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Op-Ed:
Expectations,
disappointments misplaced emotions: The ride to the other side
Coronado’s Cheryl Landon,
daughter of actor Michael Landon, shares about expectations and
disappointments.
Do you remember your first
home? Many homes need remodeling and landscaping, which comes with unexpected
disappointments. Imagine your dream home is located in a remote valley where
buildings don’t go above two stories, there are acres of avocado trees, children
safely walk from neighborhoods to schools and even the local market on the main
boulevard.
The summers are extremely hot, 115 degrees. Your home is situated at the end of a cul-de-sac isolated on a high, flat hill surrounded by mountains. This two-acre property is dirt and wild weeds.
You are the male patriarch and made the decision to landscape the flat land surrounding the home. You envision the rose bushes your wife dearly loves, a fountain with fragrant flowers in the entry, and lush grass sweeping the flat grounds with ivy cascading down the hillsides. The backyard will have a playhouse and swings. A pool has been installed with a hillside waterfall made up of lava rocks. It’s summer.
You’ve rented a hand plow with leather shoulder straps. Since it’s stifling hot you’re bare chested, straps are harnessed tightly and you begin to plow your land. Only the dirt ground won’t give way to the plow. It’s relentless. The tougher the soil, the harder you push!
Nuns in the convent next door raise bees to harvest honey as income. There’s a hundred hives, all a surprise. The heat, bees, weeds, dirt unrelenting to plow and these strange tiles are all unexpected disappointments but you will not be discouraged!
The next weekend you rent a motorized rototiller. The blue rocks are pouring out hitting you harder from the motorized rototiller. The ground erupts with more tiles and then it happens. You ripped out the entire septic system! The toilets back up. The smell, the mess. The dream becomes a nightmare.
This is a true story about my dad. Michael Landon was Charles Ingalls before “Little House on the Prairie” was conceived. It was the 1960s, the days of “Bonanza,” and this was our first family home in rural Encino Valley. I was nine years old.
Today’s emotional climate is filled with broken expectations and harsh disappointments often spreading misplaced anger into innocent lives. We’ve been observing violent chaos terrorizing us. We’re all affected. One important solution to chaos is for each of us to find purpose, the lesson, in unexpected disappointments.
Most times these disappointments become misplaced emotions, and challenges feel out of our control. It’s easy to shove these feelings deep down inside of us. Yet, the anger and frustration start to eat away at our peace of mind.
Innocent lives become targets of misplaced anger. This misplaced anger has little, if anything, to do with the innocent person being attacked. Others believe they must resort to violence to bring purpose to their cause. The more violent, the more attention. More innocent lives become victims of these attacks. This needs to stop! How?
We all experience broken expectations and disappointments. We are not alone. Realizing we all share challenging disappointments is an important awareness to have empathy for the emotional struggles of others, perhaps ourselves.
This empathy offers a greater sense of gratitude for our own struggles. Ultimately, the only way to experience the richness of life is an attitude of gratitude. This liberates us to understand the trial’s lesson with better solutions.
I find to appreciate what I have and to do so with empathy opens the way to a universal Higher Power. This Higher Power provides wisdom for quality solutions, greater peace of mind. We have the “Golden Rule” which ensures the best way to experience happiness is treating others as one seeks to be treated. A great way to experience higher power is to feel the wind.
The wind is an imagery for this powerful force. We cannot see the wind yet we feel it. The wind is invisible and powerful. Like the wind’s powerful invisible force, so is the force in our challenging disappointments. Disappointments are heart wrenching. It hurts deeply, feels hard to breathe, and lacks energy to move our body.
Yet, this hurt builds character, teaching us lessons we would not have learned but for these challenges. Challenges divulge the higher power’s intended lessons through the attitude of gratitude, and not through pity. Yes, feel the pain but also seek out gratitude. It’s liberating!
Today’s emotional climate
strikes us as an exploding danger zone warning we’re at a breaking point. Increasing wars, violence, environmental
hazards, global economic chaos… Frightening.
There is the return to a better world, our own world, if we believe!
My dad never gave up on us and neither should we. He knew fierce disappointments and determined strength of empathy and gratitude.
Our Encino home provided 12 years of profound happiness. This happiness began with the unexpected septic explosion. The ride to the other side is taking our broken expectations, disappointments, misplaced emotions and feeling the wind to believe there’s a better solution waiting for us!!
Cheryl Landon is a Coronado resident and is the daughter of actor Michael Landon.
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Op-Ed: The bully’s cycle and the strength of love
Cheryl Landon
March 16, 2024
Imagine you’re in a classroom as a 12-year-old boy.
Anxiously, you’re gripping the desk waiting for the 3 p.m. school bell to end
the day. Your heart is rapidly beating when RING goes the bell and off you go
running as fast as you can to get home to rip off the urine stained sheets your
mother has publicly hung out to humiliate you in front of your peers and
neighbors. You’re often bullied now for being a chronic bed wetter, a condition
you can’t control, and a Jew in an anti-Semitic neighborhood.
It’s crushing, with daily defeats attacking confidence and
joy. Your mom is a fierce bully.
There’s no one to help you. Yet, something inside of you
gives you strength to believe your life can be different.
The cycle of bullying
Exactly, who is a bully? A bully is someone who often hurts
and frightens others preying on “easy target” victims. Such victims are
considered inferior and can’t fight back, and that’s tormenting.
This torment is learned behaviors and beliefs passed down
generations. It’s a cycle of bullying we
must eliminate, starting with toxic beliefs.
These beliefs are like broken pieces of glass locked inside
us, sometimes buried so deep we aren’t aware how they are cutting away at our
self worth and controlling our actions.
We all can agree we each have suffered at the hands of a
bully. We’ve experienced being hurt from bullies and even being a bully
ourselves. For some individuals being a
bully is a way of life, while others
refuse to lead or live a bully’s life. It becomes a deliberate choice: Abuse or
Love.
Abusing is easy. The strength of love takes courage in a higher presence of
being. A higher power that’s the ultimate power in our universe. There are
incredible role models who have endured horrendous abuse yet took the path of
love: Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, Christina Aguilera, Patrick Stewart, Charlize
Theron and Michael Landon are such role models.
What fascinates me about the story of the 12-year-old living in an abusive household is my father, Michael Landon. He suffered bullying throughout his life, which haunted him until the day he passed, speaking to his deceased mother as if she was beside him while he was dying. Dad passed away on his mother’s birthday, July 1. No matter the scars, the strength of love prevails.
Today, bullying is out of control; innocent lives are
attacked daily. What is to become of our youths’ future?
The answer lies in remembering who we are. We are created
in a Higher Power of Love. God. Whatever
name you may use, there is a Higher Power and that power is LOVE.
The strength of love that resides in you and me. It’s easy to forget. It’s been forgotten, and
now it’s time to remember who we really are so we unite in purpose to bring out
the best in one another rather than the worst.
It’s easy to be cruel.
It’s easier to be naive. I’m here to remind us we are created in this
love that’s the strength of love! I’ve
seen this presence. Felt the power. My father witnessed this Higher Power at my
death bed when I needed a miracle. It was granted through a promise dad made to
God. Michael Landon devoted his life to
serving God teaching lessons through television about the strength of love used
against bullies, to better lives and future generations.
Simple tools
I’ve discovered simple tools to diminish bullying
effects. Just imagine we are created in
this Love. It releases anger and hurt that eats away at us. Instead of allowing
toxic habits and people to hurt us, we look inside and see what it is that
attracts this abuse. Equally, the righteous, abusive bully – where is this
anger really coming from? Get honest!
This brings us to see gratitude rather than injustice.
Gratitude allows for the strength of love to prevail over wrongful
thinking. Having a mind set in gratitude
is liberating. It opens us to take moral inventory and see outdated beliefs
easily hiding. It’s these hidden beliefs that sabotage us to make unhealthy
decisions based on anger and hurt that gets passed down. So it’s vital to clean
out these old beliefs allowing healthy, positive beliefs to renew.
It’s this process of eradicating old, cyclic toxic beliefs
and pass on positive love that creates strength in love. We need this now.
I invite us to unite believing in the power our role models
used to eradicate the bully’s cycle. We can deliberately bring out the best in
ourselves and others, especially when most tested.
Lastly, believe: “Love, it’s what lets us live on. It’s the most powerful force in the universe. Don’t ever take it for granted.” -Michael Landon
Cheryl Landon is a Coronado resident and is the daughter of actor Michael Landon.
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