Feelings are like the weather

Feelings are like the weather, constantly shifting and changing--sometimes dark, sometimes light, at times wild and intense, at other times calm and quiet. Trying to resist your feeling experience is like trying to control the weather--an exercise in futility and frustration! Besides, if all we ever experienced were sunny days of exactly 75 degree temperature, life might become boring after a while. When we can appreciate the beauty of the rain, the wind, and the snow as well as the sun, then we will be free to experience the fullness of life.

I accept and appreciate all the varieties of my internal "weather."

The Two-Hundredth Hug

My father's skin was jaundiced as he lay hooked up to monitors and intravenous tubes in the intensive care unit of the hospital. Normally a well-built man, he had lost more than 30 pounds.
My father's illness had been diagnosed as cancer of the pancreas, one of the most malignant forms of the disease. The doctors were doing what they could but told us that he had only three to six months to live. Cancer of the pancreas does not lend itself to radiation therapy or chemotherapy, so they could offer little hope.
A few days later, when my father was sitting up in bed, I approached him and said, Dad, I feel deeply for what's happened to you. It's helped me to look at the ways I've kept my distance and to feel how much I really love you. I leaned over to give him a hug, but his shoulders and arms became tense. Come on, Dad, I really want to give you a hug.
For a moment he looked shocked. Showing affection was not our usual way of relating. I asked him to sit up some more so I could get my arms around him. Then I tried again. This time, however, he was even more tense. I could feel the old resentment starting to build up, and I began to think I don't need this. If you want to die and leave me with the same coldness as always, go right ahead.
For years I had used every instance of my father's resistance and rigidness to blame him, to resent him and to say to myself, See, he doesn't care. This time, however, I thought again and realized the hug was for my benefit as well as my father's. I wanted to express how much I cared for him no matter how hard it was for him to let me in. My father had always been very Germanic and duty-oriented; in his childhood, his parents must have taught him how to shut off his feelings in order to be a man. Letting go of my long-held desire to blame him for our distance, I was actually looking forward to the challenge of giving him more love. I said, C'mon, Dad, put your arms around me. I leaned up close to him at the edge of the bed with his arms around me. Now squeeze. That's it. Now again, squeeze. Very good! In a sense I was showing my father how to hug, and as he squeezed, something happened. For an instant, a feeling of I love you bubbled through. For years our greeting had been a cold and formal handshake that said, Hello, how are you? Now, both he and I waited for that momentary closeness to happen again.
Yet, just at the moment when he would begin to enjoy the feelings of love, something would tighten in his upper torso and our hug would become awkward and strange. It took months before his rigidness gave way and he was able to let the emotions inside him pass through his arms to encircle me.
It was up to me to be the source of many hugs before my father initiated a hug on his own. I was not blaming him, but supporting him; after all, he was changing the habits of an entire lifetime - and that takes time. I knew we were succeeding because more and more we were relating out of care and affection.
Around the two-hundredth hug, he spontaneously said out loud, for the first time I could ever recall, I love you.
-By Harold H. Bloomfield

Please Hear What I AM Not Saying

Don't be fooled by me. Don't be fooled by the face I wear. For I wear a mask, I wear a thousand masks, masks that I am afraid to take off, and none of them are me. Pretending is an art that is second nature with me, but don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled. I give you the impression that I'm secure, that all is sunny and unruffled with me, within me as well as without, that confidence is my name and coolness my game, that the water's calm and I'm in command, and that I need no one. But don't believe me, please.

My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask, my ever-warying ever-concealing mask. Beneath lies no smugness, no complacence. Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in aloneness. But I hide this. I don't want anybody to know it. I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed. That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind, a nonchalant, sophisticated facade, to help me pretend, to shield me from the glance that knows. But such a glance is precisely my salvation. My only salvation, and I know it. That is if it is followed by acceptance, if it is followed by love. It's the only thing that liberates me, from myself, from my own self-built prison walls, from barriers that I so painstakingly erect.

It's the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself, that I'm really worth something. But I don't tell you this. I don't dare. I'm afraid to. I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh, and your laugh would kill me. I'm afraid that deep down I'm nothing, that I'm just no good, and that you will see this and reject me. So I play the game, my desperate pretending game, with a facade of assurance without, and a trembling child within.

And so begins the parade of masks, and my life becomes a front. I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk. I tell you everything that is really nothing. And nothing of what is everything, of what is crying within me. So when I'm going through my routine do not be fooled by what I'm saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying, what I'd like to be able to say, what for survival I need to say, but what I can't say. I dislike hiding. Honestly. I dislike the superficial game I'm playing, the superficial, phony game. I'd really like to be genuine and spontaneous, and me, but you've got to help me.

You've got to hold out your hand even when that's the last thing I see to want, or need. Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead. Only you can call me into aliveness. Each time you're kind, and gentle, and encouraging, each time you try to understand because you really care, my heart begins to grow wings, very feeble wings, but wings. With your sensitivity and empathy, and your power to understanding, you can breathe life into me. I want you to know that.

I want you to know how important you are to me, how you can be a co-creator of the person that is me if you choose to. Please choose to. You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble. You alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic and uncertainty, from my lonely prison. So do no pass me by. It will not be easy for you. A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls. The nearer you approach me, the blinder I strike back. I fight against the very thing that I cry out for. But I am told that love is stronger than strong walls, and in this lies my hope my
only hope.

Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands, but with gentle hands, for a child is very sensitive. Who am I you may wonder? I am someone you know very well. For I am every man and I am every woman you meet.

If I Could Do It, You Can Too!

I began life, literally, with nothing. Given up as an infant by my biological mother, an unmarried young woman from the small town of Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan, Canada, I was adopted by a poor, middle-aged couple, John and Mary Linkletter.
My adoptive father was one of the warmest men I've ever known, but he had absolutely no ability as a businessman. A part-time evangelical preacher, he also tried selling insurance, running a small general store and making shoes, all rather unsuccessfully. Eventually we found ourselves living in a charity home run by a local church in San Diego. Then Dad Linkletter felt called by God to become a full-time preacher, and we had even less money. And what we did have was usually shared with whatever neighborhood derelict happened to be looking for a meal.
I graduated from high school early and hit the road as a hobo at the tender age of 16 with the idea of finding my fortune. One of the first things I found, however, was the wrong end of a pistol: my traveling companion and I were held up by a couple of toughs who found us sleeping in a boxcar.
Put your hands straight out and lie flat! one of the men ordered. If this match goes out and I hear anything more I'll shoot. As they searched our pockets and felt around our middles, I wondered if money was all they wanted. I was frightened because I had heard stories of older hobos sexually attacking young boys.
Just then, the match went out ... and was hastily relit. We did not move! The thieves found $1.20 on me but missed $10.00 I had sewn into my coat lining. They also took two dollars from my friend, Denver Fox.
The match went out again and I could tell by their hesitation that they were undecided about something. As Denver and I lay there, inches apart in the darkness, I heard the hammer of the pistol click back and a cold chill ran down my back. I knew they were considering killing us. There was little risk for them. The rain hammering down on the outside of the boxcar would drown out any noise. Frozen with terror, I thought of my father and how he would have prayed for me had he known. Suddenly fear left me and peace and calm returned. As if in response to my own restored self-assurance, they moved back toward us. Then I could feel one of the men push something against my arm.
Here's your thirty cents, he said. Breakfast money.
Today I can look back on 45 yeas as a star of two of the longest-running shows in broadcasting history; I can reflect on the success I've had as a businessman, author, and lecturer; and I can be proud of my wonderful family life - 58 years with the same wife, five children, seven grandchildren, and eight great- grandchildren. I mention this not to be boastful but to encourage others who are at the lower rung of the economic ladder. Keep in mind where I started and remember, if I could do it, you can, too! Yes - you can!

By Art Linkletter