All We Need is Love

     The delicate relationship between parent and child has weighed heavily on my mind in recent days as I continually evaluate the past thirty years of my life. I am officially ( by society's standards, at least) an adult and my relationship with my parents in in continual flux. I know that this will be even more prevalent as my parents age and I assume more of a caretaker role, especially since I am the oldest child by thirteen years. I am fortunate to have very young parents who, hopefully, will keep their physical and mental capacities for many, many more years but the hard truth is that things happen. Unexpected things. Tragic and traumatic things and lives can change in an instant. I had intended to write about the complications of changing parent/child roles and perhaps I will come back to this soon. Instead, I would like to address a far more important topic: Love. Love for your family and friends and whom ever holds a special place in your heart. 
  
   While I was doing some reading in preparation for tonight's entry about the constantly changing intricacies of family dynamics, I read something written by a friend that stopped me dead in my tracks: 


Love. Give love, whether or not the recipient wants or deserves it. Tell people you love them. They need to know. 


No truer words have ever been written. 


     It's hard to give love to someone who is resistant or who makes themselves seem 'unlovable' and loving them despite of this is the truest sign of commitment that a person can give. Maybe the person has suffered and uses distance and an unpleasant persona to keep themselves from being hurt again. Loss (of any sort) is painful and in the same way a person shies from things known to be physically painful, it is sometimes deemed in the interest of self preservation to also avoid things that are emotionally painful. It is the person who so strongly denies love that often needs it the most. 
    
      As for not deserving love, there are in my opinion, sadly, many reasons that a person may forfeit there right to receive love. People do terrible, heinous things to each other and there are times when I am shocked by the compassion that comes from tragedy. I have heard accounts of victims of horrific crimes who have told their attackers that they love them. They have told the people who have taken something from them, be it a loved one, or the feeling of security and personal safety and more, that they forgive them. That they love them. I can not imagine this kind of compassion and how painful that sort of love must be.
     
     The "tell people you love them" portion applies to absolutely anyone you care about, but especially to family, if you ask me. I can't tell you how many times I have taken my anger and frustration out on those closest to me or blown off my loved ones for a worthless cause. It's amazing how quickly I am to dismiss those closest to me because I know that they will always be there and have my back. I wouldn't dream of treating a stranger the way I treat my family sometimes because I know I will be judged by a stranger, but never by those who love me. I am fortunate in this regard. I don't tell these people often enough that I love them because I assume they know. But there have been times when I have had to suck up my pride and tell someone that I love them because I was so afraid that something would happen to either them or me and they wouldn't know how much they meant to me.  This happened to me once, many, many years ago, and it haunts me to this day. A week and day before I turned twelve I spoke to my five-year-old brother on the phone (he was out of town and would returning home the next day). We finished our conversation about how the neighbor boy hit him in the eye with a rock and, as we were readying to hang up the phone, he said, "I love you TT". I had never before neglected to tell him that I loved him, but that day, for whatever reason, I didn't say it back. I replied with, "I'll see you tomorrow". That was all. That was the last conversation I ever had with my brother because he died in a car accident on his way home the next day. If there was just one thing I could go back and change, it would be that my little brother would know exactly how much I loved him, but I assumed that I would get the chance. As James Taylor sang, "I always thought I'd see you again". Sadly, it's not always the case.
    
    Love is hard and love hurts because it makes raw and vulnerable the most precious and delicate parts of ourselves. It touches us in places that nothing else can reach and allows us to access emotional and physical feelings inaccessible by any other means. While talking about her two young sons, a friend told me that having children was the best and worst thing that ever happened to her because she loved them more than she had ever imagined possible. She said the high you get from that kind of love is indescribable, but when they hurt you, you feel pain like you have never felt before. I wish for all of us that we experience, and learn from, the highs and lows and love. And please, tell someone that you love them, even if you know they know how you feel, and especially if you don't.


I love you M,D,S & C.   
  

Project Hindsight Needs Your Help!

Welcome to Project Hindsight! 

 I need your help compiling advice, personal accounts, stories, anything really that could be used to show that knowledge and wisdom come from experiences. Good or bad. Try to imagine that you could go back in time to particularly bad, or wonderful, experience in your life. What would you tell yourself? What words of wisdom would you impart on your past self having come through the other side of that experience. What would you tell a friend or a stranger who is experiencing a personal tragedy that you have lived through, a challenge that you have faced, a wonderful experience that they may never live again? This past year and a half has been an especially difficult one for me and I really could have used an extreme life change reference guide throughout this bumpy ride. I’m sure I’m not the first, or last, to feel this way and the most comfort I’ve received has been from hearing stories of how others made it through similar situations. I will only be able to do this with the help of others. I have made a list of topics; feel free to say as much or as little as you would like or to add categories of your own.  

And please share this with others. I will only be able to complete my project if many people participate. Your contributions will be completely anonymous. Thanks in advance. I want to share collective experiences to give support, hope, encouragement, and a good laugh to others. Tell me the things that you wish someone had told you before you faced whatever it was head on.

Your participation means the world to me!

Please send completed submissions to: hindsightproject@gmail.com

What words of wisdom or advice would you give a person who is about to experience the following life experiences? Please feel free to expound, tell stories, share quotes, rant, vent, etc.

1.       Marriage-

2.       Divorce-

3.       Being a parent (or not)-

4.       Being a child (as an adult or youth)-

5.       Job loss-

6.       College-

7.       Teen years-

8.       Young adult/college years-

9.       Growing up-

10.   Deciding what to do “when you grow up”-

11.   Dating-

12.   Military experience (from any perspective)-

13.   Family (whether nuclear or otherwise)-

14.   Pets-

15.   Loss of a loved one-

16.   Substance abuse-

17.   Physical/emotional/sexual abuse-

18.  Illness or injury- 

19.  Anything else in the world that you would like to share 

Let's Get This Party Started

     Project Hindsight has been on my mind for a while and I'm really excited to finally get going. Not excited in the "oh look, a 20% coupon from Bed, Bath and Beyond" way, but rather the kind of excited that harkens back to being a kid the night before the first day of school. My backpack is packed, clothes are set out and I'm worried about whether or not people are going to like me and whether I will be smart and witty enough to hack it. Will I make friends? Will the other kids be mean to me? Will I discover a subject that I love?
   
     This blog is about sharing with others so we can all dip into the collective experience pool and take the things that will help us on our journey. Sometimes we need a sympathetic ear or a hard kick in the ass, but more often than not, I need humor. A good laugh truly is fantastic medicine. Since it's just me here now and no one has subscribed as of yet, I'd like to kick things off with a true story with a very important moral that serves me to this day.

   The year was 1986 and it was the first day of first grade. It was September in the Mojave Desert but for some reason I insisted on wearing a sweatshirt to school. I was a very unreasonable child and nothing my mother said could convince me otherwise, even though she tried over and over to tell me that I would be way too hot. It was powder blue with little flowers or animals or something all over it and I just had to make my debut in this shirt. Sometime around lunch I was sitting at my desk (we ate lunch in our classroom for some bizarre reason) and I began to get unbearably hot. Without thinking, I pulled my sweatshirt over my head. It was in the moment when my face was stuck somewhere in the depths of my shirt and my arms were over my head, trapped in their respective sleeves, that I realized that I did not have anything on under that stupid sweatshirt. Unfortunately, I realized this about an eighth of a second before the rest of the class did and my arms were hopelessly trapped and there was no hope for a quick recovery. I wrangled myself back into my shirt and stared, humiliated, at my desk for the rest of the day. The rest of the afternoon was a blur and when my mom asked me how my day was, I mumbled that it was fine and omitted the fact that I spent at least ten never-ending seconds topless amongst my peers. I'm not certain how I disposed of it, but I never saw that shirt again.

Moral of the story: Listening to the advice of someone wiser than you will help ensure that no one ever says, "hey, there's that girl who took her clothes off in class" as you walk by.

In The Beginning...

Once upon a time there was a woman who, despite all of her best efforts, could not catch a break. It seemed like no matter what she did, nothing worked out right. She fully recognized that the problem was her own and that the troubles in her life were the direct result of the decisions she was making, but unfortunately for her, this knowledge came after each bungled experience. This woman, of course, was me.

I understand and agree with the fact that a person learns from their mistakes. I have learned many, many valuable lessons from my mistakes that I would not trade for the world. I have also learned many lessons the hard way and, in hindsight, I would give my eye teeth and more to be able to do things differently. Everyone feels this way at one time or another. Some wise person told me that "you can learn by making mistakes or you can learn by watching others make the mistakes". I think a healthy dose of both is necessary, but I tend to be the person whom the wise people watch for their lessons. Surely I'm not the only one.

I started Project Hindsight because I want to share my experiences and compile those of others. I want to create a collective reference point for others to peruse when they feel like they are the only person in the world going through a particular challenge and for people to come together to celebrate life's victories. Sometimes all we need to hear is, "I know just how you feel" from someone who really does. I also want to create a place where visitors can say, "I screwed up royally. Let me tell you about it so you can, hopefully, avoid my mistake". In a way this blog is a little like AA. I'll go first. Hi. My name is Tiffanie and the most important lessons I learned have been in hindsight.