What happened to the little girl whose first word was “No”? I am hardly alone in having learned to say “Okay” while choking down the honest and obvious “No.” In doing so, there goes the undeniability of authenticity and its power.
The truth of the matter behind my first word, as I was told, was that I was slow to talk. I was about two and a half when it was Christmas and my father was driving me to my grandparent’s house, about forty-five minutes away.
All along the way, my father said, “What does Santa say? Ho, ho, ho.” Over and over.
When we got there and everyone was ready to hear the new party trick, my father said to me, “What does Santa say?” and then looked at me expectantly.
“Ho, ho, ho,” I finally said.
Learning to Repeat
I hadn’t learned to speak so much as to learn to repeat. I learned to figure out what response the other party is waiting to hear, and then say that.
As a communicator, I was an actor, not an authentic human being. Many times in life, I found myself saying okay when it was a lie. Other times, men proceeded, perhaps confident that should they ask, the answer would be the one they wanted.
I acted my way through life. There’s no way I could have won an Oscar because I might have been saying yes, but then the truth would leak out.
When I was fifteen, a piece of male anatomy was shoved into my mouth, and there’s no way a word could have come out in the midst of the cramming.
With shock, I learned what it was called when his hockey buddies called to laugh at me for using my teeth while performing it.
Today, I know what else it’s called, and there’s no statute of limitations. I don’t know which was worse, the choking or the group shaming, but I do know something more important.
That’s why God gave me teeth, and I’d do it again. Who’s the ‘ho now?
I read about the hockey player trial with E.M. and wondered a number of things. Why was her drinking a factor, but not the players? What did it matter if the one guy’s balls were “in” her face or “on” her face? Too close is too close. In the end, I’m waiting to see if she’ll be countersued to return the earlier settlement.
Perceptions First
I don’t always fight back against the appropriate source of the intrusion. More often, I’d lose my temper at something trivial. Or, I’d smash my things.
I vacillated between sadness and anger, and today I know they are the same emotion, transformed through the kaleidoscope of perception.
To be sad is to think you deserved it, but when you don’t think you deserved it, you are righteous and angry. You versus them, and the dial turns one emotion into the other.
Keep turning that dial until you identify and untangle the untruths of that kaleidoscope. You many need someone else to help you see through a veil that you were born with. They can be impossible to spot when you’ve known no different.
Having almost thirty addresses in my life, I’ve experienced a wealth of these clashes. Perceptions I was born with or into coming up against someone who experienced things completely differently.
Growth comes when the invisible becomes visible and you break out the Windex.
As a snowmobiler, I loved the irony of having to wipe my visor clean. Snowmobiling, for me, was an exercise in active meditation, as there is no one to talk to, no distractions allowed, and a vast white canvas around for your innermost thoughts to expose themselves in full regalia. As the thoughts accumulate and the snow dust builds, I have to reach up and with the Hyperswipe on the back of my glove, wipe the plastic clear in order to proceed safely.
Over the kilometers, I’ve cried, laughed, and felt every emotion in between in the safe privacy of my helmet. Perceptions spotted, questioned, eliminated and replaced, on repeat.
Experience Second
That helmet that seen so much, and is now for sale with a brand-new scratch-free hundred-dollar visor for the mere price of the visor.
I’ve upgraded to a heated visor. Initially, I thought the point of it was to battle freezing rain, sleet, and the other conditions I’ve found myself riding in that required use of my finger wiper.
Instead, I found out that it keeps my face toasty for those days when the wind is finding cracks and there was a wind chill warning before I started riding at a hundred miles an hour.
With that so-called old helmet, I’d wait for warmer days like most people. With my new helmet, the weather is not as prohibitive a factor.
I was asked if I would take $55 for it, and I replied, “lol, no.” From “Ho, ho, ho”, it’s not far to the word no. When does one need to use that word? When the flow of life isn’t working out so swimmingly.
When asked for my lowest price, I explained all the research behind the pricing already offered since they had clearly not done their homework.
In reply, I was told to “Grow up.”
I’m still laughing. A little homework goes a long way toward recognizing opportunity and ruining your chances at it.
How many times in life have you had a perception of something, only to find you were mistaken? Often, for me. I thought snowmobiling was riding a couch in the wilderness, to find out that the seat is merely padding for when it hits your rear. I thought hunting was random, senseless and brutal, to discover that it’s strategic, respectful and humbling.
Labels Last
Having racked up many of these experiences, I’ve learned to take note of my perceptions and not let them dictate my answers nor my choices. Nor do I let them label me.
Though I have hunted, I don’t think of myself as a hunter. Being a hunter implies that I will continue to buy tags, renew licences and apply to raffles as the years go by. Yet, I may never again pick up a gun or a crossbow.
I got my first buck, a three-pointer with a crossbow, in December 2022, and a four-point buck in November 2023 with a 30/30. (First and Biggest at the camp that year) and haven’t harvested anything since. Mic drop?
When you identify with a label, it becomes increasingly difficult to change it. I’m a smoker? You’ll have a difficult time to quit puffing with that self-applied label.
I’m a woman, and I’m not going to let you tell me what it means. If you think it means I should be like a geisha, then off to another land with you. If you have any perceptions about how I should be, then I’ve learned, that’s your problem. Not mine.
Trying to guess what you want from me, and delivering puts me in a secondary position and I will not take that anymore. I have endured much suffering simply so someone else might not experience the least discomfort.
That’s a trade off that takes advantage, and if there’s one thing Trump’s trade wars have taught me, it’s that it’s never too late to say, “Hey, I’ve had enough.”
To hear Canada’s response is disappointing. We’ve not paid our NATO tab for years. The response that we’ve been friends for so long, and yet have a violent “Elbows Up” slogan. Those friends get old.
Learning to Speak
I’m proud to say that I’m not a two-bit whore. That’s to say that my partner told someone that he leaves a toonie on the nightstand. If it’s gone in the morning, then he knows he just slept with a two-bit whore.
That whore always says, “But it’s just a toonie and I needed change to get a coffee!”
They have their excuses, but when does it stop?
I told a friend that my mom cost me $500, my brother $1000, and my sisters got me for just over that, while I cut two boyfriends off, both at $12,000.
He replied that he wished he’d started with smaller amounts like I did, because his relatives got him for six figures.
Never a lender nor a borrower be, but when you lend money and it doesn’t come back, that’s an education in the character of that person.
Real men (and women) pay their debts, and the rest should come with red flags, like that red-letter “A” of the adulterer that’s still as shameful today as then, if we no longer use the lapel pin. But you haven’t heard of the Coldplay Kiss-Cam Cheaters?
In comedy, the trick of improv is always answering your turn with, “Yes, and…”
Life isn’t always a comedy, but what if that was a matter of perspective and choice about how you answer the universe. After all, what’s done is done. To move forward, what if you simply responded with, “Yes, and…”
As in “Yes, I’ll take your bid for $55 and charge you $45 for taxes, handling and other fees such that the total comes to, wait for it, $100 as advertised. Thank you.”
Funny First
Oh yes, life can be a tragedy, a drama, a romance, a comedy or whatever you want, depending on how you tell it or how you chose to perceive it.
Mine is a rom-com, because I’ve always enjoyed the light-hearted joy and generous use of serendipity. Suddenly, I see, this is how I want to be, and each moment might as well be so scripted.
Yes, and strength comes from continuing forward when faced with resistance. You can’t laugh all the time, or your cheeks would get sore.
Humour comes from surprise, as in surprise, I bet you didn’t know the sentence was going to end that way.
My partner has an irritating habit of mouthing my words as I speak them. Not like he’s listening, but at the exact time I’m saying them. It makes me feel like I am the most predictable communicator ever, and I long to change the end of the sentence before he can guess it.
Sometimes, I pull it off to laughter all around.
As I did last week, I noticed new inflammation on my partner’s skin. “Don’t worry about it,” he said, “I put the plantain on it when it happened, and it sucked the sting right out.”
See, you can teach old dogs new tricks when they realize, “Hey, that worked.” First, expose the perception, brace for the new experience, and then laugh about why you were so trepid.
Isn’t it funny when it always goes that way?
Courage Second
I spent the spring promising myself that I’d spend the summer going swimming every day, but I’ve only managed to go knee-deep every day. I’m such a scaredy-cat, while I laugh at my cat for being one too.
Wim Hof, the master of the cold experience, says you should start with cold showers. For me, a cold shower is a pure lake water shower. When you turn the cold as cold as it will go, our water system simply adds no hot water to it. Every day, I ask the shower if I will swim today, and every day I’ve said, “Not today.”
Yesterday, I put my hand into the bucket of minnows and exclaimed, “This water is hot!”
I’d expected that it was sitting in a car for a while, but no. “That’s straight out of the lake,” he said.
It’s the day. The air is now colder than the water, helping to create that perception of warmth, of, “Come on in, it’s so nice in here!”
Being second is easy, there’s always a role model. Even if you reject the role model, it’s easier to see one thing and it’s opposite than it is to see anything in a vast expanse of possibility.
When it comes to snowmobiling, I follow, and sometimes I’m stunned that we remained on the trail, when to me it looked like a wide-open white canvas. In life, I was born second, and I followed, even if sometimes, that meant taking the exact opposite.
In a world that always seemed either/or, black/white, it was illuminating to discover that there are actually a multitude of grey ambiguities and other choices between.
Leading Last
In snowmobiling, I announced in my helmet that, “I’m coming for you.” I stepped up my concentration, focus, courage, vision, intuition and everything else I needed to get on the gas and get going.
First, I passed one, and I announced the success. Then came the next one. Finally, I said it again, expecting to see an increase in speed, a last-minute ditch to keep the lead.
But there was nothing. A few high-fives, a “Thanks for making the ride interesting,” but no effort to race back. Real men laugh, not retaliate, as Taylor Sheridan’s Beth points out.
Without grand drama, I passed him and I knew what was coming next. A new sled.
I didn’t know for sure until I overheard him tell a salesman that he had one coming for next year,” as I listened to them discuss the new turbo sleds under development.
He didn’t know these communicators in our helmets could work over the span of a couple of blocks. Five-stars for clarity over distance for these bad boys.
A secret spilt, I spilt it too.
I was admonished. “It was supposed to be a secret!”
“Yeah, from me, not with me.” Prepositions matter, as those lawyers argued.
On a snowmobile, it’s just physics. If you and I have the same sled, and I am fifty pounds lighter than you, than it’s a matter of skill and courage until I pass you. This I learned when everyone scrambled to buy the new sled advertised as fifty pounds lighter.
Wait, I’m fifty-pounds lighter…
It wasn’t long until I found the label I knew I’d wear for as long as I could make it last: snowmobiler.
Air Your Truth
You’d think the easiest question to answer would be to declare one’s preference somewhere between yes and no, and be honest and authentic about it. Yet, we don’t.
We try to fit in; we exhibit entrenched training and values that might not translate the way we think we’re playing them out; we lie.
I think that we all know the truth when we lie, and the lying isn’t doing you any good. More, the people you think you are protecting or think you are doing it for, probably don’t really care and likely don’t want you to sacrifice to the extent that you are suffering.
Let up and let go. Exhale the truth and let it breathe.
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