Self-Awareness

Life of Ryan II: Legacy

Ron Johnson Feelings, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

(NB: this is the second of a series of blogs written by “Ryan” (not his real name), someone who has become quite important in my life. He has a bit of trouble writing, as you will have note in Life of Ryan I, so some of the words are mine, but the feelings and the thoughts are his. You might take advantage of writing to Ryan through me: ron.johnson@midlandspsychological.com. Rj)

This is the second in a series of “The Life of Ryan,” which came out of a conversation with my psychologist some time ago. Ron and I have been meeting pretty regularly for many years…well, not always regularly. You see, he has what I call the “Smith gene,” which is a reference to a tendency certain Smiths have of being tardy…or not present at all, or coming a week late or a day early. I just have to put up with it. Ron tells me that he has inherited this tardy-inclined gene from his parents, but they were Johnsons, not Smiths. Maybe the names got mixed up on the boat from Europe. At any rate, we have conversation every week, or two weeks, or three weeks, depending on how Ron’s Smith/Johnson gene seems to be acting up.

Ron’s malfunctioning gene isn’t the topic of this discussion. I want to talk and write about my “legacy,” or perhaps lack thereof. By the way my “writing” is sort of figurative because the idea for this writing came during one of our recent meetings. The “writing” I do is a bit of a misnomer because Ron actually does the writing. I just sit back and dictate, well…sort of dictate. It is a bit difficult for me to write these days. I have this small malady called multiple sclerosis, which has caused me a bit of limitation in what I can actually write. My hands don’t work real well. Actually, they don’t work at all. In fact, not much of anything works in my body except my heart pumping blood into my cardiac system and my lungs pumping air into my breathing system. My doctor tells me that I am healthy as a horse…aside from the MS. So given that my hands don’t work real well…well, not at all actually…and my arms don’t work at all…and my legs don’t work…, I’ll have to depend on Ron’s words. It sounds like I’m complaining so I will give up on this line of thought because I don’t want to bemoan my current state. I want to bemoan my previous state. Hence, the current discussion on my “legacy.”

In one of our recent meetings I told Ron that I had been thinking of my legacy, meaning the legacy I will be leaving behind. I have been thinking such things since I raced past age 70 not long ago and I remember the Bible says that the “number of man is three score and 10.” That’s me plus some. So this thought about my legacy, or perhaps more accurately, my thoughts about legacy has been on my mind for some time. You tend to do that when you get past 50, more at 60, and then 70 really hits you. Most of the people my age (which would include Ron, by the way), had grandparents who were 70, and they always looked “old.” I can’t say that I feel “70” but that is what my birth certificate apparently says, so I have to believe it. Whether it is “legacy” or some other phrase that describes the same thing like, “what I have left behind” or “what I have done in life” or “what the world might remember about me” these all mean the same thing. And these thoughts lead to the big question: did I do anything of significance in life that could actually be said to be a legacy? I told Ron that I didn’t think I have any sort of legacy.

That word, and the feelings and thoughts behind the term legacy led to this writing that I’m doing. Ron thought the idea of legacy, or lack thereof, was somehow important. So he said he would try to put together some sort of statement, or page, or blog, or something that might be a way I could communicate my thoughts and feelings down on paper. So I sort of dictate these words to Ron and then he goes back to his office and re-writes what he thinks I said. Then he sends it back to me, and I go over it and trash it because he isn’t always as good at saying what I think and feel as I am. It is a joint effort. In my first “Life of Brian” I mentioned that he is my amanuensis, a word I had never heard of before Ron used it. Amanuensis sounds like some kind of disease, but it apparently means ghost writer. I will have to use my amanuensis because it would take me an hour to write this very paragraph, and Ron tells me he learned to type 110 words a minute, evidently with 100 errors or something. I’ll just have to trust him on that one.

Back to the legacy idea. Yes, I told Ron I didn’t see that I have a legacy to leave the world. Now, if anybody ever reads this monologue, you might say that I had children and now have a flock of grandchildren and the like, and this is my legacy. Perhaps, but it doesn’t feel that way. I told Ron that my wife did most of the raising of our kids, at least that’s the way it seems to me as I look back. And I can’t do much more than look back. Unfortunately, when I look back, I am not too pleased with myself. I just didn’t do much. Let me try to fill you in on how I see the past…or we might say the lack of a past…or the lack of a meaningful past. It starts with opportunities ignored. It leads into being lazy. It ends with regrets. Opportunities, laziness, and regrets. That’s about how I see it when I look back at my life.

In many ways I had a good life. I did a lot of the right things. I always went to work, usually early, since I don’t have the Smith gene noted above. I always paid my bills. I always cut the lawn. I even did a bit of housework from time to time. But I never got around to fixing that front door handle that kept falling off. Have you ever seen that token with the words “round two-it” on it? I have a trunk load of those things. Just lots of things that I couldn’t seem to “get around to” doing. Hence, the “lazy” word that I found myself using with Ron. He didn’t like the word, but he didn’t see me sitting in my easy chair watching TV and drinking a beer when I could have fixed the front door. Or the back door. Or the garage door. To say nothing about re-wiring the kitchen so you didn’t have to turn the light on in order to get the toaster to work. Or fixing the plumbing so we had hot water going into the laundry room. Lots of “round two-its”.

But there are more important things that I didn’t really do. I didn’t finish college. Well, more accurately, I hardly went to college at all. A semester with barely passing grades and another part of a semester that got tangled up with playing a lot of pool and drinking a lot of beer. So I went to the Navy, thinking that the Navy could be a way of getting rid of those round two-its. Didn’t do too badly, but for those of you who know what the military is like, there were a lot of times that I just needed to look busy, not be busy. Did my stint, but got out early. Maybe a mistake, maybe not, but certainly I didn’t put my whole heart into the Navy any more than I did with college. Ron tells me that things came a bit too easy for me. I don’t know if I am as smart as he seems to think I am, but I admit that I could get the “gentleman’s C or B” without much effort. Never seemed to have the drive to study and perform. A’s just didn’t seem important. Lazy? I don’t know. Sure looks that way. I have lots of regrets.

Regrets. Lots of them. College for sure. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone to college at all. Maybe I should have gone right into the Navy, or into the workforce, or into some kind of trade school. Yet at 70, I don’t know what I might have done. Nothing seemed to draw me. Nothing seemed interesting. Nothing that I wanted to put real effort into. But I didn’t put real effort into anything aside from working faithfully, and a fair bit of bowling. Got a 297 once. Damn. Just did what I needed to do in order to get by. So I have these regrets about not having established a life that would now look like some kind of legacy. I’m still looking.

Ron thinks that this writing might be a way to find a legacy. Maybe. I don’t know. All I know as I sit here reading what Ron has transcribed out of my ramblings is that I feel disappointed in my life. Not the people in my life; not my wife, kids, and family. Just me. Just disappointed in me.

Stay tuned. The more I talk, the more it seems I have to say. I’m particularly interested in family, with all that it means.

Further Reading

Life of Ryan 1: The Easy Life

Life of Ryan I: The Easy Life

Ron Johnson appreciation, emotional maturity, grief, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

(NB: this and following Life of Ryan blogs are coming under my personal blog rather than from him directly. The reason for that will become obvious to readers. “Ryan” (not his real name) has given me permission to post these blogs. Read and consider your thoughts and feelings. If you choose to respond, do so on the blog or directly to me: ron.johnson@midlandspsychological.com. I will pass it along to Ryan.)

My name is Ryan. I’m writing to you from my home, a home where I have lived for the last 20 years, longer than I lived in any other home. It is good home, and it serves me well, but I often hate it.

It’s not the brick or mortar that I hate. The physical structure is fine. There is nothing wrong with how the walls and ceilings have been built, seemingly by very good tradesmen. I never have to worry about the electric or plumbing needing repair, or the roof needing redone. In fact, a person couldn’t ask for a more solid structure. In fact, it’s a rare time that anything goes wrong with the structure. Home owners should be so lucky.

It’s not the people in my home that I hate. The people are quite nice, at least for the most part. They do a fine job taking care of me. In fact, they do more for me than most people get from their co-inhabitants. I never have to do laundry or the vacuuming. I never have to do the dishes. I don’t even have to fix meals. The other people in my “home” do all that stuff. What other man is so lucky to be treated like a king of his castle?

You should be as lucky as me. I just sit back and enjoy all these privileges: house repaired as necessary; household duties taken care of; meals prepared regularly. People stop by to see me and chat from time to time. I’m even given in-house entertainment, like games and parties. I just sit back and watch all this work being done. Just sit back and watch TV, play video games, and keep up with my Facebook friends. Well, that doesn’t always work because my computer goes down from time to time and I have to wait for the IT guy to show up and fix it. But this is not so bad because all the other things in my home are taken care of. And get this: I have two people in my household who actually give me a bath. For the most part I have nothing to do but hang out while I watch all these things being taken care of. You should be so lucky. Living the good life, yes?

It sure seems like to the good life, doesn’t it? There is a slight problem with my being the king of my castle with all these privileges. What could possibly be missing from this scenario where all the necessary things of life are being taken care of for me? What could possibly be wrong with my just sitting back and watching TV while everyone else in my home goes about doing household duties? What’s wrong is this: the only thing I can do is “sit back and watch TV while everyone else in my home goes about doing household duties.”

I am not able to do the dishes and repair the roof. I am not able to fix the plumbing and re-wire the kitchen. I am not able to shovel the snow in the winter and cut the grass in the summer. I am not even able to change the channel on my TV. In fact, it is quite an effort for me to actually play video games and get on Facebook and do email. It actually takes my breath away to get on Facebook and check my emails on my computer. It literally takes my breath away to do these things. I huff and puff to do this small task. Well, not exactly huff and puff; more accurately I sip and puff when I’m trying to navigate my way around the computer.

Puffing and sipping is the only way I can operate my computer because I have multiple sclerosis. I can’t move. I can’t move at all. All I can do is sip and puff. I can’t move my arms. I can’t move my legs. So I can’t scratch that itch on my leg. I used to have a little use of one of my arms and hands, which helped me greatly because I could change the TV channel, migrate the mouse on my computer, and use my electric wheel chair. All that disappeared several years ago, and I am left with speech as my only means of communication with the world around me. But even that is waning, something that tends to happen with MS patients as the muscles surrounding speech began to deteriorate. I can go from speaking normally to whispering to moving my lips without any sound at all depending on how these speech-based muscles want to cooperate.

It must sound odd to hear someone say that he wishes he could fix the drain in the bathroom, shovel the snow, cut the lawn, repair the kitchen electric, or climb on the roof to repair the leak. But that is exactly what I wish I could do. Even more so, I wish I could get on the floor and wrestle with my grandchildren. I so wish for lots more, like kissing these grandchildren, and my own children, and my wife, but even this is a huge effort that is rarely made. Besides, who wants to kiss such a bump on the log when the guy can’t simultaneously wrap his arms around you?

All of this sound like so much complaining. I suppose it is. I try real hard not to complain. Yes, sometimes it is a challenge to puff on the mechanism that alerts the staff of some need I might have, and even more of a challenge to wait for an hour to have someone respond to my call. But for the most part, I am not inclined to complaining. In fact, my psychologist has asked me to “feel bad for myself” every day. He says that it would be good for me to “just feel bad” for a while. I don’t see the point. In my mind, it’s going to be the same thing today as it was yesterday and the same thing tomorrow. So what’s the point of feeling bad for myself? It just seems like so much complaining.

By the way, this same psychologist has taught me a new word that is relevant to this discussion: amanuensis. I understand this is a sophisticated word that means ghost writer. He has initiated this current monologue and may be willing to help me with others. He is my amanuensis: he writes what I tell him to write. Well, he is a bit more of a writer than I am, so the words are largely his. But the ideas and the feelings are mine. I tell him what I am thinking or feeling and then he goes home and writes up some kind of monologue like the present one.

I plan to do more of these. The idea came up during one of the conversations that I had with my psychologist. I told him that I was disappointed in my “legacy.” But that is the next edition of Ryan.

 

Feelings IX: Joy From Intuition

Ron Johnson appreciation, Feelings, happiness, mindfulness, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

This is the ninth in a series of “feelings”. Our most recent addition, Feelings VIII had to do with the feeling of joy, specifically related to the joy that one experiences in one’s five physical senses. Here we would like to explore joy that comes from what we might call our sixth sense, which I am calling intuition. This joy from intuition is something like when you say, “I don’t know why, but I just feel good (or joyful, or happy, or content).” Let’s consider together how we might understand, value, and express this intuitive joy.

What is intuition?

This word “intuition” is sometimes used too much and sometimes not used at all, so I want to be careful in how I suggest we use it for the feeling of joy. Importantly, I subsume this word intuition under the heading of the word feelings that we have been studying these recent weeks. Recall that the word “feelings” as I am using the term is very important but does not lend itself to any exact definition. Succinctly put, feeling is first a physical feeling, secondly an emotional feeling, thirdly a thinking feeling, and fourthly an activity-based feeling. People tend to express their feelings in one of these arenas. For instance there are people who express their feelings primarily with their body experiences, others with their emotion, others with their thoughts, and others with their activities. I think feelings encompasses all four of these phenomena in life, and that emotional maturity requires us to become more fluent in all of these ways of expressing feelings.

Some people call intuition a “gut level feeling,” and such people profess that they experience these sixth sense feelings during dreams, whether awake or asleep. Some people consider such intuitive feelings spiritual. And while some people would use the term “spiritual” to explain this experience, but certainly this sixth sense is not limited to religious experiences however profound they might be. When we talk about a sixth sense, we might even be talking about one of the five senses operating at a level beyond our awareness. Neuropsychologists might be able to see what part of the brain is firing when we have this intuitive experience, but we will defer that discussion to folks who are more skilled than we are in matters neurological. We can say that times of joy come with people and without people. Consider the following.

Times of joy with people

People of some personality types have their greatest times of joy with people, while others find joy in other avenues. People-based joy can come in many forms including:

  • In depth conversation
  • Simple weather-related brief interaction
  • Sharing an experience with someone
  • Being in a familiar group of friends or family
  • Being in a lecture where everyone is intent on learning the same thing
  • Caring for a child or playing with a child
  • Planning or thinking about a future event with people

Times of joy without people

Consider the many times you have found joy being alone, perhaps when you were:

  • Reading a new book or a favorite poem
  • Appreciating some special aspect of nature
  • Remembering a very special time you had when you were alone
  • Writing something, like this blog
  • Playing by yourself, whatever that might be
  • Working alone on a project without any interruption
  • Praying or meditating

If you acknowledge that you have this feeling, this “sense of something,” you will then be able to consider whether it is a simple thought or emotion that has passed through your head, or a profound understanding of something important to you. If this sixth sense feeling stays with you beyond a few seconds, you need to take a moment and allow it to run its course. If this feeling comes and goes within a few seconds, you don’t have to spend time trying to bring it into consciousness, but if this feeling stays with you, your next task is to give it some room.

Giving intuition room

Giving intuition “room” means allowing yourself the freedom to experience intuition time to unfold. Again: you might notice something physical, emotional, intellectual, or action oriented. This is easier for some people than it is for others, probably due to personality type and temperament. If you do this easily, you may be predominantly an intuitive person, but if giving intuition room is difficult, you may be a person who is more practical, rational, or analytical. It is possible to give intuition room by allowing yourself to feel something that has no exact cause, which again, is easier for some people than it is for others. Everyone is intuitive in some way, but not all people acknowledge this intuition, even to themselves.

Giving intuition room is quite simply allowing yourself to experience this feeling, this gut-level, analytical, emotional, or physical thing without knowing what “it” is. Just feeling it. True intuition can lead to amazing scientific discoveries to which many scientists attest, or to insights about oneself or the universe at large. “Just feeling” an intuition means allowing yourself to experience intuition in the way that is most natural to you: physical, emotional, intellectual, or activity-based. There are times when you feel an intuition about potential danger, but most intuitions are quite apart from danger and the fear that accompanies danger. Once you have given intuition room, you often will discover that you have a feeling of joy. Let’s consider how that might happen:

  • For people who are primarily physical in their experience of intuition, they might experience a very pleasant physical experience, perhaps a physical calm, a physical strength, or better yet a feeling of general body pleasure
  • For people who are emotional, they will most likely feel inclined to cry, crying being an expression of joy (and of course of sorrow), but joy that is born of love
  • For people who are intellectual, they may experience this intuition in a sense of knowing something or understanding something
  • For people who are activity-based, they might experience intuition while doing something, very often having success in some physical endeavor.

Consider the joys in your life. Consider writing them down. Consider putting them into a poem…or a project. Consider sharing them with someone. Trust your intuition

Further Reading

Feelings 1-VIII blogs

Pillard, N. (2015). Jung and intuition. London: Karnac

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper and Row.

Schutz, W. (1967). Joy: expanding human awareness. New York: Grove Press

Freedman, J. (1978). Happy people: what happiness is, who has it, and why. New York: Harcourt Brace.