purpose Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Those Two!

Around a couple of weeks ago, I went for my yearly routine mammogram which I have faithfully done since my early forties. I’ve always been blessed to have it come back normal and I wasn’t expecting anything different this time around. I casually looked up my results in my patient portal, as I was sitting under the dryer at my hair salon. I gulped when I noticed that there were two pages, instead of the usual simple paragraph that essentially stated “all is well.” I then noticed that I had a voicemail waiting in my inbox from my primary care doctor. Ugh. I tried to remain calm and even, but I’ve been going to my hair stylist for years. I consider her to be a friend. She could read the dread on my face in one second, so I told her that my mammogram had come back with some issues, and I needed to set up further testing. My hair stylist tried to reassure me, and she told me that one time she had gotten called back, and even had to have “markers” inserted, so they could watch areas in her breasts more closely, year-to-year.

I’m not proud to admit that everything which I espouse on this blog, went out the window that night. After I scheduled my follow-up testing appointment, I stewed in my emotional abyss. My emotions were turbulent. I was admonishing myself for letting the last few stressful years, literally eat me alive. My imagination kept driving me to the worst case scenario, and it was demonically parking me there.

However, I am not one who likes to stay in the land of “Feel Bad” for long. I tend to feel my emotions immediately and robustly and fully, and then I try to move on. I reached out to family and friends for support and for prayers. Dr. Google states that about 10 percent of women are called back for more testing after their routine mammograms. From my informal survey, it seemed that around 60-70 percent of my friends had been called back at least once, and thankfully, not one of them has ever been diagnosed with breast cancer. We all seem to belong to the Dense Breast Club, which makes us more likely to need more testing. I knew that the hardest part of this ordeal was going to be the limbo time before I could get into the imaging center for further testing. At first, that time period was looking to be about three weeks, as the closest appointment which the imaging center had available, was closer to the end of this month. As I tried to steel my nerves, my youngest son texted me this: “Okay, I know you are probably a bit anxious right now, so you know, follow all of the advice you would typically give to me and know that is going to be okay.” Our youngest son lives with epilepsy, so I knew that I had to be brave, if not for me, then for my family, and for trying to live the peaceful philosophies that I have delved into, and I so deeply believe in. I had to “walk the talk.”

And so, for the most part, I did walk my talk. And then, amazingly, I lucked into a cancellation spot and so I was able to have my follow-up testing yesterday. The specialists did a more advanced mammogram on me, and they were still unclear about what they were seeing, so they performed an ultrasound next. My husband was with me. He is my rock. I was scared. I was nervous, but I also knew that whatever came of it, I would be able to handle it. I am blessed with faith, and loving relationships, and I know that society and medicine have come so far in the early detection of breast cancer and viable treatments. I knew, like my son reminded me, that no matter what, I was going to be okay.

Thankfully, it turns out that the areas of concern on my mammograms turned out to be two cysts and a lymph node, and they told me these results, a few minutes after the test. The radiologist stated that I did not need to come back for another year. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. (I’m on my knees.)

There is a naughty, foolish part of me, that sometimes would prefer to keep my head stuck in the sand. “What I don’t know, can’t hurt me.” I sometimes trick my brain into playing Jedi mind tricks on myself. “Total health and wellness, you are,” my inner Yoda likes to say. And truthfully, I think that the Jedi mind tricks are a good medicine to keep taking, as long as I keep taking them, with the prudent steps available to me from modern medicine. Mind and body and spirit are all interwoven, and they have a lot of influence on each other.

Before I got my final results yesterday, a calmness came over me. I feel a deep purpose in being the matriarch of my family. I feel a deep purpose in sharing wisdoms which I have learned, to be cataloged on this blog for myself and anyone else who cares to read them. I feel a deep purpose for following my innate curiosities about learning more about all of the fascinating people and things and experiences to be had in this world. I had an innate sense yesterday, that my purpose is not completed yet. My mission is still going strong. A sense of purpose may very well be the true pulse of life. One of the slogans used during Breast Cancer Awareness month is this: “Hope unleashes your superpower”. There is no doubt in my mind that hope and purpose are indeed, superpowers.

Ladies, if you haven’t already, schedule your yearly mammogram. Do it now.

“Breast friends get screened together”

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

It’s Your Thing

I don’t believe that there is any decent writer who isn’t also an avid reader. Most days before I start writing, I do a fair amount of reading. Interestingly, no matter how randomly I seem to choose my reading materials in the morning: news stories, essays, book chapters, tweets, horoscopes, old journal entries of my own, text exchanges, magazine articles etc., a common theme often seems to evolve. Today, from my various readings, I jotted down these ideas that seemed to be “the message” which my most intuitive self was trying to bring to the forefront of my mind and into the guidance of my everyday life:

Don’t fixate on the negative.

Enjoy and fully appreciate the everyday modest delights in life.

Keep it simple.

One of my readings this morning included this quote:

“A multitude of small delights constitutes happiness.” – Charles Baudelaire

This morning, not long after I jotted the French poet’s astute quote down into another one of my almost full leather bound notebooks (On an aside, I consider these notebooks of mine to be some of my greatest treasures in life. These ever-evolving notebooks contain thoughts and wisdoms that provoke my own thinking, and they guide me and inspire me to my own innate wisdom and peace. These personal treasure boxes are available for anyone who can read and who can think and who can feel, to create and to accumulate and to savor. If you don’t have a “thought museum” journal/notebook/scrapbook, start one today. They are like potato chips. You won’t be able to stop at just one.), I started reading another excellent article by the New Zealander, Karen Nimmo. Karen Nimmo is a psychologist and a prolific writer and this particular excerpt from her article stood out to me, and enforced and validated this one main message that seems to be the theme of my reading today:

“Life is challenging, that’s the deal we all sign on for. But if you find one thing — one thing — that gets you excited even in small doses, one thing that makes you come alive, preserve it. Nurture it. Build it. Sneak back to it. Invest in it. Because it’ll be there for you all the days of your life.” – Karen Nimmo

I have often thought that if I am fortunate enough to grow old and feeble, I hope that I will always have the ability to read, and hopefully, even to write. (More than once, I have even pictured little old lady me, perched in her comfy bed, in the nursing home, reading to her heart’s content, all day long until it’s time for dinner, and then I even hope to be able to read, while I am eating my dinner.) Reading gets me excited, even in small doses. So does writing. Writing makes me come alive. And so every morning, as Nimmo suggests, I preserve these activities. I nurture them. I prioritize them. I sneak back throughout the day to look at my blog, and to read any comments, and to read other various written communications that have caught my fancy. I invest in these activities on a daily basis, because they are an investment in my own happiness and fulfillment and feeling of purpose. My happiness and excitement and contentment is positive energy that spills out to my home environment, and to my family, and to my pets, and to my friends, and to my community and to my world. My investment in my deepest, truest self (even in small doses) ends up being my gift of joy to the world. Win-win. What is “that thing”, that “one thing” that makes you come alive? What’s that “one thing” that brings out your most beautiful, positive, alive and happy energy, so that when you do “that thing”, it only adds to the bank of positive energy that our world so desperately needs right now? Whatever that activity is for you, doing “that thing” is your gift to yourself, to your family, to your friends, to your community and to your world. You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to all of the rest of us, to do that thing that makes you feel the most alive, even if it is only in small doses. In a world where we are facing a horrific crisis that has absolutely no winners, we need loads and loads more of the magnificent, light-filled, uplifting, excited, loving, positive energy that is a “win-win” for all of us. As Nimmo says, find “your thing”. “Preserve it. Nurture it. Build it. Sneak back to it. Invest in it.” Do it for yourself. Do it for all of us.

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

Whimsies for Wednesday

+ My daughter has a summer internship at a local credit union. She came home with a stomach bug Monday night. She’s fine now, thankfully. In fact, she’s back to work today, but we were all kind of surprised by her illness. If there was any upside to this pandemic mess, it was that none of us, living and working at our house, came down with flus or colds or any other viruses for over a year. They say that paper money carries a lot of filth on it. I believe it. She’s only been working there a couple of weeks now.

+ I read an article that was talking about why it is so hard for many of us to figure out our purpose(s) in life. The article, taken from an excerpt from a book by Kristine Klussman, says that we get tripped up by three erroneous beliefs about “purpose.” The first mistake, is that we think that our purpose has to be grand and noble and all-reaching. The facts are, we don’t all have to be (nor are we going to be) Gandi, or Martin Luther King Jr., or Florence Nightingale. It’s all of the gazillions of parts that make a whole. Just being and doing our own little gazillionth, is enough and serves its purpose. Secondly, we have the false belief that we just have one singular purpose. Anyone of us, who is a parent, knows that this premise is false. My purpose in parenting has been to raise healthy, happy, productive members of society. My purpose in parenting has been to experience a love like I have never known. My purpose in parenting has been to continue and to carry on the good parts of my heritage, and to heal and to change the parts of my heritage that I found to be harmful. (Right there, I have listed three purposes in my life, and that’s just under the subset of “parenting”.) Finally, we think that our purposes have to be “forever.” Why? If the only constant is change, and we are all evolving in an ever-evolving world, does it not make sense that we will have different purposes in different stages of our lives? There is some real satisfaction in working through a project, or an experience, or a career, and being able to say, “My work is done here.” This feeling of completion allows us to open doors to other purposes in our lives, as we go on. Variety is the spice of life.

+ We all are so good at writing to-do lists. I read something this week that said to end your day with a “ta-da! list”, which lists everything that you got done, during the day. Even if it is just doing a load of laundry, and cleaning some dishes, you did these chores! You didn’t have to do anything. You could have just been a “bump on a log.” Ta Da! You got things done. What a great way to end your day on a positive note.

+ Finally, here’s a perspective changer. The universe is almost 13.8 billion years old. Any of us will be lucky to reach 100 years of age. We humans are not very old, and frankly, in the scheme of things, we are not all that important. I think that Anthony Hopkins gets it right, in the opening meme. Just live your life’s experience. That’s your own real purpose. Your life is fleeting. Your life is fragile. Your life is short. Ta Da! You’re here. Put this on your “to do” list today, in Sharpie and in all caps: 1. LIVE AND LOVE. And tonight, when you are going over your “ta da!” list, smile in peace and contentedness, that you did it. You LIVED AND you LOVED.

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

Give Me Five

Recently I read this:

“The 5/5 Rule: If it is not going to matter in five years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes.”

That mantra has been proven to me again and again, as something to follow. I keep a brief daily journal. The spaces are so small, to answer the same 5-6 questions every single day, that I rarely even answer the questions in full sentences. One of the daily questions is: What challenged me today? When I look at my old journals and I look at my answers to that daily question, most of the time, I can’t even remember what challenge I was referring to in my answer. And certainly, I am not feeling any of the broody, moody feelings that accompanied my answer for that day.

I also keep a prayer box. When things are really worrying me, I write these worries down and I put them in my prayer box, knowing that they are being handled by forces far greater than me. It is astonishing to open that prayer box up, every so often, and to read my older worries, only to see how many of these concerns have been resolved, often in the most miraculous of ways. I highly recommend this practice. It is freeing.

Sometimes I think that I just soak in my worries, and my concerns, and my traumas and dramas, out of boredom, or as a distraction from the mundaneness that sometimes occurs in the practice of managing every day life. Obsessing on situations, often just leads to emotional chaos and then, my out-of-control emotions (caused by the freight train of my obsessive, ruminating thoughts), start to control me, if I don’t reign them back in. If I don’t control my emotions, then they control me.

And now for a holiday bonus tip:

I got a lot of interest on a recent post discussing “my purpose.” There is a brilliant, wise old soul (although judging by her picture, she is a beautiful young woman) on Twitter named Valencia. I read her Tweets every single day. She is the epitome of wise. (on an aside, most of the wisdom which I’ve garnered in my life, has come from the most unlikely of sources. A lot of the times, younger people are much wiser than many old fools.) I think that I came around to understanding my own purpose with her help. She posted this a few weeks or months ago, and I wrote it in one of my journals. It makes a lot of sense.

“Living with your purpose isn’t only a matter of career choice. If you have trouble finding your path, kindly stop pressuring yourself to pick ONE main direction. Instead, write down your values and the principles you wanna live by. You just found the foundation of your purpose.” (Valencia on Twitter)

Here is an Example

I’ve mentioned it before, but I just have to do it again. Watch Street Food: Latin America (Netflix), if you need a good relaxing, heartwarming, reassuring, resonating show to watch before you go to bed at night. To be clear, I don’t really like to cook. I am not a particularly picky or discriminating eater. I don’t watch The Food Channel. I love to watch Street Food: Latin America for one major reason – the cooks in the show are absolutely passionate about what they do. They love their individual lives, each centered around cooking, and it glows out of their eyes and their whole faces beam and shine. You can’t help but feel warmed and touched by these chefs’ bursting bliss. Their happiness and contentment honestly seems to burst right out of them, like it can’t be contained in their bodies. Just like daily cooking and serving makes these cooks, in the show, buzz with delight, (and like eating their various concoctions does for their customers), I feel a complete and wholesome sensation of well-being, watching “love of life” in action. It is so utterly inspirational and uplifting.

None of the featured chefs in these shows are wealthy. In fact most of them live quite modest lives, and some of them created their shops and their street stalls out of total desperation, needing to save their families from starvation. Still, if you asked me to give you an example of a completely happy, satisfied, and totally alive person, I could quickly pick more than one of these street vendors from this delightful show, as a perfect, shining example. Honestly, it would be easier for me to show you one of these people, than most comfortable American suburbanites whom I know.

This show reminds us that real nourishment comes from living our passions. When we do this, we feed our own souls, and the by-product of being true to our own purposes and to own our selves, is that the souls of many other people are fed, as well. We are all inspired and nourished, by art, and by music, and by brilliant scientific discoveries, and by inventions, and by well-cared for, happy children, and by people who serve simple, delicious delicacies, from their well-loved stalls and carts (and hearts), every single day. We are inspired and comforted and blessed by others who are the embodiment of Love in motion. Love is an action. Our hunger and thirst for life is satiated by what we do, and what others do, all in the name of Love. Life flows so well that way, just like it was designed and intended to do.

30 Cooking Quotes to Inspire Your Inner Chef | BLINQ Blog

I am . . . .

I have been reading a very interesting book entitled You Can’t Afford the Luxury of a Negative Thought by Peter McWilliams. It’s one of those books that you don’t need to read cover to cover, but more so, you flip through it, for daily doses of inspiration. One of the first chapters I “flipped to” was the chapter on purpose, mostly because the cover says that this particular chapter changed Oprah Winfrey’s life. A life changer for Oprah Winfrey, has got to be an interesting read, for sure. I am still digesting what I read about what McWilliams says about purpose, so I am not sure that this chapter has altered my life just yet, but it has made me think, and think deeply and more clearly. Here are some of his thoughts on finding your purpose:

“A purpose can be summed up in just a few words. It usually begins, ‘I am . . . ‘ It’s a simple but powerful statement about why you’re here and what you are here to do.”

“You have been fulfilling your purpose your whole life, even if you don’t consciously know what your purpose is. A purpose is not a goal. . . . . a purpose is fulfilled in every moment.”

Some examples of purposes: “I am a joyful explorer.” “I am a lover of life.” “I am a servant of spirit.” “I am a giver of happiness.” “I am a servant of humanity.”

A purpose is general enough to fit many situations, but specific enough to fit you perfectly. “I am a student of life” might fit almost anyone. “I am a festive student of life” might be you.

You may want your life to go in a certain way. That is not necessarily your purpose. Statements about what you want are called affirmations. Your purpose is what you are already doing. . . A purpose indicates both movement and direction.

To discover your purpose, begin my telling yourself, “I want to know my purpose.” . . . Look back on your life. Write down the words (uplifting ones, please) that describe the activities and general thrust of your life thus far . . . . A purpose is not something that you create, it’s something you discover. . . . .Once you know your purpose, it becomes a golden divining rod. When you are wondering, “Should I do this or should I do that?” look to your purpose. . . . .Once you know your purpose, you have answered the time-honored question, “Why am I here?”

When you bring yourself more in line with your purpose – in an involved, active way – you may notice that your energy flows more freely, the blocks and the tensions in your body release, you become more active, vibrant, and alive – healthier.”

Peter McWilliams does not recommend sharing your purpose with anyone, should they cast doubts for you. Your purpose is a very personal thing. Perhaps it is best said by another wonderful writer about purpose:

“It’s not what you do, but how much love you put into it that matters.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?

Fortune for the Day – “The days are gods, only no-one suspects it.” – Emerson