Tag: Real Simple magazine

Real Simple

Good morning, friends. If you didn’t get a chance to read Thursday’s blog post, “The Lifeboat” or even if you did, please go back and read my wonderful, and loyal reader Kelly’s response to that post. It is beautiful, poignant and real. And (the other) Kelly is truly an excellent writer.

This is a “Gorge Season” in my family. Every family has them. We have three birthdays in a matter of a couple of weeks, and usually Easter falls right in the mix, as well. Yesterday, for my daughter’s birthday, we started with an onslaught of doughnuts, went to a very generous Japanese steakhouse for dinner, and ended up with my daughter’s favorite chocolate volcano cake and ice cream right before bedtime. My husband mentioned more than once that he had the worst night’s sleep of his life, last night. And we are just out of the starting gate on this year’s early Gorge Season. It gets harder every year, as we age, but somehow we manage to go at our spring Gorge Season with great gusto.

Before my daughter’s best friend arrived to our home to join us for dinner last night, I was thumbing through “Real Simple” magazine (the March issue). I have subscribed to this magazine for years. It’s a good one. One of my favorite features is the Modern Manners advice column by Catherine Newman. If I had to summarize almost every answer that she gives to her readers about various issues that they are in a huff about, I would say it is something like this: “Take a chill pill. Is this really a hill you want to die on? Life is too short. Don’t get your panties in a twist.”

In this issue, one person was upset with how her guests didn’t leave her borrowed RV the way she felt they “should have” done it. This is the finishing line of Catherine Newman’s answer to the reader: ” ‘Read my mind’ is an unrewarding approach to just about everything; if there are invisible strings attached, people tend to get tangled up in them.”

Another reader noticed some expensive antique silver decanter labels were missing after a few dinner parties she held for friends. She was concerned that they may have been stolen and she asked Newman if she should bring it up with her friends. Newman reminded her of the great possibility of finding the misplaced labels (this kind of thing has happened to me before, and then my high-and-mighty, outraged, suspicious mind immediately turns to shamed, chagrined mind. Has this happened to you? Not fun.) Newman’s finishing line to her answer to this reader: “Things are just things. Assume you lost them, and let them go.”

The final reader’s question was about her father constantly giving her unsolicited advice via articles that make her feel belittled and insulted. She wanted to know how to handle asking him to stop this behavior. A few of Newman’s final lines on this one were excellent: “You could also remind him that you’re on the same page. As my own son has said to me, ‘I promise I want me to be happy and successful too.’ ”

That one hit home with a little sting of “ouch”. Why do we parents have the tendency to forget that our adult children and our dearest friends and family, all likely share the same goals that we do? “I promise I want me to be happy and successful too.” And why do we all think we have the secret formula for everyone’s happiness and success??? In 2022, the self-improvement industry is projected to be worth around $13 billion dollars. If we all had the easy formula, there would be no 13 billion dollar industry to support. And further, everyone’s idea of happiness and success is different. My extremely extroverted and social friend was telling me that with my soon-to-be empty nest right around the corner, I probably should start to join a lot of clubs, find some social events, and fill up my calendar with lots of stuff in order to stave off the loss of my regular routine. I know that she meant well, and that she was trying to take care of me with love, so I didn’t have the heart to say, “That sounds like pure hell to me.” Her idea of happiness and fulfillment, is my idea of hell.

What I like best about the overall theme of “Real Simple” magazine, and that includes Catherine Newman’s Modern Manners column, is that it reminds me not to overcomplicate things. It reminds me that very few things in life are worth torrents of emotional angst and loads of hand wringing. It reminds me that life can be as simple or as complicated as I choose to make it. The older that I get, real simple feels real good. Maybe being happy and successful comes down to just experiencing the experience. The older that I get, the more plausible this seems. It really could be as simple as that – experience the experience, and then let it all go.

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

It’s That Simple

I ripped some pages out of some past issues of Real Simple magazine lately that reminded me of my childhood. One reader, named Anna Polisann, wrote in to the editor, that she now realized that her mom had trained her for 2020, when as a child, her mother told her, “Go find something to do! Learn to enjoy your own company.“

I think that my generation and older generations before mine, often got those same marching orders, many, many times, from our parents. The younger generations seem to have a lot more structured time. Oftentimes, as I was driving my kids from one practice, to another scheduled playdate, to another lesson of some sort, I would question the sanity of what I was doing. It didn’t seem right to keep them, (nor all of us, really) so scheduled up. I remember rationalizing that even though I didn’t necessarily agree with this direction of more structured childhoods, if I didn’t do it, my children would be left in the dust. And unfortunately that was often true. Most of the sports teams in our children’s schools were filled with the kids who had spent their childhoods on travel sports teams, or with intense private instruction. Many kids were taking college level courses, sometimes starting in middle school. I still question if all of the pressures that this way of life brings on to kids is healthy. I really don’t think that over-structuring our children is necessarily good, but at the same time, when comparing generations, we are never comparing apples to apples. I didn’t grow up with a home computer and a cell phone. My parents remember getting their first TVs. Each generation of children experiences a vastly different world, if we really consider how fast things change in technology, and in society.

Still, I am happy that I received the “enjoy your own company” lesson. Frankly, I really enjoy my own company. I’m at my crankiest when I don’t get enough time to just be with myself. Ironically, this pandemic situation, while making many people feel “lonely”, actually robbed me of some my alone time and peaceful solitude. At this time last year, my three youngest children all started studying from home, and my daughter still studies at home. My husband has been working from home, for the first time in his career, since last spring, too. It has been adjustment for me, to share the house during the day. When more people are in any one area, the energy is more aroused. I notice this, even in my dogs’ behavior. Energy feeds off of other energy, keeping things more abuzz. I have learned to take rides in my car, or walks out in nature, to soothe my nerves, when the electric energy around me, is just too much.

Another reader in Real Simple answered the question, “What is your favorite book to give as a gift?” Jennifer Waller answered, “Betty Crocker Cookbook or The Martha Stewart Cookbook. I’ve had both for years and still refer to them. There is something comforting about pages with butter splotches and sugar crumbs in the spine.“

I loved Ms. Waller’s last line. Isn’t that the truth? Getting back to the idea of how quickly life is changing all around us, there is a huge amount of comfort in the things that stay the same. Every cookbook, that is worth its weight in gold, has a few grease stains and crumbs to dust off. And that is true for every generation of people still alive on this Earth. I hope that this “well-worn, classic cookbook fact” remains to be a fact of life that never, ever changes. There is great comfort in the classic things in life, which stand the test of time. These things become the steady rocks that we cling to, as reminders that there is still some stability and constants to carry with us, in an otherwise, sometimes seemingly chaotic, frenetic, quickly changing world.

Awesome Love Stands the Test Of Time Quotes | Love quotes collection within HD images

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