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August 10, 2010

Forgiving “He Who Shall Not Be Named”

Posted by Steven Joiner under Heart, Spirituality, Suffering | Tags: , , |
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Why Can't We All Just Get Along?

I’m not a conflict-oriented person; I’m more of a defuser. I’m the one that mediates. I don’t escalate. I navigate and create, if not peace, then at least a working truce.

I’ve made a fist and punched someone once in my life (my friend Chris back in 3rd grade when we argued over comics and I gave him what might be the wussiest punch/slap in human history). I had a best friend in high school turned enemy by a girl (‘mine’ then ‘his’) that resulted in one shouting matches (with him behind a closed door), and one night where he show up with friends at a fast food restaurant. I was driving away before they could all get out of the car.

Yet there is one relationship in my life that got to the point of ‘in your face’ shouting, threatening of legal action, months of cohabitation misery, and, for several years after, the desire to inflict bodily harm. By the time it all ended, my then-wife and I vowed to never speak his name; he was to be “He who shall not be named” or, the shorter version, ‘Fuckface’. My nickname for this friend (before Fuckface) was K-Swiss and that is how I will refer to him. I am not opposed to using his name but I want to respect the last vestiges of privacy left in this cyber-world.

This is the story of that relationship and how I came to forgive him, forgive myself, and to move on. (more…)

 

August 3, 2010

108 Memories of My Father

Posted by Steven Joiner under Gut, Head, Heart, Spirituality | Tags: , , , |
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My dad also taught me how to smile for photos

This musing is part of a longer piece called “Waking Up“. I’ve separated it out into its own blog post for the simple reason that this was one of the most profound active meditations I’ve ever done. While my father is dead and there are no more chances for new memories, I think this exercise has incredible benefits for all of our relationships… living and beyond.

As I listened to a monk from India talk about the path of spirituality and ‘righting relationships, especially the relationships with mother and father’, I was struck with the desire to recall 108 (a sacred number in the east) distinct memories of my dad. He died in 2002 and I long ago realized that my path to self-discovery goes through my understanding of our relationship. Even though he has ‘shed this mortal coil’, our relationship is in very much in the present. (more…)

 

July 13, 2010

I just can’t work under these conditions!

Posted by Steven Joiner under Dog, Heart | Tags: , |
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Me (last year) with the new mama

… due entirely to the cute overload.

I mean, really, look at the work environment in which I toil.

A hard day's work

Want to see that up close?

Cute overload

They squeak. They yelp. They blindly drag themselves around grunting. How can one concentrate? (more…)

 

June 11, 2010

Losing Control

Posted by Steven Joiner under Gut, Head, Heart, Spirituality, Suffering | Tags: , , , , |
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What you cannot control will set you free.

The survival brain says that we need to be in control. Control means safety. Control means calling the shots. Control means that we can relax… but only just a bit. Don’t relax too much or you might lose control.

I had control issues. I still have control issues. But my control issues today are opposite from my control issues in the past.

Personal and Environmental Control

My old control issues were all about self-control and environmental control. I wanted to present a face to the world that was calm, collected, together, and otherwise stable. My goal was to compose the face I showed the world before stepping out and then not to let that face change. Call it my “game face” or maybe my “life face”. I know I was successful because friends said I was the “stable one”, “the calming influence”, “Steve the infinitely patient”. Ultimately, however, I was projecting a false self, not my authentic self.

I wanted to be in environments that I could control; this is why I naturally gravitated toward teaching, why I always preferred a party at my house to going out clubbing, and why I didn’t enjoy huge crowds. I never sought to control those around me (in fact, I loved the originality in my friends, loved ones, and students) but I wanted the space I inhabited to play by the rules… my rules. What a frightening way to live! (more…)

 

March 12, 2010

Relationships

Posted by Steven Joiner under Gut, Head, Heart | Tags: , , |
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I am sitting in the same seat on the same porch at about the same time of day as I was last fall when I decided to move to Kansas City. I was journaling at the time and I wrote about the sunlight (which is shining today), the chickens wandering around my feet (they’ve since been eaten by a neighborhood dog), and, most importantly, reflecting on the relationships I have here in KC (which, like the sun, are still here and, unlike the chickens, were not eaten by a dog). That moment was the crystallization of an important thought: the community and the relationships here feed my soul. So why not make the move?

Relationships were on my mind a lot then as they are still today. While I was conscious of relationships during my married years, the end of my partnership obviously stirred up a lot more thoughts and emotions on the matter. As I was sitting on the porch here in KC thinking about the relationships around me I was also thinking about the lessons gleaned from my marriage and subsequent divorce. In other words, I was thinking about relationships of the romantic, platonic, friendship, professional, tangental, etc. variety.

I now offer up, for your consideration, those thoughts… which, admittedly, are largely in the context of romantic love though the lessons are applicable to all relationships. (more…)

 

March 10, 2010

When Coming Home Takes 23 Years

Posted by Steven Joiner under Head, Heart, Travel | Tags: , , |
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(I wrote this essay in the fall of 2006 and never sent it out to be published)

When Coming Home Takes 23 Years

Laying in my bed at 1:30 a.m., I hear the sound of home. From my apartment on Hawthorne Boulevard the train whistle is more distant than when I was a child in Aloha, but the feeling is the same.

Like most boys, I was fascinated by trains, particularly their mass and myriad of moving parts. The sight of one no longer impresses me but the idea of trains — running on America’s arteries feeding the capillaries of roads and the red blood cells of semis — still fascinates me. The tracks were not far from my home on Southwest 175th Avenue in Aloha 23 years ago and I can recall the typical Portland sight of a train snaking along with steady deliberation for what seemed like a hundred miles and, of course, waiting at the flashing gates for what seemed like an eternity.

The train whistle is part of what tells me I am home. (more…)

 

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