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.

Borrowed Wisdom

Another gem from Marc and Angel Chernoff of Hack Life.

It is another example of insight from the Universe that came along for me when I needed it.

I am intimately familiar with overwhelm. I lived that way for most of my adult life.

Was it a character fault? A habit I’d developed to cope? I’m still not sure.

Those fastidious people who can tackle projects on an orderly and well-organized timeline?

I don’t understand those people.

But I’m learning. Slowly.

And late.

But I’m learning.

I envy those people. They often produce results of lasting duration. They benefit those around them in small and large ways. They firmly root themselves in their legacy.

Marc Chernoff’s post below offers a partial explanation for why I may have acted the way I did.

Too much is sometimes simply too much. We must learn to stop, sit down, and let the flood waters flow over and past us. How and however we can.

“Do not ruin today with mourning tomorrow.”
— Catherynne M. Valente

Ever feel a little overwhelmed? Or really overwhelmed? Here’s a story that may resonate.

Once upon a time there was a man who had been lost in the desert for three whole days without water. Just as he was about to collapse, he saw what appeared to be a lake a few hundred yards in front of him. “Could it be? Or is it just a mirage?” he thought to himself.

With the last bit of strength he could muster, he staggered toward the lake and quickly learned that his prayers had been answered: it was no mirage — it was indeed a large spring-fed lake full of more fresh water than he could ever drink in his lifetime. Yet while he was practically dying of thirst, he couldn’t bring himself to drink the water. He simply stood by the water’s edge and stared down at it.

There was a passerby riding on a camel from a nearby desert town who was watching the man’s bizarre behavior. She got off her camel, walked up to the thirsty man and asked, “Why don’t you have a drink, sir?”

He looked up at the woman with an exhausted, distraught expression on his face and tears welling up in his eyes. “I think I’m dying of thirst,” he said, “But there is way too much water here in this lake to drink. No matter what I do, I can’t possibly finish it all.”

The passerby smiled softly, bent down, scooped some water up with her hands, lifted it to the man’s mouth and said, “Sir, your opportunity right now, and as you move forward throughout the rest of your life, is to understand that you don’t have to drink the whole lake to quench your thirst. You can simply take one sip — just one small sip… and then another if you choose. Focus only on the mouthful in front of you, and most of your anxiety, fear, and overwhelm about the rest will gradually fade.”

Avoidance Ace

I have a PhD in avoidance. I’m not sure I always realized that. I am not sure I always realized how much avoiding problems hurt me

I used to have noble delusions of why I wasn’t doing the something I was supposed to be doing. “I’m too busy with other things.” “I have to follow my to-do list.” “I’ll get to it. I’ll get to it.” “Eventually,” I would say.

Funny how I always seemed to have plenty of time for entertaining and frivolous pursuits. Shopping. TV. Magazines. Even housework. A preferable alternative say, to tackling taxes.

When I come across writing that expresses exactly what I am thinking or feeling – or more likely, what I need to hear, I am compelled to share it. As I have done before.

In part, I share it simply to put the good advice out there. The larger part of sharing it in my blog is to ensure I capture and remind myself of something I need to be regularly reminded of.

I have been on Marc and Angel Chernoff’s Hack Life mailing list for some time. They regularly publish helpful posts on how to live life well. They have written several books. Their output of consistently wise and relevant messages is impressive.

Below, Angel Chernoff clearly articulates why avoidance as a coping technique is dangerous. Avoidance and denial were endemic in my family of origin. Indeed, avoidance of problems regularly led to tragic outcomes in our family. Avoidance and denial led to tragedy in my life, too.

I made ill-advised life choices by ignoring facts. I shut my eyes really tight and convinced myself my problems would have disappeared by the time I opened them. I was such a child for such a long time.

Better to rip the bandaid off, they say. Face up to your problems. Take the bull by the horns. That said, it can take a long time to learn. It can take a long time to work through and resolve the fear that causes avoidance.

See if this post on developing healthy coping styles (and, ironically, avoiding unhealthy ones) resonates with you. It sure did with me.


The goal each and every day is to gradually grow stronger on the inside, so that less and less on the outside can affect your inner wellness without your conscious permission.

Truth be told, how you cope with unexpected problems and frustrations can easily be the difference between living a good life and living an unhealthy one. If you choose unhealthy coping mechanisms like avoidance or denial, for example, you can quickly turn a tough situation into a tragic one. And sadly, this is a common mistake many people make.

When you find yourself facing a disheartening reality, your first reaction might be to deny the situation, or to avoid dealing with it altogether. But by doing so you’re inadvertently holding on even tighter to the pain that you wish to let go of — you’re, in effect, sealing it up inside you.

Let’s imagine someone close to you has grown ill, and supporting this person through his or her illness is incredibly painful. You might not want to deal with the pain, so you cope by avoiding it, by finding ways to numb yourself with alcohol and unhealthy eating. And consequently, you grow physically ill too while the pain continues to fester inside you.

Obviously that’s not good.

If you notice yourself doing something similar, it’s time to pause, admit to yourself that you’re coping by avoiding, and then shift your focus to a healthier coping mechanism, like using the quotes listed later in this post (several of which are excerpts from our books) to help you open your mind.

When you face struggles with an attitude of openness — open to the painful feelings and emotions you have — you find out that it’s not comfortable, but you can still be fine and you can still step forward. Openness means you don’t instantly decide that you know this is only going to be a horrible experience — it means you admit that you don’t really know what the next step will be like, and you’d like to understand the whole truth of the matter. It’s a learning stance, instead of one that assumes the worst.

https://www.marcandangel.com/2024/02/19/40-quotes-for-coping-with-things-you-cant-control/

Feels Upswell

Maybe it has something to do with the Andrea Bocelli concert we went to last night.

Such a privilege and a joy to see a world-class talent performing live and in person in a venue with 17,000 other people.

Maybe it has something to do with the upcoming one year anniversary of this daily blog.

Will I end it or change direction? At the moment, I have no idea.

Maybe it has to do with friends visiting. They come from a life I have left behind. They remind me of who I am and where I come from. How I had to live to survive.

Seeing Andrea Bocelli in concert last night reminded me how much my life has changed. I doubt I would have taken the opportunity had it presented itself in Canada.

Joy is multiplied when it is shared. And I had no one back there to share with.

It is always a learning opportunity to experience yourself in unfamiliar surroundings.

In the Orlando KIA Center I watched a seasoned musical genius wring every possible emotion out of the musical scale. I realized I was definitely not living in my version of Kansas anymore.

I well remember the unsettling pattern from my travels. It is hard to feel fully settled or grounded in a foreign country. I imagine it must take years to achieve that feeling.

That may explain why I am having that feeling now. Settling in a foreign land and separating from that which was so familiar for so very long.

Personal growth is usually incremental. But like arriving at any desired goal, working at something for years can appear to result in “overnight success.”

There can be several peak moments and precipitous valleys to go through along the way. Then something you strove for – often for years – is reality.

And with that, your reality suddenly is other than it was. You have arrived. Somewhere else that is different than where you were. Someone new and slightly unfamiliar who is different than who you were before.

This changed reality can bring with it a host of changes both internal and external. It can trigger – I am learning – an unfamiliar rise in emotions. It is perhaps nature’s way of internal decluttering.

I always believed that only by bringing something to light, can we see and examine it for what it is. It is only then that we can shed it and move on. That we can grow.

That would appear to apply to life changes, too.

There are markers in everyone’s life. Graduation day. The wedding ceremony. The pregnancy discovery. The birth of your first child.

A friend who dies unexpectedly and way too soon. Then one parent dies. Then the other. A cancer diagnosis in you or a loved one. Monitoring wonky lab results as if someone’s life depends on it. Because it does.

These changes rise incrementally even as we live our lives guided mostly by habit and daily rituals until there is – as my daughter put it – an “incident.” A something either large or small that changes the trajectory of a life.

So maybe the feels I am feeling are a cumulation of small events that have built up day over day and month over month for a good many months now. It intrigues me and makes me curious about what is going on inside me.

Among those uncomfortable feels is a rising sense of passion and reengagement in life. Modest ambition. Energy to pursue it. A feeling of being grounded and settling into place. Finally.

A saying popular in the last century was that the greatest gift a parent could give a child was roots and wings. Roots to bind them to who they were and where they came from. Wings to let them dream and grow and pursue their dreams.

Perhaps fomenting underneath my current state of emotional discombobulation are a manifestation of those two conditions.

Maybe all the internal seeking and emotional work I have done for so long have finally landed me here.

Inhabiting my self at last and fully for the first time? We’ll see.

Energetically Speaking

The mysteries of energy – what it is and how it works – are largely beyond me.

Personally, I know when I have an abundance of it. And I really know when I don’t.

I accept that energy is all around us and supports us and all other living things. Naturalists might interpret that universal energetic flow as god at work.

But beyond that superficial understanding and my reliance on electrical outlets to power up whatever device I need to use, my understanding of energy is scant.

Eastern religions have a deep and complex understanding of energy. They understand how the energy in us is connected to a larger energetic system.

Some Westerners have clued in and try to apply the knowledge of those belief systems to our own philosophical frameworks.

From this, many Westerners have adopted and follow the dictates of balancing their chakras and pursuing a yoga practice. In Far Eastern culture, internal energetic pathways in the body are called meridians which are the channels through which chi (life energy) flows.

This belief system attributes a lot of suffering and illness to blockages in energy flow. Acupressure and acupuncture evolved as methods to unblock the meridians. By doing so, the body’s own healing energy can take over and bring it back into balance, or a state of wellness.

It all seems like delicate balancing act to me to achieve and maintain a state of wellness in ourselves and on our planet. Many capitalists don’t think this way. Nature is seen strictly as a resource to exploit.

We are all paying a high price for that attitude with climate change and increasingly extreme weather events around the world.

Likely, we have all heard the analogy of how the butterfly flapping its wings can impact events on the other side of the world.

I will rely on this quote by Catherine McKenzie to better explain where that philosophy comes from:

“They say that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian rain forest, it can change the weather half a world away.

Chaos theory.

What it means is that everything that happens in this moment is an accumulation of everything that’s come before it. Every breath. Every thought. There is no innocent action.

Some actions end up having the force of a tempest. Their impact cannot be missed. Others are the blink of an eye. Passing by unnoticed. Perhaps only God knows which is which.

All I know today is that you can think that what you’ve done is only the flap of a butterfly wing, when it’s really a thunderclap. And both can result in a hurricane.”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10523011-they-say-that-if-a-butterfly-flaps-its-wings-in

That would appear to put an enormous amount of responsibility upon individuals to consider and monitor how their actions could affect outside events.

I believe there were great cultures that did do that as part of their inherent belief system. First Nation tribes believed spirit was in every living thing. They treated the Earth they lived on and the animals that were sacrificed for their survival accordingly.

I think it is a fair comment to say that sensibility was eradicated at the end of the nineteenth century as effectively as First Nations people and the buffalo were.

All to say, I superficially understand the dictates of maintaining my own energy supplies. I pursue practices and activities that I believe support that effort.

Mostly I have taken up certain practices through a zig zag process of traia and error over the years.

Yoga helps unblock parts of my body that are tight and tied into knots, essentially by tying itself into knots. No wonder so many Westerners think yoga is weird.

I have had acupuncture when no other modality seemed to improve that nagging bursitis in my right scapula. I don’t well understand how acupuncture works, only that it has and does. That is sufficient to my purposes when I am in chronic pain.

They say that the more you know, the less you know. Or as more accurately expressed by Aristotle: “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.”

Regarding life energy, flow, Spirit and interconnectedness among all living things, that is precisely my experience. I know a little bit about a lot of things.

I am in a chronic state of tension as a result. I realize I will never reach that carrot of fully understanding the fundamental mysteries of life: where life started, what life is and what keeps us and life constantly moving forward.

I do know I appreciate the unrelenting quest and happily sacrifice a fair amount of my life energy to seek answers to those multitude of things I do not understand.

I pray for the sustained energy to keep me pursuing that quest for as long as Nature/Spirit/god permits.

Bud Jet

The subtitle of this post should be: How I have successfully managed to avoid incorporating any money management systems in my adult life to date.

That’s an uncomfortable revelation.

I am triggered by the word “budget” in the same way I was triggered by the word “maths” in my adolescence.

Misshapen demons of indeterminate shape and size would arise in a mist in my head when I heard either of these words. There was something vaguely threatening and out of control to me about money and maths.

Or worse, to an aspiring “artiste,” such as myself, something constraining and restrictive. I was a far too much of a free spirit to be held in the traces by such trifling things as mathematical logic or the spending restrictions of a budget.

I loathed and disdained such restrictions. I devised pictures in my head of small, weak muscled little men, sitting in dark rooms under a hanging light with arm bands holding up their shirt sleeves and half caps on their head. Wearing thick glasses with gold wire rims.

In my head, they exuded an air of punitiveness and judgment and were decidedly “unfun.” Who would want to consort with such lowly people or follow their dictates? Phooey.

Well, since those days of conjuring visions of money banshees and numbers demons in my head, I have matured. Somewhat.

I get the inherent logic of income and outflow. I understand living within your means and why it has stress and financial management benefits.

But my relationship with money is still conflicted. I was scanted – mostly emotionally – as a young child. When my parents’ marriage imploded, I was only 11 and on the brink of adolescence.

Before the implosion, we enjoyed all the perks of a professional middle class upbringing in our small East Coast Canadian town: swimming and piano and ballet lessons. Summer camp. Pony Club. Birthday parties galore both hosted and attended.

Those pre-teen years and until the age of majority was reached should have been a stage of life when I had a cocoon to develop in. Needs fully taken care of. Some wishes met. A warm and safe bed to sleep in every night.

It didn’t go that way for long after the marriage broke down. Eviscerated by business and financial loss, my father doubled down on his miserliness. He did keep a roof over our heads. We were fed and clothed – if parsimoniously. We had the basics. Just.

And only until I was 16. When I started earning money outside the home, the cocoon imploded. Dad moved to another town and left me in the big city to survive on my temporary salary and whatever survival skills I had and would pick up along the way.

Looking back, that was probably too young to be abandoned by parental supervision. Something I only realized in retrospect.

So my internal relationship with money is a bit out of whack. I have the standards and expectations of someone raised in upper middle class affluence. At the same time, I carry the fear and neurosis of a child who had all of her security – including financial – ripped away. And much too soon.

As another tax deadline rises on the horizon, familiar old neuroses are emerging, too. But I have changed my approach over the years.

In prior years, I would stall and upend the tax preparation process for the absence of a single receipt or maybe two worth only a few dollars. I have learned now that ballparking is a reasonable target.

The tax people don’t care if your calculations are off by a few dollars. They care immensely if you decide to avoid filing taxes at all or grossly misrepresent your finances. I have taken extraordinary care over the years to ensure I do neither. With mixed results.

So after what can only be described in my universe of a flagrant spending spree in recent months to get the home I’ve always dreamed of, I am changing gears. I am preparing a “bud jet.” I am addressing the debt that has accumulated and how to best bring it in check.

My husband is of the view – as am I – that paying interest to credit card companies is akin to throwing money away. We are in synch in that regard. What he has – and has always had – is an easy relationship and confidence about money that I never had.

But I’m learning. After a healthy relationship with oneself, with one’s spouse and family and friends, a healthy relationship with money is an essential part of one’s overall well-being. I have learned that lesson about money.

With maths, I have at least learned to tally numbers pretty accurately in my head. That is progress, too. Maths doesn’t so much terrify me these days as confuse me. But I manage the basics. I could likely conquer it if I were so inclined.

So off I go to reopen the Excel spreadsheet I have been working on. I can’t say I love the budgeting process. But I don’t hate and fear it any more as I once did.

I have finally learned money management is my dominion to control.

Not the other way around.

Musical Back and Forth

Ever heard of Belle Chen? Neither had I until recently.

A pianist. She creates complex engaging sounds at the keyboard. She interweaves nature sounds with her recordings.

I’m listening to whale sounds in the rendition of her current composition at the moment. Earlier she used synthesizers in a piece.

I read that Chen’s piano training took place under a number of teachers in a number of different locations as her family moved around quite a lot. First to New Zealand from Taiwan. Later to Australia.

Those various musical learning teachings shaped her unique piano playing style. I imagine her inherent musical talent and inclinations shaped her musical expression as well.

She is Taiwanese-Australian. She was a first generation immigrant in Australia and the first pianist in her family. She is now based in London.

She is 35 years old.

When we are growing up, we look up to and are influenced by the established talent out there in the world. My musical tastes were initially influenced by the big band sounds of the 40s. Glenn Miller. Artie Shaw. Duke Ellington.

And the superstar solo artists of the time. Frank Sinatra. Peggy Lee. Andy Williams. And the great Ella Fitzgerald. My parents were a little older than the norm. It showed in the music that shaped them and ultimately us, too

I watched both of them suffer culture shock as cultural musical tastes shifted from the big band vibe of the 40s to Elvis Presley in the 50s, then Beatlemania and the onslaught of rock bands in the 60s and 70s.

Even my father became an avid viewer of the Sonny and Cher Show in the 60s. Mainly, I think he liked how Cher looked and dressed.

For a while, it was our time in the music world. Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane, The Who, Fleetwood Mac were claimed collectively as our own personal minstrels. Or so it felt at the time.

For years, we were masters of and awash in the soundtrack of our generation. It was the music we played on our phonographs. Yes, our record players. It was the music we rocked our heads to when it came on the radio.

Joni Mitchell and Carole King were my personal musical heroines. I spent hours listening to their evocative tunes with others in university lunch rooms. I would listen to them through headphones all alone in my room with silent appreciation and gratitude.

These were my ladies and cheering section. They sang what I was feeling and comforted me.

This morning I met Belle Chen on Apple Music. I was searching the classical music section for a soundtrack to accompany my day. After looking her up online, and seeing her eclectic musical background, I opened up her musical offering. I am now a devoted, if emerging, fan.

Belle Chen is my daughter’s age. I note that I am now looking backwards at emerging musical talent out there.

The mainstream musical stage has shifted beyond recognition to my ears. Its artists are often multi-talented and have to create elaborate music videos to accompany their sound.

Today’s young artists are taking hold in my psyche. I am already a fan of rappers Bad Bunny and Doja Cat. Meghan Thee Stallion has caught my eye with her flashy television ads as much as she has with her music.

Ed Sheeran is a longtime favorite. And even he is likely getting too old to count as “fresh talent”. any longer.

The musical guard has definitely changed. The great musicians of my generation are being installed in musical halls of fame. Or they are already dead. Or dying.

Or they are enjoying a great revival as Joni Mitchell is. She is currently enjoying her first number one hit on the Billboard charts. She has been “rediscovered” after a mature and moving rendition of Both Sides Now at the Grammy Awards recently. She composed that song in her twenties.

I sit and watch the passing musical parade. I take pleasure and comfort from what I hear and what I can choose to listen to. I was never a head-banger back in the day, like many of my peers. If I wish to revisit the music of my or any other generation, I just have to hit up the internet.

Seeing my girl Joni’s star rise again in a new generation is a wistful and delightful development. “Ye shall know them by their works.” It was a Bible verse meant to apply to distinguish good people from bad.

Joni is certainly known by her works. Her lyrics sit in my head like prayers. She used her talent prodigiously on this Earth. I, for one, am mighty glad she did.

Now I don’t only have to look back to revisit her genius. I just have to turn on the radio.

Today’s young people, years from now, will be able to do as I do now with my 70s favorites. They can call up any of their favorite music and musicians at any time they want. Spice Girls, anyone?

Enriching Rituals

I woke up this morning and turned up the heat a notch on the thermostat.

Chilly morning.

I gathered the contents of several random garbage bins and put their contents into a bigger kitchen garbage bag.

Then, I took the bigger bag outside to the curb and heaved it into the big green garbage bin that will be collected shortly by municipal workers.

I came back in the house. I fed the cat. Made a cup of coffee. Loaded and started the dishwasher. Returned to my “writing” chair to take my daily meds and write this post.

Almost all tasks were accomplished on auto-pilot.

I am big on “to-do” and checklists generally. They impose order and a sense of achievement.

At the same time, I am struck by how so many of our daily chores are done on rote. Automatically without much thinking.

This is desirable as my neurons are not firing a mile a minute until quite some time after I have woken from sleep and suffused my body in caffeine. If I had to think consciously about what to do to get the day started, there could be an unseemly delay in getting anything done at all.

The daily rituals we follow and patterns we establish in our lives can be both a help and a hindrance. Unexamined, they can find us stuck in unsatisfying ruts. But they also help. Because of daily habits and rituals, getting through the mundanities of our lives does not require a lot of thinking.

Imagine waking up every morning and having to write a “to-do” list just to get your day started. Profoundly inefficient. And memory issues are bound to arise up the road. That could lead to awkwardness if, say, we forgot to put on pants before leaving the house because it wasn’t on “the list.”

So with company visiting, I am struck by the existing taken-for-granted-ness in my own daily rituals and patterns. Company does not know where everything (anything?) is. Company does not know where anything (everything?) goes. Not yet anyway.

They are learning my environment as I have had to create it. When I arrived in this new house a few months ago, I didn’t know where anything went either. I had to figure out where to put things. I’m still figuring that out.

I had to organize the things about me and create systems in an unfamiliar environment. That may sound straightforward to people who grew up in stable, well-organized homes.

I didn’t grow up in such a home so every efficient organizational decision is a small and very personal victory. 

I have frequently enjoyed (too many times to count) the hospitality of our company on their home turf. Watching dinner preparation unfold between them was always akin to watching the operation of a well-oiled machine.

There is a choreography and unspoken layers of foundational understanding between them. This foundation makes the whole process unfold seamlessly with unfailingly delicious results at the dinner table.

In matters of hospitality and meal creation, I am a clunky awkward adolescent. I have some tools to contribute to meal-making and a few tricks up my sleeve. I’ve never starved or inflicted food poisoning on my kids or anyone else I care about. That’s a good track record and starting point.

But I was a single person for much of my adult life. Most of the hospitality I longed to offer was lived in a dream state. Or in my role as an Airbnb hostess.

There were several satisfying social events in that hosting context, if infrequent. A while ago, I decided I want more social outings with friends in my life. I want to be more hospitable more often and have people over for visits and meals.

Yesterday, the nub of that dream was realized. He commandeered the bar-b-q and grilled the steaks to perfection (as he always does). She took over the prep and set the table perfectly (as she always does).

I chipped in with necessary elements of the meal I was pleased to have at hand: dishes, and, glassware, and cutlery, and serving dishes, and my own special vegetable contribution.

This elaboration may seem flaky and a little foolish to those who have enjoyed the easy patterns of long marriage and hospitality every day for decades.

To actually actualize these commonplace rituals at a later stage in my life is both a wistful and deeply appreciated development.

My husband and I moved into our new house several months ago. Our visiting company and falling into routines and sharing a perfect and delicious meal together christened the space.

Our house has officially become a home.

I am grateful to these old friends who, by their presence, have proven the inherent value of hospitality and sharing our space I secretly longed for.

Their presence has diminished the anxiety I felt about my ability to pull it off. To be fair, they are also very forgiving of my shortcomings

More sharing and socializing is a ritual and pattern I am eager to establish in my life. It means more to me, I figure, as it has been absent and a distant goal in my life until only recently.

Beyond grateful for the opportunity. Time to get those housewarming party invitations out – stat.

A Month to Go(al)

In my personal calendar, this is an important milestone. One month until I hit the one year mark in publishing a daily blog post. A normal year is 365 days. I get to wrap up this accomplishment in 366 days being a leap year and all.

That’s just like me. Always taking off a little bit more than I can chew. And full confession, I will have hit my goal on March 13th. March 14th, 2023 is when I published my first post on this journey. So 367 days.

Like any destination I aim for, I certainly hope to get there. I wasn’t sure when I set out if I would. (I’m still not if I’m honest. A lot can change or go sideways in 30 days.) Like I said, I hope to get there.

I expect my posts over the next thirty days to be more reflective. More filled with figuring out what this exercise was all about. More filled with stock-taking. More winding up for the BIG FINISH. The false construct of a false deadline that is important to me and me alone.

What have I learned? The secret to life and living? Some aspects of what matters most in a lifetime are clearer to me.

The greatest learning may be that living life is much simpler than we conceive it to be in our heads. The basis are the basics. We deviate too far from them at our peril. The basics are essential to our survival.

I found this quote from Richard Feynman and it sums up an aspect of what I’ve learned and how I’ll shape my life moving forward. To keep moving forward seems to be the most consistent advice I’ve heard and read out of some of the world’s greatest minds.

For all of the deliberate obfuscation and mental gymnastics some people engage in to inflate their sense of importance, this advice is stupefying in its’ simplicity

Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.

Richard Feynman

By the way and by way of bringing up a non sequitur, speaking of love, today is Valentine’s Day.

A celebration of love they say.

From where I sit, it seems more like a celebration of chocolates and flowers and ballooning the bottom line of the companies that sell them

Not that I’m cynical.

I like chocolates and flowers as much as the next person.

Punctuating my looming period of deeper self-reflection, a sampling of chocolates can only assist the effort.

Critical Thinking

Writer/journalist Joan Didion said:

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” 

Me, too. I am coming to understand the value of writing in this way. Life and life events unfold around us willy-nilly every day that we wake up and engage with the planet. Every day is the herald of new experiences, events and, inevitably, change.

Writing gives me a platform from which to analyze what is happening in the world and corral events within logical boundaries. It is a form of intellectual sheepherding if thoughts were sheep.

It also keeps me honest. I often ask, “Is what I am writing today consistent with what I’ve written before? Is it a shift or alteration in my perception or belief system? Am I growing or regressing or stagnating?”

If we’re lucky, our daily analysis of what is going on in the world draws from multiple disciplines and experiences gathered during our own life stages. The fundamentals of a liberal arts education that includes economics, history, medicine, engineering, political science can enrich that analysis.

We don’t need to be experts or steeped in a particular discipline to apply its principles. It can be enough to simply be aware of the discipline and that certain principles may apply.

Take the recent Super Bowl, for example. That was a sociological and psychological phenomenon. It had the largest TV viewing audience since the 1969 moon landing.

Why? Okay, let’s apply those education principles.

The Super Bowl is a massive and increasingly worldwide cultural event. Attendance (in person or via TV screen) means belonging which is a widely acknowledged social and psychological need.

The Super Bowl spectacle demonstrates tribalism. “My team’s better than your team!” That is a higher level of “belonging” and reinforces the twin conceits of superiority and dominance over another group.

Whether that inflated sense of superiority is an actual need or not is debatable, of course. What isn’t debatable is that many people seek out and sign up for a cause they can get behind and take pride in. Whether that is a sports team or a charity or a church or a cause.

When “the cause” (or team or country or chess player) we support excels, we can feel vicariously excellent, too. We can congratulate ourselves on our good judgment and shrewd sense of discernment.

I have heard guys talk about sports (hockey or football come to mind) where you’d think that they were actually playing on the team and had something to do with its victory.

If we stand back and look at the phenomenon of sports hysteria and fandom critically, we can appreciate what a complete and complex construct these sports events are.

Much like religion, these events have been wholly invented by humans to serve as a distraction and opiate for the masses. I am not including money-motivated in here though that bears closer economic analysis.

You really have to admire humans for their ability to elevate humble sports competitions into the histrionic mega-events that they are today.

By comparison, humans had nothing to do with the creation and fundamental dictates of nature. Sure, humans dabble extensively to intervene and alter natural processes, but humans didn’t “invent” trees.

They didn’t build mountains. They discovered how to use them to their advantage. Science taught us that.

Nature also has inherent concrete laws. Try as we might to do otherwise, we are going to die. It is an inherent process in each human that science has not yet managed to stave off indefinitely.

Each day, I am aware I observe and explore events and issues through my own personal filters. I have biases and values that influence what I write. I have formal education which further influences what I think. I have professional training where objective facts are essential.

I suppose this mixed background bag is what makes my writing different and maybe distinct from other voices “out there.” I am learning where my thoughts are likely to take me, what issues grab my interest and, most important to me, why they do.

I have frequently said in this blog that I write for myself. Like Joan Didion said. It is as much an exercise in self-exploration as any kind of pontification that should be seen as gospel or objective truth. It is an expression of my truth as I see it in this mind and body at this particular juncture in world history and my personal history. Absolutely nothing more than that. A single voice.

And yet, if individual raindrops didn’t fall, rivers would not run, plants would not grow and the ocean would eventually dry up. Sure, other raindrops would step in to keep the water flowing and countless writers could easily take my place.

But in the daily doing of this writing thing, I learn more about myself and the world I live in. My life then becomes an example of living authentically in concert with my own motives and beliefs, if I but follow those internal dictates.

I don’t know about you, but for me that state of being is “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Getting to know one’s own heart and mind sufficiently to travel through life with maximum joy and minimum chaos is well worth it to me.

The lessons of history – globally and personally – have taught me that pursuing that approach works. It may not seem like much when compared to the great men and women and the course-altering achievements of history. But I’ll take it.

Peace is the prize.

Beautiful Hubbub

I have lived a quiet life in the main.

Living single and celibate during my extended healing phase, I came to love solitude. I loved being on my own. I loved the peace and quiet. I still do.

And yet, a visit with friends is expanding my perspective and experience.

There is a general hubbub afoot. It was really evident while watching the Super Bowl last night.

No riotous reaction to goals scored or lost. No jumping up to dance with Usher during his mesmerizing performance. Even the Kansas City Chiefs last minute overtime win generated only a muted reaction (full disclosure, they were mostly 49ers fans in the room).

But there was hubbub. Comments here and there. A living room full of people. Pizza coming out of the oven and into appreciative bellies. The sound of ice tumbling into glasses and darting out to the washroom.

Hubbub.

Unfamiliar in recollections of my recent adult experience. Pleasant in the extreme. A life goal and wish, in fact, that came with my dreams for the new house.

I pride myself on a certain disdain for televised sports. It is the last resort of armchair ex-athletes reliving their high school glory days. Or so I believed.

I’ll be darned if I didn’t get fully engaged int eh Super Bowl yesterday. Where my intention was to hit the hay after the halftime show, I ended up hanging in there.

I was becoming acquainted with some players and their strongest moves. I watched Taylor Swift and her friends cheering on Swift’s boyfriend Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce.

It didn’t take long before I was cheering him on, too. Even if I wasn’t fully sure of what moves it was that I was cheering for. Such is the contagion of passion and enthusiasm.

And all the while, the low-key hubbub of friends in the living room percolating quietly around me. Steady. Lovely.

I have a strong suspicion I will neither be so derogatory nor disinterested when Super Bowl comes around next year.

Not if friends are with me and Taylor Swift is involved.

I thoroughly enjoyed my reintroduction to the low-key hubbub of socializing with friends. 

It is now not outside the realm of consideration that I might entertain creating such low-key hubbub again in the near future. Even without the Super Bowl.