new beginnings Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Monday – Funday

Credit: @ArgyllSeaGlass, X

Mondays are tough. Mondays after a Super Bowl that goes into overtime are brutal. What I do love about the Super Bowl is that it is a great connector of people. Even if you don’t love football, you can’t help but giggle at the commercials, be completely wowed by the halftime show (Skates! Usher, you blew it out of the water!), and feel your patriotism rise a little bit. (the flyovers never fail to take my breath away.)

I was flipping through Big Panda and Tiny Dragon by James Norbury. On page 28, is this exchange:

“Nothing is happening,” said Tiny Dragon.

“Maybe,” said Big Panda, “it’s happening underneath first.”

I love this exchange. Sometimes in the beginning of the year, you feel like everything that you want to accomplish and experience is at a standstill. But you’ve made plans. You’ve implemented changes. You’ve gotten organized and did some purging to make room for the new, but your outsides don’t necessarily reflect this. Or do they? We’ve lived 6 weeks into the new year. I bet if you look at these past six weeks, you’ll be amazed at what you packed into them, and all that has already occurred in your life since the beginning of the new year. I did this exercise yesterday and I was happy to realize that in the last six weeks, we created a lot of fun memories with our family, and also with some of our extended family and friends. We attended a wedding, made a couple of nice upgrades to our home, and made some decisions regarding our plans for a secure future. We packed plenty of our normal routine stuff into our days, with some really good, fun times sprinkled into the mix. Our seeds for the year of 2024 are definitely coming up to the surface and they are beginning to sprout.

Reading this passage from Big Panda and Tiny Dragon, also made me question if I was doing a good job, making sure what happening “underneath” is being healthfully nurtured. Am I feeding and nurturing my hopes and dreams, for the year and beyond, with good thoughts, faith, plans of action, and steadiness? Or am I letting what’s “underneath” rot in the decay of negativity, regret, hopelessness, aimlessness and frenzy? What happens underneath the soil, is always a good indicator of how healthy and vital a plant will grow. What does my own grounding of soil need to ensure my own healthy growth? I am the gardener of my soul.

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

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

194. To whom do you matter most?

In the Beginning

13 Uplifting Quotes About New Beginnings

I love new beginnings. Today feels so fresh and new. It is the first day of the month, and the first day of summer (in a calendar sense). Over the weekend, we did things like going to see a movie (at a theater!) and we ate at a couple of restaurants (inside, no masks). It feels so good to get reacquainted with “normal life” again. It is, perhaps, a hidden blessing which the pandemic brought to us. We get to experience all of our old stuff, like it is new, with a more wide-eyed and open-hearted appreciation for everything that before, at times, seemed dull and routine.

I am watching the latest Naomi Osaka story with a keen interest. I am trying to stay detached from having any strong opinions about the story. Naomi Osaka, a Japanese tennis player, is one of the best tennis players ever to play the game. She withdrew from the French Open, after she experienced quite a lot of pressure and fines and criticism, for choosing not to speak to the French media, which is considered an obligation of the players. (Sports is a big business, after all – as is, just about everything) Osaka cites being an introvert and suffering from depression, as her reasons for not wanting to speak with the press. She is putting the priority on her mental health, by choosing to withdraw from the French Open.

My daughter is a competitive tennis player. She has a lot natural talent and athleticism and she could have chosen to take her tennis experience to much higher level, if that was her goal. In sports, having the raw talent is a necessary component, but to really succeed at the highest levels, it requires a single-minded devotion to the sport. It takes a focus and a passion, that makes all decisions about anything in your life, always to be hinging on the highest and utmost priority of succeeding at your sport. (what to eat, when to sleep, how to fit in your schooling, spending money on trainers, conducting your relationships etc. etc.) It can often lead to a one-dimensional life. It is not for the faint of heart.

I’m 50, so I have, quite frankly, laughed at “the snowflake” jokes and the memes that say that our younger generations are “soft.” Each older generation thinks that we are so much “tougher” and wiser and more resilient than the generations that come after us. And that may be true, in some regards. We older people have a lot more experiences in life, under our belts, and the old adage, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger”, often rings true. However, in my life’s experience, my strongest, bravest moments rarely came from “toughing out” something miserable. It did take bravery to hold on through negative, painful experiences, but it took even more bravery, to ask for help. The moments that I had to muster up my greatest courage, usually were the moments when I said to myself and to others, “I can’t endure this any longer. I don’t want to feel this misery anymore. I must be true to myself.” My bravest moments were times when I “bucked the system”, because the system no longer rang true to me – to the deepest part of myself. My most heroic moments in my life’s experience, have come from the times when I no longer cared what other people thought (sometimes masses of people), and I stayed clear on what was truly important to me. It takes a hell of a lot of gumption to be true to yourself. It is not for the faint of heart.

I have a deep sense that we are at a “new beginnings” stage in so many factions of our lives. There is a lot more vibrant re-considering of the status quo, going on, and perhaps because of social media, and so many more public news outlets, this questioning is being brazenly played out, on a world stage. In the case of Naomi Osaka, what some may see as a weak moment, may well be the most defining, brave moment of her life. It may be the most inspiring thing which she has ever done for herself, and for her fans. As I said in my opening sentence, “I love new beginnings.” I have learned to embrace them. New beginnings happen all of the time, every moment of every day. And they are good. They are what leads to a brave, new world.

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

Adulting – Second Half

Today is the first day of my second half of “adulting.” Some people would say, “Whoa Nelly! Don’t jump the gun!” You see, my eldest child, my 22 year old son started his new adult life today, but I still have three kids in the cooker. That said, I’ve always been one to look ahead and I think I saw the writing on the wall when my eldest got his driver’s license. The fact that this new phase of my life was right around the corner became even more evident when he went off to college, which involved study abroad and internships in which he lived far, far away and came through the experiences alive and well and an even better, more interesting young man than he was before the adventures. So obviously, I see where this is going with the rest of my brood, soon to be following suit.

I had my eldest son when I was 25. I have spent most of my adult years being a mom. “Mom” has been my primary title, identity and structure of my life until yesterday when I “let” one little birdie fly the nest. At that moment, I felt that structure crack a teeny little bit. Seeing my son off to his new adult life was surreal and sort of anti-climatic. You drop your child off at his new apartment, you wish him luck on his first day of his exciting new job, you make sure he has groceries and you sit on your hands and wallet, knowing that he can well afford his own groceries now and your major work with him is done. Your part of the masterpiece has mostly concluded and your role has changed from nurturer, teacher, mentor, protector, provider to mostly now, just an excited observer. The scale has slowly shifted from predominantly shared adventures to now sharing with each other our mostly individual adventures.

As any parent having gone through this transition knows, the mixed bag of emotions being felt is tumultuous and almost undefinable. I have heard that we can fit all of our emotions into four simple categories: mad, glad, sad and scared. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is possible to feel all of those emotional categories all at once and deeply!

I have started this blog for me, but if it is helpful to others that would be grand. I have always felt that when people truly share what is really on their hearts, the world is a little less lonely. I don’t know where my second half of adulting leads me but I am certainly in the contemplation stage. And this new stage of my adventure is probably very similar to my son’s new experience – exciting, scary, exhilarating, freeing, introspective and necessary for us both to further develop into what we are meant to be in this mystery called Life.