Nothing compares to YOU

Author: Corinna Kaebel

  • What Are My Feelings Telling Me?

    Is everything I feel relevant? The subtle but crucial difference

    Do you know this feeling – you wake up in the morning, and while you’re still in that twilight state, the familiar worries, big and small, slowly but surely flow into your consciousness?

    Yet yesterday evening everything had been so beautiful, and you had gone to bed with a feeling of elation, determined to approach the new day “positively”!

    So now, on top of the already unpleasant feeling, comes the annoyance with yourself for having “tipped over” again.

    Do you notice something?

    At least I notice a clear tendency, almost cruel in its exclusiveness, to always want to strive for absolute happiness – or even feel obligated to do so.

    If you’re not happy, something’s wrong with you.

    I have several very different questions about this:

    • Isn’t it okay, given everything that’s constantly happening in the world, to sometimes not be manically happy – even if you’re among the fortunate ones who don’t live under immediate threat?
    • What if your happiness looks completely different from what is commonly defined as such? Quieter, more relaxed, with more room for various sensations?
    • What if you can easily let go of that heaviness that does not belong to you?

    Everyone will think differently about my first question – but surely everyone will admit that paradise doesn’t reign on earth. Why else would religions, spirituality, philosophy etc. exist? They ultimately serve to cope with “this life,” to understand its meaning, to either explain the unpleasant, the suffering, view it from a different angle, or reduce it. The central question for me is: How do I deal with the fact that suffering exists? I strive to live as honestly as possible and to open up space for happiness in my encounters with others, as best I can.

    This brings me to my second question: What is happiness for you personally, in your sphere of influence? Where do you find yourself in this particular situation?

    My happiness consists of being able to perceive and feel things, but then also being able to switch back into that spaciousness that allows me to continue breathing and see other possibilities. This also includes phases where I consciously surrender to melancholy, sadness, grief. Times I allow myself when I don’t have to sugarcoat or reinterpret anything, when I let my feelings and sometimes tears flow freely. Interestingly, these phases pass all the more quickly the kinder I am with myself and allow everything – often it’s a matter of just a few minutes.

    Only dwelling in foreign suffering that one cannot alleviate drags one down in the long run and doesn’t help anyone.

    But how do I recognize when I’m dealing with my own feelings?

    As a rule of thumb, I can say: If familiar thought loops attach themselves to the feelings, or entire thought constructs unfold in no time, the longer I try to “get rid of” the feeling, it’s rather an energy from outside: I perceive it and try to make sense of it, to justify it by walking down familiar mental pathways.

    An example from this morning: “The week begins. Oh no, I still haven’t found a new additional job. I’m a loser, an outcast, a parasite, I’m going to waste my parents’ money too, I’ve always been a failure…” Viewed soberly, I could refute every single “point,” but that’s precisely the crux – that in such moments one doesn’t think “soberly.” Instead, the brain “thinks” all fitting associations from one’s own experience toward the perceived energy. Following the motto: “I feel …, this must come from the fact that I did or didn’t do …, am or am not … etc.” At the end of such thought chains, I feel even worse and see no way out. This is the clearest sign that it’s an energy from outside that I cannot change because it’s not mine.

    In summary – feelings from which long thought chains unfold that lead to hopelessness are usually not mine.

    But how do my own feelings differ?

    Here’s an example from my not-so-distant past: In the last two years, since I became the last remaining person from my family, without having founded one of my own, especially during travels I was overcome by the realization that I currently have no one in the world waiting for my updates. While I had previously sometimes experienced this “having to report” as an unpleasant burden, the new “freedom” was initially anything but pleasant. It was a feeling of aloneness that went so deep that my head couldn’t even engage, and as soon as I (finally!) stopped suppressing it, it broke through and discharged itself, in this case in healing tears.

    Or a situation annoys me that I initially try to talk myself into liking. However, if I give free rein to the anger by, for example, consciously grumbling to myself and also physically releasing the tension, clarity suddenly emerges. And afterward I might even start singing.

    The difference between foreign suffering that we perceive and unsuccessfully try to resolve — our head runs hot but comes to no conclusion – and our own feelings that discharge when we give them space, has been a vital realization for me.

    How are you doing?

    Do you struggle with “troublesome feelings”?

    What if we can handle everything if we just approach it consciously?

    I wish you a wonderful, diverse, and conscious day!

  • Bye-Bye Bothmerstraße!

    Bye-Bye Bothmerstraße!

    Looking out over the garden in front of my family’s house that has been passed on from my grandparents to my parents, then from my parents to my sister and me, and ended up in my hands after my sister’s passing almost two years ago, I am grateful and happy to soon be leaving it for good, to a wonderful young family. And to go out into the world, once again!

    Over a period of seven years when first my father, then my mother, and finally my sister passed, I have come to periodically live in this house, with varying extents of gratitude, to be honest. There’s so much more upkeep involved in a house with a garden than I am used to as a work nomad taking up residence wherever life leads me. Moreover, the circumstances necessitating my presence – revolving around clearing out the house over the years, trying to provide support to my family in sickness and death, making it a haven for my sister and me after our parents’ passing – were not exactly joyful. Nevertheless, I am very grateful to the house and especially the garden for providing me with an oasis of peace when I most needed it.

    But now the time has come to move on.

    And although all those years I simply HAD to take sorting through my family’s belongings might seem excessive to some, I hope that my experience – as it will most probably play out in this blog – will be a contribution to some readers. Just reading about how other people experience a similar situation can already bring the relief of knowing you’re not alone.

    So today I am starting off my blog Bye, bye Bothmerstraße! with a short spin through time.

    So what did the house mean to me over the years?

    Starting in the 80ies and 90ies, it was my grandparents’ home whom we visited on Easter and New Year’s Eve. They would move their 50ies-style metal garden furniture with flowered covers and a wax table cloth out onto a stretch of artificial grass to proudly sit on their veranda. The interior, with its plush u-shaped sitting corner complete with mirror and wooden lions, was more reminiscent of a Victorian style but could easily be complemented with said garden chairs if need be. Classic snacks were being offered – such as jelly-filled donuts called Berliner, and mustard eggs – but my grandparents also made concessions for the younger generation by putting out peanut flips and pretzels. One of the culinary highlights for me was the so-called Gelbwurst, basically weisswurst in the form of cold cuts, a regional specialty. Today, I wonder how 7 adults could sleep in a 100 square foot home – but apparently, we managed.

    I also remember the winters having a magical touch to me, as they were cold and there was actual snow (!), especially in comparison to rainy Northern Germany where my parents and me lived at that time. And in spring and summer, squirrels running up and down the trees and around the neighborhood were always a special treat to me. All in all, I had pleasant associations with the house back then, as the place my grandparents lived.

    Later, when they moved into a living unit in an old people’s home they had been reserving for years in advance, my parents moved into the house. Now they were separated by just a 10-minute drive. As my father’s retirement coincided with my graduation from high-school I had time to help my parents move, and then set out to go to university.

    I remember my sister and me having lots of fun helping our father nail down tar paper on the garage roof, and seeing my parents transform the living space to their taste and liking. They added a winter garden at the back of the house, and a tiny sunroom extension in the front – which, funnily enough, is associated with another very enjoyable memory of helping hands-on – namely in breaking down the wall with hammers!

    Afterwards, there were family gatherings over a period of almost thirty years, and the rooms in the house taking on different functions. Most notably, my sister and me would always sleep in the second-tiniest room of the house in the basement, with a folding bed crammed in, but that’s where we could talk into the wee hours without disturbing anyone – and also enjoy the sweets our father secretly snuck in for us.

    All in all, in my mind, the house was reserved for family feasts and family get togethers – which in our case would be our nuclear family consisting of our parents, my sister and me.

    Notwithstanding all my hunger for freedom and travel it provided a sense of emotional stability I certainly didn’t fully appreciate at the time. Moreover, I could still leave stuff – like my children’s books and toys, but also more recent items, “at home”. And the attic provided an ample choice of furniture to populate my student’s abodes with. I remember at one time taking a hoover on my train ride back to Leipzig, much to the amusement of the other passengers.

    The house in Nuremberg was the place I could and would find my parents without fail – and although our family dynamics weren’t exactly easy and I always had to brace myself for those visits and recuperate afterwards, there was this bedrock quality I’ve come to appreciate only recently.

    Later, as our parents started aging, the house saw a lot of pain, suffering, intensifying of detrimental personality traits and hard talks. And yet, as far as possible, the family tradition of gathering to talk or play were being upheld, even after our father died 7 years ago. Our mother followed him a little over a year later, and up until my sister passed, I’d arrange for us to celebrate Christmas and New Year’s at the house in a fashion that reminded us of the bigger family gatherings of the past.

    Once, my sister jokingly said to me she could picture me as an old lady sitting in the living room with some knitwork on my lap, looking out over the garden – which, at the time, elicited but horrified protest from me.

    But today, I am looking out of the window and enjoying every bird (or cat) that comes to visit, in delightful anticipation of leaving it all behind and in good hands very soon.

    I wonder how life will unfold for the new owners here – and what stories the house will have to tell then?

    In conclusion to this introduction, I would like to give you some questions around the concept of “home”.

    How you have experienced your parents’ house – if there has been one in your life, of course?

    Or, to put it more broadly, where have you experienced or placed “home”?

    Is there one place in particular or are there several places – or people – or states of mind – which hold that quality for you?

    How important is a sense of home to you?

    And how grateful would you allow yourself to be for all the instances of home you experience?