relationship going forward. If a foundation, previous history, to a relationship has already been established then, at my age, the easy choice is to go with the relationship having a foundation. Looking at myself as best I can it seems like I am still a piece of work, relationship(ly) speaking. Weighing the two choices between a relationship having a foundation versus the relationship needing lots of work seems an easy choice. Yeah, at my age I would choose the former over the latter. (currently listening to a solo piano playing the Theme From Love Story, it fit). I do like the excitement of forging a relationship with a new someone. And it will be someone new. Marcia's gone.
Working on a new relationship belies the idea one is always working on relationships when engaged with others. The difference between working on a relationship with a foundation versus one with a new person is familiarity. Familiarity provides context to building the relationship going forward, therefore less work. At my age less work is preferable.
My favorite mode of operation is silence. Probably, most likely, due to my belief in impermanence in turn leading me to not comment on my current state, how I feel or think about my current state of being. I have to work on my silence if I really do seek a relationship with another female of the human species. Marcia put up with it and learned how to deal with it effectively. I can't expect a new relationship to understand nor comprehend what is happening internally with me.
Yes, and cooking for myself, and then others, will help.
August 15, 2015
I'm 68 going on 69. Why am I back, reliving, a kind of teenage romance thing? It has been over 40 years since I was in a dating scene. And believe me the repeat performance has been just as painful as whichever romance I experienced in my young adult years.
I suppose I could blame it on Marcia. She said she wouldn't abandon me and in the end she did. My reasoning(blaming Marcia) is as follows:
I was 27 when we got married. Marcia was 20. Little did she realize what a fruitcake she had partnered.
I was carrying a lot of baggage up in my little cranium. What did you do when you learned nothing was permanent? I decided nothing was permanent and built my set of crude walls to filter my experience.
I decided it was hard to trust people because they were impermanent.
When I fell in love it was always head over heels, full steam ahead, in my own way, which looking back, could be seen as plodding. (out of flow, possibly, but it will fit down the way)
Marcia was a smart person and picked up on the primary issue. Abandonment!! Yep, I said it. Young as she was she didn't have the life experience to have some good tools at hand. She certainly did later. Abandonment and trust have a symbiotic relationship. She was trustworthy early during the beginning years. And for the remaining of our time together. So if you trust someone then you will believe them when they say, "I will not abandon you." And I did.
We were married 37 years. To me a long time to trust and to not be abandoned.
And now the reasoning for blaming Marcia has been presented. As you can see pretty weak.
And now back to the primary question. Why am I reliving the pain of romance? The idea of romance seems a bit absurd when you have reaped the payoff, joy, of a romance becoming a relationship. A relationship committed to growing, changing, evolving, into something new and different.
I believe myself to be a mature adult. Wise in his years.(although, the challenge of romance being added to the mix is daunting to say the least) I am therefore looking at relationship more than romance, although intimate romance is certainly what has gotten me to this current state.
What am I gonna do about it? I'm doing the best way I know how.
If it, love, is about relationship more than sex, which to me has been the cherry(not a maraschino) on top. And right now I'm trying to make the distinction between the early time when the drive to procreate love(young adult) motivates and the later time when love is more relationship oriented. My preference is for relationship.
So, what have I taught myself if relationship is what I value more than sex? To me, then it is pretty easy to understand why I wasn't chosen for a long lasting relationship going forward. If a foundation, previous history, to a relationship has already been established then, at my age, the easy choice is to go with the relationship having a foundation. Looking at myself as best I can it seems like I am still a piece of work, relationship(ly) speaking. Weighing the two choices between a relationship having a foundation versus the relationship needing lots of work seems an easy choice. Yeah, at my age I would choose the former over the latter. (currently listening to a solo piano playing the Theme From Love Story, it fit). I do like the excitement of forging a relationship with a new someone. And it will be someone new. Marcia's gone.
Working on a new relationship belies the idea one is always working on relationships when engaged with others. The difference between working on a relationship with a foundation versus one with a new person is familiarity. Familiarity provides context to building the relationship going forward, therefore less work. At my age less work is preferable.
My favorite mode of operation is silence. Probably, most likely, due to my belief in impermanence in turn leading me to not comment on my current state, how I feel or think about my current state of being. I have to work on my silence if I really do seek a relationship with another female of the human species. Marcia put up with it and learned how to deal with it effectively. I can't expect a new relationship to understand nor comprehend what is happening internally with me.
Yes, and cooking for myself, and then others, will help.
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