Author: Kris Evans

Perspective

Kris Evans

PerspectiveEveryone has their own perspective.  At the moment, I know with me, I feel my perspective is the right one.  At the moment.  I try to judge my point of view from my experience.  Whatever I have gone through in my life to get me to this point right now is how I come to my conclusions.  And it seems everyone, for the most part, does the same.  We see our point of view as being right for us.  Not necessarily what’s correct for the masses or even the ones closest to us but the one that feels the most comfortable to us.

For me, I try to base my perspective on being fair and honest.  The honest part is the hardest.  To know the truth but to live the truth is really difficult.  I don’t always want to own up to what’s true.  And other people’s perspective can be quite daunting when it pertains to you.

The meaning of perspective, according to the dictionary, is “proper or accurate point of view or the ability to see it”.  Ah, the ability to see it.  Sometimes I don’t want to see how I perceive things.  It’s based on circumstances in my life that I don’t want to face or acknowledge.  But then I have to own up to the fact that I haven’t dealt with my insecurities enough to listen to someone’s objective advice.

When someone asks me my opinion of an issue they are having I’m sometimes afraid of speaking my mind.  I’m worried my perspective will be hurtful and that they may not be ready to hear the truth.  Or my truth anyway.  And I know how they feel.  I have to remind myself to go into that childlike space and find the happiness and pureness that’s under all that fear and doubt.  Again,  facing the real truth.  Being honest with myself.

The value of my word is a big one for me.  I have the need to please and make everyone happy and so I make promises that later I cannot keep.  Then, from my perspective, I try to justify why I said yes in the first place.  Instead of being honest at that moment I take the comfortable route.  In the end, however, it usually bites me in the ass.  You would think after repeating this behavior countless times I would learn.  But change is difficult.  It’s even more difficult as you get older.  I constantly try to push myself not to settle in and become complacent.

What’s your perspective of where you are?  I’m curious to know if I’m just being too analytical.  I know I am desperately trying to quiet the voices in my head of the constant judgment.   From my perspective, the change must come from within me.

Ego

Kris Evans

EgoThe hardest thing in my life I live with and the one thing in my life I would like to lose is my ego.  It is really hard!  I have good days and bad days.  Usually, the bad days are when I am working with incredibly talented people and I feel insecure.  Instead of being smart about the ego and telling it to go away, I let it creep in and do the deed.

Insecurity, fear, frustration and just downright not liking myself and it rears its ugly head.  Now I know that having a healthy ego can be a good thing (or so I’m told), but  I’m not quite sure sometimes where healthy ends and insecurity begins.  It has a way of starting the voices in my head.   I try to justify in order for me to believe what I’m telling myself and then it begins to get murky.

The ego tries to justify this crazy behavior.  I know I am good at what I do in my work but how good?  And according to who?  I would love to be satisfied with knowing I have worked many years to learn my craft and be proud of that fact.  But sometimes the ego keeps me from enjoying the fruits of my labor.

I have read many books about how to live life in the moment and not let what others think of me matter.  But then my ego shows up and it does matter!  I want them to like me.  Really like me!  And isn’t that why the ego plays such a dramatic part in our daily lives?

It goes back to the simple fact we want to be loved.  We want to be accepted.  We want to know that everything is going to be all right.  That to find the true essence of oneself we must rid ourselves of the fear of being alone.  To trust that what we have whatever that may be right now at this moment is enough.  That the next moment may be different but for right now it’s enough.  And right now it’s still enough.  And that moment to moment of knowing is what softens the ego to be healthy and caring.

This healthy ego will make us strong enough to face whatever it is the future will throw our way.  In that strength, we will be able to experience birth, life, love and death with the knowledge that it will have its way if we let it have its way.  We have been given the free will to choose.  I am going to try to continue to choose this moment.

Inspiration

Kris Evans

SightInspiration comes when you least expect it. You can be inspired by anything.  Many are predictable.  Art, nature, sunsets, magazines, books, people, animals, etc.  The list goes on and on.  But yesterday I found myself overcome with tremendous admiration at a place where I had been many, many times.

Nine years ago I underwent surgery for uterine cancer.  I had been working in Greece and knew something wasn’t right.  Thank goodness I was scheduled to go home in a couple of days.  I immediately call my nurse practitioner whose astute observation saved my life.  She immediately took a biopsy and found out I had cancer.  I will never forget that phone call.  One moment I feel like a very healthy 50-year-old and the next moment I’m wondering whether I will see my son graduate from high school.  Looking at your mortality dead in the face is something you can’t explain.  It’s not that it’s so overwhelming it’s just when it’s not expected it’s jarring.

No one quite understands what the feeling of having cancer is until you have it.  No words, observations, sayings, articles…nothing prepares you.  I’m not trying to be melodramatic.  Cancer is very cut and dry.  You have it or you don’t.  You die or you don’t.

But here’s where the inspiration comes in.  I went for my yearly exam that will be a part of my regime for the rest of my life.  I entered Cedars Sinai as I had entered so many times.  First five years it was every six months but now I have gotten past the stage where I can get life insurance.  Before five years of cancer-free, they deem you too risky.  I didn’t have to do chemo or radiation.  Didn’t lose my hair.  Some of my insides were taken out but I feel I got the better end of the stick.

I go to the front desk and check-in.  They give me my wrist band as a reminder I’m a patient, not a visitor.  I will always be a patient.  I’m healthy now, thank God, but here I will always be a patient.  I go into the waiting room and notice that there are so many more people waiting than there was even five years ago.  Don’t know if that means more people are being treated but it appears that way.

My name is called and they take me into a room where people are getting their chemo treatments.  And this is when the realization creeps up and grabs me.  I see an older man with his wife.  The nurse is giving him his meds and talking about the weather.  It seemed it was a way of focusing on something else that wasn’t as difficult as the task at hand.  I am so inspired and in awe of her strength and kindness to this couple.  She does this all day long day after day (she had said she had been there for 27 years) and her focus on her patient and her professionalism in the midst of such sadness was astounding.

Not far sitting in another chair was a beautiful young lady with a scarf on her head receiving her treatment.  Our eyes met and she gave me such a pure smile like a small child.  We were patients in the same room but the connection in our glance I think made her feel like she wasn’t alone.

I feel guilty just having my temperature and blood pressure taken.  I feel like I have escaped from something.  I am called in to see my doctor but I excuse myself to go to the restroom.  And once behind the closed door by myself, I start to cry.  I can’t stop.  For some reason being there is a reminder of how lucky I was to dodge the big C.  I am cancer free now and am determined to be for the rest of my life.  But somehow in that bathroom, I realize it could have happened to me. Instead, it has happened to so many people I see when I come here and today it has been overwhelming.  I’m angry, I’m grateful, I’m sad and I’m crying because  I am so happy I have survived.  But more than any of that I’m inspired by how hard people fight and how much they are loved and how many dedicate their lives in trying to win the battle.