Wyzga On Words

Advice To Navy Seals In Training - And For The Rest Of Us.

U.S. Navy SEALs (Sea, Air and Land Team) take on the tasks of war focusing on forward operations and combat support.

What I want to know is: How do they endure the grueling mental and physical workouts that weed one brother from another?  Click here to see some photos of U.S. Navy SEALs in training.

Here's a clue: some advice from Joe Maguire (Deputy Commander U.S. Special Operations in Pacific Command-COMPAC) sent to me on April 24th, 2011 when I was ready to call it quits:

"First, never give in to the pressure of the moment.  Whenever you're hurting just hang in there.  Finish the day.  If you're still feeling bad, think about it long and hard before you quit.

Second, take it one day at a time.  One evolution at a time.  Don't let your thoughts run away with you.  Don't start planning to bail out because you're worried about the future and how much you can take.  Don't look ahead to the pain.  Just get through the task and know success is ahead." 

Yes, I'm a U.S. Navy Nurse; but I'm no SEAL.  I'm no SEAL; but I'm still standing.  Taking it one evolution at a time, I fall down 7 and get up 8.

It's Never Too Late To Start Heading In The Right Direction.

What does Beethoven have to do with friendship and compass headings? 

My friend, Stephanie West Allen, sent me a post she wrote in 2002.  It's a wonderful story about the importance of friends who turn us in the right direction.  I call this direction "True North" on my personal compass heading.  I am gravitating toward it with the help of faith, family and friends.

For me, the heart of Allen's blog post is the series of questions she posed which may also be a help to you.  Excerpt.

"Some Questions for You

What gift inside of you is so strong that it must triumph over any adversity (or shyness or inactivity or busy-ness) and  come out for others to enjoy? Are you still holding it in, sapping creative energy by squelching it? What will it take for this ability, this genius, to flow out of you on a stream of inspiration?

We all have our genius with which we can make our world and that of others a more beautiful place. Part of being a member of the brotherhood of man is sharing our gifts with each other. What will bring your tear of joy?

And one more question, who in your life gently turns you around when you are facing in the wrong direction so you can see your standing ovation?"

What are your answers? 

And what other questions does this writing prompt as you turn and head in the direction of your True North?

Suiting Up For The Next Generation.

Saturday last saw me all suited up and talking to upwards of 50 folks who came to The Ecology Center to learn about honey bees (Apis mellifera), pure local honey, and becoming a backyard beekeeper or "beek."

Click here to access the link to the Q&A blog with an observation hive video.

The adults posed many questions showing lots of interest and concern about the plight of honeybees (the canary in the mine of our world), Colony Collapse Disorder, how to distinguish real honey from the store bought fake stuff, and so on.  I felt like I was on "Stump the Beekeeper."

But the real excitement, equally insightful questions and "ah ha!" moments were shared by the young people.  There were eight year old farmer wannabes, ten year old girls taking pages of notes with pencil in spiral bound notebooks so they could prepare for a class report, six year old hands held in the air so long to ask a question that first one arm and then the next and then back to the other were raised.   The teenagers were so engaged they did not text during the hour - well, as far as I could see.

I passed around honeycomb taken from the wild when I rescued swarmed colonies, frames of built-out comb used to raise brood and store honey, frames of old comb where bees had died emerging from their cells, and showed off the beek basics I carry around in my beek box.  The young people were ecstatic when I displayed a photo of lavishly drawn designs painted with wild colors on stacks of hive boxes - no bland white boxes for these kids.  Everybody wanted to get into the act setting up a backyard hive.

Some days despite my Aquarian tendencies I can present a pretty cynical face about the future of the planet.  As I posed for the last cell phone picture and packed up my beek gear I knew that just as we "let bees be bees" the same applies to kids: give them some ideas, support and direction; then let them be as they find their way.  

I believe we are going to be just fine. 

Planting For Future Generations.

I want to plant an orchard.  I want to feed people apples and other wholesome items that come from apple trees.  I am not a young woman.  Somedays I get discouraged that I will ever plant and till my own fields. 

When I confided my uncertainty about my orchard dreams to a wise storyteller friend, she reminded me of one of her favorite "Hodja" stories.

 Nasreddin Hodja is a cultural figure in Turkey. Depending on the story he may be a fool or a philospopher.  What we can say for sure is that each culture has a "Hodja" who is very much like us.

Here is the story she told me:

Planting an Orchard

One day Nasreddin Hodja was planting tree seedlings in a field near his house. His neighbors collected at the edge of the field to watch him work.  They laughed at his efforts.  "Hey! old man, Hodja, why bother?  You are so old you will be dead before even one of these trees bears fruit." The Hodja continued to plant. After a time he straightened his back, looked at the crowd and smiled.  "Yes, what you say may be true.  But I have eaten apples planted by others.  Now it is my time to plant.  I am planting for the next generation."  And he bent back to his work.

So often we can get caught up in making today happen.  Time goes by.  We may sacrifice dreams because they sound foolish, especially as we get older and become less able to see them all the way through to fruition.  But this story reminds me to hold fast to what is important: now is the time to plant.  Plant the dream - for the next generation.

NOTE:

You can also find versions of this story in the following resources:

Gross, Michael. The Fable of the Fig Tree. (New York, NY: Henry Z. Walck, 1975).

MacDonald, Margaret Read. Earth Care: World Folktales to Talk About (North Haven, CT: Linnet Books, 1999). 162pp. $26.50; $17.50pa. ISBN 0-208-02416-6; 0-208-02426-3pa.

Iraq Vet With PTSD Finds Solace In A Film Role.

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, has seen its share of wounded military men and women.  Many have war-inflicted wounds you can see.  Many others have something not so easily detected: post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Sgt. Matthew Pennington is one such survivor.  James Dao brings his story to clear relief in his reporting for the NYTimes, "Acting Out War's Inner Wounds."

When I read the article I was reminded of the line by pre-eminent writer Zora Neale Hurston that I have embedded in my email signature line and on which I have written: "There is no greater burden than carrying an untold story."  I believe that what Hurston meant is when we share our stories we find we are very much alike.  I don't know whether the sharing or the reflection of our experience in that of another human being is where the burden lightens; but I can tell you that it does.

“We are lonesome animals.  We spend all of our life trying to be less lonesome.  One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the Listener to say - and to feel - ‘Yes! that is the way it is, or at least that is the way I feel it.  You are not as alone as you thought.’” [John Steinbeck]

 The story continues:

"For Mr. Pennington, medications seemed to worsen his depression and therapy did not ease his anxiety. He seemed headed for divorce, isolation and perhaps alcoholism. And there his story might have ended, a case study on the intransigence of war’s psychological scars. But it did not end there.

In 2009, an unexpected opportunity landed in his e-mail inbox: a casting call, forwarded by a friend in Nashville, from an undergraduate filmmaker looking for someone to play a combat veteran who had lost a leg, had post-traumatic stress disorder and lived in Maine.

This is my life, Mr. Pennington thought.

So on a lark, Mr. Pennington — whose last appearance on stage was in middle school and who had become nervous in crowds and, indeed, avoided most human contact — decided that fixing his life depended on performing before a camera.

“I thought acting would be so out of the normal that it would force me to deal with things,” he recalled. “I wanted my life back.”

The struggle by wounded veterans like Mr. Pennington to reclaim their lives is the unfolding next chapter in America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2001, 46,000 American service members have been injured in combat, perhaps a third or more seriously. Those veterans now face years of rehabilitation at a cost of billions of dollars annually.

In the coming weeks, The New York Times will profile a few of those veterans. Their cases say much about the critical importance of high-quality health care and loving families. But as with Mr. Pennington, they also underscore the individuality of recovery, where the most effective therapies are often discovered by the veterans themselves."

I am not writing a happy ending.  That's not for me to write.  If one is written it will be Pennington's doing.  What strikes me is that yet again the story of who we are, where we've come from, what we've seen, how we have persevered will help all of us get home.

You might wish to click here to watch the story in video form.

Women Who Pursue Their Own Desire. What Dream Is Yours To Capture?

One flew planes and the other swims with sharks.

One died at the age of 90 and the other is 62 with an ocean to cross.

Both are one more reason I gotta say, "We're not here for a long time but a good time."

Betty Haas Pfister was 19 when she paid a dollar at an air show to fly in a plane.  Over the next decades of her life, Pfister made her home in the sky.  Excerpt.

"It was the first of hundreds of flights that Betty Haas Pfister would make — dozens as a member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, or WASPs, during World War II, and many more as one of the nation’s most successful female competitive pilots. (And not counting those as a Pan Am stewardess in the days when women had a much harder time getting hired as pilots.)

Ms. Haas Pfister, a two-time winner of the All Women’s International Air Race, died on Nov. 17 at her home in Aspen, Colo., her daughter Suzanne said. She was 90."

Do you know what captivates me most?  Two things: the photograph of Pfister sitting on the nose of her P-39 fighter, and then when WWII was done with her she found her way to live life her way.  Excerpt.

"As one of 1,074 WASPs, Ms. Haas Pfister ferried planes from factories to domestic airfields or to ports for shipment overseas. WASPs also towed targets for aerial gunnery practice. Thirty-eight died in accidents. But by December 1944, with the war winding down, the women were deemed no longer needed and the unit was disbanded.

Ms. Haas Pfister found work as an aircraft mechanic and, very occasionally, flying cargo planes. In 1948, for Pan American, she became the first stewardess ever hired with more than 1,000 hours of flight time. “She got to travel all over the world,” her daughter said. “But she’d rather have been in the cockpit any day of the week.”

Several years earlier, Ms. Haas Pfister had paid $750 for an Army surplus P-39 fighter that she named Galloping Gertie. She flew in dozens of air shows and races around the country, and in 1950 she won the All Women’s International Air Race from Montreal to West Palm Beach, Fla. Two years later, she recaptured that title in a flight from St. Augustine, Fla., to Welland, Ontario."

Closer to ground is another woman who refuses to give up. I blogged about Diana Nyad just as she was getting ready to swim 103 miles of open ocean and then when she called it over. In her story recently told to Elizabeth Weil of the NYTimes, "62 And Life To Go," Nyad is going at it again.  Call her crazy.  Call her determined.  Just don't call her quits.  Excerpt.

 "But as Nyad approached 60, she didn’t feel satisfied; she felt regret. Her 10-year relationship with the woman she calls the love of her life ended in 1994. Four years after that, Nyad sat outside a Los Angeles hospital while that woman had a baby with her new partner, Nyad needing to be there. Nyad’s father died the same year. Her mother died in 2007. Single and childless, she was a romantic without a lover, a striver without a goal. Shouldn’t her existence add up to more? “I wasn’t going to adopt a child, but I knew I needed something of that order,” Nyad said when we met early in November. “Something that would require everything in me. No time for neurotic meanderings about the past, no luxury of that. Got to be my best self.”

So Nyad started swimming again, training for Cuba, hoping to master the crossing that eluded her in her prime. Nyad suddenly seemed happier, secretive, tanned; her friends thought perhaps she had taken a lover. After five months of pool training, Nyad flew to Mexico to test herself in the open water. She did two long swims off Todos Santos — six hours and eight hours. “That’s when I knew I could do it,” Nyad says. “Endurance is not a young person’s game. I thought I might even be better at 60 than I was at 30. You have a body that’s almost as strong, but you have a much better mind.”

My hands are showing their age.  Yet, if it truly is as Nyad says, "Endurance is not a young person's game," then count me in for another life!  We're not here for a long time but a good time.  If you can touch that dream, you can catch it.  What's yours?

What Is Your Good Work?

I look at my hands turning older and think of all I still want to do.

In the act of trimming a lamb's hooves I am concentrating, focused on the task at hand and the warm body nestled under my arm.

I am reminded that now is the time to be your own unabashed, unashamed true self.  This world needs all the breath we have.

 

 

 

When Perplexed, Return To Your Roots And Allow Yourself To Be Deeply Lost.

Maybe you know this feeling of "being lost in a dark wood where the true way is wholly lost to you."  [Dante]

What do you do then?

I know what I do: I go back to my roots in storytelling and poetry.  I summon the voices of those whose work I rely on.  As I have written before, one such voice is the poet and author David Whyte.

I have been memorizing a poem I heard Whyte read.  I was lucky to find it on line to share with you.  The poem is part of an interview on the topic of creativity which you may read in whole or in part by clicking here.  The poem gives one permission to stand still, forget about the logistical conversations that consume our mind asking how to get from here to there, and for a moment be deeply lost in what you yearn for.

"There is a teaching story out of the Northwest Native American tradition that would be told by an elder to a young girl or boy who asked the question, "What do I do when I am lost in he forest?" In other words, "What do I do when I've lost my creative fire?" which is really "What do l do when I forget who I am?" It has been rendered into modern English in a marvelous way by David Wagoner. Here is the answer the elder gives:

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead

and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here.

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger.

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers.

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it you may come back again.

saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you.

You art surely lost. Stand still.

The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you."

As a storyteller I believe that the choices I and my fellow tellers make about the stories we tell are driven as much by us and our own needs as by the need of the story to be told.  It has been my experience time and again that a program of stories I prepared to tell at a gathering was shifted around by some force of creativity or intuition.  A story not on the program but which ended up being told is the very one that someone in the gathering needed to hear.

I cannot account for it; that's just the way it is.  Sometimes, you must let the story find you.

The Secret Of Life.

Henry Moore was a celebrated sculptor and a poet; at least that's how I interpret his free-form works that look like flash-frozen Play-Doh forms conjured up by a day-dreaming child. 

Moore said,

"The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for your whole life. And the most important thing is -- it must be something you cannot possibly do."

To what are you devoting this one precious life? 

How To Run Your Own Board Meeting.

The other day I received an email inquiry from my friend, colleague and fellow blawger, Stephanie West Allen, asking about my business plan.  She was asking friends and family whether they had a business plan, or used a business plan because she was considering developing one.

It was such an interesting question (for this Aquarian) that I picked up the phone and we had a chat about who uses - and eschews - business plans.  In the course of our conversation I shared with Stephanie my business model and she asked me to share it with you.

Set up a table in your home or office along the lines of the one in the photo above. Provide a chair and a place seating for each of the members of your "organization" along with an icon that represents the work they do.  My "organization" has a CEO, CFO, and a department head for IT, Marketing & Sales Department, and Accounts Receivable.

I serve as the CEO so my seat is at the head of the table.  I give my quarterly report to the other members and then move into the CFO seat where I offer a financial affairs report directing my attention to the now empty CEO seat. I continue in this manner all around the table before returning to my CEO seat to conclude the meeting.

What's the point?  Besides exercising my imagination and giving me some company in the boardroom, this exercise serves to bring Lightning Rod Communications to life.  When we step into the shoes (or seat) of another, we experience things differently. I can become, for example, the Marketing head who is responsible for getting our message into the global world in ways that I might not if I was simply intellectualizing about "What do we do to be seen and heard?" Serving as the CFO who actually reports on our financial health makes me responsible and responsive to the realities of the current fiscal environment.

Plus, I get to eat whatever is on each plate as I make my way around the "boardroom table"; another reason I don't hold these meetings at night and serve wine.  Although with the current economy that might not be such a bad idea....