I Know I Am

Bloom’s taxonomy: know, understand, apply, analyze, synthesize, evaluate.

I know I’m here, or do I know that? Do I need other people to verify that I exist? Am I like the tree in the forest, that my sounds don’t matter if no one hears me? Many people feel that way. I once was one of them. I am no longer.

I see their need to know they’re here. I see them clutching tightly to unimportant things. They worry over life’s details − milk rings on drinking glasses or crumbs on tables. They fret on a word said that’s not the one they might have said. When a mistake occurs, their first words are, “I didn’t cause it.” How hard it must be to find a place to stand by clinging to such negative things.

I know how to be invisible. I know that it can feel a struggle not to be.

But how do I know that I am?

I know because things I do change things. When I plant flower, it grows or withers. When I smile, people smile back. When I let go, I breathe easier, and others sense that. They relax. I take down walls or build fences. I wipe a tear from a child’s face. I give a hug to a grandmother. I give up a seat on a bus.

I know I am because my very being changes things in the world.

−me strauss Letting me be

Resilient − Like the White Light

They say I’m resilient, and they act like it’s something.

I call it getting up in the morning. I guess I could stay in bed, but sooner or later I’d have to get out of bed. Then I’d be facing a bigger bunch of troubles than I’m facing now.

From their side of the fence, it might look heroic, but from where I’m standing it seems like the only thing that I have going. I’ve to keep heading for that white light at the end of the tunnel.

Now that white light − it’s resilient. It’s always there, even when troubles seem to block it out.

I suppose some troubles , if you ignore them, lose steam, wither down, slink away leaving no damage. I’ve got no experience of troubles like that. The troubles I know are the kind that stick with you, stick on you, stick to you.

I have to face them, look in their eyes, and tell them they have to leave. I have to let them know it’s me and the white light. The white light − it’s resilient.

If I don’t do that, my troubles stick around. They won’t listen. Fact is, they’ll start pushing like bullies on the playground. It’s happened. Life doesn’t work, when I react to troubles. It works when troubles react to me. The only way to do that is treat the darn bullies like children.

Every morning I get up ready for my problem children. I plan them a breakfast of what I’ll do with them, to take care of them. They are handled with calm, and directness, and love. Then I shine that resilient white light, and I tell them they aren’t any trouble − knowing that if I believe that I can disarm them. If I can believe I can tease the meaness out of them.

That’s about when folks start saying, I’m resilient.

Resilient can mean positively stubborn.

I hope they’re right. I want to be resilient − like the white light.

−me strauss Letting me be

Just Right Chair

I used to wonder why other folks in college could sit up nicely through a three-hour class and I would end up sliding down with my legs stretched out in front of me. Why was it that I couldn’t sit like a lady? Had I no manners, no poise, no dignity? Even when I consciously tried, I failed. Was I a hopeless case in these matters?

Finally, I realized it wasn't me. It was the chairs.

Chairs don't fit me. They’re too big or too small, but they’re not just right. Really.

Chairs don’t fit me. My legs are too long. Sitting in chairs with my feet on the floor puts my knees higher than . . . than they should be. That’s not right. Crossing my legs turns me into triangle balanced on a point. Tall people everywhere must have this problem too. Why don’t I seem to notice them being bothered by it?

Chairs don’t fit me. My derrière is too bony. I get “bleacher butt,” if I sit too long in a chair with no cushion. My bottom falls asleep. It gets numb, which is an interesting, uncomfortable feeling. I even got bruises from sitting too long. I don’t blame the chairs. They just weren’t made for me.

Chairs don’t fit me. My mind wasn’t meant to sit for hours while people talk about things that aren’t important. I think better when I’m walking and moving and talking. I push information through my brain faster when my whole body is involved in the process. I’m wreck at the end of a long sitting meeting.

Chairs I meet weren’t made to fit me.

One day I will find a just right chair. It will be the perfect height from the floor and have a perfect cushion. I'll feel as if I’m on top of the world when I sit on it.

My just right chair will have a feedback loop that pushes me out to walk when the time is just right.

It will be beautiful too.

When things are just right, they always are beautiful.

−me strauss Letting me be

NOW Is Already Gone

In third grade, we watched our teacher, Miss Fox, write the word NOW on the chalkboard in large letters.

Miss Fox was a large woman, not taller than 5 foot six, but probably 200 pounds. her body weighed heavily on her legs, and it seemed so contrasting to the fine, thinning divergence that was her dark auburn hair. At 8-years-old, I thought it was just weird old lady hair. Now I think back and realize she suffered severe hair loss.

Our Miss Fox had a large lap, like a grandma. The kind you’d want to sit in to listen to a story read aloud, but I don’t think anyone ever did. Miss Fox was very serious about making sure that we were learning. She wasn’t a hugger. She took to teaching as a calling. Everything she did, every word she said was an opportunity.

We didn’t know we were her last class ever. I think she might have known.

Even as an 8-year-old, I could sense her pain. Pain seemed to permeate her lower back, her walk, most anyway she sat. She didn’t stand much. She wore black, old lady nun shoes. Her legs were wrapped in elastic bands for support.

I suppose the pain is what made it all that so very important.

She told us that NOW is already gone − gone as soon as we say the word. That's what she said. She said we have to use every NOW as best we could, because NOW is so fast and so fleeting. She said that too. Miss Fox made clear that if we missed using NOW we couldn’t get it back. But, she said, if we always make the most of NOW, when we look back we would see WON.

Miss Fox died the summer after third grade. Our class was the honor guard at her funeral.

Her words about NOW, were her legacy. I often think about them.

−me strauss Letting me be

Imagine God

If, in that first moment when everything started, I was the one who made the universe, I would hope that I would only make things so lovely, so worth exploring.

I would hope that my wishful wondering would be generous and giving to the creatures and beings that I would bring to life.

I know deeply that whoever made the stars and nebulae, flowers, and trees, the hawks and cockatoos, tigers and sharks couldn’t help but have a care for us.

If it were me, I would.

I would know exactly what I made.

I would know that the people I made could make mistakes. I would wish them all of the love to grow. I’d hope they’d find the way of love, hope their feet from the hardest roads.

I’d never choose for them, but I’d wish I could. What would be the point, if I did?

I’d watch like a parent, bearing their pain, reveling in their laughter. Never able to let them know it touched me; it moved me; it made me feel.

My first words on that first day would have been, “Let there be joy.” That would be my blessing for them for eternity.

I can’t believe a creator who made the trees would want us to hurt ourselves ever.

If a person can feel and understand . . . imagine God.

−me strauss Letting me be

A Blind Eye

I get self-conscious when people look at me. I wonder what they’re seeing. I wonder what they’re looking at. I wonder how I look to them. Are they overlooking something important? Are they making assumptions?

Can they see what I’m not saying − what I’m wondering, thinking, wishing, praying, what I’m hoping they’ll extrapolate from the weird, kind of nervous behaviors that I make?

I care too much when strangers look.

In the best circumstances, I get a chance to unfold one-to-one, talking about a mutual interest. Make that a crowd and I might have to blend with the walls for safety. Hopefully I’m over trying too hard to fit myself in. I worry that I’m not.

But are they? Are they really looking at me? Probably not. I’m the one pointing their eyes this way. They aren’t. They can’t be seeing the tiny cracks I’ve always worried about. Why would they have such interest in such small things? Major ideas in my life are details in their world. My details are off their radar completely.

People are overlooking me entirely. This worrying about what they see is energy wasted, wearing me out unnecessarily, triggering noisy “look at me” behaviors that don’t define me, that get folks to look away, that make them and me uncomfortable.

I do them so folks will go away, so I can breathe. Isn't that strange? I get myself unable to breathe worrying about things that people, who aren't looking at me, are seeing.

Sometimes I marvelously over-think things, especially when I put myself in the center of the universe. How much more out-of-focus could my vision get?

I overlooked, looked right through, looked right past each person.
I didn't look in anyone’s eyes, not a single person’s.

I was a blind eye that made assumptions. That's the irony.

When I see people, I don't worry about what they are looking at.

Looking and seeing are different things.

−me strauss Letting me be

Imagine the Flower

Imagine I could see me as well as I see that flower.
I could know my life, my worries, my universe. I could experience a we that was perfectly tuned.

We would have influence. We could show me possibilities, and can make harmony happen − good things, things that made people smile, things that made the world better, things that healed and helped, held hearts softly as they let go of misery and sad times.

Imagine the chance to be generous, the chance to have and give mercy. Imagine unconditional love as a way of life. Imagine forgiveness without having to earn it..

If I could spend one day with me, and find our way to a conversation . . . anything could happen. All I would need to do is look in my eyes and see me.

I want to see myself as I see that flower.

The rest would be easy.

−me strauss Letting me be

Looking Up, Looking Out

Being tall and often lost in thought, I have a habit of looking down when I walk − I like the view. When I want to focus − to think about writing −I get fewer distractions. If I want scenery, its nice to watch the world go by at that scale. The lighting behind me, falling on the path is lovely. I notice details that other folks quite literally overlook.

I see every stone, every crack in the pavement. I see the handprints that kids made when workers were laying the concrete. I wonder at how the tree roots broke through the sidewalk. I wish for roller skates, the old fashioned ones, when I’m on the smooth parts. I hear music in my mind and I walk to its cadence. Sometimes I watch my feet progress along the pavement.

On paths that I walk frequently, I find myself wondering whether there’s one square inch that I’ve stepped on every time I walked that direction. On all paths I think about folks who have walked before me. I picture them. They appear − the young aunt with her niece and three nephews going to town for ice cream. They are like imaginary memories.

Looking down makes the world move at the same pace as I do, and I’ve always been one who best likes the 30,000 foot view. But it also means I miss so much. I miss the flowers in the gardens and the beautiful, unique, and individual houses that stand by them. I’ve walked by some so many times and hardly recall a detail about any one of them.

One house has birds of paradise in a vase in the window. I drove by it not too long ago. How long had they been there? What else have I been missing?

Exotic flowers are art and symbols − colorful, rare, and seemingly alien − especially the flowers called birds of paradise. I love the way they seem to be always looking out, looking up. It makes me wonder what they’re thinking.

One shouldn’t walk past exotic flowers without seeing them. I need to start looking up, looking out, looking all around when I’m walking.

Life wasn’t meant to have only one perspective.

−me strauss Letting me be

For the Presence of a Child

They called him Seawall. He came from the south. He got up north on a train. He was a real hobo. Most of this life didn’t stay in one place too long. They called that wanderlust. Seawall found work where he could, doing what he had to do, and made his way from place to place by jumping trains. Somehow, some way, the last stop left him outside my dad’s saloon and that’s where he stayed.

Seawall did things for my dad. He scrubbed floors and carried in big bags of flour. He sorted bottles and cleaned up at night. He lived in the shack next to the tracks,− a lean-to really − slept on cot, just a chair and desk beside it. I went to see him there once with my dad. I think of slave quarters when I picture it, and then I think that today people might say he was homeless or that he needed mental help.

Seawall had no age, just a craggy face, an unassuming manner, and baggy pants that of that uniform unwrinkled teal-blue-gray color. He rode an old two-wheel bicycle. People around town knew him by it. People in the saloon did too.

At dinner time it was a memory to be part of the ritual of how Seewall put his bike away. He'd ride in the back door of my dad's saloon, take one ride around the entire tavern, and end his trip behind the bar. He'd lift the trap door, wave to the patrons, and carry his transportation down the old, wooden stairs to the musty dirt floor cellar to stow it for the night. He'd leave the cellar through the side door. Then he’d walk into the saloon through the front door as a patron, sit at the bar to eat his dinner and spend time with his adopted family before retiring for the night.

Even as a little girl, when I would see him sitting at bar, he looked like sad painting − a man living out his life. My mom often sat me by him. When she did I couldn't help but notice how his craggy face would fill with light − not for me, I don’t think − for the presence of a child. At least, that's how it felt. It was life recognizing life.

And what a gift he would give me − his smiling, clear blues in that craggy, sailor-like, weathered face. All of his past would fall away and I would be all that there was. He would play that awful game − tic tac toe − with me for hours just to see me smile back. Seewall was my friend. He looked forward to seeing me. I looked forward to seeing him. We were safe with each other. We didn't need to talk. We smiled.

I was too young to know that people had stories. Even now I only know bits of his. I wish I’d learn the rest of his one day. My brother said his real name was Sewell Southward Sebastian Fleming the Third. I wonder if anyone remembers what his real name was? He lost his name in the Great American Depression after he lost his job, after he boarded that first boxcar.

I remember that he could talk like Donald Duck and make me laugh.

−me strauss Letting me be

Whole Again for the First Time

Her name was Meadow, though she’d never seen one. She dreamed of one day finding a meadow, having a picnic, and feeling at home there. Until then life was about food, clothing, and shelter, and a green balloon.

Meadows don’t have boundaries or edges. They’re wide open to the sky above and flat to the ground. They don’t seek company. They wait for folks to discover them and their wildflowers. Some people do. Some people run over them without even noticing the meadow they are trampling. The name was well-chosen for this little girl.

The world couldn’t see that then. Neither could Meadow. Meadow thought she was like the green balloon.

Because she thought it, it was true.

Meadow didn't tell anyone, but she kept her problems in that green balloon. She also tucked in the bad feelings that problems bring with them. She knew that way the bad things always were contained. She thought that meant she’d be safe and never be hurt. She didn’t know that other feelings were trapped in there too − good feelings − feelings about believing, knowing, trusting, and . . . just being, the right to be boring.

So the balloon became part of her. Meadow tied it to her wrist the way children do. She started to think of herself as the girl with the green balloon. The world thought it curious that she never let go of her balloon, not ever.

Meadow held onto that balloon even when it meant letting go of living life. When she couldn’t get the balloon through a door, she wasn’t invited to the party. She couldn’t go lots of places or do lots of things because of the balloon and what was inside it. When the balloon got in the way, she could not let go of it. So the world let go of her.

Meadow, the girl with the green balloon, felt alone left behind.

Then someone asked her, “What do you keep that silly balloon for?”

She told him.

“Why would you do that? Those problems are over. You're grown now, if they happen again, you'd know what to do. Imagine if you had your feelings inside you.”

All Meadow had to do was untie the string and let the balloon go.

It seems so simple.

It was. I did it.

−me strauss Letting me be

Glistening in the Light

You hit it right on the head with “can you hear me now?” If the answer is “no” it’s probably because I can’t hear me now. Once I get that clarity–tune in to that signal–I’ll be clear to others, too. − Steve Farber, author, Radical Leap, and Radical Edge

Listening. I’m listening now in a way that I wish I had listened all of my life. Oh the things that I’ve missed by having thoughts when I could have been hearing what was said. People share such marvelous things, gifts really, golden glorious, gentle gems. I walked right by them without knowing. Who would have thought that listening requires that my ears be wired to my heart?

It’s not so much sadness I feel . . . or regret at things done wrong. What I feel is the absence, the loss that comes from not knowing. I feel minus a glow I might have had, if only I had been listening . . . and hearing.

I’d feel a brightness shining deep inside me, that’s only now begun.

If a tree falls in a forest . . .

I want to be listening.

Glistening in the light.

−me strauss Letting me be

Small Town Girl

You don’t really understand the place you grow until you’re gone long enough. Long enough is when you can see with the eyes of one who's never been there. It's a new place when you walk down the street and your name rings no bells, when places are memories, some no longer there. Then you begin to know where you’re from and something about who you are.

Growing up in a small town isn’t something I thought about. It was just how things were.

A small town is a small universe. It has no galaxies. It barely has solar systems. Small town stars just aren’t strong enough to get planets to orbit them not for long.

It’s the way of small towns to attract individuals not crowds, or maybe crowds don’t form because there aren't enough people. Every small town crowd is really made of tiny clusters of ones or twos or threes that happen to be together.

What that means is that the bikers, the theater folks, the dancers, the nerds, the geek, the jocks, the gays, the uptight, the laidback, and the “in-between, self-conscious-I-don’t-knowers,” all know each other/ We all talked and interacted in ways that we never would have if there were more of each of our own kind to hang out with. Instead we all learned how to talk to each other. We couldn’t help but learn.

I had no idea what that small town was teaching me about people.

−me strauss Letting me strauss

Positivity

To think about it the way they do in school, the opposite of negativity would be something called positivity. In the world of Science and electrons, that seems just how it should work. In the world of people and feelings, that’s not even close to reality . . . I mean that literally. There’s not enough reality in that word that we might name positivity.

Pollyanna could tell you that and so would everyone who avoids her − those who think some negative thinking keeps us safe.

Negativity, that raining, dark cloud, floats over and turns off the sunlight. It makes it so that we can’t see things – it becomes a polarizing filter, raindrops on the windows of our souls. Soon we’re watching the drops run and race, and we’ve forgotten about butterflies or wild, velvety violets, or lovely Australian wine. Instead the rain is all we know. Our sorrow at being one with all of these becomes our sorrow at being alive.

Real positivity isn’t the opposite of that. The opposite of that would be as delusional and contrived. Real positivity is not a filter. It’s an opening of ourselves, our souls, our eyes. We can see the sadness of the rain, but we know that won’t keep the sun from coming back, bringing its warm life, letting us dance.

We’re a magnet for the opposite charge that . . . when things are negative a positive still has its 50/50 chance to be attracted, to orbit around us, to shed some influence in our lives. Positivity lets us see it when it comes, know its value, and hold it gently in our hands.

The sun and moon share the same sky.

--me strauss Letting me be.

25 Words: Riding with the Top Down

25 wds:
Curving the interstate,
the top down, the sky up,
the world ready and waiting,

music playing,
and a lifelong friend smiling
is heaven on Earth.

--me strauss Letting me be

The Dance Floor of My Imagination

I often dance when no one’s looking, almost anywhere.

This morning, at 4 a.m., I caught myself dancing from one room to another. I watched myself for a moment. I tracked my thinking, You’re actually good at this. You should find a way to do it more. What is that you love about it? What are you recreating?

I danced my way through my thoughts into the basement of my childhood. I found myself there when it was still an open space − before my mother made it modern and remodeled.

I was on the dance floor of my childhood imagination.

I could hear the music playing. I could feel the floor and see the diffused light coming through the small, high window. I knew the hours, the fourteen years, I spent dancing in the dusky darkness without worrying. No worries to moving, turning, reaching. My feet didn’t need my head to find a way to hear the music playing on the old record player.

I danced my tree house, my diary, the canvas on which I could paint and then repaint.

It was a forest or a field or the sky. It was the space to stretch. It was the statement I am.

It’s no wonder that I find myself still going back.

Everyone should have a dance floor in their imagination.

--me strauss Letting me be

Where the Blood Flows

Who knows what it’s like to be on the inside, deep, deep inside where the blood flows. where thoughts and feelings mix with the music and color, where the universe lives both inside and out. Are their few or many? Are there any who know how to live inside that far?

Things where the stars and cells are one work differently.

Do they know that pain doesn’t hurt there? Do they know that moonlight blue is safe as being in a mother’s womb?

No one seems to know that all things come from that deep, deep place where the cells grow. No one comprehends that the love starts with those simple cell dividing, those cells we saw in Science class, those cells that live inside our being.

If everyone understood that . . . would they see that’s what makes love so strong, so pliable, so reliably unconditional?

Is it true? No one knows me. No one sees me. Is it so that they can’t see so far inside me? Maybe some see more than I do.

I know that I don’t know me.

Yet I know the place I speak of. I live, dream, I dance, I love there.

−me strauss Letting me be

Colorful Windmills

Can you hear them? They’re calling me, telling me there’s a world of sunshine and colors . . . reds and yellow, and greens, and . . . blues.

Blue eyes, blue flowers, blue birds that fill bright blue skies have been waiting, waiting, waiting for me.

What am I doing inside thinking about things in shades of gray? Lavenders are sweetly whispering my name. Even the pinks, those shades I thought I didn’t like, light the sky by the corals both so patient with my thoughts. How could I not have feeling for them?

The softest prism of light is shining in past the blinds to say, “Stop. Open the windows of your mind. Let the colors blow through with the breeze.”

Colorful windmills are turning my view around to take in the whole world again.

−me strauss Letting me be

If . . . If Only

I looked at him.

Everyone saw one kind of person – aggressive, argumentative, and a bit of a show-off. I saw a little kid who had been left behind, standing at window waiting for a dad who never came. Why couldn’t they see past his actions to his heart? The whole story was right there, written in his eyes, on his face. When you talked to his heart, his head listened, his actions followed.

If . . .

If only . . .

If only you would just see past the surface to who he is. that he wants to be, just be, just like everyone else. If you could see, you would know. If you didn’t take what he does personally. . . he doesn’t know how else to protect himself, he doesn't know.

If he wasn’t so aggressive, argumentative, and that a bit of a show-off.

If you knew him, you would love him. You wouldn't want his heart to hurt.

If . . .

If only . . .

If only we could see past the surface to who we are and that we just want to be, just like everyone else. If we could see, we would know know.

If we could see ourselves, we wouldn't want anyone's heart to hurt.

No wonder we have such a hard time with love.

−me strauss Letting me be

Wonders Inside Out

Somewhere inside, far up in the sky, at the softest edge of everything, is the yawning, loving magic where music, grace, and color begin.

You have to listen carefully in the heart of night when the people noise is gone. It takes the light of one star and the patience of the universe. It needs a heart that listens and a grateful, quiet mind that hears. A telescope or recorder can’t do it, nor can a frightened soul bundled with stress and spiteful, ugly thoughts.

I think that this is how the first peoples learned to drum, to sing, to dance. They reached inside to find the sky and found stories in the stars to tell and musical words to chant. I’m sure they understood themselves to be part of the whole experience. That's how they found their gods, their gifts, their greatness to hear the music, see the colors, feel the grace that was themselves.

You have to be a child to know this fully . . . or a fully grown adult who knows that wonders come from the inside out.

−me strauss Letting me be

The Same Differences

When I was young, I wished to be the same. I yearned for it. It meant comfort and belonging. Part was the human need for understanding. I was sure that being the same came without strings, pains, or problems. I was young, callow, and idealistic. Shallow with good intentions. So young.

I tried to learn how to do it. I studied how people thought and what they did. I could do anything. I could do that. I knew I could. I watched. I listened. I tried. I adjusted. I tried again. Like a child in dress-up clothes, playing so seriously, I imagined people would see the image I wanted them to see.

What they saw was a picture that wasn’t right, that didn’t work. Like that child in dress-up clothes, I was doing the same things, but not knowing why. I was the wrong kind of living doll − an inexperienced, badly costumed actor − overstated, overdressed, with no understanding for the part I chose. I didn’t mean to fool or confuse them, or me. I probably tried too hard to please them at my own expense.

I thought if I fixed my differences, life would make sense and the pieces would finally fit. I would fit. I could see it so clearly. The world would make sense. I would have a rightful part in it.

The real dancing could begin, because . . . then everyone would see who I really am − if only I would change to be like just like them.

I was trying to be invisibly visible. I succeeded. I was an oxymoron. I looked so closely that I couldn’t see. I tried so hard to be like them, so that I wouldn’t have to try so hard to be who I am.

The irony in those musical words dances across my face and through my ears.

If only I’d been looking. at the context − the one that didn’t have me as the center of the universe − I might have noticed everyone trying as hard as I was. I might have seen that those folks, those folks I thought looked so much the same as each other, are individuals with wonderful distinct, dynamic differences worth getting to know.

The differences are what make us the same.

−me strauss Letting me be

32 Years Wondering

I wrote this about vulnerability 32 years ago.

I wonder at times how I in my ways invite people to hurt me. Perhaps my unqualified open being is a statement of martyr-like qualities that I do not wish to acknowledge.

Or I could be a victim of a childlike faith in the goodness of humanity?

What if there is a hidden purpose (naturally, for the good all − like in some movie) and I am a carrier of some great disease meant to infect (at least affect) the hearts of all people?

Could it be that what I have assumed to be hurt is merely the feeling of strength received when one gains knowledge about one’s self?

Perhaps it's simple insanity. Some would say it is ultimate, arrogance on display.

It's thoughts on paper written down − my thoughts, my truth − then and now.

32 years later, I still wonder why I open myself up like this.

−me strauss Letting me be

Tape Recordings in Our Heads

We all seem to be afraid of being too much of some thing − some word we don’t like, some word we don’t want ever to be, some word that scares us.


Each person seems to be afraid of a word that means doing something, being something, something that the person in question couldn’t possibly do or be.

It’s the person who thinks that he’s going to be clingy, who never gets close to imposing his needs. Even a concerted effort in that direction wouldn’t let him get close to being needy enough. Yet he worries about it.

It’s the one who fears offending another’s intelligence, who couldn’t if she tried, even if she took lessons. Yet she frets over the fact that she might, avoids saying what she knows just in case someone hears the wrong thing, thinks she could be, might be talking down to him.

It’s the child who can’t bear the thought of being in the way, and instead is invisible to everyone. It’s the college kid who lives a nightmare of being ordinary when the reality is potential that is amazing, unique, and extraordinary.


We all have these words we fear − each our own and self-selected, probably by something someone else did or said. Despite the DNA that protects us, that makes it so we could never be or do the word that we chose, we act on guard always as if we might, we could. Afraid.

That is, of course, except for me. You don't think so, but I really could be my awful word. I could outwit my DNA to hurt myself and be my word.

We all think that too.

We're a most interesting species. Sure of flaws, holding tight to them, we won't be moved − even if we don't have them, even if they were invented by something someone said a long time ago.

One day I will invent an ERASE button for the tape recordings in our heads.

−me strauss Letting me be

Brave and Vulnerable

“You are brave and vulnerable.”

I know folks that have only one or the other. They list. They lean. They need things to stand complete.

The brave ones need an audience to know their strength. They need dragons to slay. They don’t understand why folks don’t thank them when they save the kingdom. I was brave in that way once.

The vulnerable need an audience to know they're alive. They need to give until they're all gone. They don’t understand why other folks have boundaries. I was that kind of vulnerable once.

I took my brave and my vulnerable out of their separate jars. They’re not broken anymore. In that way, neither am I, and in that way, I am no longer one.

Brave and vulnerable belong together, like two sides of one coin.

Brave and vulnerable make poetry and history happen. They write emails as the dawn. They make house numbers in the stars, and drink cognac in brand-new conversations.

Brave and vulnerable touch us, teach us, and change us, each brave and vulnerable, deep and wonderful breath we breathe. We touch the universe together in large and small ways that hardly anybody knows.

Brave and vulnerable, eating tea and cookies in a big leather chair, watching me write this on a dark night in Chicago with a light on faraway.

Brave and vulnerable own my heart, my mind, and every dance I do.

They are memories. They are imagination. They are two kids playing, smiling in the sunshine at six years old.

Brave and vulnerable − they are me and you.

−me strauss Letting me be

When the Truth Changes

I don’t really mind when things don’t happen as planned. I avoid plans whenever I can myself. Plans tend to hang over me, like leafy vines. Even plans I look forward to have a weird sort of “have-to-ness” about them. I’d do well in a world where spontaneity worked without cost in the form of long lines, or lost seats, or an inability to attend altogether. But that’s for another world not this one.

Managing in the world of other people means making appointments in time. It means saying I’ll meet you here. I’ll call then. We’ll have a lunch and discuss our next move. Those are plans that are definite unless they are changed. Aren’t they? They're the truth when they are said, but then sometimes. The truth changes.

I understand that sometimes new information, or more consideration, or even a change of heart makes a person decide that such a plan is no longer a good idea. That is when the truth changes. The truth I’ll meet you, I’ll call you, We’ll have lunch, is no longer true.

The problem is when the person who has changed the truth doesn’t communicate that change.

So I wonder. Has the truth changed or did the person forget? Did the truth change for a reason that I should know? Has it changed for good or momentarily?

Some folks automatically update the truth when it when it changes. Other do not.

Asking about a change with the second group usually falls flat. If they cannot update the truth, it seems they cannot respond at all.

The void upsets me. I feel I believed someone valued and respected me and instead I find it was an empty shell who gave me nice words that unraveled themselves. That's uncomfortable, especially when I never get to find out what the the truth was, or is, or might have been.

We learn as a child what a plan and a promise it. We learn in business to value our word. When we don't keep it, what does it say that we think about the person we gave it to?

I know of people who don't do as they say or let others know that they cannot. Is it an act of cowardice to avoid an act of telling the truth? Or is it an action of a time when time is like a time warp and thought are of thinking and not of people?

I'm confused that bravery is in short supply to people made of the same stuff as stars.
I'm confused that people, even me, can think of thinking more than thinking of other people.
But then I'm confused a lot.

That seems to be a truth that doesn't change.

−me strauss Letting me be

He Is Here -- The First Born

always a boy
always his mother's
sensitive, thoughtful,
on a path going
hearing the music
complete
so controlled
patience
beautiful bridges
deep, still waters
big top tents
safety nets
holding us up
like the circus poles
number one
looking out
looking over
us always smaller
him always taller

cherish him
he knows
not why
his genes are love

He is the grandson of my older, older brother, a first born.
The great-grandson of my first born father.

−me strauss Letting me be

Being Only, Being Old

When I was young and foolish, I was sure that I’d never want to live past 80. I didn’t want to be the only − the only one. I didn’t want to be left behind, missing people who were gone, missing those who were only part of the memories of my life.

Now I am older − still not wise − still so foolish, but I know . . . a few things. I know that I have always been the only Sometimes I have reveled in it. Sometimes I have been too aware of how it sounds and feels like lonely. Yet, I must have gained some thoughtful insights, for I look around me and see that I am less only now than I have ever been in my life.

If I could have, if life could promise, if on my birthday candle I could make and get one wish. I would wish that I could grow old, knowing certain people were still somewhere on the planet. They are people who have given and taught me, held and brought to places I could never have gone or gotten, left or forgotten on my own.

One is of those certain people is my friend, Shining Silver. How she makes everyone who’s near her better, taller, bright, more generous. How that shining glows inside her. It’s the gentle way her giving makes everyone better without making her less. It’s the unconditional love that drives her and the wisdom of the life that rides beside it.

Shining Silver polishes my world view, my understanding, and reveals something my cellular intuition knows, but I have not yet discovered with a simple silver observation.

I say I think I am a closet creative. “I think that’s how I got to be stuck with unemotional concepts living inside my head. Folks understand smart, but they fear creative playing. I've learned to hide the joy I feel for fear they'll hear me.”

She simply answered, “People aren’t afraid of someone who is freely creative and eccentric − much more creative than they are − but they really don’t like it when someone is smarter.”

It wasn't other people who had feared my creativity. It was me. Somehow they had read that in the way I dressed my ideas up in smart and thoughtful clothing, trying to look less like me and more like them, without really knowing.

In one lovely, light Shining Silver sentence, she had told me to get out of my head, to be real and to be me, in such a way that I could hear her − both her words and the love she wishes.

If the ones like Shining Silver would be on the planet with me, I never be only.

Old would only be a word.

−me strauss Letting me be

Six-Year-Old Thinking

Yesterday I played with school books, the kind of books kids learn to read with. I arranged and rearranged them. I looked to see whether I’d read them. I thought about how I would teach with them, if I was still teaching. I remembered me back in a classroom – me as a 6-year-old, waiting to hear the secrets of everything grownups know.

I thought about how six-year-olds think about teachers.

When you’re six-years-old, teachers are superheroes.

A first grade teacher is larger than life and holds miraculous promise in a six-year-old’s eyes. First grade teachers are beautiful, know big words, and never tell lies. They’re grownups, whose work is to like me, to teach me, and to take of me. They can tell me how things work, help explore the universe, and untie and unravel the most difficult knots. Even parents listen when teachers just whisper.

I was a first grader and a first grade teacher − I know mysteries from both sides of the job.

I also know I told parents some young “teacherly” truths that I truly hope they put off to my youth and ignored. I think of the things that I said in wonder and I wonder at how much I thought I knew, didn't know, wish I knew, later learned, now I know, can't return to put to work for the kids that I loved so back then.

I would be such a great teacher now that the six-year-old I was then couldn't help but have turned out to be a better person today, if I could only go back then and help her to see what I now see about what I didn't see when I was only a six-year-old looking up into the face of a young teacher just like the young teacher I had been. I really would.

At least I got two things right when I was teaching my six-year-olds. Not one day was boring, and they knew I respected their thinking more than anyone grownup had done before me.

Truth is, I respect most six-year-olds more than most of the grown-ups I meet.

Life has a way of undoing our sense of truth, wonder, and belief.

It’s hard to find a six-year-old cynic.

−me strauss Letting me be

Today I Learned to Write My Name

Today I learned to write my name again. I wanted to remember what it was like. I didn't use a fat pencil or a crayon. Instead I used a computer and a mouse. It took me a long and tedious time, just as it did the first time around. I had to work to get each of the letters formed right. That was important. Time was not.

It's my name. I want it to look just so. I want it to look like me. My name is the first word most people know about me. It’s one of the pictures that they’ll keep in their head when I’m not there. When they think of me, it's one of the pictures they'll see.

They say if I change my name it doesn't mean a thing, but we know that it means a whole lot. It means more than if I change how I look, what I wear, or what I do.

My name is the first word my parents called me. It’s the first I learned to say. It’s the word on every page about me, on every page that I write. And when I feel unjustly treated, I hear myself say, “He didn’t even know my name, not really.”

Names are the most important words that we know.

Today I learned to write my name again.

It humbled and exhilarated me with the sheer potential of growth.

−me strauss Letting me be

Day 2: Facilitating Creativity

Imagine creativity on a second day, a private company event. One might think it would be awful. One might go in expecting something stifling. Anyone who did would be totally wrong.

Something changes when all of the people in a group chase creativity with the same goal. They're all making the same thing happen .

In they walk, only half ready, but anticipating. Some aren't so sure when they arrive that this is the way, but they're still part of the goal. They still want the right answer.

Add to the mix that the guy who brought them was sure enough in the power of their creativity for all of them. Those two things – a common goal and a leader who had faith – that made the difference, that made a day that I've never seen any like it.

The group became focused, energized, and alive. They felt a reason for coming together. Issues of “group think” disappered, if they ever were. This bunch saw that success depended on their creativity. Their creativity was a tool toward reaching innovative ideas – ideas that could be put into practice, not nebulous wishes.

It could happen. They knew it. They could imagine.

Work became play in a most serious fun way. Personalities became good things. People were smiling. They became more them. I became more me -- not the less I usually make myself in a roomful of intelligent strangers. They weren't strangers long, by the end of an hour an observer wouldn't have known who worked years together and who had just met me.

Imagine the picture – teamwork, creativity, innovation, without politics, without whispering, without hierarchies, judgment or fearing.

New colors filled the room. No one noticed who was dancing or walking around, or who offered an idea that couldn't be explained in a way others could get it. People smiled often and leaned into each other while they were talking. People acted like friends, played like schoolkids, worked like explorers on an important quest.

It didn't matter that they were realizing that more work would need doing.

When the music played as the group left, I was dancing. My feet were filled with energy. My head was light, and my heart was happy.

Being creative with a roomful of people who care only about one thing is uniquely satisfying.

I don't have to imagine.

Creativity without lines is a joyful and amazing experience.

−me strauss Letting me be.

Day 1: Facilitating Creativity

Creativity and innovation was what was supposed to happen. Two days, two different groups gathered for that purpose, focused on creativity and innovation..

The first day was a “public event.” Anyone could join in. Well, anyone who could find a way to fund the experience. People were from a wide range of backgrounds and variety of reasons for being there. Four people from the same company came together as a team. Everyone learned the same things, but applied it to their own goal.

In its own way it was lonely. In it’s own way, it was like attending a meeting at my old company.

I learned more about how I think. I learned more about how other folks think. I got to see thinking in action, got to hear and make observations, got to hear all of us talk about how we responded to what we did.

I was the only one who had to physically stretch to take in information, walk around to process it, stare out the window to look inwardly in order to close off a thought with a period at the end. Other folks might have said I was lost in my own thoughts. I might have said I was lost in a roomful of them.

I went home exhausted, wondering why I wasn’t feeling filled up with energy.

Being creative alone in a roomful of people, isn’t joyful. It’s limiting. Somehow not all of the colors seem to fill the room and dancing seems not quite appropriate, sitting up straight still seems like a good idea. When everyone has their own goal, creativity is work, even when they’re being truly creative too.

Creativity does not work well with lines around it.

−me strauss Letting me be