Emotional Intelligence and Dumb Phones

It’s only day three in the week and already I’ve had a unique experience to fill up time in my weird widowhood world where sometimes it seems like that’s all I’ve got is time. Woo is me. I want something more meaningful in my life but until I make that happen for myself I go to things like an OLLI class that was billed as “a stimulating and thought-provoking session about the fascinating field of emotional intelligence.” Would you sign up for a workshop like that if that’s all you knew about it? Thankfully I wasn’t the only one who was intrigued and foot-loose enough to act on that impulse. Fifty people showed up and we had a great time laughing our gray-haired heads off as we learned that emotional intelligence is about “managing our own emotions and the ability to ‘read’ emotions in others.” We talked about the nine ways people learn and how IQ alone is not an indicator of success in a person’s life. We talked about the characteristics of emotional intelligence---the other indicator of success---which includes handling relationships and being a self-motivator. We touched on that fact that emotions are impulses to act (flight or fight) and feelings are more mind based, our reactions to emotions and we base those reactions on our past experiences. 

I’d been to one of the speaker’s workshops two years ago so I knew he’d be entertaining. That one was titled, “I’m Dying to Talk to You” which was about end-of-life conversations. He had worked for Hospice for 25 years and he’s one of those people with a thousand anecdotes on the tip of his tongue and he likes to interact with his audience, letting us share stories as well. If he could be cloned he’d make the perfect “gift” to give to lonely widows and children you’d like to grow up to be good citizens of the world. Up for auction! One male who actually listens, who can tell funny stories, who has a generous heart and throws out sentences that you want to write down like, “Human souls don’t want to be fixed, they just want to be heard” and “we’re all recovering children” and Emra Bombeck’s “Worrying is like being in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do but does not get you anywhere.”

That last one about worrying is a hard habit to break. At least for me. If you don’t worry, you don’t troubleshoot your way out of potential problems. Or is that a cop-out, something I tell myself to justify things like getting naked in front of a dermatologist so he can look at my moles? What’s the difference between worrying and your mind subconsciously working on ways to avoid what you’re worried about? My biopsies came back, by the way, and two are cancerous so I’m scheduled for what they call “surgery” but is really just them digging out more skin around where the moles were removed for the biopsies. Sorry, Emra, but my ‘rocking chair’ did get me somewhere. 

Changing topics: I bought a new smart phone that was absolutely the stupidest phone I’ve ever had and between Don and me we’ve had a lot of cell phones going back to the ‘80s when Motorola bag phones first came on the market. (See photo above.) Can you believe it, the plan we had with that first cell phone was $9.99 a month for life for unlimited calls and we were able to keep that plan, transferring it to upgraded phones, until 2005. We finally voluntarily gave up the contract because the company got fussy and would only let us use it with a basic cell phone and I wanted one with more bells and whistles on it. But I still have that same cell phone number---31 years!

The phone I bought had some (new to me) features on it that I wanted like voice texting and voice maps but what it didn’t have the ability to get itself activated. After making four calls to the company spread out over 11 days and waiting on hold for over four hours finally a technical support guy declared the phone is defective and they’d send me a pre-activated phone to make a swap. The good news is they said they’d wave the $35.00 activation fee and drop five dollars off the monthly service fee. The bad news is when the phone arrived today in the mail it wasn’t the right model. It was a phone that cost nearly $100 less than I paid! Back on the phone I went but this time I had a direct line to technical support so I didn’t wait on hold. I got the apologizes one would expect and the promise that they’d use overnight delivery to get me the right phone. This whole saga has been frustrating but I’ve kept my cool through it all. However, if one more thing goes wrong with this fiasco my emotional intelligence will go down the drain and I’ll be back here writing Dumb Phones, Part Two. And I’ll be naming names. ©

The Whiny Widow

There’s a teaser promo that’s been coming on TV all week long for the finale of season six of The Good Wife, a legal drama that I haven’t watched since season one. In the promo it shows the main character, Alicia, saying, “I don’t have any friends and I don’t know why.” If there’s more to the promo than that one line, it’s going right over my head because that single sentence haunts me long after the promo is over. I’m venturing a guess---and I could be embarrassingly off base---that she has no friends because her husband and her once-best friend slept together and as a consequence she doesn’t trust or confide in others. She's a guarded person plus she’s busy being a mother and a defense attorney. How’s that for analyzing a TV character I barely know? I might just have to watch the show tonight to see why that promo line is the teaser to a storyline that’s supposed to hold viewers over to season seven in the fall.

“I don’t have any friends and I don’t know why.” That could be my theme song except for the fact that I do know why I don’t have any friends. Heck, I’ve spent all week long trying to puzzle out an explanation that doesn’t come off sounding whiny or like an excuse or a cry for someone to fix me. I’m not doing any of those things but if I was, “whiny” would probably come the closest to the truth. I’m just trying to make peace with the way things are in my life. And I guess this would be a good place to state the obvious, that I lost my very best friend and soul mate when my husband died. Before that happened, I didn’t sit around thinking about friends. Duh, I didn’t have that hole that needs filling. Like The Good Wife, I no longer have a confidante. Waaaa! Well, except for this blog. Whine, whine, whine and yes, I’ve got cheese to go with that.

Okay, moment of truth: It’s misleading to say I don’t have friends. The trouble is my closest friends and family---the ones where the give-and-take and the conversations flow seamlessly---don’t live close-by. And all the technology in the world isn’t going to give you a satisfying hug. Waaaa. Though I did get a hug this week from the son-I-wish-I-had. He stopped by. I love that guy. We chattered back and forth like a couple of magpies on a clothesline.

In the making-new-friends department, it doesn’t help that I’ve always been an independent person who is not afraid to be alone. I have this theory that it’s the people who don’t like being alone who evolve into extroverts. They invite, they organize, and they draw people to them to keep them company; me I’ve always been able to entertain myself so I depend on the extroverts to get me out of the house and away from my hobbies. Thank you, extroverts. You are an important pillar in the social order of old maids and widows. Do your thing. Just tell me where to be, when and what to bring.

I had hoped to sign up for some Olli classes this summer but everything they’re offering is dark and heavy like: The Dawn of the Nuclear Age, The Bubonic Plague, and Death Acceptance. Yuck yuck and yuck. Someone must have kidnapped all the artists and writers who normally teach the fun stuff because there isn’t a single thing in the new Osher Lifelong Learning Institute catalog that I’m interested in taking. Twenty-six classes and not one is a remotely upbeat class except for Chinese Music which conflicts with my Movie and Lunch Club. Whine, whine, whine. I am turning into a broken record. 

I have a busy week coming up. Monday and Tuesday I’m helping with the Mother’s Day banquet at the senior hall. That first day, I'll be helping to decorate the hall and setting the tables for 110 guests and on Tuesday I’ll help get the beverages ready, dish out the catered food and clean up after everyone is gone. Then later in the evening I’m going to my first “Write and Share MeetUp" at the library. Wednesday I’m going to a live musical production downtown. Thursday I have carpet cleaners coming and on Friday my Movie and Lunch Club meets. Yup, I keep throwing things into that hole in my life, hoping one day I’ll look back and say, “Where did it go? I don’t see it anymore.” I just wish I didn’t feel so restless in the meantime. What I really need is a meditation class so I can turn that whiny “Waaaa” of mine into Ommmm.  ©

Robert Frost and the Prima Donna

I volunteered to work at a fund raiser auction, and two half days this week I helped put together gift baskets full of donated goods which will be auctioned off. (An additional volunteer day will come on Friday to help move items from storage to the silent auction and live auction sites.) This was my second year helping on the basket project but I don’t think there will be a third. I discovered I have a low tolerance for making creative decisions by committee. My fellow volunteers were lovely people but I spent twenty years of my work life designing bouquets and backdrops for weddings, holidays and elegant parties. I have a degree in art and a great sense of scale, balance and color and it drove me crazy that every basket and cellophane bag size and every tissue paper filler and ribbon color decision we made had to be a collaboration. Lest you think I was being an artsy fartsy prima donna, I wasn’t. I wore my go-along-to-get-along persona. I oohed and awed in all the right places, knowing I could have done the work in half the time if left to my own devices or if we’d done the baskets assembly line style like we did last year. More than a few times I had to listen to my mother’s voice in my head saying, “If that’s the worst thing you’ve got to complain about, you’ve got it pretty good.” She was a smart lady.

Ohmygod! Now that I think about it maybe I really was an artsy fartsy prima donna if I had to give myself that Mother Lecture! Ooookay, I'll have to think on that some more but if I was being an in-the-closet artsy fartsy prima donna at least on the outside I was the Queen of Go-Along-to-Get-Along Land where I’ve resided most of my life. No wonder I don’t have many friends. I’m so fake and phony I’m surprised I don’t get arrested for impersonating a human being. Robot Lady says what ever you want to hear if her tactful little hints don't work the first time out.

Changing Topics: When a shirt-tail friend found out I’m taking a class on metaphors, she remarked, “I think it’s great that you’re taking up writing at this late date in your life.” I didn’t know how to response to that so I lamely replied, “Me, too.” I felt like an old dog being petted and praised for learning a ‘new trick’ that I’d actually known how to do all along. Though the ‘Fun with Metaphors’ Olli class is writing related, it’s so much more. This week’s class was a series of quality conversations and my classmates have a rich collection of life experiences to share. Sometimes I feel like a chimney sweep when they get to talking about their world travels. Ya, l’ve been to those tiered rice fields in the Orient---in my head. I’ve seen the Heidelberg Castle in Germany---in an International Geographic Magazine. Africa? Isn’t that the place where the elephants have their own mud spas?  Our class time went by too quickly as we talked about common metaphors like “it takes a village” “America is a melting pot” “life is a box of chocolates" and “life is a journey.” Tons of interesting topics came to the surface as the professor asked questions like, “Is there truth in the metaphor for you? Why or why not.” We ever talked politics which pleased me right down to my toenails that need a manicure soon or my shoes will no longer fit.

We also spent time in class discussing Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken and the professor made a comment about how different our observations were from when she teaches that poem to high school students. She laughed when she told about a student who read the poem in her high school graduation speech. I remember studying The Road Not Taken way back in my teens and now as an adult I don’t see how anyone that young could truly understand what Frost was saying. It’s not a credo for nonconformists as so often the poem is presented. It’s far more ambiguous than that. Who knew…except for the bunch of adults who just took part in a metaphors class? ©

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.