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[elkooba]

Listening

LISTENING

Yesterday JFT addressed this topic. This is one of them things that if asked most people would give their ability high marks. In reality listening is a lot more difficult than it seems. It takes effort and form some it even requires concentration.

Any early form of escaping for me was fantasizing. There were time where I would drift off into some fantasy in my head in the middle of something that I was suppose to be listening to.

Simple put, you can’t listen if you aren’t paying attention. Paying attention once upon the time was difficult for addicts during the best of time. Over the years with the new types of drugs introduced it has made paying attention even more difficult, I believe. If you add in mobile devices it can be quite a challenge.

Listening is an art and a craft that needs to be practiced over and over or your ability erodes.

You can’t become a better listener without first admitting you have a problem listening.

Listening is an active effort not a passive one contrary to what many believe. Hearing is a passive effort that is often confused with listening.

Technology has slowly eroded the ability to listen as part of communication by removing the ability to be here now 100%.

You would be amazed at the improvement in the quality of your life if you decided to learn how to become an active listener.

[elkooba]

Relationships

I have been writing a book for my son. I had my first child at 57 and hope for the best but plan for the worse. I am structuring it like the Prophet by Kahil Gabron. He can look up my thoughts on various topics, if I am not here. Many of the things I have posted here are things I wrote for him. I wanted him to have a sense who who I was as a man, not just his father.

This is my latest

I have read a ton of books on relationships and love. They have all provided me with much needed insight.

I am far from being a relationship guru, but offer the following insights of my journey.

1 I had to learn to forgive, especially when the other person had not realized they had harmed me or caused me grief and pain. Forgiving unconditionally is an art that has to be practiced to be learned.

2 falling in love is easy, falling out of love is even easier. Learning to fall back in love with the same person, sometimes over and over the course of. Relationship, now that is hard but a necessary skill for long term happiness.

3 There is a word for folks that like to boldly state, “just becuase they are on a diet doesn’t mean they can’t look at the menu”. It is called a reservation and if you look at the menu long enough, you will eat something.

4 being unfaithful is a decision that started long before you did the dirty deed with another person. It’s like relapses, picking up is that final act of. Relapse. Learn to recognize and avoid sticky situations .

5 empathy and compassion are critical skills. The ability to walk in your partners shoes nurture the ability to be more sensitive to their needs as well as their hurts.

6 if as much effort was put into satisfying our partners needs out of the bedroom as we do in the bedroom, life would be happier.

7 Choose to be happy and put your efforts into that approach rather than seeking to be right. There are a bunch of single people that felt being right was more important than being happy.

8 When rage and anger have won and things are ugly. Always provide an exit for your partner, never back them into a corner. Doing so has disastrous results.

[elkooba]

Power of words..

Some of us have thicker skins than other. It has been my experience that the folks that say they don’t care what people say or think about them are in denial. People that actually function that way just do and it is so normal to them that they rarely if ever articulate it.

It is so ingrained in their persona that it would be like them saying today I woke up and opened my eyes and took a breath. It is not an achievement, just a simple fact of their personality.

I am not one of these lucky people. Suffering from a triangle of self obsession which include resentment, anger and fear has distorted much of what I have heard over the years told to me by others and often by myself.

I took everything personally, even when the comments were actually complimentary in nature. Someone would say “ hey Walter that shirt really looks good on you!” I would hear there is something wrong with my shirt and go home and toss the shirt in the garbage.

Someone else would mention what a really nice guy I was and why was I single and I would hear that there was something wrong with me because I did not have a girlfriend.

I don’t do that much anymore, but it was a really tough nut to crack. It took years and a level of self honesty that is both a blessing and a curse.

I had to start somewhere, and as in all things I started with admitting there was a problem. I learned that I had an encyclopedia of words that I used as a crutch to justify or rationalize my beliefs.

I will be honest, if I had known the amount of effort and energy it would take to overcome 30 years of this line of thinking, I might not have been as willing to open Pandora’s Box. Even after peeking inside and realizing what was needed, I tried to make believe I never peeked, trying to make believe that I never looked under the rock.

I had to start somewhere and during that time, watching Saturday Night Live I happened to see a skit on Positive Afermations and words of wisdom by Stuart Smalley. It was a comedy skit but I was able to utilize various skill sets they made fun of to finally make headway.

Here is what I started doing and what I learned thru gaining experience which lead to wisdom. They are in no particular order.

Negative Affirmation are just as powerful as Positive ones, often they are even more powerful and readily accepted. Telling myself or other around me even joking that I am a loser or I am this or that is a crutch that allows me to not accept personal responsibility.

Being critical or marginalizing others, was a huge defect and as I mentioned at the beginning played havoc with my interpersonal development.

I had a very good friend that in a previous life was a very successful conman. He like me decided to embrace a new way to live and he was not only a wealth of stories but was a wealth of human nature tales. He specialized in conning other conman and was quite good at it.

I remember he told me that human nature being what it is we see the world and those in it as we view it. This at the time was some Dali Llama, Kung Fu Grasshopper spiritual stuff that was way over my head at the time. It was only years later, that my mind opened to the truth and logic in his words.

If I am a thief, I think everyone is trying to rip me off

If I am a liar I think people are always untruthful.

If I am cheater then so is my love interest

If I make passively aggressively make fun of an article of clothing that someone is wearing, Guess what,

If I innocently ask if someone is single knowing the answer and knowing that I just am in search of train wreck material then guess what?

I on occasion still come up short, I am either not vigilant or just human. I can’t honestly admit that as a rule while I do act out on occasion, I no longer suffer from these things.

How did I do it you wonder? It started with a desire, which lead to a decision and I just stopped. This is very simplistic, but going into details would be a book in itself..

[elkooba]

Learning to cry...again

When the beatings started I cried until there were no more tears. In the spirit of transparency I was really a bad kid with some very severe behavior issues.

When I was around 15 I made a decision to stop crying regardless of how much physical pain there was I refused to cry. I have to admit there was the occasional drunken stupor type crying, but the regular crying was non existent.

When I decided to get my act together, life was incredibly unbearable, I no longer had the crutch of alcohol or drugs to deaden my pain. It was almost unbearable and after 5 years of being sober, but miserable I knew I was at a turning point, but I really wasn’t sure how to proceed.

I actually went to see a doctor about a separate issue and while talking to the doctor I mentioned that I thought I had an issue because I did not cry. He was an old country doctor, I was attending college in a small town.

He listen to me and broke out his prescription pad and using that Greek chicken scratch that only doctors and pharmacist can read, he wrote me a prescription. He didn’t say much just handed it over and asked me to have it filled. He charged me $150 and asked me to return in a week.

It took a few days, but I finally ended up waiting in line at the local pharmacy to have my prescription filled. I handed the prescription and the pharmacist informed me he couldn’t fill the prescription. Thinking it was perhaps something I might have to drive to the “city”, I asked him where I could go to fill the prescription. He recommended the grocery store next door.

The prescription was for a 25 lbs bag of onions. I needed to purchase the onions and then peel them and return to the doctor with the onions on my next scheduled visit.

The appointment day came and I showed up at my scheduled appointment. The doctor asked me the strangest questions it went something like this:

Doctor: Young man I see you took my advice and purchased as well as peeled the onions.

Me: yes I did as you asked.

Doctor: so tell me how did the peeling go?

Me: it was a pain, my hand smelled like onions for days.

Doctor: did the onions make you cry?

Me: yes they stung and I cried

Doctor: great news! The issue is psychological not physical , you may want to see a therapist.

I left the office and was so angry I left without my peeled onions. Something else happened though. The foundation for the walls and mechanisms I had built were starting to give way.

I was in a very bad way emotionally looking back. I had flown thru junior college without any real effort and graduated at the top of my class and upon transferring to a major college, everyone was as smart if not smarter than me.

My ego was bruised, old familiar feelings of low esteem returned and my established support group was 100s of miles away. The harder I tried the worse I performed. A few days later thing came to a head. I was placed on academic probation. I was devastated.

I started crying and didn’t stop for several days. Tears are just showers of the soul I once heard someone say. I cried not just for my current situation, but every painful experience where I should have cried or wanted to cry but just couldn’t.

It has been almost 25 years since that day, I can honestly say it was the end of the beginning. My tears started flushing away all the hurt, guilt and shame. Even more amazing a few years later I actually started smiling and was even known to laugh on occasion. That’s a story for another chapter...

[elkooba]

It’s complicated...

My mother packed a small bag, grabbed my little brother and left my grandmas house when I was about 2. It seems like a separate life time the next time I saw her. I was 8 and the experiences I had suffered between the age of 2 and 8, changed me.

I had no idea why my mom didn’t return, I was not old enough to have the attention span to even notice. My grandmother became my mom. She fed me, clothed me, nurtured me and encouraged me with her kindness and love.

I sometimes think if she had been around a little bit longer, my life may have been different. When she died I became a ward of the State of NY. My mother had left a few years earlier and never returned for me and my father had become fixated on his lifestyle and becoming more and more dependent on mind and mood altering substances.

After my Grandma died, my father tried very hard, but the getting and using of his habit just became all consuming and then more important. That period of time between that is considered formative by Psychologist , the ages between 2 and 6 were horrific.

Let me just say that by the time I was 6, I knew more about preparing a needle for IV use and sex than any child should know at that age. I feel like I never really experienced being a child. I had to cook for myself and take care of my dad often by candle light. It is only now that I realize that it was not that we had not paid the electricity but that we lived in abandoned buildings.

When my father was sent to Vietnam, my uncles and aunts tried to provide, but I was in need of deep emotional guidance. I was too much to handle, so the stare of NY moved me to Foster Homes. Foster homes could not deal with me, so I was sent to an orphanage.

The reason I was sent to an orphanage was because I had discovered knifing. My behavior had graduated to active violence. The state of NY tried electric shock therapy and various medications to contain me, but all attempts to reform me met with failure.

The only recourse was sending me to reform school, the problem I learned later was that I was too young. While rare, children that were as young as 8 were sent to reform school but never someone at 6.

Then God in his mysterious ways intervened. My father somehow was able to turn his life around, and I was released into his custody. 50+ years later some details are but my father suffered a relapse, overdosed and was admitted to a hospital.

The State if NY had now somehow tracked my mother down and I remember the moment we were reunited. She got into the backseat of a car with a young little boy and, I can’t tell you why, but I knew without a doubt by intuition that this was my mother and brother.

My heart sang. My mom had remarried and had a beautiful little girl. She asked me if I wanted to go live with her and I was relieved.

I still remember that evening, I arrived home and my little brother and me played his Fisher Price record player with his favorite 45s.

Lady Modona and In The Year 2525. I have not listened to those songs since I was 8.

I don’t think my mother and later my step father Robert had any idea of the task she had taken on. I was very seriously emotionally disturbed.

My mother enrolled me in Catholic School with my brother. Roberts father was a custodian there, so we were able to gain admittance for me. My brother was already enrolled.

Needless to say, I knew absolutely nothing about Catholicism and my proven track record reappeared. I was expelled for using a knife and slicing someone’s hand open. I was 8.

My mother and step father realized that they had taken on more than they realized. Unfortunately the state of NY was already aware and all attempts to “ send me back” met with failure.

Then the beatings began.....

[elkooba]

3 Strikes

In bearing my soul to myself, to God and to another human being some years ago. I was able to make sense of many of the destructive patterns in my life.

It is like one of them connect the dots images, where you trace all the dots and a figure of a tree or a boat emerges. I was aware of all that I ad done up to that point, but I never understood the frequency or the patterns. They say that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. However, true insanity is doing the samething even know what the results would be.

The man I bared my soul to was a fellow New Yorker and I remember clearly listening to my version of my life’s events and then boldly in a non judge mental way telling me how I had started out life with 3 strikes against me. I looked at him and asked him to elaborate and he responded with the following:

Strike # 1

I was born in Bellevue Hospital in NYC. While today almost 60 years later this is an outstanding hospital that is well known for their research and care providing, all those years ago it was mainly a hospital for the criminally insane or the indigent.

Strike # 2

My mother became pregnant out of wedlock. Times have changed and while this is a norm these day, it was certainly not the norm in Deeply religious Orthodox Family like my Grandpa and Grandma Dashinsky ran.

Strike #3

As if becoming pregnant without the respect of marriage was not enough to bring shame on my grandparents home, become pregnant by someone who was not Polish or even white was the straw that broke the camels back and caused my mother to be kicked out in the street as a young unmarried mother.

These days, inter racial or ethnically diverse relationships are not frowned upon, but it was not always so.

For years I could not understand why my mother hated me so...

I actually did start my life on the wrong foot, even if it were no fault of my own.

[elkooba]

Inventories

I remember in the early nineties, the early stages of finally trying to turn my life around. I wrote a searching and fearless moral inventory. I have written quite a few over the last three decades, but that first one makes me laugh internally. It was really funny, it should have been titled “Poor Me, and how unfair life has been to me”

It was an important breakthrough for me though. I wrote about stuff that that was real and wrote about stuff that I later realized were imagined. There is something really therapeutic and profound about journaling. Your subconscious opens up and flows.

My experiences since then has taught me the following;

1) There are advantages to sharing how you feel when you suffer from an error in judgment or your going thru something. The pain is lessened but short term in nature.

2) Writing allows you to get to the exact nature of why you feel the way you feel or why you did what you did. It takes effort and practice, but the reward and/or relief tends to be long term.

Sharing with friends can sometimes be comforting but may not always address the exact nature of the consequences of poor choices and decisions. I can’t tell you how many times my friends would demonize an ex, when what they should have said was “ hey brother, it’s not like she put a gun to your head to make you safe her!”

I would have learned that life lesson so much sooner in my life.

[elkooba]

Life Goals

In my youth there were two certainties that I wanted. I wanted to be a fireman. In New York City that have very large ladder trucks. These fire trucks are so long that there are actually 2 drivers. One driver sits in the cab and steers, and the other driver sits at the back of the truck, above the rear set of wheels and also steers.

I remember thinking that it was the coolest job in the world and that was what I wanted to do with my life. Sadly the road I traveled took me down a different path.

The other certainty was that I did not want to grow up to be like my father. My father was not the type of man that would work a 9-5 job, he enjoyed fast cars, fast woman and stealing cars to pay for that life style.

Eventually he was caught, and the judge offered him a choice. Prison or Vietnam. He chose Vietnam. He went off to fight the red menace and arrived back with various issues. The most troubling one was an addiction to drugs.

There was no doubt in my mind that I never wanted to grow up to be like my dad. Sadly I was never able to achieve these early life goals. I never became a fireman and eventually became a drug addict, just like my father.

[elkooba]

Fact or Fiction

This is my attempt to leave something for my children. I plan on being as completely honest and transparent as I can, however to protect the innocent and in some cases the not so innocent. There will be elements of fiction. It is not my intention to purposely lie and leave people astray, it's what the “movies” call creative licensing, The creative licensing is based on flawed and faulty memories and open interpretations. Most importantly, i do not wish to cause harm. Making myself feel better at the expense of another is not spiritual nor practical. While every single feeling i share will be as truthful as I can be, it will be a work of fiction

[elkooba]

Preface

I have decided to write a book. I was inspired by someone I heard share this past weekend. It is motivated by my acceptance of it being very likely that my one year old son may not have me around when his life lessons begin to formulate his approach to life.

I have no plans on going anywhere, but being in my late fifties I want to ensure that I can share with him my own life lessons from the other side.

I have decided that while truthful, it will have elements of fiction, simply because there are those that need to be protected.

It is not intended to be a best seller and I have decided to format it in an unusual way. I will base the structure of my books based on 2 of my favorite books and authors.

The Prophet by Kahil Gabron , where similar to a meditation book my son can lookup a topic and view my ESH on it.

The Road by Jack Kerouac, not because of it’s literacy achievement, but because of his writing style, which was one long running sentence.

This is the preface I created as my first step.

Dedicated to my Son, you taught me two important lessons. Love can be unconditional, and it can also be never ending.

January 6, 1962 2:54 AM

I arrived into this world, free of defects. I had yet to develop the quirks in my personality that would go on to play havoc in my life.

Your Loving Father

W.

[elkooba]

Dedicated to my one year old son, you taught me two important lessons. Love can indeed be unconditional, and it’s capacity can be infinite

Walter L.