Author: MaggyMac

First published at 6 years old (The Daily Gleaner, Fredericton, NB, Canada). Have written something every single day of my life, if only a To-Do list. Bearing down on writing THAT book for me and myself alone. If it resonates, reaches, inspires, disgusts, bores, or otherwise affects external readers, I have achieved all I wished to achieve on this planet.

Advent One

I’m going to go to church today. It’s been awhile.

With all the stresses and strains of the past few months, I am deliberately seeking sanctuary. I have tried to create it in my home environment. That has helped some but it is not enough.

I need people. I need community. After living in a new place for such a short period of time, church beckons me back. Attending church was once central to my life.

In the Christian tradition, today is the first day of Advent. It is the first of the four Sundays leading up to Christmas Day. On each consecutive Sunday, we celebrate getting closer to the blessed birthday of Christ the Lord. It is such an enduring and compelling story.

Do I buy the whole Christ the Savior story 110%? Not really. He was undoubtedly a wise and good man. Deeply wise like many others who had come before him. Confucius. Buddha. Mohamed. All great humanitarians who contributed great wisdom and advice for how to live a good and godly life.

I have always been impressed by the consistency in their messages. Delivered and interpreted within vastly different cultural contexts and languages and eras. But the basics seem similar.

Love is a big one. Love one another. Help one another. The greatest value we can offer to life is our time and talents. That is how love is actualized. Pretty simple script. Pretty difficult to stick to.

There’s all those pesky ego desires and physical and emotional demands and limitations on whatever we do or want to do. So life is an ongoing struggle between selflessness and self-preservation.

It is disheartening to see how highly evolved spiritual visionaries have fared in history. The messages of peace and love the greatest humanitarians – starting with Jesus Christ – are contrary to the more common and baser human interests of power and control.

Assassination seems an alarmingly common fate for many visionaries that walked among us. Abraham Lincoln. John F. Kennedy. Robert Kennedy. Martin Luther King.

Preaching the gospel of love and peace is clearly in conflict with the more worldly interests of those who believe that glory and salvation are only achievable here on Planet Earth.

As the Advent season begins, Christians collectively gather to focus and reflect on this monthlong journey towards the biggest birthday party in their annual calendar. We can try to stiff the incessant material come-ons, difficult as this may be.

Same story every year. We are reminded to put “Christ back into Christmas.” “Remember the true meaning of the season.” Hard to argue with that logic. A debate over the inconsistency of those sentiments is for another time.

Personally, I am happy for the inherent annual reminders in this season that aren’t about buying stuff. Reminders about the importance of love, magic, unity and harmony.

My thoughts turn to Christmases past and present. I especially like memories when the elements of love, family, sharing and joy came together and were there in abundance.

Here’s to an upcoming season of the same.

Never, Ever Give Up

Giving up can be so tempting. Chucking it all to free up your calendar, your head and your peace of mind. Easier said than done in some cases. Too easy in others.

The advice is age-old and profoundly wise. Necessary, too, if we are to keep moving forward. We recommit to life every single morning. I have found it easier when there is an endgame at play. A specific goal to work towards that would take me somewhere I wanted to go.

I also found that the motivation to keep going was intimately tied to how I felt about myself. It was also tied to who I was living for. I think that goes for everyone.

What we do every day shapes our daily activities and our self-image. Choosing to engage with life is a decision that we make over and over again.

The harsh truth is there really is no lasting form of escape, save death. And even that is debatable and creates consequences we cannot fully determine after we are gone.

The thought of inflicting mortal emotional and psychological wounds on our loved ones should be enough to dissuade anyone from making rash decisions. But it does happen and its outfall can be hideous.

I once read of a hapless son whose life was upended when his relatively young mother died through assisted suicide against his deepest wishes. He appeared incapable of surviving her loss and, worse, that he had been helpless to prevent how she died.

His tirade was leveled at the administrators of her assisted death and how they acted in spite of the impact of her untimely loss on her loved ones.

I have been deeply emotionally distraught and felt helpless and hopeless to change my situation. I don’t believe I was ever in the type of pain that would have justified choosing death when there were other options to resolve my difficulties.

It was not enough that my situation seemed unresolvable to me. It was more that I was not fully compos mentis or mature enough to make that determination.

Life sheds many souls who can no longer bear their circumstances or the chronic despair they cradle inside. I can only imagine the mental agony that drives them to self-annihilation.

A soldier who watched his best friend rent asunder by an IED. A woman trying to make sense of why the “good guy” she knew casually raped and humiliated her. A terminal stage ALS patient who is on the brink of losing any capacity to function independently. The list goes on ad infinitum.

Staying the course through the worst physical pain imaginable or by carrying unbearable emotional agony changes us. It can soften us and lead us to a deeper level of empathy with our fellow human beings.

The gritty and painful parts of life are as much a part of the whole as the good bits. Integrating its’ agony and ecstasy not only offer the opportunity to become wiser and deeper human beings but more capable of relating to others.

Of course, it is only by hanging in and staying the course that we have a chance to apply the lessons of the pain we’ve survived to the life we create moving forward.

And to belabor the obvious, we can only do that if we are still here. Never, ever give up.

Lifesaving Advice

We learn lessons every day of our lives. Some of it can be lifesaving.

Here’s advice worth internalizing.

Trust your subconscious to pull these lessons up if and when needed.

(Although I admit it might be a stretch to find a tampon to stick in a wound at the exact same moment you have been hit by a bullet. And disheartening to learn that in a polar bear encounter, you are essentially a dead duck.)

What trivial knowledge might one day save your life?

  • When having a heart attack, you don’t swallow aspirin, you chew it. Then swallow.
  • If someone is stabbed or is punctured by a sharp object. Leave it in. The object is blocking the blood from spilling out.
  • If you ever get shot by a small caliber weapon, one of the best things to use to plug the hole and stop the bleeding is a tampon.
  • If you are choking or having a heart attack get out of your car. You can’t signal anyone if you are unconscious inside the car, but if you are draped over the hood of the car you are sending a distress signal.
  • If you vomit and it looks like coffee grounds, you need to get to a hospital. You’re bleeding somewhere and it’s reaching your stomach. The partially digested blood comes up looking like coffee grounds.
  • If being attacked, never strike in the torso, this is not the movies. Instead, go for the groin, eyes, or ears and then run and scream as fast and loud as you can.
  • If you ever almost drown to the point of throwing up water or passing out, even if you feel 100% fine, get to a hospital. Your lungs can unwittingly self-fill up with fluid over the next few hours.
  • Flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.
  • If you’re ever somewhere really high (e.g. hiking) and you hear crunchy/crinkling noises in the air and/or feel static electricity (like your hair standing up), get out of there immediately, lightning is on it’s way.
  • Use this helpful rhyme if you’re ever facing a bear: If it’s brown, lay down. If it’s black, fight back. If it’s white, good night.
  • They rarely put Barnes and Nobles in bad areas, so if you are lost and need to find a decent area to stop, put “Barnes and Noble” in your GPS.
  • Don’t walk down the stairs with your hands in your pockets.
  • If you are stuck on a train track and have to abandon your vehicle to an oncoming train, run away from the track but also run towards the train itself. If you run in the same direction as the train is traveling, you will be standing where the debris of your former car lands.
  • If you’re at the beach and the ocean suddenly recedes, get to high ground. ASAP
  • If stuck in a riptide, remain calm, and swim parallel to the shore. You’ll still be pulled out some, but it’s better than fighting against the riptide, which is inevitably stronger than you are. Once you’re beyond the riptide, you can swim to shore.
  • When drowning, use your jeans as a life preserver in water by tying the legs together and filling them air.
  • Rohypnol, the date rape drug, has a salty taste to it.
  • When crying for help, try and call out specific people (“You with the red shirt, help me, I’m being mugged) instead of just screaming generally (“Help! I’m being mugged”).

    Most important: You were born with instincts. If you feel something is wrong with a person, place, situation, it probably is. Don’t discount those feelings in your gut that something isn’t going to work out, or there’s something hazardous about the situation. Also, in these situations, don’t be afraid of being rude. Just leave.

Hafiz Suboor, https://darkpsychologyfacts.quora.com/

Sayin’ Ain’t Doin’

I heard “I love you” a lot when I was growing up. I wasn’t one of those who could complain their parents never told them they loved them. Quite the opposite. I heard those three words repeatedly.

As a consequence, I had a hard time knowing or showing love when I grew up. I guess I believed it was enough to say those three magic words to cement and support a relationship.

In spite of this conviction, my relationships kept falling apart. Friendships foundered. Romantic relationships sizzled for about three months and then fizzled out. I was a great sprinter but a poor marathoner. My education was just beginning.

I had no idea how to back up professions of love with action. It never occurred to me that three square meals on the table every day was love. Or that clean clothes washed, dried, folded and put away in my chest of drawers meant love.

That someone would stand up for you or step in for you when you were flailing and out of your depth was a show of caring. And protection. Which is a form of love.

I am not sure when the disconnect between “sayin’” and “doin’” started to become obvious. My family lauded my early accomplishments and were happy to associate and claim me as their own. Every scholarship I earned, every public show of support was backed up by my family 100%.

It all seemed to fall apart when I foundered. There wasn’t an iota of support from my family when I was hurt or vulnerable or – God forfend – if I failed.

In generous moments, I like to think that my family was “training” me to be successful. A sort of weird Pavlovian positive reinforcement thing. I came to realize it wasn’t that at all.

When friends would tell me my family was jealous of me, I couldn’t wrap my head around that. “Jealous of what?” I would wonder. I could never really put my finger on the source of the disconnect between how they said they felt and how they made me feel.

If I didn’t “feel” the love they clearly had for me, I was deficient. Not them. Then, one day, everything became clear. The learnings came hard and fast once I had a baby. Whatever else a woman may be and however strong and confident she is in life, a baby will make her vulnerable. Physically and emotionally.

I assume most families get that and support women through the process of pregnancy, birth and early infancy. Mine didn’t. It wasn’t built into our family mantra of external success and worldly accomplishments.

Having a baby was, after all, a common accomplishment almost any woman could achieve. (Fully knowing as I write that how heretical a statement that may be to women who have struggled to conceive.)

I don’t know if anyone is adequately prepared for the unrelenting and challenging needs of an infant. It is one of those “fine in theory” moments in life that becomes a stark, 24/7, non-stop arena of incessant demands that you ignore at your (and your infant’s) peril.

I remember the mantra I devised when my son was crying. “Is he hungry? Is he tired? Is he wet?” If I was pretty sure all those boxes had been checked, I too rarely made the obvious conclusion that the infant just needed to be cuddled, hugged, rocked and reassured that he was safe and not alone on the planet. That there would always be someone there for him to rely on.

I did not learn that at home. Dr. Benjamin Spock, the controversial baby doctor from the 50s, was no help either. Let them cry themselves to sleep,” he exhorted. “It builds self-sufficiency.”
I don’t agree.

It was another lightbulb moment when I realized my children needed little else from me BUT love. My presence and listening to them and my implicit support was pretty much the whole package. Plus the occasional twenty bucks now and then.

Sure, they needed constant material support when they were little. But I honestly believe, as I have read about some families, that if there was enough joy and love in their upbringing, their material situation didn’t matter all that much.

So I am wary now when I hear the words, “I love you” and more cautious when and to who I say them. The ones I say those words to frequently have earned them. The friends who hear those words have been there with and for me. There are friends who literally lived through thick and thin with me. There are some about whom I truly believe I would not still be here without them.

“Sayin’ ain’t doin’.” This rule has served me well in later life. Where I used to easily trust, I am now inclined to wait until people prove what I mean to them before I grant them access to my inner world. It was pretty junky in there for a while when I was awash in confusion, regrets and unmet promises – given or received.

Because life is a marathon and not a sprint. Once I recognized that, I was more inclined to rely on others who consistently showed up in the race with me than those who sat far away on the sidelines – cheering me on.

Listen Up

I like the piece below because it is sensible and realistic. Platitudes abound in society and they can be useful. For a minute or two.

But there are a few widely shared platitudes in life that are a little TOO optimistic. They prevent us from internalizing and accepting how life really is for us at any given age and stage.

There are platitudes that prevent us from taking full responsibility for our lives whatever situation we find ourselves in. Not doing do can open us up to crushing disappointment and regret. It is all up to us.

This is a helpful guide (I found) for adding perspective to those helpful comments people make that aren’t quite as easy to attain as they sound. Accept the reality of these prescriptions and you have a better than average chance of making it to the end of your life with your eyes wide open.

That is, having lived a real life based on the real opportunities and people you have had come into it and those you built your life around.

Only then do you really have a better than average chance of dying in peace and acceptance with minimal regrets. When you have only yourself to blame or thank for its outcome.

The older you get the more you realize that a lot of things you were taught in your youth are just plain wrong.

  1. You can be anything you want to be. No, no you can’t. There are tests you won’t score high enough on that will prevent you from being accepted into whatever program you desire. All this despite having the intelligence and skill needed to excel at whatever the profession may be. Even if you have the right credentials and experience, if they are not hiring for what you want to do…well…you may be out of luck. There are miles of reasons why you can’t be whatever you want to be.
    • But guess what? You can be the best at the opportunities life does present to you.
  2. Hard work is rewarded. No, not always. Sometimes the power of the universe conspires against hard working individuals and unfairly rewards our lazy, short cut seeking, less intelligent friends, co-workers, and acquaintances.
    • But if you knuckle down, and don’t let the unfairness of the world ruin your attitude, show up everyday, and do your best, then because of your hard work, you definitely increase the odds of having a fulfilling life.
  3. Money and wealth are your greatest asset. No, no they are not. They are important and provide security and freedom.
    • Your health is your greatest asset. If you have terminal cancer or some other horrible condition, all the money in the world does not matter. In fact, if you get type 2 diabetes or heart disease, what you can do is radically impacted. So invest in your health daily.
  4. That others care about your house, your clothes, your toys, and you in general. No, no they do not. We all think others are concerned with what we have or don’t have. They’re not. In fact the people we think are thinking about us, usually are not thinking about us at all. The world doesn’t really care about you.
    • But, if you are lucky, you have a few people who do truly care about you. It’s usually a very small number of people. They are the people that truly matter in your life and they probably could care less about all your toys.
  5. That we will all live forever. No, no you won’t. Sure, no one ever comes out and blatantly tells you that you will live forever. But every message we get on TV, social media, or culture in general seems to want us to believe we are immortal. Worse yet, our own minds seem to lead us around as if we are going to see the next two centuries.
    • But, you are going to die. Everyone you know is going to die. That should not scare us. It should free us. Free us to be present in every moment because this moment is all we really have. The past is gone. The future is not guaranteed. We have today. Embrace it and allow it to grow the love you have inside you. Then share that love.

Run The Dishwasher Twice

This story below didn’t just speak to me. It screamed.

I have been in the place of the protagonist in the story. Utterly spent with the seat out of the pants of my life and metaphorically mismatched shoes. No prospects. No hope. Ready to cash it all in.

I had two young kids. That was motivation to keep going. I wasn’t functioning well and had no support nearby. Caring friends or family or even professionals can provide a shoulder to lean on. It is often the most important job anyone can do for us.

Still I continued to place expectations of normalcy on myself. I needed to keep up the guise of “functioning.” I needed to tell myself I wasn’t beaten and could still perform my usual daily tasks. I was so kidding myself. It was like asking someone with two broken legs to run an obstacle course.

Just like the protagonist in this story, I sought validation from a counsellor or two seeking some reason for me to hang on. When the seat of the pants is out of your life, trust me, nobody wants to hear about it. Except maybe a paid professional.

It can take some time for us to figure out that we are the only ones who can come up with the answers we need to change and take charge of our life. It is a necessary emotional transition from dreamy adolescent to in-your-face-reality adult to do that.

Because figuring out whether, or if, to do the things required to save our lives is strictly up to us.

“When I was at one of my lowest (mental) points in life, I couldn’t get out of bed some days. I had no energy or motivation and was barely getting by.

I had therapy once per week, and on this particular week I didn’t have much to ‘bring’ to the session. He asked how my week was and I really had nothing to say.

“What are you struggling with?” he asked.

I gestured around me and said: “I dunno man. Life.”

Not satisfied with my answer, he said “No, what exactly are you worried about right now? What feels overwhelming? When you go home after this session, what issue will be staring at you?”

I knew the answer, but it was so ridiculous that I didn’t want to say it. I wanted to have something more substantial. Something more profound. But I didn’t. So I told him,

“Honestly? The dishes. It’s stupid, I know, but the more I look at them the more I CAN’T do them because I’ll have to scrub them before I put them in the dishwasher, because the dishwasher sucks, and I just can’t stand and scrub the dishes.”

I felt like an idiot even saying it. What kind of grown woman is undone by a stack of dishes? There are people out there with actual problems, and I’m whining to my therapist about dishes? But my therapist nodded in understanding and then said:

“RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE.”

I began to tell him that you’re not supposed to, but he stopped me.

“Why the hell aren’t you supposed to? If you don’t want to scrub the dishes and your dishwasher sucks, run it twice. Run it three times, who cares? Rules do not exist, so stop giving yourself rules.”

It blew my mind in a way that I don’t think I can properly express.

That day, I went home and tossed my smelly dishes haphazardly into the dishwasher and ran it three times. I felt like I had conquered a dragon. The next day, I took a shower lying down. A few days later. I folded my laundry and put them wherever they fit. There were no longer arbitrary rules I had to follow, and it gave me the freedom to make accomplishments again.

Now that I’m in a healthier place, I rinse off my dishes and put them in the dishwasher properly. I shower standing up. I sort my laundry. But at a time when living was a struggle instead of a blessing, I learned an incredibly important lesson:

THERE ARE NO RULES. RUN THE DISHWASHER TWICE!

Patina

Ours is a mobile society. We flit from job to job and house to house without much forethought. It seems we are constantly chasing the “next big thing,” whatever that thing happens to be. For us.

It may be a new job across the country. Maybe acceptance into an academic program in a big city miles from home. It may be that our parents are getting older and we want to live closer, just in case. Adult children start having babies. Many grandparents want to live closer to their grandchildren. Adult children usually appreciate the child minding help.

Everything that is new soon becomes old. It is true that our lives cycle up and down through this unceasing transition. A gift arrives with attendant excitement. Several weeks or even days later, that gift is taken for granted.

Even we were once new and now we are older. Our utility and beauty isn’t as obvious as it once was.

I reflect on the consequences of this mobility in an age where expedience and disposability rule. I have some lovely antique furniture and family dishes. My children will likely have no interest in them. Yet among them, there are old pieces I adore.

My grandmother’s hand crocheted bedspreads. A small porcelain swan with gold tipped wings. I have a beautiful set of antique Korean cupboards. They are intricately carved in Asian designs and outfitted with brass hardware.

The design is complex and interesting. The inside of all the cupboards are papered in old Korean newspapers. Sadly without any dates.

Those cupboards exude an air of an older and more stable world. A patina. They exude the pride of the cabinet maker’s craft. They are sturdy and elegant. The finish is burnished and rich. In part due to the lacquer used but also thanks to the gentle effects of aging.

Old furniture often exudes this elegance. The wood is solid and strong. The joints are well made and reliable. The mirror-like finish has been buffed into a gleaming surface that reflects the image of any of its caretakers.

By contrast, elegant old pieces are 180 degrees away from any IKEA product I have ever owned. I recently did a massive decluttering of furniture and other detritus. Anything IKEA was easy to offload. It broke down without resistance. The cost of replacing it would be less than storing it. My friend Gerry likes to say: “The word IKEA means “junk” in Swedish.”

It is hard to imagine that hanging on to and passing down precious family keepsakes used to be the norm. Young women filled cedar hope chests with linens and special items they planned to use in their married lives.

I remember reading Sigmund Freud’s biography years ago. I was struck to discover, in amongst his many groundbreaking accomplishments, that he purchased an apartment in Vienna as a young married man. He fully expected when he bought it and ultimately lived in that very same building for most of the rest of his life.

That seems unbelievable today. Almost as unbelievable as someone “joining a firm” in their twenties and retiring from the same firm years later.

I am more comfortable living in a hybrid of the old and the new. I like the idea of repurposing old pieces for new uses. I like the comfort of knowing people who lived before me invested their time and talents into creating pieces of utility and beauty. It feels like that aesthetic has been replaced by the mantra of “new and improved.”

It also allows a new generation of young people to define and obtain what they need to fulfill their own preferences and aesthetic. I suppose that is a good thing.

I still cherish the few remaining old pieces I have and plan to hang on to them. My children may offload them when I shuffle off this mortal coil. In the meantime, they are mine to use and enjoy. I suppose there is something inherently healthy in a refusal to be tied to artifacts of the past.

Maybe this new way of managing old things is a practical and necessary response to living in an unstable society marked by easy and frequent mobility. But being older myself, I like to think I have a certain utility and unique patina acquired over many years of living.

I am a hybrid of sorts. Partly stuck in the context of my upbringing while navigating a new world with new rules and ideas. Personally, I feel I have even more value than I did when I was younger. It seems prudent to remind the world and young people about that before someone decides to cart me and my peers off to a landfill.

Sleepy Time

Writing Prompt: If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

I’d hate it. I love sleep so much. More accurately, I love the rituals of getting ready to sleep. I love the warmth and coziness of settling in between the covers. I just love the feeling of becoming warm and drowsy and drifting off into sleep.

Settling into that netherworld between the world of being awake and sleeping is seductive. It might be some weird psychological undertone about returning to the womb. But likely not. I don’t have particularly strong memories of being in the womb and the thought doesn’t much appeal to me.

I also enjoy dreaming. I love the topsy-turviness of dreams and how sometimes they confuse the hell out of me. At other times, my dreams work out some strange plot line with people I know or knew well at one time. Those people might do something in a dream I could never imagine them doing in real life.

They might reveal a hidden talent. They might shout in public or otherwise speak up assertively when we know them as mostly shy and reserved in daily life. I am most intrigued by those dreams which feel so real I feel trapped in them.

They push me to frantically work out solutions in my head about how I am going to manage a situation. Only to wake up to find it was all an elaborate fiction that almost instantly disappears.

Those kind of dreams can shake me up. It is as if the veil between reality and whatever the dream-state is diaphanous and almost transparent. Where does that world go when we wake up? And why is it so hard to recall the details of our dreams?

I’ve tried dream journalling. It never quite catches the complexity and nuance that a dream scenario presents. I am sure that is partly because dreams can evoke a range of emotions while they are unfolding with speed and meaning and nuance that are difficult to capture on paper.

But if I really didn’t need sleep, what would I do with all the extra time? Likely, nothing. I would do a lot more of nothing. I would sit more often in a forest on chunks of soft moss. I would listen to the forest sounds. I would watch insects and small animals doing what insects and small animals habitually do. I would deeply breathe in the fresh air surrounding me.

I would do this in an effort to transition away from my very important, very urgent real-world demands. I am held in sway daily like most adults by financial, physical, people and environmental obligations. I would like to let go of a lot of these demands without the bottom falling out of my life.

It is a delusion to believe more time would help me get more on top of my responsibilities. I let go of that fantasy a long time ago. The most efficient among us get everything they need to do done in the time allotted.

I hate those people.

The fault, it would seem, might be in me.

So while it is that I must sleep to get through my days, I am not sure more time would change my life dramatically. I think the secret to making my life richer or more efficient or meaningful or whatever emotional state it is I am going for, must be accomplished within the time parameters I’ve been given.

That is both the tragedy and the beauty of life. Just like everyone else, I have to figure out what to do with the precious amount of time I’ve been given.

Think I’ll sleep on that tonight.

99 And Counting

Superagers. People who live to 110 in relatively good health. The hype around pushing the “normal” chronological lifespan of most humans is high these days. Many new companies are devoted to unravelling the secrets of living a longer than average lifespan.

In 2022, I underwent something of an anti-aging program myself though my motives were more complex. AVIV Clinics in Wildwood, Florida offers a three month hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) program designed to combat a host of aging-related and other medical conditions.

HBOT has been commonly used in health care for years as an aid to healing stubborn wounds. AVIV is using the technology to “refresh” our aging bodies and brains which may have been damaged in the process of living. Participants like me engaged in five-days-a-week HBOT sessions for two hours a day.

I signed up for the program to address the impact of PTSD on my brain and years of cumulative emotional trauma. It is said that emotional trauma presents on an MRI in the same way as physical trauma does, just like concussions or other head injuries.

That intrigued me. What intrigued me more was the difference between my brain’s MRI after the program compared to when I started. Blood perfusion increased. Areas of my brain where there was diminished blood flow were quite evidently revived.

The most noticeable impact was the calming effect of the HBOT protocols on me. As a PTSD survivor, I was never really able to fully relax and often lived in a state of hyper-vigilance in what were otherwise normal social situations. Which is exhausting.

I suppose the feeling I would describe in the parlance after HBOT was that I felt more “grounded.” A year and a half later, a sense of calm and inner stability has persisted. That alone was worth the price of admission (admittedly high and not yet covered on any health plans.)

So I am naturally drawn to the promise of the new anti-aging movement that is developing. Living to 110 plus would only be worth it if the body plays along and stays healthy. That has never been more possible than it is today. People these days talk more about “healthspan” than “lifespan.” I am already a convert.

CNBC correspondent Dan Buettner investigated the habits of 263 centenarians around the world to see how they’ve done it. There are sensible prescriptions in here for all of us at whatever age we are.

Read Buettner’s article to learn about the “non-negotiable” rules for living that he discovered in 263 centenarians he talked to. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/24/i-talked-to-263-of-the-worlds-oldest-living-peoplehere-are-their-non-negotiables-for-a-long-happy-life.html

Good advice for any time of life in my view.

Working on heading in this direction myself.

Coming on Winter

I once spent a few winter months living in a cabin in the woods.

It was around this time of year that I moved in. It was late fall, nearly winter. Cold. Quiet.

The cabin was located near the edge of a large lake. There was a small house up the lane. But no trees or bushes to impede my view from the front door to the pebbly beach and beyond.

Looking from the beach across the wide, expansive lake – already half frozen though it was only November – there were cottages. Most were closed for the winter. Sensibly.

I still recall that winter as one of the calmest I’ve ever had.

The beauty of the place was not only the quiet and isolation. It had a lot to do with the quality and color of the light. The light was filtered through a gauzy land fog in the early morning.

In the late afternoon, driving down the lakeshore road showcased a light palette of golden hues in the sky. The long shadow of shoreline trees laid across the surface of the frozen lake.

Fortunately, there were just enough landlocked residents in the area to justify plowing local roads. If not, I would have been looking to rent a snowmobile for my shopping expeditions.

What I remember most fondly was the peace and quiet of that little cabin. It wasn’t what you would call luxurious. A better description would be utilitarian. Galley kitchen. Three small bedrooms. A bathroom and living room. And cold.

I started using the bedrooms as extra storage space. It was just about the right temperature for keeping produce fresh. I eschewed all three for sleeping and parked myself on the futon close to the heater. I would rather have died from carbon monoxide poisoning than hypothermia.

On one memorable occasion I took a bath in the blue cast iron bathtub. To make it tolerably warm, I heated two enormous spaghetti pots of water on the stove.

I threw the boiling water into the tub one after the other and heated up another two batches. The boiling water kept the tub warm just long enough to get an acceptable two inches of hot water out of the faucet. As you might imagine, the bath was soon abandoned for quick showers.

In the mornings, long, lazy days stretched out in front of me. The sun rose lazily across the lake and I followed suit. A hot cup of tea. A book to read. High density memory foam slippers to ward off frostbite. Wrapped in one of those ubiquitous afghan square throws. My lie-ins were part laziness and part self-preservation until the propane heater kicked in.

I felt safe enough to get up and move around the cabin once my breath stopped steaming in the crisp, morning air. What we may have experienced as something of a trial when it was happening can soften in recounting the experience. It is the lessons we take away from any challenging situation that we hold on to, if we’re lucky.

It is coming on winter. By contrast to times past, it is sunny and warm most days and so it will remain in the coming months. That has its own charm. I am no longer living alone but sharing my space and life with a special someone.

When I wake up these days, I am grateful for all that is available to me. What I can remember fondly about that winter of isolation was the solitude and beauty of the physical environment I was nestled in. I can hardly remember any details about the numbing cold and all the other cold weather living challenges.

After all, I survived them and landed here. It’s pleasant to have memories of that long, cold, beautiful winter to look back on. Even better is that it reminds me to create new and beautiful ones where I am now. These days will be what I will look back on years from now.

It reminds me to make today the best it can be so I can enjoy the memories I am able to recall in the future. That must be growth.

I don’t recall consciously thinking to much when I was younger that today I would be making my memories of yesterday to revisit.

I am much better about doing that now.