The Cost of Freedom (and no…this isn’t a political statement.)

I saw a red-tailed hawk flying above me in our hay field today while I was riding one of our horses. Clear blue sky as his back-drop; he soared for minutes above me- surveying the fields below. And, for that moment I was transfixed as he circled above me, flashing his white wings donned with an ornate black pattern underneath. FREEDOM is the only word that comes to my mind when I see such creatures. Absolute freedom. I felt gratitude, I felt inspired, and truth be told I felt a little envious as well.

I am not this free, and most of the people I know aren’t either. There are times, as a mother, wife, business owner (insert any of the many roles you fulfill here) where I know for certain I’m not nearly as free as I once was. My phones remind me as they ring throughout the day. My email reminds me, that real people with real needs await my actual response. I see the house I live in, the horses who need fed twice a day, the dog, the cats, friends, the stuff that needs cleaned, the bills that need paid, the staff that needs direction, and the children who need absolutely everything. I am not all that free.

I remember in college and grad school having a rule that I would never own anything that didn’t fit in my 1984 Chevy Celebrity Station wagon. I moved frequently back then from place to place; dropping out of college from time to time to travel. Trains, busses, hitch-hiking to Ithaca college to hang out with theater people for a while who were working winter-stock theater. Driving to California with a girlfriend the year after to look for the work we ultimately failed to get. I hooked up with some Buddhists there who taught me many things before I decided to come back to Indiana to complete my degree. My girlfriend traveled north to Seattle with some friends and I was left to make the 20+ hour drive home alone. I remember calling my dad and asking him to come make the drive home with me… that there was a plane-ticket waiting for him at the airport if he would just come to keep me company for the long drive home. We drove that manual Chevy home without a clutch which went out somewhere in Nevada…stressful to say the least but an all-around great memory of singing Carley Simon’s "Mocking Bird" at the top of our lungs and push starting the car at every mandatory refuel.

And there was a trip to Paris I made for next to nothing…where I stayed with some girls I didn’t know, when my Venezualian friend and travel companion was deported for landing without a Visa. I got by on the one word I still knew in French; “Café” as I drank espresso, and smoked cigarettes and read Leo Buscaglia books in the café’s. I met some Arabs there who I could converse with in Spanish, our only shared language. We talked politics and I was amazed at how much more they knew about the world than I did. They’d spent time in Cuba, Paris, and the Middle East. Their world view impressed me. They were the warmest, warmest people I’d ever met. In sum, they fed me for nearly a week and kept their pub open late for my friends and me so we could drink wine and play the juke box when we ran out of money to do anything else. They got us a pass into a club frequented by American models working in Paris. It was the first time a realized that models without makeup aren't very pretty, and that I truly hate club music.

Finally, the trip I made solo to the Outer Banks, where I had vacationed as a child. I camped, just me and my dad’s dog (who I borrowed), in the snowy mountains of West Virginia on our way. I built a campfire in a completely empty campground and was pretty sure I could handle anything if I could survive that bitter cold and isolation. I’ve never ever felt so capable in my life. We made it, that Aussie and me, to North Carolina only to discover it was snowing there too. I was lucky enough to run across an old friend I hadn’t seen in years, who took me in, lent me a much needed shower, and gave me shelter for the week ( I wasn’t really wanting to camp in the snow for a whole week!). Six months later, I married him.

These years of my life; though I lived in absolute poverty through all of it, working three and four jobs at a time to make ends meet and pay for school and food and rent and life; these years were precious because I was so absolutely free. Freedom was a decision to load the car and fall off the grid for a while. It was searching for myself all over the country, only to learn I was looking in the wrong places. It was learning how absolutely trustworthy and compassionate humans are to a traveler without money. This freedom, I cherished. The time alone. The new experiences. Freedom; to me it is as precious as the air I breathe. I imagine that I am not alone in missing it having traded it for something else.

So now, mid-thirties, no longer able to drop off the face of the earth, no longer able to run away. No longer able to fit the things I own in my car. The greatest sources of my joy; my family, my career, my homestead, are also are the things that keep freedom at bay. So I do what most of us do; I trade freedom for security, I trade freedom for responsibility. I trade absolute freedom for something different… not better or worse, but definitely different. Security, stability, the chance to make something of myself, have an impact on the world, and the opportunity to mother my children.

And maybe someday when my kids are grown I’ll join the Peace Corps and work human aid in Africa or move to Alaska to live in a remote cabin. But until then I make substitutions to quench my thirst for freedom. I find smaller ways to experience freedom in a life that feels, at times, quite bogged down with responsibility. It’s not the only means to experiencing freedom, but it is mine- no question, it’s mine. For some it’s a motorcycle, or exotic travel, or a BMW that corners at 80 but feels like 20. For me, it’s my horse, who on a cool day can run faster than I have the courage to go, and who will always chase the illusive hawks with me, as we find freedom together, in big hay fields, on my little slice of heaven; home.

The Dark Side of Gratitude

It is the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, and I’m just now finding the time to sit down and write. We took a several mile hike through the 100 acre woods behind our house, that connects to another hundred acres of nature preserve. My children, 6,7 have learned to identify mile markers that lead us from our land to Cedar Creek. The names, to me sound like the Dora the Explorer clues. “Giant Swamp”, “Troll bridge”, “Twin Towers”, “Monkey Island”, and the final destination, “Rushing River”… aka, Cedar Creek.

It’s the kind of day that makes it really easy to be grateful. Beautiful, calm, peaceful… and I felt that gratitude very strongly on our walk. For my amazing family, for (if not so much the house we live in) the land live on, which I love. For watching my husband teach my children about deer trails, and pointing out antler posts. These are the moments I never want to forget. And yet, an important part of gratitude, to me, is learning to be grateful for the less-than-blissful things that enter our lives. The crisis. The big loss. The little lose. The failure, and the trauma. These are the things we are often tempted to meet with resistance. “Why me?” “This can’t be.” are the natural initial responses. Most people try to deny, minimize, and withdrawal from these “bad” things that are also a part of life.

What I have noticed, is that actually embracing the bad, and finding gratitude for the hidden gift, lesson, or strength that is being honed by this negative experience is important- even if you can’t yet determine what possible gift or strength is being honed. The longer you shove away the bad feelings and question, ‘why me’ the longer it takes to learn the lesson the “bad” thing can teach you. In my experience, shoving these emotions away can also lead to depression, but that’s probably another article.

It is counter-intuitive to step into and really experience with gratitude the negative things that enter our lives, and the things we bring into our lives unintentionally. And yet doing so, with an open heart, and trust in the process that is your life, yields healing and wisdom much more quickly than denial or self-pity ever could.

There are things in life that are impossible to be happy about. I’m not happy that after our blissful walk we came home to find the male of the Woodpecker pair that fed from our feeders everyday, dead; his mate at his side watching over him. I hate seeing animals die, I hate that part of life. I hate to witness suffering, I hate loss, and I really was quite smitten with that bird. Yet, it was an oddly intimate experience to watch my daughter pick him up to investigate his body in death. She placed him gingerly against a tree while my son picked the last of the years Mums to lay over his body. Then my daughter and I buried him while she told me what was to happen next with his soul. Death is an amazing opportunity to learn what children intuitively know of life and death; a better way to allow them to develop than to tell them what I think I know about it. Mostly I just listen and learn from their innate wisdom.

So of all the things that happen today, the death of that beautiful bird is my least ‘favorite’. And still, there are gifts of intimacy with nature, intimacy in a shared moment with my children, and a learning moment for them about what life is, and isn’t, to them. All things, though sometimes it can take a lifetime to find the gift, are worth having gratitude for; despite the package they come wrapped in.

Belief Is Everything.

An oldy but goody... because the swallows are back yet again...

Belief is Everything. By Emily Osbun Bermes

We have a nest of swallows, this year, in our horse barn. I am fascinated by these birds that fly with more stealth and grace than even the Red Tail Hawks do. I’ve watched these swallows build the nest, and recently populate it with 5 babies.

I recently saw one of our barn cats in full pursuit behind one of the parent swallows who was flying not more than a foot off the ground. She chased the tiny bird at full speed around the back of the barn, and out of sight. I jumped up, in a vain attempt to save the bird I was sure was about to be cat chow. Not 10 seconds later, before my feet had even left the deck, I saw the return of the cat and the bird. To my surprise, the bird was not in the cats’ teeth, but rather chasing the cat so aggressively that the cat ran straight up onto the deck seeking shelter. Not what I anticipated!

Now, you and I both know that the cat could have eaten the bird; and we all know the bird couldn’t have put a dent in the cat (not a very big one anyway). But there are times in life when belief alone can defy the laws of nature, and practical wisdom. The swallow believed he could scare off the cat… and the cat bought it.

Confidence.
No matter who we are, at some point we will doubt ourselves; it’s impossible not to. As a personal coach I’ve worked with individuals who seemed to have it all, yet doubt, for them too, was inevitable. Its one of the common denominators for being human, it seems. And yet, when faced with a challenge, imagine the difference between taking it head-on with the confidence of a swallow with the audacity to attack a cat, or taking it on more like a canary; convinced of your own delicate nature.

People will respond differently to you; depending on which belief you choose to hold about yourself: I see it everyday. “We teach people how to treat us” I’ve heard said so many times; and I honestly believe few things more strongly. If we put ourselves out there with the expectation that we will be successful, respected, listened to, taken seriously… we most often will be. If we put ourselves out there guarded, unsure of who we are, believing we will be eaten alive… we will be. The beliefs we hold about ourselves impact how others treat us dramatically.


Arrogance.
An important distinction begs to be made, however, between confident conviction and utter arrogance. It is a subtle line that most people can spot….. in others. Self-assuredness is the confidence in knowing who you are, what your talents are, and knowing exactly when and how to use them- there is authenticity in confidence. There is very little fear, and a lot of clarity- like for our swallow friend. Arrogance as I see it, is more like a peacock. Insecure, in need of attention, and falsely advertised by a huge plume of deceptively long feathers… underneath it all, a peacock is essentially a turkey, and on some level, I think he knows it. If you are going to put your energy into anything… let it be authenticity and confidence… not plumage.

Life Balance. A Performance-Based Perspective

Life Balance… For Those Who Wouldn’t Normally Consider the Concept.

By Emily Osbun Bermes



Let’s face it; the eighties have been over for some time now- for most of us anyway. Along with the obnoxious clothes and big hair, the “I can do it all, have it all, and be everything to everyone” mentality created in the eighties, has been left behind as well. In retrospect, collectively, we’ve noticed that quality of life does matter, and that having, doing, and being everything mostly left us exhausted and depleted anyway. As a culture we’ve started to recognize that a more healthy life balance might be necessary if we are to ever start feeling good about our lives. We’ve started to recognize that the price of “success” might be too high, and that success is sometimes only bitter-sweet. To gain the job or status you thought you wanted, you might have to give up something more important. So as a culture, we’ve been re-evaluating our priorities, wondering what it would take to really fulfill us, and making choices to that end. Doing it all just didn’t do the trick.



Despite the culture shift, there are still a lot of very successful people running around believing that to be “a success” they need to keep sacrificing everything for that aim. It’s the guy who is working 70 hours a week, talking on a cell phone through lunch, and mentally strategizing the next big deal through his daughters’ soccer game. It’s the woman working 15 hour days only to come home and work another 3 or 4. These folks don’t have life balance.



If for the past 15 years, the more touchy-feely reasons for having a reasonable life-balance hasn’t been persuasive to you, have you considered that a lack of balance might actually be inhibiting your work-performance as well? It’s true. If there is no other reason for you to investigate life balance, look at it from a purely performance-driven angle. A person with a life that is out-of-balance, performs similarly to car whose tires are out of balance. You might not notice what isn’t there, performance-wise, until you have your car maintained. The little pull you’d learned to live with, the watery steering you’ve come to ignore… when fixed, make a performance difference that makes driving that car fun (and safe) again. The same is true for your life. When you instill a healthy balance in your life, you’ll find you perform better than you realized you could- in all arenas.



Life balance, or the degree to which all areas of your life are functioning to a degree that pleases you, is important because they are all tied together. Your work, finances, intimate relationships, family relationships, friendships, spirituality or personal growth, health/wellness, your physical environment and fun (yeah that’s right- fun) all come together to create the life that you experience. Notice, the common denominator is you? The spiritual crisis, the floundering marriage, the disconnect from your children, the painfully obvious lack of fun… all impact you, and you are the foundation for performance. It is as simple as that.



An executive who learns to focus energy and attention, not just on what he or she is good at (usually work), but to focus energy on the things that come less naturally (maybe relationships, maybe cutting loose) actually increase their overall balance, become more fulfilled, and are better able to meet the demands of the workplace-everyday. And they learn to do it with more energy, clarity, and focus. It’s like driving a well-maintained car; you are simply more likely to go the distance if your life has balance.

The significance is this:

Imagine the executive, so loved and respected at work, and her home life is a wreck. That’s a wheel out of alignment. Imagine the manager who is really happy at home and at work, but his he is obese, and this impacts his energy level and self-concept- that’s a tire with low air pressure. Or a CEO who is so disconnected from fun, he’s not sure what he would even do for fun if he had the time- these are bald tires. The analogy here is that you can’t have top performance with any instrument that has not been maintained. You wouldn’t drive your child or grandchild around in a car that had been this poorly maintained, would you? Yet many people neglect their own life to the point that they are not fully able, fully present, or fully responsive to the needs and demands of their complicated lives. Showing up for your life without having properly maintained yourself is a little like driving yourself, and everyone/everything you love around in a car that in a state of disrepair.



So, if for no other reason, consider life balance form a purely performance-based perspective and do a little maintenance on the most important machine you own: you.

Myth of Perfection

So, recently Guen, one of my fabulously talented colleagues, sent out a mass email … with a typo in it. Now mind you, I’m practically famous for the occurrence of typos in my writing, so you can imagine I didn’t care very much at all. But Guen, an absolute tyrannical typo Nazi, was quite mortified. How can a couple little letters reek such a sense of failure in such a competent, intelligent, wonderful human being? And why is that vulnerability in each of us, even if it isn’t around typos but something else entirely?

Little imperfections get us down because, while professionalism and polish are always important, perfection is simply impossible. Yet it is often the expectation that is communicated to us. Society expects us to be perfect. The media holds up perfect archetypes for us to try to emulate. Misguided parents often project that their love for us is about in proportion to the extent to which we are perfect. And there are always people eager to look at, talk about, or judge the lack of perfection we exhibit, leaving us particularly exposed and vulnerable when our imperfection accidentally shows.

And while it’s not easy to ignore that, it’s at least a little disarming to realize that people who are prone to notice, judge, (and worse) point out, or celebrate the imperfections in others are only doing so to feel better about themselves. Truly, I’ve never met anyone really happy with themselves, truly at peace in their own skin, who felt the need to elevate themselves by taking joy in the imperfection of another.

I heard a commentator on talk radio the other day (no clue which side of the fence he was on if that matters) who said, “You know, I think politicians would come much closer in terms of working together if they’d all admit they’re a little messed up … because we are ALL a little messed up. Like, ‘Here’s what’s wrong with my life, but I’m working on it’ or ‘Here’s what I struggle with, but I’m working on it.’ So that, instead of trying to capitalize on the failures and imperfections of each other, they might actually focus on doing something good together. After all, no one is without a skeleton in the closet. No one.”

Now you and I both know this will never happen. But imagine what it would be like to watch people going around in the work place, in relationships, in families with that level of authenticity. “Hi, I’m Emily, I can’t balance my checkbook but I’m working on it.” “I’m impatient, and a horrific speller, and I’m really really easily bored. My computer skills are lackluster at best, but gosh I’m good with people. It’s nice to meet you.” Or how about even more authenticity. “I’m not actually working on learning to balance my checkbook because I got over caring that I can’t do it!!!!”

It’s a radical thought, I know.

But I think if people got over feeling terrible about their imperfections enough to simply own them, it would sort of liberate everyone to stop pretending to be perfect also. And then maybe, just maybe, Guen could stop beating herself up for the typo and I could stop feeling so inept for needing my 7-year old’s help with my own computer.

Give a Little Bit

We went to the Black Pines Animal Park yesterday. They’ve begun their big move/renovation so it’s different and not totally put back together. But the animals are still impressive and the work the place does is still humbling. Over a hundred exotic (and many rather large) animals; big cats, a camel, bears, snakes big enough to eat my youngest … you name it, they’ve got one. All of these animals were rescued from people trying to raise them as pets, circuses or carnivals. And as we wandered around, I was overwhelmed by the immensity of such a facility. I have a heart for animals, but the operation was enormous and, at that, they turn away hundreds of animals a year. The problem, to me, is overwhelming. Feeling that way, it’s not that I don’t want to help, but I notice there is a paralyzing feeling that comes over me in not knowing what to do and in feeling that any action is so small that it is essentially inconsequential. I think sometimes people connect with issues and then do nothing for this same reason. I don’t think so often it’s apathy, but it can look apathetic.

Yet ultimately doing a little is enough. And when people focus on looking for little things to do, the possibilities become apparent. The perspective that a little is enough (and a far cry better than nothing) leads to more action and a sense of empowerment rather than apathy or immobility.

That night, after we visited Black Pine, my son noticed a kitten by the side of our country road as we drove home. We got out and investigated and he and his two siblings appeared to have been a dumped litter. You’d be surprised how many dumped litters we get … kittens much too young to survive on their own and abandoned by their owners.

So we took them home and, after a sinking gut feeling, I went back and found two more in the litter. In total, five little kittens, gorgeous, being smothered with love from my kids until we can find them homes. It felt so good, so empowering, to do something … even though I know it’s not even a dent in the scheme of things.

Whatever your cause is, I encourage you to look for ways, even little ways, to do something. Deciding to do something leads to action, action is empowering, and empowerment feels good and does make a difference.

Consider the man who combed the beach tossing stranded starfish after starfish of the thousands that lay dying on the beach back into the ocean. When questioned what difference he thought he could possibly make because his actions seemed so futile, he threw a starfish back into the ocean and simply stated, “I made a difference to that one, didn’t I?”