Fortune for the day – “In every human being, there is a special heaven whole and unbroken.” – Paracelsus
Happy Friday!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!! I am away from my normal routine, surroundings, resources. Last night we went to a wonderful restaurant that served Spanish tapas. Everything we ate last night was so wonderful. Spanish tapas is definitely my new favorite. Please don’t ask me to pronounce anything we ate last night. I group it all in one word . . . . delicious.
Today, since I am away on a trip, far from my pile of thoughts and research, I am not going to write my traditional blog post, listing three favorite things, songs, books, products, etc. New readers, please check out previous Friday posts for more favorites.
Recently, I read an article about the best small towns to visit in each state. Based on the fact that some of the towns that were listed that I have visited, and they are some of my favorite places that I have ever visited, I have put some of the other towns which I have never visited on my bucket list. Here are some of the towns on the list. At the very least, they are worth a little research if you are looking for a great, quaint, weekend getaway. The first eight I have visited and can vouch for, they are definitely “Favorites” worthy. The rest are recent additions to my bucket list.
Fortune for the Day – “Spread love everywhere you go.” – Mother Teresa
I am writing this in the wee hours of the morning before I head to the airport for my weekend trip with my college friends. On my calendar, in today’s space, I had written, “Write my blog about Brazilian “saudade” (sounds something like sow-da-ji).” Now I’ve mentioned on this blog before, how my calendar is marked all over with my incredibly sloppy handwriting , and questionable abbreviations, so once again, despite my vows to do better, I was left with the question, “Huh?”
I’m not sure where or when I heard of the word “saudade”, but in doing my research this morning, it turns out that saudade is a word that describes a feeling – a feeling so intense, that the country of Brazil has made January 30th, a day to officially celebrate saudade. This is how Wikipedia describes saudade:
Saudade is a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return.[3] One English translation of the word is missingness, although it might not convey the feeling of deep emotion attached to the word “saudade”. Stronger forms of saudade might be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing, moved away, separated, or died.
Saudade was once described as “the love that remains” after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one’s children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) that should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. It brings sad and happy feelings together: sadness for missing and happiness for experiencing the past.
It’s not lost on me, that on this official day of Saudade, I am embarking on a reunion with women who are dear to me. I am meeting up with women who I met when I was 18 years old, over 30 years ago. Back then, we were all just on the cusps of our first half of adulting. We had just passed over the thresholds of our childhoods, into the earliest stages of becoming adults. We met on a bucholic, beautiful college campus, having no idea of what our lives, shared and individually, had in store for us. We were fresh-faced, eager, confident, excited and scared, all at the same time. A lot of life has happened in those 30 years – marriages, divorces, births and deaths, curvy career paths, and a few extra wrinkles and pounds. Other than a few hard-wired personality traits and habits, we aren’t anything like those 18-year-olds who connected with each other, so long ago. Will we feel saudade for those very young versions of ourselves, this weekend? Will we feel saudade for those young ladies who entered college without the internet or cell phones to distract us? Will we feel saudade for all of the possibilities that had lain before us, those many, many years ago when we first met each other? Of course, most likely we will feel saudade. As we approach 50, more of our lives are likely behind us than in front of us anymore, and that’s okay. We’ve helped each other share in the beautiful fruits of life, and we’ve helped each other bear the scars which some of the thorns of life have made. When we look at each other, we still see that fresh-faced, eager, confident, excited yet scared, young lady behind the eyes of our friends, and we know that we have a lot more memories to make and to share with each other in the years to come. All of that equals more added saudade for our precious Bubble, but only in the best definition of the word.
Fortune for the day – “We are not separate from Being. We are in it.” – Plotinus
Is it just me or has January 2020 just flown by? I literally looked at my calendar this morning and counted the weeks to make sure that I got my fair share of January days. Apparently, I did. This was a recent post from Think Smarter that resonated with me:
This weekend I am headed out for my annual reunion with my best friends from college. It is always such a mind-clearing, restful, loving experience. Sometimes the reunion is just crazy and funny and all about letting it all hang out. Sometimes the reunion is serious and feels like a continual group hug from start to finish. A lot of the times, it is a mix of both of these things. It also helps to get a break from our every day lives. All of us friends are moms. As moms, we have to manage our own lives and calendars, as well a few others’ lives and calendars. (And truthfully, even though we are technically not supposed to, we secretly worry about the calendars and the care of the kids who we have (kind of) cut loose, as well) So, honestly, sometimes one of the best aspects of going on this annual ladies’ reunion, is to get a little break from all of that planning and plotting that we all do on a daily, weekly, yearly basis. We, on this weekend, as individual ladies, get to choose what one person wants to eat, what one person wants to drink, what time one person goes to bed and what time one person wants to wake up in the morning. We are always hang loose on these happy reunions, because we understand that we all need a breath-releasing break from each of our every day responsibilities and concerns.
Readers, I always bring my computer on every trip that I take during the year, and I typically do a daily blog post. I sometimes contemplate giving myself a vacation from the blog when I am away on trips, but then I say to myself, “That feels like a punishment. I love writing and connecting with my readers. Why would I do that to myself?”
So, I plan to bring my computer with me this weekend. I most likely will do a blog post every day, but if I don’t, just realize that I am doing what is best for me that day. I will be doing what is best to keep my creative juices flowing. I am going to just take each moment, one at a time, and savor it. I plan to just see where the flow takes me, because Plotinus is right, Being knows what It is doing and I am happy to be part of that Knowing. My trip is “going with the Flow.”
Fortune for the day – Let the beauty you love be what you do.” – Rumi
Yesterday I was a cranky little bi-otch. I was Moody Trudy to the extreme. In my younger years, I would have over-analyzed all of my thoughts and feelings relating to this annoying cloud of doom which I carried with me all day, but this time, my older wiser self, said to me, “Oh for goodness sake, don’t be a Drama Queen, you slept terribly the night before. Watch something slightly boring before you go to bed (we did, we watched The Curse ofOak Island . . . for some reason we love this show, although I would never call it scintillating) and go to bed early and you’ll feel better in the morning.”
The older, wiser part of me was right. She takes a no-nonsense approach to life and I secretly find that comforting. Today, I feel so much better. Nothing circumstantially really has changed from yesterday to today, in my life, other than a well-rested mind and body. Ah, what a difference!
Amusing quotes about sleeping, forthcoming:
“I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?” ― Ernest Hemingway
“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.” ― Phyllis Diller
“Laugh and the world laughs with you, snore and you sleep alone.” ― Anthony Burgess
“There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.” ― Mindy Kaling
“Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep” ― Albert Camus
RIP – Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant and the seven others who died tragically in yesterday’s fatal helicopter crash
The world is mourning a basketball icon. I have to admit that I am surprised by how much this news has affected me and my family members. We like basketball, but we are not rabid fans. We are not from Los Angeles. While Kobe Bryant was an unbelievably good basketball player and a decidedly devoted father, he was not without flaws. None of us are without flaws. I think sometimes that we desperately want to believe that there are the flawless someones, out there among us, and we turn our legends and our heroes and our icons and our celebrities, into what we want them to be, in our own minds, and then we are soul-crushed when they don’t live up to our expectations, and ultimately, when they do what we are all destined to do, and that is to die. It is especially hard when these idols suffer untimely, surprising, cruel, and shocking ends. This is the first time that I can remember that my children and my husband and I, are sharing that same surreal experience, of losing a shared cultural idol, suddenly. Other celebrities who have passed recently, have seemed to be a bigger part of my husband’s and my life’s experience, but this time, my kids are experiencing very clearly, their own sense of mortality, which always comes from these painful, public losses.
My husband and my daughter and I, went to go see the movie “1917” last night. It was a very good film. I was tense and empathetic throughout the entire viewing. After the movie, I do what I always do – I started looking up the history of the film. I wanted it to be “true.” Even more desperately, I wanted the lead character to be “real.” I wanted that character, who was so filled with integrity, courage, humility, valor, perseverance and loyalty, to be based on one very real, “flesh and blood” person. The character, it turns out was actually fictional, and the story of “1917” was loosely based on war stories told to Sam Mendes, (the writer of the film) by his grandfather.
Why do we need heroes and why are we so crestfallen when they prove to be humans, just like us? Could we really relate to a true, bullet-proof super hero? Would we really be able to comprehend a true and perfect super human, and do we really believe that they could fully empathize with us? Do we project the best parts of ourselves on to people who have genius levels of talent, drive, vision, creativity and authenticity? Do these people make us feel more hopeful and inspired, about ourselves and our own lives? Would this hope and inspiration be possible if these people were not in human form, just like us? The greatest religious teachers – Jesus, Buddha, the Dalai Lama, etc. came to this Earth to share their wisdom and love, in human form. They experience(d) amazing triumphs, and devastating pains, just as we do. And because of that, their teachings resonate to the deepest parts of our human hearts and our eternal souls. They are accessible to us.
I am not going to do a fortune today. I am going to end this post with some Kobe Bryant quotes which I think are pretty on-point. No matter what your thoughts (or lack of thoughts) are about Kobe Bryant, no one can deny that he lived his in-born passions to the fullest, and in that way, he served as a wonderful reminder that we can and we should, do the same with our own passions, especially if we want to elevate this human living experience for ourselves, and for others.
“Everything negative — pressure, challenges — is all an opportunity for me to rise.”
“Once you know what failure feels like, determination chases success.”
“When you make a choice and say, ‘Come hell or high water, I am going to be this,’ then you should not be surprised when you are that. It should not be something that is intoxicating or out of character because you have seen this moment for so long that … when that moment comes, of course it is here because it has been here the whole time, because it has been [in your mind] the whole time.”
“The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great at whatever they want to do.”
Fortune for the Day – “To change one’s life: do it flamboyantly. Startimmediately. No exceptions.” – William James
Sundays are poetry workshop days here at Adulting Second Half. On Sundays I share a poem and I fully encourage you to share your poetry in the Comments section. It’s fun to play with words!! Please give it a try. I moderate all comments and I would never allow negativity in this sacred space, where we share what is on our hearts and minds – openly, freely, authentically. Here’s my poem for today:
invecchiamento
Sometimes I accept the inevitable,
I let it flow,
I’m at peace with it.
Sometimes the frustration builds,
And I try to dam it all up,
Trying to defy the laws of nature
And gravity.
Sometimes I laugh at my acts of futility.
Sometimes I marvel at them.
Sometimes I play the comparison game.
Who of us is doing it better? And in what way?
And does it matter? And do we really have a say?
Sometimes I stop paying attention to the things which I cannot change.
Fortune for the day – “Patience makes lighter what sorrow may not heal.” – Horace
I’m not sure if I like how Horace worded the fortune. I decided to look up translations of the fortune and most of the translators said things that sounded a lot like, “Just be optimistic that you are going to feel better in the future.” I suppose that is the right translation of Horace’s statement. When we are in the middle of grieving something, it sometimes feels like the grief will never end. Someone once gave me an analogy to dealing with grief which I find to be very helpful. When we first experience something that causes us pain, it is a stabbing, searing cut to our soul. It is a horrific pain, but we must allow ourselves to feel the pain, in order for it to eventually heal over, in a healthy way. If we don’t feel it and acknowledge it and cleanse it and nurse it, the grief can become a festering, infected pain that spreads all over us and spills on to others, like a disease. Some things that cause us grief, are slight, like a brush burn. They cause us pain for a brief moment, but then the event is over and the pain scabs over quickly and heals completely, and that pain is easily forgotten. Some grieving that we experience is like, initially large, deep, deep gashes, some so penetrating that they even feel life threatening. However, if just we hold on (sometimes just holding on, a much longer while, than we would like) and breathe through the pain, after a while, the gash starts to scab over. It is still tender when it is touched, but it is not nearly as painful, as the initial shock of the experience that caused us grief. Sometimes the scab will get ripped off again, by an event related to our grief, but this time we know that it will heal more quickly than the initial wound did. Finally, if we hang on long enough, the grief scab turns into a scar. The scar is always there to remind us of the pain that we experienced, but it has healed to a point where it can even be poked at, and the pain is barely felt anymore.
It’s not over ’til it’s all been said It’s not over ’til your dying breath So what do you want them to say when you’re gone? That you gave up or that you kept going on?What do you do when a chapter ends? Do you close the book and never read it again? Where do you go when your story’s done? You can be who you were or who you’ll become Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh oh, if it all goes wrong Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh oh, darling just hold on
The sun goes down and it comes back up The world it turns no matter what Oh-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh oh, if it all goes wrong Darling, just hold on (Steve Aoki, Louis Tomlinson – Just Hold On (Lyrics)
Hello and happy Friday!!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!!! This has been a productive, yet tiring week for me. I’m looking forward to some chill-time. How about you, friends? New readers, Fridays are for frivolous favorites. Typically I list three favorite items, beauty products, websites, songs, books, etc. that make my heart just sing. Please check out previous Friday listings for more favorites and please, please add to the favorites in the Comments section. Sometimes I feel like I am running out of favorites. (as if that was possible) Here are mine for today:
Basin.com Shower Bombs – I’m not a “bath girl.” I only enjoyed baths when I was pregnant and when I was three. I do love me a good, long, butt-turning-red hot shower, though. However, there is a part of me that always felt that I might have been missing out on the bath bomb thing. I even contemplated putting a bath bomb in our outdoor hot tub, but then I also started contemplating the service call price for stuffed up pipes, and I shelved that idea quickly. So, when I found these shower bombs at my local CVS, I jumped on them. They are wonderful! They come in many different scents and they kind of just “sizzle” when water hits them. My FOMO about bath bombs has now disappeared.
PlantNet App – This nifty free app for your phone allows you to take a picture of the plant you are questioning about (say in a random walk in the woods or perusing a beautiful garden), and it immediately sends you links to the name of the plant you are looking at, with all of the care information available at the click of a button. My daughter and I tested it at our local nursery (which had tags with plant names and care information) and the app was “spot on.” Very cool!
Dove Chocolates Valentine Candy (Dark Chocolate Almond Promises) – Okay, I love chocolate. All varieties of chocolate, I love. Typically though, if I am honest, I will choose milk chocolate and even white chocolate over dark chocolate. But, this particular concoction of dark Dove chocolate filled with chopped up almonds, all wrapped up in Valentine foil with the ever-wise Dove fortune printed on the inside, is the bomb! The total bomb! Milk, be gone! Which brings me to the fortune of the day. This fortune comes from the delicious Dove dark chocolate almond promise morsel I just unwrapped and devoured.
Fortune for this fortunate Friday – Find someone to accept you completely.
Fortune for today: “Wisdom begins with wonder.” – Socrates
I have filled this week with chores and appointments. It feels good to be getting things completed and checked off of the list, yet I feel scattered at the same time. There are way too many things, ideas, lists whizzing around in my brain. So today, I am just going to drop a couple of random thoughts and trivial knowledge that could be useful down the line, for any of us.
A group of butterflies is officially called a kaleidoscope. I think that fact is just fabulous!
On the way to tennis yesterday, my daughter asked me what is the difference between dots and polka dots. I had no idea, so of course, I insisted that she look it up, right then and there, and school me all about dots. (You would think that my kids would learn by now, that I do not care to leave questions unanswered.) So with eyes rolling, and thumbs Googling, she found the answer and then explained the difference to me. It turns out that “polka dots” is considered a pattern, whereas a “dot” is just one circle in the pattern. “Polka dots” became a named pattern during the time that polka dancing became popular in Europe, because both the dance and the pattern seemed to suggest “fun, light and cheerful.” In Spanish, they call dots “lunares” which means little moons. I think that polka dots/lunares are just fabulous!
My mentee who is a high-schooler mistakenly calls herself “shy.” I always insist to her that she is not “shy”, she is “reserved” and there is a big difference. My middle son is very much the same way and I always had to correct his teachers on that fact, particularly when he was younger. Both my mentee and my son are fabulous, interesting, engaging conversationalists. They just don’t always have a need for center stage. I admire them for that fact. Think Smarter (Twitter) hit the nail on the head, once again. And of course, you all know by now, that I think that Think Smarter on Twitter is just plain fabulous!
Fortune for the day – “The only wealth is life.” – Henry David Thoreau
Like many people I know, I recently watched the three part Netflix series Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez. It is a fascinating documentary. There is a lot to discuss about the show, to try to understand how a football player with so much talent, ability, fame and fortune, could so easily free fall into becoming a cold-blooded killer. The documentary touches on child abuse, sexual identity issues, drug abuse, brain damage due to concussions, the entitlements which society gives to our super star athletes, and the list goes on and on. Aaron Hernandez seemed to be caught up in the perfect storm of all of these issues, and probably even more problems and factors, that we can’t even begin to fathom. And of course, what is most sad, is that several families and friends are left to mourn their dear loved ones, for the rest of their lives, due to Aaron’s senseless actions.
There are so many issues to consider in the Killer Inside documentary, but there is one thing that has stuck in my mind, more than all of the other points being made in the show. The jailers who brought Aaron to his tiny jail cell claimed that they never had a prisoner take so quickly and easily to being confined than Aaron did. Here was man who came from living the high life in a 7,000 square foot McMansion, to a tiny, 7-by-10-foot, bare, no frills jail cell and he seemed actually relieved to be constrained. He craved the structure and “ease” of jail life, with no distractions to derail him. This is from an article describing conversations he had with his fiance and his mother, while in jail:
My room is very organized,” Hernandez told Shayanna Jenkins, his fiancée and mother of his daughter, Avielle. “I have everything lined up perfect, have my little trash in there. Everything all folded, I always make a nice perfect pillow.”
He added: “It’s actually cozy. I think I enjoy it too much.”
Hernandez even went on and on about prison food, as shown in a transcript from a different conversation:
“So you get two honey buns, right? And you put a layer of peanut butter in between the two honey buns with the icing facing each other,” he told Jenkins in one phone call.
“For breakfast, I got three pancakes, with two sausages — not bad,” Hernandez stated.
Supposedly Hernandez spoke of taking “bird baths” at his small sink and wrapping his jail cell light with a shirt to give it a warm glow.
“Jail doesn’t bother me,” he told his mother in one phone call. “I’ve been the most relaxed and less stressed in jail than I have out of jail.”
What is it about structure that is so stress relieving? I know that our dogs are completely out of sorts, if we miss our nightly three mile walk. Ask any zoologist and they will talk about the importance of regular, reliable routines to keep animals healthy. We are animals, too. One article I read said this about needed structure in our lives:
“Life structures can cut down on the stress of life by helping us to more easily maintain positive habits.
This is important because habits are what drive many of the activities in our lives, whether we realize it or not.” – Elizabeth Scott, verywellmind
So if we have good structures in place in our lives, which promote healthy habits, with enough room and open-mindedness for some flexibility when things go unexpectedly, a little off track, we are likely to experience less stress, overall. I suppose that the trick is to make sure that our structures are really the right ones to help us create a formula of healthy, regular habits, which in totality, equate to good, healthy lives. Who would think that a documentary about an ex-NFL murderer would make me want to examine my own structures, which I have in place in my own life, a little more closely?
