admin, Author at Adulting: Second- Half

Live For Moments

“Acting is all about honesty. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.” – George Burns

“When real music comes to me – the music of the spheres, the music that surpasses understanding – that has nothing to do with me, ’cause I’m just the channel. The joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium… those moments are what I live for.”
– John Lennon

Creative arts is all about authenticity, vulnerability, and channeling Greater Forces. That is why we all respond to these artistic outputs, in their highest form. A beautiful painting, a breath-catching photograph, a soul-searing poem, touch us and connect us to the deepest part of ourselves like nothing else can. And then, when we look around and catch a glimmer of that same awestruck feeling that we are feeling, also in the faces of the other observers/experiencers, that’s when we feel the least alone. That is when we feel the silver web of connection that we often forget is there, holding all of us together, creating an amazing, gorgeous tapestry of Life and Love. That’s when gratitude washes over us and cleanses us to our cores, reminding us of what we are all really made of, at our purest form of passionate energy.

My friend turned me on to Lizzo yesterday. Her college-aged daughter introduced her to Lizzo and I earned a lot of “cool mom points” when I picked up my daughter from the high school yesterday, playing Lizzo, at high volume. My daughter knew all of the words already. Lizzo is a female rapper and most of her songs speak of empowerment. Lizzo sings/says a song called “Truth Hurts.” When I looked the song up on Youtube, I saw this comment, about the song, that made me smile:

“this song makes me feel like a strong independent woman.. and i’m a guy.” – Foreign Warren

My favorite line in Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” is this:

“Why men great ’til they gotta be great?”

If we’re going to talk about equality and empowerment, that line applies to all of us – male and female and everything else in between, doesn’t it? We lose the connection and the channel to our deepest, most creative inspirations, when we start focusing on the response to our output versus the joy of creating (an co-creating) the output. When we start aiming in on how many likes and views and notes of approval from others that we’re hoping to get, the connection to what the Universe is really trying to do with our lives, gets static-y and sometimes even gets disconnected. And we feel lost and confused and disappointed and sometimes, empty. We need to be refilled with what really keeps us connected. And the rub is, what keeps us connected is not anything applauding us on the outside, but moreso, what is deep, and profound, rising up inside of us, just wanting to burst through, in all of its glory.

John Lennon is arguably one of the greatest musicians of our lifetime and “those moments are what I live for” were the moments that he was gifted to “transcribe” what the Universe wanted the rest of us to enjoy, and to relate to and to sing along to, sometimes at the top of our lungs. He didn’t talk about sold-out concerts, or how many people were in his fan club, or his NYC penthouse. Lennon’s “live for moments” were during the creative process, with his juices flowing, and his open heart just taking in everything and transcribing the Love that was meant to touch all of our hearts, every time we listened to one of Lennon’s songs.

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The Blues

In the airport yesterday, I was watching a TV program discussing the Blue Zone lifestyle. The Blue Zones are places like Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; Loma Linda, Calif.; and Okinawa, Japan. Although geographically spread out, the people of these communities practice remarkably similar lifestyles that have given them much longer longevity numbers than the world’s average and they have also been found to have less cancer, less cardiovascular disease, less depression and less dementia. The island of Icaria, Greece (also a Blue Zone area) has the highest percentage of 90-year-olds on the planet, where nearly 1 out of 3 people make it to their 90s. Apparently, Icarians have about 20 percent lower rates of cancer, 50 percent lower rates of heart disease and almost no dementia.

On the other hand:

“The average life expectancy in the U.S. has been on the decline for three consecutive years.

A baby born in 2017 is expected to live to be 78.6 years old, which is down from 78.7 the year before, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.” – CNBC 7/9/19

The above article quoted states that the decline in Americans’ life expectancy rate has to do with a rises in suicides, liver disease and drug overdoses. We clearly have something to learn from these Blue Zoners. In a nutshell, taken from a book called The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest by Dan Buettner, here are the nine common factors believed to create the longevity and daily health of the people in the Blue Zones:

Know your purpose.
Eat less.
Have faith and a spiritual practice.
Eat mostly plants
Drink wine in moderation.
Have a healthy way to decompress from stress. (prayer, meditation, singing, etc.)
Move naturally throughout the day. (moderate exercise throughout the day versus occasional hardcore workouts)
Have strong connections to family and close friends.
Have a social life.

This is clearly oversimplified, but there is so much information and the science behind it, all over the internet, that goes into greater detail. I’ve always been one who leans towards the KISS system. (Keep it simple, stupid.) So I think that it can all be summed up this way:

“If you ask what is the single most important key to longevity, I would have to say it is avoiding worry, stress and tension. And if you didn’t ask me, I’d still have to say it.” – George Burns

Sing Us a Song

Last night, I attended a wonderful concert, in which a 71-year-old musician, an old-time rocker, had us all up on our feet. He was still a great showman, changing costumes, running across the stage and yelling out a primal scream that at my age of 48, I don’t think that I have in me anymore. I imagine that this performer will be a showman until the day that he dies.

I love musicians. If there is anyone who lives their lives on their sleeves, it is them. Anyone who can turn raw emotion into a song that keeps the rest of us humming along in life, is a true alchemist. Watching a band in the middle of a set, is watching pure life and happiness flow out of its human forms to congregate and make beautiful sound and rhythm and harmony, that the rest of us catch and bring into our souls, as we sing and dance along. There is no wonder why musicians capture our awe and adoration. They remind us what pure life sounds like and feels like in reverberation. What a gift that has been bestowed upon them, in the form of a talent that is only best understood when it is shared. Music is Love whispered, shouted, sung, and hummed and strummed, reminding us of the vibration of our own very hearts, way beyond just the physical beats.

“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” ― Plato

Cacophony

Yesterday, we were perusing a really cool, modern, city bike shop. While making our purchases, sitting right by the cash register, I noticed a little display, of tiny bike bells, guaranteed to make the loudest, longest ringing sound that a bike bell has ever made. So like any mature middle-aged person, I rang one of the bells. Sure enough, the advertisements were not a lie. There were several different colors of bells on the display, so without really thinking, more on impulse, I guess, I decided to try every color at once (as if the color of the metal was going to make any difference in the sound). It was like a little bell symphony – a loud and annoying and never-ending one.

The clerk had a wincing look on her face and a tight smile as she wrapped up our purchases.

“Ugh. I’m sorry about my lack of impulse control,” I said. “You probably hate these bells. It’s like the stores that keep their animated holiday decorations right by the register. While the rest of us are all kind of enchanted by the bobbing Elvis Christmas dog belting out “I’ll Have a Blue Christmas” with just a press of its cute little paw in a mitten, the cashier is ready to beat anyone black and blue with the mechanical Elvis dog, because she or he has already seen and heard the dog’s little song and dance, 18,942 times and it isn’t even Halloween yet.”

“Exactly,” she said with a fatigued look on her face, watching my hands very closely, just daring me to make the unfortunate decision to ring yet another bell.

I just smiled, thanked her, took my package and left. I’m a mature woman. Plus, I think that being pelted by a box of metal bike bells would be very painful.

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Unplugging

Friends, you’ll have to forgive me, but I have unplugged the thinking, analyzing, story-telling, making sense of things through my perceptions and moods, part of my brain.

I am on a wonderful trip, enjoying family members and exploring new places. I am in “just experience this” mode and it is fabulous. It is such a relaxing, peaceful, full of wonder and delight, state of being. Why can’t I be in this “fully present and happily aware of the moment” state all of the time?? Uh oh. There it is. The critical analyzer in me just got plugged back in. Who did that? Unplugging now. Awww, so much better . . . . . .

Listen, It’s Friday!

Hi all! Yay! It’s finally Friday! Happy Friday!!! On Fridays, nothing of any kind of a serious nature is discussed here at Adulting – Second Half. On Fridays, I typically list three favorite products, songs, websites, books, etc. that make my Material Girl life all of the more fun. I strongly encourage my readers to add their favorites to the Comments section, so that we all can have even more fun this weekend. Please see previous Friday posts for more of my favorites. Today I am going to list my favorite “kid videos” that make me smile and giggle out loud, again and again. Many of you will recognize the first video which is the inspiration for the above meme. Click on the videos and giggle away!

Happy Friday, dear readers and friends!!! I hope that you have a fabulous weekend!!

Where is the love, y’all??

“Here’s the thing – I’m friends with George Bush.

“In fact, I’m friends with a lot of people who don’t share the same beliefs that I have. We’re all different, and I think we’ve forgotten that that’s okay, that we’re all different.”

The presenter used the example that while she wishes people didn’t wear real fur, she has a lot of friends who do.

“But just because I don’t agree with someone on everything, doesn’t mean that I’m not going to be friends with them,” DeGeneres said.

-From the Ellen Degeneres show, after the fallout of her sitting next to George W. Bush during a football game

You know that I have sidestepped and tried to stay away from controversy, for the most part, in my blog. I don’t like politics (nor politicians, frankly), I believe that there are many paths to God, and I certainly don’t care to have people cram their opinions and “shoulds” down my throat. Further, if I just don’t agree with the other person’s opinion, I don’t care to be made out as an “idiot” or even worse, a “villian.” I respect everyone’s right to their own viewpoint, and I expect the same respect in return. No harm, no foul.

What I was trying to get across in my blog that I wrote on Tuesday (Love. Spirit. Life.) was that if we can’t have honest discourse and questioning with each other about our differences, if we have to feel fearful of admitting our conflicted thoughts and feelings and beliefs, all that have arisen from our own unique and personal experiences – these very experiences that have helped shape our own lifetime perspectives, how are we ever going to evolve and move forward to a more enlightened, cohesive state of being, as a whole? How are we ever going to feel that we are leaving a good world for our children and our grandchildren, when we pick divisiveness and exclusivity in our “clubs of thought” over our love for the whole of humanity?

If I were to only choose to associate with people who felt the exact same way as I do about all things, than I wouldn’t have one single friend. In fact, the six people who I love the most in this world, my immediate family, would no longer be able to associate with each other. In the last presidential election, the voting members of our family of six, effectively cancelled each others’ votes out.

We all complain about the horrifying polarization of our current society (that seems like the one thing most of us agree about), yet we start out with the assumption that anyone who doesn’t see things the way that we do, is evil or stupid – people to be feared and ostracized. How are we ever going to experience empathy, understanding and compromise, if we are made to feel that we can’t even express our own viewpoints for fear of being excommunicated from our communities, our churches, our friend groups, perhaps even our own families?!? What is our highest law? Shouldn’t it be Love?!? Does Love behave this way?!?

We all complain about the horrific statements made anonymously on the internet. Still, even with these forums, we have gotten so “careful” that I have even seen anonymous Comments, start off with, “I’m probably going to be skewered for this, but here goes . . . .”

We will never be entirely unified with anyone about everything. But if we choose to only communicate and commune with people who are close enough to “being just like us”, we will never, ever bridge these ever widening gaps. We will just add more suspicion, paranoia and make assumptions about other people, without ever trying to see them as most importantly, other people who likely have the very same deepest, core concerns as us. (love, safety, health, security, and peace for our families and our friends, our communities, and our world)

I am always amused when people tell me I’m so “honest” in my blog. Why shouldn’t we all be “honest”? I’m not saying cruel, and thoughtless and blunt. (which unfortunately, I have been these things, as well, and I am not proud of that fact) Why do we fear having open, authentic discourse? I think it is because the new way of communicating seems to be more “cram my righteous thoughts, ‘my holier than thou beliefs’ down your throat” and if you don’t agree with me, I will attack you with name-calling, bullying, shaming and ganging up on you, and then I will never speak to you (or anyone who you associate with) again.”

What ever happened to really hearing each other, trying to understand where the other person is coming from? What every happened to saying, “This is how I am seeing and experiencing and processing what is going on. Tell me your thoughts. Where am I wrong? What am I missing?” Whatever happened to the belief that in the end, we are so much better off looking for our connections, than staying in our far corners of disconnect??

I don’t like rants. I just wrote one. I am only human. Aren’t we all???

“Discussions are always better than arguments, because an argument is to find out WHO is right, and a discussion is to find our WHAT is right.” – unknown

Brought Him Back

I’m headed out to see my eldest son’s new digs this weekend for the first time. I am going to see his life in reality, not just how he describes it to me. I have my expectations set correctly. He has always leaned heavily towards the Oscar side of things, versus Felix. I can’t wait to see him, of course, but I also can’t wait to have an accurate visual of him hiking around the neighborhood lake, the placid lake that he always talks about while he talks to us, his short commute to his office building and I can’t wait to see his beloved local grocery store, supposedly filled with fabulous, unique delicacies, the likes that we’ve never seen.

My daughter and I were talking about what it is like to see something or someone in reality, that apparition which you have conjured up in your mind, for a very long time. When I read a good, engrossing novel, before long, I have a very detailed image in my mind, of what the characters look like, and their mannerisms and their voices. When Hollywood gets it “wrong” in the movie version, I just want to scream. Sometimes, I can’t even finish watching the film.

Also interesting are the times that I have seen celebrities, in person. That experience is always a tad disconcerting, too. The celebrities always seem like such teeny people to me. Perhaps, because in our minds, famous people seem so much larger than life, so when we see them in person, they are shockingly normal sized. They are amazingly, just people, and not the exaggerated, dynamos of energy, announcing their presence like The Great Wizard of Oz. The real person part of them is the human wizard who lives behind the curtain, behind the facade of their illustrious acting or singing or sporting personas. When the superstars are not bolstered up, and blown up by the spotlights and the limelight, they shrink back to size, like a puff pastry, taken out of the hot oven, to cool down.

Regardless, while curiosity killed the cat, I’ve always liked the part of the proverb that reminds us that “satisfaction brought him back.” I love having my curiosity satisfied. It is one of my greatest pleasures in life. Even if whatever I have been anticipating disappoints or is 180 degrees different than what I have been anticipating, at least I am now, “in the know.” There is no nebulous about that particular person, place or thing, swirling around in my mind, lost in wonder and fog and exaggeration. The hazy, imagined concept, constantly being stirred and conjured and changed up in my imagination, finally solidifies to form to a concrete vision – a hard chunk of reality, and my life and my visions and my sensibility feels more solid again. I’ve got my feet on the ground again, and the comfort of the accuracy of my experience versus the ambiguity of an idea with no true, real physical form, has the tendency to give my soul some solace and my mind some peace.

Love Better.

Love better

Love is the most important thing in our lives, yet we are taught very little about it. One Love is on a mission to change that. We educate young people about healthy and unhealthy relationships, empowering them to identify and avoid abuse and learn how to love better.

The above entry is from the One Love Foundation. (joinonelove.org) Last night, I was reading an article about the CEO and the background of this foundation, and I thought to myself, “Oh, I’ve got to save this for Favorite Things Friday. This is a great website.” The Ted Talk, lead by the CEO of the foundation, Katie Hood, is an excellent watch.

Honestly, I planned to make this website one of my Friday favorites, mostly for myself, as a saved resource for my daughter and for my sons, and for my friends’ children, and for the girls whom I mentor, and for you, my readers and your children. Sometimes, I see a great resource or website or an article and then I forget about it, or where I saw it and I try to find it again in the massive mountain of information piled on the internet, and it is sadly, Mission Impossible to do so. My blog has become my treasure trove of what strikes a chord in me, and thus, hopefully, it can be helpful to others, as well. Still, I woke up this morning, thinking about this foundation’s mission and I thought, “This can’t wait until Friday. It’s too important.”

One Love was created by the Love Family. In 2010, a University of Virginia lacrosse player, Yeardley Love, was violently killed by her ex-boyfriend, also a UVA lacrosse player, right before they were both to graduate from college. In retrospect, all of the signs of a dramatic, unhealthy, abusive relationship were there, waving their red flags. Unfortunately, though, a lot of people (even smart, educated people from loving families) are colorblind to red flags in relationships because as the above statement says, we as a society, don’t do a whole lot to teach young people about love. We don’t do much teaching about what is healthy and what is not healthy when it comes to love or any other type of relationships.

Yeardley Love, was a beautiful, athletic, talented young woman who came from a loving, prosperous family. I remember in college joking that there was an obvious inverse curve when it came to relationships. Often, the prettiest, most ambitious, most campus involved, women with the highest GPAs, who I knew – the women who seemed to have “their sh*t together in every other regard (pardon my French), would often have the least healthy relationships out of all of us, with really toxic men. Yeardley and her boyfriend would have proven that hypothesis. It’s not really a funny joke, though. Obviously.

The old model for love relationships has kind of been a try, experience and learn, without much direction from anybody. But too often those experimental relationships turn deadly or leave lasting scars that color all future relationships to come. I really like what One Love is on a mission to do, in terms of educating young people and giving them some insight and direction.

That being said, I think One Love needs to add a precedent to these videos and lessons about relationships with other people. I think, we as a society, have to teach and model to our young ones how to learn to love themselves and how to have healthy relationships with themselves, first. I copied this quote into my notebook recently by Melanie Tonia Evans:

“Most of us won’t stay in relationships in which the level of love is below what we feel for ourselves.” Evans then goes on to say this:

“We have as yet not become a solid source of love, approval, survival and security for ourselves and we hold other people responsible for meeting our needs.”

Narcissism is a huge buzz word these days, but it is still largely misunderstood. People equate self-love with narcissism, but nothing could be further from the truth. True narcissism is a personality disorder, usually formed at a young age as a defense mechanism from abusive or neglectful experiences. A true narcissist has no sense of true self, and can only find his or her reflection and sense of self from others, hence often being called “energy vampires.” A healthy person with good self-esteem and full of self-love and who is capable of self-care, has absolutely no need to take anything from anyone. They are brimming with confidence and comfort, that comes from within themselves. A healthy person understands the bounty of their own grace and the grace bestowed on others.

Often, especially in a competitive society such as ours, our children think that they need to do special things, to be high achievers, or to stand out in some form, in order to be noticed and to be loved. They are searching for love and approval from outside sources. They have put conditions on whether or not, they are worthy enough to be loved.

If we are honest with ourselves, what kind of love are we modeling to our children? Do we love ourselves unconditionally? Do we treat ourselves with kindness, understanding and respect at all times? As a mother of four children, I have seen again and again, that children are much more likely to model what we do, than any lecture we give to them.

Love better. It is such a good mantra. We can only love better when we fully understand what true unconditional love looks like and what it feels like, when we choose to embody it. Better love is there, inside of each of us, ready to come out into action form, for ourselves and for others. People like the Love family understand that, as they are turning this horrific tragedy into a revolution of change in the ways our young people approach love, and life, and relationships. If that isn’t the deepest form of love, I don’t know what is . . . . .

Love, Spirit, Life.

I experienced a situation this weekend that I have to write about it. I’ve pondered it and ruminated on it, since it happened. I’m still trying to wrap my head around what lessons I have gleaned.

There is a beautiful old theater that was built in the 1920s in the city that I live in. It’s in the National Register of Historic Places. It has been on my bucket list to see a movie at this theater, known for it’s ornate beauty and Wurlitzer organ, for a long time, but we have never gotten around to it. My friends brought it up recently, talking about it’s amazing antique features, and so, on a whim, with nothing else going on this past Saturday night, I looked up the movie that was playing at this particular venue. (this theater typically shows indie films or old classics or the Rocky Horror Picture Show) The movie showing on Saturday night was The Shiny Shrimps, a comedic French film about a homophobic man who after using homophobic slurs, is ordered to coach a gay water polo team for The Gay Games, in order to still stay qualified as a national swimmer for France. My husband, who was curious about the theater, as well, agreed to drive the 45 minutes into town and to look around forever and ever for parking, because we really didn’t have any other plans for the night and we are always seeking out novelty (we are both adventurous fire signs).

Now, having seen Moonlight at the theaters, we both understood that there would likely be a larger than usual gay population at the theater. That doesn’t phase us. We have gay friends and gay family members and we don’t consider ourselves homophobic, whatsoever. However, as we got closer to the mob sitting outside, waiting to get into the theater, it became obvious that the crowd was 90 percent gay men and maybe 9 percent lesbians and we helped make up the possibly 1 percent or less of straight people, who were going into the theater. The theater holds 1200. We were clearly in the minority.

I immediately felt uncomfortable, not just for myself, but also for my husband, who is a good looking, charming, outgoing man. I stammered something about just exploring the theater quickly and then just leaving. I found myself wanting to get to and to sit into our seats, quickly and discreetly. I found myself trying to almost shrink into myself, as to not bring any attention to our traditional, conventional long-married, totally straight couple status. I sensed and understood my husband’s acute uncomfortableness, as well and I felt guilty for the whole situation, all the way around.

Obviously, after ending up exploring the theater and ending up staying and watching what was a fun and enjoyable movie, my husband and I discussed our experience.

“I felt like everyone was thinking, why are YOU here?” is what I said to my husband.

“I think that you have that all wrong. I don’t think that anyone cared. I don’t think that they were thinking about us at all,” my husband said.

Yes, he was probably right. It could be kind of narcissistic to think that I was any kind of focus, for the night. I compared it to an experience I had long ago when I was still in high school. One of my best friends was of Chinese descent and she invited me to an event at her Asian Cultural Center. It ended up that I was the only Caucasian person at the festival. Again, I had that same feeling of wanting to disappear, so matters got worse, when we were playing dodge ball and I got knocked in the head and my contact lens popped out. Everyone stopped the game and started searching the gym for my contact lens and I had another great, sore thumb moment. I can still make my face turn red and heat up over the moment, over thirty years later.

For me, the most important lesson, I got from my experience on Saturday night (and from the high school experience that I can still remember clearly) is empathy. It is a very strange, self conscious feeling to be “the different one.” Even if the whole population is being kind and considerate and supposedly ambivalent to your being different, you can still feel it. It is a lonely, apologetic, uncomfortable, maybe even a tad scary, defiant and defensive, yet tinged with shame feeling. I’m not saying that those feelings are the “correct” feelings to have, but to deny them would be a lie. Empathy for those who have to go through their whole lives feeling like the “different” ones, is probably the best reminder/gift that I received over the weekend. Those complicated, mixed bag, stirred up emotions would be a lot to face for anyone, on a daily basis, every single day of your life.

Recently I watched a very interesting reality show called Couples Therapy. One of the married couples, DeSean and Elaine, a black man and a Puerto Rican woman, were disagreeing over wanting to go to upscale restaurants. DeSean was trying to get across to Elaine that he didn’t enjoy spending their hard-earned money in places that made him feel “less than.” Elaine’s response to that is “Who cares?” She says that it is the other people’s problems if they are racist or bigoted or just plain snooty. While that is the truth, it is also not reasonable nor fair to discount DeSean’s internal and external experiences, and the confusing feelings that arise from those experiences of being a black man, in a predominantly white culture.

I always tell my children that we are never going to solve any of the world’s problems until we change the way people think. We cannot change how anyone thinks, until we really go about trying to understand the other person’s point of view and the feelings and experiences that have created that point of view. This is really what empathy is all about. I like that the younger generations are less focused on differences. They do a better job of “I’m okay, You’re okay.” My husband and I both agreed that our weekend’s theater experience would have most likely been much less uncomfortable (or even less of anything notable to talk about, at all) for our children, three sons, who are all young men and our daughter, a teenager. Our children have only experienced that it is okay for two people of the same sex to love one another, and for two people of different races to love one another. They know that is normal for women to be CEOs and Airforce pilots. They were children when a black man was voted President of the United States. Our children know that it is only the extreme, vicious, simple-minded and ugly-hearted people who hurt people or minimize people who have different religions, sexual preferences, political stances, or racial backgrounds than they do. They know this, not because it has been preached in esoteric theory and righteous platitudes, but because it is the experience that they have mostly lived and seen, on a daily basis, since they were young.

My experience this weekend was a very introspective, compelling lesson in empathy. I hope that someday soon in the future, we can bridge the gap of our differences and see them just as that and nothing more – differences in perspectives and points of view, spawning from vastly different lifetime experiences. Differences are not personal affronts. They are nothing to be feared or to be ashamed about. Differences are nothing to create individual, protective, inclusive clubs about, and around. Because in the end, as much variety as there is this world, at all of our own very deepest cores, under all of the hurts, and the masks, and the fears, and the bravado, and the ego creations, we are all very much the same substance – Love, Spirit, Life.