Author: Mark Thomas Ritchey

Things I learned from my cats

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What matters most is how you see yourself. That’s the lesson in a nutshell.  I touched on this a little in my post titled, “A Better Day”.

I’m coming at the topic from a different angle, observing my cats.  My five year old cat, Smokey doesn’t know how big he is.  He’s a bit skittish and shy. He climbs up on my chest to cuddle.  (A lap isn’t good enough.) When he does that, I have to put down my laptop, or else he walks on the keyboard and, invariably, messes things up.  (For example, he once deactivated the keyboard. It took till the next day to figure out that you could still hit shift + enter to get it back, though it seemed like nothing on the keyboard was working. Another time, he turned the screen display 90°.  I didn’t even know you could do that.  I was able to go into the display menu and turn it back from portrait to landscape, though it remains a mystery how he did it with just the keyboard.)  Also, I can barely see the TV over him when he’s sitting on me.

Enter Rex the much smaller, younger little guy my brother and I adopted about a year ago.  Rex is a sweetheart and after about ten days, Smokey accepted him and they get along nicely now.  However, Rex is a little troublemaker at times, picking on the gentle giant, Smokey.  It’s only in play, but he gets a little carried away and makes his house mate squeal sometimes.  Then we have to separate them and scold Rex, sometimes even close him in a room for a while.  The thing is, Smokey could easily kick Rex’s ass.  He has learned to assert himself, and the problem has slowly gotten better.  So, I guess Smokey gets to a point where he’s had enough.

I share these feline antics as a way of relating my own experiences.  I was shy and timid in school, and socially awkward.  Add to that my rather small stature, and you’ve got an easy target for teasing.

Like Smokey, I didn’t realize how big I was.  Not physically, but intellectually, emotionally, and personality speaking. I was blessed with a brilliant mind, a bright and generous heart, and a lovable, witty, fun spirit.  None of this came out until young adulthood.  I started coming out of my shell somewhat the last two years of high school, but was still kind of a lost puppy.  (Awww)  It’s okay. It got better.

Today, I still come across as reserved, and social anxiety does hold me back until I get to know people better, but the shyness and the fear are gone.  Physical lack of energy is a problem at times too, with sleep apnea and Crohn’s disease, but caffeine helps.  ha ha

I don’t resent any of the teasing I took in school because it actually did help push me to change. I realized after getting my associate’s degree in my early 20’s that I had played right into the teasing, making it all to easy. (Not saying it was my own fault.  Just saying I could have changed things.) I was also very alone in my two years at community college, for all the same reasons.  I had no problems with the intellectual aspects at all, but yet was completely burned out at the end.  It made me start analyzing.  Why was it so hard? To quote John Donne, “No man is an island”. I needed a support system. How does one build something you’ve never known? Where to start….

An epiphany came one day at the mall.  Maybe some of you remember the mall store called Deck the Walls.  They sold art and photo prints and the like.  I saw a small matted picture of a kitten looking into a mirror.  The text read “What matters most is how you see yourself”.  Reflected in the mirror, is a lion.  It really struck home, so I took it home.  I mean, after I paid for it, of course. I still have it as a reminder.

It made me see more clearly than ever how one’s persona is perceived by others as a reflection of your own inner image.  Confidence, satisfaction, contentment, happiness.  All things I lacked, therefore did not project.  What I got back from others was a direct correlation to what I was carrying and exuding, or not.

I was just coming into my own in my late 20’s when I hit some health problems.  Getting to work became all-consuming and I eventually had to take a break from it.  Then, I didn’t get much social contact, but things are going much better now.  I sometimes feel like I end up being put in that old “box”, where he’s the shy, quiet guy.  Or, my anxiety makes me feel uncomfortable and pushes people away.  (Nobody likes to feel uncomfortable.) The good news is, I feel like I’m ready to Bust That Box! (I believe I found the topic of my next post.)

Til then, keep going and keep growing!

A Closer Walk, Part II

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Well, it’s almost a year since I joined my new church as a member, and over a year that I’ve been attending.  I still enjoy it, and I’m very glad I went back.

Progress report: I’ve gotten more involved with the church by making Facebook posts on behalf of the church on our page, ushering,  participating in a video interview, and I’m about to join the A/V team.  I’ve gone to a few game nights, Lenten soup suppers, and we even have a sci-fi lovers social group, which I’m in.  I think it’s so cool for a church to have that.  I’ve also met several other members interested in writing.  One of them even published a book.  So, I guess it’s fair to say that the social aspect is still a big part of why I go.

How am I doing in my “walk”?  For one, I pray more often, though not everyday.  When I do pray, I try to really focus on what I’m communicating to God.  I don’t just say the words in my head.  For instance, if I’m praying for someone’s surgical procedure to be successful, or for an illness, or physical and emotional pains to pass, I put myself in that person’s place.  I think about how I would feel as I talk to God about them.  I think that’s important so that you connect with the Holy Spirit rather than just rattling off a half-hearted request to a far-off God.  It goes back to my doubts about God hearing prayers that I mentioned in Part I.  I think that we’re connected to God and to one another through the spiritual plane.  The words are just the way we form our thoughts and feelings. They’re important, but not necessarily the part to which God responds. I believe He responds to our souls’ stirrings.

I won’t tell you that I don’t still have doubts about prayer and God’s involvement in our lives.  I do. But I feel a connection, nonetheless.  I think, sometimes, it’s hard to feel it with so many distractions and demands on our time. I push through it though as an exercise of faith.  Isn’t that what faith means after all? To accept what we can’t see, hear, touch, or even feel emotionally or spiritually, at times. It’s a process, and an enriching one.

One of the doubts that gets in the way of my personal connection with God is the conflict between my traditional upbringing, with its strict adherence to the letter of the law of scriptures, and my changing beliefs. Specifically, being gay and knowing that the Bible says things against homosexuality.  Sometimes I think that maybe the early church leaders “edited” the scriptures that had been passed down to fit their own beliefs and to keep control of the masses.  I watch the skies for the expected lightning bolt when I even think that. I’m still working through all that.

A recent development in that department came a couple of months ago.  My pastor writes occasional articles for the local paper, and who do you think saw one of them? My mother.  The pastor mentioned her same-sex spouse in the article. I never got around to telling my mom that the church I’d chosen was a gay church. The cat was out of the bag.  She wrote a bunch of scriptures down for me to look at and gave them to me when she was here visiting.  She mentioned the article and said “you know it’s not the Lord’s will”, regarding same-sex marriages. We briefly debated the issue and I promised I’d look at the scriptures.  I have yet to do that.

I will have to read them and prepare a response.  That will be Part III of this post, and hopefully an open discussion with Mom.

The tyranny of time

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I once had to do an essay on time for a writing contest when I was in school.  While I was a good writer, it was not a strong subject for me and I bombed.  Ironically, I erased a good deal of what I had written and rewrote with little time left that was allotted to complete the essay.  I wrote until the last minute ticked away mercilessly, and then I was out of, that’s right, time.

Now I’m 45 and doing much better at a lot of things time related, like punctuality.  I used to be a good ten minutes late everywhere, more than that for social engagements.  I always felt harried and nervous.  There were other reasons for that too, but running behind definitely doesn’t help.  That’s not to say I’m never late, but I know how to avoid it.  I’ve developed a greater sense of urgency which kicks in before it’s too late to have any chance of getting ready and getting there on time.  So that’s being on time,  better.

Then there’s time management.  Let’s look at the everyday first.  There’s work. No choice how long you’re there.  And some people drive a good ways to their jobs.  I don’t.  I don’t know how people can drive an hour and a half or more each way, 5 days a week.  That’s crazy to me.  It’s too big a time investment.  I don’t want my life to be about work. I want time to put into things I want to do for personal enrichment, enjoyment, and to secure my future.  That last one refers to writing.  Of course, I seem to find all kinds of things to stall before writing, even housework.  It has to be done, but it can wait.

We measure time in hours and minutes through the daily grind, while months and years seem to slip by.  A couple of my new friends from church are older than me.  One just turned sixty and the other will be in the fall.  I commented to both of them how people always lament getting older even though they may seem young to someone else.  They both quickly responded that age is just a number.  As they are both active and don’t look or act their age, I think I should look at it that way too.  The thing is, I always focus on how much I thought I would have accomplished by a given age, and then I feel the passage of time like a weight.  I think, I’m forty-five and still haven’t completed anything significant with my writing.  I haven’t had a real meaningful relationship.  I haven’t traveled, haven’t done this, haven’t experienced that.  See the pattern?

I do try to look at things positively, to see what I have done.  It’s challenging for me because I’ve always been very hard on myself, but I’ve been through a lot, and I’ve grown as a person tremendously.  I conquered shyness, I’m more confident.  I went through health and career challenges.  I usually see the glass half full when it comes to other people or external situations, so I shall try to do that for myself.

I never got my bachelor’s degree becomes, I have an associate’s degree which I did while working and was the first in my family to get any kind of degree beyond high school.  I’m not a writer becomes, I’m in a much better job than any previous and have a regular schedule so I can plan my writing time. Forty-five goes from, too old to start on things I wish I’d done already to, a good age to take off running.  I’ve got so much more life experience now for writing material.  Robert Frost comes to mind as one of many whose careers started in their forties.

I guess the important thing is that you take the next step whenever you come to it, whether you come to it at the time you had planned or expected, or not.  If the way is blocked you make a new path.  Detours can delay us, but make us stronger and wiser on the other side.   Impatience just makes the extra time wasted.  And the last thing anyone should do in this fleeting life is waste time.

Whatever step you need, or want to take next in your life,  take it as soon as you can, even if it’s just a little baby step.  Maybe that’s all it’s possible to do right now, but the action will affirm your intent and grow into resolution.

I almost feel bad for giving this post the title I gave it, but it’s how I’ve felt many times over the years.  Of course, you can’t halt the march of time, or even slow it.  You can watch the torrent go by from the shore, making you dizzy, or you can jump in and swim with the current.

Seize the day! Seize the moment!