Love

Happy New Year!

/ Christine Barnett / Leave a comment

We have a tradition of coming up with resolutions for the new year. In that spirit, here are some things that I want to work on this year, and probably much longer than that!
I want to let love be a guiding principle in my life, and I want to let go of fear whenever I can. This idea feels good and right to me. I don’t have well-defined plan how exactly how to accomplish this. But I’m reading some good books about it, and I believe some of my other areas of focus for the year will help me.
I want to become more mindful and meet each moment with my deepest values. Inherent in this idea is the need to define my deepest values. This sounds like a lot of work, but I think there are some truly meaningful rewards to be found here.
I want to live my life more intentionally. I want to examine my automatic scripts that I use in my daily life and rid myself of the ones that really don’t serve me. I want to be responsive instead of reactive.
This one is not a unique New Year’s resolution: I want to make care of my physical self a bigger priority. A long time ago, I got the idea that physical talents weren’t my strength. I think this core idea has allowed me to justify not focusing on physical fitness. But as I find myself smack dab in middle age, I think it would serve me to focus on fitness so that I can continue to do the things that I enjoy. There’s also this crazy possibility that I could gain physical skills and abilities!

I hope that you have a wonderful new year!  And I also wish that we all are successful working towards the goals that we choose to pursue!

Don’t Let Hate Win

/ Christine Barnett / Leave a comment

Try to remember that a symbol doesn’t have any power or meaning that you don’t give to it.
Instead of allowing a symbol to inspire feelings of hatred, contempt, disgust and intolerance, try instead to choose to experience the feelings that will increase the love and the kindness in our world.
When I see a symbol meant to inspire negative feelings, I choose to deny it that power. I choose to feel grateful for the positive steps we have made towards tolerance and acceptance of others, instead of experiencing feelings of frustration, separateness and hatred. I choose to be grateful for the opportunities we still have to become more loving and understanding, instead of feeling depressed and hopeless about the injustices some of us may still have to experience. Instead of allowing General Lee’s battle flag to bring up sorrow in me, I choose to celebrate all of the good people in the world who are not perfect, but still choose to demonstrate love, kindness and tolerance more often than hate, greed and ignorance.
Don’t let hate win. Be strong, and find a way to personally translate those symbols into reminders to spread love instead.

My Three Areas of Focus

/ Christine Barnett / Leave a comment

I am an Oprah groupie.  I am not ashamed to admit it.  I have been watching her broadcasts of Super Soul Sunday and Oprah’s Lifeclass on her OWN network since its inception.  Integrating some of the great ideas that have been brought to my attention through these shows has been an awesome, fulfilling and a truly joyful experience.  I enjoy exploring ideas that might shift my perception, and allow me to arrive at a new appreciation of life as a human being.

One of the things related to Oprah that I am entertaining currently is a “O-Course” called “Thrive.”  The instructor is Arianna Huffington.  Many of the things we have covered so far make me feel proud of myself.  I didn’t need the instruction to know that plentiful sleep is important or that working until you fall over is not success.  Today’s assignment was to identify three goals, and then to let go of goals that aren’t a priority and that you can’t realistically include in your life.  Completing this assignment gave me the opportunity to clarify and re-affirm three key areas of focus in my life.  I’ve decided to share these with the biosphere of the internet.  Here we go…

Living life by being present and full of love.  Using this presence to cultivate awesome relationships with myself, my husband, my son and each person I encounter each day.  Removing mindless and numbing things I do out of habit.  Practicing gratitude and making decisions made from love.  Being aware and fully experiencing all the joy in my daily experiences.

Getting my “house” in order:  removing chaos and providing management for my daily life.  Employing self-care strategies to feel great physically:  improve diet, increase exercise, increase physical touch and massage and remove unnecessary stressors.  Employing strategies to make household chores and administrative tasks more manageable and less stressful…and get them completed to create an environment of peace and harmony instead of worry about what needs to be done.  Letting go of self-judgment regarding the things that I realistically don’t have time to do.

Using my employment opportunity not only to help support my family, but as a fertile training ground for helping others while achieving personal growth.  Monitoring the amount of energy I allow my career to consume.  Continuing to cultivate a positive, curious and helpful attitude while working.  Cherishing those with whom I get to spend so much time each work day.  Doing excellent work by focusing on one task at a time and maintaining a slow, steady way of being.

A Milk Ring Means I Love You

/ Christine Barnett / Leave a comment

I am grateful for the plastic ring that results as you open a gallon jug of milk.  It wasn’t always this way.  I used to get irritated with my husband for leaving the “milk ring” on the kitchen counter.  Why couldn’t he just turn around and throw it in the trash?  Is that so difficult?  I personalized this to the ridiculous extreme.  I felt disrespected because he would carelessly leave this trash behind in my path for me to clean up.  What was he thinking?  Well, at first he wasn’t.  He had no evil intent.  Instead of using my powers for good, I used them to turn a harmless little action into a personal attack.  I had the amazing power to turn what should have been an insignificant event into a heaping helping of negative feelings.

Milk Ring

Once my husband learned about my ridiculousness, he began to teach me a lesson about life.  He began to leave the milk ring on the counter on purpose.  Sometimes he even puts them in my purse or in the pocket of my jacket for me to find unexpectedly.  Through my ability to stop taking this thing so seriously, and through his gentle and constant reminders, the milk ring has become a symbol of love, acknowledgement and humor.  Now, when I find a milk ring on the counter, it makes always makes me smile.  It reminds me of the lovely journey we are taking together.  It reminds me to laugh at myself when I am taking things too personally.  It reminds me that my husband is thinking about me, and that he loves me even when I’m being crazy.

Gratitude and a Happy Ego

/ Christine Barnett / Leave a comment

I finally started a blog last night.

It’s kind of a big deal for me because one of my goals is to be brave and to speak my truth.  I am still speaking through my writing, but my hope is that it will eventually lead to my actual spoken word, face-to-face with other people, most or all of the time.  That is not to say that I’m going around lying all the time.  I am actually a very honest and truthful person.  But my trick is the things I don’t say – the things that I keep to myself.  I have thoughts, feelings and responses about topics that can be controversial, or spawn judgment from others with strong opinions, that I keep to myself because of my fears of conflict, judgment and rejection.  I love, and I am inspired by the song “Brave,” sung by Sara Bareilles, from her fourth studio album, The Blessed Unrest (2013).  When asked about the song in interviews, Sara shares that she thinks that “there’s so much honor and integrity and beauty in being able to be who you are, [and] it’s important to be brave because by doing that you also give others permission to do the same.”  These are things I want in my life:  honor, integrity, beauty and the people around me (including myself) to feel willing and able to stand up and be and share who they truly are.  In the end, it’s all about love and acceptance.

But I wonder what would happen if you
Say what you wanna say
And let the words fall out
Honestly, I wanna see you be brave.
— Sara Bareilles and Jack Antonoff

Here’s where the gratitude comes in.  My expectation is that I would write and no one would read it.  And, because I am fighting some fear, I was OK with that.  But within hours of my first post, I got my first “Like.”  It was from a blogger named Eddy, whose writing has those courageous qualities I hope to achieve for myself.  And because of this simple form of acceptance, my needy ego is very happy.  I’m so grateful for the positive feedback and the speed in which it was delivered.  This will motivate me to share more.

A thankful shout-out to a brave and kind blogger, Eddy, for my first “Like”:  http://eddybcruz.wordpress.com/ 

A New Holiday: Zankieween

/ Christine Barnett / Leave a comment 
A deep analysis of a curious & possibly not age-appropriate fascination.

I am typically a responsible, forty-four year old woman with a fantastic husband and a wonderful kindergarten-aged son.  But each summer, I enjoy watching the show Big Brother, and I have recently become intrigued by one of Big Brother 16’s contestants, Zach Rance.  I periodically check his tweets and I follow him on Instagram.  I’ve also recently subscribed to his fledgling YouTube channel.  In addition, I happened to notice the #Zankieween tweets on Halloween, and I stayed up late into the wee hours to read the tweets and see the pictures and videos of Zach with his friend, Frankie Grande, at a Halloween party.  I enjoyed seeing them be each other for Halloween, watching them dance together, and enjoyed seeing the salacious selfie of Frankie with Zach biting his ear.

Zach biting Frankie's ear

Zach biting Frankie’s ear

Frankie and Zach with the Rance Family

Frankie and Zach with the Rance Family

For those who do not watch Big Brother, I’ll need to tell you the “Zankie” story.  Zankie is a combination of the names “Zach” and “Frankie,” Zach met Frankie, an openly gay man, in the Big Brother house.  They pretty much instantly became great friends (called a “Bromance” on Big Brother), and possibly something more in the romantic sense.  Zach says that Frankie is one of the funniest and smartest people he knows, and those are the most important qualities to him in other people.  They were more than typically physically affectionate for two guys while together in the BB House, often hugging and cuddling each other.  But, Zach, in a few of the serious interviews I’ve read online, professes that he is straight and that Frankie is just his best friend.  But his words, actions and reactions to Frankie in the Big Brother House, and after leaving, seem to go contrary to that of a straight man.  And there are still a bunch of Big Brother fans that are hoping that the relationship develops into something more.  This was the main fuel for the trending of #Zankieween on October 31, 2014.

Being an introspective personality, I have given some deep thought about why I (a middle-aged, happily married, straight woman) am so fascinated with this young kid from Florida, and additionally, his relationship with his friend Frankie.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:

  • I genuinely like Zach’s personality. He is energetic, funny and clever.  Even though he is highly sarcastic, I still can sense that he is a good-hearted person.  I have not seen a boring interview of Zach Rance yet.  He just doesn’t take himself, life or other people too seriously, which is a quality I admire.  He also seems to have a supporting and loving relationship with his younger brother and the rest of his family.  Moms love this.
  • But most importantly, I am impressed with his bravery. He is not afraid to openly express his feelings and emotions, at least some of the time.  I think this is what got me hooked.  He professed to Frankie that he was in love with him on the show, and he knew that thousands of people could see the footage.  He wasn’t afraid to be physically close with Frankie on the show with everyone watching.  He is also, evident after #Zankieween, still friends and physically close with Frankie even though it may go against the theory that he is straight.  I wish I were as brave as Zach, and I desire to be more open expressing myself and my thoughts, emotions and feelings.
  • I simply enjoy a romantic, “odds are against it,” love story. Just as I like watching a fictional “chick flick,” I enjoy the suspense and possibility that there could be something more, and that everything will turn out great in the end, even with difficultly and betrayal in the relationship (Frankie betrayed Zach on Big Brother).  What I think makes this even more interesting to me, is that these are actual people, not just fictional characters.  Will there be a “Happily Ever After?”

Irregardless of my temporary state of teen-aged-like obsession, it doesn’t really matter to me whether or not Zach has romantic feelings for Frankie.  There is a true love that exists between the two of them.  Whether it is romantic or platonic – it truly doesn’t matter to me.  Love is so much bigger than those limiting ideas.  And in the end, what is more important than rooting for love?