“This is your captain speaking…..……,” and in the most soothing tone he or she continues an announcement. 

Good news, bad news, they always sound so smooth, so in control,  relaxed – even when delivering the toughest announcements. 

Airline captains know their tone, pitch, and rhythm, when speaking over the intercom, conveys even more than the words they may carefully use to communicate with the hundreds of passengers. 

Anxiety, airline pilots know, is highly contagious. 

They know that a plane load of passengers (even those who speak a different language than the captain may use) can hear and detect anxiety without necessarily ever seeing the captain. 

The last thing a flight crew needs is a plane load of anxious passengers. Even under tough or dangerous circumstances, what the captain and crew most need from passengers is that they are both informed and relaxed with relaxed and calm being even more important than informed.

What’s true for an airline captain and crew is also true for you and for me. 

We do our families a great service when we hold onto ourselves (manage ourselves) before we communicate (spread) tough or bad news. 

Families read, hear and catch unmanaged anxiety and it “jumps” to others before we have said a word. 

Anxiety is contagious, in airplanes, schools, businesses, wherever, and in your family.  

“How are you doing?” is a question thrown about with abandon, a polite greeting, or a genuine show of interest. If you were to fully trust and honestly answer with the opportunity to sit down and speak with whomever inquires, what might you say? 

While there are indeed more than 4 options, which best describes you this Monday morning?  Which would you choose and why?

Here are my quickly-drafted definitions. If you so desire, let me know. 

• Spiraling: Usually an emotional slow crises, moving in a downward direction, the gradual slow beginning of feeling out of control. Matters are getting, at an increased speed, out of hand. Spiraling can pertain to any areas of living – finances, relationships, and career.      

• Surviving: Living, with difficultly, through the struggles of life. Day-to-day, week-by-week, barely keeping your head above the proverbial water. This can pertain to any area of living – finances, relationships, career.

• Idling: Waiting, alive but stationary, neither progressing nor regressing, feeling somewhat stuck. This can pertain to any area of living – finances, relationships, career. 

• Thriving: Enduringly enjoying and meeting, and even sometimes beating life’s challenges. It’s making steady progress towards your known and expressed goals. This too, can pertain to any areas of living – finances, relationships, and career.     

Don’t be surprised if during a happy moment or during a pleasurable experience you are hit with a moment of grief or regret. 

You are probably not regressing. 

You’re probably not dealing with unsuccessful self-forgiveness. 

Your mind, your thinking, your experience (in the present) and your memory (of the past) with all its traumas, disappointments, losses and your unspent emotions will easily collide, and collide they will when you at your most relaxed, your happiest, and when you least expect. 

Without being too dramatic or analytic, it is as if your unexpected happy moments, your moments of non-anxiety, your moments of “letting go,” undergo a form or survivor’s guilt and want to clearly remind you of the losses and regrets and the failures you have known and survived. It’s when you are healthy and enjoying a moment that the loss of a beloved spouse or a breakup in a marriage may come calling, calling you to be grounded, to remember, to be aware, that happiness and success are built against a context of loss and defeat.

It’s not regression but progression.

It’s not a lack of self-forgiveness.

It is a reminder that laughter and joy and peace and kindness can live boldly within the lives of those who have known deep suffering.

From the shore of Lake Geneva — a coffee shop’s view

Yesterday, in much of the Western world, mothers were celebrated, and appropriately so. I would like to extend my congratulations to the fabulous mothers who read this column and to those who don’t and to those who will never see it:

I take my hat off to mothers who work themselves out of a role, week-by-week, month-by-month, slowly, but surely, teaching their children that they are fully capable of living life independently. This is true mothering

I take my hat off to mothers of few resources. There are mothers who carry water on their heads, walking hours, to their children every day. There are women who spend days selling meager goods at markets to put food on the table for their children, often without the assistance of a husband or any help at all.

I take my hat off to the woman I’ve met who lived in extreme anxiety because of the behavior of the immature man (or men) in their lives and make a priority of protecting their children to give them the best life possible.

I take my hat off, I bow my head, to women who have decided the best option was the difficult but caring choice of adoption.

Look me in the eye. Talk to me. I won’t budge from your truth. Tell me the best. Tell me the worst. Tell me the dangerous. I will look you back in the eye and see and then tell you that, like me, you’re part of the human condition, that I accept you no matter what.. 

Look me in the eye. I will look back at you, hopefully with care and hopefully with mercy and charity and acceptance, with love. It’s the kind of love that wants  you to be totally free, empowered to be exactly who you were designed to be. It’s not too late, not for anyone.

Look me in the eye. Tell me of your early years of struggle, of being misunderstood, of being conflicted about what was going on within your conflicted home. Tell me how your history continues to impact you, tries to sabotage your thoughts and your future. I will tell you that I think I understand. 

Look me in the eye and tell me your story, as much or as little as you want to reveal. I will give you my ear. I will listen with my heart. It’s unlikely your story will surprise me. We have probably walked similar paths even though there might be nothing similar about our origins.