#365Gratitude Day 352: Jerks

So my work on the Big Little Podcast, occasional event wrangling, teaching at kink events, and online advocacy make me something of a very minor media personality.  As I joked with a friend the other day, I'm maybe a slightly larger fish in a very tiny pond.

Over the years, I've developed some very strong opinions about all sorts of things related to being kinky, an age player, or just even a human being.  (All of which I happen to be!)​

Among these things I beleive are the following:​

• Self-acceptance and love matter When you're alternative in any way, it's super easy to fall prey to the trap that you need someone else to tell you that those alternative things are okay. It's a damnable lie. You don't require anyone else to approve of you.
• Labels are mostly meaningless. They're the placeholders for a conversation you can have with someone else. They're useful for those conversations, but that's about it. What one person calls being an "inner kid" another might call being "regressive", still yet someone else might call that "Just how Uncle Dave is, don't mind him."
• Compassion begins with oneself You have to love and embrace who you are, before you can love and embrace who anyone else is.
• Communities don't exist They're social cohorts, groupings of people with something in common. But they're not collectives with a life, culture, and ethics held in common. Each member within them is responsible for themselves, to themselves. Each member within them can (and does) live as they choose, for the most part. There's no such thing as "harming the entire community" or "doing something for the good of the community", or "rousing the community to action to do thing x". Just because I like age play and you do too, doesn't mean we owe each other anything, or are guaranteed to be alike, or even get along.
• If you want acceptance and tolerance, give it. Waiting around for the other guy to be good, kind and true isn't going to do you any favors. You shape the world you live in.

There's plenty more, but that's a fine cross-section of the ideas I hold.  The problem is, many of these ideas just rile people up, and piss them off.  It's not a problem, really.  I don't mind people disagreeing with me.  Actually, I welcome it.  I'm always willing to engage in polite discourse with others, and to refine my opinions, too.

I recognise the essential truth that opinions are much like the anus - everyone's got one.

Sometimes the people who disagree with me get a little unhinged.  They rant and rave, type WALLS OF TEXT against what I have to say, sometimes call me names, all sorts of unpleasant things. 

I'll admit, sometimes it can be irritating and often exhausting.   

But I realized a while back that my purpose isn't to be "right."  (I actually don't think I am right.  There is no right.  Here's a great zen story about how that is possible.)  My purpose is to help people to help themselves.  I don't have the answers to all the questions.  I just have some questions.  I ask myself these questions all the time.  And, for those who want to join me in that self-questioning, I have questions for them.

It makes me feel great when, at my urging, someone else does the same sort of soul-searching I myself do, and comes to a better place for it.  It doesn't have to be the same place I'm at.  (In fact, I think that's kind of impossible.)  I get so much out of the thoughtful discussions I have with others about all sorts of things.

Here's where the gratitude comes in though.  Even when someone not only disagrees with me, but wants to sort of publicly wipe their ass with me, good still comes of it.

For one thing, people who do this sort of thing self-select themselves as members of an elite group, "people I am not going to emotionally invest in, or invite to my house for sugar cookies." 

For another, often when this happens, those enlightened folks who DO get what it is I'm doing will jump in the fray, and do their level best to bring the discussion to a healthier, more balanced place.  In a way, these jerks who foment such unrest are almost an unwitting aide to the very work I'm doing, teaching others mindful tolerance and self-love.  They do their best to not lose their cool as they cope with these argumenative folks.

That makes me glad I know them, and shows me that what I'm trying to put out in the universe is making some difference.   I don't care to try to help every person, because I don't think it's possible and smacks of hubris.  But I do care about helping each person I can.  

When I see people treating themselves and others with compassion, practicing tolerance, being open-minded, and sex-positive, it warms my heart. 

I'm glad that whether they like it or not, people who treat me poorly help me to do what's important to me.

#365Gratitude Day 351: Tense Studies

So, there's this corny joke I love.

The past, the present, and the future walk into a bar together. 

It was tense. 

Corny jokes aside, tense is on my mind today.   

I've been a Taoist for around a decade now.   I remember when I first got started in my meditation and contemplation, I was super excited, and often very confused.  It was like I was learning a whole new way to think, to speak, and to act.  I struggled to understand what Tao is, what te is, tried to move with the Tao as opposed to against it.  (Which is a meaningess distinction, what I really came to understand in subsequent years was that I had the choice to practice mindfulness, or not to.)  Along the way I frequently got into long, thinky exchanges with my brother, Spacey, who's a very good person with whom to have those sorts of mulling sessions.

Now I find myself on the opposite end of that sort of exchange.  I have several friends who have decided to explore Taoism and mindfulness too, and are just getting started with their own journey.  I get phone calls, texts, emails, fetlife messages, the occasional munch conversation, Skype calls, and Kik messages from these lovely people, all seeking to find their way, and wanting my help.  

It's beautiful. 

I'm happy to help them as they find their way.  I count it a big blessing that the work I've done for myself previously is there for me, so that I, in turn, can help them.  In an almost ineffable way, it's like this giant mobius strip.  That which was before exists to shape, inform, and nurture that which is coming to be which in turn exists to lend shape to that which was before.

I know, it makes my head hurt, too.

But I'm grateful for it. 

#365Gratitude Day 350: Christmas Presence

So this time of year is always a bit weird for me.  Back when I was a kid, I used to love Christmas. It was the one time of year I was guaranteed to see and spend lots of time with my dad, who also loved the holiday.  He traveled a lot for his job, and I didn't see him much.  He used to make a big deal out of the holiday, and I enjoyed it, and sharing it with him.

That turned out to be problematic for me in later years, when I found out that for my entire life, my dad had been a narcissistic, antisocial, monster.  During the mainstay of my childhood he led a hidden life, cheating on my mother with more than a dozen women.  In later years he added to this by embezzling an enormous amount of money from my grandparents' family business, crushing it, and emotionally blackmailing my entire family by pretending to have leukemia, when he never did.  (I could go on at length about my dad's many ills, he was a spectacularly broken, bad person who did awful things to me and so many of the people I loved.  But I won't, because this isn't really about him.)

Anyhow, when all this terribleness came to light, it shattered my family.  For years, I really, really hated him.  I also had a bitter loathing of the holiday season.  Anything to do with Christmas or the notion of returning home to one's big, happy family made me want to vomit.  There's this Folger's commercial that I particularly loathed, and which still makes me unhappy to this day.

Later on, as I made peace with my father, and raised a child with my first wife, I learned to find my joy with Christmas again, to a degree.  After I remarried, that "Re-Christmisazation" process continued.  My wife Missy loves Christmas.  My sister-in-law does, too.  They dance around the tree, singing, while they decorate it.  They love putting up funny Christmas decorations, putting electric candles in the windows, all that jazz.  It's often infectious, and I'll get swept up in it.

But I'm a bit Christmas bipolar, at times.  

Every so often, the old pain about the holidays comes rushing back, and I find the whole thing hollow, and unpleasant.  Then there's my odd disconnect with it, socially and spiritually.  As a Taoist, it's not my holiday.  (I don't really have holidays, per se.  My only day is this day.)  So the commercial, run-to-the-mall, show-your-love-with-stuff thing kinda grosses me out.  It reminds me a bit of things my dad did, who often emotionally manipulated others by buying their affection.  

I know, for a gratitude post, this is pretty depressing, right?  Stick with me, I'm getting there.

That pendulum does swing the other way too.  A few weeks ago, my friends Moliére, Squee, Ally, and I ran a sort of littles-themed Christmas event called the Littles Express.  It was magical.  It made everyone who attended so darn happy.   That in turn, made me happy.

Yesterday I went Christmas shopping for my wife and my sister-in-law.  I did it by myself, and navigated the stores and crowds reasonably.  I got most of that shopping done.  I treated myself to ice cream, and food court chicken teriyaki, both guilty pleasures.  As I was walking around looking for things I knew they'd like, I suddenly found my Christmas spirit again.  It felt great to find gifts for them which I knew would delight them.  I'm looking forward to their surprise as they open them.  Getting stuff is nice, but giving is awesome.  

The Friday after Christmas, I have plans to see an old friend, and to do this Christmas tradition he and I have had for years.  We go to a moderately priced restaurant, order our meal, and when the check comes, we tip 100%, in cash, and write a nice note to the server, and then bolt on out of there, so they are surprised by it.  We love doing this.

So I guess the thing I'm grateful for is that I'm able to make the holiday my own.  Through mindfulness, I can have "Christmas Presence".

#365Gratitude Day 349: Being of a particular nature

So there's this idea about "average people."  They live in a house with a white picket fence, have 2.6 children, a dog, a car, all that jazz, right?

It's probably mostly bullshit. 

But having said that, if there truly is such a thing, I know I'm not it. 

I gave a friend of mine a ride the other day, and she, like me, is highly deviated from that everyday path.  As we drove together, we discussed her not being quite like everyone else.

She and her room-mate aren't exactly dating, but aren't exactly not dating either.  He's kind of like her vanilla dad.  They look out for one another, love one another, and are emotionally intimate, while not being otherwise intimate.  She often tells people that he's her boyfriend, because it's easier than explaining the very complicated true nature of their relationship, which doesn't seem weird, outré, or odd to her.   

But she sometimes forgets that, out in the rest of the world, that makes her an oddball.  

My own life is very much like this.  I'm polyamorous, and a part of a number of different relationships.  Each of these is unique, with its own special wonderful facets.  I'm not going to list them all for you here, there's no need for that. 

But the thing I'm grateful for is this: I don't need to be like those picket fence people.  I can, and do, find my own joys, out of the circumstances of my own life.  

My life is often pretty darn weird.  I have these deep emotional connections to people I'm not related to, except by choice.  It can be difficult to explain to others, sometimes.  I have "kids" who are chronologically older than me.  I'm regularly laid bare, emotionally, and physically, in front of a whole group of people who I'm very entangled with.  

But it's so very enjoyable to be a part of. 

#365Gratitude Day 348: Being okay with not being okay

Yesterday I was grouchy.  

I was out of spoons from a very busy day the day before.  Plus, it looked like I might be coming down with a cold.  (Which today, I don't have, thank goodness!)

My plan was a day filled with activity.  But I just didn't have it "in the tank".  

I got up, ran an errand for Missy, who was working, went and worked out, and realized I just didn't feel good.  

I'm generally a cheery, easygoing, kinda-love-everyone sort of person.  Not yesterday.  The littlest thing made me want to snap at people, say, or think terrible things.  I was downright unpleasant.  I knew it, too.  I decided I needed to pull the emergency brake on the train of my day.

So I came home and proceeded to do the one thing I most needed to do:

Nothing.

I rested, all day.  Watched some mindless television, ate some leftovers, played some games on my iPad, and was wholly and completely unproductive.  I ate ice cream.

It was a good choice.  Today, I feel much better.