tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60154447751706994702024-03-13T12:22:36.274-04:00Thomas G. Fifferaka * Tom Aplomb * Author * Speaker * StorytellerThomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.comBlogger1282125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-48848384634373114032022-04-04T07:38:00.000-04:002022-04-04T07:38:43.783-04:00Some Thoughts on Writing Memoir<p>In the famous Monty Python skit, the Ministry of Silly Walks elevates expressing and, in the process, embarrassing oneself in public to an art form encouraged by the British government, much as our NEA and NEH provide support and legitimacy for more traditional creativity. Writing a memoir is partly an exercise in taking a silly walk, as the trip back through time demands doing a jig here and dodging a jam-up there, sidestepping un-repaired potholes and perilous pitfalls and pitiless, bottomless pits of self pity, and keeping your feet out of the pungent piles of shit into which it is so startlingly easy to place them. It’s a stutter step walk, like the thing impatient people in Manhattan (an oxymoron if there ever was one) do when they’re walking too close to the person in front of them. And yet, writing a memoir is also a measured marathon, a race to keep pace with the run of memories, thudding one foot in front of the other to maintain forward motion as the mind races back to reclaim a scene, a scent, the schematic of a an experience, a name, a place, a particular word or phrase, a passage of poetry, then sprints ahead to catch up with the story, which has already reached the next mile marker.</p><p>The process is both exhilarating and infuriating, and you eventually hit the wall of forget, which like love in the e e cummings poem, “is more thinner than recall/more seldom than a wave is wet/more frequent than to fail.” You can’t just push through it. You have to step over it, and before that, dis- and reassemble it, tearing it down on one side and rebuilding it on the other, brick by brick—or in the case of what few have the courage to call the magic of invented memory—trick by trick. Factual recall is inevitably impaired by time, and the battle between veracity and verisimilitude rages until you discover these twisted twins are not true opponents, but close, if cautious, friends, that will both serve your cause loyally.</p><p>At the top of the wall stands Jack Nicholson, from “A Few Good Men,” shouting to Tom Cruise, “You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall,” warning Cruise that he can’t handle the truth, claiming he is doing the distasteful but indispensable duty of defending what’s right from the onslaught of what’s true. But Jack’s Colonel Jessup, who was disposable in the film, is demanded by the writer, who is rebuilding and re-mortaring the wall, rearranging the bricks by revealing their patterns, the nicked edges that fit neatly together, the striations and discolorations that indicate which ones sat side by side while time wrought its sublimely destructive work, even occasionally fashioning entirely new bricks—facsimiles of those that were smashed or lost or have decayed beyond recognition. This is the architecture or more accurately the engineering, the masonry of memoir.</p><p>Within the memoirist’s Ministry of Silly Walks is the Bureau of Reclamation, which, as an agency of the United States government within the Department of the Interior (where, of course, all memoir lives before it is written), is the nation’s largest wholesaler of water and second largest hydroelectric power producer. This organization’s operations—harnessing the raging rivers, impeding with dams the water’s inexorable flow, containing a river’s energy, collecting and distributing its juice, slowing an endless rush to a manageable and meaningful trickle—this is exactly how the memoir writer reclaims his or her story—a story that, like a dry riverbed, is brought to life with a raindrop of recollection, a story whose path was never lost but needs to be re-found, re-mapped, re-channeled, and sometimes even reversed before its convoluted and meandering course makes any sense at all.</p><p>Every river has both a source and a mouth, and every writer does, too, the source being his heart and the mouth being her voice. In Robert Lowell’s poem, “Man and Wife,” he writes: “you were in your twenties, and I,/once hand on glass/and heart in mouth/outdrank the Rahvs in the heat/of Greenwich Village, fainting at/your feet—“</p><p>Have you ever had your heart in your mouth? Try writing a memoir.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNTwpy2coORvorVx6KCVviuwAhWrlRCNfUkur7moAYS9ty_qhfZUcJxxf2op9pNUavolg0JA-rUQNBK7Efcof3L9ZTETNorMGnwKhW2d9HfluOX--miS5GjOSAuPgKB7DUoBe2pgdMdw_OyEgSZx0fJImYtHOplxIdLUAfDPdCl8Pm6_WW3q4HIEUH/s1773/1174003C-45E6-4620-B114-282F9A671A15.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1773" data-original-width="1773" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNTwpy2coORvorVx6KCVviuwAhWrlRCNfUkur7moAYS9ty_qhfZUcJxxf2op9pNUavolg0JA-rUQNBK7Efcof3L9ZTETNorMGnwKhW2d9HfluOX--miS5GjOSAuPgKB7DUoBe2pgdMdw_OyEgSZx0fJImYtHOplxIdLUAfDPdCl8Pm6_WW3q4HIEUH/s320/1174003C-45E6-4620-B114-282F9A671A15.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-6155003995925263642020-07-25T18:23:00.001-04:002020-07-25T18:24:12.311-04:00No, That's Not What Men Do<h2 style="background-color: white; box-sizing: inherit; color: #242424; font-family: "Alegreya Sans", sans-serif; font-size: 30px; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px 0.375em; text-align: center;">
<em style="box-sizing: inherit; display: block; margin: 0.2em 0px;"><span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bolder;">A line overheard at the beach leads Thomas Fiffer to call for all men to speak out against aggression and violence.</span></em></h2>
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<i>Note: I felt compelled to reprise this in light of the recent verbal assault against Representative Ocasio-Cortez and her remarkable response.</i></div>
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Yesterday, I took my boys to the beach. A beautiful beach in a beautiful suburb. A peaceful place where parents and kids play and picnic, read and relax, socialize, and soak up the sun. A place where aggression and violence are virtually absent, except in the spirited exertions of children chasing their friends, pumping their water pistols, or pelting each other playfully with fistfuls of wet sand, despite their parents’ pleas to stop. An idyllic place where nothing bad happens. The sun was shining, and the sand was warm beneath my feet. But what I heard there left me cold.</div>
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♦◊♦</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #307d7e; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 20px; line-height: 25px;">The sun was shining, and the sand was warm beneath my feet. But what I heard there left me cold.</span></div>
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As a writer, I have learned to be a snoop. I constantly observe people around me, cataloging curious traits and behaviors, and I listen in on conversations hoping to hear tidbits and gems. It’s a habit all writers will confess to, and it holds our secret to making characters real. You can also learn a great deal about people from only a few words, and yesterday offered a shocking revelation. As the family sprawled out on the sand next to us—father, mother, young boy and girl, and a tanned old lizard of a man who appeared to be the grandfather—was getting ready to leave, the little girl, six or so, ran petulantly to her father. “Daddy!” she cried, her upset clouding her face as she stared up at him, “Daddy! Grant pushed me.” Grant, her brother, appeared to be about a year older.</div>
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I ran through the responses I use when one of my sons goes after the other in a way that is unbrotherly and mean.</div>
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“Apologize to your brother so we can clear this.”</div>
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“We solve problems with words, not fists.”</div>
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“It’s my job to protect you, including from each other.”</div>
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From the looks of the father—the cast of his eyes, his aggressive posturing—I figured his answer might be different, but I could not believe what I heard him say.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bolder;">“Get used to it, Schuyler. That’s what men do.”</span></div>
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I felt sick.</div>
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Horrified.</div>
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Disgusted by the distressing knowledge that this human example of what is wrong with our culture was … right.</div>
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And painfully aware of how the cycle of aggression and violence gets repeated and reinforced.</div>
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In the second I heard those words, the rotten root of the tree was bared, the root nourished by the toxic streams of entitlement and hatred, the root beneath the tree that bears the bitter fruits of male disrespect and contempt.</div>
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The father was not addressing his son’s aggression towards women.</div>
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He was not supporting his daughter’s right to respectful treatment.</div>
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He may have thought he was preparing Schuyler for the reality of a world in which she’ll inevitably be mistreated.</div>
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But his validation of that world, and his refusal to raise an emotionally intelligent son and an assertive, confident daughter, made my heart sink on to the sand.</div>
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♦◊♦</div>
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My younger son was off at the playground, but my older boy was with me when the father spoke, and I turned what I heard into a teachable moment for him. I told him I was astonished at what the man had said to his daughter. I told him I wanted to say something but saw no point in confrontation, knowing it wouldn’t change anything. But I determined to make a difference where I could. I made it clear to my son, who is about to be a teenager, that pushing women around is not “what men do.” I said, “It’s what pigs do, and that man is a pig.”</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #307d7e; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 20px; line-height: 25px;">I made it clear to my son, who is about to be a teenager, that pushing women around is not “what men do.” I said, “It’s what pigs do, and that man is a pig.”</span></div>
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Later, as my son and I were sitting up on the lifeguard chair looking out at the sun-dappled waters of the Sound, he asked me why women become prostitutes. I explained that it’s complicated and offered the thought that some women grow up with a lack of self-esteem or sense of their value, and that as prostitutes they may feel valued for their bodies when they exchange sex for money. I don’t know if that’s the right answer, but I do know that little Schuyler will not grow up knowing her value, that she will believe she is less worthy than men, and that she will lack the courage to demand equal treatment. Her father is making sure of that, because he wants a world that puts his needs first, a world of submissive women who think it’s OK for men to push them around.</div>
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Male aggression and violence are endemic because they are <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">embedded</em>.</div>
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Because parents like Schuyler’s father raise boys to feel <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">entitled</em> and girls to take their lumps <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">without complaint</em>.</div>
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<span style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #307d7e; font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 20px; line-height: 25px;">Too many boys grow up with modeling that molds them into misogynistic monsters.</span></div>
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Not all men are like the pig on the beach, but too many are. Too many boys grow up with modeling that molds them into misogynistic monsters, under influences that enable and allow them to be violent, controlling, and dominating without question, in a paradigm of fear-based respect that tells them they are less of a man if they don’t put their foot down and squash women into second place.</div>
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In the wake of the Isla Vista shooting, women have created the hashtag #yesallwomen to show that all women experience male aggression, even though #notallmen behave aggressively.</div>
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I believe men must counter with a new code of conduct, a new paradigm of respect that eliminates aggression and violence.</div>
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Based on the words I overheard at the beach, I’ve created a new hashtag: <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bolder;">#notwhatmendo</span>.</div>
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And I’m calling for all men to stand up, speak out, and model a new standard of behavior.</div>
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Whenever we see aggression and violence, wherever we encounter it, when it’s spoken, suggested, or acted, and with every opportunity we have to show our children and the world what we’re made of, we must speak out against it. We must unite and say, <span style="box-sizing: inherit; font-weight: bolder;">“No, that’s not what men do.”</span></div>
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Originally published on <a href="https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/cracking-the-code-of-male-aggression-and-violence-fiff/" target="_blank">The Good Men Project </a></div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-53391916713756809422020-07-02T08:15:00.002-04:002020-07-02T08:15:54.914-04:00A Tribute to My Father<div class="p1" style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">My father, Robert S. Fiffer, was a larger-than-life character, and though he lived only 48 years (of which I knew him for nine), he had an outsized influence on both the world and me. First of all, he was big. Not tall, but heavy set. He joked that he weighed “two hundred and plenty,” and when he once shaved his beard, he grew it back immediately to hide all his “extra” chins. Born on the hardscrabble west side of Chicago (Austin), he attended public school, where he skipped a grade (as I did) and finished high school at 17. His father, who had emigrated from Romania, was a songwriter whose claim to fame was having a composition played by Lawrence Welk. But the music (which he tapped out by ear on the piano) was a hobby; Grandpa Fiffer made his living behind the counter of a small cigar store where he earned so little he allegedly hid the day’s cash receipts in the lettuce. He, my grandmother, my father, and my uncle lived in a tiny apartment behind the store. After high school, my father attended the University of Chicago for both college and law school. (He was not fit for military service, due to flat feet and a bad knee.) During the 1940s at U of C, Mortimer Adler instituted a two-year college program, and law school was a four-year stint. My dad couldn’t afford to take summers off, and as the school was on the quarter system, he finished six years of education in four, paying his $100 a quarter tuition with his Gin Rummy winnings. He was at the time, the youngest candidate to take the Chicago Bar Association’s qualifying exam, and they made a special dispensation to allow him to practice under the age of 21. That same year, 1947, my parents married.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">As my father moved up in Chicago’s legal world through hard work (he usually rose at 4:00 am and was said to read while he tied his shoelaces), he became highly successful, eventually running his own medium-sized law firm, but he never forgot his working class roots. He was overly generous with both money and time, giving to charities and stepping up consistently for community service. He tipped well and frequently gave free or discounted legal assistance to those in need, such as our carpenter or a staff member of his club (The Standard Club), both of whose sons ran afoul of the law. He also got involved behind the scenes in democratic politics, and in one race, when the opposing candidate was accused of embezzling, had play money printed up that read “Stolen by Orville Hodge.” At political and charity functions, he used the men’s room frequently, not out of need, but because it enabled him to strike up conversations with potential clients on the way in and out. Knowing how to work the system was (and still is) key in Chicago, and the story goes that when Harris Wofford (who would go on to become a senator from Pennsylvania) got arrested and put in jail during the infamous 1968 Democratic Convention, a friend placed a frantic, late-night call to my father asking him what course of action to take. My dad’s response was, “Who’s the judge?”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">He kept the door of his corner office closed, even when he was out, so his associates would assume he was in and not slack off when the boss was away. But he worked harder than all of them. The biggest deal he put together was Robert Irsay’s acquisition of the then Baltimore (now Indianapolis) Colts. The Colts’ owner, Carroll Rosenbloom, had always wanted to own the Rams, but selling the Colts involved huge tax consequences. So, in the only whole-team trade in NFL history, Irsay bought the Rams and immediately swapped them, at equal value, for the Colts, making everyone happy, especially my father, who, after the deal closed, bought me an enormous stuffed ape (“Ernie”) in the airport and bought Ernie a first-class seat on the flight back to Chicago. At one time, I had autographed photos from Johnny Unitas, Bubba Smith, Bert Jones, and other football legends, and my parents attended two Super Bowls. We spent one spring vacation in Florida at The Jockey Club and on the Irsays’ Yacht, the “Mighty I,” and my father became the team’s secretary and general counsel.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">For my parents’ 25th anniversary (1972), my dad took the whole family (I have two older brothers) across the Atlantic on the SS France, then the largest cruise ship in the world, followed by a grand tour of England, France, and Italy. I still have the key to our stateroom. I joined my parents on subsequent trips to Scandinavia and the Far East. My dad died three years later, too young, having lived, we all said, at least 96 years in his brief 48. The Jewish Community Centers of Chicago honored him for a decade with the annual Fiffer literary lecture, bringing in luminaries such as Cynthia Ozick, Alfred Kazin, Mordecai Richler, Walter Laqueur, Harold Brodkey, and Saul Bellow (whom I introduced). The University of Chicago Law School has a scholarship in his name. One of my favorite memories is driving downtown to his office in Chicago’s Rookery building, going through the tunnels on the expressway (Big John and Little John), riding the elevator up to the top floor (there was still an operator in the 70s), and photocopying my hand on the copy machine. Another is spying on him from outside our house, taking notes on a pad, while he worked at home on a weekend in his study. I have his home desk (an old library table), and some of the many classical music tapes he recorded (and cataloged methodically in notebooks) from albums or the radio. He even made tapes of “Peter and the Wolf” and “The Jungle Stories” for me, so I wouldn’t ruin his expensive phonograph. Another memory (though I have forgotten the tales themselves) is of the “Barfberry Stories” he would tell me at night before I went to sleep. On the day he died, he caught me procrastinating, reading the <i>World Book</i> when I should have been writing a book report. He made a notecard for me with an acronym—DOOTAAT—and explained that the letters stood for “Do Only One Thing At A Time.” To this day, I’m not much of a multitasker, and I chuckled a little when I read that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both consider “focus” to be the most important behavior for success. I don’t always live up to Dad’s advice, but at least I was able to focus long enough to write this piece!</span></div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-40038854069271965992020-02-08T19:00:00.001-05:002020-02-08T19:00:54.149-05:00Something Familiar, Something PeculiarAs a kid in the 70s, I loved watching the <a href="https://www.womansworld.com/posts/entertainment/cbs-schedule-all-in-the-family-141332">CBS Saturday night comedy lineup</a>, considered to be one of the greatest combos of all time. It began with <i>All in the Family</i>, followed by <i>M*A*S*H</i>, <i>The Mary Tyler Moore Show</i>, <i>The Bob Newhart Show</i>, and finally <i>The Carol Burnett Show</i>. I may be wrong, but I believe the sequence was preceded by the song, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-hZhr2k2hk">Comedy Tonight</a>," from Stephen Sondheim's musical, <i>A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum</i>.<br />
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<i>Something familiar, </i></div>
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<i>Something peculiar,</i></div>
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<i>Something for everyone:</i></div>
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<i>A comedy tonight!</i></div>
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If anyone remembers this differently, please chime in, but I am almost certain I heard this song on network TV back then. I also fondly recall the NBC "Mystery Movie" theme, "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkvS8XLc874">Midnight, Moonlight & Magic</a>" (by Henri Mancini of <i>Pink Panther </i>fame), that ran before a rotating selection of classics: "Columbo," "McCloud," and "McMillan & Wife."<br />
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I'm not writing to this to reprise my favorite 70s TV music, rather to proffer a writing tip that came to mind as I thought more deeply about the "Comedy Tonight" lyrics. Though the song most likely intended something familiar and something peculiar to be two distinct offerings (though within one performance), the combination of the familiar and the peculiar in a single character, action, place, or scene is what makes the best fiction work. We want to be surprised by stories, yet at the same time feel the surprise was inevitable. We want the character's tic, the plot twist, the room where it happens, the specific scene, to feel both peculiar <i>and</i> familiar, to be not what we expected and at the same time feel completely right. It's a delicate balance, a literary high-wire act, where we feel the sickening yet exhilarating sensation of almost falling while at the same time we know we won't fall. The best stories move us by shifting something inside us while at the same time reminding us of who we are at the core. I believe this what Anne Lamott meant when she wrote: "I do not at all understand the mystery of grace--only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us."<br />
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Coming to the familiar, peculiar place in writing is not easy; it requires consistent work. But when you nail it, you know it, because it feels as natural as being naked, as true as the truest truths you know.<br />
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Here are some examples.<br />
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. — Charles Dickens</blockquote>
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Now is the winter of our discontent<br />Made glorious summer by this sun of York;<br />—William Shakespeare</blockquote>
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Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. —Herman Melville </blockquote>
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You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. —Vladimir Nabokov</blockquote>
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If perfection is stagnation, then Heaven is a swamp. —Richard Bach</blockquote>
Perhaps you have your own examples, from your own writing or your favorite writers.<br />
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I hope this musically-inspired musing helps you with your craft.<br />
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Image attribution: <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comedy_and_tragedy_masks.svg">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Comedy_and_tragedy_masks.svg</a><br />
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-68673877267846589532020-01-27T13:38:00.001-05:002020-01-27T13:38:23.066-05:00The Man Who Saved New York (and My Mother)If you are a widow and you loved your husband (as my mother loved my father), the photo on your nightstand is most likely of him. Not so with my mother, Elaine. Her nightstand, or rather, her "other' nightstand (the one that had been my dad's), was home to a framed, signed headshot of a famous financier and, by all accounts, fine gentleman whose <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/14/nyregion/felix-rohatyn-dead.html">obituary</a> recently appeared in <i>The New York Times</i>: Felix Rohatyn.<br />
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In case you were wondering, my mother did not have an affair with Felix. In fact, I don't believe they ever met. They did, however, have a mutual friend, who was the source of the signed photograph. And she did love Felix, perhaps not passionately, but enough to pay homage with her bedside shrine, enough even to plant a kiss—on the forehead of course—on the glass behind which his bespectacled face rested.<br />
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You see, Felix was my mother's savior.<br />
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Elaine hated the certainties of death and taxes as much as anyone. She avoided the former for 91 years (passing on in 2015) and railed about the latter for much of that time. Ironically, she was a strong advocate of government spending, particularly programs that benefited people in need. Her politics were formed in the crucible of the New Deal, and FDR was one of her heroes, just as Ronald Reagan was a "reactionary" and a "bad man." (There's a whole other post in my queue on the words she used for people of whom she disapproved.) When tax time came, she paid what she owed, but she was loath to give Uncle Sam a penny more than his due, because everything he got took away from what she would eventually leave her children. In financial terms, this meant she hated selling for a profit (almost as much as she hated selling for a loss)—a dilemma that defined her singular strategy—hold.<br />
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In the 1970s, her obsession with limiting tax liability led her to a decision that was supposed to help her sleep at night but turned out to have the opposite effect: she invested heavily in New York City municipal bonds. Why? Well, the interest she was getting on her safe CDs (spread out among numerous banks so as not to exceed the FDIC insurance) was, at the time, staggering—perhaps 11, 12, or 13 percent. Had she made the connection, Paul Volcker might have been another heroic figure worthy of a frame. But bank interest was taxable (i.e., bad), and municipal bonds were low-risk and federally tax-free (good). I don't know what those New York City munis were paying, but if you factored in the tax savings, they must have equalled or even outstripped the high-interest CDs. And they were virtually as safe, because, the idea of New York City defaulting on its debt was utterly unthinkable.<br />
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Until it wasn't.<br />
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Suddenly, the greatest city in the world was about to go <i>mechuleh</i> (Yiddish for bankrupt), and my mother's brilliant gambit to enjoy safe, tax-free income was looking both foolish and potentially fatal to her fixed-income finances. Sure, the bonds were still paying interest, but their value had evaporated overnight, and they were nearly worthless. She was beside herself and agonized over her mistake. There were no good options. Selling the bonds for a colossal loss would have been disastrous; waiting for them to fall to zero even moreso. She was caught between a rock and a surprise debt crisis.<br />
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And then along came Felix—the man who saved New York and, arguably, the J.P. Morgan of his day (though considerably better looking). Felix took charge, restored confidence, formed the Municipal Assistance Corporation, and gracefully guided New York City back to fiscal health. In doing so, he rescued my mother. It was a miracle. You can read about his accomplishments in his death notice; I don't need to elaborate on them here. Thanks to his efforts, my mother's tanking munis were resurrected, and she eventually sold them, never to buy a bond again.<br />
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Lest you think my mom was all about money—she wasn't. The picture of Felix was her idea of a joke—albeit one with a serious undertone. There were many mementos of my father, <a href="https://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2013/02/hovering.html">who died when I was nine</a>, in our house, and Elaine was a generous donor, of time as well as money, to many worthy causes. Just as her politics were defined by the New Deal, her emotions about money were, like most of her generation, shaped by the Great Depression. She was as frugal as she was generous, and she despised waste almost as much as taxes. She was also determined not to depend on anyone, especially her children, for support, and to preserve what she had for her children and grandchildren. She did a good job. An admirable job. And for that I am grateful. And thanks to Felix, who saved my mom from losing her shirt, I can rest a little easier and enjoy life a little more.<br />
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Photo: <a href="https://www.azquotes.com/author/37831-Felix_Rohatyn">AZQuotes.com</a><br />
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-89248203435866035532020-01-22T12:13:00.002-05:002020-01-22T12:13:31.612-05:00Rib Joints, Raising Boys, and Reminiscences<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">On a recent trip to my chiropractor (if you need one, he's excellent), I complained that my neck was especially stiff. I could barely twist it either way without experiencing pain around my shoulder blades. I'm used to stiffness in my shoulders (that's why I get adjusted every week), but this level of discomfort was unusual for me.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">"Stand over here and let me take a look," he said, with take a look meaning assess my situation by placing his hands on my shoulders and upper back. "Ah. Hold still for a sec." </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">I can't exactly describe what he did, other than to say he wrenched apart my right shoulder and torso in a way that instantly relieved the pain.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">"What," I asked, "did you just do?"</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">"I adjusted your rib joint. When it's out of whack, the nerve gets really pissed off."</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">"Yeah, it was angry all right. Whatever you did...all the pain is gone."</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">He smiled. He also let me know that he himself is prone to this particular injury and immediately sees a chiropractor when it happens, because "it's not something you can fix yourself."</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">A lot of things in life are like that—more than we care to admit.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Leaving his office, the words "rib joint" (even though mine had just gotten unstuck) stuck with me. I remembered the local rib joint, Bobby Q's, where I used to take my boys when they were young and the restaurant was still in Westport. We would go on Tuesday nights, when kids' food was half-price and the magician, Tony, was in residence, moving table to table offering up his same old tricks, and making balloon animals that we'd bring home and save until they eventually deflated. My older son would try to stump him with requests like octopus or armadillo, while my little one was content with the standard fare of cats, dogs, and the occasional monkey.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">On one visit Tony was looking a little pale, and he had a contraption around his waist—some sort of miniature air compressor—that he was using to inflate the balloons. He explained that he'd had a case of pneumonia and didn't have his full wind back, but was determined to be able to make his balloon animals for the kids. At the time, my boys and I cracked jokes about what a sad sight he was with his balloon-inflating apparatus, while also commending him for his dedication. Not long after, Bobby Q's closed (to reopen later in a neighboring town)—the first of many icons of my sons' childhood to vanish. There was Gamestop, replaced by a liquor store where we have vowed never to shop. Radio Shack, where knowledgeable salespeople would readily help us solve small technical problems with the right cable or cord. Ace Hardware, whose owner greeted everyone as "boss" and gave each of my boys a tiny keychain flashlight every time we came in. One of the hardest losses was the pub, 323, at the bottom of our hill, our go-to spot for comfort food and conversation. But perhaps the hardest blow for my older son was the Army Navy store, where he used to buy pocketknives and old military gear (supply vests, even a gas mask), and we could spend an hour browsing through their eclectic offerings. Passing these now empty or replaced storefronts always brings a lament, and while the new Bobby Q's serves the same delicious falling-off-the-bone ribs, it will never have the feel of the old one. Despite the good food, eating there is painful, sort of like having a body part out of joint.</span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-size: small;">Since my visit to the chiropractor, my neck's range of motion has improved dramatically, and aside from some lingering tenderness on my right side (the location of the offending rib joint), I've felt better than ever in my back and shoulders. Some adjustments are needed and welcome. Others we never quite get used to. Even though we know everything changes and nothing lasts forever., the change comes as a shock, a mini-earthquake rattling the otherwise smooth, predictable surface of our daily existence. For a while, we are shaken up. And then we settle into a new pattern, a new routine. As much as the place that is gone, we miss the feeling of the time we spent there, romanticized perhaps in the haze of reminiscence, but recalled fondly as part of our shared experience, our collective family story. The loss becomes bittersweet, because it intensifies the power of our happy memories to bring us joy. And of course, there is always a new story to be lived, remembered, and told. </span></span></div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-22511881686455671072019-10-31T19:17:00.003-04:002019-10-31T19:17:53.601-04:00Fit To Be Untied<div style="text-align: justify;">
The summer after my father died my mother did something bold and adventurous—she took me on an African safari. It wasn't just the two of us (she was not that bold); the trip was sponsored by a group: the same outfit—Alumni Flights Abroad (AFA)—with which we had traveled to the Orient (and yes, people called it that in 1974) along with my father the previous summer. While AFA did not strictly limit its voyagers to graduates of the 34 top-flight colleges in whose magazines it advertised (a limited number of "referrals" were accepted), it did attract a more intellectual crowd than your average organized tour. So, after a miserable spring vacation (booked before my father's death) at Far Horizons, the Florida gulf coast resort where we had gone as a family for years, a trip suffused in grief and awash in the painful flow and still more painful ebb of memories, Mom and I were off to Africa and the lush, green rolling hills (according to AFA's itinerary) of Lake Naivasha.</div>
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Our first stop was New York (as our overseas flight left not from O'Hare but JFK), and we went a couple of days early to take in some Broadway shows. I would have to consult my journals to recall which plays we saw—one was likely Leonard Bernstein's musical version of <i>Candide</i>—and we stayed at our favorite little (then unpretentious, now boutique) hotel, The Lowell, on East 63rd Street. The rooms were small, with worn gray carpet and yellowish walls, and they smelled of bleached linen. There was no view. The hotel was home to a large number of older permanent residents, and its tiny lobby was the domain of Rudy, who served as doorman, bellman, elevator operator, and giver of advice. Rudy knew New York, and though my fastidious, forward-thinking mother would have done so anyway, he warned us to leave extra time to get to the airport for our flight to London, as there was "always a bottleneck [he pronounced it bah-ullneck, without the "t"s] on the Van Wyck." On the morning of our departure, Rudy hailed us a cab, and we headed for JFK, a good six hours or so before takeoff. </div>
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It turned out we would need every minute of it. Not because of the bottleneck, though we might have experienced it had we actually taken the Van Wyck, which fell along the logical route. No. We were not delayed by traffic but by the one cab driver in Manhattan who did not know how to find the airport. Now, you are thinking maybe the driver was new to America or didn't speak much English. Wrong. He was, as I remember, a nerdy, long-haired, slightly disheveled (in the way of academia, not poverty) young man, born and bred here, who drove us in what seemed to be ever-widening circles around our destination. As we passed Coney Island the second time, and a trip that should have taken 40 minutes or so had stretched into and hour and a half, my mother asked if he knew where he was going.</div>
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"I know where the airport is," he stammered.</div>
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"Yes," she said, "but do you know how to get there?" A more refined question.</div>
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"Don't worry, I'll find it."</div>
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"Well you'd better," she quipped. "We're leaving on an international flight at six tonight."</div>
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"Where to?"</div>
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"London, then Nairobi."</div>
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The driver nodded. More minutes passed, after which he finally said something like, "You know, I think I am actually lost."</div>
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At which point my mother lost it. "Oh Shit!"</div>
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"Lady!"</div>
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"Don't lady me. How can you drive a taxi if you don't know how to find the airport?"</div>
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"Lady, this isn't my real job. I have a Ph.D. in political science."</div>
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"Well! A political science major should know how to read a map."</div>
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He had no response to this, just a slight shake of his curly-haired head.</div>
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"Shit on you for getting lost," she said. "Shit on you. Just find the airport, so we don't miss our flight."</div>
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My mother was, to use one of her favorite phrases, fit to be tied.</div>
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I'm not sure how we eventually found the airport, but it probably involved our driver stopping and asking someone for directions.</div>
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Upon arriving in London the next morning, we learned our connecting flight to Nairobi was delayed, causing us to spend an unbearably hot night at the Grosvenor House, near the Greenwich Meridian, before landing not too far from the equator. Unfortunately Lake Naivasha, which we boated across under leaden clouds and persistent drizzle, was anything but lush, and the only creatures we encountered those first two days were cormorants, perched on what looked like dead trees rising out of the lake's dark water. But the adventures that ensued, the marvels we experienced, are worthy of another story. </div>
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My father was dead, and six months later my mother and I were in Africa, lodging in lodges, descending into Ngorongoro Crater, learning about Leakey's discoveries in Olduvai Gorge, driving in VW vans across the Serengeti plain. What could be more surreal?</div>
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My mother may have been fit to be tied when our cab driver couldn't find Kennedy Airport, but as the trip and its wonders progressed, it was clear she had untied the knot of our grief, and, despite the magnitude of our loss, given us something to smile about.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Photo: Thomas G. Fiffer, 1975, age 10</span></div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-1695639567059271622019-10-29T12:04:00.001-04:002019-10-29T12:04:35.748-04:00The Jig Is Not Up Yet<div style="text-align: justify;">
I sat down in my office to write this morning with nothing to write about. When the weather goes dismal, I find my level of inspiration sinks, like <a href="https://poets.org/poem/memory-w-b-yeats">Auden's mercury</a> "in the mouth of the dying day." To a degree, our feelings mirror our environment, and when the world outside is muted, my colors tend to go soft and quiet. My focus blurs. There are, however, <a href="https://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2010/10/rothkos-at-low-tide.html">treasures to be found</a> in this dimly lit and often mysterious space, where I can't help but embrace the pervading semidarkness, the heaviness of the clouds' gray gloom counterweighing my usually buoyant enthusiasm, the rain and chill forcing me to find warmth within.</div>
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Despite that fact that my phonograph was firing on only one speaker, I put on a favorite jazz record by Errol Garner: "Ready Take One." The dull sound of his bright music, missing what seemed like its better half, was depressing, and I began searching for solutions to the speaker problem. One image appeared to require deconstruction of the turntable. A YouTube video was immediately too complicated. I was about to move on to replacement parts, when I decided to give the wires, which of course I had fiddled with numerous times before, one more jiggle. Boom! Splendid stereo sound as both speakers resumed their magical, musical dance.</div>
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Just a jiggle—that was all it took. And faith that <i>this</i> jiggle would do the trick when the previous ones hadn't. As the swell of bluesy jazz began to lift my spirits, I wondered if the word jiggle might offer any insight. And guess what? Jiggle derives from <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/jig">jig</a> (with possible influence by jog), which means both fiddle, as in the instrument, and a "lively, irregular dance." I can't say the underlying musical connection surprised me (since that's how divine wordplay works), but it did fill me with delight. No, I didn't dance a jig, but I sure felt like it. Especially enjoyable was the word irregular, suggesting that a jig, and therefore a jiggle, doesn't fit a pattern but instead incorporates random, unscripted movement, the freedom to express oneself in the moment, the inspiration of improvisation, the bliss of letting the music flow through and take you where it wants to go.</div>
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Sometimes life needs a jiggle, a little fiddling to restore its fullness, a second (or third, fourth, or fifth) try to set things into a happier alignment even after previous attempts have failed. In truth, those previous jiggles weren't failures. They are all part of the same jiggle—each wiggle and waggle moving the wires a jot—or a lot—closer to the perfection of connection. It's an amazing feeling to hear from both ears again, to stop straining for sounds you know intuitively are supposed to be there. To know that what you are receiving is no longer diminished but amplified, thanks to some persistent jiggling.</div>
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So get busy. Jiggle away. See what you can fix. Because something in the world always needs fixing.</div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-413053965270225722019-10-25T15:54:00.000-04:002019-10-25T15:54:17.234-04:00Rearrangement Is for the Birds<div style="text-align: justify;">
Like many children, I held the adorable (then) and naive (now) belief that I could change the world—if only I could run the show. This mindset was reinforced by grown-ups who treated me as a boy genius (one neighbor actually gave me a large blue and white "Genius!" button), and the constant drum of that oft-recited phrase, "You can be anything you want to be." While this wondrous world of infinite possibilities was at times tempered by my mother's depression-era thrift (when I joined the school band, she told me I could play any instrument I wanted, as long as it was a saxophone or clarinet, those being the ones my brothers had played and we therefore already possessed), I was frequently told that I was special and indulged to say the least, and I knew both the meaning and spelling of precocious, as well as many lengthier words that stretched beyond my age-appropriate vocabulary.</div>
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My belief in my transformative powers manifested both in the ambition to lead—running for class and club president and such—and a minor obsession with rearranging things to make them not only more pleasing but also (what I considered) more correct. Our home was orderly, but I felt compelled to impose order in other areas that, to me, cried out for betterment. These included airplane magazines, from which I would first carefully tear all the pages, then replace them in what I felt was a more logical and aesthetically appealing sequence. </div>
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In my childhood bedroom I had a set of colorful laminate shelves, cabinets, and drawers, popular in 1970s Chicago, called Schurniture (likely designed by a Mr. Schur), that hung from small metal rods inserted in wall brackets and was, as a result, completely rearrangable. Every so often, I would remove my books, clothing, and tchotchkes from our travels, lay them out on my fire-orange shag carpet, and change the Schurniture's configuration, making some shelves higher, some lower, or moving the blue cabinet to where the red one had been. I felt a great sense of accomplishment after these makeovers and took pride in the new look I had achieved. </div>
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At one particular restaurant we visited, The Willow Inn, the sugar packets had illustrations of American birds. Sipping my kiddie cocktail garnished with a Maraschino cherry, I would remove all the packets from their porcelain dish, spread them out on the white tablecloth, and place the birds in alphabetical order, being sure to group together any duplicates. I did not know what OCD was when I was six or seven, but these efforts, along with a host of nervous tics I exhibited—sniffing my hands, touching my thighs, and the worst of all, constant blinking—were, in retrospect, precursors of my mild version of the disorder. It blew up after my father died, when I believed, during the year following his death, that by stepping on cracks, picking up sticks, altering my route to or home from school, or repeating various other actions, I could bring him back. I never saw a therapist then, though I'm sure I shared these resurrective compulsions with my mother. I ended up curing myself by opening our front door on the one-year anniversary of losing my father, resolving that I had done everything I could and he would either be there or not. The rush of cold, February air that greeted me was liberating.</div>
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Throughout the decades of my life, I have, with each successive chapter (college, grad school, marriage, children, divorce, remarriage, second divorce, job changes, and moves), rearranged and realigned my life. With each successive shift, I come a little bit closer to having everything in its place—not (as this would be presumptuous) where I think it should be or even feel it should be, but where I believe it is meant to be. This surrendering—not easy for a control freak—to an arrangement that resonates internally but derives from something greater than the self—reminds me of Anne Lamott's famous quote on grace: </div>
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I do not understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.</blockquote>
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Today, as a lark (pun wholly intended), I bought, on eBay, a collection of those little sugar packets with the birds. (Remarkably, someone had saved them!) When they arrive, I will resist the urge, still there but tempered by the <i>fuga</i> of <i>tempus</i>, to arrange them alphabetically by name. Instead, I'll place them in a bowl on my desk, both as a memento of the once-obsessed boy and a reminder that human order is no match for God's divine plan. The call of the birds will echo my own: to trust the flight path of God's arrows—faith, hope, and above all, love.</div>
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<br />Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-77793499330353100332019-10-21T16:13:00.001-04:002019-10-21T16:13:15.849-04:00Not So Simple Gifts<div style="text-align: justify;">
A long time ago, in a career far, far away, I worked at a now defunct book packaging company in Manhattan called Running Heads, its name an arcane reference to the text—generally book title and chapter title—that runs along the top of each page. Book packagers, for those unfamiliar with the trade, generate ideas for books, subcontract the writing and (if included) photographs and illustrations, then sell the production-ready manuscript, or in some cases, finished books, to a publisher who promotes and markets the title as their own. Credit is given to the packager on the copyright page; if you inspect one of your coffee table books, you will likely find a packager mentioned inside. One of the books that came out during my brief tenure as Senior Editor at Running Heads was <i>Simple Gifts: The Shaker Song</i>, which paired the lyrics of the well-known song (’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free) with spare, elegant photographs of Shaker buildings and furniture. Later, I would create a somewhat similar title, <i>The Dance</i>, for which I hand picked a set of all-American images to accompany the Garth Brooks song of the same name. I even managed to include a wedding picture in it from my first (and at the time only) marriage: a shot of my now ex-wife in her Battenberg lace dress, surrounded by her red-velvet clad bridesmaids (we were married in December), smiling brightly as they fawned over her, set to the line, "I might have chanced it all."</div>
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I'm not sure if my name is inside <i>Simple Gifts</i>, but I am sure I did not understand then the nature of gifts, perceiving them as talents bestowed on some and not on others, having grown up hearing what a gifted child I was. I had no idea my gifts were meant for anything other than academic achievement, the furthering of self and advancement in the world. I did sense that my gift for writing held rewards greater than my grades—the joy of creating and the satisfaction of generating original work—but these took a distant second to the ego boost of receiving praise. My gifts were something I was fortunate to have, not something that (as I am now cognizant) carried with them an obligation, a commandment to give. To some degree, this distinction develops naturally as we move from child to adult, but suffering loss—particularly heartbreak—and finding the capacity for mature compassion—are instrumental in redefining our understanding of gifts and giving.</div>
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The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_Gifts">full lyrics</a> of the Shaker song (included below) celebrate the joy—and relief—of submitting to our gifts and of accepting the ultimate gift of God's grace. When we reach the point of knowing that gifts are not something we simply receive but something divinely given and ordained for good, "true simplicity is gain'd" in the form of clarity, the coming together of <a href="http://www.bestlifedesign.com/business/dolphins-and-porpoises.html">mission and purpose</a>. At the same time, we assume the burden and shoulder the delicious weight of putting our gifts to consistent use, of devoting (and yes, I mean in the spiritual sense) ourselves to sharing.</div>
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What happens when we ignore the knowledge (which frequently comes in the form of feeling) that we have been given a gift intended for others, when we try, with excuses, to avoid the call? To pretend we didn't hear? When this happens, we squander providence. We forgo opportunities, allow windows to close, let sliding door moments slide by un-seized. And these acts of omission have an impact on the shape of the world, the configuring and reconfiguring of paths and their associated outcomes. When we fail to act, we do nothing less than shift the balance between fate and destiny, both for others and ourselves.</div>
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It is said that God's greatest gift to man is free will. "Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall," wrote Milton in <i>Paradise Lost</i>. Yet, this freedom is a complex gift, the gift to come down, as the Shaker song intones, "where we ought to be." It is not the gift to do as we please, but the gift of knowing the difference between right and wrong, light and dark, order and chaos, love and fear. The gift of the words that enable us to make these distinctions. In the Lord's Prayer, we ask that God's will be done, not ours. In the act of asking—an act of our will—we pray that God's will and ours will be one. This melding of our will into God's, this sublimation of our will to His, raises ours to a higher status, just as the sublimation of a solid into a gas turns earth-like material into air or, if you will, sky.</div>
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We need not be gifted (intellectually) to understand all this. But we must accept the gift of faith, by which I mean not so much our belief in God but our bond with God, a bond cross-tied by our expectations of God (expressed as our prayers) and His expectations of us (expressed as our unifying our will with His).</div>
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I had intended this piece to be more about our solemn responsibility to pass along gifts we are given, but my own will appears to have been sublimated to the words I've ended up expressing. Control is an illusion. The passage of time—measured by day turning to night and back and back again, orchestrated in endless circles of celestial orbits—erases and remakes everything. Death circles life, and rebirth starts the cycle anew. God is the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.</div>
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<i>'Tis the gift to be simple, 'tis the gift to be free,</i></div>
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<i>Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,</i></div>
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<i>And when we find ourselves in the place just right,</i></div>
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<i>'Twill be in the valley of love and</i></div>
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<i>delight. When true simplicity is gain'd,</i></div>
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<i>To bow and to bend we will not be asham'd,</i></div>
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<i>To turn, turn will be our delight,</i></div>
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<i>Till by turning, turning we come round right.</i></div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-45172389289819699192019-10-16T13:49:00.002-04:002019-10-16T14:41:16.545-04:00The Play's the Thing (at least when it comes to words)<div style="text-align: justify;">
Wordplay. We think of it as light amusement—fun with language, a contest in who can be more clever. A play on words by any other name is a pun, defined by <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/play-on-words">Dictionary.com</a> as "the humorous use of a word or phrase so as to emphasize or suggest its different meanings or applications, or the use of words that are alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning..." My puns drive my children crazy (we once spent nearly an hour milking udderly silly cow jokes for all they were worth, going teat for tat until we drove each other mad with cow disease, after which things went sour and they told me I was full of bull and I skulked off, cowed, to chew my cud, thoroughly whipped and put out to pasture), but I take my wordplay the way I take my coffee—seriously (no milk to dilute or sugar to sweeten)—as words are, for me, a rich source of insight, a two-way mirror, if you will, into what I see as the hidden meaning of the universe. When I study <a href="https://www.dictionary.com/browse/homonym">homonyms</a>, I come to the conclusion that God (who is the word but whose name cannot be spoken), has a devilishly wicked sense of humor. (Please spare me the ad hominems if you disagree.)</div>
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Wow, that was quite an introduction, and a prime example of prologorrhea, a long-winded windup before what I promise will be a pithy pitch, a perambulatory and rambling preamble to the pressing matter at hand.</div>
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So...when I wrote my last post, <a href="https://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2019/10/betwixt-and-between.html">Betwixt and Between</a>, I thought about how the liminal state is an altered state, a state of altering, where change is taking place. Then my mind began to play—alter/altar. Two words that sound the same with different meanings. One means change, the other a place of prayer, sacrifice, sanctification. Totally different, and yet...What happens on the altar? Isn't it a place that changes us? A place where we come to be restored in faith, united in matrimony, or given to God as we depart this life? Just as I do not believe in random coincidence, preferring to think of magical encounters as scripted synchronicities—written in a book beyond our human comprehension—I do not believe in accidents of language. I perceive it all as purposeful—a playground in which our purpose is to divine meaning. As God teases us with words that play two different notes yet strike a single sound, it is up to us to tease out the message—a revelation that pulls back another inch of the curtain, further illuminating the grand design.</div>
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The more you look at words this way, the more wisdom you find. Examining the phrase <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=entendre">double entendre</a>, which we use to describe a word or phrase with two meanings, we learn that the word entendre, now entente in French, derives from the Latin verb <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/word/intend"><i>intendere</i></a>, which meant to turn one's attention to or, in effect, strain to see or hear. The message, at least to me, is clear. We are charged with making the effort, with straining to hear the hidden (in plain sight, if we look), complementary meanings of words.</div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-16462418033373622122019-10-12T19:57:00.000-04:002019-10-12T19:57:26.516-04:00Betwixt and Between<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, however, the picture serves to inspire the words (though perhaps not quite a thousand) rather than as a substitute for them. Seeing the leaves of this tree in transition from vivid green to reddish gold, and pondering their pending detachment and descent, turned my thoughts to the seasons of change of which, unlike the four we associate with weather, number only three. I will call them static state, liminal state, and new static state—hardly a sexy set of terms, but sufficient for the purpose they serve.</div>
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It's the liminal (or threshold) state that I find most interesting. There's not much to say about the other two. As I looked at the tree, words came to me: "betwixt and between," a dated phrase for being conflicted, unable to choose between two competing or radically opposed options. We all know what between means, but contemplating its companion, betwixt, inspired intense curiosity; like learning someone you've known all your life has an identical twin you've never met. Was betwixt merely between with a twist (or twixt)? I had to see. I've always been fascinated with etymology (the origin of words), and <a href="https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=betwixt&utm_source=extension_omnibox_submit">betwixt</a> did not disappoint. What caught my eye in the etymological entry was the phrase "in the space that separates." The word "space" sits in the exact middle of the phrase, literally separating the words on either side and establishing betwixt (and its sibling between) as a space with borders of its own, not just a line. The implication here is that change, no matter how sudden it seems, occurs in stages, that moving from one state to another includes a crossing over into the between space, a space where, for a moment or measure of time, the thing (or person) changing is neither here nor there, neither vivid green nor reddish gold, neither dead nor alive.</div>
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When someone cannot process change, such as the intense grief of losing a loved one or the intense shock of severe trauma, we say they are "beside themselves," suggesting they are in a between space—no longer the same person they were but not yet the changed person they are about to be. Trauma survivors often describe the experience of leaving their bodies during trauma, standing to the side or floating above, watching what is happening to them with an odd sense of detachment, because the terrible thing can't be happening to them and must be happening to someone else.</div>
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While trauma pushes us into the dark side of the liminal state, the act of creative expression pulls us into the light, a shimmering space where anything is possible, because our imagination has no boundaries or limits. The art we create in this space changes us, often inducing feelings of surprise ("I didn't know I had that in me," or "Where in the hell did that come from?"), familiarity ("I had forgotten that image or experience), gratitude for the muse's visit, or simply wonder. Similarly, our art changes those who encounter it, sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently. Think of how many great people's paths were altered by something they saw, heard, or read. Inspiration is the catalyst that sends us into the liminal space, where we are free to engage, even indulge our imagination and create something original, valuable, transformative. Seeing the tree and associating it with the phrase "betwixt and between" brought me into the space where I could write the words here, releasing creative energy that would have otherwise remained stored in my brain.</div>
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I suppose the ultimate liminal space is the shoreline, along with its companion, the horizon. On the beach, where solid land meets liquid sea, the waves are in a constant state of motion, and if you take them in their entirety, neither coming nor going but endlessly lapping, defining and erasing the space that separates, a space that exists as the absence of water as much as the presence of land. The horizon is different, and yet the same. It seems to be a specific, measurable distance away, but that distance grows as fast as we cover it, suspending us in infinite travel, our destination eluding us because it is not a destination, only the space that separates what we can from what we cannot see. The very same space where imagination hovers, vibrating with magic, not an end but a means to an end, not a distant continent we reach and conquer, but a kingdom of air we inhabit through the act of giving chase.</div>
Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-61522770399416360802019-10-10T18:48:00.001-04:002019-10-16T13:10:07.681-04:00Some (Re) Assembly Required<div style="text-align: justify;">
This week I attended the first session of a poetry course in New Haven, taught for alumni by a former professor of mine now in his eighties—a Chaucer scholar with a wicked wit, elvish smile, and shock of (now) white hair set above his still fierce blue eyes. Teaching enlivened him; surrounded by a fresh crop of students, albeit older ones, his cheeks reddened with a youthful glow. As our class discussed the "happy surprises," (the professor's phrase) that we encountered in a sampling of narrative poems (some familiar, some foreign) by Housman, Tennyson, Whitman, and others, I was drawn back to a happy time—college—when my mind was clear, my focus was sharp, and my future filled with promise. I suppose those four years felt that way for many of us, but in my case, life took a turn after graduate school when I began my first marriage, and while my outward appearance gave no sign of the turmoil and (I would later learn) trauma taking place within, my psyche was slowly fragmenting, depriving me of the continuity that comes from keeping your character intact throughout life's journey.</div>
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Here is a bitter truth: If you stay long enough in a dysfunctional relationship, you become someone else, changing subtly at first, then later in ways you could never have fathomed, because remaining yourself is too painful. I don't blame my ex for my dismantling. It was my choice—to get married and to stay for 15 years. Still, it hurts to lose parts of yourself that you love, though once they are gone, you manage without them. You accept, then embrace your new normal. A diminished self. It is when ghosts of the former you appear, or rather resurface, that you begin to comprehend the magnitude of the loss, to feel the depth of it in the pit of your soul. I suppose that sounds melodramatic—and hardly constitutes a happy surprise—but the unusual experience of re-encountering an aspect of the person you once were is one that bears exploring. Imagine an appendage or limb, gone numb long ago, now starting to tingle, as you exclaim—both outraged and elated—"I had forgotten what it was like to have feeling there!" On an intellectual level, it's a twisted version of schadenfreude; you find misery in your own pleasure, lamenting the loss of sensation even as you celebrate its return. Then there follows a frustrated determination to get back what was taken from you, to exercise the atrophied muscles, or (to mix a metaphor), to blow on the spark, fan the nascent flame, and never again allow the fire to be extinguished. </div>
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Re-entering the world of poetry, and re-engaging in pure intellectual pursuit, reminded me of the person—the scholar and the gentleman—I used to be. In the days that followed, what began as a quest for a paper I had written for my old professor (still searching) turned into a tour of my old Yale notebooks and papers and an attempt to reassemble my bright college years by putting everything in order. Notebooks neatly labeled for each class and filled with clear, coherent writing spurred feelings of sadness while sparking resolve to resurrect my organizational habits and skills. Papers that required intense concentration and clarity of thought to write inspired me to start clearing mental clutter and take time each day for the life of the mind. I took heart in meeting my old self again and felt shame at how, over years of laziness, complacency, and inactivity, I had chosen easy over challenging and abandoned the high standards in which I once took pride. And then there were the letters—folders full of correspondence with friends—that took me back to a time when I spent time deepening relationships, exchanging thoughts and feelings instead of text messages, and crafting carefully considered responses instead of accepting gmail's insipid suggestions. Before this morphs into a complaint about modern technology, I should state that I appreciate the many new ways we are able to connect. But I also miss the intensity of written letters, the absorption that accompanied both writing and reading them, and the joy of receiving something personal in the mail.</div>
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I haven't yet found all the notebooks, and some—as is the case with many of the books I studied—were likely lost over decades of moving. But the self-reassembly project is underway. I may not be half the man I used to be (though I'd like to claim at least 49 percent), but I can, with effort, become a better man than I am now. I can hold myself to a higher standard of professionalism, perfectionism (the good kind), performance, and pursuit. As Oscar Goldman intones in the introduction to "The Six Million Dollar Man" (which my father took the time to watch with me when the show launched in the early 70s), "We can rebuild him....better than he was before..."</div>
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And here is the happy surprise I encountered on a walk at the beach with my son today—happy and completely unexpected—but in light of my renewed commitment to excellence, not completely surprising.</div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-20516054021536497662019-10-07T21:57:00.000-04:002019-10-07T22:08:32.336-04:00Why I Teach Writing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I teach writing as a business. But unlike Michael Corleone in <i>The Godfather</i>, my business is strictly personal. And unlike Michael's father, Don Corleone—who did business with Hyman Roth but never trusted him—my business is based on mutual trust between teacher and student.</div>
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Creativity, in its purest form, is personal expression—art that flows from the place deep inside where your essence resides, the crucible where your unique characteristics, experiences, and perspectives cohere to form your view of the world and the voice you use to share it. While we all know how to assemble words to form sentences and paragraphs, most of us are uncomfortable tapping into our personal creative source. If you're a writer-in-waiting, you've probably justified your waiting with at least one and perhaps several of these rationalizations:</div>
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<li>I have nothing to say.</li>
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<span style="text-align: justify;">These excuses, or self-deceptions, have the power to hold you back, but only if you give them that power, only if you cede your voice to the voice inside your head repeating these lies, the voice Steven Pressfield calls "the resistance."</span><br />
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The core of my teaching is not the elements of craft (though these are important, and I do cover them). It is enabling you—yes, you, the one hesitating right now—to silence the false voice filling you with doubt and listen to the true one that will free you to create from your heart. Creativity honors the personal, and that's why trust is so critical. You not only have to trust your true voice but also trust that you are writing in a safe environment where your voice will be heard and respected, your courage will be applauded, and your creative effort never criticized and always celebrated. This does not mean you won't receive suggestions on how to improve. My job as a teacher is to help you grow and become a better writer. But you will never feel that anything you've written is not <i>good enough</i>—only <i>not as good</i> as what you're capable of achieving.</div>
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The pleasure of unlocking your creative self, of freeing it from the fear-shackles that keep it captive in the prison of silence, is immensely enjoyable and intensely fulfilling. You may have experienced this feeling—perhaps during a childhood performance, a moment of clarity when you spoke your mind, or any time you felt safe enough to be open, honest, vulnerable, and real. It felt scary, but it felt good—the trembling anticipation, the jolt of electricity when you began, the thrill of revealing yourself, and the cathartic relief of finishing. I teach because I want you to be able to feel this joy on a regular basis, to find your thrill, and to delight in freeing the beauty that lives inside you and sharing it with the world. "Me, share my what?" you might reflexively say. But come on, you know it's in there...</div>
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So ultimately, I teach writing to empower people. Not just because it feels good to be empowered. But because we need more empowered people, more empowered artists in the world. We need more artists unafraid to speak the deeper truths not found in any compendium of facts, trite advice column, or well-researched article on Wikipedia but discovered where beauty lives, in the clear stream of consciousness that flows through your spirit, the fertile soil that nourishes your individuality, and the bright fire of imagination that burns in your dreams.</div>
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Come write with me!</div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-61591907647611723822019-10-05T17:03:00.003-04:002019-10-05T17:03:48.970-04:00We're All Gonna Die!<div style="text-align: justify;">
Summer camp can be scary. Away from home for the first time, kids are treated to terrifying ghost stories; encounter counselors who say things like, "If you touch me while I sleep, I'll kill you—it's a reflex action, part of my Marines training"; get wicked wedgies from boys bigger than they are (one little guy actually had the back of his briefs hung over the tennis net post); and try not lose digits or limbs while learning how to wield an axe. At least, those were some of the scarier things about my summer camp up in the North Woods, which in spite of them, was a wonderful place to spend eight weeks dodging mosquitoes, eating mystery meat, swimming in an ice cold, leech-infested lake, and—the best part—heading out on canoe trips that took us into nearly pristine nature far away from civilization. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area, a million-acre wilderness preserve in northern Minnesota (bordering Canada) is one of the most beautiful, still unspoiled parts of the world. Younger campers (swampers, loggers, and axemen) took sawbills—six-day canoe trips—and sometimes stacked them back-to-back to spend a dozen days paddling and portaging, sunning and skinny-dipping, cooking spaghetti carbonara over campfires, and dragging around the hulking Duluth packs that contained all the supplies. The highlight of becoming a lumberjack (your rank during your final year of camp), was Big Trip—a 12-day sawbill that, when completed, was commemorated with a plaque in the dining hall that displayed the name of the trip (agreed on by the campers) and a list of its participants.</div>
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I share all this to provide the backdrop for a most memorable sawbill taken during, I believe, the first year I attended camp (age 12). Most of the trip was uneventful, but on one of the portages (for those of you not conversant with canoeing, a portage is a stretch of land separating two proximate lakes, measured in rods, over which you carry your canoes and packs), a contingent of campers (myself included) got cut off from the counselors when we took what turned out to be a wrong turn on the trail. As it dawned on us that we were lost in the woods, one of the campers panicked.</div>
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"Omigod, Omigod," he bawled. "We're lost! We're lost! We're all gonna die!"</div>
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As he sob-screamed his lament, I took stock of the situation.</div>
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"Michael," I said to him, "Calm down."</div>
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"WE'RE...ALL...GONNA...DIE!" he blabbered, releasing a rush of shallow breaths between each word.</div>
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"Michael..."</div>
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"Y-y-y-yeah?"</div>
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"We're not going to die." Finally, I had his attention.</div>
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"No. First of all, we have the map, which the counselors need for the rest of the trip." One of the other campers displayed it, safe in the clear plastic pouch hanging from his neck. "And second, we have the food." Another camper pointed his thumb at the heavy green canvas sack on his back. "So," I said, "the counselors are going to find us."</div>
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And soon enough, they did.</div>
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I have told this story to many people, including my kids, offering it as an example of how clear, rational thinking is the best way to counteract panic.</div>
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Michael fell into a state of fear not because there were no options to ensure our survival, but because he didn't know what to do. Feeling powerless, he flailed about and allowed his anxiety to block his brain from assessing the situation. It never occurred to him that simply waiting for the counselors to find us was the safest course of action with the greatest chance of success.</div>
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I'm not patting myself on the back for being the one to figure it out. I've panicked plenty of times in my life over things major and minor, stressing out needlessly when a clear head and calm demeanor would have served me better. I'm offering this tale as a reminder to myself and an example from which we can all learn how to be more effective under pressure. Because the thing is, young Michael was right. We <i>are</i> all going to die—eventually. So if we can learn to take life's inevitable surprises in stride, we can live better—and enjoy life more—in the time we have here.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://bernardgolden.com/amg-earnings-q3-18-time-to-panic/">bernardgolden.com</a></span></div>
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<br />Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-77032399388193790962019-10-04T13:21:00.002-04:002019-10-04T13:21:46.940-04:00Word Up!<div style="text-align: justify;">
You won't find much hip-hop slang in my vocabulary (though I did take a class in college called "Structure of the New York Mambo." More on that later.) But the title of today's post—which you will shortly see has a second meaning—is right "up" my wordplay alley, a delightful little stretch of road (that often elicits groans from my children) with Pun Place at one end and Double Entendre Drive at the other. All right, enough nonsense.</div>
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Among the plethora of promotions in this morning's email, one missive hit its mark: the Word of the Day from <a href="https://www.wordgenius.com/" target="_blank">Word Genius</a>. I don't recall opting in to their daily dose of definitions, but since I enjoy waking up to a word in my inbox other than "sale," "clearance," or the stress-inducing phrase "last chance," I will not engage in the interdiction of opting out, as that would constitute both a contradiction of the way I feel and a literal act of contra-diction. But to the point.</div>
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Today's word served up by Word Genius was "bugaboo." I recalled it as referring to something small we get stuck on, a sort of major obsession with a minor concern. The definition offered was more specific: an imaginary object that inspires needless fright, with a secondary meaning of a problem that persists. I immediately thought, how many of us, not only in our creative work but also in our everyday lives, suffer from the paralysis caused by persistent, unnecessary fear. I've written previously about <a href="https://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-big-what-if.html" target="_blank">fear being a choice</a>, but that post prodded readers to find the courage to do big things; it did not directly address how the little things—the bugaboos that beleaguer us—stop us in our tracks.</div>
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If we want to beat our bugaboos, we have to start by deconstructing the definition. Beginning with "imaginary," we can conclude that bugaboos are not real. And if they are not real, they cannot have any real impact. Their power to plague us exists in our imagination, which means we can disempower them at will. What makes bugaboos difficult to deal with it is that they flow from the same source as our creative power. Imagination, and our ability to envision everything from future outcomes to fictive worlds, is our greatest gift. But like any potentiality, imagination has its dark side; it can cause both joy and torment. We can, like Captain Ahab in <i>Moby Dick</i>, feel our topmost greatness lying in our topmost grief. So if bugaboos thrive in the dark corners of our imagination, shining light on them is the way to send them packing.</div>
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One of my bugaboos was that I couldn't write these posts without the forced compression of an hour-plus-long train ride. Another was that I had run out of things to say. Another that still holds some power is needing to have a clean house before I start writing. And another is the thought-spiral we've all experienced that can sink any attempt at self-improvement: the anger, frustration, and self-loathing we feel for abandoning a discipline—one that made us happy—and the resulting self-flagellation that knocks us down even as we're trying to summon the strength to start again. But (and this happens to be the title of my upcoming memoir), You Have to Start Somewhere.</div>
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When I focus intently on the work I'm meant to do, when I shine my light on the goals glowing the distance, the bugaboos disappear, like shadows in the sun. </div>
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You don't have to be a genius to get rid of your bugaboos. Just do your work, and they'll run away all by themselves.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.wordgenius.com/all-words/bugaboo">www.wordgenius.com</a></span></div>
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<br />Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-64318964374414269102019-10-02T11:28:00.002-04:002019-10-02T22:26:40.424-04:00Pause, Refresh, and Pick Up the Pen<div style="text-align: justify;">
Recently a friend asked me why I stopped writing the blog. Before coming to dinner he'd read some of my posts (on top of others he'd read many months ago), and he let me know that my words were helpful. His question was as much a challenge as an inquiry, and I didn't have a single good answer. My stock response has been that when I ceased commuting by train to New York City, I stopped writing, because the hour-plus-long ride was the time I devoted each day to blogging. In truth, that is not a reason but an excuse, as I have ample time each day to consider, reflect, process, and proffer some paragraphs that help sharpen my focus and (I hope) inspire others to look at things in new and enlightening ways. </div>
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The thing about the commute was the compression it created—a short space of time in which I forced myself to compose, correct, and complete a piece of writing. I could easily set a timer while I sit in my home office—filled with light and set up for writing that isn't happening much now—and return to the discipline of delivering daily messages. I could easily set the timer, but I would find it much more difficult to summon the dedication and commitment, as those muscles have grown weaker during the time I've been away. <a href="http://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2011/06/strength-first-attribute-of-aplomb.html" target="_blank">Strength</a>, of course, is the first attribute of aplomb, and strength is the quadrant of the circle where I will find the impetus to get me moving again, where I will (if I am still and listen) hear the whisper. </div>
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Coming around now to the real answer to my friend's question, it is clear that I didn't stop writing because I stopped commuting; I stopped writing because I stopped listening. I closed my ears and closed off the receptive—and vulnerable—part of myself, perhaps to block my anger and disappointment over losing the job that brought me to New York each day, perhaps to avoid the grief that came from losing my mother a year and a half later. Or perhaps because I thought—not felt (because I was not in touch with my feelings), but thought—I was done. I still wonder now if I have anything to say, but I never worried about that before, even on those mornings when I didn't have an idea before I got on the train. I always knew it would come to me, that all I had to do was find the strength to start, the patience to keep going, the wisdom to let the voice take over, and the grace to give the voice—and not my ego—credit for the result. Part of me longs to begin again, and part of me is afraid I will fail. But I can't succeed if I don't try. So, it seems, you will find me here a little more often as I stretch my muscles and work to get myself back in shape. </div>
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Refusing to listen is form of numbness, a poor attempt at self-protection that only results in isolation. If, as the musical artist Kate Tempest says, "Connection is the antidote to numbness," I need to <a href="http://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2009/06/connecting-reconnecting-and-letting-go.html" target="_blank">connect, reconnect, let go</a>, and connect again. It's no coincidence that the linked post on connection, written more than ten years ago, is about my mother, about her sitting with me <i>on the train while I am writing</i>, about sharing a space quietly, wordlessly, with someone you love. The post is fully self-aware, of everything from the idiosyncrasies of my writing process (which I notice as my mother observes me), to the effort she and I both made to remain connected while living 900 miles apart. I had to let go of my mother a little more than four years ago, but when we have fully connected with a human spirit, we never actually let go completely. </div>
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My mother loved my blog and always encouraged me to keep writing. And so, to keep me going, I will imagine she is sitting next to me, on an imaginary train, speeding along on imaginary tracks, heading for the very real destination called imagination. And as I turn to her, I will smile.</div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-37252947395379442682015-07-05T18:48:00.004-04:002015-07-05T18:48:47.775-04:00A New Second Home for Thomas G. Fiffer aka Tom Aplomb<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This week I created a new website to bring together my writing, speaking, and storytelling and the array of professional services I offer clients.<br />
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Please come visit me at <a href="http://thomasgfiffer.com/">http://thomasgfiffer.com</a>.<br />
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I will still be sharing blog posts here, too, so if you're here just for the writing, stick around. If you're interested in the other things I do, visit the new site.<br />
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I look forward to seeing you in both places.<br />
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With gratitude,<br />
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TomThomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-54607958424105872732015-06-28T16:22:00.000-04:002015-06-28T16:22:09.609-04:00Why Couples Fight: The Real Cause of Conflict<h3 style="text-align: center;">
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<i>All couples disagree, most argue, and some slug it out with words day after day. Let's take a look at the real source of discord, how it escalates to conflict, and how to stop it from derailing your relationship.</i></h3>
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“You never understand me, John. You never know what I want. I tell you, but you don’t listen. It’s always all about you. You’re just an insensitive jerk.”</div>
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“Jane, I bust my butt every day for you. And you never appreciate it. You’re always on my case, criticizing me, telling me I don’t do enough, make enough, making me feel inadequate, comparing me to our friends.”</div>
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“You know, John, without me you’d be nothing. I’m the best thing that ever happened to you. You’ll never find a woman like me, and once you realize that, maybe you’ll start treating me better.”</div>
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“Look, Jane, what do you want me to do? I’ve apologized a hundred times already. You bring up these old hurts, every time you’re upset with me. You sound like a broken record. I <em>said</em> I was sorry. Now can’t we be done with it?”</div>
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<br />It’s sooooo aggravating. John and Jane are both reasonably, maybe even super-intelligent people. They love each other. They may parent together. And yet they can’t seem to resolve a disagreement, or even agree to disagree and move on? Why? Because they’re both defending untenable positions that don’t address the underlying issues plaguing their relationship. These issues hide below the surface and, like a drop of acid added to water, convert disagreement into conflict. “But wait!” John says. “That’s NOT the problem. The problem is, I’m right and Jane’s is wrong. She never listens.” “If only John would understand,” Jane counters. “If only I could convince him.” Think again. They’re both wrong—not necessarily in logical terms—but in their approach to the conflict and the behavior patterns they’ve developed to deal with it. If John and Jane sound familiar to you, read on.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />When I first started seeing my therapist and complaining about the things my ex-wife and I fought about, he shared some electrifying words with me that changed my entire understanding of the conflict in my marriage. He said, “Pay no attention to the content.” My first reaction was outrage. “What? Don’t pay attention to what I’m hearing? But she said . . .” And you’re probably thinking the same thing. “I’m supposed to ignore my partner’s outrageous statements, lies or misrepresentations, insults and inaccuracies, the ‘you never’ and ‘you always’ sentences that spell the death of healthy communication? Yes, I’m telling you to ignore the content, the words themselves, as well as the situation or issue that precipitated the argument. Because none of that is important, and none of it is relevant to what’s actually happening. Here’s why. When partners engage in endless, unresolvable conflict, the conflict is about feelings, not what triggered those feelings. This truth becomes clear after a while, because as the relationship progresses, more and more incidents trigger the same feelings, and things that didn’t incite a reaction in earlier days become flash points for bitter fights and even violent rage. And when rage sets in, there’s no hope for resolution.<br /><br /><h4>
The real cause of conflict is lost intimacy.</h4>
<br />The feelings that underlie endless conflict are generally hurt, disappointment, betrayal, deprivation, abandonment, or loneliness, or wrapped into a bundle—not feeling loved. When we’re thirsty we go for our favorite drink, and if it’s not available, we’ll take water. If we’re stuck in the desert, we’re grateful for the drops of moisture found inside a cactus, and if we’re desperate, we’ll drink our own urine to stay alive. When we’re thirsty for love, we go for our favorite source of love, our partner. But if our partner is unavailable for emotional or sexual intimacy, we look for a substitute. Not a substitute partner—though that may eventually occur if things get dire. A substitute for intimacy. And what does a better job of getting us eye to eye and toe to toe, right in each other’s faces, and gives us an opportunity to show just how intimately we know our partner, than a fight? We become aroused, passionate. Things get hot. And silence, if it’s plaguing the relationship in the form of withholding, is broken as words—cruel and insensitive ones perhaps—but still, words, are finally exchanged. Put another way, a fish will swim away from a hook, because a hook means pain and possibly death. But bait? Bait means food. And food means life, so bait is tempting. So one partner baits the other—with a statement, often hostile, that is difficult to ignore. The other partner reacts, and the fight is on. Suddenly, you’re thrashing wildly as you’re being reeled in again to the endless argument. It is not always one partner who does the baiting, because both crave intimacy and each is just as likely to start a conflict, consciously or not, to achieve a semblance of closeness.<br /><br /><h4>
It’s the feelings, stupid.</h4>
<br />When a young child is upset, the child often blubbers and babbles. Words don’t form, because the brain is overloaded with emotion and the cognitive circuits are fried. But we understand instantly from tone and expression that the child is in distress. The same thing happens with the endless argument, only it occurs between adults. One partner feels hurt, disappointed, betrayed, deprived, abandoned, lonely, or all of the above, and the intensity of these painful feelings overloads the parts of the brain that manage communication. It’s the way you feel when you just want to scream. In addition, while the other partner’s action or inaction may have triggered these painful feelings, they often relate to wounds from the first one’s past relationships or childhood that the other neither caused nor is capable of healing. Unable to identify the source of the upset, the angry partner focuses on his or her mate as the target and relieves the intense emotional discomfort by blaming him or her for something—anything—convenient. It doesn’t matter that the couple may have been over this particular issue time and time again. The issue is not the point; it’s a place holder for emotions. The words are meaningless, but the emotions are real. If you focus on the words, you grow intensely frustrated with your partner’s irrational, non-constructive behavior of confronting you with an issue you thought you had resolved. Your reaction feeds the cycle of the endless argument, because no logical counter you can offer will lessen the pain your partner is experiencing. When is the last time an argument ever changed a feeling?<br /><br /><h4>
Hurt is inevitable; it’s how we handle it.</h4>
<br />Feelings of hurt, disappointment, betrayal, deprivation, and abandonment make intimacy impossible, because they block trust. Once we realize our partner is capable of hurting us deeply—a natural condition of intimacy—we become afraid it will happen again. We put up walls, grow defensive and aloof, distance ourselves from our partners to protect our egos and our feelings, and soon enough loneliness sets in. Real intimacy requires risk, and most partners are risk averse in relationships, especially those who suffered deep hurts in previous partnerships or in childhood. It is a truth universally acknowledged that at some time or another, your partner will hurt you. This is a fact of being in relationships. The key to healthy relationships is how we handle being hurt, along with recognizing whether the pain being caused is intentional or not. It hurts just as much if it isn’t intentional, but it’s easier to forgive if it isn’t. It may, however, not be easier to correct, because if your partner isn’t aware he or she is hurting you, that awareness must precede corrective action. If your partner is aware of hurting you and intentionally continues, it’s not a relationship but an abusive situation, and you would serve yourself well by seeking counseling as to why you’re still in it. If you love each other and want to stop fighting, you need to realize that when we feel hurt, being right, being vindicated, soothes it, even if being right comes at the expense and pain of our partner, someone we love. That’s why insisting on being right is wrong, and being right is not an inalienable right but an alienating behavior.<br /><br />The endless argument is so much easier to start than a dialogue about the lack of trust or the feelings that underlie it that partners fall into the destructive routine of fighting to replace the intimacy they have lost and would like to regain. Breaking your dependence on fighting to achieve intimacy is crucial to restoring the health of your relationship.<br /><br /><h4>
Ignore the content and stop the fight.</h4>
<br />This simple trick for contributing partners helps you ignore the content and break the devastating cycle of the endless argument. First, strip away the words. Listen to the tone, the pitch, the rhythm of your partner’s voice, humming quietly along with it to block out the actual words being spoken. When your partner is done speaking, say something like, “You know, that’s really terrible, and I’d like to help. Can you tell me in one word what emotion you’re feeling right now?” Often the answer will be, “anger.” If it is, you can follow with, “Can you identify in one or two words the source of your anger?” Your partner is likely to say this is you. Here’s where you work your magic. Help your partner understand that a person can’t be the cause of anger or any other emotion, that emotions such as anger are our reactions to actions or words. “OK, so I’m angry with what you said (or did).”<br /><br />Now, here’s the hard part—accept your partner’s anger. Accept that it exists and is real. Then, explain to your partner that anger is a secondary emotion, a feeling that floods us after we experience primary emotions such as hurt, fear, rejection, or humiliation. Ask your partner if he or she can identify the feeling that came just before the anger. If, for example, it’s hurt, you can say, “I’m sorry you feel hurt. Let’s talk about where that feeling is coming from.” By taking charge and shifting the dynamic, you begin to guide your partner away from the quick fix of relieving pain by blaming you and towards the pain’s true source. The response you encounter may be, “Well, I feel hurt whenever you talk to your mother on the phone,” or “Every time you come home late I feel abandoned.” If you can slip out from under feeling blamed and responsible for your partner’s feelings, you can engage in a more constructive dialogue focused on intent. A statement such as, “I didn’t intend to hurt you by calling my mother or coming home late” joins the two of you in an effort to avoid the hurt and improve the relationship. This can be followed with, “How can we handle this situation going forward to avoid your feeling hurt?”<br /><br /><h4>
Functional communication is intimate and sexy.</h4>
<br />So we know understand that arguing serves as a substitute for intimacy. When partners can’t connect in a healthy way, when the thrill of romance and the easy flow of love are gone, they often resort to fighting to restore a measure of closeness. And fighting, in its own way, can be sexy, especially if the kiss and make up part follows. But in truth, there’s nothing closer and more intimate than being in complete agreement with your partner, being in sync and on the same page, and there’s nothing sexier than the security of knowing you can always talk to your partner about anything and not get blindsided, ambushed, or slammed. Lines connect at a point, and for partners to connect, there must be a point of connection—a shared perception, perspective, principle, or goal. This can be as simple as the desire for peace and harmony in the home and the relationship, and the commitment to work to make that a reality.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />Here are some examples of functional communication around typical issues that dysfunctional couples fight about in the endless argument.<br /><br /><br />“I’ve been putting it off and need to call my mother about dinner on Sunday. It’s important to me that we go, but I know you have feelings about it. Would you like to talk about it so we can get on the same page before I call?”<br /><br />This statement acknowledges that your partner has an issue with seeing your family or your relationship with your mother and offers a conciliatory gesture in advance of an action you are aware could be triggering.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />“When you didn’t call me all day today from work, I felt really lonely. I’m sure you were busy, and I understand. Now that you’re home, maybe we can relax and catch up, talk a little about my day—and yours?”<br /><br />This statement establishes hurt feelings then quickly transforms them into a request for intimacy. Instead of closing the door with an attack, it opens the door for an apology that your partner knows will be accepted and creates an opportunity for restoring connection and trust.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />“When you don’t discipline Dylan and make me the heavy, I feel like the rug’s been pulled out from under me. I know we both disapprove of his behavior, and we both want him to change it, but we’ll be stronger as parents and he’ll be better off, too, if we can support each other when it comes to discipline.”<br /><br />This statement expresses the feeling of abandonment while at the same time extending a bridge to your partner on the issue of discipline. It also suggests a way forward that doesn’t blame the child’s behavior on the more indulgent parent.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />You may not think of these suggested exchanges as the best way to get your partner into the bedroom, but they sure beat a fight that ends up with only one of you in the bed and the other on the couch.<br /><br /> Originally published on <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/couples-fight-real-cause-conflict-fiff/#sthash.Sxnqxj3W.dpuf" target="_blank">The Good Men Project</a>.<br /><br /><i>Photo—<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/">tambakothejaguar</a>/Flickr</i></div>
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<b>About the Author:</b> Thomas G. Fiffer, Executive Editor at The Good Men Project, is a graduate of Yale University and holds an M.A. in creative writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a professional writer, speaker, and storyteller with a focus on diagnosing and healing dysfunctional relationships. His books, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Cant-Work-dysfunctional-relationships-ebook/dp/B00WOYMCDS/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430177309&sr=1-6&keywords=why+it+can%27t+work">Why It Can't Work: Detaching From Dysfunctional Relationships to Make Room for True Love</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00WVOFM7O">What Is Love? A Guide for the Perplexed to Matters of the Heart</a> are available on Amazon. He lives in Connecticut and is working on his first novel. <div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-15432895742763064202015-05-15T14:47:00.001-04:002015-05-15T14:47:11.646-04:00How to Stop Choosing Ambivalence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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You can’t make a choice, so you put it off, endlessly considering the pros and cons. But you’ve already made your choice—one that will keep you stuck and in pain forever.</h3>
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<br />Recently, I conducted a 30-minute relationship health assessment session with a coaching client. This man is stuck in a dysfunctional, high-conflict, unsupportive marriage that isn’t meeting his needs or his partner’s. But of course, there are kids, a house, jobs and finances, there is the pretense of marriage and the shame and horror stories surrounding divorce, and there is denial, and inertia.<br /><br />I helped him find his non-negotiables—those things he is unwilling to accept in a relationship … but is nonetheless accepting. And I understand, because I lived a life similar to his for 15 years, why he is accepting them, why he holds out hope that things will change for the better, why he believes that if he just works a little harder, gives a little more, sacrifices a little more of himself, and offers one more shred of his tattered heart that love and warmth, intimacy and connection, the good times he and his wife shared at the beginning of their relationship, will return.<br /><br />I understand why he’s both hopeful and afraid. Why he has faith but also has his doubts. He knows, as I did, that the status quo is unsustainable, that he is risking his own emotional disintegration, but he is stuck, as I was, unable to get off the fence, unable to make a decision on staying or leaving. He is trapped in the deadly limbo of ambivalence.<br /><br />In a post titled <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/should-love-really-be-this-hard-21-signs-you-chose-the-wrong-partner-fiff/">21 Signs Your Relationship Is Doomed</a>, I wrote:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
When turned towards the positive, hope and faith are powerful forces and miraculous sources of healing, but when employed as mechanisms of denial, they form the pillars of a delusional world, along with their companion—fantasy. Quitting is a dirty word, and it’s drilled into us that we should never give up. Knowing when it’s right to quit, when it’s best to move on, is the key to your emotional survival …</blockquote>
<br />But how can my client—or anyone—know when it’s time to dig in and go all in or time to call it quits and file for divorce?<br /><br />Well, there are <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Cant-Work-dysfunctional-relationships-ebook/dp/B00WOYMCDS">books</a> and <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/stay-go-ultimate-relationship-litmus-test-fiff/">tests</a> and of course therapists and counselors who can help you try to figure it out.<br /><br />But the truthful answer is, sometimes you can’t know with complete certainty. Sometimes you just have to <a href="http://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2010/05/power-of-conscious-choice.html">make the best decision you can</a> with the information you have at the time, because not making a decision means you’re wasting the rest of your life in limbo, half-in and half-out, never getting any traction on anything you do because you refuse to move forward.<br /><br />So how can you get your butt off the fence (and the fence post out of your ass), and make a decision when you’re worried that both decisions might be wrong, that both might bring grave consequences and deep regrets? And when deciding one way involves hurting yourself and the other way hurting someone you love? The takeaway from the time I spent working with my client on this conundrum was this:<br /><br />When we’re stuck in an unhealthy situation, the only thing holding us back is fear. We can cite dozens of logical, practical reasons for changing or not changing, but it’s the fear of making a wrong decision and regretting that decision that keeps us from acting. We torture ourselves with the shadow outcomes of imagined pain and loss from either choice instead of focusing on the pain and loss we’re experiencing in the present moment. Fear is a great immobilizer, despite our fight or flight response. We become frozen in terror, and instead of fighting to make the relationship work or fleeing to save ourselves, we default to the tragic course of withdrawing from life but staying in the relationship, sacrificing love and intimacy and connection, and convincing ourselves we don’t deserve to be happy (which for anyone lacking self-esteem is not that hard). I described this in a post titled <a href="http://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2010/05/power-of-conscious-choice.html">The Power of Conscious Choice</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
You may feel stuck—in your job, your marriage, a financial mess. You may not like the alternatives to your current situation. So you shut them out, convince yourself that there are no alternatives, and attempt to absolve yourself of responsibility for your life. But this is not absolution. It’s abdication. The alternatives do exist. They may involve hard work, unpleasantness, hurt, radical change, leaving things and people behind, overcoming paralyzing fear of the unknown.<br />The way to push through the fear of deciding is to remove the frame of right and wrong, to acknowledge that you have two choices (or perhaps more), with two different sets of consequences, and you simply must make the best choice you can …</blockquote>
<br />There is a way out—not necessarily out of the relationship but out of limbo. The way to push through the fear of deciding is to remove the frame of right and wrong, to acknowledge that you have two choices (or perhaps more), with two different sets of consequences, and you simply must make the best choice you can to address your present unhappy condition, instead of perpetuating it by obsessing over your imagined unhappy future.<br /><br />By doing this, you’re making a conscious choice—one in which you’re aware of the consequences—as opposed to what was most likely an unconscious choice that got you into a dysfunctional relationship and launched unhealthy, destructive patterns of communication and interaction. Exactly what is a <a href="http://tomaplomb.blogspot.com/2010/05/power-of-conscious-choice.html">conscious choice</a>?<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
There are two remarkably simple components to making conscious choices. First, get in touch with your feelings about the situation. How? Just ask yourself: “How do I feel about this?” and give yourself an honest answer. You may be ecstatic or despondent or somewhere in between. The key is to let yourself feel. The danger is not in acknowledging your feelings but in not acknowledging them. Then, ask yourself whether you want more of that feeling or less of it. Does despair serve you? Do you want more frustration or anger in your life? Are you getting something out of feeling powerless, helpless, put upon, overlooked, under-appreciated, mistreated, victimized? Do you really want to be the victim all the time, if that’s what you feel is happening? If you want more of the feeling, make the choice to go in the direction that provides that. If you want less, go the other way. It’s your choice, directed by a conscious interaction with your feelings.</blockquote>
<br />One important note to add is that many of us who have difficulty establishing boundaries and making choices that honor and serve ourselves have experienced trauma at some point in our lives. As my colleague at The Good Men Project and Executive Director of <a href="http://www.malesurvivor.org/">Male Survivor</a>, Christopher Anderson explains:<br /><br />Anyone who has experienced a significant degree of trauma has also had to figure out a way to endure powerlessness. Many people learn (oftentimes because the trauma is endured in childhood) that there is no other solution when dealing with adults than to silently endure.<br /><br />Viewing our stance of powerlessness through the trauma-informed perspective is critical to understanding our why, which can then help us approach our how differently and create happier and more fulfilling outcomes in our lives.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br /><br />I’ve always loved a famous quote from President John F. Kennedy, adapted from Dante’s Inferno, but I never understood until now how it applies brilliantly to dysfunctional relationships:<br /><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.</blockquote>
<br />A dysfunctional relationship is a small-scale, two-person (or more if kids are involved) moral crisis. It’s not genocide, but it’s emotional suicide, or self-icide, unless you address it. Staying in limbo is preserving neutrality. Make a choice. Get off the fence. Whatever you decide, you won’t regret deciding.<br /><br />Photo—<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/quinnanya/3333940021/">Quinn Dombrowski</a>/Flickr<br /><br />A collection of Thomas G. Fiffer’s articles for The Good Men Project on dysfunctional relationships is available on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/">Amazon</a> in his book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Why-Cant-Work-dysfunctional-relationships-ebook/dp/B00WOYMCDS">Why It Can’t Work: Detaching From Dysfunctional Relationships to Make Room for True Love</a>.<br /><br />Originally published on <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/how-to-stop-choosing-ambivalence-fiff/#sthash.WiybnFE5.dpuf" target="_blank">The Good Men Project</a>.Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-61388562553227804232015-02-13T11:00:00.000-05:002015-02-13T11:00:08.931-05:00Do You Want to Talk Seriously About Men?<h2 style="text-align: center;">
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<em><strong>Thomas Fiffer challenges the media to engage in a serious, two-sided conversation about the roles and responsibilities of men and women in breaking the cycle of violence and abuse.</strong></em></h2>
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A recent <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/opinion/to-stop-violence-start-at-home.html?_r=0" target="_blank">OpEd</a> in <em>The New York Times</em> began with the following paragraph:
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THE pattern is striking. Men who are eventually arrested for violent acts often began with attacks against their girlfriends and wives. In many cases, the charges of domestic violence were not taken seriously or were dismissed.</blockquote>
Calling attention to this pattern is neither striking nor new. The media saturates us daily with stories of violent men---whether their violence is vilified when they harm innocents, or celebrated when they kill and maim in the name of homeland security patriotism. What was striking about this article was the leap the author made from paragraph six to seven:
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Boys who grow up in homes with abuse and domestic violence are nearly <a href="http://www.mcedv.org/children-exposed-domestic-violence">four times</a> more likely to perpetrate domestic violence than those who grow up in homes without it. Because violence in the home tends to be a child’s first experience of it and is often defended as either inevitable or trivial, it becomes the root and justifier of all violence.</div>
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Men who commit violence rehearse and perfect it against their families first. Women and children are target practice, and the home is the training ground for these men’s later actions.</div>
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The author moves seamlessly from violence in the home experienced by boys to men perpetrating violence against their female partners and their children.</div>
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There is no mention of girls, who presumably experience the same amount of violence in the home as boys do, growing up to become violent or engage in crime, nor is there any mention of adult women as perpetrators of domestic violence and abuse, despite the fact that <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/women-abuse-men-often-called-abuse-fiff/" target="_blank">a spate of studies</a> indicate that women and men are responsible for violence in the home in nearly equal numbers.</div>
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The author then calls for intervention to break the cycle of violence, but only to "ensure the safety of women and children" with the added benefit of preventing potentially violent men from committing future crimes.</div>
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By intervening early and stopping violence in the home, we ensure the safety of the women and children who are the first victims. We can also take steps to make it harder for perpetrators to go on to commit additional crimes, whether inside or outside the home.</div>
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There is, however, no picture painted of what this early intervention might look like. The conclusion, based on a <a href="http://polisci.unm.edu/common/documents/htun-weldon-apsr-2012.pdf" target="_blank">study</a> the author cites, is that:</div>
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Strong and thriving feminist movements help to shape public and government agendas and create the political will to address violence against women.</div>
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One can't disagree with this, but a one-sided approach to breaking the cycle of violence will never be as effective as one that takes into account the entirety, diversity, and complexity of the problem. Ignoring both violence against men and violence committed by women in an article titled, "Top Stop Violence, Start at Home" strikes me as disingenuous, misleading, and unsupportive of the countless men who grew up in homes with violent or abusive women. Articles such as this one leave readers with the impression that violent men are the problem, and violent men create violent men. This view, while it may not be what the author intended, is both simplistic and damaging, because it perpetuates a fundamentally inaccurate understanding of the domestic violence dynamic and overemphasizes the role of male aggression in that dynamic.</div>
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The world benefits greatly from strong movements that raise awareness of violence against women, foster a national dialogue on it, and ultimately shape public policy to improve women's safety. But we're desperately in need of a strong force or movement that does these same things for violence against men. It doesn't matter what that movement is called---only that it speaks specifically and directly to men's needs and concerns. And for that movement to arise and flourish, it would behoove the media to hold authors to a higher standard and demand a more comprehensive and balanced view in addressing the topic of men and violence both inside and outside the home. Because ... we need to talk seriously about men.</div>
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<em>Photo---<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/zjootsuite/283798390" target="_blank">Ton Haex</a>/Flickr</em></div>
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Originally published on <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/do-you-want-to-talk-seriously-about-men-fiff/" target="_blank">The Good Men Project</a>.Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-85240905127911271372015-02-12T10:38:00.000-05:002015-02-12T10:38:14.630-05:007 Unspoken Secrets About Life After Abuse<div style="text-align: center;">
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<em><strong>Thomas Fiffer reveals seven truths about life after an abusive relationship that stay mostly in the shadows.</strong></em></h2>
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<span style="color: #307d7e; font-family: georgia; font-size: 20px; line-height: 125%;">While certain wounds are healing, different ones---wounds hidden by the relationship itself---erupt in agony.</span></div>
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Looking from the outside, you would think when someone finally escapes an abusive relationship, the worst is over. No more torture. No more hell. No more emotional blackmail or physical violence. And with the source of the hurt removed, healing can begin. But after the external danger is gone, and the abuser is (at least physically) out of the picture, the survivor's internal journey is only beginning. And parts of it can, surprisingly, be tougher and more painful, in a way, than the suffering they endured at the hands of their tormentor. While certain wounds are healing, different ones---wounds hidden by the relationship itself---erupt in agony, not only endangering recovery but also making the survivor wonder if getting out was really worth it. This is one reason it takes the average survivor of intimate partner violence seven times to leave for good. And it's one reason most people have no idea why it takes so long to heal. Here are seven unspoken (or rarely spoken) truths about the unique challenges survivors face <em>after</em> they've gotten out.
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<span style="color: #307d7e; font-family: georgia; font-size: 20px; line-height: 125%;">It requires completely rewriting your self-concept to include your victimization without allowing yourself to become a victim.</span></div>
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<strong>1. You have to stop living in denial.</strong> After you're out and the past abuse is out in the open, you are forced to acknowledge it instead of pretending, at least on some level, that it wasn't happening. This requires you to integrate the awful things that happened to you into who you are, without letting them define you. It's way beyond reinventing yourself by changing careers or going through a massive paradigm shift. It requires completely rewriting your self-concept to include your victimization without allowing yourself to become a victim. There is a kind of sleight of hand involved in this similar to when the magician runs the knives through the lady in the box but doesn't actually cut her, because letting go of one self-concept (in which you've invested months or years of your life) before the new one is fully formed requires an act of faith.
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<span style="color: #307d7e; font-family: georgia; font-size: 20px; line-height: 125%;">How can you pine for someone who hurt you?</span></div>
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<strong>2. You have to walk away---and stay away---from something you believed was love.</strong> No matter how you look at it, this means heartbreak. Loss of innocence. Shattered hopes and dreams. And unbearable loneliness. How can you pine for someone who hurt you? How can you long to return even though you know it's the worst possible thing you can do? Because you didn't want to let go of love, or what you convinced yourself was love, or what some part of you still sees as a chance for love. And because your feelings don't change the second you decide you can't live with a person. You may flip from love to hate, but the intensity is no different, and in many cases, you (or a part of you that you hate) may still love that person, even though you know he or she is unhealthy and unsafe. You wanted it to be better, not over. You had no choice, and yet, your choice was terrifyingly difficult.
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<span style="color: #307d7e; font-family: georgia; font-size: 20px; line-height: 125%;">You learned to be submissive and silent, to second- or even third-guess yourself, to start every sentence with "I'm sorry."</span></div>
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<strong>3. You have to unlearn your unhealthy coping strategies.</strong> You learned every trick to try to keep your abuser happy, or at least to avoid triggering his or her rage. You learned to be submissive and silent, to second- or even third-guess yourself, to start every sentence with "I'm sorry." You learned to walk around minefields and stay out of the line of fire. To tiptoe around insecurities, walk delicately on eggshells, and act as if parts of you---needs, desires, dreams---didn't exist. You learned to diminish your own value,and to accept utterly unacceptable treatment. The mind-bends you went through to achieve a modicum of harmony and keep yourself---and perhaps your children---safe from harm---are staggering. And they're all not only useless but counterproductive and unhealthy in a healthy supportive relationship. So you become a relationship novice again.
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<span style="color: #307d7e; font-family: georgia; font-size: 20px; line-height: 125%;">Some relationships may never regain the closeness and intimacy they once had.</span></div>
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<strong>4. You have to repair broken bonds with family and friends.</strong> This is one of the hardest tasks a survivor faces, particularly if you denied the abuse and defended your abuser while it was happening. These critical relationships are damaged, and even though your family and friends may be tremendously supportive, you may not be aware of the extent of their pain---and they may not want to burden you with it during the early part of your recovery. Some relationships may never regain the closeness and intimacy they once had, especially if you---or your abuser through you---pushed someone away. Your old life doesn't just snap back into place immediately. You changed, and others changed along with you. Restoring broken relationships is hard work, and focusing on finding a new way to enjoy family and old friends will be more productive than trying to go back to the way things were before.
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<span style="color: #307d7e; font-family: georgia; font-size: 20px; line-height: 125%;">Forgiving yourself for abandoning yourself, and for the pain that abandonment caused for you and other people you love is different.</span></div>
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<strong>5. You have to forgive yourself.</strong> This sounds easy, because you forgive yourself for stuff all the time. We all do. You forgive yourself for being late or screwing up at work. You rationalize the time you waste on unproductive activities (e.g., Facebook). You find ways to let yourself off the hook, because ... because it feels good. But forgiving yourself for abandoning yourself, and for the pain that abandonment caused for you and other people you love is different. You obsessively try to understand why you got into an abusive relationship---what was it about you that made you vulnerable, what was it about your abuser that seemed so incredibly appealing. You blame yourself, your childhood, your abuser's childhood ... and yourself again, until you come to a place of true forgiveness and acceptance. "I could have made a healthier choice. But I didn't. And that's OK. I lost a lot. But I'm going to be OK. I'm going to be OK, and I'm going to move on."
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<span style="color: #307d7e; font-family: georgia; font-size: 20px; line-height: 125%;">The hardest thing is squaring the hatred you were subjected to with the idea that you are worthy of love.</span></div>
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<strong>6. You have to start loving yourself again.</strong> When you hate yourself for what you feel you allowed to happen to you, it's hard to find much self-love. And self-love wasn't exactly encouraged by your abuser either. You were likely told repeatedly you weren't lovable---not by anyone except your abuser. So now, who will love you? The answer has to be---you first. Restoring your healthy esteem for yourself must follow self-forgiveness and will allow you to start drawing boundaries that protect you from further harm. A self-care regimen, maintained consistently, can create the feeling of self-love even if you're not generating it inside. Also, if you are a person of faith, remembering that God loves you can help you through the darkest spaces. The hardest thing is squaring the hatred you were subjected to with the idea that you are worthy of love. The trick? It's both/and.
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<span style="color: #307d7e; font-family: georgia; font-size: 20px; line-height: 125%;">Bad advice from good people is still bad advice.</span></div>
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<strong>7. You have to deal with a host of naive, insensitive, self-righteous, but mostly well-meaning people.</strong> Everyone who hasn't lived through an abusive relationship has answers---and questions---for you, especially if they read something on the Internet. And anyone who has been through one, or knows someone who has, listens---quietly and patiently. It's hard enough to share your truth with yourself (see #1), but to share it with people who don't get it or think they know how to solve your problems is frustrating and painful. When someone says, "Come on. You're still young. You have your whole life in front of you," you don't want to be rude and say, "Yes, but I'm stinging from the loss of the 15 years I squandered." But bad advice from good people is still bad advice. This is why it's so important to find communities of survivors, to talk to people who have experienced the same things you have. It is also crucial to choose carefully the people with whom you share your truth and only do so with those you can trust fully and you know will not use it to hurt you.
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The unspoken secret about life after abuse is that, in many ways, it's harder than before. Because the seven things listed, along with a whole lot of others, make for<span class="text_exposed_show"> excruciating work. And when you see that work as the requirement for leaving, you can see why it's so hard for people to leave abusive relationships.</span><br />
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Originally published on <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-unspoken-secrets-about-life-after-abuse-fiff/" target="_blank">The Good Men Project</a>.<br />
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<em>Photo---<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/gagilas/6372350329" target="_blank">Petras Gaglias</a>/Flickr </em>Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-27101993662932064692014-07-08T16:01:00.000-04:002014-07-08T16:01:20.162-04:00Should I Stay or Should I Go? The Ultimate Relationship Litmus Test<br />
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The long-term relationships we choose have greater impact on our happiness and well-being than any other decisions we make. This simple, 10-second, yes or no test helps us determine whether to stay the course or head for the hills.</h3>
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<i>Should I stay or should I go now?</i></div>
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<i>Should I stay or should I go now?</i></div>
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<i>If I go there will be trouble</i></div>
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<i>An’ if I stay it will be double</i></div>
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<i>So come on and let me know</i></div>
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—<i>Should I Stay Or Should I Go</i>, The Clash</div>
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New relationships are the best, right? We all know that special thrill. We meet someone fun and attractive, everything is fresh and exciting, and we experience the joy of discovery as we learn intimate details about another person and start to feel safe sharing our own. Companionship sure beats loneliness, and we feel fortunate and blessed to have found someone who finally understands us. And then there’s the magical bliss of infatuation, the sprinkle of sparkly fairy dust that dispels all doubt and makes us feel as if we’re perfect for each other.<br />
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And then … reality bites.<br />
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He steals a glance at the blonde one table over.<br />She orders a third drink.<br />He snores.<br />She falls asleep without brushing her teeth.<br />He gargles religiously for five minutes every morning.<br />She leaves a tampon in the toilet.<br />He confesses he didn’t really like Bridget Jones’s Diary.<br />She confesses she doesn’t really like Thai food.<br />He admits he was only pretending to like cats.<br />She starts to “upgrade” his wardrobe.<br />And so on.</blockquote>
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The progression from la-la land to love it or leave it is normal as a relationship grows and evolves, and with a core foundation of shared values and interests, sexual chemistry, solid communication skills, and dedicated commitment to making it work, many couples survive the drop-off of the booster rocket at the end of the honeymoon period and launch into the difficult but immensely rewarding orbit of building a long-term, loving relationship. Understanding what happens in our subconscious when the dream state wears off is key to making a sound and healthy decision about staying or leaving.<br />
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As time goes by—one month, three months, six months—a strange thing happens. We begin to feel, on the one hand, more confident and comfortable and less afraid of being ourselves around our partners. Yet at the same time, having invested a quarter or half a year of our lives in being with another person, we begin to worry about the what ifs, especially the big one: What if we’re wasting our time on someone who isn’t “the one”? And how do we know if this one is the one? This confusing dichotomy of increased confidence in and comfort with our partnership bond accompanied by decreased certainty of our partner’s rightness occurs naturally as we move closer to shifting from a short-term, easily escapable relationship, to a long-term, committed, often legally-sanctioned and possibly life-long partnership with another person. Just as we start to let our guard down, our protective instinct kicks in to ensure we’re getting in bed—literally and figuratively—with a partner who is safe and will treat us well over the long term.<br />
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The confounding push-pull of these conflicting feelings leads to those seemingly random outbursts of emotion, crying jags, scary statements such as “I don’t know if I love you,” and the need for a “break” or “time off to sort things out” before moving forward.<br />
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At the same time, partners experience an unsettling set of fears that spur irrational behavior. There is the fear of fucking up, of ruining the relationship and losing a loving companion. There is the fear that we don’t deserve to be loved, that we will be dumped as soon as this is discovered, so we might as well end it ourselves to avoid being dumped. Finally, there is the fear of losing “the one,” the person who is meant for us, and living an unfulfilled life with substitutes because we stupidly lost “the real thing.”<br />
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These fears result in the following unhealthy behaviors:<br />
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<li>self-imposed pressure to agree with our partner and conform to his or her ways of doing things;</li>
<li>a tendency to accommodate and compromise;</li>
<li>avoidance of confrontation even when our principles are at stake;</li>
<li>and reluctance to draw boundaries for fear of upsetting, alienating, or driving our partner away.</li>
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While these behaviors seem rational in the short term, as they smooth out early rough spots in the relationship, they are unwise for the long term, as they gouge deep potholes that partners will need to navigate around down the road to avoid damaging the relationship.<br />
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In this confusing mess, the questions arise: Is he or she the one for me? Is it meant to be? Can we make it work? How do I know?<br />
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Fear of making a mistake also results in testing, which can take the form of obnoxious or disrespectful behavior to see how a partner reacts or manifest as requests for proofs of love and commitment. Isn’t love grand?<br />
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Perhaps the most memorable marriage test appears in the movie Diner, when Baltimore Colts fan Eddie, played by Steve Guttenberg, administers a 140-question football test to his fiancée Elyse to determine if she is marriage material. Even though she fails by two points, he still walks down the aisle with her.</blockquote>
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In retrospect, couples who have been together for a long time often say, “We just knew,” but hindsight has a way of shrouding what really happened in a haze of false memory, revisionist history, and wishful thinking. Few people remember exactly how they knew or what they were thinking at the time. And everyone offers a different tidbit of advice.<br />
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While it’s nearly impossible to be objective about love—after all, we’re dealing with feelings here—it’s crucial to be aware of the factors that influence our decisions. It’s also helpful to have a simple, yes or no, blue or red litmus test (as opposed to a 140-question sports quiz) we can use to determine whether our relationship is destined for long-term happiness or headed for heartbreak. Here are 10 tests that don’t work, and one that does.</div>
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<li>He always tells me he loves me. (Saying it doesn’t make it so.)</li>
<li>She says she accepts me exactly the way I am. (She may actually want some changes—we all do.)</li>
<li>We always make up in the bedroom. (Sex doesn’t engender intimacy; intimacy engenders sex.)</li>
<li>We never fight. (All couples have disagreements.)</li>
<li>He’s nice to my parents. (It could be an act.)</li>
<li>She’s good to my kids. (It could be an act.)</li>
<li>We never run out of things to talk about. (You may not be communicating about the important stuff.)</li>
<li>He/she always puts my needs first. (No one is a saint; there may be resentment building.)</li>
<li>We like all the same things—books, movies, foods, activities, places to go. (Life will get boring if neither one of you ever pursues an independent interest or takes the other out of their comfort zone.)</li>
<li>He/she says we’re soulmates and I’m the one. (If this is true, it never needs convincing.)</li>
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Here is the one test that does work.<br />
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How does your partner treat you when you’re wrong?<br />
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When it turns out you’re mistaken or had the wrong idea about something, does your partner jump on you, go for the jugular, pound the point home, spike the ball in the end zone, gloat in victory, take joy in your defeat, self-congratulate on superior intellect, and act smug about being right?<br />
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Or does your partner act respectfully towards you, give your points fair consideration, try to help you see where your judgment might be inaccurate or flawed, show forgiveness and understanding, treat your discussion as a learning experience instead of a conquest, and employ communication skills not to weaken you but to strengthen the relationship?<br />
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To me, this is the ultimate test. Because inevitably, we will all be wrong. And when we are, we do not want to be made to feel small, stupid, ignorant, and worthless. We don’t want to feel that our standing has been diminished by “losing.” We don’t want to feel squashed or stomped on.<br />
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We simply want to be treated fairly and with … respect.<br />
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Photo—<a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Litmus_paper.JPG">Wikimedia Commons</a><br />
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<span style="text-align: justify;">This post originally appeared on <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/stay-go-ultimate-relationship-litmus-test-fiff/#sthash.DV33dhZq.dpuf" target="_blank">The Good Men Project</a>. </span><br />
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-2159658037233341312014-06-11T17:26:00.001-04:002014-06-11T17:26:09.122-04:00Five Words That Will Change Your Life<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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A five-word epiphany on finding happiness and fulfillment.</h3>
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<i>You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em</i></div>
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<i>Know when to fold ‘em</i></div>
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<i>Know when to walk away</i></div>
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<i>And know when to run</i></div>
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—Kenny Rogers, <i>The Gambler</i></div>
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<br />I know. The headline reads like clickbait. But I promise you this, and I don’t promise lightly: The five words you are about to read hold the power to change your life—that is, if you choose to let them. I know, because they changed mine.<br /><br />Only stay where you’re valued.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />These words express a simple premise, but one that is perhaps the most difficult to adhere to, and especially hard for anyone who—as a child or adult—has been made to feel broken and unworthy. The challenge of following this rule is twofold: first to recognize devaluing relationships—at work, in friendships, at home, even with ourselves; and second to summon the courage to leave.<br /><br />Only stay where you’re valued.<br /><br />Being devalued is often less about what’s being done to you than about what’s left undone or withheld.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />What are the signs of a devaluing relationship? They can be obvious or subtle and insidious. If your partner, friend, or boss talks down to you, insults you, bullies or intimidates you, and otherwise treats you like a worthless piece of crap, it’s clear you’re being devalued, though you may try to deny it because it doesn’t align with your sense of who you are. It’s harder to see devaluing behavior when you’re under-appreciated, undermined, unsupported, and taken for granted by someone who signs your paycheck or treats you like one. Being devalued is often less about what’s being done to you than about what’s left undone or withheld, the absent gratitude, the praise that’s never spoken, and we often get used to living on scraps, awaiting a feast that will never be served.<br /><br /> Only stay where you’re valued.<br /><br />Being employed does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being in a relationship does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being financially supported does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being taken care of does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being made love to does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being told you’re beautiful does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being put on a pedestal does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being called on for every crisis does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being told you are loved does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br />Being loved for what you give and not for who you are does not mean you’re valued.<br /><br /> Only stay where you’re valued.<br /><br />Learn to distinguish being used from being valued.<br /><br />When you feel depleted, diminished, and discouraged, y0u’re being used.<br /><br />When you feel enriched, empowered, and encouraged, you’re valued.<br /><br />When your contributions are unseen, unmentioned, and unrewarded, you’re being used.<br /><br />When your contributions are acknowledged, appreciated, and advertised, you’re valued.<br /><br />Listen quietly to your heart, and you’ll know if you’re valued.<br /><br /> Only stay where you’re valued.<br /><br />Our sense of self-worth does not depend on the estimation of others. We are all worthy. But our feelings of happiness and contentment center on knowing intellectually and feeling on a deep emotional level that we matter, that our life brings value to other people.<br /><br />Only stay where you’re valued.<br /><br />The risk of being continually reduced is nothing less than personal evaporation.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">
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<br />When you spend time in a devaluing relationship, you become convinced that no one will value you. This makes it difficult to walk away. You think things can only get worse, that the devaluing situation is the best you can do—and the best you deserve. Walking away takes strength, belief in yourself, resolve to move forward, and the courage to take a risk. It also requires the awareness that the risk of being continually reduced is nothing less than personal evaporation.<br /><br />When you walk away, you might be alone for a while. But the odds are good you’ll find something better. And to that I say, “Deal me in.”<br /><br /><i>Photo—<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/28096801@N05/">DieselDemon</a>/Flickr </i><br /><br /><div>
This post originally appeared on <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/five-words-that-will-change-your-life-fiff/#sthash.edMj5vRO.dpuf" target="_blank">The Good Men Project</a>. </div>
Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6015444775170699470.post-83731961904365747712014-04-25T15:52:00.001-04:002014-04-25T15:52:38.868-04:00How to Court a Good Man: What to Do and What Not to DoA good man, as the saying goes, is hard to find. Well, not really. There are millions of good men out there. Millions. Good men whose intentions are honorable. Good men whose behavior towards women is kind and respectful. Good men who appreciate love and value commitment. Good men who hew to a code of morality and decent conduct in their personal and professional lives. Good men who don’t need to be bad boys to prove themselves. And these good men are not hiding. They’re everywhere, in plain sight. The young cashier at the supermarket who asks how your day is going. The guy jogging along the bike path who smiles as you pass by. The weary commuter coming home on the late evening train with a bunch of flowers on the empty seat next to him. Some of these good men are already taken. But many are not. Many are available and looking for a good partner—a person who shares their values, appreciates their efforts, and treats them with respect. Recently, a reader wrote in to The Good Men Project and asked if we could provide her with a guide to how to court a good man.<div>
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The rest of this article appears on <a href="http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/how-to-court-a-good-man-5-dos-and-5-donts-fiff/#sthash.MEYdXw60.dpuf" target="_blank">The Good Men Project</a>. </div>
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Photo---<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/ketugajjar/" target="_blank">KetuGajjar/Flickr</a></div>
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Thomas Fifferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08709841415778262214noreply@blogger.com0