(Photo credit: Kenny Teo (zoompict))
The five-minute warning wasn’t enough for my daughter.
Mommy, please tell me when it is fifteen minutes before it’s time to leave. So I have time to finish my game.
The truth is, sometimes I forget to give a warning at all and we just have to go when we have to go! Warning or no warning. But my daughter had a point that reminded me how often we take for granted or even assume we have a right to be warned. Oh the rights we possess! Or not. Well, not really. We don’t have many rights in life and “the fifteen minute warning” isn’t one of them.
We have the right to love and friendship, (with who is another discussion,) but not much else. Yet even without the right, many of us have the privilege of “the fifteen minute warning.” And time tics away and what have we done with it?
At work we are told about working better as a team member.
At home we are asked to stop yelling when we are upset.
We are warned. Time passes. Pride keeps us from being friendly to ourselves often enough. Friendly would be to forget about how we are right and hear the warning. Being right is over-rated. Friendly is the crisis. Friendly is to go toward the wanting.
If we can’t do this even though we know we hear, maybe we don’t have what it takes? That’s a turn in the warning to get an opinion of “why” from a medical professional and then to respond to the recommendations. “The fifteen minute warning” is designed to improve our experience and readiness. If we can’t, than shift gears into finding out why.
Questions: What warnings have you heard that improved your experience and readiness? Please tell us your story
Self-Care Tip: Deliberately use warnings as the privilege that they are, rather than entitlement, to be friendlier to yourself.
I found that more kids have to give parent warning/reminder to get them to school on time than there are parents getting their kids up to get them to school on time.
Early maturity indeed
Good to see you commenting, Carl. Have been thinking of you and hoping that you are okay. God bless.
I need to observe these warnings more before I can comment further. Suffice to say that the “warnings” can often be my intuition, that its an internal warning as opposed to something “external” if that makes sense. “Friendly is to go toward the wanting”. Ouch that makes me want to cry deeply. So often I guess I go toward the “wanting” and its not healthy the wanting of food or addictive behavior however that is a cover up for what is really “wanting”. I know there is a “wanting” I have right now and fear of many different shades is stopping me and its a wanting that is so core and fundamental and yet so scary because of my past. Gee thanks Sana nothing like getting deep and dirty so quickly!
I will observe and see where I go with this. I love a recent quote I read on someone’s blog “If you’re lost and confused or not sure what next to do ask your self ” . . . if I had confidence and self esteem what would I do?” Then there’s your answer, thats what you need to do. Author Unknown. So with confidence and self esteem I can walk toward the wanting. sigh . . . that makes me breath heavy just writing it. Its deep Sana and these questions you pose are quite multifaceted. As always, well done Sana and thank you!
Thank u col. I appreciate your insight n disclosure so much. But what of these tears, friend? Tell us.
The wanting is so deep and has been for so long and I have been watching and waiting, with still breath. Not sure how to speak it out loud, or to even really look at it deep inside. Its all hovering around like the first verses in Genesis. I can feel it peripherally, dancing in and out. Glimpses like shadows from the leaves of the trees dancing in the wind. I am exercising hard, learning to swim properly, getting ready to teach all my new classes in the fall along with my old ones and I just know that all these things are part of the answer to the wanting. They are all part of the 15 minute warning. But in a good way. There is a healing that is going on that is so deep and so profound and yet going on in such a simple and humbling way. I don’t know if I am making sense at all but it makes sense to me as I write. Like when we meditate and we get to that place of meditation and we say “oh look I’m meditating!” drats, that’s gone now! I don’t want to or need to “look” at it I am doing. I am just doing and allowing. There it is, I am allowing the process to happen, see even this is a process. The tears are tears of the Holy Spirit being along side me. The softening of the heart and Soul, and of the little one inside me who longs so deeply for a soft place to land and to be safe and to trust. To be held lovingly and safely, and treated with kindness and care after being treated so badly and shabbily but her mother and father. Sana the abuses that have been revealed this past year are so profound that some days I don’t wonder that I don’t go running off shattering into a million little pieces (yes just like the book title, and I loved that book and regardless of how or why it was written it was so accurate!). So I am building trust bonds with myself, giving and listening at the same time to the 15 minute warnings. Living a duality yet as one. I once had a counselor who was helping me after our daughter almost died, and he said to make room for all the parts of me, the little one, the teenager, the competent adult (and I found out I was in very early menopause just then) and I laughed and said the crone too! So all these parts reside within and I function as one, and they all have their moments of “warnings” which I guess are my intuition, and yet I often exist in a place of profound Divinity and peace where my mind is neutral and at rest and I just simply absorb where I am. I am so Blessed. My love is deep today Sana. Thank you!
whew! that was beautiful. i get your vibe. the shadow proves the sun? hugs and keep on woman of courage
…and time goes on and you realize that you missed the chance to express love and gratitude, to show up, to write the note or make the phone call, to do the exercise, to follow the guidelines, to remember whose friend you are to whom. Heeding warnings, whether 15 minutes or 15 days or even 15 years, allows us so much time without regret. “If only” is such a sad thing to have to think or say. I know that all too well.
Thanks nance. The regrets u mention, anything on your mind?
Most just things like regretting that I didn’t tell my father-in-law that I loved him before he died. We’d only been married a few years and I hadn’t been brought up to tell even my parents that. They never said it to us. I regret not calling my favorite aunt more often. By the time we had enough money to be comfortable making long-distance calls, she and I only had six years of her life left and I realized that money really isn’t everything. The rest are little things except for the regret that I didn’t know how to be a friend to myself soon enough and I “lost” 18 years of my life as I hid in the darkness of depression. That regret will haunt me for the rest of my life.
that makes sense. standing w u. imperfect us. 🙂
I have been learning that one of my “warnings” is when I start feeling like I am being personally mistreated by people at work trying to help me by giving me input. On one occasion I asked to leave early where I was volunteering because I felt that I was going to put others in “danger” and I needed to step back and think through my own feelings on what a co worker said and come to an internal agreement that they were correct. I have also come to learn that a “warning” is when I have to have some “quiet” mental days to be able to protect and care for myself.
Sounds lk wisdom at work in u Heidi. Not always easy to act on. Let us know how it unfolds and about yore condition of your courage and self. Keep on
Food for thought here today, Sana. warnings are a blessing and not an entitlement. And even perceiving the warnings is difficult: our powers of self-deception are many and varied.
I agree. (drooping lip on my daisy hat). Sometimes though, Ive noticed that increasing my receptivity w deliberation has been rewarding. Today and yest. Last mo, not so much. :). Keep on