While astronomical summer isn’t technically over until September 21st, lots of us tend to fold up the patio furniture and call it at Labor Day. Partnered with Memorial Day, the two holiday
weekends serve as bookends for our summer fun.
We push to the side many of the responsibilities rote in ordinary time to
make room for the great outdoors, packing into this time vacations, barbeques,
gardening, swimming and the like, made all the more decadent by the long hours
of daylight. I often wonder with such a
full life how I create space for something more.
Although I manage to keep up with
the blog, posting at respectable intervals, I allow my normal life to be interrupted
during these magical fourteen weeks of warm weather to make room for an honest-to-goodness summer romance, the juicy kind that teenaged girls can only dream
about. No, a ghostwriter has not jumped
in to author this post; this is really me talking.
So when I come across this piece
on maintaining focus in the face of distraction from the ever-empathetic, always
authentic and truly human Peter Bregman, I read it in the context of my own thrilling,
reckless summer disruption. I am fascinated to discover that in all of the intoxicating
excitement someone new brings to my life, I keep my eye on true north (most of
the time) by telling myself the very same things Bregman is telling others to address
focus at work. It might seem clinical to
connect the two, but I assure you, it’s not. Seen through my lens, the ideas look like
this:
Dating is all about attempting to
“put yourself in the right box”. This is
tricky because in order to be truly happy, you need to be comfortable in someone
else’s box without changing what is
core to you. Bregman stresses resisting
the urge to downplay your strengths, repair your weaknesses, or abandon your passions
in order to fit in. You would think by
middle age we’d be wise and
confident enough not to go there. But I’m here to tell you that engulfed in a steamy haze every
one of those thoughts cross my mind this summer. I need to look hard at what I am willing to
alter and what is non-negotiable.
Dating demands
experimentation. To know if you even
want to be in this person’s box, you
need to test drive the things he likes and he needs to do the same for
you. Who knew I could become addicted to
green smoothies, drive a Porsche, or bare my soul, because it’s not only about trying new activities, but initiating
intimate conversations. I learn through finding
the courage to speak from my heart that it’s possible another
will truly listen respectfully, despite the fact that he disagrees.
Dating cannot be rushed. We’re all in a
race to the finish line, to seek and secure the “one.” There are few things requiring more control
than attempting to slow the momentum that the passion of a relationship in its
nascence fuels. Yet every time I allow myself to slow down and breathe, I find
that I am actually able to invest more, to love more than is possible moving at
warp speed.
Dating means establishing boundaries,
clearly communicating them, and remaining steadfast when they feel like they’re slipping. If I fall down anywhere, it’s here. This
is where I am most vulnerable. In my
quest to please I will give up a little bit of what’s important to me, not always fully able to trust
that I can hold my ground and still be loved.
Dating, more often than not, means
an end. I’m sure some lucky couples hit the jackpot on the
first try, but they’re likely a
statistical anomaly. Many deem the end of a relationship the equivalent of
failure. I don’t see it this way. Bregman highlights a very important nuance
that is the difference between feeling broken and defeated about a dating
experience and feeling positive and proud:
Failure informs you about what doesn’t work, which can be even more useful than knowing
what does.
In September we lose minutes of
daylight at a faster rate than any other time of year, summer annuals are dying
out, kids are back at school. I’m looking forward to renewed focus on my art, hard
at work on my next submission to The Sketchbook Project. I plan to research how
to self-publish a book. And I want to
learn how to row on the water. I have dreams to pursue, time to fill, a chasm to close.
I wouldn’t trade my summer hiatus for anything.
Where I didn’t believe
space existed, not in my busy quotidian world, not in my head and especially not
in my heart, I discover a capacious opening and allow a new person inside. That’s success in
itself.
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