Feel 2018: February Observations and Reflections

I can’t believe it’s already a week into March!  February went by in a blink… except for the days that I was in India.  Those days dragged on and seemed to last forever.

I’m here to report on month #two of my Feel 2018 personal research project.

 

My relationship with my dad  

First, if you read my January Reflections post then you already know about my thoughts about my relationship with my dad.  So I’d like to report about a little bit more progress in the right direction.

Like I mentioned, I have been working on changing my thought from “I haven’t ever had a very close relationship with my dad” to “How would I show up in certain situations if I believed that my dad and I had a good/close relationship?  Would would my actions be?”  

Because of this new thought, I have been working on being more intentional about contacting my dad here and there (mostly through texting so far), which is definitely more of an effort than I was making before.  In my January post, I mentioned that even though I had been texting my dad more, he wouldn’t ever respond back.  I wasn’t worried about this or even really bothered, it’s just something that I had observed.

But an interesting thing happened this month.  A few days into the month, during breakfast, I texted my dad something random that my daughter had said about his broken foot.  No response.  I didn’t even think about it.  Well, hours later, right before dinner, I got a text from him.  It wasn’t really in response to the text that I had sent, but it was about his foot and how he got a new cast.  I responded back and then he responded back.  Then back and forth, back and forth, we had a 10 minute or so text conversation. 

Nothing monumental.  Nothing sappy or “daddy/daughtery”.  Haha.  I was feeling a mixture of happiness that we were actually chatting with each other and making a little bit of progress but also feeling a lot of awkwardness because it’s unusual and uncomfortable for my dad and I to be chit chatting. haha. I tried to lean into the awkwardness feeling and just let it be. Improving my relationship with my dad will require a lot of this.

So that was one of the success moments in regards to strengthening my relationship with my dad.  Another success happened on the day when we got back from India.  A few hours after getting home, I got a text from my dad asking if we were home yet.  I was kind of shocked to see that he had initiated a text conversation with me…and that it showed that he was concerned about me and wanted to know if we made it home safely.  As far as I knew, he didn’t even know we were returning that day. 

I replied and he replied and on and on.  It ended up being a 15 minute or so conversation.  At first it was just some small talk but then he asked if I had a good trip.  I know that this doesn’t sound like any sort of big deal, but for some reason, this question felt like it had some weight to it.  Like my dad was actually expressing interest in my life.  Of course, I know that he has always been interested in my life.  But typically, he doesn’t really express that out loud.  I resisted the urge (because the awkwardness was rising up in me) to just give him a quick, basic answer like “yeah, it was good.”  And instead, I decided to open my heart a little bit and give him more details about how crazy the trip was and how I was really glad to be home.

A few days later, I was talking to my mom on the phone and my dad happened to be listening in as well.  My mom was asking about my trip and since my dad was there, I kind of had a phone conversation with both of them.

Again, none of this sounds like any big deal at all.  Just some random, seemingly inconsequential text conversations and a “speaker phone” phone conversation.  But to me, they mean something.  They mean that progress is being made and that my quest to get more in touch with my feelings and allow them to propel me forwards is working.  Something, however little it may seem, is happening to my relationship with my dad.  And that’s exciting.

 

Experiences in India

I can’t write about February without writing about India.  India took over my brain for most of the month. 

India was quite the experience. There were definitely some good experiences and we made some good memories.  But a lot of it was way out of my comfort zone and I had plenty of opportunities to feel emotions.  Sometimes I was successful with leaning into my feelings (both positive and negative), other times, I just wanted to numb my feelings and for the trip to end so I could be back home.

 

 

 

Here are some of my thoughts…

We spent a lot of time just sitting around in our hotel room, and that got pretty boring.  We were jet lagged so we woke up pretty early most mornings, but in India, a lot of people don’t really start their day until later.  Also, our friend was busy with wedding prep stuff so he usually wasn’t available to hang out with us until the afternoon. 

Our hotel room.  See that bed?  All 3 inches of that mattress?  It was really uncomfortable.  But that is a luxerious bed in Begusarai.  Most people sleep on beds that are super hard – when we sat on their beds (they don’t have couches), it felt like they were just a piece of wood with some quilt batting on top.  We Americans are definitely spoiled.

We spent hours and hours hanging out in this room.  If we had known how much downtime we would have, we would have come for 2-3 less days.

 

We were too nervous to go out by ourselves because barely anyone spoke english (and we definitely don’t speak Hindi) and people would just stare at us and follow us around – literally.  We had a few instances which got pretty uncomfortable.  As far as our friend knows, we were the first Americans to ever come to Begusarai.  It’s not a tourist location at all so no foreigners ever go there.  I was literally the only Caucasian person there.  Jershon could blend in a little bit more because he has brown skin (although lighter than theirs) and black hair.  But me – with my blonde hair and fair skin – I stuck out like a sore thumb.  A throbbing thumb. 

These girls were pretty excited to take a picture with me.  Haha

(they don’t typically smile in photos)

 

Being so popular and pretty much like a celebrity was flattering and I didn’t mind it at first.  But by the end, it was pretty annoying.  I just wanted to blend in and be normal.  I was tired of the wedding photographer and videographer taking so many pictures and videos of us (throughout the 3 days of wedding celebrations).  And we also had an uncomfortable experience when we were visiting one of the temples as part of one of the pre wedding ceremonies.  It was late evening so it was dark outside and we were inside the temple gates so we kind of felt blocked in.  Some random guy came up to us and wanted to take a photo with us.  Our friend’s family members were pretty protective of us and told him “no” pretty forcefully and there was a small argument between our friend’s uncle and the random guy.  It stirred up some fear in me and I just wanted to go home.    

Having Americans (or any foreigners) visit Begusarai is so rare that they wrote about us in the paper.  Haha.

I can’t read Hindi so I have no idea what it says, but hopefully it was nice.  Haha

 

The pre wedding ceremonies (for the groom… the bride did her own ceremonies in her town) lasted for 3 days (more like 3 late afternoons/evenings).  The actual official wedding ceremonies (that involved both the bride and groom) happened in the middle of the night on the last night.

As part of the ceremonies, each of the nights, a large group of us would walk a half mile or so (to different locations each time) behind this party bus (in the middle of the street so traffic just had to drive around us). The party bus was blasting loud music – like hurt your ears, we (Jershon and I) wore ear plugs to keep our ears from being damaged, loud. Even though it wasn’t that far of a walk, it would take us over an hour each evening to get to the destination because every couple minutes, we would stop to dance. Indians love their dancing.  I don’t love dancing, I feel super awkward when I dance.  But for the most part, I just tried to enjoy myself and embrace the experience.  For the majority of the first two nights of this, I was successful and genuinely had some fun. Other times (especially by the 3rd night), I just didn’t want to even try anymore. I was tired of forcing myself to dance.  And I was tired of the people forcing (sometimes literally – they would hold my arms up in the air when they noticed that I wasn’t dancing) me to dance.

 

 

 

Throughout the trip, I learned to stand my ground more and decided that I would rather feel shame (that shows up when I don’t feel like I fit in) mixed with empowerment for standing up for myself and not giving into their pushing and peer pressure rather than feeling shame + more shame for people pleasing.  This didn’t just apply to the dancing.  A lot of the people were very pushy with offering food to us and wouldn’t take no for an answer.  I understood that they were trying to be nice and welcoming but it was frustrating to not have them accept a polite decline.  Food was stressful for me partially because of the flavors and spiciness, but mostly because of food/water safety issues that I was paranoid about.     

I am a fairly sensitive person so to me, everything in India was intense and sensory overload. I often felt so overstimulated there.

• Sounds: constant beeping, people talking really loudly, especially in the middle of the night, super loud music blasting from party busses, loud annoying elevator music right outside our hotel room, etc.;
• Smells: pollution, trash, Indian food, smoking, etc.;
• Tastes: Indian food is not only super spicy, but also just intense in weird flavors (I definitely prefer American versions of Indian food.)
• Visual overstimulation: they love their loud, bright colors;

 

 

 

Eating a traditional meal with our friend and his family

 

 

 

During the wedding ceremonies, the photographer was taking photos of the bride and he was literally inches from her face. I don’t know why he couldn’t just step back and use his zoom lens, but instead, he was literally right by her face. And I thought to myself “that is the symbol of India…. all up in your face. Personal space (in multiple ways) doesn’t mean anything to them.”

I am realizing now that I think a big reason why I didn’t love a lot of the person to person experiences in India was because I felt resentment.  And I felt that resentment because I wasn’t good at making and keeping boundaries.  It’s really difficult to have boundaries when you are walking into a completely different culture with different traditions and ways of interacting with others.  And then throw on top that we could barely communicate verbally with each other because of the language barrier.  

Like I said, India wasn’t all bad.  We made some fun and crazy memories.  It was neat to meet our friend’s family and get to know some of them (the ones that spoke english and could communicate with us).  I gained a lot of gratitude for my life at home and for the privilege of being an American.  And I had a really special spiritual experience that strengthened my testimony in a real way and I’ve reflected on this several times over the past few weeks.  All in all, I’m glad that we went on this trip but I don’t really have any desire to go back to India.  Haha.

I’m sure some people would love to go on a trip there.  It wasn’t always an amazing experience for me though.  It doesn’t help that I came into the experience with strong hesitations already.  It also didn’t help that I didn’t sleep very well the entire trip (jet lag + a really uncomfortable bed). 

I kind of feel shame rising up (I know I should be more grateful for this opportunity to visit the other side of the world) for even writing my real thoughts and sharing them here.  But there you have it.  I didn’t love India.

 

Buffering

I wrote about buffering in this post and I’ve been reflecting on what my typical buffering situations are and why I feel the need to buffer in those moments.  

I did some brainstorming one afternoon and here are some observations that I’ve made so far, although I still have some digging and discovering to do…

What do I buffer with?

• sometimes food
• social media
• sometimes cleaning
• sometimes buying things
• consuming information

• boredom 
• irritation (whining kids)
• overstimulation (loud noises from the kids, whining, etc.)
• under-stimulation (unintelligent and not mentally stretching conversations with the kids)
• awkwardness (when I am with my siblings and parents)

 

I think that my biggest emotion that I try to avoid on a daily basis is boredom – boredom with playing with my kids, talking to my kids, boredom with our possessions and wanting something new and exciting. I crave novelty.

• maybe feeling useless in the world and like I don’t have anything to contribute 
• losing myself as an individual and “only being a mom”
• losing the pleasure of delicious foods
• missing out (not knowing what’s going on on social media)

Here’s a journal entry from February 27th about a success and sweet moment that I had because I didn’t buffer.

“After dinner tonight, I took the girls upstairs to give them a bath. For a couple seconds, I thought about grabbing my phone off the kitchen counter and bringing it with me like I often do but I already had my social media time for the day (I’m trying out scheduled social media times for myself instead of just checking it whenever I’m bored). So I left my phone on the counter.

Anyway, a couple minutes into bath time, I started wondering how big the average 20 week baby is (my friend is at the hospital right now, starting her induction to deliver her baby that passed away). I thought “I could run down to the kitchen super fast and grab my phone” (more like call down to Jershon and have him bring it up to me because I’m paranoid about leaving the girls in the bath). But I decided not to. And then a couple minutes later, I got to have a sweet little moment of being fully present while I watched Roxanne. She was holding her hands (palms up) under the running water and just sitting there in awe at the warm water hitting her hands. Every so often, she would pick up some of the bubbles from the bath and rub them between her fingers. Then she would pick up a hand full of bubbles and put it on her head. She’d turn around, look at me, and laugh. 🙂

As I was watching her, I was trying to put myself in her place. And I was thinking about what she might be thinking. Maybe she was thinking about how amazing it is to have a body and how she has waiting so long for this and here she is, finally having an earthly experience and experiencing what it’s like to have a body. I mean what a cool sensation to feel the warm water hitting the palms of your hands! And these bubbles! They are so fun!

It was such a little thing, but a really sweet experience. One, to just watch my baby enjoying the bath, and two, to think about how amazing it really is to have a body. I often take it for granted and just sort of forget about this amazing gift. But tonight, in this little moment of mindful presence, I remembered.

If I would have taken my phone up with me and buffered away the “boredom” of bath time, I would have missed out on this.”

 

So there you have it… some Feel 2018 reflections from February.  I hope to keep up with this monthly reporting.  It’s a nice way to track some of my progress with this goal.