Tag: inspiration

Black Friday

For as much as I like to shop, I never go out shopping on Black Friday. I hate crowds. However, this is not to say that I won’t veer into window shopping on the internet today. Happy Friday!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!! My favorite things for today are my Merrell hiking boots. We got a pair of Merrell hiking boots for each of our family members, five years ago, before we were embarking on a trip out to California that we knew would entail a lot of hiking. Since then I have clocked hundreds of miles on my same pair of Merrells in all kinds of terrain, in the United States and abroad. They have never let me down (nor let me fall down), and my Merrell hiking boots are in good enough shape to wear, for quite a few more rocky trails, for sure. I look at Merrell hiking boots as an investment, and a good one.

Black Friday is a good day to get yourself a pair. Merrell is even putting their best sellers on sale for 30 percent off. If you have made having more outdoor adventures for yourself, a solid resolution for the new year, you NEED a nice pair of Merrell hiking boots. Show the Universe that you mean business.

www.merrell.com

Hope you are enjoying a wonderful, relaxing Thanksgiving weekend with your loved ones!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Happy Thanksgiving!

One of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving, is the eavesdropping. I think most of us writer types are observers and eavesdroppers, and Thanksgiving is one my favorite times of the year to do it. I love hearing my kids catch up with each other, slipping right into the playful ribbing which they have always done with each other throughout the years. I love hearing my daughter, excitedly relay all of her happenings of the semester to her Dad, as she is savoring his one-on-one attention, as they prepare some of our Thanksgiving meal together. All of this background noise is music to my ears. I don’t even really listen to the words. It’s all the buzz of love, filling my house and my heart. This sound, by far, is one of my favorite sounds in all of the world.

I was thinking that it is easy to fall into the trap of only being thankful for the typical standards. Of course, I will never NOT be deeply grateful for my family and my friends and my health and my home and my faith. These things all go without saying. So, in the last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what NEW things in my life that I am grateful for this year. I am so thankful for bringing the practice of painting back into my life this year. I’m grateful for the Arts Center where I take my classes and the NEW friends who I have already learned so much from, in these classes. I’m thankful for some NEW appliances and outdoor furniture that we sorely needed, but had put off purchasing (out of a mix of stubborness, frugality and laziness and perhaps environmental consciousness (ha!), my husband and I tend to get our absolute full usage out of things, until they are way beyond their worn-off expiration dates). These NEW items have brought ease and pleasure into our lives. I’m also thankful for the NEW places we have visited, and the culture and fascination and beauty which they have brought into my perspectives and elevated living experiences. I’m thankful for the NEW apartments and living situations that all four of our kids have begun living in, this year. They all seem happy and comfortable and pleased with their NEW living situations, and that brings my heart joy and peace.

Readers, I am so thankful for all of you, NEW and OLD. Throughout the year, I occasionally get the pleasant surprise of meeting someone who reads my blog. Often it turns out to be a friend of a friend, and this brings me so much joy to hear that someone shared my blog, and it turns out that my blog resonates with this NEW person. That’s been the goal all along – to write my authentic thoughts and feelings as I go through a big transition stage in my life, and thus connecting with those who also like to deeply reflect on what they are experiencing in their lives, at any given point. One thing that always amuses me, is that these NEW people often feel the need to apologize to me, because they don’t always read my blog every single day. What?!? Are you kidding me?!? You don’t owe me anything. If someone reads just one of my blog posts and that’s all they needed, or they read my blog every single day, I am so utterly grateful, either way. I am touched. I feel a new form of connection with anyone who comes to commune with my words for a while, whether it be a one-time thing, or an occasional or regular experience. Anyone who has taken the time to read anything that I have written, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It means the world to me.

I wish you all a wonderful day, full of happy surprises. I know that the holidays are often a big old mixed bag of emotions – joy and melancholy, laughter, tears, arguments and hugs. So, what I wish, for all of us this holiday season, is the true experience of Acceptance. May we accept each holiday event, exactly as it comes to us, and realize that we can just experience it all, without needing to give anything a reaction or a definition. May we all stay more in the observer/eavesdropper role and just soak it all in, because often the holidays are just a microcosm of the intensity, beauty, frailty and reality of life and love. Maybe sometimes it is best to just be “the neutral watcher” to really capture the essence and the wonder of it all.

Again, thank you for being with me, readers. You are loved by me. I am so thankful for you and the blog.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Wednesday’s Whimsies

+ The picture above is not a great picture because I’m not a great photographer. But you get the gist. That’s our neighbors’ Christmas tree. (That’s a really big truck below it, to give you perspective of its magnanimous size) That’s our neighbors’ mini Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. It’s really beautiful and they always manage to get it all decorated right before Thanksgiving. All of the rest of the decorations on our street have really just become accents to it. I mean should the rest of us even bother now??? Seriously though, the neighborhood’s “absolute opposite of Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree” is huge and beautiful, and I love it. And yes I’m jealous, but the tree is fabulous and I love it.

+ Siri’s nice now!! For those of you who use iPhones, and if you did the latest update, you’ll notice that Siri now says, “You’re welcome!” in her best Chick-Fil-A employee voice when you thank her for the information that she gave to you. (Yes, I have always thanked Siri. Manners, babe.) She also doesn’t seem quite as bothered and smirky when you ask her for information. AI is evolving and in a good way, this go around, in my opinion.

+ Today is the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. Over a decade ago, I took all four of our children on a road trip through several states and even more cities (yes, it was crazy – one child was still in diapers, but that is what you do when you are young, energetic and idealistic. Also, there was no GPS at the time. My kids always laugh about my books of Mapquest printed sheets, which I used back then, to get us all around). We stopped at Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was shot, and we were approached by a “tour guide” who turned out to be a homeless man with a lot of conspiracy theories. He was a colorful character who started all of his sentences with a dramatic, thickly Southern accented “Looky here! Looky here!” When I think back to that trip, I don’t remember a lot of it, but I do remember “Looky here!” In fact it has become part of our family’s vernacular. We gave the “tour guide” a handsome tip and I’m grateful for that because he gave us a memory which has lasted nearly two decades and still brings a smile to my face.

+ Before the holidays are upon us, remember that you are making memories, and these memories can be happy, funny, silly, “Looky here!” memories or they can become horrible, searing, imprinted memories that everyone tries to forget, but can’t. The holidays tend to bring out the best and the worst in all of us. If you are seeing someone who doesn’t visit often, but is coming to be with you now this Thanksgiving, relish that fact. Don’t use that time to make them feel guilty for not visiting more. Do you think that guilty feelings will make them want to come back for more helpings of ghastly guilt, down the line? Loving, enjoyable, easygoing energy is much more likely to pull them back for a few more visits, because everyone likes to feel good and loved and appreciated for what they do, and accepted for who they really are, in this world. Looky here, steer the conversations towards beautiful decorations everyone has seen, and funny “piles of Mapquest pages” stories that everyone can laugh about, and happily reminisce with each other. Stuff the turkey. Don’t stuff your opinions about volatile topics down everyone’s throats. There is a time and a place for those conversations, and a happy holiday gathering isn’t that time nor that place. If there was ever a time to concentrate on my blog’s tagline, it is during a holiday celebration. Print it out and put in your pocket. Imprint it on your mind. You won’t regret it. A surefire way to have a wonderful holiday season is to focus on all of the good. Be the star on your family’s celebrations this season. And by being the star, I don’t mean constantly stealing the spotlight for laughs and attention on you. When I say “Be the Star”, I mean be that beacon of light and love and kindness that puts the spotlight on others’ acts of love and light and kindness. Be that star which guides everyone towards hope and love and light. Here is my tagline:

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Six Percent

I did a search on my blog just now (I have been writing this blog almost daily for five years now) for “the holidays.” It turns out I have written eight pages of stuff about holidays. That’s a lot of writing about a relatively limited part of our lives. There are eleven official federal holidays in the United States. These holidays don’t include religious holidays such as Easter and Passover, and secular holidays such as Halloween and Valentine’s Day. So, for argument’s sake let’s bring the number up to around twenty holidays a year that we celebrate (with the idea of including our personal and family birthdays and anniversaries). Out of 365 days of the year, about twenty or so days are dedicated to holidays in our country. Less than a month, out of the twelve months in any given year are dedicated to holidays. About 6 percent of the year is dedicated to holiday celebrations. Ninety-four percent of any given year is filled with ordinary days.

Why am I turning the holidays into a banal, robotic, emotionless mathematical word problem? I am writing this because it helps with perspective. If you “live” for the holidays and celebrations, and the rest of your life feels like drudgery, or a countdown to your next celebration, you are putting all of your greatest living experiences into about six percent of your life. If you dread the holidays, and you live in angsty anticipation for weeks before any of the particular holidays arrive, you are living in fear of events which only take up about six percent of your life. The other 94% is all yours to do whatever you want to do with it, without the peripheral hoopla.

Perspective is important. Figuring low, at least 90% of our lives are spent in our everyday routines. If you wake up most days in eager anticipation of what the day may bring, whether it be a holiday or not, you will lead a fulfilling life. Don’t worry about the holidays. Don’t load them up with too many expectations. Put the same kind of effort, and thought, and hope into your every single day that you do for the holidays, and you will surprise yourself with a greater percentage of wonderful days. Don’t wait for the holidays to tell your friends and family that you love them and that you are grateful for them. Don’t wait for your birthdays to celebrate yourself. Live every single day of your life as a celebration of the gift of experiencing living a life. Our lives have been gifted to us, for no other reason than because Love and Creativity wanted to feel itself living a life through us and our individual perspectives. Perspective is everything. Keep this 6% perspective in mind this holiday season, and into the new year. If you make loving and cherishing your every single day in the new, upcoming year your major goal, next year’s six percent of holidays will just end up being the cherry on top, of your delicious, multi-faceted, fabulous sundae of a life.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Monday – Funday

credit: a still photo from The Notebook movie

RIP – Rosalynn Carter. I can’t be the only one who is wondering if Jimmy will soon follow Rosalynn in the near coming days. It sometimes seems that in this modern world, truly good-hearted people and long-lasting, devoted marriages often seem to be quaint, unusual relics of the past. Why is this? Shouldn’t these be the things that we work on to be commonplace and almost expected? Would the world be different if this is where we put the majority of our main focus and energy?

“Do you think that our love can create miracles?” – Allie Calhoun, The Notebook

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. I like to think of poetry as the secret code of our souls. In order to write poetry, you have to put your most sensible, guarded, orderly part of yourself aside and let the poetry write itself. It is the one form of communication that you come to as blankly and open, as someone else who is just reading it for the first time. How many times have you written a poem and thought, “Oh wow, I wrote that?? That’s what is stirring deep inside of me??” Get to know yourself better and write yourself a poem today. I wrote this poem about a lovely bridal shower which I attended yesterday:

“The Elders Table”

We watched the beautiful young bride excitedly unpack each gift,

Clean, shiny, unmarked, powerful tools to create the sustenance of a fairy tale.

We reminisced of the days when we sat in her seat and her spotlight.

So full of hope, and promise, and energy, and expectant excitement.

We marvel at the versions of ourselves who long ago, once sat in her seat,

Radiant and innocent and ambitious and determined and clear.

We still have many of the tools showered upon us, on those days, long ago when we were the brides.

The tools are well-used, scarred with marks, some almost broken, but determined to continue their purpose.

We, who are intently watching the bride, are now the continuance of the women who bestowed these gifts upon us.

And it is only now, that we deeply understand why it was so imperative for our elders to impart these gifts upon us.

The gifts weren’t just pots and pans and knives and nightgowns and a little wad of money for extras.

They were the tools that helped sustain the hope, and the excitement, and the energy and the promise,

When life’s storms were determined to make their marks, sometimes gashes, all to test our tenacity and plans.

Would the inner gentle flower of our young bride’s heart wilt under the load of life?

Or would the dried, sustained, circle wreath arrangement of our elders, be our borrowed strength,

When we decided to fondly pick up a remembered tool, from a lovely little bridal celebration, and to calmly use the implement, so to carry on with life . . . . .

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Let’s Just Rot

My daughter is home for her Thanksgiving break from her university. We were shopping yesterday and we were discussing what we should do in the evening.

“Let’s just go home, sit in front of the TV and rot,” she said to me.

“What are you talking about?” I asked her, as it sounded kind of gross to me.

“Well, when my roommates and I are all stressed out, we agree that we need a “rot day” and we all just sit in our pjs, piled up on the couch, and we flip through shows on the TV. We call it rotting.”

This made me laugh. I decided to adopt it into my vernacular. “Vegging” sounds better than “rotting” but I’m a “call it like it is” kind of a gal. And every once in a while we need to give into our rotting, instead of fighting it all of the time with movement and action and denial. Facts are, we are in a state of decay from the day we are born, but this isn’t a bad thing. Wine, sauerkraut, cheese, and balsamic vinegar are all better with a little bit of aging/rotting. And when you call sitting still and doing nothing, “rotting”, it kind of reminds you to not do it too much. We all may be in a state of decay, but nothing says that we have to decay quickly.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Aperture

Last night my husband and I went to an art gallery to watch the performance of a Japanese painter. The painter calls herself an “ink performer” and she has performed her art in many countries all over the world. The painter had already painted an intricate, fearsome looking dragon, in black ink, on rice paper, mounted on a silk tapestry. Her performance was devoted to accenting this dragon, by dramatically painting it with dips and dabs and sometimes sword-like thrusts of bright metallic gold ink, while doing a traditional Japanese dance involving bells, drums, and all of the while wearing a large, lengthy, enveloping kimono (she was teeny), which she had also previously hand painted. This experience was fascinating and interesting and so completely out of my own frame of reference. The artist could not speak any English, and she had just arrived from Japan the day before. I imagine that while looking out into the gallery at a small sea of gaping Americans, that we, too, seemed completely out of her own frame of reference. And yet it was magical experience for all of us.

I learned the term “frame of reference” when I was in high school and I took a World Cultures class from a wholly devoted and passionate teacher. When learning about a country, my teacher would transform his entire classroom into the country that we were learning about, as best that he could. I distinctly remember when we studied Japan that he wore a kimono, bowed to us as we entered the classroom, performed tea ceremonies and he insisted that instead of Mr. Sloan, we were to call him Sloan-san. He would always emphasize that we were to remove judgment from our lives’ experiences as much as possible. He would remind us that it was just by happenstance (for instance my soul ended up in Caucasian female body, born in America, in 1970), that we entered into our own particular circumstances, and that is the same for everyone else in this world. What is normal and pedestrian for someone, is unusual and exotic to someone else, and this is mostly because we are each looking at life, through the lens of our own frames of reference.

Today’s world is more global and connected than ever. More people travel the world over than ever before. Computers have made it easy to access global websites and products and programs at the click of a button. But “frame of reference” isn’t just about other countries and their traditions. Travel around the United States, and you get all sorts of different “takes” on food, BBQ, music, dance styles, celebrations, etc. Go from your own city, just twenty miles out into the countryside and you will experience a whole different way of life, without even having to refill your gas tank.

Life is so much fuller and more interesting when you stop trying to live up to an image. Life is so much fuller and more intriguing when you let your curiosity and imagination move you past your rote habits and comfort zones. When you live up to an image of who you think you should be, or what you want people to think of you (hint: people don’t think about you much at all, except maybe occasionally, when they may be questioning what you are thinking about them), you start limiting your choices of where you go, and what you do, and what you experience, and who you have these experiences with, throughout your days. If “these people/places/experiences” don’t fit your image, you don’t try them out, and then your life starts to get extremely limited to singular views, and uniform, biased experiences. Your frame of reference gets really tight, like a camera’s aperture becoming almost closed, to the size of a pinhole. And when a lot of people start walking around with pinhole apertures, the world becomes a dangerous place. We live in a more globally mobile world than ever. We can’t limit our frames of reference. It could become our downfall.

Today, do something to broaden your own aperture. Order or make a food that you’ve never tried before. Go to a different neighborhood and check out their eclectic little shops. Instead of force-feeding your own strong opinions about politics or religion, earnestly question and listen to someone who sees things differently than you do, with the goal of trying to understand their point of view. Watch a foreign film. You get the gist. Do more of this type of thing in your life on a regular basis, and the world becomes a less scary and more fascinating place than you ever could have imagined. You start to fully appreciate that we are all just souls/life force made of the same stuff, which just happened to land in different bodies, in different families, in different neighborhoods, in different cultures and in different countries. When you really broaden your aperture, your frame of reference starts to open so wide-angled that you see the picture as all-in-one. You begin to see and to fully understand that we are all just tiny little specks of the One Big Thing.

“Your frame of reference is everything. It will determine the quality of your entire life. Nothing escapes its influence.” – Tom Bilyeu

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

The Question “Why?”

One of the most arresting questions in the world is “Why?” We asked “Why?” a lot when we were little kids because we were so full of curiosity, and we earnestly and honestly were trying desperately to understand all of the new things which we were experiencing. We asked “Why?” so much that it annoyed our elders and more often than not, we would get shut down. And then we got older, and we stopped asking “Why?” all that much. We found it got easier to stay in our indoctrinated and conditioned beliefs because it created a framework for us to navigate our lives. Questioning everything, and exploring the answers that resonate, takes work. It is exhausting and sometimes even emotional and chagrining. This ignoring the “Whys?” is fine until it isn’t fine. These times that we are living in right now are tumultuous because more and more people are asking “Why?” about a lot of things, and these “Why?s” can be witnessed and communicated all over the world via computers and social media. Also, as this is happening, more and more people are keeping their feet firmly planted, in their (sometimes relatively unexamined) beliefs, mostly out of the fears of the new “Why?”s cropping up, and of the changes that could arise from these “Why?”s. Some people are deeply fearful of their loss of power.

Last weekend we went to a wonderfully creative sand art show with friends of ours. I noticed a large group of Amish people walking along the path on the beach, admiring the art, like we were doing. They were all dressed head to toe in dark clothing, so that few of their body parts were showing, on a day that was sunny and clear and close to 90 degrees out. Now to be clear, this isn’t a call-out on anyone’s faith. There are many, many paths to God (or not) and throughout all of history, the only one unifying belief that all of the different paths seem to believe is that they, themselves, have total ownership of the one “right” path. And that’s okay. In my life, what is most important is that I believe that I am on the path that is “right” for me. But the only way that I can make sure that I am on the right path for me, is to find out, and to deeply explore my own answers to “Why?” Why do I believe the things that I do? Are these truthfully my own beliefs from the deepest core of my own self, or are they just “facts” which I’ve memorized to “pass the test” and get approval? If I had gone up to the group of Amish people on the beach and asked them “Why do you dress in this regale, even on a hot beach?”, I am sure that I would get some fervent, well-examined answers from Amish people who fully believe in the modesty, and less attention to bodies, and less focus on individuality, as it relates to a deeper connection with God. But I also believe that I might get some robotic, unexamined answers that said something to the effect that is what our religion/ancestors told us to do, and I am fearful of the consequences if I get brave enough to ask “Why?” And I am more fearful that the answers won’t resonate with me, and then I will either have to do something about that fact, or I will have to live with the uneasy feeling of not being true to myself. I will have to knowingly live a lie.

Again, the most arresting question in the world is “Why?” because it is often the precursor to change, and to the opening up of realizations about ourselves, and how we have been living. It is a “wake up call” question and that’s scary for us. We don’t like to admit when we may have been wrong in our thinking, or even worse, that maybe the answers to our questions aren’t as simple as we would like them to be. Asking “Why?” makes us feel vulnerable and less sure, and that isn’t a framework that feels good in a big, wild, unpredictable world. However, at the opposite side of the scale, asking “Why?” can also deepen our connection to our beliefs, and make us fully realize why our particular beliefs are so valuable to our own thinking and the way that we go about living and creating in this world. Either way, asking “Why?” is extremely valuable to us, and how we authentically and fully live our lives, going forward.

It is my own (fully explored) belief that a lot the world’s problems could be solved with more questions. Why do I believe what I believe? (about anything – God, family, government, leaders, romantic relationships, economy, friendships, environment, laws, rules, health, etc.) Are these beliefs serving me? Are these beliefs servicing my family, and my community, and the world at large? Are these beliefs honestly part of that inner “knowingness” that when I get real, real still, seems to just naturally navigate me to what is right for me, and thus also for the connected world at large?

If you have something in your life that has been pinging you for some of your attention, give it that attention today. Give it attention by asking questions surrounding the situation. Get brutally real with yourself. It’s okay if you give yourself a little shock of awakening about some things that you may have just been going through the motions about, or trying to ignore or rationalize. Freedom is daunting, but freedom of thought is the one freedom which no one else can ever take from us, unless we hand it over to them, mindlessly, on a silver platter. Don’t ever give your freedom away.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Adventure Time

I listened to an interesting podcast the other day when a counselor was saying that people often come to her with concerns and anxieties about their milestone birthdays. Her clients often seem to feel really upset if they think that a milestone birthday is nearing, and they haven’t completed the proverbial, rigid checklist of things that they feel they should have accomplished by such-and-such milestone. Her clients often seem to feel anxious about fitting it all in, into a neat little package with a pretty bow. The counselor said that she reminds her clients that these are silly, undue pressures which we put on ourselves with arbitrary/one-size-fits all dates and goal posts. While it is good to have goals, it is also good to be flexible about our goals, and to allow for our own individuality, and for unforeseen detours. Also, she said that if you have a milestone birthday coming up, say in the next three years, remind yourself about just how much life happens in a small span of three years. You have a lot of time in between milestone birthdays to live and to experience life. If you feel like your life isn’t going anywhere, and you are stuck, start at March of 2020 when the pandemic shutdown happened and think of all of what has happened in your own life from that moment, until now. Write down all of the happenings, the new relationships that came along, the job situations, events celebrated and experienced with loved ones, the day trips and the vacations, the ups and the downs, the changes in the structure of your daily life, etc. – all of that happened in only about three and a half years. And remember, not one of us could have planned for a pandemic to happen exactly when and how it did, and nor for the ramifications of that pandemic. Even with all of the slowdowns and haltings that this pandemic created, look at all of the life that you have lived in just three years! In between milestone birthdays is a period of ten years. A lot of life is packed in-between milestone birthdays. In short, the counselor was saying that it is best to view our milestone birthdays as just passing mile markers along the way (mile markers we were lucky to arrive to, still alive and vital and raring to go). And when we feel we aren’t accomplishing everything that we wanted to accomplish by a certain time period, it is helpful to look back and to remind ourselves about just how much we have accomplished and handled and experienced in a relatively short amount of time. When we do this, we can look forward into our futures knowing that this multitude of life’s happenings will continue on and on and on, until it is time for our ending day. While our time on earth is limited and we will probably not get to everything that we’d like to experience, what truly counts is the daily journey. Isn’t it better to be relaxed, and to be hopeful, and to be faithful, and to enjoy the ride as we move on down the roads of our own individual journeys, enjoying the travel, and the people, and the scenery along the way, instead of spending our time worrying and hand wringing about what life will look like at milepost 40, 50, 60, 70 or 80?? As Maya Angelou said, “Life is pure adventure.” And adventures are set in their own time and in their own ways, with lots of surprises and unexpected curveballs. The Cambridge dictionary defines adventure in this way: “an unusual, exciting, and possibly dangerous activity, trip, or experience, or the excitement produced by such activities.” I didn’t see anything in there about specific activities and timelines and accomplishments, did you?

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.