perspective Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Fluidity

Everything is fluid. Even how you think about things is fluid. Especially how you think about things is fluid. We have started getting Christmas cards and a couple of them have come from people who were from a time when we lived in a whole different state. I have really fond memories of the people there. We were young families, literally raising our kids as a village. The neighborhood we lived in was mammoth. It was so big that it was essentially our neighborhood kids filling the entire elementary school. But yet, the neighborhood felt small, due to the wonderful circle of people we cavorted with there.

Many of our former inner circle there, like us, have left the neighborhood, for different neighborhoods (upsizing and downsizing) and like us, have even left for different states. We had to leave that neighborhood, and that state, back in 2011, for the necessity of greener pastures to support our large family quickly descending upon college age. So, leaving there, was truly bittersweet. We had poured our heart and souls into re-designing and adding on to the home where we lived there, with the faulty assumption that it would be the home that even our grandchildren would come to visit. And then, almost immediately after we finished the totally draining (both emotionally and financially) years long housing project, the Great Recession housing crash happened. We essentially had to give that home away for pennies on the dollar.

For many years, I had bitter feelings about that home. It had become a financial burden and albatross around our necks. It became “the thing” that made it hard to get “a fresh new start” in our new state. It was amazing that a creation that I had once had been so proud of, and had poured so much of my heart and creative vision into, had quickly turned into one of my biggest nightmares. It was a really humbling, shocking, disillusioning time in the lives of our family. And for years, only thoughts of anger and disbelief and frustration and regret, surrounded any ideas of our former home.

Today, out of curiosity, after receiving the cards that reminded me of our “former life”, I looked up our former home. It had been sold again in 2017 and the owners had added on even more beautiful updates. Interestingly, I noticed that all of my feelings of anger and disgust, had dissipated. I am back to feeling proud of “my former creation.” I am back to feeling deeply proud of the fingerprints, and the heartbeats, and the creative vision that we had for that home. I am mostly proud of the happy history and memories that we added to that place which we called home for a time in the life of our family. I am back to feeling only a full fondness for a lovely time in my life, and the lovely nest which we had created for our family at that time. And at the same time, I have no desire to go back. I am truly fulfilled at where I am in my life right now, and I see how all of the dots in my life have been connected and are being connected, as the picture of my life is being lived.

I have noticed this circling around of feelings and perspectives many times, about many people and situations, in my own life. I have also noticed this in the lives of others. Life has a way of softening the edges, after processing the hard stuff. How many people, having gone through vicious divorces, end up deeply hugging each other at their shared children’s major milestones? How many people have been able to find the gifts of lessons and silver linings, and forgiveness of self and others, in even the worst circumstances of their lives? Oprah Winfrey is credited with saying this: “Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different, it’s accepting the past for what it was, and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward.”

If you are going through a tough time in your life, give yourself the knowing that someday you will likely look at this situation with a different perspective. The worst, sharpest edges causing the gashes, and the bleeding, and the pain, will dull with time. The sharpest edges will stop being able to hurt you anymore. That’s the beauty of true forgiveness. It’s an acceptance of what is, and deciding to only take the “good stuff” from the situation. Forgiveness is finally stopping the continually gashing of yourself with the sharp edges, and allowing yourself to heal the wounds, so that when you come back to viewing the situation, you will see that the now dulled edges, can’t really hurt you anymore. You will find that with time and distance, the healing has created a strong (and sometimes scarred, but often stronger for the scarring) barrier to what was once a truly visceral, seemingly unending pain. Believe this. Stop poking at your pains and let them be. Allow the miracle of the change of perspective to appear when the timing is just right. Believe in impermanence and fluidity because they really are the only constants in life, besides the underlying Love that holds us all afloat.

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

Late Start

I’ve been distracted this morning. My daughter brought home some friends from college for a local annual festival we have here in town. My husband was going to town on making eggs and bacon before they headed out.

“Dads love to make breakfast!” all of the young women agreed. We also learned that most of us moms use a lot of emojis in our texts to them. Dads apparently don’t use emojis, nor respond to the texts all that frequently. Back when I was in college, our parents had to use a lot of written correspondence, as we didn’t even have email, and long distance telephone calls were expensive. I used to joke that I would get “Memo from Dad” as he was still in business mode when he corresponded with me. Apparently, the texts from many modern day dads still read like formal, “Memos from Dad.”

Earlier this week, I mentioned I am reading a book called I Never Thought of it That Way by Mónica Guzmán. I’m about a third of the way into the book, and it is a really interesting read, backed with scientific data. Guzmán talks of a time when she had just moved to Seattle, and she sat and complained about all of the constant rain in Seattle to a new friend. Her friend challenged her to sit and to listen to Seattle’s rain. Supposedly Seattle’s rain is a light and steady rain that has a beautiful sound all of its own. Since then, Guzmán considers the Seattle rain to be her favorite sound. She sometimes sits in her car for a few minutes and listens to the rain, as a meditation before she starts her day. She even misses it, when she travels. This situation is where Guzmán got her title for her book, I Never Thought of it That Way. She asked her friends to give examples about how their thoughts were changed about something, when a new perspective was introduced. She was shocked with how many answers she got back. Do you have examples of this? I do – many, many examples. List some of your perspective changing moments (sometimes called “a-ha moments”). Next, pick something you feel strongly about and make yourself consider the question, “Can this be looked at in a different way?” Guzmán suggests using the question, “What am I missing?” when you find yourself perplexed by ideas that do not match with your own ideas.

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:

1298. What is your least favorite ice cream flavor?

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.

“Fresh Eyes”

credit: Outlookindia

There is so much heat in the air, that even sitting in the air conditioning feels like being in a tanning bed. I feel like a slug. I don’t want to move. It feels like it takes the gallant effort and mental fortitude of a Navy Seal to psych myself up to go outside, just to get my mail. There’s summer in Florida and then there is “summer in Florida, amirite?!?” We are definitely in “amirite” territory this week. (in case you haven’t heard enough complaining about this unprecedented summer heat wave, I just indulged you.)

I’ve gotten a few dozen new subscribers in the last week or so. Thank you, welcome. I’m so honored. I love to write and I would do it in a void, but it feels truly validating to be read. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I wrote a blog post once about my writing process, and about how what you get in your email, is usually the first draft. I can almost guarantee that you will find at least one typo or grammatical error. That’s why I have my editor (aka my wonderful husband) read my blog post every single morning. My sweet husband then texts me, how much he liked my post and what he got from it, and then right after that text is “And here are all of your mistakes:”. And I always think to myself (almost every single day), “How did I not catch that mistake?!? How did I miss that?? I’ve read over my post 3-6 times before publishing! How does that happen? And how does my husband spot the mistakes every single day, right away?!?”

Now my husband is not critical. He is the most supportive person in my life. My husband just happens to be far more detail oriented than I am. (All you’d have to do is look at our respective packed suitcases, desk tops or individual grocery carts to see how differently our minds work.) While in a hotel room my husband might hone in on the small knick by a light switch, while I, at the same time, am determining what the overall ambiance of the room, the hotel, or even the whole town itself, intuitively feels like to me. My husband is detail oriented and I’m big picture, and this is why we work well together.

And now is the moment that I finally get to my point: “Fresh Eyes” on any situation in your life is so important. An open mind to what these “Fresh Eyes” see, is also equally as important. Make sure that you have at least a couple of people in your life, who you admire, trust, and believe that they have your best interests at heart (friends, family, minister, therapist, mentor). When you have a situation in your life that you want some feedback on, go to your trusted “Fresh Eyes” people. Be open to what “Fresh Eyes” see. Don’t beat yourself up for not seeing what “Fresh Eyes” puts a spotlight on. Your “Fresh Eyes” people are coming into the situation, having never seen it before. When I write my blog posts, my mind already knows what it is trying to say. Often I can’t type the words fast enough. I often miss my mistakes, because my mind already sees what it wants to see. It already has a fixed idea or a prejudice as to what the blog post is saying. “Fresh Eyes” usually don’t come into any situation with a predetermined agenda.

If you prefer “finished product” with few or no typos, just go read my blog on my website in the afternoon. Rarely do I change the ideas or sentences in my posts, but sometimes I get the inspiration to do so. Therefore, what you get in your email every morning, is usually not the final “turn into the teacher” paper. I rely on my favorite “Fresh Eyes” to give me different perspectives, and to help me to clean things up a little bit here and there. Having two extra sets of eyes or more, is never a bad thing with any situation in life. Ask a beautiful monarch butterfly. It has 12,000 eyes (is it a wonder that butterflies are not easy to catch?)!!!

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

Blocked

I have a rare case of writer’s block today. It doesn’t happen to me often. I think that it is related to the time change, and the achingly distracting pinched nerve in my neck. It is said that when you have writer’s block, you should just write. Just write.

It’s times like these when I am feeling sorry for myself that I get a text like I just got from one of my sons, who is in medical school. He said that he just met a patient who survived being trapped in rubble for three days, during 9/11. I have espoused more than once on the blog that just because someone else is having a heart attack, doesn’t mean that your broken toe doesn’t hurt, but sometimes a little dose of perspective comes right when you need it to come, also. There are some hardcore survivors all around us. People’s stories and backgrounds are fascinating and we know so few of them. If you ever want to be truly entertained, ask some questions of a stranger. People are more fascinating than any of us realize, especially if you ask the right questions.

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

Bigger Than You

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuiqZxeN-1g

I’m sorry to be delayed with today’s post. I’m grappling with a pinched-nerve in my neck which is like having the worst toothache that I ever had, in my neck and in my shoulder. I am sorry for those of you who deal with daily pain for years on end. Pain is so miserable and distracting and annoying.

The above video is part of the best scene from Babylon, a movie which we watched last night. Babylon is about the change from silent films to “talkies”, and it takes place in 1920s/30s Hollywood. The movie is not for the faint of heart. It shows the debauchery and the underbelly of early Hollywood like you would never expect. The film is long (3 hours), but I found it be interesting and entertaining and thought provoking.

The scene above is a monologue from Jean Smart, who plays a notorious gossip columnist who has just written an unflattering feature about Jack Conrad (played by Brad Pitt), a washed up, silent films era star. In the scene, Jean Smart’s character is telling Jack that while he is no longer “spotlight” material, the beautiful thing is that he will live on, indefinitely, in the films that he starred in, for generations to come. At the end of the scene, where Jean Smart’s character tells Jack that his time is up in Hollywood, and there is nothing that he did to create this fact, and there is nothing that he can do about it now, we see Jack Conrad leave the room, disquieted but grateful that the gossip columnist gently but firmly told him the truth. “Thank you for that,” he says, almost under his breath.

I appreciated this scene so much because it so clearly depicts when any of us hear “a truth” that we deeply know, but we have not yet let this truth surface to our consciousness. We don’t want this truth to be the truth, but yet when we finally face the truth, we are also grateful and relieved to no longer have to pretend anymore, that it is anything other that what it is. It is what it is, is the ultimate truth about anything when we finally face it head on. And the truth can be so painful, and yet so liberating all at the same time.

This scene in Babylon is the ultimate scene of letting go of ego, and of realizing that the idea of life is bigger than any individual life in it, even the lives that are lived out in the spotlight. Life has gone on longer than any of us can fathom, and it will continue to go on, long after each of us departs. Towards the end of the scene Elinor St. John (played by Jean Smart) says this:

” . . . It’s the idea that sticks. There will be a hundred more Jack Conrads, a hundred more me’s, a hundred more conversations like this one, until God knows when. Because it’s bigger than you.”

Elinor does leave Jack with a hopeful thought about people seeing his movies long after he is dead, and in that regard, his memory lives on. On a broader scope, that’s how anyone of us continues to live on after our deaths, for generations and generations in families, and in close groups of friends, and even in societies. Our stories become lores and legends. Our mannerisms become traits in family genes. Our habits and rituals become customs and traditions. Our creations and treasures become heirlooms and antiques and springboards for more creation. The ideas of any essence is what sticks. “That which is bigger than us”, never ends. We are each just small waves of an endless/timeless ocean, and this truth is both frightening and liberating in equal measure. It is what it is.

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

Friend Zone

****Happy Birthday, to my blue-eyed (yes, they’re blue!) baby. Your intelligence, truthfulness, humor, and resilience has me in awe, always. I’m so proud of you and excited for your next big steps! Your mama always has your back.****

“a sitcom about a friend group where not everyone is in every episode because they have other friends they like to hang out with sometimes” – @Dave_Horwitz

“We need to start talking about abusive friendships where there’s shaming, jealousy, or different levels of emotional manipulation. Abuse isn’t something that only happens in romantic relationships.” – Dr. Nicole LaPera

I had a fascinating text exchange with good friends of mine yesterday. One friend was lamenting as to whether she wanted to go to a neighborhood Christmas party or not, because a “frenemy” in that group recently posted a picture of a more exclusive holiday experience with just a few people in their long-standing neighborhood friend group. There was a lot more to this story, and it’s not my story to tell, but it brought up a broader, interesting conversation about friendships, in general.

Who hasn’t been in situations like these? When our children were little we lived in a huge neighborhood in North Carolina with a neighborhood pool club, which served as ‘neighborhood central’. Our local elementary school was primarily just for our neighborhood. Our friendships were mostly created by having children in the same age groups. It was honestly a wonderful, love-filled experience for us, and for our children, and we all have fond memories of living there. But, of course, no friend groups exist without drama. There were inevitable cliques, and underhanded, toxic situations that demanded that people “take sides”. There were brutal betrayals, and as children grew up and many of us moved on to different pastures, “what was” is now just a fond memory, with the hazy edges of letting the bad stuff fall off, and the good stuff still be at the heart of the memories.

In our discussion about friendships, one friend noted that she has been burned enough in friendships, that she finds that she experiences more social anxiety than she ever has before. Even with us all being in our fifties and older, and being older and wiser, we still worry about what people think about us, even though logically, we all know better than to do so. As the wisdom is often said – “What someone thinks of me, is none of my business.”

My own experience in my friendships, since I was a kid, was to stay in my comfort zone, i.e. “on the peripheral.” I’ve always been a wanderer. I’ve been included in a lot of different groups throughout my life. My nerdy book club friends have always been every bit as important to me as my fun, party friends, and my longtime, “I knew you when” friends, and my intimate soul sisters, who got together in an organic fashion to understand how to help each other to feel better. Thankfully, I am married to my best friend, so I’ve never felt a need to find “a bestie” outside of our relationship. I’ve always been welcomed by a lot of different kinds of people, but I’ve never been anyone’s “maid of honor.” And I’m cool with that fact. I feel safe and free and less committal on the periphery. I find that there are less expectations, less drama, and less likelihood of really angering someone, when you are on the periphery. It helps that I like being by myself a lot, too. Perhaps I am my own best bestie? I don’t know how to armchair psycholize myself in regards to my friendships, other than to say, I am mostly pleased and satisfied with my friendships in my life and my place in them. Do my feelings occasionally get hurt when I am not included in something? Of course. I’m human. But ultimately, I’m satisfied with the relationships in my life. Being a satellite sister is the right place for me.

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

The Final Gift

When you are experiencing someone who is at the ending days of their life, it makes you remember to try not to live your own life focused on the trivial stuff. When you see someone who is closing their life out, you realize all that mattered was the experiences, the passions and the relationships that the person had and shared. The things that we often put a lot of focus on in our lives, such as our worries, our grievances, our stuff, our appearances, our righteousness, etc. really holds so little meaning in the end of it all. As hard as it is to watch someone fade, perhaps the final gift which they give to us, is the reminder to keep our minds, our actions, and our lives, on what really matters – savoring our every moment, and while doing so, staying in the spirit of love and awe and gratefulness for the miracle of life.

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

If You . . .

If you ever struggle with feeling like you are not doing “enough”, remember that you are just one tiny little cell of an immense, intricate ever-growing living organism. Do your own cellular function and know that it is enough. Know that your life is an important function to the life of the whole world, just as any tiny cell, helps to support the life of a whole body. Just one human body contains 37.2 trillion living cells.

If you ever struggle with gratitude, think about what Steve Jobs wrote above. Be thankful for all of the other “cells”, past and present and future, who have helped to co-create the life you have lived, the life you are currently living, and the life that you will live tomorrow. You will quickly become overwhelmed with immeasurable gratitude. You will be awestruck.

If you are struggling with anger, fear, frustration, resentment, indignity, try to step out of your own little “cell” for a moment, and see the bigger picture. Perspective often cures and frees the darkest of emotions. Steve Jobs died about a year after he wrote this poignant email to himself.

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

Fried Egg Friday

Happy Friday!!! Happy Best Day of the Week!!! Typically, on Fridays (when I am in a good, happy mood) I share three favorites of mine: movies, songs, websites, products, books, pet stuff, etc. Today I am in a good mood. I choose to be in a good mood. I choose to pick the thoughts that support my good mood. From experience, I can tell you that my mood is usually a choice. Today, I choose to feel good. Now in reality, my regular readers know that I am a big proponent of feeling your feelings. I am a big proponent of being real and authentic. I also understand that sometimes, our dark emotions are caused by messed up chemicals in our bodies, which is out of our control, and may need some serious intervention. And of course, we all know that repressed feelings are not good for our bodies or for our psyches. Still, in my experience, in many cases, you can choose to move past your darkness. I’ve earned the right to say this. We’ve been going through hell with my youngest son’s epilepsy the last few months and I have definitely let myself feel the pain, but I have also crawled back to the light. It feels better in the light. Today, I choose to bask in the light.

In a text chat earlier this morning, a friend reminded us of another matter-of-fact, practical friend’s wise words of advice, “It’s only a big deal, if you make it a big deal.” Be choosy about what you make to be the big deals in your life, friends. Not everything has to be a big wave. Help yourself to give yourself some smooth sailing.

My favorites today, are all in video form. I was introduced to two new songs this week, which really moved me. They went into my playlist. See if they speak to your ears. My final favorite for this week, is a link to a video series by a young man who is a travel vlogger, named Drew Binksy. Drew has visited all 197 countries in the world, in the span of ten years and he has made some amazing videos about his adventures. In his latest video, he talks about his eight biggest “takeaways” from this experience. Here are my favorite two insights of his:

+ “The world is safer than you think and 99.9% of people are good people.”

+ “Food is the ultimate connector because everyone needs to eat.”

Choose to have a great day today friends. It’s a precious day in your life. Feel the feels, but then let them go. Here are the links to my favorites for today:

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