Food for Thought Deluxe: Never Stagnant (Never Stagnasty Either)

I’m living in a pretty interesting time of my life right now… Very interesting.

I can’t remember a day in the recent past, meaning, in the past few months to a year, where a day has not gone by where I haven’t had the opportunity to impart some wisdom or advice in the life of others… or where someone hasn’t imparted wisdom or advice into my own life.

Sometimes this happens multiple times per day. And when that happens? That’s what I call a good day.

That makes me feel very rich. Not in money, but in knowledge, wisdom, heart, love and power.

And it increases daily. I am getting to the point where I wake up with a sense of expectancy.

I tell you… What more can your friendly neighborhood Oldgirl ask for?

Because you know what? This Oldgirl needs all the wisdom and advice that she can handle. I’m like a bottomless pit when it comes to advice and wisdom. I soak it up like a sponge. I squeeze that sponge out into my mental databank somewhere… and come back and soak up some more.

Anyway, I was talking to someone last Saturday morning about some things. She’d said the night before that she’d cried herself to sleep. I told her that if she needed to talk, I was here.

I think she even woke up crying. What the world?

I feel her, though. Because Lord knows that I’ve cried myself to sleep many a time. And I’ve woke up crying. So I understand.

She is a little like me—keeps whatever bothers her close to her heart. I respect that.

I understand that too.

On Saturday morning, she text me about some of her issues. (Note: I asked permission to post this. She said I could. I could even use her name. Uh... she will remain unnamed).

I know I’m a good ten years older than her. So I understand some of her issues. I’d been through the same thoughts, feelings and emotions. I was able to offer her some extra special “food for thought”.

One issue she had, that I myself and many others have from time to time is this:

“I feel so stagnant.”

Sigh.

I felt for my homegirl.

I too have felt stagnant.

But when I get to feeling that way, I have to give myself a mental wedgie. I have to lace up my spiritual bootstraps. And be quick about it too.

Stagnant can turn into Stagnasty… real quick, you see.

(Yes. I did go make up a word. I sure did. I'll discuss that much later).

And you know me… I am not the most well read girl in the world, so I like to clearly define my words.

Stagnant – not moving or flowing; motionless; showing little or no sign of activity or advancement; not developing or progressing; inactivity.

Stagnant has several synonyms – stale, still, standing, quiet, sluggish, motionless, brackish, inactive, flat, slow, depressed, slow-moving.

Man… none of those words make my heart leap for joy. None.

There’s no wonder that when people cry “I am stagnant”, it is a fully loaded statement. It is drenched in tears. It’s covered in sheets of pain and sadness. It will have you so depressed that you will feel like you will never see the light at the end of the tunnel ever again.

And when you do see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s not the end of the tunnel It's not the way to freedom. It’s a fast moving train coming straight at YOU.

Yes, feelings of stagnancy can get that bad for some folks.

I posed a question to her. It’s one that I pose to my ownself very often.

First of all, let me digress and explain something about myself. I am a scientist. I have a doctorate degree in organic chemistry. I am interdisciplinary, meaning I have done research and published papers in several scientific areas.

And I am spiritual. I don’t necessarily care for organized religion, but I go to church, pray, study my bible, etc. That is waaaay more important to me than my scientific training. Mind you, I’ve been embroiled in all things science since the age of 16, when I started college. I am 43 now. That’s a ton of science. I’m reading a book on quantum mechanics, string theory, and relativity right now (I have a minor in Physics, so I like to do a little, uh, casual reading in that area, in my spare time).

So, as you could imagine, I think of everthing from a spiritual AND a scientific standpoint. You may ask, how is that so, since the two are polar opposites? Well, I’m a scientist to the utmost degree. So my thinking tends to swirl around in that direction. At the same time, I am a spiritual person.

And I believe that everything is born out of the spiritual. Including the scientific.

I’ll let you go chew on that and debate amongst yourselves. That’s just my personal philosophy. Sorry, but that piece of paper you are writing on didn’t appear out of thin air. It came from a tree. That tree went through various processes to become paper. And somebody formed a thought in their head that maybe we can take this tree and make paper from it.

Everything starts with a mere seed of a thought.

And that tree came from a seed that had been sown in the ground.

And if you’ve been reading here for awhile, you know how I am about sowing seed.

Boy, my eyes are stretched, trying to sow a seed. Sow a seed of cash, wisdom, kindness, help, advice… SOMETHING good. Yes sir. I figured all that out in my 20s, honey.

That is all… You needed to know that so that you could understand what I am about to relate to you.

Back to our subject matter.

Anyway, I offered her some advice.

Advice I give my own self when I get to feeling stagnant.

You’re never stagnant.

I’m never stagnant.

“Your hair and nails grew overnight. They are growing right now as we speak. But you can’t tell. Just because you can’t tell doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.”

She agreed with that.

And that is coming from someone like me, who has an alopecia component to her lupus. I haven’t cut my hair since June 2010. (I do some bootleg trimming with a rusted pair of scissors, but not a real hair cut). My hair grows at a really slow rate. So over the past year and a half, it has grown approximately an inch.

It has grown slower than your hair.

But understand this: no matter how slow my hair grows, it hasn’t been stagnant.

I asked her, “Did you get up this morning and piss?”

She responded yes. With a giggle.

I told her that while she was asleep, her body worked hard. It very precisely identified all the bad and dead cells, repaired damaged cells, and generated new ones. It even identified potentially cancerous cells. It ushered all those dead, badly, damaged and potentially cancerous cells to your blood stream, and directed it to the kidneys.

And when you got up this morning?

You pissed all that out… along with other contaminants… contaminants expertly and precisely identified by your body and targeted for elimination.

And you did all that without not even thinking about it. It was all an involuntary process.

When you are asleep, in your seemingly most still and “stagnant” state of being, your body was far from stagnant.

Very far.

“We’re never stagnant.”

Never.

Her response was “*gulps*. Yes ma’am.”

She may have been thinking… “That LadyLee… she know she is a bit out there. She think too hard about stuff. ”

Whatever, baby. Maybe I am. But I’m just offering you a different perspective. You can take it, toss it around, chew on it, use it or trash it if you want.

Do with it what you like.

Know this: In the time that it took me to write this post (a couple of hours), the earth has traveled approximately 135,000 miles on its path of revolution around the sun. The earth rotated on its axis some 2000 miles.

Yet we can’t even tell. Of course, if we pay attention to the position of the sun during the day, we can tell. But have you noticed that we don’t really care about all that? However, we DO pay attention to when it’s daytime and when it’s nighttime. The difference between the day and night is very apparent, very stark.

We pay more attention to stark changes than we do to subtle changes.

That translates over to life in general. We’re never stagnant. Something’s always happening. Always. We are more in tune with the rapid changes… and we don’t celebrate the subtle and quiet changes.

I don’t know about you, but that’s how I get to feeling sometimes. And I have to remind myself that it’s all important.

I penned a post a few years ago about the movement of the space shuttle from wherever they store it to the launching pad. It takes six hours to move it 2 miles. If that’s not “stagnant”, I don’t know what is.

Subtle slow speed… but progress was made. There was a starting point and there was a destination. If the shuttle was moved too fast, some of the expensive and delicate mechanical parts could get messed up, so it had to be moved SLOWLY. If not, something would break. And we can't have the shuttle busting up in space, can we? We've seen what happens already when stuff goes wrong with the shuttle! Hmm.

I’ll let you find the parallel to life in that one.

I didn’t fully realize this and appreciate it until I was about to turn 40, and I pondered my own life. I am not a rich woman. I am not a beautiful woman (well, I am beautiful to me, lol). I don’t have everything that everyone wants. I’m just me. Your friendly neighborhood Oldgirl, LadyLee.

But, I broke out crying several times as I thought of all that had gone on with me between the ages of 30 and 40. There were way too many times during that span of time that I complained of feeling stagnant. But I was far from such. Over 10 years- over 3,650 days, mind you- I’d had more joy, pain, triumphs, trials, tribulations, hurts, dreams, disappointments, learning experiences, fears, growth and achievements than I can count or even remember.

There was this wondrous mix of things going on. In 10 years. We not talking about all 43 years of my life. Just that 10. To think of what has gone on in the past 43 years would make me pass out.

Goodness gracious alive.

The point was… I was never stagnant.

At that moment, I realized that the only time you’re stagnant is when you die.

I’m not dead. That means I’m not stagnant.

The human body completely regenerates itself on a cellular level every seven years. That means no cell in my body is older than 7 years old. You know this has to be true on some level because whenever you shower, there is some dead skin that comes off and you gotta wash out your tub. You scratch up on your face right now and some dead skin comes off on your fingernails. And the body kicks in and creates new skin cells.

O_o.

The body is a wonderful specimen, constantly repairing and regenerating and making new cells.

Never stagnant. NEVER.

I know when I am feeling the most “stagnant”, a few flags start flying. Some red alerts, if you wanna call them that.

It is an alert to pause and think. And I ask myself a question (well, several questions): What is it that I am suppose to be learning at this very moment? Am I standing still because I need to grow in a particular area? Are some of my decisions I am making or have made causing this stagnancy? Are there any immediate steps I can take to break up this monotony? Can I identify someone who has gone through the same thing and get some advice?

I ask myself many more questions. I won’t list them. But that list above is a healthy start to breaking and busting up the fallow ground of personal stagnancy, isn’t it? I think it is. For me, at least.

And I know me. I have to get to work and ask myself the hard questions. And step out and take immediate action.

If not, I become stagnasty.

Yeah man. That’s the word I made up earlier in the post.

You know, stagnasty. Like water that’s been sitting around for too long.

You’ve seen standing water… water that’s just there, just stagnant, not flowing or moving.

If left along long enough and not treated or whatever, it starts to smell. Stuff starts growing in it. It gets slimy. It’s just nasty.

Stagnasty.

And you better not drink it! You better not! If you do, you’re gonna get sick, babes. Sick as a dog.

If we don’t address the roots of our stagnant feelings about ourselves, we may become stagnasty like that water.

I am pretty much convinced that people who are problematic… you know, people who cause emotional and mental carnage in the life of others around them, people who always got something to say about other peoples’ choices and lives… People who always at the center of a bunch of mess.

Yeah, those type of people.

I am convinced there is some area of stagnancy in their lives. An area that has been there for a long time, one that they haven’t dealt with. And they’re trying to deal with it in the wrong way.

Stagnancy is painful.

And people in pain tend to try to deal with their pain by hurting other people. People who can't control their emotions tend to try to control the emotions of others. That’s stagnasty right there. Your stagnancy gets to a point where it affects not only you, but it infects all the people around you.

And I’m sorry, but that’s just jacked up.

And I think our times of feeling “stagnant” are gonna get worse before they get better. I submit that we are living in a very interesting time. Very interesting. We are living at a time where information and all that we want is at our fingertips.

I was getting an iron infusion today, which took about 4 hours (geesh!). I had my smartphone, my kindle and my netbook all going. (I almost brought my touch notepad laptop, but uh… that woulda been too much, lol). I was listening to some music (O’Jays whooo hooo!), texting back and forth with a couple of folks, doing some writing, reading some blogs, and watching movies on my kindle… all at the same time.

You couldn’t do all that 10 years ago. Heck, you couldn’t do all that 5 years ago.

Technology and the information from it is fast. And you do realize they are about to come out with the computer eyeglasses. And the prototypes of contact lenses that let you text from your eye are already being tested (How on earth is THAT going to work?).

Yet there are things in life that still take time to do.

Like personal growth.

Finding your soulmate (permanent, not this fly by night foolishness).

Permanent weight loss (and I mean permanent).

Breaking addictions (just say no, ya’ll. It’s harder than that).

Forming new good habits (permanent ones, not this trendy stuff).

Coming back and working your way out of bad choices and bad decisions (that is painful for me).

And whatever else you can think of.

A blog sister is teaching me a LOT about the importance of our timing versus God’s timing and the specific order of the heart’s desires and much much more. In the midst of all this life- this fast life of ours- we may be having those feelings of time to time of stagnancy. I know she does. But she works through it. With the desired results running her down like a freight train. (Whoo. That sista preaching so good, I almost dropped her a 40 page email. But I’ma leave you alone, girl. You know who you are. I’m gonna leave you alone. Cuz I don’t want you to think I’m crazy. I’ll just sit here and watch and listen and learn and crochet very fast. Very fast.).

We’re not stagnant at all. We’re never stagnant.

It’s not only the journey that’s important. But it’s the thousands of little things we learn along the way that is most important of all. Check this out: we may have needed all of that so called stagnancy in order to properly take care of and handle those things we desired at the journey’s end. All the things you learned in the process may be critical to not only obtaining, but maintaining the desired goal.

Hmm… A food for thought, within a food for thought. Sigh.

Life has gotten faster. So when such things and special areas of our lives that need specific attention and nurturing don’t move as fast, we become overwhelmed with feelings of stagnancy. Well, I know I do.

Life is getting faster and faster and faster. And time seems to be getting shorter and shorter. Not enough time to get things done. Mind you, there are the same amount of hours in this day as it was on the very day you were born.

I am old enough to remember when I had to go to the encyclopedia or card catalog for information. I remembering having to buy stamps so I can mail my bills. I remember seeing a payphone and jumping out to call someone. I remember sitting down and writing letters to friends and mailing them.

Fast forward to the present. Mess around and let that smartphone not be working fast enough. Let that laptop move a tad bit too slow. Mess around and let my movie on my Kindle stall out. I have a conniption fit.

It’s no wonder when things I want, growth-wise and lifewise in general, don't happen fast enough, I began to have feelings of stagnancy.

That is when I have to chin-check myself. And remind myself that I’m not stagnant. Things might not be happening fast enough, but you know what? They are happening.

I’m NEVER stagnant. Never.

I’m praying. I stretching my faith out there. I’m doing the personal self-examination. I’m identifying what I need to do. I am thinking about what I want to see happen. I’m writing down goals and plans. I’m using resources. I’m doing all kinds of things. Some of those areas are weak. I have a chance to shore up in those areas. Never stagnant.

And get this, and this is something I figured out years ago: I thank God in advance for the breakthrough that I’m looking for. Whether it’s breaking some ratchet habit, or believing for some need to be met, or something I desire, etc.

I have hollered many a time when something manifests, “This ain’t no surprise to me! I’ve been working on this! Been thanking God in advance. No surprise when it shows up!”

MANY a time.

Might as well. Better than sitting around crying about it. Hear me now, believe me later… I give myself time to whine and cry. But the older I get, the shorter that time gets. I have a long laundry list of accomplishments. I unroll that proverbial list and read it from time to time and remind myself that all things are possible.

Can’t cry too long though, babes. I don’t wanna morph into stagnastiness, now.

Because Faith is the evidence of things not seen, the substance of things hoped for. Might as well get busy using it, stretching it, and testing that out. Give God a positive attitude to work with, man.

Don’t get me started on that. Time to wind this post down.

Just a LadyLee theory… and general observation about people around me.

And most importantly, an observation about myself, and the things I do to avoid being… stagnasty.

That’s the word of the day. Use it in a sentence, why don’t ya??

LOL!!

So I hope I was helpful to my friend. I think our text messaging lasted some 4.5 hours? And that is cool with me. I think I washed clothes, cleaned the kitchen, did some crocheting… all kinds of things in that time period.

All the while, working to be an asset to my friend.

I hope I was helpful to her.

And this was a long post. 3145 words. If you made it through all my pontifications and ebonics, you deserve an award! I shoulda put out a $100 gift card Stagnasty Sweekpstakes or something for comments, shouldn’t I have?

And the winner of that card woulda been ME. LadyLee.

LOL. That’s the ultimate in cheating.

I hope you found something helpful to you.

This was a “note”to myself. A long one, mind you.

And it was a note to my homegirl with whom I had that long text conversation with. I know it's hard for her to talk about her issues. We have that trait in common. I am glad she trusted me that day.

All scrawled high upon the washed white walls of The House of LadyLee.

I hope I built her heart and mind up that day. But she may need to come back and read this in the future whenever she becomes overwhelmed with feelings of stagnancy.

I know I will have to.

Really though.