Jell-Oh My

My dear friend Ra gave me the great idea to call the stupendous jello art Jell-Oh! What a perfect way to get around the problem of using the corporate name, yay. Now I just have to go back and edit it into a gazillion blog posts so that it will be googly enough to register.

Now that I know about the filtering ways of google I wonder if I am anywhere near as famous as I think. Google keeps showing my blog as the top search result, but that is just what it wants me to think is the top. Now I'll mess it all up again with a name change. But oh well. It's really about making the stuff, not selling it or being famous. I just want to make the stuff.

Which brings me to the Market emotional territory. Things have been a bit dramatic of late, all winter and it doesn't seem to be over. I keep returning to the wonderful fount of knowledge and understanding that I gained from counseling, mostly from RC, Re-evaluation Counseling, which is a peer-to-peer network for building community through emphatic listening skill-building.

What I'm using the most is the work around drama, what constitutes it, how seductively attractive it seems, and how to eradicate it from our daily doings. It's work everybody needs to do for their own benefit and the great relief it brings to all human interaction.

I'm no expert, but what I have learned is that if you don't own and work through your emotional issues, the hurts and confusions and pre-judging you inflict upon yourself on a daily basis, some of which goes all the way back to birth and early childhood, you will spread your suffering around and make it much larger than it needs to be. This is not easy work.

Feelings aren't facts. When you feel something, it can cause distress, even if the feelings are positive and you are pleased. We develop a natural habit of amplifying and sharing the feelings, and if we bring a lot of confusing old stuff along with them, we tend to go into irrationality rather quickly. It's very difficult to stay out of it and remain rational, while at the same time feeling the emotions, identifying the patterns and their steps and pitfalls, and keeping it to yourself while you process. That is the delightful part of co-counselling, that you create a safe space to do that processing and come out the other side back into the present, with another human, so you are not alone in the work, and you get some assistance from someone who cares.

People who have not learned this regularly amplify and spread their distress all over whatever the rest of us are trying to do, and it makes things so complicated and uncomfortable! Good listeners can divert some of this, because we all want to be heard and seen and know it is real, but mostly there isn't time to do the kind of listening that will really help the people who really need it. Particularly not on Saturday.

Other times all it takes is one person giving their full attention for one short period of time. There are a couple of people in my sphere who are really great at it. Beth's address in this week's newsletter touched upon it: "Focus," she says. "Right now." Our Board chair, Willy Gibboney, is a really practiced listener and he has been called to listen to several people this week, to encourage them to stop and listen to others, to develop their compassion. When he has to go off and do this instead of sitting on his little stool making drumsticks and talking about his craft, my heart aches for him and how seriously he takes his volunteer position in our organization. I'd much rather watch how he gently mentors young people and listens carefully to even the most needy wacky person who wanders down our lane. I'd much rather see him sell some shirts and get inspired about new drum designs.

We are starting to see the swell of people from outside our area, bringing their interest and attention (and money) to our little lives, that influx that helps us survive ourselves and make it one more week or month or year doing what we want to do. With their help we are able to not only survive, but thrive, and spread our way to those who are looking for it. We need these customers. They need us, too.

They don't need to see our distress, the way we stand too much and are cold and trapped in our booths and fearful about our utility bills and whether or not we are doing our best work and whether or not we are being treated fairly and whether or not we are indulging in complaining or really seriously in need of help. They see us from the outside, and we forget that everything we communicate is what they see. We all know how well that desperate energy plays on out little 8x8 stages, how easy it is to scare off those who really want to buy something, but don't want to engage in some troubling conversation about how all of our problems are really caused by someone else and how we really need more sales and better customers. Can you imagine how it is for them to feel that kind of neediness coming from us?

When we are blaming others, glaring or holding onto misunderstandings, failing to extend compassion, all about ourselves and what we need instead of what we are bringing to share, we are sowing our distress and amplifying it. You nurture what you pay attention to. If your whole day is about how this or that person is doing this or that wrong, you are most likely communicating that and mostly that, not your joy of creation, your next great idea, your happiness to be alive and doing what you love.

So I will echo what Beth says. Focus in, get serious, and do your work and do it well. This is it, now is the time. We have a lot riding on our moments. Every little negative way we fail to process our irrationality and spread it to others adds to the hurt and not to the joy.

Get some help if you need it. Learn about your internal landscape and how you dramatize it, and how much happier you could be if you could shut off some of those habitual pathways that lead you down the road of distress. There are lots of folks doing co-counseling in our area: wonderful, skilled people who will welcome you in and help you learn how to be happier and make the world more wonderful. Lots of them are also tuned into NVC, Non-violent or Compassionate Communication, which shares much of the same thinking. Paraphrasing Marshall Rosenberg, why are we here if not to make life more wonderful?

If you can't afford one-way counseling, find the RC class, or if nothing else, do some research and ask a friend to trade time listening to each other. You do that anyway in less formal ways, so it could be an easy step to clear some private time and try it out. Develop your empathy and compassion. Do it for yourself, and do it for our community. We need you to be your best self, so we can be our best selves. There's a lot of work to do!