The Voices

 “Does everyone have voices in their head?”

“What do you think?”

The voices.  The voices can be so powerful.  I remember a few years ago, I was traveling for work in Brazil, and I couldn’t get a hold of Laurel.  As background, we had some text exchanges around our one dog Daisy, too many treats, and Daisy throwing up the night before.  The voices started:

“Laurel blames you for Daisy throwing up”

“Daisy is sick and had to go to the vet”

“Daisy is dead and Laurel doesn’t want to tell you”

“Laurel has been kidnapped”

“Laurel is dead”

Spoiler alert, none of these happened.  Yes, the voices are powerful.  I unfortunately had many instances like this when I was traveling a great deal, not sure if it was the lack of sleep, being away from home or what, but these stories were way too frequent.  Since I’ve been traveling less, these situations have lessened, but I’m pretty sure they will never quite go away. 

As many of you know, I’ve really come to enjoy yoga.  OK, that may be an understatement.  I enjoy yoga, yoga studios, yoga teachers, other yoga students, books about yoga….  I think you get my point, I’m hopeful it hasn’t become an obsession, but quite frankly, when Laurel introduced me to yoga four years ago, it started slowly, but eventually, I’ve grown to really love it and love what it’s done for me.

Having said all that, I’m still not the most graceful or beautiful yogi.  I have horrible flexibility, my strength isn’t great, I can’t balance to save my life, and I have the grace of a giraffe.  But, it really doesn’t bother me.  One of our teachers, Brooke, is always so supportive and positive, she’ll say in class when we’re doing a balancing pose, “You guys look awesome!  You look so great!”  I always laugh because I’m pretty sure she’s either not looking at me, or she’s just being incredibly nice.  I never really watch anyone in yoga, and I really don’t worry a whole lot about how I look, I’m virtually positive I don’t look great, but I’m OK with that.

Recently, I’ve been really working on Balancing Half Moon.  I could never do it, and it kind of bugged me that I couldn’t because, I just thought, I should be able to do this.  My issue is that you have to balance on one leg, and my quads are very tight and weak, so it’s difficult for me.  With Laurel’s help and coaching, I started to be able to do it.  Not great, but I was able to balance on my leg with one hand on a block.  I was really excited to be able to finally do this, at least my version.

“How much of what is happening in your head has to do with what’s happening in life, right here?” Baron Baptiste from “Perfectly Imperfect”

On Labor Day, we had an outdoor yoga class at a park.  I love outdoor yoga because I love the outdoors, and also because strangely, I can balance a lot better on an uneven surface compared to a flat surface.  It was a wonderful experience, we had a great time.  Then, the studio posted pictures of  the class, and I was devastated.  The picture was Balancing Half Moon, and as I looked at the picture, I saw three lovely roses, and one really ugly thorn.  Now to be fair, the three around me all are teachers, and their poses were beautiful.  Kim, Nicole and Laurel all had these beautiful variations of Balancing Half Moon, and there I was looking, well, like a really awkward giraffe.

And the voices started…

“You look awful”

“You should be embarrassed”

“What are you doing out there?”

“You should quit yoga”

I kept telling myself what I always tell myself, I’m a work in progress, I’m doing the best I can, and I may not look that great, but I’m on my mat, I’m working at it.  But the voices are powerful, and they were taking over.  On a walk the one day with Laurel, I started crying, and tried to explain to her what was going on.  I love yoga, I don’t want to quit, but I hate the way I look, I hate looking like an awkward old man, it’s embarrassing.  She, as I would expect, gave me the logical answer very similar to the logical answer I was giving myself, but I tried to explain to her, the voices are powerful.

It also took me to a bit of a different direction, but also pretty painful.  I don’t know about everyone else, but when I see a picture of myself, I really don’t have too much reaction.  I know I’m not the best looking guy in the world, and quite honestly, I think I’m looking more and more like Doc from “Back

to the Future” each day, but it really doesn’t bother me.  I started thinking about people I know, mostly women, who refuse to have their picture taken, and refuse to post pictures of themselves on Facebook or anywhere else, and I wondered, what are the voices in their heads telling them about how they look?  It hurt to think that while I hated to see what I looked like in a yoga pose, there are people that just in general hate what they look like, and the voices are telling them, they are ugly, or overweight, or whatever. 

I had a recent conversation with one of the wonderful young ladies I used to work with in Lawrenceville with WIKA.  She was telling me about her son at college, and the voices that are telling him all of those negative things that they sometimes say.  I could easily relate to what he is going through, it’s not easy when you are young, working through those social situations at college, trying to maintain your grades, and have those voices telling you all the things you aren’t good at.  It’s also extremely difficult to be a mother and not being able to do much to help, other than offer those positive comments to try to overcome those negative voices in his head.

While the voices may be powerful, I’ve grown and developed in my ability to deal with them.  The quote above from Baron Baptiste is from one of the chapters titled “The Cosmic Joke”, where he describes that so much of what we believe isn’t real but fabricated in our head.  It’s helped me realize, I’m not alone, there are others who create a new reality like I do.  Another way is this week I’ve been watching a video I found of Hillsong United singing “Break Every Chain” and hearing:

“There’s a power in the name of Jesus to break every chain”

Each morning, when I plank, I’ve been watching and listening to this song, and I hear that phrase over and over telling me about the power of the name of Jesus.  I do firmly believe that Jesus is much more powerful than any of the voices in my head that tell me I’m not good enough.  The voices will always be there, but I’ve been able to deal with them much better through prayer, through song, through reading, through therapy, and yes, through yoga. 

Going back to the comments from the beginning, that was an exchange the other night between Sarah, my therapist, and me.  I asked Sarah that question, and as is typical of a therapist, she turned it around on me (therapists are really sneaky that way).  I’m guessing everyone has some sort of voices in their head.  I’m guessing some are different than others.  I’m guessing some are really strong and persistent while others are those slow, subtle comments that are like a faucet dripping, eventually wearing you down. 

The other day in yoga, Amber started our class with little note cards she put in front of each of us.  The cards had many different messages like:

“You are worthy!”

“You have a light, it’s meant to shine!”

“You are loved!”

This is the one I got:

My hope and prayer is that many people have voices in their heads telling them messages like this.  I hope that when they look in a mirror, they see the light that they are to the world, they know they are loved, they see someone who is worthy.  I’m really hopeful that many out there don’t have those voices that tell them all the things they can’t do in life, but they have voices that tell them how amazing they are, how unique they are and how the world is a better place because of them being in it.

As Laurel and I drove home from that class, I talked again about the voices and what they were telling me.  Again, she reiterated the logical answer, and I said my typical response to the voices, I told her I’d just tell them:

“I’m baptized, so fuck off!”

She told me, maybe you should tell them:

“Brooke says I look great, so fuck off!”

Kindness, Simple Kindness

 “This is a sermon about kindness, simple kindness.  It’s a sermon about the opportunities that we have, all of us, …to treat other people with gentleness, meekness, tenderness, mercy, and kindness.  Sometimes we do; sometimes we don’t, but you know what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about kindness, simple kindness.”  Dr. Thomas Long, from the sermon, “Be Kind, Be Kind, Be Kind”

I first heard this sermon in I’m guessing the late 80’s or early 90’s.  Dr. Long came to Westminster Presbyterian Church in Dayton, Ohio as a guest minister one Sunday, and this sermon probably captured me more than any other sermon I ever heard in my life. 

When I say “first heard”, there is a reason for that.  This sermon moved me so much that I got a copy of it from the church on cassette (yes, I know, many years ago, and I’m that old), and I’d listen to it in my car on my drives to and from work.  I can’t even recall how many times I listened to this sermon, but it was countless times, and I can still hear it and see Dr. Long preaching it.  I can’t remember if the tape finally broke, or I got rid of my car and no longer had a cassette deck, but eventually, I didn’t have the opportunity to listen to it anymore.  Thankfully, there is the internet these days, and I found a copy of it on a website.

There are so many reasons why this sermon touched me, but I think one of the biggest reasons why was Dr. Long gave so many vivid examples of people who needed our kindness:

• The woman running the cash register at the local grocery store who’s had a really long day.
• The guy at work who is constantly complaining and spreading negativity throughout the organization.
• The lonely neighbor who just needs someone to listen to them.
• The homeless man who is looking for some spare change as you are leaving Starbucks.

We come across these people every day, and we can choose to be kind, or we can pass them over and move on to what is more important in our lives.  For the most part, it’s easy to ignore these people, and not give them a moment’s notice.  It’s easy to ignore them, unless you see them in the light of God.  As Dr. Long further states:

“To put it bluntly, in the Bible, kindness is an act of civil disobedience.  It’s a refusal to treat people according to the customs and the mores and the traditions of the status quo of the world around us and an insistence on seeing them and treating them in light of who they will become in God’s future”

I recently saw one of those Facebook posts, and I always wonder, is this real or just a fabrication?  It was one of those stories where a person had reached the end of their rope, and they had planned on committing suicide that day.  They worked in customer service, and someone was so friendly, so kind to them, that they changed their mind, and they didn’t commit suicide.  That person obviously had changed their life forever.  While the story may be a fabrication, I still believe it provides a teaching moment.

My experience wasn’t quite the same, not quite that dramatic, but in that moment, it definitely meant a lot to me.  As I shared in my latest blog post, I had a deep plunge recently, and I was pretty down.  No, I wasn’t suicidal, but I certainly had my share of irrational thoughts running through my head.  It just so happened that I had an interaction with a colleague at work, and it made an incredible difference for me.  She had various kind words for me, but she also shared a couple of meme’s or sayings that really touched me. 

Now the one was funny, as you can see:

It made me laugh, and it also for some reason made me think of one of my favorite quotes and words to live by from Nadia Bolz-Weber:

“I’m baptized, so fuck off”

I’m starting to believe I need to rename my blog site since I use this quote so often anymore, but as usual, I digress.  While I don’t have as many issues with people getting down on me for not being perfect, I have plenty of voices inside of my head telling me what a screw-up I am.  So I did enjoy this picture and the sentiment of it.

The one I really enjoyed was this one:

It reminded me so much of an excerpt from Glennon Doyle’s “Love Warrior”:

"We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, our job as parents is to protect our children from pain, and our job as friends is to fix each other's pain.  Maybe that's why we all feel like failures so often - because we all have the wrong job description for love."

And more recently, I read the following from Rolf Gates:

“We are in a hurry to escape the pain we have been in and are still contending with, but our haste is self-defeating.  Do not walk so fast.  The pain you wish to escape is everywhere.  Do not walk so fast.  The grace you seek is everywhere.”

We have this concept of life that we should only embrace the good, the favorable, the enjoyable.  But we also have to embrace the painful, the dark, the fears.  Too many times I’ve let those irrational, devastating thoughts take over and push me further and further down.  I’ve learned, with some success, I need to just let them be, let them simmer, let them bounce around in my head, until it’s time for them to go away and be replaced with something more pleasant.  Key phrase, some success.

In the end though, it comes back to kindness, simple kindness.  Maybe, just maybe, this interaction with a colleague helped me embrace the pain I was going through and not let it take over until I could move to a better place.  Have you experienced this kind of kindness?  Have you made someone’s day with a kind word?  Has someone made your day with a kind word?  In the end, it’s just not that hard, and it can make all of the difference.  No, you may not keep someone from committing suicide, but maybe you’ll be the one voice of love and compassion for someone among all of the negative voices they hear each day.  

Dr. Long closed his sermon with these words from Henry James:

“There are only three things important in human life: be kind, be kind, be kind.”