My Mistake about Ruritan Lake, Brene’ Brown’s Emotional Vernacular and Genius, Oprah’s Teachers

A great deal of our mental health and mood, feelings, disposition comes from early life experiences, and our adolescent environment, whether we realize it or not, accept that fact or not. And those seeds or thorns, can sprout, grow up big and strong with the correct understanding and nurturing (positively and negatively), and they can continually cut, deeper and deeper if they are not pulled out and disposed of. Ignorance is not bliss and realization of the complexity of our mental state and the connection between many factors and our actions and feelings or mood is critical to understand and manage actively. This is also critical to ensure we properly weed our internal garden – to take the early detection and action approach before the weeds overtake us and the ramifications can be dire.

With a few moments of introspection in the car today on the way to work, I am finding an example from my childhood that is surfacing again. An experience and a place that I hadn’t truly realized the power it held over me, the direction it skewed me in at a few critical junctures in my life, and its popping up here again in the present day. Those thoughts of the lake and my broader vision to work to understand the disorder, the entropy and the causes and effects of my madness, put me to work not just on the article but also on a first pass at mapping my mind. Those thoughts also confluence with some unexpectedly great weekend sofa vegging binge-TV, while I’m still surprised at how coincidental it is that all of these things are hitting me, something feels more than coincidental here.

Ok, so it wasn’t a casual car ride singing along to my favorite band the Avett Brothers, or a moderately engaged drive listening to a podcast on a variety of topics, most surrounding the subjects of behavior, psychology, mental health - which is typical of most days. This ride put me deep in my chair overcome and overwhelmed with joy and sadness, both of which typically originate from clarity these days.

I’m watching the appleTV+ series ‘The Me You Can’t See’ and that series, very well done, is highly recommended. I see in that show other examples of early experience imparting on our mental health in a lasting way, from many interviewees on the show’s episodes all the way up to the host Oprah Winfrey. I also watched the Brene’ Brown series on HBOplusGoNow+ ‘Atlas of the Heart’ and those insights all came together for me.

Brilliant Brene' Brown said something very powerful: Emotion is biology, biography, behavior and backstory. At first I thought, wow that is a lot – how do you organize it all (as an engineer I thought about a map and flow diagram, I can’t help that – another example of what I’m talking about). Biology, or our genes, is far different than the other three factors at first glance when we think about what makes up our feelings, thoughts and our mental state, or our emotion(s) and mood. Trying to understand the ways all the internal and external subjects play into our overall being, it’s a tall task. My first stab at the mental map is here, and this is a diagram I will come back to and refine hundreds of times for sure. How does biology, environment, experiences, influences all combine to dictate what we do and where we go, how we feel?

Everything is connected, and its very hard to explain and comprehend it all. Brene’ Brown also said we have pre-work to do before getting on the job of understanding what’s inside our heads and hearts – slow down before you start working on this complex mental map. Many of us do not have the capacity to intelligibly discuss our emotions, feelings or mental state. We don’t really have the vocabulary. And I agree, but I am working on this also - as we all should be.

On vocabulary in the mental health space, we need to develop an appropriate and well-recognized, agreed upon, and simple set of words and concepts to describe the complex subject. How can we stop the stigma and speak up, have meaningful conversations with each other without the requisite tools and faculties. The mental health vernacular of feelings and emotions needs to be developed, we need that handbook or job aid to life (I am certain Dr. Brown is working on that book in addition to the series and podcast). Brown’s dictionary of the mind and heart – a necessary precursor to have any fighting chance in hell of turning the tide on mental health as a detriment and cancer in our society. The storm has been brewing for ages and is only gaining strength, so we must arm ourselves with data and understanding.

Perhaps the mental health dictionary that educates us on the riddles and vernacular is the nutcracker tool and the task is to crack open that walnut, or to see what’s inside your head – impossible with your bare hands, but infinitely easy with the right tool. Mmmm, yummy pesto is my thought now – maybe the weeds in my brain are fresh basil and if I crack that walnut of a head properly and blend it all up we have a delicious sauce – now I’m Jonesin’ for pesto and a nice Albarino wine from Brecon Estates - considering how much salty cheese I consume due to my anxiety eating, I’m sure the mix will be a wonderful pairing. And I’m full of oil and vinegar too so we will have exactly all we need.

Try for a few minutes to put how you feel down on paper, it’s very challenging to get past happy, sad, anxious, tired, positive, negative in the elementary school level of descriptors regarding our mentality. So how difficult is it then to understand someone else’s true state and mentality if we are trying to crack the nut from those few mundane words they can vocalize and we can understand? Challenging is an understatement, yes. I think of what my wife told me once when I was struggling to describe something, she said ‘Use Your Words’ – very simple and very direct. But, to use our words we first have to find and understand the dictionary that accurately encompasses, appropriately reflects our internal feelings and emotions. To build a house without the toolbox, not so easy. [Brene’ Brown conducted thousands of surveys to see just how good or bad we are at describing emotions and feelings – the average person could come up with three (3), and as you read below we have a long ways to go from there to 87+. That makes me happy, sad and pissed off – I guess that’s par for the course.]

As I dive deep into the lake of Brown’s data and research I find a quote that connects me back to the last article on the loss of a few extremely talented, bright stars - the recently spotlighted suicides of a few highly-functioning, young superstars (Cheslie Kryst former Miss USA, Stanford women’s soccer goalie and national champion Katie Meyer, Wisconsin track star Sarah Shulze, James Madison University softball catcher and national champion Lauren Bernett – these are just a few of the many cases out there – 5 suicides occur in the US EVERY HOUR). Stars when they die, they implode, they become supernovas. And these losses are tragedies, but in some way I hope we can start / continue / improve the conversation on mental health so that the families of those we lost feel that it was not all in vain, that their shooting stars illuminated society to change our approach to mental health. In those cases, the pressure of perfection was likely a factor, likely one of the biggest factors that led to their lights being extinguished.

“When perfectionism is driving us, shame is always riding shotgun.” -Brene' Brown

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/01/brene-browns-empire-of-emotion

Here is a link to Brene’ Brown’s comprehensive research – identifying 87 emotions and experiences that define what it is to be human. Totally fascinating work! Ok so now I realize that my mind map in figure 1 above is just a high-level and we will need to double-click into all of those boxes – a lot more work! And wow, finally a reason to have taken four years of German in high school after all these years: Schedenfreude, Freundenfreude are on the list. For those keeping score the definitions of those Deutsch diametrically opposed terms is taking pleasure in the misery of others, the enjoyment of another person’s success, respectively.

https://brenebrown.com/resources/atlas-of-the-heart-list-of-emotions/

And then she outlines the 8 derailers – the emotions, behaviors and empathetic miscues that get in the way of the connection we all so dearly need. We have to wade carefully into this sea of emotion – sometimes the best intentions can have unexpected, negative consequences we must recognize to avoid. There’s so much power and wisdom here if we take a moment to process all of this.

Step 1, develop the vocabulary to adequately and accurately describe the thing that is you on the inside, I liked that. Then Brene’ takes us further:

Step 2, understand if ‘the you’ on the inside is ebbing and flowing like the tides or steady like a concrete pillar. And this step 2 brought us to what I thought was a literary or political debate: Traits vs. states as a concept to further understand or differentiate between our mental health and emotions, feelings.

At this point you must be wondering what the hell does a lake have to do with all of this, ok, sorry but there’s so much here that divergence in writing is appropriate when talking about all of our internal divergences and tortuous paths to understanding ourselves. We are almost there, maybe.

Back to the car ride to work. When I thought about this concept of trait being more fixed or even permanent (or at the very least a predisposed condition) and state being a temporal, transient condition, I got a little dazed and confused. Our genes they are more trait, so biology is fixed – that part I got. But then as I thought more, I concluded that the debate is a tough one from there, perhaps endless like the order of the chickens and eggs. Is my mood, which is partially determined by my biology and the other part from a wide array of influences a state, or is my modulation ability and centering a function of my traits? That went on for a while. But regardless of the answer when considering our emotions, feelings behind our actions or personal default settings, the realization of the combo is the true power in the lesson. The AND not the OR is what I implore. Nothing in our minds is black and white, the gray is where we spend the day. Most things are not cut and dried (that comes from a letter of dissatisfaction to a clergyman or priest/reverend in 1710 where the writer commented that the sermon was ‘ready cut and dried’ meaning it had been prepared in advance, lacking freshness and spontaneity. Another definition would be ‘already decided and unlikely to be changed, determined ahead of time’ which in this case of trait vs. state seems to go against what we mean – traits or states are not a matter of certainty. We seek clarity and understanding, and here is a very clear and definite definition in an unclear world and subject matter.)

Our lives and generations before us were spent predominantly in the gray clouds and we are yearning for the sun to shine through and make everything white from the light and black, dark from the shadows. Clarity is fleeting and rare.

From my view, each of the four components of emotion, backstory, behavior, biography AND biology (the 4 Bs) that Brene’ Brown speaks of can fall into the traits or states bucket, with the right perspective. We are not biologically-destined for depression and despair or success and happiness. We must understand that any one of us can oscillate from failure to triumph in life, from fulfilled to ill in our heads multiple times in a day. And regardless of our past, or our genes, or our experiences, we can work to grow and overcome, realizing where our focus must target to do so comes from those four Bs of emotion. Oprah detailed a few very sad stories from her youth, but she has turned out pretty ok.

For example, unrelated to mental health, but perhaps so, I have a friend who used to be overweight, extremely overweight just like many others in his family. They all said they had the fat gene, it was hopeless to do anything. Well, maybe they did have a biological predisposition or disadvantage, or emotional block, but that doesn’t mean they were doomed to a fate of obesity. And contrary to my other friend, who is mega-ripped, in spite of a poor diet and to-the-limit lifestyle, she says her extremely fit physique comes simply from ‘a little gardening and walking.’ Let’s not talk about her overactive thyroid or natural predisposition, ok, its just picking fruits and vegetables. Well when you see this Mrs. Universe’s family pictures, you see a lot of other walking gardener fitness freaks in her family. So you get my point, there is a biological component to who we are physically and mentally – you have probably heard the ‘You’re as hard-headed as your grandmother’ or ‘All you Joneses are just alike’ either directed towards you or not in a heated extended family supper table debate (in my home its right about when the Thanksgiving deserts come out – pumpkin or pecan pie with whipped cream on back-handed compliments). There is a biological component to us that is passed down, which is our state based on our traits. But even traits with the right states can change, heck some states have turned from blood red to November blue in recent elections, and caterpillars turn into butterflies every season. My doomed 330-lb obese friend from high school is now a marathoner and health-nut, in super shape and looks every bit like a celebrity fitness gardener on the soon-to-be HGTV special ‘From ripping pants seams to ripping carrots out of the ground with ease’. And he didn’t do all this alone, he had a program, feedback and support, education and internal drive, determination and a healthy (no pun intended) attitude to a long-term lifestyle change, it was never about scale-watching for him. Behavior influences biological vulnerability, environment is an influence, experience another.

The mental health battle is one that needs to be fought on multiple fronts, a complex enemy that takes a multi-pronged approach. I am realizing that, seeing it all around me whether on TV or elsewhere, that positive trend along with events in my personal life are highlighting this fact and perhaps for the first time truly resonating to the point of realization and understanding. Or at least the start of that process, I hope. I have to also say, the fact that ‘The Me You Can See’ is being broadcast, shows we are stopping the silence on mental health and we have great focus and power behind the effort. Much needed also, the effort to confront mental health requires a much greater voice, platform and strategy as ever before. The screams, scope and depth of the issue are growing larger and louder every day in a world that moves faster and is more slippery when it comes to managing the multiple inputs and signals that tie into our mood and feelings and actions. But hearing Oprah Winfrey open up about the only thing that makes her cry was very moving. She said the only thing, is thinking back to her early childhood when she had to leave her grandmother and go live with her mother in Milwaukee. Oprah’s mom made her sleep out on the porch, she was very harsh to her as just a 9 or 10 year old girl and her only saviors were her teachers. School was the only place she felt loved. That’s why Oprah wanted to be a teacher when she grew up – her teacher Mrs. Duncan brought out the best in her, gave her a feeling of self-worth, that she could be anything and take over the world if she wanted to (and obviously she did – wow). Education relieved and saved Oprah Winfrey, and it influenced her choices far into the future – she had school to bring out the fire inside her as she grew up and matured, and all through her life as an adult, she has been a teacher in her own way. The most obvious and direct is through the educational programs she’s started with the Oprah Academy. She has ensured hundreds of young women had the same teacher guardian, coach, motivator, angel that she did. And she has changed many lives for the better because of this. But as the Oprah Academy started up in 2007, it was not a snap the fingers success (but since inception the program has graduated 525 powerful, strong, smart and confident women who have matured through Oprah’s team and support).

Oprah and the academy support team were not prepared for the trauma that came with the students, girls who had suffered for years in so many ways from poverty, abuse, you name it. They couldn’t just unpack all those things on day 1 at the academy, the thorns we all carry don’t pull out easily. Some thorns were suppressed and never addressed. So here was Oprah wanting to take on a teacher role and make a positive change for so many and in a way she was a student in the process initially, and it made her stronger, her program stronger in the long run. She had to truly understand the unknown burden that others carry. That has to be a lesson – learn someone’s story, tell your story. Pull out the thorns together. The bumps in the road leave us battle tested and ready to take on whatever is around the bend more effectively. Untether the soul with your story and help another while helping yourself – open your heart up for someone else, its part of the healing, never self-serving. Many of us are here more because of the desire to tell others in the hope of helping them far beyond helping ourselves.

Oprah broke her generational cycle, she has broken the cycle for countless others and it goes back to an early influence, a security blanket. And that, drumroll – we are finally seeing the sun sparkling off the surface of a lake just off in the distance through the woods, is what I was thinking about from early in my life. A security blanket I keep going back to, my safe place, where I felt loved and similarly able to do and be anything. Ruritan Lake is my teacher, and has been for 35 years. I just learned that.

My wife is just a few weeks into a new journey, a move to a new city and a new job at a new company. A lot of change at a time when I have set our collective lives on edge and another time where I am realizing just how fortunate I am to have such a superhero for a partner. She is the only one who doesn’t understand how great she is, but that is another story for another day. For me, she is unfairly kind and committed beyond anything I could ever ask for or deserve. And not just another job in another place, a top executive level role at one of the most dynamic companies on the planet, so the pressure she is managing would be tremendously challenging even if she had a sane, sure and present partner by her side. She is truly amazing.

As part of all these changes, she is looking for a new home – where I believe the lake effect surfaced for me and I finally got it, finally connected the dots. I recently, two weeks ago, had to buy a new car, so I went back to old faithful, a 2018 Honda Accord because I had one previously as my first car (and my second car) when I was young and ‘happy’ and the cars were truly reliable and solid. And there the light went off. So without a truly conscious decision-making process I ended up in another Accord, reverting back to a past security blanket and familiarity. And the November Blue hue was just the cherry on top, and the fact that the car reeked of smoke from the previous owner, no problem. That was one example in the last few weeks, but another bigger one where the ah-ha bulb really went off is with the house-hunting process, and when my wife and I identified a house sitting on a lake as an option. I couldn’t get that one out of my mind and nothing would even come close to measuring up to that one. Even its faulted were explained away or brushed aside. The lake house is a no-brainer, or a subconscious no-brainer for me. And why would that be? Again, here is Cheslie Kryst’s wisdom in defining the most important question ever on this planet – WHY? Unfortunately her 31st birthday yesterday was without her.

Well, when I thought about why I was so infatuated with the lake house, I quickly connected to a lake in my childhood, which at a time of feeling alone, unsure and in my own head as an adolescent, much like I am feeling at this point in my life (or still feeling in my life), the lake was the place of serenity, security, love and happiness (and I still lack the proper vocabulary of emotions to define this sacred place). This house-hunting lesson was the third time a lake drew me in by its warm, calm waters, twice before it was Ruritan Lake in Virginia.

When I was growing up in the ‘80s and my Mom was going to school, working to try to find her way, there was a lot of uncertainty and angst in our lives. But luckily, we had my godparents to support, create opportunities and provide for us, Papa Marsh and Nana Mary were our security blankets and guardian angels. My godfather and godmother took me to what started as a trailer and later turned into a beautiful home they built mostly themselves and with the help of neighbors who in time they returned the favor on. All of this magic of building and sharing took place on Ruritan lake in Fluvanna County, in the rolling hills of the Blue Ridge of Virginia just outside of Charlottesville. Just past Zion Crossroads and Palmyra, not far from Fork Union Military Academy and the banks of the Rivanna River. Ruritan Lake was a place of discovery, splendid natural beauty, freedom and possibilities – whether it was my godfather and godmother taking me for walks all through the woods to magical springs and forest flower beds of lady slippers and dogwood trees, the love they and the neighbors next door and down the gravel road showed me consistently and flowing endlessly like the springs, this was truly a safe haven and love bubble for me. Going fishing, target shooting with a slingshot, doing projects around the house, riding in the tractor, it was a place that made me feel good about life and myself. Right in front of my eyes my godparents showed me that you can do anything you put your mind to, with planning, patience, perseverance and help. I was not alone, not worried about whether I fit in, if I was wanted or enough, there was no question there at Ruritan Lake. For years I went with my godparents on weekends, for weeks at a time in the summers as they worked on the house, and my Mom joined whenever she could. Salamanders, snakes, blackberry picking and making cobbler, painting the house, clearing land, sitting on the deck watching the sun disappear, the sounds of the wild, passing deer and turkeys coming and going, playing with the dogs in the lake, what a magical place surrounded by many who more than adored me, wanted nothing but the best for me and made me believe in me in just those moments. I was still alone in a way, but felt none of that at the lake. And that stayed with me, at least subconsciously for the majority of my life, but now again its front and center and warming me to the point of fever. Yet the tears of joy and love streaming from my wide eyes cool my cheeks, the lake taking care of me again. Maybe the lake was my Giving Tree, a memorable, formative children’s book among a few others by Shel Silverstein – and the lake is not out of gifts or lessons in my life, perhaps I will never come to Where The Sidewalk Ends. Ruritan lake has given me so much selfless love and teachings, without it I would be a Naked Hippo without A Light in the Attic.

I thought I grew up when I got to college, I got away from the drug crowd, I took a better attitude to studying to get real A’s not fake ones, I went away to Penn State, to be a big-time athlete, a scholar, everything a salutatorian, clever and smart, funny and a bright-light-even-in-the-night kid should become. But patience wasn’t a part of my makeup, even if I was taught the value and virtues of process, discipline, commitment, and perspective as I didn’t last long within the boot camp and big machine program of Papa Paterno’s Penn State. I was in the opportunity of a lifetime but couldn’t understand it, let my youthful insecurities and demands get the best of me. And after a year, I ran back to Ruritan Lake and enrolled at the University of Virginia. I thought the lake would save me again, and in a way I was running from a great opportunity and situation to a worse one. Sure, the schooling was great at each place and I turned out wonderfully on that end, but I relinquished any chance in the sports world I could have had and I was also closer now to the friends and vices of my high school years. I thought I was in the wrong place at Penn State, escaping to a secure, better place while running home, but over time this decision was just the opposite. I was blinded by my experiences growing up at the lake and had an unbalanced view of things to say the least. I needed to be loved, the tough love at PSU broke me swiftly and I wasn’t able to handle it. Sure, its water under the bride and everything culminated into my arrival at this moment with so much to be thankful for, thankful to be alive and well, my heart beating and my blood boiling with the wisdom I finally realized. My escape and running mentality paved this life with a beautiful beyond-what-I-deserve partner and I have experienced so many great things along the way in spite of my internal tortures and shortcomings of mental health disorder, mind entropy. Se la vi, but I am finally getting the teacher’s lesson. And when I see that lake house as an option for our next home, it stands out for what it represents from my childhood. Let’s see if I can lose my bias and predisposition that originates from Ruritan Lake. But more importantly, recognition that our early experiences, influences stay with us more than we know, that is what I will certainly buy and ride for the next 200,000 miles like my Honda Accord. Maybe I can finally pick out the thorns and move past them. Maybe this new lake will truly be a Pearl.

I know I started writing this with the perspective of how powerful our early experiences, people and influences can be for us throughout our lives. Consciously and subconsciously, that is the case, and it can be a beautiful thing or a dangerous thing or something in between. Regardless, we have to step out of our moment and check ourselves to find that perspective. I know Oprah is very thankful for her teachers and I am very thankful for my godparents and the time we spent for so many years at Ruritan Lake that shaped who I am. I will always run back to that place and to them, for they are my teachers. And when I originally thought I was making mistakes with the lake, the answer of whether running back to the lake is right or wrong is totally inconsequential. The love and experiences provided are the most valuable things I have and the most precious gifts.

Oprah Winfrey & Brene’ Brown are two unbelievably intelligent, giving, societal powerhouses making our world a better place.