empty nest Archives - Page 155 of 167 - Adulting: Second- Half

It’s In the Structure

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?

“I thrive in structure. I drown in chaos.”
― Anna Kendrick, Scrappy Little Nobody

An Animal’s Eyes

Fortune for the day: “Work is love made visible.” – Kahlil Gibran

The TV show, 60 Minutes was particularly good this past Sunday, I thought. The entire show was made out of segments about nature and animals. I lapped it up. (So did our Labrador retriever, Ralphie, as he kept looking behind the TV for the pack of wolves showing on the segment about the Yellowstone National Park wolves) My favorite segment featured Joel Sartore, a photographer for National Geographic who has made it his life’s mission to make a pictorial ark, much like the biblical, Noah’s ark. He spends at least half of each year, going around to zoos and conservancies photographing every species that they have in captivity. Sartore only uses black or white backgrounds and he focuses on the animals’ eyes, so that we can fully empathize with their emotions and their inner beings. During the 60 Minutes segment, one animal which he photographed was the last frog of its kind. Once that particular frog passes, there will be no more of that species, ever again to be found on Earth. Currently, there are 9,844 pictures of species in Joe Sartore’s Photo Ark. He says that it will take him about 25 years to document every species currently in human care. Peruse the miracle of it all, in awe and amazement, at his beautiful website:

https://www.joelsartore.com/photo-ark/

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” –Anatole France

“Animals are such agreeable friends—they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.” –George Eliot

“An animal’s eyes have the power to speak a great language.” –Martin Buber

Soulful Sunday

Fortune for the day – “When anger spreads through the breast, guard thy tongue from barking loudly.” – Sapho

Anger does start in the chest, doesn’t it? And it has a burning feel to it, that does spread like fire and even sometimes like an inferno. What are you feeling right now? What does that feeling feel like, in each part of your body? Notice it. Stay with it. Describe it. Feel it. Let it go.

New friends, Sundays are our Poetry Workshop days. I share a poem and I feel a longing to have more of my readers share their poems in the Comments section. (Longing is a hollow feeling deep in my core, I’ve noticed) Anyway, it’s safe here. Even if you don’t feel like sharing, write a poem just for yourself today. You’ll find it freeing. You’ll be able to express more than you ever could with regular prose. I promise. Here’s my poem for today:

Sunday Morning

Windchimes tinkling softly

Sun rising assuredly

Lake moving swiftly

Leaves stirring slightly

Mind waking slowly

Coffee brewing steadily

Dogs arousing excitedly

Daughter coughs quietly

Sunday morning arises,

Absolutely, gloriously, perfectly.

From the “No Horse Pucky” Archives

Fortune for the day – “Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”- Albert Einstein

The time has come for another “No Horse Pucky” story. I haven’t recounted one of these types of stories, on the blog, in a long, long time. This story is from long ago. I wasn’t even married when it happened. I was engaged to be married, though.

It all happened in an ugly, green minivan. That particular minivan ruined minivans for me, for the rest of my life, despite a minivan’s convenient nature, which would have come in quite in handy, for a mother of a large brood like mine. You see, I was 23 years old and the ugly minivan, was an all expense paid company car. I had inherited the minivan from the previous textbook sales representative, a middle-aged family man, whose position I had taken over, after he left to go to a different company. I had sold my Barbie car (as my Dad liked to call it), a bright red, zippy Miata convertible, and I was now sporting around town in an unsightly, lumbering hunter green minivan. Blech!

Anyway, one evening on the commute home, being stuck at a long traffic light, I got distracted. I got distracted by my new, shiny, lovely engagement ring. I am, admittedly, a highly distractible driver. (My sister once said that I drive like it is an afterthought to everything else that I am doing.) I decided to take my engagement ring off, to admire it from all different angles, while waiting at the stoplight. While I was gazing adoringly at my new bauble, the light changed, and the rightfully irritated driver behind me, blew his horn loudly and long-ly. It startled me and I jumped, which made my engagement ring fall out of my hands, slide down the steering wheel column, down into a crack where the steering wheel connects into the dashboard.

At the next traffic light, I decided to use a pen to try to pry the crack open a little bit, so that I could slide my ring back up into my hands, to put it back onto its rightful finger. I pried the crack open so wide that the force of gravity swiftly swooped in, to teach me a lesson and the ring fell down into the crack, now disappearing from my sight. I started panicking, imagining that perhaps the ring had fallen out on to the road, as if the minivan was a bottomless car, the type driven by Fred Flintstone or Barney Rubble. (the van was pretty bad but not THAT bad) In my hysterical state, I cut off three lanes of traffic to take a sharp right turn into the nearest service station that happened to be right there, like a lighthouse, a great beacon of hope, in the desert of my despair.

“Help me! Help me, please. My engagement ring fell behind my steering column!” I shouted out to the man in the back corner of the garage. The man, covered in grease, eyed me up and down, suspiciously and motioned for me to pull the minivan into a stall of his garage. He dismissed my silly fears of the ring falling onto the highway and told me to go calm myself down, in his small, dumpy waiting room.

About a half hour later, the man sauntered into the waiting room, holding my engagement ring. He informed me that he had to remove the steering wheel, to retrieve my poor ring, which had been like a small, innocent, pretty animal, waiting patiently, yet desperately, at the bottom of a dark, smelly well.

“Ma’am”, he addressed me with a stern scowl on his grease-marked face. “Let this be a lesson to you. This is why we DON’T take these things off.”

No horse pucky.

Intentionally

Fortune for the Day – “What’s old collapses, times change, and new life blossoms in the ruins.” – Johann Von Schiller

The bucket story from yesterday’s blog post, seemed to resonate, so I will add one more thought that really stuck with me from Dr. Christian Conte’s book about anger management. He states that as people, we are more likely to judge ourselves on our intentions and yet, we are more inclined to judge others, by their actions. So, this implies that people are judging us on our actions, because they really aren’t privy to our intentions and they may make incorrect assumptions. Just having this knowledge about how we judge ourselves and others, makes me want to maybe give others a little more of the benefit of the doubt, but to also hold myself a little more accountable for my own actions. Along these lines, I recently copied down this quote into one of my “Things to Ponder and Write About/Inspirations” notebooks. I think that the quote is from Think Smarter on Twitter, but I am honestly not certain:

“Any time you worry that someone is going to judge you, that is really you judging yourself.”

Hmmmmm. Judgment is an uncomfortable subject, so let’s bring this back to intentions. Last year I read that it is more useful to rephrase “New Year’s Resolutions”, to “New Year’s Intentions”. “Intentions” has a more positive, hopeful ring to it, than the demanding, demeaning, judg-y, foreboding tone of the word, “Resolution.” If you are having trouble coming up with New Year’s Intentions, these questions that I cut out of an article from the last issue of Spirituality & Health magazine, I thought were interesting, positive and absolutely thought-provoking:

What’s unfinished for you to give?

What’s unfinished for you to learn?

What’s unfinished for you to experience?

What are you waiting for?

Happy Friday Eve, friends.

Empty Bucket

Fortune for the day – “All shall be well. And all shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well.” – Dame Julien of Norwich

Recently I flipped through an interesting book by Dr. Christian Conte. Dr. Conte is a renowned anger management specialist who specializes with working with some of the most violent criminals in our country. He tells a lot of parables in his writing. I like that because they are simple and easy to remember. He tells one story of a teacher, who told her students that she was going to give each of them an empty bucket. She asked her students what they would fill their buckets with. They all shouted out things like food or money or even, (and probably most likely), their cell phones. The students asked the teacher what the right answer was to her question and she replied that there was no right answer. She replied that she had no judgment about what they put into their buckets. She just asked them only to agree with this statement, “Whatever you, in fact, put into your bucket, will be in your bucket. Your bucket will be filled with everything that you put into it. Agree?” The students all agreed with a “duh!” sarcastic expression on their faces. The teacher then said to her students, “Your mind is just like your bucket. Whatever you fill it with, that is what is in your mind. Choose carefully what you fill your minds with.”

Image result for good quotes about choosing your thoughts

Good Neighbors

Fortune for the day –“From their errors and mistakes, the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.” – Plutarch

My husband and I sometimes act like cranky old fogies when it comes to today’s new inventions. We have often giggled about our friends and relations, who have cameras all over their homes, as if they live in the White House, or Fort Knox, or an American embassy in the Middle East, or something. (Our course we have two large, annoying dogs who would lick any unlucky, unwise intruder, to death, in a matter of minutes, so we are safe. Ha!) Perhaps I may be guilty of naivete or even more so, of the old adage, “What I don’t know, can’t hurt me,” as I insert my head into the warm Florida sand. So imagine my surprise, when I got a little choked up at a Ring TV commercial being played during last night’s championship football game. Ring sells doorbell cameras and video cams, among other security products. Typically, I get annoyed at companies whose profits come from playing off of people’s biggest fears, but I got a new perspective about Ring last night with this spot:

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/Zj69/ring-good-neighbors

Essentially, Ring showed real footage of people being caught being kind. Ring showed a series of real people doing what most of us people try to be – good neighbors. It warms my heart to watch it (again and again) and usually, I can’t stand commercials. I would typically scoff at buying a Ring doorbell, but this ad honestly made me reconsider my position. Now that is what I call good marketing. As stated at the end of the advertisement, “Thank you, my brother. I appreciate you.”

“Thank you, my brother. I appreciate you.” Let’s practice saying that a little more in 2020. I imagine that would go a long ways in changing the world into a better place, if everyone made that a new year’s resolution/intention. And that resolution is easier to keep, and feels a hell of a lot better than starving ourselves, on celery quinoa diets, to try to lose a few pounds.

And readers, “Thank you, my brothers and sisters. I appreciate you.” (from the depths of my sincerest heart)

All Over the Map

Today’s Fortune: “The soul is here for its own joy.” – Rumi

Today is Monday and I slept horribly last night, for reasons unknown to me. Just as I am all over the map in my actions, flitting from one half-finished chore to another, so goes my thoughts. Therefore this is going to be a “random thoughts, all over the map” day here, at Adulting – Second Half. Here is what is conjuring up in my wild and crazy, and very sleepy mind right now:

First Thought – If I am going to continue to be archaic and insist on using my Barnes and Noble hardback, paper desk diary, as my daily calendar, I must improve my handwriting. My handwriting has become barely legible. Further, I must stop writing “in code.” The reality is, I forget the code that I created almost immediately after I write the crazy, unidentifiable words/symbols/wtf? on my calendar, and I spend hours in puzzlement and bewilderment and anxiety, trying to understand what I am supposed to be doing. I then become my own version of Angela Lansbury, trying to decipher my own sloppily written, and not-so-very clever abbreviations, for the things that I must do in life, in a timely fashion. I must fix this problem. Stat.

Second Thought – I saw this quote on twitter made by a young woman who appears to be in her twenties: “Third wave feminism in not about empowering women, it’s about hating men, yelling in the streets, and on demand abortions. Traditional feminism is empowering. Third wave feminism is embarrassing.” Someone commented on her tweet with this comment: “Third wave feminism hurts women more than men. Men are afraid work with women now, afraid to be in the office with them, afraid to date them. Any man with a career he has worked hard for would be NUTS not to be terrified.”

I have walked this balance beam for a while now, raising both young men and a young woman, in this current divisive climate. I understand that sometimes it is necessary for the pendulum to swing far out in one direction, in order for healthy change to actually happen, but I do hope that it comes back to center soon. I think, as women, when we project anger and hatred and disappointment that we have about some “bad” men, on to every man who we meet and know, we are being completely unfair. Do we do that to other women in our lives, making every woman who we meet, feel bad about being a woman?? If a man is instantly disliked just for being a man, what makes us, as women, so likable and agreeable, to him? If a man’s experience is that every woman who he knows, are man-haters, one can see how he would start to deeply distrust women. Thus, he will project his learned hatred of women on to every woman who he knows. And thus, the cycle of inequality, mistrust and divide continues. I think that it is our responsibility as mothers, grandmothers, aunts, etc. to be strong, wise, healthy examples to both young men and to young women, and to raise up strong, confident, kind, capable, loving, self-respecting adults, who can discern for themselves who is toxic (no matter what that person’s sex may be), and to be brave enough and healthy enough to create strong values and boundaries, to protect and honor their own true selves. When they feel solid in self-love, they will share that healthy love and respect with the other men and other women in their lives, who deserve it.

Third Thought – My husband and my eldest son are currently reading the book called Empire of the Summer Moon, at the same time, so that they can discuss it when they are finished. The book is primarily about the history of the Comanche Native American tribe. Now the book sounds a bit too brutal for me to stick my nose into, but it did remind me of this scene from one of my favorite movies of all time. If you have never seen the movie, Hell or Highwater, put it on your watch list. The character development is excellent. It is one of those movies that you think about long, long after you have watched it. Here’s the scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V-5p3fM90s

Now, I must get back to more half-baked projects and to deciphering what I am really supposed to be doing today, that is, when I can figure out what the chicken scratch on my calendar really says. Have a great week, friends!

Soul Sunday

Fortune for the day: “What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be.” – William Blake

Let’s get to the poetry workshop part of the day! Here’s mine, please put your stream of thoughts, in poetic form, in the Comments section. Thank you, Carla, for joining in last Sunday. I deeply wish that our poetry forum would get more poetic in 2020, so that we have many interesting, thought provoking poems to read and to interpret and to feel and to connect with, on our Soul Sundays, that we share here at Adulting- Second Half. This is firmly a no-judgment zone. I have veto power and I will not allow any hate on my blog forum. Poetry comes from love, from vulnerability, from the deepest understanding of life that sometimes cannot be put into ordinary prose. Poetry does NOT come from fear and hate. Again, here’s my poem for the day:

The Mind

The most outrageous adventures

Most often take place in the far corners of our own mind.

It is fascinating that a place of comfort and reprieve

Can also be a berth of agonizing hell,

In the flip of a switch of an ordinary, random thought.

If a thought is allowed to continue and to grow and to repeat itself,

It becomes a prison cell, a sorceror holding a hypnotist’s ball and chain,

Creating a trance and a falsehood of reality, that overtakes the soul.

If we can stand back with bemusement and detachment,

The mind is often nothing more than a scatterbrained child,

Changing continually, with the winds of whimsy.

Just for fun, it likes to see how far reaching its thoughts can take us,

evoking deep, primitive emotions that stir wild energy,

intense energy, flowing throughout and reaching every cell

of sometimes the entire physical body.

The one thing that the mind doesn’t ever care to be . . . .

is quiet.

Too Quiet

Fortune for the day: Everyone must row with the oars s/he has. – English proverb

Thursday night I was feeling a little grumbly and annoyed. This is not unusual for the first week back from a lengthy winter break. I was feeling a little worse for the wear, from going full steam into a new, busy routine and I was also trying to coordinate other family members’ needs and obligations (also in full steam mode). Friday morning I had agreed to drive my daughter and her friends to a club competition, where they were going to present a project. The competition spot was a good hour away and their presentation is only 10 minutes long. Honestly, I was agitated and feeling my inner whining going, “When am I going to get some time for me? When am I just going to get some peace and quiet for myself? wah wah wah wah”

While the young ladies were doing their presentation, I ended up in a wonderful, warm, interesting coffee shop. It was filled with signs with funny, pithy sayings such as this:

And this:

And this one in the bathrooom:

Yes, the hipsters were getting a chuckle out of old lady me, walking around the shop taking pictures of all of the funny signs, that just openly and obviously tickled me. I am a decent tipper, so I didn’t get thrown out of the joint.

This is the sign that really got to me, though:

This whole delicious coffee shop experience helped to change my negative attitude, and this last saying was the major cherry-on-top. Soon after, I picked up the girls who were happy with how their presentation experience went. We shared a delicious, giggly brunch and I dropped them off at their friend’s house, where they planned to have a sleepover party. I went home to a very, very quiet house. Too quiet. Sometimes you have to be careful with what you wish for, I suppose.