Amber Eyes

March mornings wear amber eyes under

which I, a flyspeck, am trapped in morning’s

honey-thickened glaze. I long to fly but my

wings are congealed, sticky-thick.

Winter ebbs, teases with the promise of spring yet-

to-emerge. Green-helmeted buds erupt, setting out

tentative antennae to one day sprout

their joy at life. They are frozen in time.

Crocus, daffodil, narcissus: I whisper their names.

For they are as stuck as I under winter’s heavy coat,

Stilled by snow's tempered passions, trembling

To melt in mud season's messy embrace.

The sun is pointing in the right direction.

Even hunched under the weight of gray gel,

life burbles, planning patiently a return to life.

I long for a glimpse: Crocus, daffodil, narcissus!

“Rise with us, robin,” they urge me. For I, too,

emerge with spring. "Open your wings.” Icy
memories last an unearthly moment until
Dawn's new amber eyes illumine my wakening.

~Robin Stevens Payes
March, 2013        

No Time like The Present

I am completely fascinated by the concept of time and how relative our experiences in it are. Not as Einstein experienced relativity, perhaps, but according to how we live in "real time." As marked by the Atomic Clock on the grounds of the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C., right next to the Vice President's house, it is exquisitely metered to match the most minute changes, marked to the infinitesimal and mostly unobserved interactions of atoms. This is, in fact, Washington time: moving faster than the eye can see.

So tied today are we to the unfolding of our devices, that my young adult children cannot even imagine wearing a watch. Why rely on such an unfashionable accessory when the time is as close as your cell phone or tablet that signal and ring to tweets and texts as your friends and family clocks in? Most of the clocks in our house measure time in hours, minutes and seconds -- like most of yours, I'd imagine. But, except for timepieces in my bedroom and kitchen (all the better to time the microwave oven, my dear), most of those sporting long-dead batteries are only accurate two times a day. Not a reliable timepiece for the incalculable meetings, class schedules, phone calls and appointments that govern any of our lives. And, of course, we have daylight savings time, an arbitrary adjustment twice a year to give us more daylight around the edges.

This is of more than academic interest to me: having just completed a time travel screenplay that juxtaposes Washington, D.C., today to the slower rhythms of 15th century Florence, Italy, it was not just modern ideas that proved alien as our heroes found themselves moving back 500 years; but even any urgency to act in any given moment that separated my time travelers from their unwitting Renaissance hosts.

It turns out, we've been measuring the pace of life in this way since the 18th century, as a way to bring some order to the chaotic speeding-up of life around us. Prior to that, grand cathedrals featuring astronomical clocks timed with mechanical movements show that day's version of animation sounded the hour and quarter hour in and around towns that centered on their regularity, but these soundings may have varied from town-to-town and even church-to-church, making meetings tied to their appointed chiming approximate, at best.

Here is the daily show at the Cathedral de Notre Dame in Strasbourg, France, where you will even hear roosters crowing as the angels proceed on their mechanical march of time, as they have done since the 12th century.


The clock-keeper of the cathedral played an important role in the community; once overtaken to Swiss perfection by the wind-up clock and watch, to electrical wall socket and, increasingly, in the past half-century or so, by battery. At the same time, the mechanisms that govern its functioning have moved to analog to digital with increasing precision.

So not only has our conception of time evolved, but the instruments of measurement have moved from the town square to inside our homes, wall-to-wrist, and finally wrist-to-digital pocket. But I am interested in a larger question: are we better off today, governed as we are by the ever-changing second hand? Has increasing reliance on chronology led us away from healthy circadian rhythms?

For those of us pondering how our sense of the present has grown so divorced from even recent pasts here is a novel re-creation: The Present. An beautifully elegant new timepiece that marks the passage of seasons may help us renew our appreciation for that most elusive of all moments: the present.


Despite the much-hyped 2012 winter solstice, and apparently inaccurate Mayan predictions of end-times, perhaps we are now ready to usher in this new time, The Present, with the calm and wonder it deserves.

Thinking that, whatever time zone you're living in and whatever system you use to measure that, now is the only time we've got. So here's to now: all in good time.

On Being Right Where I Am

I have been discovering the virtues of mindfulness for quite some time. I define this as the art of observing what's on my mind but not attaching to it. Watch your worries and let them pass.

For those of us Westerners uncomfortable with Eastern practices of meditation, or who associate contemplation with religion and all the baggage that institution conjures, we define this practice as metacognition: thinking about your thinking.

This practice of non-attachment has done wonders for my normally unquiet mind, where I was wont to grab on to every grievance, wrong or seizure of self-doubt and worry it to death.

I don't miss these obsessions with what is only, after all, a passing thought.

But another piece of the mindfulness puzzle still eludes me. It is the idea that wherever I am, that's where I'm supposed to be. I think this means that any situation provides an opportunity for learning. I like that idea, in principle, but that my brain apparently thinks otherwise. Or is it my ego that has grabbed hold and won't let go?

After all, I am the person who has always known she could change the world. Yet, no one else seems to be signing on for that experience, wherein, I save them. I used to receive a modicum of satisfaction in sheltering my impressionable children from experiencing the hardships of life. Yet, as young adults, even they seem impervious to my magical incantations to wish away harm.

So either I have failed greatly in what only I have long understood as my God-given mission, or I have been focused on the wrong goal. Perhaps, in distracting myself to believe I can save everyone else, I have unconsciously distracted myself from appreciating that things don't always turn out the way you want them to. That, perhaps, bad things exist for good reasons - like teaching us to cope in the game of life.

Trying hard to appreciate that, in this moment, I am in the right place, even if it is different from where I have always thought it should be. And that learning to be here, now, IS the lesson, despite my unsalved ego's insistence that I have somehow failed.

Just watching now, to see if I can allow the wind to carry away my attachment to being the one who protects others. And accept that I am right where I should be.

Going From Shame to Joy

University of Houston Researcher Brené Brown on why staying vulnerable and owning even those parts of your story that may be shameful is essential to a joyful life.

April 26, 2012

Psst: don't tell anyone my secret. I spent last weekend immersed in shame. Struggling to maintain my openness. It’s a tough combo that makes most of us want to run and hide. 

The setting: “The Anatomy of Joy,” an Omega Institute workshop, offered lessons from research on vulnerability and shame done by University of Houston social science researcher Brené Brown. In the past year, since going public with her research in a 2010 TEDx talk, "The Power of Vulnerability," viewed now by more than 6 million people, she has lived through feeling ashamed and exposed talking about topics that nobody wants to discuss: shame and vulnerability.  

So Brené and I spent the weekend together. Virtually, as is the way of all modern relationships. “Women and Power” gave me a live streaming video window into a heart she shared freely. Here she was talking to me and 8,500 other virtual friends in New York and around the world about how leaving yourself open, suffering yourself to be vulnerable despite the fear of being humiliated, is what ultimately leads us to joy. 

A paradox.

I was watching with something other than journalistic detachment. Having suffered my own humiliations recently—suffering the limbo of a project I passionately believed in going unfunded, profound misunderstandings with a colleague, a relationship on the brink, I wanted to learn from her. Like you, perhaps, I long for joy. 

If you've listened to her most recent TED talk, "Listening to Shame," you know that the response to her “vulnerability” led to her having what she called a "breakdown", and her therapist characterized more positively as a “spiritual awakening”.

What was the source of her awakening? Finding in her research, after six years and thousands of hours spent conducting interviews with people, that the secret to getting to joy, to embracing life and all its imperfections wholeheartedly is accepting yourself, imperfections and all. 

Wholeheartedness means self-acceptance despite shame, failures, needing others—and not having to be perfect. 

Love and acceptance. The very things we are all looking for. 

This simple finding—admitting your vulnerability could lead to joy--so shocked the “take no prisoners,” former University of Texas party girl-turned-social work researcher that Brown had to step away from her research and go into therapy for a year to figure out this "vulnerability thing", describing her own aversion to admitting she might be less-than-perfect by confessing she “didn’t even hang out with people like that.” 

Coming to Terms

“Happiness,” says Brown, “is circumstantial; joy is internal and very deeply spiritual. The things that bring us the most joy in the long run may not always make us happy in the moment.” 

The things that bring us joy may not make us happy. 

Another paradox. 

It turns out that those people who were truly joyful, wholeheartedly “all in”, had one thing in common:  

“I came across a group of people who were fundamentally different. They woke up every day and acknowledged, ‘I am enough.’” Self-compassion, self-acceptance, these are not just words to those wholehearted people, but a way of life. For most of us, in a society that worships perfection, we are never enough—and think others judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves.

How does this lack shape us and contribute to a culture marked by shame? “We live in a culture of deep, deep scarcity—never enough...relevant enough, popular enough, rich enough...there is "never enoughness". I call these the shame Gremlins: you are never good enough, and who do you think you are!”

Flashback to the perfect job, "acting" as director of external affairs for a nationally-ranked graduate school of public policy. Back in the '90s, before news was a blood sport, I started building the institutions public reputation from scratch working with a brilliant faculty—upgrading "the best kept secret" of a school near the nation's capital into a nationally recognized institution that turned out some of the best-prepared up-and-comers in the worlds of policy, economics, and politics. I started a regular policy series by news makers, news reporters and policy makers, involving students in the process. I orchestrated a globally televised  Presidential Primary debate before that became an Olympic sport, inviting students and faculty involvement, that thrust the school and, indeed, the university, into a wider international arena.  

I so loved what I did that I wanted to make the position permanent. To be hired on permanently do my dream job, I had to interview; I had done my job well, raising the profile of the school and its faculty, developing rapport with my colleagues, trust from the faculty and increasing recruitment in the process of its growing public reputation.  Slam dunk, no?

No. I didn't get my own job. Then I was asked to train my successor, who didn't have the skills the position called for. I mean, are you serious!?

That hurt, of course, but I was ashamed to confess this. I hid away to lick my wounds. 

To mask our imperfections, to deny the very vulnerability that allows us to connect, expand creativity, allow intimacy, we armor ourselves to meet the day without showing our human chinks. It’s exhausting and isolating to live such a guarded life. 

Does the Mask Keep Us Safe?
 Brené argues no. Stuffing down shame, numbing the pain, also keeps us from feeling joy. ”We can talk about joy and happiness, but if we don't talk about what gets in the way…what gets in the way of us being ‘all in’?” To keep ourselves safe, for hiding all our imperfections under the skin we, as a society, have become the most over-medicated, surgically perfected, addicted, anxious, depressed and distracted adult cohort in the history of this country. So it would seem that guarding ourselves from sharing our pain with others—staying vulnerable—has resulted in stress, disease and lack of connection. In a word: shame.

As her data bore out, life is no less difficult for the people who saw themselves as worthy of love and belonging. “But this group,” Brené observes, “in the midst of struggle, said, ‘This is really hard, but I am still worthy of love and belonging.’ 


The whole-hearted folks she was talking to, "also made different choices than I was making. ...things like cultivating self-compassion; like they would talk to someone they care about. They let go of perfectionism. They'd cultivate play and rest and let go of exhaustion as a status symbol and productivity as self-worth. Let go of anxiety as a lifestyle. 

“Here's what I learned is essential: love and belonging,” Brené attested. “These are irreducible needs. We are hard-wired for connection. It is why we're here. Love and belonging are two of the most powerful expressions of connection.” 

The common thread for the wholehearted people in her study was in practicing gratitude. 

Practicing gratitude—I could do that. Being thankful for all what is right here-right now: to wake up with my dog cuddled beside me. To listen to the rain from the warmth of my kitchen with a cup of tea and nowhere special to go. To talk to a friend. 

Everyday moments as the path to joy. Not one moment, but a lifetime of moments adds up to something joyful to celebrate. 

Learning this has been a profound awakening. To acknowledge, “I am good enough.” To own my story and share it—in all its glory and shame. To stay open and not succumb to numbness. 

Ah yes, back to that story of not getting my own job? I was shocked. Needed time to retreat and figure things out.  Out of the ashes, I set to work on a novel, Satan's Mortgage. Transformed my hurt, anger and embarrassment into creative output. Good therapy.

So, of course, it's not all about the defeats. There are triumphs, too. And moments that fill the everyday. Still, it is painful to admit my failings in the story I show myself and the world and not shut down. But, as Brené relates, telling the whole story and remaining vulnerable despite the shame offers our best chance at getting to joy. 

I am practicing. Despite the letdowns, my failures and imperfections, “I am enough.” Good enough. Kind enough. Pretty enough. Smart enough to find joy in life. I am doing the best that I can. 

It's a secret we can all share. And sharing secrets like that earns Brené Brown a standing ovation.

What moments in life have you been keeping secret? 

Digging Deeper:

Books, blog and more www.brenebrown.com

2012 TED Talk On vulnerability

More on the value of self-compassion

Time to Let Him Go

Being the mother of a soon-departing college freshman is not a new feeling - in fact, this is departure number three; the first two have already successfully completed that four-year experience in one piece. They've even decided to take up residence close to home and family, and we enjoy a close relationship where I can watch proudly as they navigate the adult world. It's just that this is the last to go. The landscape for my baby is about to change dramatically, and my own landscape will soon reflect his absence in a quieter, less chaotic home life, but also strangely empty of all that teen energy, angst and exuberance.

I pride myself on not being a helicopter mom: one of those parents buzzing overhead to monitor the life of her child, diving in at any sign of difficulty. But I like to think I am also supportive, available and reasonably helpful. This child's leaving is significantly different from the previous two in yet another way, however: he doesn't like to open up to us. His relative silence means I worry that I won't have any sense of the daily joys and struggles so far away, that he will not want me to get to know his friends, that he won't call, text or Skype regularly, so I won't be able to hear in his voice what's going right, or what's going wrong. "You're so annoying, Mom. I'm fine" is a regular refrain when I push him to share.

This newly emerging young man has some added challenges - not uncommon to many teens. Learning difficulties make school difficult. ADHD means it's hard for him to maintain focus. The fact that he finds it hard to find the words to explain what's going on in his brain leave him reticent to discuss this fact with teachers - particularly when they're strangers in a new setting. I feel for him. I wish I could talk to his professors myself. But I won't. Because he is also proud. And I am not a helicopter mom. So that task is now up to him.

My daughter consoles me that I have done all I can to help her little brother reach this point successfully, and that now it's up to him. I know that, developmentally, she is right, but Number 3 doesn't necessarily follow the clock. It's vexing.

It is not that he's never been away from home before. For the past six summers, he's gone to sleep-away camp in Maine for a two-month stretch. A natural athlete, and patient coach and instructor of younger children, he thrives at camp. But after two months, in an environment I know intimately, under the care of adults I've known since my own teen years, he comes home.

Still, the day of his departure for High Point University is drawing undeniably closer - only a week from today and we will be moving him into his dorm room. In what seems like a "kiss-and-run" policy, the university schedules move-in day on Saturday, a Convocation Sunday morning, and then it's off to the races.

Why does a mother worry about this so much? Is it because the definition of her role is about to change so radically? Is it the thought that our relationship is about to change forever? If this were a multiple choice test, I'd have to leave room not just for a choice of, d). all of the above, but one more option: e). all of the above and more.

I know enough about the brain to understand that this is my limbic system overruling my better judgment. The drive to protect, to nurture, to keep our offspring safe is a primal drive. My rational brain says, he'll be home in just over a month (his college has an extended fall break); he is just a phone call away; Southwest flies to a town close-by in less than an hour. All of these facts sound reassuring, but don't erase the feeling of looming loss and powerlessness.

It is, according to the calendar, time to let him go. He will experience all the newness of college life and adjust easily. Or he will struggle with the freedom, choices and changes of boundaries. He will be away from daily interaction with family and the comforts of home. In either case, I will continue to poke, call, text and be that "annoying Mom" who wants to stay involved in her son's life, even far away.

I am proud of my young man. He's accomplished so much in 17 years. I am thrilled for him that he is strong, autonomous, smart. I know he has the strength to take on life's challenges and I pray that the values we've worked to instill stand up under the pressure of adjustment to this new life, new friends, more strenuous academic expectations.

In a week, we cast our baby out of the nest. I will watch with pride and tears as he spreads his wings to fly. It is all a mother can do. Right?

The Wondrous Waltz of the Daffodils

William Wordsworth's classic verse, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, that ode to spring's temporal dance, evokes the seasonal dance of wind-struck daffodils, "Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Wandering and dancing in the breeze." The poet's gaze - espying clouds of yellow, "Waving their heads in spritely dance" - how can we help but be joyful in their company: "And I, beside them, dance in glee", even as the grey, icy winds of winter give way to the indomitable sunshine of spring.

Garrison Keillor recites the poem on April 15, 2011 in his daily Writer's Almanac (see podcast below). The date for me is meaningful: my father, David Stevens who, well into his 80s would visit nursing homes to read poetry he loved to "the old people", would recite this most beloved poem by heart at every reading. This year, it was as if he touched me from another dimension, channeled by Keillor: my father the accountant would have danced with glee at the conclusion of this day, April 15, that the long tax season, the grays of thousands of 1040 long forms and long days and nights under the sore artifice of office fluorescent lights, could finally give way to fresh air, suddenly lengthened days and the sunshine of spring.

Since my own childhood, when Daddy and I would walk of an early spring day, one of our favorite things to do, daffodil's have evoked the dance of freedom, light and love. So now, in this season of spring and light and hope, I think of him when I take my walk in the woods, and "when oft upon my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, I gaze upon the inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude."

My father was also a poet in his own right. My own yard offers up a meager yield of only three lonely dancers, but I cut them to grace our Passover table and take delight in gazing upon them, as I know Daddy still must. "And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils."

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
by William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

Note to Self: I Have Promises to Keep

I was grabbed by Orna Ross's Creative Intelligence blog post about the paradox of creative intention. She advises us to look at intention, not as a plan, but as a guiding principle, recognizing that despite the force that focused intention can create to make things happen, there are equally forceful and opposing actions being served up by the universe that may derail us from achieving what we really want.

For the sake of clarity, I am listing "Orna's paradoxes" here:
* To clearly visualise what we want, then let go of any attachment to the outcome.
* To be prepared to do our part while allowing life to do its.
* To work well and make appropriate efforts while also playing well, with lots of rest, relaxation, contemplation and meditation.
* To be persistent but not bull-headed.
* To work towards success while welcoming failure as a learning opportunity.
* To be resilient but not self-satisfied.
* To know what we want at the same time as knowing we are complete without it.
* To fully appreciate what we’ve already (co)created while directing energy towards what we’re (co)creating now.

But what about the question of setting clear intentions - and holding them central? Case in point: my novel in progress, After the Party's Over. Already two years in the writing and 90+ pages in, I have been stymied for months over forcing my seat in the chair to move the plot forward. I am waiting for the main character to tell me what's on her mind. She has revealed quite a bit recently, but I find my eyes glued elsewhere, not to her.

The paradox of inattention has derailed my best intentions. What's keeping me from writing?

First, paying clients. This is a good thing, as we have to eat and pay the mortgage. But there is a paradox. In my social marketing business, I help scientists, educators, researchers, and health professionals tell their stories. Storytelling still - just not my own.

Next, as part of my professional toolkit, I use social media. My professional blog offers a way to amplify client stories, as well as initiate discussions with colleagues and engage in conversations about social marketing. In my novel, some of the characters text and tweet, but no serious social networking is keeping them from living their lives as I write them.

Then, of course, Twitter. I am pretty judicious about turning off the Tweetdeck when it comes to meeting client deadlines. Just not my own. In fact, I had every intention of writing three pages a day during November or, in tweet-speak, #NaNoWriMo. That is, until client deadlines interfered. So I postponed my personal NaNoWriMo for December. And here we are, mid-December, and my poor main character Ellen is still frozen in time waiting at the airport in Detroit, having met up with her ex-husband, the one she walked out on, leaving their three children to his care years before. They are suspended in time until I get my butt on the seat and fingers on keyboard to write them a surprise encounter.

Family, college applications for youngest son, dogs...these are things I have let get in the way.

But it is still December, when miracles do happen. I have high hopes for the week between Xmas and New Year's, when NOTHING HAPPENS IN WASHINGTON, to turn my attentions to fulfilling my better intentions before another year slips away.

Because storytelling is what I do. Fully recognizing the paradox in this plan, my intention is to make my own at least as important as everyone else's.

What about you?