Tag: voting

Simple Truth

“Simply put, there are 10 things to do regularly to increase your resistance to stress: Get enough sleep. Eat right. Exercise often. Dress for the weather. Express yourself. Practice daily pleasure. Look for the good. Cultivate a support system. Love them. Let them love you back.” – Holiday Mathis

Last night as we were finishing up a delicious, nutritious dinner, I nonchalantly asked my husband if our daughter had texted us that she had made it to her tennis lesson. Out of all four of our children, my daughter has always been the best about texting us about reaching her various destinations safely. We even complimented her on that fact, before she left for tennis. It was about a half hour after the lesson would have started, when we realized that she had not texted us. I called my daughter’s phone which went straight to voicemail. I waited a few minutes and called it again. Once again, it went straight to voicemail. I called her instructor. No answer. I made a few more increasingly desperate calls vacillating between my daughter’s phone and her coach’s phone. With no answers from either, I could feel my hysteria rising. Without much notice to my husband, I jumped into my car and I headed up to the location where my daughter takes tennis lessons, about 20 minutes away. Rides like these, feel like they are dragging out into eternity. Patience and calm have never been my higher virtues. I was madly angry at every single driver in the cars in front of me, for actually following the rules of the road and for driving slowly and safely. I was incredibly relieved to see no accidents or police lights shining from the sides of the road, as I frantically scanned the areas surrounding me. My husband remained at home, but stayed on the phone with me for the entire ride, to calm my nerves and to remind me to drive safely. We noticed that the tracking app he shares with her was disabled for some reason. We talked to each other about the fact that even the most responsible teenagers forget to text sometimes. We reassured each other that our daughter most likely was fine, and she probably just didn’t hear her phone ringing from the courts. I felt tears choking up in the back of my throat as I drove like a madwoman to the courts. I prayed out loud. My convertible top was down, so I felt my prayers being carried into the wind. When I finally came to the long windy drive to take me to the tennis courts, I saw my daughter’s car. I saw her doing “her thing”, out on the courts.

“Is that your mom?!” I heard one of her fellow teammates say. (I’m guessing I had a slightly crazed look on my face and my hair does get a bit of a manic look when the convertible top is down. Retrospectively, I am seeing myself resembling Disney’s Cruella Devil, at this particular moment)

“Why didn’t you text us?!” I tensely, (but still trying to stay under control), low-key screamed to her.

“I did,” she said as she scrambled to look at her phone. “On crap, it says ‘failed to send’ “, sorry, Mom!”

Her instructor said that she had been avoiding the calls, because the tennis instructor didn’t recognize my number, and she had been bombarded with election calls that she had learned to ignore. She apologized profusely.

I breathed out one of the longest held-in breaths which I’ve had in a long, long while, I wiped my eyes and I carefully and slowly drove home to my husband’s waiting arms. Last night, when my daughter came home from her lesson, I gave her an especially long hug and a kiss goodnight. I didn’t want to let go.

Moral of the story: No matter what, it’s all going to be okay. We know how to take care of ourselves. We know how to take care of each other. Rarely is anything as bad as it seems. Just breathe. Follow the ten simple commands above, and we will do fine with anything that life throws at us. Life is mostly good. The odds are in our favor. This is true. Relax and breathe.

Break Up

Happy Election Day! Thankfully, I feel mostly detached and curious, more than anything. When I was in college, an American Politics professor of mine said something that really stuck out to me, and I never forgot it. He said, people spend way too much handwringing about national politicians, when it is your local politicians who really affect your every day life the most. Fortunately, for me, I don’t have a problem with my local politicians. I do wish safety, comfort, ease and hope for all of you, my beloved readers, no matter what your political leanings may be.

Today, one of my horoscopes told me to “break up with my image.” I think that is something which I have been doing for a while now, in this middle stage of my life. First of all, I am not even sure what my “image” is, to begin with. It’s always interesting and fascinating to me, when other people have ideas about you, and you think to yourself, “Wow, that’s not really “me” at all. That is the image I am projecting?!?” Still, I think that “Break up with your image,” is a good command to think about. Do I do things to keep up with “an image” or am I always true to myself? Do I have different “images” when I am with different people? Do I care too much about what other people think? Is my image more about other people’s projections on to me, than actually anything to do with the “real me”? Do I have a such a clear sense of self, that the word “image” almost becomes meaningless? It really is a good thing to ponder about and to meditate on, if one has the time and inclination to do it. You get a lot from reading your horoscopes, even if you think it’s all phooey.

Back to today’s matters, no matter what happens in the elections, life goes on. We are all going to be okay. I read this mantra the other day, and I liked it so well, I wrote it on a fancy piece of paper and I put it right in front on my computer where I write every day:

I CHOOSE TO MAKE THE REST OF MY LIFE, THE BEST OF MY LIFE

The choice is ours to execute the mantra stated above. The only life which we really have any kind of real meaningful voting power on, with almost every single choice ever made, is our own lives. As I oft repeat to my children, “An excellent life is made from a series of good decisions.” Choose well, my friends. Your life is precious. Make sure that it is in good hands.

Make It Stop

Without getting political, this is why I can’t wait for this election to be over:

+According to the battling commercials, no matter who wins, we are doomed to the worst fates which any of us have ever endured. Having been through most of 2020, that says a lot. I don’t do well in waiting rooms, let’s just get it over with. 😉

+The national “Do Not Call” list does not work. I get several calls (landline and cellular) every single day from every single state which I have ever lived in, telling me who to vote for in the upcoming election, including all of the different various state representatives and local sheriffs and tax collectors (where I no longer live).

+I am sick of people telling me to vote. I voted. I always vote. I don’t think I have ever missed voting. I don’t like the presumptuous assumption of not voting, when people use the phrase, “Vote.”

+I am completely over having to carefully weigh my every word ,when it comes to any political “issue”. I am a Sagittarius. Sag’s number one fault is constantly putting our feet in our mouths. We are known to drop brutal truths on the daily. Lately I feel like I have to use my mask as a gag, in order to avoid upsetting or offending anyone, from any side of the coin. (I am guessing some of my friends and family think that the gag/mask idea is a good one for me.)

+Election years tend to highlight the worst in all of us. I am eager for us to come together and to start showing each other what is the best in all of us. I understand that when the election is over, this isn’t going to instantly change people into healthy collaborators with the ability to see all of the good in each other and in each other’s intentions, but at least there won’t be the huge national platform exacerbating everyone’s most angry, hateful, suspicious, demonizing sides, everywhere you look.

If you choose to add to my rant in my Comments, I welcome that – please just keep it general and apolitical.

Risky Business

I will never politicize this blog, but I do want to say that I will be happy when this day is over.  I am so sick of the robocalls!  Our home phone which is typically a dust collector has been called so much lately that it’s hot to the touch.  I’m sure that I don’t have to tell blog readers to go vote.  Most of us probably already have voted.  I remember as a kid, there was only one day and one option as to where to go vote, and my sister and I would stand in line forever with my parents at the local elementary school library with our neighbors, well into the evening, on voting days.  I know that I am going to sound like a cranky old lady who walked miles to school, in three feet of snow, uphill both ways (that is all mostly true), but there really are no excuses when it comes to voting.  It is our civic duty and great privilege.  Did you hear that, kids? (I have two “voting age” sons and one who just missed the cut-off – oh my goodness, I still can’t believe that my kids are this old.)

For some reason Madeleine Albright has been on my mind lately.  I remember reading about her biography years ago. I haven’t actually read the biography, but I read enough about it to find it intriguing. Madeleine Albright was our first female Secretary of State.  She was age 60 when that occurred.  Interestingly, she did not have big political or frankly, career aspirations for a lot of her life.  She was happy raising her three daughters, taking classes to earn her Ph.D. and supporting her husband’s career.  When her husband decided to leave her for another woman, and they later divorced, is when Madeleine started to take a career in politics seriously.  She was 45-years-old at that time.

I’m not here to discuss whether Madeleine Albright did or didn’t do a good job being our Secretary of State.  What I do find inspiring is that she was able to rise to such an important position in our country and in history, in her later life.  It was not her life’s ambition to be a politician.  I really like this quote of hers:

“Women can’t do everything at the same time, we need to understand milestones in our lives come in segments.”

I find that quote comforting.  It’s okay to put our focus on different aspects of our lives at different times.  Sometimes our families will have the focus of our lives, sometimes it will be our careers and creative pursuits, and sometimes it will be our romantic relationships.  Sometimes the focus will just be on our own overall health – mental, spiritual and physical.  The key is that it is impossible to be highly focused on all areas of our lives, all at once.  When we try to do that, we just get scattered, stressed and end up doing a lackluster job at everything.

My husband left an article recently published in the Wall Street Journal on my desk.  It talked about a divide that is occurring between the older generation and the younger generations coming up.  The article stated that to close up the divide, we should take the opportunity to fulfill the needs that we all have, while going through our living experience together.  There is an biological/historical argument that older people are programmed to have the need to nurture and younger people have the need to be nurtured.  Successful daycare programs have been set up combining the very young with the very old.  In Britain, a woman in her fifties and financially able to retire early, set up a program for other people like herself to give back to society, in the teaching capacity.  There was so much interest for people wanting to teach in their later years, that there is a waiting list for being part of this program!

“Today is the doorstep between everything until now and everything from now.”- Ophira and Tali Edut

It’s never too late to get started on an old dream, a new dream, or just to start to dream again.  We all have something to give and to do, until they day that we take our final breath.  Smart Thinking (one of my favorite Twitter feeds) posted this the other day – “Your death clock started ticking the day you were born.”  I don’t mean to sound morbid or scary by stating that quote. I honestly find that statement to be freeing and daring.  I think that the sooner you make peace with the fact that death is inevitable, the more the focus becomes on truly taking advantage of living and all of the glories that come with the experience of living.

Today is the day to take risks.  I always tell my kids that you should always ask for what you want.  The worst case scenario is that the answer will be “no”, but that only means that you’ll just be in the same position that you are in right now.  I’ll end with another quote from Smart Thinking:

“Take risks.  If you win, you’ll be happy.  If you lose, you’ll be wise.”