Whose Bravery?

I'm struck every day by how we judge others by our personal standards.  Oh.  You've noticed too?

This past weekend, my husband and I were staying at a place where they furnish bikes.  There were two of them and both of them felt uncomfortable for me.  The seats were too high and I didn't feel like I could stop with any stability.  My husband called me a wimp for not agreeing to get on one even though I didn't want to.  The discussion moved forward in that way of discussions and soon I was being accused of not ever wanting to take chances or push my physical limits.

In the old days this type of 'discussion' would have deteriorated rapidly.  But on that day I took a minute to think about what he was saying.  He was saying that he liked to take chances and push himself physically and that if I didn't there was something wrong with me.

"Okay. I get what you're saying," I said.  "So, I tell you what.  I'm going to give you a piece of paper and in five minutes I want you to write the beginning of a story.  Then I want you to read it to a group of people, some of whom you barely know."  He looked at me like I was crazy.  "Then," I went on, "I want you to spend hours expanding it and revising it and after you feel like you have something worthwhile, I want you to send it to a dozen literary magazines and wait for them to reject it. And if you don't do this, I"ll tell you I think you're a wimp.  Or stupid."

Hmmm.  Something started to sink in maybe?

"In the past seven years, I've been brave in ways I never thought possible," I told him beginning to get emotional.  "They aren't your ways of being brave, but they were acts of courage nonetheless.  For you to hold me to your standards of bravery is patently unfair."

He got it. And I appreciate it. 

What I took away from the discussion is that he would like for me to do more things with him that are physically challenging.  He has certainly put himself in situations at my urging where he wasn't all that comfortable.  So I'm going to work on it.

Is there a place where you're holding people to your standards without respect for their strengths?  Where are some places where you might stretch yourself, be courageous where you haven't been?

Less Is More

A couple of months ago, I wanted to enter a writing contest. We were to choose a photograph and write a story to go along with it. After writing mine, I realized that my four-hundred words had to be cut by one hundred words.

Now you have to be concise to tell a story in four hundred words and the thought of taking out a fourth of them was daunting. But I did it, and I think my story was stronger for the purge.

I've been thinking about how that relates to my communications: email, conversations, letters, etc. Here is a typical conversation between my husband and me:

Me: What would you like for dinner? Do you want to go out or order in? I could cook that tenderloin or we could have breakfast for dinner. What do you think?

Hubby: Um...

Me: You're probably sick of leftovers. Let's see... there's a pizza in the freezer? Would that be good? But we did decide that we'd quit eating so much fatty food.

Hubby: Um...

Who can get a word in edgewise??

In conversation, critiques, and emails, I tend to say the same thing three or four different ways, or even the same way several times.

And one last thing I do: I always say one sentence too much. The last sentence is the one I usually replay over and over asking, "WHY DID YOU SAY THAT???"

In this renovation year, I'm going to try to be more concise. Stop repeating myself. Give people a chance to answer my questions. Write succinctly (and start by taking out every word that ends in -ly).

My husband used to work with a man who had a sign on his desk that pointed toward the person across from him. It said, "GET TO THE POINT." Good advice.