For all of the bravado of our younger years, being young is actually a time of a lot of insecurity. A beautiful part of aging, is having all of the experiences under our belts that we’ve lived through, and enjoyed, or at the very least, conquered. When an incident arises which needs our attention, it is so good to fall back on the self-assurance, “I’ve gotten through worse than this, and I’ve come out better and stronger on the other side. I will figure this out. I always have.”
Sometimes when I see quotes like this, I think to myself, “Yes. I know. I trust myself, and my strength, and my faith to see me through, but do you know what? I’m a little tired of figuring sh*t out.” It turns out that life is often a big, long series of figuring stuff out – even the good stuff, like where to eat and what movie to watch. But as you age and you’ve proven to yourself that you are pretty good at figuring stuff out, this self assurance sure helps lighten the load.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The above is from my favorite Twitter feed, Think Smarter. I live in Florida. We get a lot of visitors from other states, and even other countries, particularly at this time of year. People who are retired, or people who are on fun, relaxing vacations, are definitely operating at a much different speed and mindset, than the rest of us full-time, every day Floridians. I guess that it all comes down to thoughtfulness and awareness that none of us are the Center of the Universe and thus, please act kindly and accordingly. At the same time, we full-time Floridians truly appreciate, and we are entirely grateful for the tax revenues that our Snowbirds and our Sight-Seers bring to us, and for that, we add a few seconds of patience and restraint, in the grocery stores, before we start sighing loudly, glaring sharply, and then go stark raving mad, ramming shopping carts into fully stocked shelves of juice and wine. Consider yourself warned.
On the subject of warnings, I allowed myself to get caught up in the COVID-19 frenzy last night and actually contemplated spending $689 for a couple of surgical masks. (but then my husband reminded me that we have some kind of protective painters’ masks in a dusty container in our garage, probably from 1999, and our fishing gaiters actually look way cooler and more fashionable than surgical masks, so I put my credit card away) Still, even though I don’t ever get the flu shot, and I spend a sizable amount of money on immune system related supplements every month, and I mostly stay at home by myself every day, by last night, I was scoping out crematoriums, as I had myself convinced that I had the symptoms of COVID-19, and I was hopelessly doomed to a breathless death. In all seriousness, I do hope that all of this panic and alarm calms itself down, and that we can find a quick and reasonable way to contain the virus, heal the sick, and soothe all of our collective fears.
Along those lines of thought, I read something recently that stated that the emotions that we feel when we are excited and the emotions that we feel when we are fearful, are remarkably the same. Perhaps when we feel ourselves getting out of control, feeling darkening fear, we should shut off our computers, shut off our phones, and our TVS, wash our hands (for 20 seconds – sing “Happy Birthday” twice – quietly, and to yourself, if you have a lousy singing voice), and instead think about something that we are excited about. Notice that the feelings of fear and excitement are remarkably identical. To stay on the positive side of the identical feelings, stick with the positive thoughts of elation and happy anticipation, knowing that COVID-19 will soon become ho-hum news of the past, and it will be readily replaced with something else horrible in the news, which we can terrorize ourselves about.
Happy Friday Eve, friends and readers!!!
Fortune for the day – “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” – Aristotle
“If you spend enough time with people who don’t laugh, you may start to think you’re not funny. Similar errors in judgment could be a takeaway from hanging out with the incurious, unkind and aesthetically oblivious. . . . Remember that the good life always involves people with the qualities we value.” – Holiday Mathis
After dinner last night, my husband and I stopped at an adorable cafe for coffee and dessert. We had time to kill (yes, that’s my excuse for getting dessert) because we had to pick up our daughter from an outing which she was having with her tennis friends. That is the only reason why we stopped at the cafe, despite passing it on the road many times before and saying to each other that “we MUST give that place a try.”
The cafe is European style. It is furnished with modern, sleek, yet comfortable Scandinavian furniture with frosted glass tables that change colors from the encased subtly color changing lights. The atmosphere is unique, relaxing and elegant. The gelato and the sweet, delicate desserts were absolutely scrumptious, and the coffee was divine. The proprietor of the cafe could not have been more gracious, welcoming, and delightful. And we were the only people there.
My husband and I both left the cafe, hoping desperately for the proprietor, that the cafe would stay in business, but we both already had the sinking feeling that we might not get another time to visit the eatery. Its prospects did not seem good. The problem mostly appeared to be with its location. The main street of town is filled with restaurants, breweries and shops. The cafe is on a quiet side street, a little bit out of the way. My husband is the one who thought to give it a try, when I suggested getting some dessert. I had suggested Panera or a local ice cream shop, both frequented by us and others, many times over. The cafe, despite being on my “local bucket list”, never really crossed my mind.
I could turn this blog post into a treatise of shopping “local” or “Flocal”, as we call it in Florida, but that is not really what has been swimming around in my mind, since this experience. More so, I have been thinking about the fact that just because something isn’t being responded to in a big way, or becoming popular by the masses, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s not good, or even great. The local Panera and the Tastee Treat (both chain franchises) that I had in mind for dessert, are bland and pedestrian and mediocre, at best, compared to what we experienced at the little Euro Cafe. I do have high hopes that word-of-mouth and the influx of “Snowbirds” coming into our town, will give this cafe the recognition and business that it deserves in the coming months. But I also know that we humans have a tendency to “follow the herd” blindly, when it comes to choices that we make, which makes us so vulnerable and easily swayed by the mass marketers, and the well-backed “influencers” of our time. Thinking outside of the box and then acting on that thinking, takes work, introspection, courage, curiosity and risk, that which we are often too adverse to experiencing. We are quick to follow the paths and the patterns laid out for us by our families, our friends, our institutions, and our society, without giving it much individual thought, that there may be more interesting, resonating paths that are equally viable options to try.
The great talents, gifts and contributions to society from Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson, Vincent Van Gogh, Franz Kafka, Gregor Mendel and Henry David Thoreau, among many others, were not appreciated until after their deaths. Would any of these brilliant people, who I just listed, whose accomplishments are still shaping our thoughts and our history and our knowledge and our ideas today, stop applying their gifts and their energy and their motivations, to the lives that they lead, with the fore-knowledge that this would be the case? I think not.
I like the idea in the opening quote that the good life involves people, places and things that embody the qualities that we value. Maybe that means slowing down and really pondering each of our choices, even choices as simple as to where to go to get some dessert. Are our choices really reflecting who we believe we are, at our very cores? Are our choices really reflecting what we say we value in life? One of my favorite proverbs is “Actions speak louder than words.” As someone who spends a lot of time playing around with “words”, I understand how easy it can be to start spin doctoring experiences, even to myself. “Walking the talk” takes a whole hell of a lot more courage, insight, and integrity than lying to myself with flowery words, ideas, images and sometimes, even excuses.
My son was telling me a story about one of his science professors. She is a strict, brilliant German woman. She is currently teaching him Organic Chemistry 2. He said that the most interesting trait about her is that no matter what is going on in the class, no matter if she is in mid-discussion of a highly complicated subject or demonstrating a lab experiment, if someone sneezes in the class, she stops and says, “God bless you.” My son said that this has become such an obvious trait of hers, that he sometimes thinks that students fake sneeze on purpose, in order to get her blessing. I love that story! It clearly demonstrates the truth of the saying that what people will remember about you won’t be as much about what you said, your brilliance, your looks or your possessions, but more so, how you made them feel.
On that happy note, “God bless you, readers!!” It’s Friday, the easiest day of the week to feel blessed!!! Here at Adulting Second Half we call Friday – “Favorite Things Friday”! I typically list at least three favorite things, songs, websites, videos, books, etc. that have added positive vibes to my life and I encourage you all to do the same in the Comments section. (please feel free to Comment on anything, any time. I see the stats, I know that you are out there – I would LOVE to hear from you!) Please check out previous Friday posts for other favorites.
Today’s favorites are all quotes. I took these from a list of 77 of supposedly the world’s most popular quotes. I narrowed that list down to my favorites (at least for this Friday)! Here goes:
“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” – Dr. Seuss
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.” – C.S. Lewis
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” – Marilyn Monroe
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” – Albert Einstein
“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.” – Malcolm X
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” – Helen Keller
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.” – J.K. Rowling
“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.” – Abraham Lincoln
And to end with where we started:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou
Happy Friday, friends!! God Bless You!! Thank you for blessing my life and making me feel heard, interesting, and worth your time!!
