Breathe

Stop, Take a deep breath, rinse and repeat. 

Today is Christmas Eve. It isn’t like I don’t have enough other thing going on. There are things to do with family, friends, rushing around, and of course last minute shopping. The worst part about last minute shopping is it is always followed up by last minute wrapping. I would argue that last minute wrapping is the number one reason men are so bad at wrapping gifts. 

Today of all days is the day I need to stop, take a deep breath, and remember why I’m doing anything I’m doing.

Why am I so worried about gifts?

Why am I so busy with family?

Why am I spending so much time with friends? 

Why. WHY. WHY!? 

These are the people I value most. So before I get snarky with them because I’m tired and I don’t want to be running like I am. I need to stop, breathe and focus on what I hold most important. And, if these things I’m trying to do are truly an inhibitor for me to connect and prioritize those people. Time to skip these priorities. The reality is, in twenty years, nobody is going to remember what I got them for Christmas. Everyone will remember how I treated them. How are you showing the most important people in your life that they are a priority to you?

Reprioritizing,

–JT

Christmas Adam

My wife, her family, and I have quite a few traditions around the holidays. Many of the traditions revolve around this day, 23 December. The family has come to call this day, “Christmas Adam.” (in reference to Adam and Eve. I appreciate the pun–tastic nature of this naming scheme.) We decorate cookies, judge each other decorating skills for prizes, sing songs, tell stories, swap gifts, and watch movies. This is a family tradition of theirs dating back millenniums as best as I can tell. Christmas Eve is usually a more relaxed day involving cookie/sugar coma recovery, possibly a Christmas Eve service of sorts and more movies. Finally, there is Christmas day, full of gifts, food, and family. I enjoy all of these times of celebration, memories, and family. I find myself still thinking about the rest of the month. 

I think about this month being a time where I am processing my messy places. 

I think of those who don’t have a healthy way to process their mess.

I think of those who are truly in need.

This year I have been thinking about my lack of service in the midst of our Christmas Adam/Eve/Day Trifecta. This year I need to be a part of making a difference for those who are not in the middle of a community who want the best for them. This may be service at a shelter or simply by engaging the people around me and telling my story. Showing that there is hope no matter how hopeless they feel.

How can you engage those you need to know there is hope in this season of darkness and loneliness?

Helpfully,

–JT

Stranger Danger

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. 

A simple statement with all of the meanings. It has so much to say and it strikes me hard as I’m spending so much time in a metropolis. I see people all around me every day and I make snap decisions about them. 

I see someone who is a bum and I assume they choose to be there. 

The fast food worker and I assume he never went to college. 

I assume so much about all of these people yet I never take the time to ask them their story. To discover how they actually got to where they are. I never take the time to explore with them what their future could hold and what hope there is for them. I just keep on driving, ignoring, and assuming I have a reasonable estimation for who they are and how they got to where they are. I don’t spend time getting to know their story. Their story has value. They have value and I don’t take the time to know their story, only to know my guestimation about them.

I had value even though I was in a rough place. I might have never been a bum, but I have been emotionally broken. I have never worked at a fast food restaurant, but if I needed a job and they were hiring I would take the opportunity to pay my bills and fill my belly. I am not too different from these people I am making snap judgements of. I have potential. My potential and value has been called out. I am valued by people who love me who have taken the time to get to know me.

Who am I taking time to know and encourage? When do I stop and remind myself that these people I see have value, potential, and life experiences that have played into their life choices.

With Empathy,

–JT

Traditions!

Growing up, we never had many traditions. We never really had an annual groove where we did this or that every year. We celebrated birthdays, holidays, and took trips. However, we didn’t really have any major, “Manning Family Traditions.” I think everyone involved would say this is true. Now that I’m older I go to family and friends houses, or talk about different holiday traditions people do every year. I love hearing about how these traditions bring people together, how they have enjoyed these traditions and what they mean to them. 

For me, I am glad, so glad I do not have a deeply engrained regiment of traditions bonded to my soul. It has been freeing for my wife and I create new traditions that are unique to us and enjoyable for both of us. Meanwhile maintaining the right priorities throughout the process. 

(Aside: It has been more enjoyable for me than for my wife. However, she is amazing and wants to find thing we both agree on and can celebrate together even though she loves the traditions she had.)

These traditions are hard to come up. They leave us with many questions. Do we buy a tree? Do we do gifts for people anymore? Do we do gifts for each other? Do we put up lights? Do we even know why we do any of these things in the first place? 

And no clear answer as we don't love doing some of this stuff and we do love doing other bits of this.

How do she and I work together to find traditions that speak to both of us and align with out priorities?

This is the question we keep coming back to. The question that drives us forward. We don’t have many answers yet, and we are going to keep digging for new answers, but I am glad to have the answers we have and to be looking for these answers with her.

As the clock ticks closer and closer to the “big day,” where do your traditions come from? What do they prioritize? Do these traditions align with your life’s priorities?

Untraditionally,

–JT

Sleepless in Tacoma

I love asking questions. I love it even more when I find answers to my questions. I love the answers the most when I have been wrestling with the questions for a while, especially a questions like, “Why do I feel compelled to go to Tacoma to spend time with my friends? What waits for me there?” 

[Aside: Obviously I want to see my friends. I love these people. I just felt more compelled and forced to go than just the usual, “Golly gee, I’m super excited to go.”]

I’m excited to say, I have a clue to the answer tied up in a story from these past days spent in Tacoma. Of the two friends I have in the area, one of them is, putting it mildly, quite a bit more forward and blunt. They are both pretty honest and real people in general, one of them will tell you how it is in a very direct sense. Suffice to say, he calls a spade a spade and makes no bones about it. He and I have been spending quite a bit of time together. I love spending time with this guy.

The flip side of this conversation, I am not an extremely forward person. I actually have a bit of fear and anxiety about sharing my opinion or bringing up conflict with people. For example, the other night I was talking with some friends and we were trying to decide what to eat. I suggested a place because we were all so indecisive. But I was afraid of rejection, offending someone, and anxious about it being a bad choice. I almost didn’t say anything. 

Spending time with my friend is reminding me that I need to voice my opinion. I need to voice my commentary. In situations where the outcome has no bearing on anything, I need to voice my opinion if I have one (in these types of situations I usually don’t have even an inkling of an opinion and I’m not about to start making some up to be contrarian.) In situations where the group is going drastically off course, I need to voice my opinion. I need to have a voice. Having a voice is good. However, it is a high powered assault rifle and it is going to be a little messy moving forward and figuring out when and where it is actually good to open my voice.

How do you feel about having a voice? What are you doing to use your voice for the good of others and your community?

Cautiously,

–JT

From the Outside, Looking In

I love the community I get to be a part of. I’m a part of a group of people who love each other. They want the best for one another and they genuinely want everyone to succeed. They have their priorities in order and they aren’t bent on silly things. This community is far from perfect I assure you; but, we are all more focussed on the well being of one another than we are each others’ flaws and flukes. I can say all this because their actions align with their words, especially in my life. However, I’m beginning to see how different the community I get to be a part of is different from so many other communities. This is not a statement that my community is better, it is a statement that my community goes about things differently. I’m so glad we’re different too. 

Our methods work well in our area, better than they would someplace else. The methods of other communities works better in their areas, better than they would in my area.

The striking part of my observations is, when I am visiting a different community, it is better for me to take part in their methods and processes and encourage them to pursue their goals than it is for me to insert, discuss, or force my own ‘tried and true’ methods. I am excited about this realization. 

I now see that the guilt and weight I’ve always carried when visiting people who do things differently than I do was as unnecessary as I felt it was, even though I could never put my finger on why it was unnecessary. I’m can celebrate the differences wholeheartedly. 

How will you celebrate the differences between you and whoever and wherever you spend time this holiday season?

Excitedly,

–JT

Mama Bear

**DISCLAIMER: I am not pregnant and my wife is not pregnant in any sense of the word.** 

I am afraid of parenthood. For 1000 different reasons, I am genuinely afraid, both from the perspective of a healthy respect for something. My fears range from viewing a mama bear across a valley through binoculars, respecting the mama bears power and strength from afar; to, the genuine terrifying fear of someone who is fleeing from a mama bear after they accidentally stumbled into her and her cubs. 

Really, it is quite terrifying when I think about. I am bringing a small, miniature human into the world. My teammate and I are uniquely responsible for feeding them, clothing, changing, and appropriate nutrition. Then there are the psychological needs as well. We have to encourage them, love them, and provide the essential building blocks of human social interactions. All the while also maintaining their physical needs. I can’t divide these tasks between my wife and I. If one of us doesn’t do enough, in the physical or emotion needs then we have a disaster on our hands. And the thing that really gets my goat about it all, I don’t even know how good a job I did for 18 years? 20 years? 25 years? 40 years? The nail in the coffin is, there is no test drive, manual, or perfect recipe.

No amount of babysitting will ever prepare me for a lifetime of parenthood. 

Trial by fire. 

Much like our friend who is being chased by the mama bear, he only knows if he is going to live because is or is not caught by the mama bear.

Now that I’ve hopefully given you a glimpse of my minor apprehensions about having children, it is time for the coup de grâce in the conversation, “I do not get to set aside my own issues in order to rear this youngling.” All of my upbringing, good experiences, bad experiences, and brokenness will be present in the way I bring up this little “bundle of joy.” I do not get much of a choice in this either. 

Finally, we have the the wildcard in the conversation. Me and my friends.

I had a conversation with a friend about the contents I of the post and he picks it apart for me immediately. I had a conversation with a friend who knows me, who has lived with me, who has known me through my life’s struggles. He says to me, “Yeah, you really need to work through your stuff with your dad, it will make all of this so much better.”

How right he is. I am afraid of my children being negatively affected by my decisions and my wife’s decisions in the same way my life was affected by my dad’s decisions.

This is my friend who loves me and knows me.

Who knows well enough to point out where your hurts are dictating your decisions?

**DISCLAIMER: I am not pregnant and my wife is not pregnant in any sense of the word.**

Friendzone

I have people in my life who know me pretty well. These are people I can be genuine, open, honest, and they just know me. These are people who I’ve known a long time. A really long time. We've been friends/family for the better part of 20 years. We’ve all seen each other at some really high points and some really low points. We know each other. These are a couple guys I would call brothers and a girl I would call a sister. 

I get to be with these people now as I have the time to spend with them. I came to their place and told them where I am at, and they take me into their lives with open arms. I am blessed by these people. This family of mine. They bring me in and love me and support me. This is the best reminder that I am loved. And whether I think I am or not, I have people in my life who want the best for me, here in Seattle, Moscow, and Pullman. I have people who care. The question for me is am I going to let them care? 

Am I going to let them in on what is going on or hold them out at a distance?

Mr. Thinker & Mr. Feeler

The recent personality exploration I’ve gone through have caused me to perform my self analysis with a new lens based on the information I was shown about myself. A piece of this information is how I’m wired in regards to thinking and feeling. I have an ability to think and feel on equal terms. When I make a decision or make a statement, I have to have my thinker come up with a couple options, then my feeler has to verify that I feel good about one or both of these options or revise these options. Then my thinker has to reprocess any changes the feeler made and my feeler has to approve the revisions continue revising. You can see that this process becomes a little tedious. It happens rather quickly considering all the pieces involved. However, it is very slow in comparison to people who are free to make decisions based on one attribute and not two. (I’m painfully aware of how long it takes me to make decisions.)

These pieces get interesting when one of my attributes is malfunctioning. An extreme life event of some sort such as the passing of a loved one. This life event might leave my feeler broken, overwhelmed with emotion, or just shut down and became incapable of processing. Overstimulated. 

So, my thinker stepped up, he said to the feeler, “Don’t worry bro, I got your back. Just sit down and heal up and we’ll pull you back in to the game when you’re better.” Very thoughtful of my thinker to take on the load for a bit. 

My feeler never stepped back up. He never took the reigns again. He was lost in the fray. Hiding. 

Scared.

Hurt.

He was incapacitated. He has been crying out and I haven’t been able to help him. My thinker has been overworking trying to maintain the load and my feeler just keeps feeling worse and worse all the time. My feeler eventually fell to the place where he was suppressed behind my thinker, depressed under the stimuli, and my thinker is angry because nobody is helping him. 

Six months later I’m falling apart because my thinker and my feeler are overwhelmed by it all and they cannot process a dang thing. And now I’m dealing with it. 

I’m looking my feeler in the face, making him process through the life events. I’m easing the load of my thinker. Letting him step down and only take care of the thoughts so my feeler can take care of his load only. 

How do you deal with unexpected stresses? How long do they affect you for?

Who helps you process your stress?

Worth

The server at my restaurant, my barista, my neighbor, at some point of these people will offend me [again.] I’ll be hurt and angry about this. Maybe I’ll say some unsightly words or yell at them (in the comfort of my car where they would never know of course.) Then I’ll go on with my day. Ignore the fact that I’ve made these decisions to devalue people I don’t know. 

People who have a life and experiences that I’ll never know about. These people will never be close to me. I make decisions about these people every day when they offend me. 

I decide their value.

I decide their potential.

…their humanity. 

I decide this all based on my own experiences. 

…my own value.

…my own humanity.

Now it is time to start remembering these are real people, not simply nameless faces. I need to engage these people the way I would engage my friends, let them make mistakes (even if it negatively effects me.) I need to assume these people are just like me. They have life experiences, value, and they are worth more than me projecting my baggage on them and deciding their worth accordingly.

What do you use to decide others’ worth?

Wake Me Up, When December Ends

I’ve been wrestling. (I’m sure this is a surprise.) But I have been wrestling with myself and why now. Why December? Why not next summer? Why not never? Why not when I’m 73 and retired? Why now? 

Why a sabbatical now, in December of 2014?

Then it struck me. Finally. The question spun itself. When better than right now? 

I’m going to be seeing family and friends. I’m going to have time to spend with these people. Not for the usual purpose of being unruly young men. Or the general celebrations with family where we are all meeting and greeting and small talking. I’ll be seeing them this year to talk about my mess. I’ll be seeing them this year to help them deal with their mess. 

This is the season where you and I are met in our messy places to be healed.

The season where I know I can find healing.

What are you going to use this season for?

A Week Already

It is hard to believe it has been more than a week and truly I am just shy of two weeks since I started my sabbatical. I’ve met with a counselor, I’ve gone through the Pathmakers workshop, and I’ve spent a good amount of time reflecting on my life, analyzing where I’ve been and how I landed where I’m at. I actually feel like this is a rather healthy adventure so far. 

I didn’t think it would be as good as it has been. For some reason, I was afraid that I was going to be an epic failure and go back after a month as messed up as when I started. However, if I went back today, I would would feel accomplished. I am astounded the difference it makes to take time to reflect and heal. 

I’m glad I still have more time to continue this process. Today, I am in my old stomping grounds. I’m seeing some friends I haven’t seen for far too long and I’m going to spend some time with my mom and stepdad. I’m glad to be back. I don’t get back this way as often as I would like and I am glad to be going back for an extended stay. My time back home is usually far too short. 

I think I will be able to connect with my mom, old my friends, and some new friends who have moved this way. I look forward to all of it. However, none of it would be possible unless I was taking some time off to reflect and heal.

When is the next time you’re going to do take some time for you? Have you made an appointment in your calendar to get away and reflect? Are you like me where you need someone who loves you enough to make you take that time off? Don’t wait too long. You need it sooner rather than later. Even if it is just a couple hours, an afternoon, or a day. Get some time to clear your head and reflect.

Reflectively,

—JT

Epic Failure

If revenge is a dish best served cold; then, failure is a dish best not served at all. At least that is how I’ve operated in my life up till now. Any time I apply myself to something I succeed. Maybe I’m not the best at it in the world, but I would at least succeed. I would decide “task xyz” is worth my time and effort, pour my heart and soul into it, and I would be a success. 

The part of this equation I’ve never dealt with is when I pour myself into a task or working to achieve a goal and then I fail. Not in the sense of I came in second place in a competition. More in the sense of, the goal was totally and utterly unachieved. 

This summer I encountered one of these “unachieved goals.” This is part of the reason I’m falling apart. I’ve never encountered failure of this proportion before and I have no healthy way of encouraging myself to get back on the horse. When a failure of this proportion is built on a foundation of self doubt and issues with my dad and all of a sudden, I have the perfect recipe for an angry depression. 

Now I have to figure out a healthy way to stop these things from destroying me. I have to figure out how to get myself back on the horse. Some sort of motivation maybe? I am truly clueless. I am looking into myself and every time I turn the page to the, “How To Motivate Yourself” chapter it is as if the whole thing is written in hieroglyphics. 

I don’t know how to motivate myself past failure besides to tell myself to just keep going. This method only works for so long with me. There will be more to this. I am not giving up on this, I just don’t know what more to do.

What do you do when you encounter failure?

Pathmaker, Pathmaker, Make Me a Path

Pathmaker, Day 2 of 2. 

It is as if the essence of my being has been squeezed out of a wet rag into a bowl and now my limp musty body is hanging on the dowel drying out with that dank dishwater smell wafting up from it. 

I may have a slight bent for the dramatic. This did not show up in my assessment anywhere. I found a pitfall in this test obviously. Even with this obvious hole, I would recommend you find an opportunity to take yourself through this psychometric assessment. It concludes with investigating many nuances of who I am which is wonderful. It frees me to be who I am and understand who my neighbor is. It encourages me to see others for who they are and embrace our differences. 

I see my peers, my coworkers, my teammates as more valuable as I can understand more of the world through their eyes. If nothing else, this is invaluable. 

Who are people you need to take time to know better that you might see life through their eyes?

The Pathmaker, Day Un

Day 1 of 2 in The Pathmaker ‘Discovering What To Do…With Who You Are.’ 

It is good. It is a process that brings definition to lives and understanding, as the tagline says, what to do with who you are. 

I would say the process is built around bringing out the why your clock ticks the way it does. This is an odd sensation for me. I’ve felt like people who are gifted in this area have attempted before to do odds and ends in helping me clarify who I am, and they missed the mark. I’ve been through Myers Briggs and many others. This process seems to finder a deeper accuracy. Though it does involve a questionnaire, more of a binder of assessments, it is definitively just as much about the interview process as it is anything else. 

The interview process is what sets this psychometric test apart. The interview process has two very important variables. The first variable is me. Am I willing to be honest, transparent, and involved with a complete stranger in understanding who I am. I hope by the end of all this everyone going through this process would answer, “Yes.” to that question on my behalf, as much as I think I would answer yes. The second variable is the interviewer. 

The interviewer must be someone who you can connect with and really understands how to ask questions to me and how engage with who I am. I would say the leader of this process is a good interviewer. He is able to read me and my teammates well. He sees how we act and react to the questions and he adjusts accordingly. I don’t think this is a perfect process; however, this process will unlock most if not all the doors for me to have direction and a compass to help me understand myself. Today, I walk away with a draft, maybe a final draft, of my life’s purpose statement:

“I must be challenged by the Holy Spirit to create opportunities for others to pursue excellence.”

I do not know if this is the final draft. I do know this statement resonates with me quite a bit. I am thankful to have someone who is so perceptive to who others are that he can see into who I am to help me craft this statement. I look forward to another day of digging into myself and I am thankful that I have had this day of learning about myself (as if I haven’t had enough of these lately.)

Who is helping you dig into who you are?

Making Paths,

—JT

Pathmaker

Part of the reason my sabbatical is so well timed is because I am going to be doing a personality assessment with the rest of the staff team I work with. This is well timed. I’ve already gone through the binder of questionnaires, and today is the first day of the process.

Something that gives me a leg up on the situation, which is great because I hate going into situations like this blind, is my counselor is the one administering/leading the process. Since I’ve already met with him I feel like I have a good start on the process. Hopefully this doesn’t come back to bite me and leave me bored for too much of this two day seminar. 

Long term, I’m excited to see where this goes. Tomorrow I’ll be posting my initial reactions to the process, workshop, and interactions I have with people throughout the process. I will post more discussion about this process later this week when I’ve had some time to digest and I’ll post everything from a zero foot view and a 10,000 foot view about me in the weeks to come. 

The best question I can leave you with is this, when was the last time you sat down and looked in the mirror at yourself and analyzed where your natural gifting is? Do you work in that field or position? Do you utilize that skill set often? What is stopping you?

Errbody in The Club

“To err is human; to forgive is divine.” — Alexander Pope

This resonates well with where I am at. My dad definitely ‘err’ed. However, I cannot throw the baby out with the bathwater. I have to recognize the other 21 years of my life where my dad raised me and took care of me. My dad hugged me everyday and told me he loved me. My dad came to most of my events like baseball, basketball, football, concert band, jazz band, musicals, and who knows what else. My dad tried to be there for all of it. My dad told me I could do anything I set my mind to. Part of the reason I am who I am today is because he still believes in me.

Today, I choose to no longer define him by his greatest mistake in my life. 

I choose to no longer define myself by the greatest mistake he made in my life.

I choose to define him by the 21 years he was a good father to me.

I will define myself by the healing and growth I am gaining moving forward.

What do you define yourself by?

Who has hurt you?

Who do you need to forgive?

Where The Buck Stops

Yesterday, I talked about my dad’s past, how little I know, and how that affects me now. However, I didn’t talk about the people who did know my dad. I didn’t talk about my half siblings.

There are my 5 of them. They’ve mostly lived away from me. They are all quite a bit older than I am. They range from 30 years to 8 years older than I am at least. I don’t know for sure. This goes to show how well I know them all. 

One of them I didn’t even get to meet till last fall when we all were together for the first time ever. She is a sweetheart. They are all wonderful people. My heart aches because of how little I know them all. They are all great people whom I wish I knew better.

Unfortunately, the phone line goes both ways and I have most of their numbers and never call.

So I am more to blame than they are for not knowing them. 

They had the same dad as I did. But the person he was to them, is not the person he was to me. (This truth cuts me to the core.) 

I sat up late with one of them and told him about the man I knew as my dad and he told me of the same man. I can hardly believe my dad could treat anyone so horribly.

He abused them. 

It kills me to know I was raised so differently.

It makes me feel responsible. That night, my half brother told me I’m not responsible. But I still feel like I am.

I can see why my dad was who he was. He didn’t have a good relationship with his dad. He told me my whole life that his dad said, “I love you.” only one time in my dad’s whole life. My dad never recovered from that. He took it out on his children. 

My dad carried the pain his dad left him with and never dealt with it. I know that because I can see how it still affected him through my life and to the end of his life. 

I’m not going to carry that pain.

I’m making changes and pulling the plug.

The pain stops here.

What pain do you carry from your father and your father’s father? 

How are you stopping it from rolling down hill to your children?

Where the buck stops,

—JT

The Dad Life

This is the dad life. If only I could encapsulate 68 years of my father in a video like that. I could maybe cram the 27 years I knew him into a video that skips a rock over the surface of his life. But truly, I don’t have much more than that. Lets be real about those first 8 years or so, I didn’t really know him in the sense of a friend or neighbor. I knew him in the sense of I woke up, ate, played, and stayed out of trouble. 

Otherwise, I don’t know much about anything before that. He told me many stories of his growing up years, but he left out the hard parts and accentuated the good parts. Some people might say he exaggerated the good parts. I would agree with that. Which isn’t that rare, we all do that to some extent. I couldn’t prove the stories he told were outright lies though. 

I couldn’t really prove much more than what I can remember and what other people corroborate. Which isn’t surprising. The more I learn about my dad the more he is a bit of a puzzle to me. The things I can prove are things like my grandpa Jack Patrick Manning being a cartoonist. 

But I can’t prove that he was a cartoonist at Hannah Barbara as much as my dad said he was or that he drew cartoons for training videos for the Navy during WWII. My dad told me all sorts of different thing about himself.

My dad was in the Navy. 

Was he really a pilot? Did he do barrel rolls in helicopters like he said he did? What about the stories he told about his time in Vietnam? Can I prove those? Do I want to do the work of proving/disproving? How do his stories interplay with him being dishonorably discharged from the Navy?

My dad raced race cars.

How about his stories about racing against Darrel Waltrip and Dale Earnhart?

My dad knew the Beach Boys.

Then there are stories about how my dad sang the high part of Barbara Ann for the Beach Boys…

You could see how I might start to become skeptical and cringe when my friends teased that my dad probably knew George Washington and signed the Declaration of Independence. But I am cringing because I know there is more truth to their teasing than maybe there is to his stories. 

You see, the more I talked to my half siblings, the more it became apparent that my dad lived a rather remarkable life. I’m sure there were mundane moments. But truly, his life was remarkable. He built homesteads and settled his family into the wild wilderness of Montana. Providing for his family off the land. 

But he never settled for reality. He always had his extra he had to add to the story. 

His life was a good story he never settled for. He always wanted more than what was real.

I now struggle with this too. I want more than what is real and I want to exaggerate my stories.

I can’t let myself do that though. Reality is where I wake up and go to sleep every day.

Reality is where my wife and my friends are. 

Reality is where my community is.

Where do your stories come from? Where do you live? Do you tell your friends, children, and family about the true version of you and who you’ve been?

Cope–enhagen, Germany

Copacetic: Adjective, “In excellent order.”

Isn’t it funny that the word cope is almost contained within copacetic? And just looking at ‘copacetic’ and ‘cope’ you’d think they were both just a brother and sister word. Yet, when you visit the authoritative source on all things, you discover, ‘copacetic’ and ‘cope’ are actually unrelated. Now, this is where the conversation about these two words truly becomes scintillating. 

One of my defense mechanisms. 

Over intellectualizing.

I don’t want to admit how I over intellectualize things and think them through 300 different ways and then feel nothing about them. And that is how I ended up down the rabbit hole of copacetic versus cope. 

Another one of my coping mechanisms is shoving, (maybe more accurately, another part of my coping mechanism.) I just take whatever it is that is bugging me and shove it. 

Somebody hurt me?

Shove it.

Displeased with my body, too fat, too skinny!?

Shove it.

I feel insecure because I don’t think I’m smart enough?

Shove it.

My dad left and I’m mad at him because he abandoned me and my mom?

Shoved it.

Shoved it for 7 years.

My dad died and I never properly reconciled with him face to face and now I feel alone in the universe. Lost because I never got a hug from my dad to truly comfort me and make me feel loved and affirmed like only a father can love and affirm his son?

Yup.

Shoved it for a year.

But wait, how can I just shove and intellectualize everything? I have to have an outlet. I have to be able to do something to preoccupy my mind. I can’t just sit at home ignore everything that is boiling under the surface. At some point I’m going to be alone and faced by the truth of what has been shoved and intellectualized into oblivion. 

Final step to my coping mechanism, video games. 

However, this cycle has to stop.

Now I am on the verge of tears as I know I cannot shove big things anymore.

I am trying to learn healthier coping mechanisms. 

I am facing this overpacked suitcase of baggage.

Equipped with a good counselor and an amazing community.

How about you? How have you been coping? 

When are you going to face your baggage? 

Who is going to help you?