This morning on our way to visit our loved one at the hospital, we passed by something that was the perfect image of an “inside family joke”. If I tried to explain it, you wouldn’t get it. It wouldn’t be funny to you at all. But I took a picture of it, and I texted it to our family chat, and I got a lot of feedback and “hahas”. I love inside jokes. I think they are some of the best forms of intimacy. There is nothing like an inside joke that makes you feel like you belong to a group of people, whether they be family or friends.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. I decided to scour the internet for a good poem about “inside jokes” and my favorite poem which I found was written by a child and it was published on a website called KidzEraMag.com. Inside jokes are a universal form of love and belonging, no matter what your age.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
When you are experiencing someone who is at the ending days of their life, it makes you remember to try not to live your own life focused on the trivial stuff. When you see someone who is closing their life out, you realize all that mattered was the experiences, the passions and the relationships that the person had and shared. The things that we often put a lot of focus on in our lives, such as our worries, our grievances, our stuff, our appearances, our righteousness, etc. really holds so little meaning in the end of it all. As hard as it is to watch someone fade, perhaps the final gift which they give to us, is the reminder to keep our minds, our actions, and our lives, on what really matters – savoring our every moment, and while doing so, staying in the spirit of love and awe and gratefulness for the miracle of life.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning, friends!! It has been quite a morning here. Unfortunately my website crashed, and I am out-of-town visiting a family member who is very ill, and I am currently in a different time zone than where I live. I am sorry for this delay on what is usually the best day of the week! Happy Friday!!
On Fridays, I try to keep things light. On Fridays, I discuss “the stuff” in life that makes my own life more interesting and enthralling. On Fridays, I share one of my favorites, whether it be a product, a book, a TV show, a website, whatever. Today’s favorite of mine is actually an email newsletter. It is called 1440 and it is the best, most unbiased source of news stories which I have encountered in a long, long time. Just the facts, ma’am! It is one of the only sources where I get my news information these days. I trust my own mind to make up my own opinions. I prefer to get my influence and my sway from myself, and the people whom I intimately love and trust. You can join 1440 for free, here (and fun fact: there are 1440 minutes in a day)
Friends, we have had some truly deep, tough, rough, yet also miraculous experiences as of late with older extended family members and their health concerns. My relationships with my family and with my friends are vitally important to me and I do my best to protect people’s privacy. That will always be my priority. My stories are my stories to tell, and my loved ones can decide if they want to share their own stories. Their stories are their stories to tell. That being said, I have had some really eye-opening moments of truth recently, realizing that it is truly our souls, our “essence”, which makes us alive, and makes us “us.” No matter what happens to our bodies, our deepest selves can, and do shine through. I trust the wisdom of the Universe more than ever now. When I am pushing against something, and my will is being overtaken by the greater powers that be, I understand that I am being lead to important lessons and evolutions of my own soul. As stubborn as I can be, surrendering to what is, brings a present peace, and eventually a future understanding and wisdom to me like no other experience does. Giving up the struggle (when the world is showing you a powerful “no”) usually leads to a confident quietude that is probably what is supposed to be our true, natural state of being all of the time. We often are our own worst enemies.
Sorry to get so deep on the lightest day of the week! I hope that this finds you all well and excited for the weekend. See you tomorrow, hopefully a little earlier!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I went to my annual OB/GYN appointment yesterday. That was fun. Ha! My gynecologist is a lovely young woman with a three-year-old child who is already ready to sit on Santa’s lap this year with his wish list. I wonder if my doctor tries to get clues about what menopause will look/feel like for herself, when she examines us middle-agers both physically, then also emotionally, by asking pointed questions like, “No really, how ARE you? Do we need to up your hormones?”
My examination went well. Apparently, I’m “normal.” (I’ll leave it at that.) As I was leaving the doctor’s office, a young man was leaving the office as well. He appeared to be a pharmaceutical salesperson. We were both walking behind an elderly couple who were holding hands as they slowly, and I mean S-L-O-W-L-Y meandered down the long hallway towards the elevators. “I’m going to need you to be the rude one first, and swing wide around them,” the salesperson playfully said to me with raised eyebrows. “Sorry guy,” I said. “You didn’t realize that I’m not a bitch.” And so we all made peace with slowly making our way to the elevators at a drunken (possibly passed out) snail’s pace.
When we got into the elevator, the elderly couple were still holding hands. “I love that you are still in love,” I said to them, and then the young man and I both smiled at them in admiration and appreciation. “Married sixty-three years!” the woman exclaimed. “And we courted for four years before that,” the elderly man boasted.
“That’s incredible and rare,” I said. “I hope to get to that anniversary with my husband.”
“At this point in my life, I just feel astonished and lucky to wake up and to get to live another day,” the woman said, honestly and profoundly.
And that’s when the young man chimed in and said, “I think that we all should feel that way, no matter what our age. I mean none of us are guaranteed anything, right?” And that’s when we all smiled and nodded appreciatively at the wisest being in the elevator. And for some really heartwarming reason, at that moment in an otherwise ordinary day, I felt so good and so connected with every generation in our world (both young and old and those like me, the “in-betweeners”). I had an extra spring in my step as I got off of the elevator. I turned around. I smiled brightly. And I genuinely and warmly wished them all a wonderful afternoon, and then I happily headed to my car, feeling like all was right in our world.
It’s the little things that make us feel alright. The little things count a lot (if we remember to count them). As it is said, the little things are the big things.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
On the way to see our children at their university last weekend, my husband and I stopped at a Dunkin Doughnuts. We had to use the restroom (of course we did – we are in our fifties) and then we bought some coffee and then we decided to treat ourselves to some doughnuts, because, why not? When I was paying, the young lady who was waiting on me, mumbled something to me that sounded like, “You’re so pretty.”
“Excuse me?” I asked, because honestly I was a little bit surprised and confused. She said it a little bit louder, yet still shyly, “You’re so pretty.” I was shocked, pleased, embarrassed, grateful, flattered and glowing all at once. You see, I’m almost 52. I’ve been considered attractive back in the day, but I’m 52. I have pudges and wrinkles and everything on my body is a little worn because I’ve lived my life enthusiastically. This now rare compliment couldn’t have come at a better time, as I was embarking on a weekend filled with beautiful young faces and perfect, scantily clad bodies, and boundless youthful energy that was impossible to keep up with for more than a day, tops.
The compliment has stayed with me since. I’m probably a little flushed as I write this. As I have said many times on this blog, it is good to offer compliments often and magnanimously because they change a person’s whole vibe, for a long while. A compliment is a beautiful gift to give to someone, and it costs you nothing but a penny of your thoughtfulness and kindness.
My friend texted me an instagram page this morning that she thought I would like. She was right. I love it. The page is of Denise Boomkens, and she is the author of TheArt of Aging Unapologetically. (which I just ordered this morning from Amazon) The latest post on Denise Boomkens’ Instagram page is a picture of a lovely, elegant 66-year-old French woman named Petra, who now lives in Belgium. Petra is quoted as saying this:
“I don’t find aging very easy and sometimes a confrontational process. The emphasis shifts from your outer self to your inner self; I sometimes ask myself, “who am I when nobody glances at me anymore.” This is not a negative development; I try to make the best of it in my own way.”
There is a wonderful, relief-filled part about shifting the focus to your inner self as you age, but there is also some grief in the understanding and the accepting of the changes that inevitably come to your aging outer shell. Still, there is some real, true wisdom to the saying that beauty comes from within. Sometimes, we think that this saying is just a nice thing to say, to make us feel better if we don’t feel attractive, but honestly, it really is the truth. I think that the girl at the Dunkin Doughnuts sensed my excitement, and my loving yearning to be with my children. I think she felt my happy, relaxed flirtiness with my husband as we embarked on our adventure. I felt pretty on the inside and it overflowed to my outside. True beauty is pure and timeless and has nothing to do with how we look.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Word for the day: Ambedo The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows describes ambedo as this: n. a kind of melancholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life . . . .
The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows was created to find words for emotions which we feel, that do not quite have a word for that particular, intricate feeling in traditional dictionaries of our modern languages. On another site the word ambedo is found beside the heading of “Thoroughly Depressing Word of the Day.” On this site (BK Words Worth Knowing), it says that ambedo is this: “briefly soaking in the experience of being alive, an act that is done purely for its own sake.”
I am not sure why ambedo and its meaning is considered to be “thoroughly depressing.” I am not quite sure why a word, that seems to me, to mean mindfulness which is also filled with deep emotion and appreciation, comes off as depressing. I find it more depressing how mindlessly and unmoved we seem to go through our lives a lot of the time. We get into habitual robotic action, often forgetting what we last did. We drive along in beautiful scenes full of nature and notice that everyone in these scenes are hunched over their phones, oblivious to the miraculous vitality teeming all around them. We stay in the dramatic, antagonizing stories created in our heads, while we miss the epic novels of being present in our every living moments, while being willing to fully feel the emotions and sensations which this presence brings to us.
Readers, let’s take some time today with ambedo. Let’s light a candle and stare at the flickering flame. Let’s watch water trickle into a fountain, and hear its light touch as it falls to the pool of water calmly catching it below. Let’s watch a precious pet napping in the sunshine and notice how the sunlight highlights the intricacies of fur and patterns of the fur slowly rising and falling to the vital breathing of our beloved companion. Perhaps what we really feel when we allow ourselves some rare ambedo moments, is an overwhelming, lump-in-the-throat awe of the incredible miracle of life. Perhaps the depression only comes about as an after-effect of ambedo, because we realize how little of our own lives we spend in the pure astonishment of the amazing, yet fleeting experience of it all. We worry about being in ambedo states as “wasting time”, and yet what ambedo does for us, is makes us come to the realization of how we waste so much of our living experience ignoring the true experience of real, tactile, beautiful, in-the-moment sensory life.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I saw a more explicit version of this on Twitter today and I decided to replace it with the tamer version above (although the other one was funnier as it replaced evil with a-hole. I do try to keep it funny on Mondays. We have to get our smiles on Monday from somewhere, right?)
It’s such a hard lesson to fully grasp, but not everyone will like us. Why is that hard to comprehend? We, ourselves, don’t like everybody we meet, and often the reasons why we don’t like someone aren’t even fully understandable to us, ourselves. Sometimes we don’t like people for truly irrational reasons. We don’t like someone because they remind us of someone else whom we had a negative experience with previously in our lives, or perhaps, we have already made up our minds that the person doesn’t like us, so we don’t like them back. So there!
We often make up our minds about people before we get to know them, and so we like or dislike a person based on our personal perceptions without ever having the full experience of getting to know the person on a more intimate level. Our human nature isn’t always the best about giving people “fair chances.” And so, that works the other way, too. If someone doesn’t like you without ever really getting to know you, whom they actually don’t like is someone based on their own perceptions and prejudices. Therefore “that someone” whom the person doesn’t like, isn’t even really you.
I read once that most of the most evil characters in soap operas and long running series are actually some of the nicest people whom you would ever want to meet. They get all of their negativity, anger, disappointment and resentment out by playing truly nasty characters. If we accept the fact that we are playing the evil character in someone’s story, we can maybe get an evil laugh out of it all. Mwahahaha. And we know that actually, in real life, we are much sweeter than the evil character whom we play in someone’s imagination.
I have always told my kids that when it comes to friends, four quarters is always better than 100 pennies. Instead of collecting adoring fans, and hundreds of “likes”, be thrilled if you have four people in your life, who truly “get you”, flaws and all, and love you deeply. The rest is all just about “live and let live”, and hope that everyone in life has their own four quarters, jingling in their back pockets to be there for them, when some random pennies have misunderstood them as evil chumps.
I have read that true wealth is freedom and the older I get, the more evident it is to me that this is absolutely true. A wonderful way to give yourself freedom, is to fully accept that not everyone likes you. In fact, some people really can’t stand you. And that doesn’t make you a bad person. Their perceptions really have nothing to do with you. You also have at least four quarters who think that you are absolutely wonderful. Whose right? It doesn’t matter. You be you. If you love and trust and respect yourself, everyone else is just a plus, and not a must. Be your own best friend and carry on with your story. The only story that really matters in your own life is your own story.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Normally I write a poem or share a poem by another poet. However, we have another planned brunch coming up for our parents’ weekend with our youngest two children at their university. Therefore I don’t have time to whip up a poem today, or even to scour the internet for a different poem. I like this quote from the Dead Poet Society film. That’s a good question to ponder. From this day forward, “What will your verse be?”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
We are visiting our youngest two children at their shared university this weekend. It’s the last home football game of my youngest son’s senior year in college. We’re only one evening in and I’m pretty, pretty exhausted. There was a time in my early adulthood that it seemed like I had just graduated from college myself. It was a good decade after graduating college, getting married and even having four kids, in which I would still feel as if I had just very recently graduated from college, myself. For the longest time, as an adult, I always felt just a few years out of college.
It is now safe to say that I don’t feel that way anymore. At all. It’s not even close. But it sure is fun to see my babies savoring their college years. And I assume that it will take a long while for them to no longer feel like the fun, silly, energetic, “the sky is the limit”, “life is a party” college co-eds, even years after they graduate. And that is a beautiful thing. The good stuff in life lingers long after it is over. Your experiences never fully leave you. In fact, your experiences do a lot to form you. Perhaps that glimmer of a young, radiant, excited college girl is shining out of my eyes a little bit this weekend. I can remember it (her) like it was yesterday.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
As a woman from a family who has many members who have served in our military branches, and who has married into a family of many members who have served in our military branches, I couldn’t be prouder. There is no greater sacrificial service, than to be willing to put your life on the line for something bigger and more important than yourself. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We honor you. Veterans will always, always be a favorite of mine.
Happy Friday, friends!!! Friday is the best day of the week, in my opinion. Therefore I keep it light on Fridays and I only discuss the frivolous – essentially material stuff that I like. On Fridays, I offer up one of my favorites, whether it be a book, a movie, a product, a website, etc. and I ask you to add your own favorites to my Comments section. Please also check out previous Friday posts for more favorites.
Today’s favorites are hilarious plant stakes that I purchased at a local plant shop, but it turns out that you find all sorts of these sticks of cute-funness, on Etsy. (With that in mind, before you know it, every one of our own dozens of plants will soon have their own stake.) These plant stakes make me smile and giggle to myself every time that I look at them, so besides the delicious clean oxygen my plants offer up to me, now they make me giggle and smile on the daily, too. How great is that?! What a simple, easy, inexpensive way to add delight into your own life.
Have a wonderful weekend! See you tomorrow.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
