FISH AND FAMILY

So I would like to begin this blog with this very important warning: I love my family. (Uh oh, that sounds like something bad is about to come, right?) They are some of the most loyal individuals I am ever going to have the privelage to have in my life. (Uh oh, this must be really bad.) They would do anything for you, no matter how they feel towards you at the time. (Uh-oh, what did these people do?)

I have a very important saying that I have created, that at least in my family is the truth: "Family is the closest thing to unconditional love you are ever going to find in a human being." Now what you consider to be your "family" will change that statement as traditional families aren't as common as they once were.....unless you are a member of the O'Roark/Roark household.

This past weekend I went to a family reunion in Dallas, Texas. Every single member of my immediate and extended family was there (minus one aunt who couldn't make it for whatever reasons.) I had every single cousin on that side of the family (there are ten of us, and only one is a girl.) I had every single one of my dad's brothers and sisters (there are six of them)....are you up to count that is 16 people. WAIT!!!! Four of those brothers and sisters are married (and my brother)....ADD 5....21 people! And who could go to a family renunion if the matriarch and patriarch weren't there. Got to love those grandparents! 23 people! Are we done yet? Oh now, my grandmother has two living brothers and sisters. 25 people! One of those has a child with a husband and two kids. 29 people! And still yet one of those brothers and sisters is married. 30 people! Yep, 30 people all staying at a bed and breakfast (with Hitler as the bed and breakfast owner....but that's a blog on it's own) not a hotel. That means that all of us were in walking distance of each other, and there was almost no time to have alone. Smell trouble? Because there was trouble.

Which brings to another saying an uncle once told me..."After three days, fish and family start to stink."

There was fighting and arguing (notice I separated those two words) and there was bitching about this and that and the other. There was people trying to get people's goat, and people not trying and yet succeeding nonetheless. Yet through it all I noticed something. I am the oldest grandchild in my family (on both sides). I noticed that everybody younger than me was getting along and pretty well behaved. We were having the time of our lives, and smiling and laughing and just all around enjoying the company. It seems all those older than us (well, the middle generation; the older generation were nice, quiet and reserved) were just up for arguing ad nauseum. It was insane! I think I figured out why.

All of my cousins have things we do not tell the older generations as they come from a time when a lot of things are just wrong (no way to look at it, no angle to try to maneuver to). There is no acceptance of things, just plain wrong. However, my cousins and myself and brother all have no real secrets from each other. (Secrets seems like such a strong word, but those little things that your family really doesn't know about you, and they don't want to know.) All of those surface things that we are told are "wrong" are not hidden from the other cousins. We may not speak all the time, but I know that we can all be ourselves around each other. I think that is not what my family is missing, I think that is what most families are missing. Communication.

There is no communication. And the odd thing is is that nobody in the family (or any family for that matter) has true secrets. Everyone knows them, but if someone finds them "wrong" instead of talking about them, they choose to pretend it doesn't exist, allowing the "secrets" to just fester. So here is the dilemma, becasue nobody speaks about them and yet everyone knows about them, here is what happens: 1) Nobody talks about it. Which leads to 2) A family member allowing themselves to create whatever scenario about that person they want to in their mind, whether true or false (as they won't speak about it). Which leads to 3) A sense of anger developing for that family member because you believe your created scenarios to be true. Which leads to 4) The anger going from internal to external. Which leads to 5) Yelling. Which leads to 6) People yelling back. Which leads to 7) Pushing. Which leads to 8) Violence. Which if you are not careful can lead to 9) the breakdown of a family that at one time was so loyal and dependable.

Communication is always the key. I don't know too many people who would disagree with that statement. However, I have seen what happens when no one communicates. I saw this past weekend a difference in generations. I see what happens. My parents' generation come from the world of "if you don't speak about it, than it is better not to think about." Whereas myself and generations below me are clearly part of a "we may not agree with each other but I say we discuss it all and just talk it through."

You know I love my family (and that is not me convincing anyone, but just a statement of fact.) This past weekend proved to me just how important they are to me in my life. They formed me and created me in a lot of ways that nobody can take away. My eyes, my nose, my sense of humor, etc. However, sometimes I look at the world and I see the generation below me just preparing to ruin the world. But then I look at the generation above me and I see how much my generation has shaped and improved the world. Maybe that is what the generation below me is doing, and I have to be prepared to face that.

The fact of the matter is this. Fish and family do start to stink after three days. However, let's face it, just like fish, you need a dose every once in a while. It's good for the heart.

GRANDMA'S BOOK

So something happened tonight that is hard to put into words...especially when your blogs are usually about thought you are having randomly. I don't really like sharing emotions through an electronic setting. It just feels so distant, but tonight is clearly going to have to be a lesson to learn in my corner. What do you do when someone you respect very much, is actually doesn't really respect you?

I work in a place where art is of a main concern, and I deal with an art form, that although is more my second favorite form of theater, is one that I'm good at, and is actually the more popular art form. I also have a degree in public relations, so I know how to get people into the seats. But it hurts your heart when you find out that others may not like that you get that much attention. See this all sounds so high school as I am typing it, which is making me think that this is all so high school. So why bother to keep going? So I won't...

But I will talk about jealousy. What a stupid thing to feel most of the times (I'm a firm believer that all emotions have their place in this world.) But most of the time jealousy is just a stupid emotion to feel, because it doesn't lead anywhere. All jealousy does is leads to anger, and the type of anger that isn't a motivating kind.

I have never been the type of person to share my feelings freely. In fact, at first glance people may think of me as just someone who is a bit scary. When they get to know me they find a lot of hidden layers, but I have to say that I'm quite a sentimental person. I respect people so much for what they can do that I cannot, and I'm not the jealous kind. (Oh, my faults come in very different colored packages though....I'm no angel!) However, I don't understand jealousy. I have felt it before, of course, but I discovered really early that it doesn't lead anywhere. You just end up staying in the same place.

Anger can be such a strong motivating force and breeding ground for creativity, but the form of anger that is attached to jealousy is so stagnant. I can't afford myself that time to stay there. Proudly I am 31, but 32 is coming right around the corner (NOT 30!!!!) so I can't be bothered to stay in one emotional state for such a long period of time.

Isn't staying still how generation gaps happen? One generation gets jealous of another generation so they just stay still until the "younger" generation long surpasses them, and then the "older" generation has to catch up. I deal with teenagers all the time, if you look (and you don't have to look too closely) you can actually see the worlds tearing apart at the seams. It is sad.

I had a grandmother who may have passed away at 88, but she was not 88 at all. She knew what she was. There is a great quote I heard on a blog I read of a great friend of mine and she said, in order to be positive you have to accept the reality. The reality my grandmother understood is that she was not 22 anymore, or 33, or 44, or 55, or 66, or 77....she was 88. She understood that and than accepted that fact. Then she proceeded to act like "the young" were supposed to. She was loved by all ages. She never got jealous of people, she was happy for everyone who succeeded, or felt like they succeeded. She was amazing, remarkable and special, and maybe i should take out a chapter of her book.

Jealousy is for the birds...who has the time. Jealousy makes us stand still, and time isn't waiting around for the jealous to catch up....moving on.

FADES IN THE BACKGROUND

So I was chatting it up on facebook with a friend of mine whom I haven't talked with in a long time. One of those friends that you always got along with but time and space just got in the way. Well there we were, she and I were gabbing on about our love for Scrabble and how we can't find anyone to play with us anymore as if no time had passed.

As time walked on in the conversation my grandmother's passing came up and my friend brought up her mother and how this past year was the year that marked my friend being alive longer than she knew her mother. I don't know why, but i teared up. I cried (and I am not a crier.) My friend talked about going to Italy because she realized that life is too short and you can't wait around to accomplish your goals. She talked about how her mother's death taught her that lesson. And as I was talking about my grandmother I started realizing how special that woman was cause of how she treated and loved everyone, despite her sharp wit and tongue.

However, this is not a "life-is-short" blog; we all know that lesson. However, as time marches on we talk less and less about our loved ones that have passed; or we stop discussing why the person we are with or why our family is important to us; or we stop mentioning the things that our loved ones did for us (no matter how small.) This is a very dangerous thing to stop talking about.

If we stop bringing these things up from time to time then they begin to fade into the background and just become the pieces of cloth that is on our skin, and they no longer are the threads that binds the cloths together. These are the things that make us whole. The way someone completes us, the lesson we learned when the person passed, or the little thing that someone did that made us go, "that is why i love them." Those are the threads.

For example, take it whenever in life you learned that important life lesson of "life is short" That time when we learned that lesson helped us put into perspective that hose dreams we have for ourselves or the goals of traveling or whatever are slowly losing time. Therefore that lesson is the thread that can sew the dream to the reality.

Or: maybe the person we love is getting on our deepest nerves one day, almost to the point of us just wanting to walk away. That memory of the time they let you sing in the car without asking you to shut up could be thread that holds the walking away to staying together.

We can't stop talking about these important things. These are the moments in life when we had realizations; when something that never made sense before became clear, and if we mention those moments but then begin to walk away from them and lose them out of our vocabulary, then we tend to go back to the way we were before the lesson was learned. What progress have we made when we do that?

So I say that if your grandmother made you realize that goals are to be accomplished or if your special someone put a note of gratitude in your car visor and you understood why you were with that person, or if your dog wanting you to love on him made you realize that simple things are important too, than don't stop talking about it. Mention it. Bring it up. And keep in mind that the friends that roll their eyes at the cheesiness of the conversation are the friends that haven't learned that you have to mention these things, cause these are the things that are the fabric of true happiness.

It's not achieving the goal that is the true joy, it is the moment when you realize you can do it.

Emotional Food Groups Pt. 1

I have a theory about emotions. I believe that all emotions that we can feel fall under four major categories: Happiness, Sadness, Fear, and Anger. Every other feeling live under varying degrees of these four. For example, jealousy (anger), depression (sadness), paranoia (fear), etc. However with all the emotions in the world I think that there is only one that doesn't belong to any one category: Love.

Though some emotions may cross lines with one of the four emotions above (I.E. Greed: fear and happiness or jealousy: fear and anger), no single emotion is able to cross all four categories such as love. Love is all of those things, sometimes at once. (But we'll save that for another blog)

Imagine this: happiness, sadness, fear and anger are the four food groups. You need every single one of those in your life in order to challenge, develop, or even relax yourself.

Just like the food groups, you cannot be truly healthy by seperating them. For example, how can you truly know how thrilling that soccor game win is if you have never lost those four in a row? How can you know how beautiful life can really be, until you have touched the edge of death? How thrilling can that lottery win be, if you have never had a single day of struggle?

Just like the four food groups, if you have too much of one food, then you are not giving your body the nutrients it needs in order to sustain a healthy daily life. Have you ever notice how annoyed we get when we are around a person who feels only one of those emotions all the time? It grates our nerves. Think about people you know who are alwasys sad, always angry, always scared, or always happy even (sometimes they seem to be the most frustrating.)

However, on the opposite side of the token if we don't have enough of one emotion it can be detremental to our well being. Think about those people who hold in that anger (I tend to be this person) and they never let it out until something very small and tiny has happened and then it is turns into World War III? Holding that anger inside of you and not letting it out in small ammounts creates this well of anger that we usually let out in one inappropriate gesture.

What about holding in sadness? If we hang on to sadness we tend to cover it up with happiness. But then that moment comes when the straw breaks the camels back (and usually it is something tiny) and we just let it all out in one fell swoop, and it takes us by storm, and we delve into a depression.

I think it's funny that of these four emotions sadness and anger are similar, and happiness and fear tend to be similar.

Why is that? Well, happiness and fear are emotions where if we live in them there is no way to grow. We don't become more complex or more intelligent people when we are feeling happy, if we are not careful we can become complacent. However, with fear, if all of you feel is fear then you never venture out into the world,and if you never venture you can't grow. The way you learn from fear is fighting to get out of it, after all that is how you begin to realize how strong you can actually be. On the same token, the way to overcome happiness is to not use it as a cover up for sadness and anger, you have to allow yourself to feel those two emotions.

With sadness and anger, they are similar because growth happens while you are in the midst of feeling those emotions. With sadness we learn as we are crying and feeling that pain in our heart. With anger, we are realize what we are willing to take while expressing ourselves through our voice, through our words, through our actions of dealing with that anger.

I think sometimes, the answer that seems the most practical isn't always the most obvious. We always want to cover the "bad" emotions with happiness. However, by not allowing ourselves to show that anger, sadness, or fear we are doing emotional damage to ourselves.

To go back to the four food groups: If we ignore fruit, we rob ourselves of the sugar our bodies need. If we ignore vegetables, we rob ourselves of the iron that our body needs. If we ignore meat, we rob ourselves of the protein that our body needs. If we ignore dairy, we rob ourselves of the calcium that our body needs.

When it comes to emotions we cannot deny ourselves a single one. They are vital to our emotional health. However, if those four emotions equal the four food groups then love is the chart that holds them all together.

I guess that must mean a Pt. II :)