Category: Life Lessons

Bridging

I feel simultaneously hyper alive and hyper tired lately which is a strange juxtaposition. The marrow in my bones is tired. Don’t ask me how I know that. I just do.

The hoard offloading I recently went through wrung me out like freshly laundered sheets put through an old-fashioned wringer washer. Where I came from, they would say about someone if s/he looked particularly rough that he looks like s/he has been “drug through a knothole.”

Reasonable reference emergent from a logging based economy where knotholes were as plentiful as the pine forests that produced them.

Feeling hyper-alive might just as easily be described as a kind of hyper-sensitivity. Coffee smells stronger which is nice. So does the cat’s litter box. Not so nice. It is as if my senses fear being dulled by my exhaustion so they rev up their attention to little things to remind me I am fully alive.

Unseasonably chilly temperatures this morning forced me to put on my trusty old sheepskin slippers. I found my flannel nightgown to wrap myself in and curled up on the couch.

I am feeling a deep need for comfort. Usually on my forbidden list, I bought a half dozen apple cider donuts this morning. Frozen macaroni and cheese sits in the freezer ready to break out when bidden. I just know macaroni mastication will be the perfect remedy to my tired, slightly depressed demeanor later on today.

I view the “meh” state I am in as much a part of the rhythms of life as the highest highs and the lowest lows we experience. Everyday life, in the main, we spend somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

We seem to be almost subconsciously called to rest by our minds and bodies when we have heavy labors ahead of or behind us. In a tender memory, I remember the kindness and comfort of the labor room delivery nurses who wrapped me in warmed up flannel sheets after my son was born.

I had read that in India, both the mother and baby are regularly massaged in the baby’s first few months to pamper and comfort them. There must be considerable healing in loving touch as a new mother adapts to her demanding new role.

Recently I bought a towel warmer. I want to replicate that delicious warm flannel feeling after my son’s birth when we step out of the shower.

There was a time in my life when luxury seemed shameless indulgence. Now it is just part of my regular self-care menu I weave into my life when and where needed. Facials, massage, reflexology, herbal teas all seemed senseless extravagances to me once. Now they are mandatory parts of taking care of myself. .

We learn to take care of ourselves I’ve learned. It is not automatic. I didn’t see a lot of healthy self-care modeling growing up. Mom took hot baths and I mean hot. She would emerge from the tub with bright red legs and half her torso. For many years, I thought this was the preferred and only way to take a bath. Until I unlearned.

Dad managed his stress with booze and eventually, following his example, so did I. It wasn’t very effective. The state of drunkenness followed by the hours of hangover was hardly a relaxing stress relief strategy. The only relief was in recovering from the binge and the hangover that followed.

So I am heading for the fridge. Going to get me a tall, cold glass of milk and one of those apple cider donuts – warmed ever so slightly in the microwave. Maybe I’ll put a scoop of French vanilla ice cream on top.

Today is not one of my stellar days to be sure. But it is a day with its own learnings and lessons just as other days. Practicing self-care being one of them.

I am about to happily take the edge off unapologetically with a little treat. While my body and spirit are feeling the effects of demanding recent events, I am grateful for an easy, short-term solution to take the edge off.

I’ll get myself back on the apple cider donut wagon when I feel better.

Boredom Begone

I’ve never understood boredom.

I have been bored from time to time and usually for very concrete reasons. Sitting at a conference table listening to someone in love with the sound of their own voice, going on and on has been tantamount to coming close to death by boredom.

Some of my teachers and university lecturers were less charismatic than others. Some would drone on in a monotone that suggested they were more suitable candidates for administering hypnosis than complex intellectual theories.

Anything that is examined closely will often put you on a path that will yield more insight and education than you can possibly absorb in one lifetime. It can feel as if knowledge and insights go on forever and ever depending on the path of inquiry we pursue.

The word “gardening” is a pretty bland high level description of what most of us have passing familiarity with. We glean our familiarity either as the beneficiaries of some gardeners’ efforts or as gardeners ourselves.

I have been scouring gardening sites, looking for fast-growing plants germane to our climate and environment. What started out as a quick jaunt to get familiar with what might, and what will not work, in our yard, I am on track to earn a PhD in horticulture.

There is not only a dazzling variety of types and colors and heights and purposes for plants but a dazzling assortment of species and sub-species within any plant genus.

To many people – often depending on their age and stage of life – gardening is dead boring. An end of life activity that rates on the excitement scale right up there with watching grass grow.

But as you begin to tease out this plant’s hardiness and drought-tolerance against that one’s delicate and easily undermined growth temperament, the whole genre of gardening becomes complex and multi-layered. Master gardeners are often referred to as “artists” and with good reason.

Life is rather like this. Admittedly we all arrive on the planet with little other agenda than to get our needs met and survive. Sadly, some people get stuck at this stage for their whole life. I kinda feel like I was stuck there for an unnecessarily protracted period of time.

Curiosity has always been one of my primary drivers. I need to understand something inside and out and upside down before I can rest easy. This has applied to many aspects of my life from family, to religion, to alcoholism, to power structures, and money. I unashamedly admit the parallels with my life challenges.

So except for exposure to self-important windbags, I am rarely bored. It is said it was philosopher Aristotle who said: “The more you know, the less you know.” A blogger/software architecture developer called Ardalis (https://ardalis.com/blog) that I recently came across explained that phenomenon this way:

“Try to keep in mind that most of the things you have a cursory knowledge of, but which really are known unknowns to you, probably are similar in that if you were to really dive into them, you’d find there’s a lot more to them than you realize now. Doing this has several benefits. It helps keep your ego in check. It helps keep your curiosity and willingness to learn alive. And it helps you develop and maintain respect for others who maybe have taken the time to learn more about a topic about which you’ve only scratched the surface.”

This is a bugbear of mine in our modern world. Everyone is pitching themselves as an “expert” in spite of limited experience and equally truncated chronology.

“This paradox of “knowing just how much you don’t know” can lead us to a more human centric solution: “It’s easy to feel small when we consider how large the world (and universe!) is. It’s good to keep in mind just how big the world is, as it offers us humility, but to keep from feeling down it’s important to focus on what you can impact. This starts with yourself. How can you make yourself better? What can you do this day to make it so the you of tomorrow is better than the you of today? Once you’re on the path to trying to improve yourself, it’s gratifying to try and help others do the same. Can you help the whole world or move the universe? Perhaps not. But everyone can help someone. Even if all you do is share your journey and what you’re learning, even your struggles, you’re bound to help others facing similar hurdles. Do these two things, consistently, and you will look back and see the progress you’ve made and the lives you’ve touched and hopefully feel that you’ve made a positive impact.“

What I personally don’t know could fill volumes. Or copious numbers of concurrent blog posts. Given all I don’t know and all there is out there in the world to know, boredom is the last thing I, or anyone, should allow themselves to be.

Whether your thing is gardening or nuclear physics, there will always be more to explore and discover during your lifetime, even when it most seems like there ain’t.

Non Sense

Some days, certain things drift by on the Internet or into your inbox that might be worth sharing. Not always. Maybe not even this time. But often.

So forgive my shortcut as I share this wonderfully inane email that has been circulating lately. Inane though it may be, it resonated like a boss with me.

As the current abominations occurring in the world, these are pretty mild. But should be worth an eye roll or two.

Hope it musters a chuckle or some resonance with the ludicrous times we live in.

Civilization in 2023: A Cynic’s Guide

Our Phones – Wireless

Cooking – Fireless

Cars – Keyless

Food – Fatless

Tires – Tubeless

Dress – Sleeveless

Youth – Jobless

Leaders – Shameless

Relationships – Meaningless

Attitudes – Careless

Babies – Fatherless

Feelings – Heartless

Education – Valueless

Children – Mannerless

We are SPEECHLESS.

Government is CLUELESS.

Politicians are WORTHLESS.

And we’re scared WITLESS.

SOME THINGS WORTH PONDERING …

Why do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage?   ️

Why do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front checkouts?  ️

Why do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and … a diet Coke?  ️

Why do banks leave vault doors open and chain the pens to the counters? ️

Why can we only buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight?  ️

Why do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering?  ️

EVER WONDER …

Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin?   ️

Why you don’t ever see the headline, “Psychic Wins Lottery”?  ️

Why “abbreviated” is such a long word?    ️

Why lemon juice is made with artificial flavor, but dishwashing liquid is made with “real” lemons? 

Why the person who invests your money is called a “broker”? 

Why the time of day with the slowest traffic is called “rush hour”?  

Why there isn’t mouse-flavored cat food?  ‍  ️

Why they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?   ️

Why Noah didn’t swat those two mosquitoes?   ‍  ️

Why the whole airplane isn’t made out of the same material used to make the indestructible “black box”?

If con is the opposite of Pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?  ‍  ️

If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?  

And for my fellow Canadians, has anyone figured out the oxymoron that is the Progressive Conservative party? Nah. Didn’t think so. ‍ 

Yours in silliness.

Off-Putting

Today’s writing prompt: What have you been putting off doing? Why?

Taxes.

I know I am not alone in this. The prompt is timely as I am remiss in providing my accountant with all of the necessary records and statements to get the verdammtes things finished.

I believe my aversion to taxes is connected to other money-based fears I have.

My father was a miser. In retrospect, I would call it an identifiable disorder. I know his miserliness emerged from childhood trauma. In his childhood, he experienced severe emotional and also financial lack (though not wildly different than others of his generation).

His miserliness in coin and spirit defined him and his life.

By contrast, my mother was exactly opposite. She freely and frequently spent money she didn’t have. She would not concede that there would be a lack of anything in her life – no matter what reality showed her.

In both parents, money issues came from dysfunctional childhoods and plagued them to their grave. In fact, their money management styles only became more deeply entrenched as they grew older.

My father exhibited visible pain when his caregiver selected a package of ham only slightly more expensive than the ham offered at the lowest price. She switched them out and bought the lower priced (and lower quality) ham. His relief was palpable.

For awhile, he ran an ice cream parlor. That was a sweet semi-hobby (pun intended) my father took on in retirement. For his grandkids, it certainly was. But Dad drove his employees up the wall. He hung around the shop all day and would not stockpile perishable items, like bananas.

When someone came in and ordered a banana split, Dad would get in is car, trundle down to the supermarket ten minutes away to buy one. One banana. I can’t imagine his strategy was all that great for attracting repeat business when a customer had to wait 20-30 minutes for an ice cream treat. I can’t imagine any money he saved by not stockpiling made up the cost of his gas.

My mother was completely opposite. A bit of a scofflaw if I’m honest. When the banks came after her in her dotage for unpaid loans, she actually took them to court to argue that she hadn’t made payments on the loans because the banks miscalculated the interest.

I can’t imagine the legal logic she deployed to make that argument. I never saw the argument written down on paper. I’m not she ever did write it down or would have dared. I only know Mom lost that case to the banks. She often said, “The banks never lose.” She knew that going in.

I know people who actually do their taxes themselves, every year and submit them on time. I do not understand those people.

Even with hired help to get the dreaded taxes done, my neurosis hangs on. I am a procrastinator extraordinaire when it comes to tackling my taxes. Or I go the opposite way. I binge produce my statements only to have the whole process slow and eventually shut down because I missed sending one statement in the annual batch.

It is an immaturity to be sure. It is also clearly a neurosis. A crazy mix of my mother and father’s belief and treatment of money. I save every receipt and invoice and bank statement like Gollum holding on to his “Precioussssss.” Unlike Gollum, I don’t get the same emotional or psychological satisfaction from grasping and holding on to fading pieces of paper.

During my recent hoard unload, it was beyond satisfying (and embarrassing) to throw out batches of receipts and paper clutter I had been hanging on to for decades. It is important to mention that not once in all those years of hoarding receipts in case of a tax audit, did I ever have to face one.

Yet there is a teeny-tiny voice inside that says if you start throwing away receipts now, you just KNOW the tax department is going to come for you. Maybe. Maybe not.

I only know it seems like a silly (but essential) habit of receipt hoarding I have had my whole adult life.

So there. I am making my fears known and facing the buggery tax returns. I’ve done that before and it is usually enough to get me partway through the backlog. I need to do it again. Ad infinitum it would seem. Or at least annually.

So guess what I’m doing today? Honest? Likely anything but taxes unless the money gods conspire to inspire me. Sigh.

Turning Tides

In The Atlantic, I recently read an article with the tragic title: Why The Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, and the even sadder sub-title: It’s not just a phase,” by writer Jonathan Haidt.

I read Haidt’s article with a curious mix of horror and hope. Let me explain.

We all know – or should – that we are living in unprecedented times. I hadn’t been sure when the “tipping point” occurred but by author Haidt’s calculation, it was around 2010.

It was during and after that year that social media evolved from being benign social sharing platforms into something immensely more insidious and hateful.

Added capacities on social media platforms such as “share” buttons and “retweeting” meant that any random ideas or comments – no matter how wrong, inflammatory or hysterical – could spread like wildfire.

Viral posts could elevate someone’s profile for a short time or destroy someone in the same timeframe, depending. This capacity for viral gang banging has been deadly on our society, our mental health and our level of trust in established institutions set up to guide and oversee our collective stability and well-being.

Once upon a time, the leaden processes of discourse and change drove me nuts. To achieve or change anything, there were protocols that deemed, and often doomed, positive change, especially if a quick response was required.

As most of my early work life was in academia and government, I would shudder when an issue needed to be submitted to and resolved “by committee.” Committees met infrequently. They were often populated by self-interested windbags more interested in the sound of their own voice than in speedy and positive resolution of anything.

My mind often moved more quickly tin those days to a “logical conclusion.” I saw committees as largely self-serving, pedantic entities that doomed many great ideas to the dustbin. Death by attrition.

At this time in history, decision-making power over important issues was concentrated in the hands of the elite few. That was the case in universities, government, sometimes churches, and definitely in financial institutions.

Enter the internet and social media. Global game changers. But not in a good way as it has turned out. There is a strict separation between the left and right. There is an erosion of trust at all levels and in all institutions. The problem will not go away or get better, Haidt points out, as AI informs and adds to the mountains of disinformation so readily available and consumed.

I now find my support for the internet’s possibilities much more conservative. I was excited to my very core when the internet emerged. I lauded its democratic promise. Now, I reasoned, anyone, anywhere, with a computer and wifi had access to all of the knowledge in the world. Wow.

Its ramifications for artists and innovative thinking were limitless, I reasoned. Authors rejected by traditional publishers for their whole careers could now find a corner of the internet where their writing could be read. Their manuscript could be published. It might be dreck but it was their very own dreck.

Free speech would arise in unison from all corners and classes, I reasoned. Free speech combined with easy access to information and facts would create a more democratic and just society. How naive was I?

Jonathan Haidt writes: “The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.“

Haidt continues: “… Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community.“

It is the conclusion of Haidt’s article that heartens me. He identifies pockets of sanity and resistance that are emerging. Hallelujah. Haidt alludes to something that has been on my mind for some time. It is “We the People” who must work ourselves out of this mess.

We collectively recognize the downward and unpleasant shift in angry and violent discourse because we are living it. Here is where we must recommit ourselves – as in so many instances – to self-salvation, if there is salvation to be had from technology’s less positive influences.

“In recent years, Americans have started hundreds of groups and organizations dedicated to building trust and friendship across the political divide, including BridgeUSA, Braver Angels (on whose board I serve), and many others listed at BridgeAlliance.us. We cannot expect Congress and the tech companies to save us. We must change ourselves and our communities.“

Excuse me while I head over these websites to see how I can do my part in bringing this runaway train back into line. You may hear more about this issue from me. It feels critical to sustaining our democratic institutions and processes.

Even more important to my personal hobby horse about elevation of the health and well-being of individuals, it feels critical to recapturing our collective sanity and peace of mind.

Just This Today

Because this one fact is just that important to contemplate and remind ourselves … again and again and again ad infinitum. Because truth is true and worthy of reminding ourselves. Frequently.

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have.

It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death–ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.

One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.” —James Baldwin (THE FIRE NEXT TIME; Vintage Books & Anchor Books)

Come Fly With Me

Today’s writing prompt: What is something you would attempt, if you were guaranteed not to fail?

What wouldn’t I attempt? Without question, the biggest challenge I would tackle would be to become a pilot. The urge to travel and fly was in me from an early age.

At 17, I applied to be an airline stewardess with a small regional airline in the Eastern part of Canada. The rejection letter was partly disappointing and partly heartening. I was too young to be hired they told me. But they encouraged me to apply again when I turned 19.

As fate would have it, by the time I was 19, I had been accepted at university. That sealed my fate for the following four years and many years that followed. Still, I worked in a good deal of flying in those university years.

I travelled twice to Europe twice between academic semesters. At the end of third year, I spent a summer in Egypt on a student seminar with about 50 other Canadians.

Following graduation, I travelled to Asia and throughout Sri Lanka, India and Nepal. You may have read of my trek through the Himalayas .

My husband was a commercial airline pilot. The irony and suitability of our union has not been lost on me. While I was schlepping from country to country on this airline or another as a passenger, he was actually flying the planes. Our paths never crossed in those days but we laugh at the possibility that they certainly might have.

My husband was a pioneer in the age of commercial flight. He flew for Pan American World Airways for 20 years until its’ untimely demise in 1991. The death of that iconic airline marked a sea change in the history of aviation.

Pan Am set the bar for class, luxury and service. I marveled that prime rib roast was not only served at seat side in Pan Am’s first class section, but had been roasted in the airline galley. Passengers got to choose their preferred cut. The wine selection rivaled a 5-star Michelin restaurant. Caviar was a standard “appetizer.”

My husband tells stories of the many glamorous passengers he ferried back and forth across the oceans. Elizabeth Taylor. Maggie Smith (who hated to fly). Flip Wilson (funny as hell.) Duke Ellington (wore a dewrag.) Burt Lancaster (shorter than he looked onscreen).

In one poignant story about a stewardess he tells how excited she was to serve Rock Hudson in first class. But her heart quietly broke after sharing her excitement with her galley colleagues. It was only then she learned Hudson’s male travel companion was also his boyfriend.

I had heard of Pan Am off in the distance. Ephemerally. I never flew on it. As a Canadian, we had other choices for European and international travel. It is my loss. The Pan Am logo on the side of a 747 was an iconic symbol in countless movies and TV shows. My husband refers to the cockpit of a 747 as his “office.”

Pan Am stories still drift through the world and are recounted by many people we meet – whether travelers or employees, always recounted with a certain wistfulness and joy. Pan Am employees seemed to universally love working at Pan Am.

My husband’s stories are full of glamor and fun they had both on the aircraft and during layovers. Pan Am employees believed – it is said – that “the world is my oyster.” When Pan Am declared bankruptcy in 1991, and went out of business, some employees committed suicide.

There are still Pan Am clubs in many places where there are still enough ex-employees to justify them. There is a Pan Am museum in Florida. You can still buy Pan Am “merch” and memorabilia online.

Today there are many female commercial airline pilots. Had I been born later, I might have been one of them. My husband and I often talk about the unlikelihood of our meeting in the first place. It was on an online dating site, not a normal domain for either of us. I was in Canada. He was in the US.

Along with the mysteries of falling in love, we talked with familiarity about restaurants and sites we saw in Buenos Aires, New Delhi, Rome, Paris, Munich and many other international capitals. In one conversation, he finally gave up asking me which countries I had visited: “This might go faster if you just tell me which countries you haven’t visited.” It still makes us chuckle.

No chance of failure? I’d be in a flight simulator somewhere in a New York minute. I’d abandon a lot of other dreams to pursue the goal of becoming a pilot.

And who knows? I ain’t dead yet. The game isn’t over until the fat lady sings. Of course, that phrase means one should not presume to know the outcome of an event which is still in progress.

Which is – in this case – my life.

So we’ll see.

Happy Anniversary

Today’s writing prompt: What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

This is timely. Today is the 24th anniversary of my sobriety. Back in the last century, I made a commitment several weeks before the turn of the century. I was going to take my last drink before the clock struck midnight on December 31st, 1999.

So I did it. In retrospect, it feels easier to have quit booze than it likely was. In the culture I came from, drinking was social currency. “Have a beer!” “Join us for cocktails after work.” “Pick up a 2-4 and we’ll go camping for the weekend.”

That booze masks pain is a given. But there was something more to it and the culture in which it thrived. A mark of adulthood? A sense of belonging? An adult-like behavior denied to us when we were 18 years and 364 days old. But the next day!! Wow. Hoist a glass. Join the fellas. Be a man!

Of course, this mysterious crossover to “adulthood” age barrier is quite state or province or country specific. Also gender specific. Women are not granted the same sense of admission when they take their first drink – another peculiar sex based inequality in our culture.

When I was a teenager, I was a passenger in a car that slid off the road and flipped over. We all walked away. When the tremulous driver shakily meets up with his father (the cars’ owner), his father offers him a “real” alcoholic drink (instead say, of a glass of milk or a soda).

It would appear an element of the rite of passage into the drinking culture also has to do with not killing a carful of your peers. Chin, chin!

Some famous incidents stand out in my drinking career. I was 20 and had just travelled nonstop overnight by train from Munich, Germany to Barcelona, Spain. I was exhausted. But not too exhausted to go wide eyed when I learned styrofoam coffee cups full of Grand Marnier cost 20 cents each.

I think I downed a dollar’s worth. Not to good effect. I fell asleep on my side under the hot Spanish sun. I awoke several hours later with a deep, painful sunburn on the right side of my leg. It took many more cumulative years of similarly stupid acts before it finally dawned on me that I had a problem.

One thing about alcoholism is that it can take time to develop and for the problem to become obvious. When you are young – as with most everything else – your capacity for recovery is more resilient. Long term alcohol consumption seems to break down cellular resistance to its more deleterious effects.

It did with me. I can’t say precisely when I realized “I had a problem.” I can’t say precisely when “I knew” I had to quit booze for my own sake and the sake of my children. Booze took nearly everything from me until it finally exited my life. Booze did not go quietly into “that good night.”

But went from life booze finally did. October 11, 1999. There is much to say about what the intervening years without booze taught me and put me through. How I learned to manage pain and tragedy and disappointment without it. I’m not 100% sure how I adapted and survived life without it. I just know I did.

Am I stronger? Probably. Healthier? Absolutely.

Sometimes I get my jollies sniffing the bouquet of a dinner companion’s delicious liqueur. If there is one thing I miss about booze, it was the sensual delight. The exquisite tastes. The heady bouquets. The complexity of the flavors.

Then my mind casts itself back to waking up deep fried in the Spanish sunshine after my Grand Marnier binge all those years ago. And all of the temptation and inherent pleasures that imbibing even a sip of the liqueur in front of me dissipate.

I get myself a soft drink and more and more frequently, a glass of ice water. With lemon. Liquid nirvana.

Considerably less flavorful but infinitely more satisfying. It’s a more than acceptable tradeoff. It still is today, 24 years after taking the pledge.

Rent A Relative

This is my brand new, billion dollar business idea. “Rent A Relative, Inc.” Who’s with me?

I mean, there are already “rent a girlfriend” agencies. They offer an attractive and agreeable companion who can accompany you to any one of a number of events to show that you are socially viable.

I wonder how often those transactional “dates” turn into “actual” relationships. I mean it is a lot more honest and upfront than a lot of our culture’s haphazard dating rituals.

If you already have the quid pro quo worked out, then arguably it would be much easier to set up the working parameters of an actual relationship.

Actual “homegrown” relationships are messy and often unpredictable. Interpersonal relationships are dependent on a myriad of factors that act on our loved ones over which we have no control. Teachers. Bosses. Traffic and road rage driven drivers. Difficult colleagues. Difficult clerks and pushy salesclerk. Banks. And increasingly, airlines.

If a sexual dalliance is your desire, there are countless other agencies that offer those services. Once and done. Or two or three times if you are testosterone heavy. That’s the man side. I admittedly don’t know much about the woman side of the equation. My “experience” is restricted to Richard Gere’s bold performance in the movie, American Gigolo, back in the day.

Men selling love and sex is not as popular a notion in our culture as the idea of women dispersing themselves sexually for fun and profit. But that is kind of a running theme in our society. Women usually bear the brunt of responsibility for sexual “deviation” regardless of the circumstances or perpetrators.

The exchange of sexual favors for money is a whole other well-established business idea than I have. And it has been around a lot longer than my business idea.

What I hate about real relations is history. It is hard if not impossible to escape. So just as you are trekking along on some happy afternoon outing, you find out that that thing you just said reminded them of something you did or didn’t do when they were 11 years old.

Apparently you never acknowledged that slight. Or you didn’t take it seriously enough. Or you never made up for it. Sufficiently. Or you don’t understand what it did to them.

In the face of such “feedback,” I am often rendered moot. Not only do I not necessarily remember the offending incident, but have to take my “relatives” word for it that I did what I did and I didn’t do what I was supposed to do to atone for the injury.

A rented relative could be counted on to never bring up past unpleasantness. They would have no knowledge of what you did or didn’t do in the past. You may miss the fact that they don’t remember the good things you shared in the past.

But this arrangement does hold the inherent guarantee that all present “relations” (to coin a phrase) would be smooth and easy.

When you are “done” with the hired relation, you could just stamp their time card and send them home. No commitment to the weeklong stay . No awkward silences after Uncle Freddy got too drunk (again). And “mistakenly” bumped into niece Sally’s chest.

No senseless revisitation (as happens way too often) in arguments when the sins of a lifetime are drug up and hurled at married partners with vicious precision. None of this resolves anything. It creates new wounds. It perpetuates the old wounds. Nothing is resolved.

The relationship doesn’t grow or move forward. The dynamic simply gets stuck in the sand. Tension is the predominant tone as the injuries lurk under the surface ready to rise up instantly in the face of renewed triggers that revive them.

So it makes perfect sense to me that hiring a relative for important family celebrations and visits makes infinitely more sense. No senseless anxiety about whether we are measuring up to Aunt Mary’s unflinching hosting standards. No wonder about what Christmas gifts to send to your grandparents when they are already millionaires and own everything imaginable.

That estranged son that causes so much unrelenting pain? Switch him out. Invite a “rent a relation” to make the rounds of Christmas parties with you. Or a husband even. The possibilities are endless.

Now I’m the first to admit the idea is pretty fresh and unformed at the moment. It will need work to bring to fruition.

But scoff if you will, in this age of AI and robots and technological advances, I honestly don’t think we are too far off. I want to get in on the ground floor.

There are relations I love dearly and wish to keep in my life forever. Still there are no guarantees. But since I have fairly light relationships with several existing family members, if pressed, I would love to have an agency to call up and have them send over a sister or two for Christmas dinner to jazz up the celebration.

I think it is a brilliant idea. And what worries me, is that in this day and age of disconnected and fragmented human relations, there is a ripe and ready business opportunity right in front of our noses.

So again I say, scoff if you will and I ask, who’s with me?

Write This Way

Writer Anne Lamott is my kind of people. Given her legion of fans, I guess a lot of other people feel the same way. 

She’s wry and witty and insightful and very funny and irreverent but also with a keen felt sense of the sacred and miracles. That seems to be a pretty cool way to go through life.

I found this Anne Lamott excerpt [naturally] at a time when I need it most. We word worshippers are becoming an endangered species. The other night my adult daughter said to me, in passing: “Words don’t mean anything any more.”

It felt like a gut punch. It felt similar to the growing disrespect and lack of civility I feel in business and social discourse these days. [My galling experience flying home to my husband from Canada was a particularly loathsome example of incivility gone wild.]

So when I get the chance to lift up and, indeed, proselytize the words of someone whose worldview I share, I am so on it.

That said, savor this perspective and these book recommendations from Anne Lamott. I actively seek wisdom and insight these days like I used to seek public recognition and booze [cross addictions].

She’s one of the good guys.

Anne Lamott’s 5 Favorite Books for Finding Hope

“I try to write the books I would love to come upon, that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness—and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me, and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me, are medicine.”—Anne Lamott

“Strangers in Their Own Land” by Arlie Russell Hochschild

“I have been foisting this on everyone since the election. A famed sociologist from Berkeley spends months visiting the Louisiana Bayou and getting to know the people who live there—their values, problems, minds, hearts, lives, and dreams. What they tell us in their conversations and how Hochschild changes by listening to them give me hope for our country.”

“Happy All the Time” by Laurie Colwin

“This is a beautiful, hilarious, big-hearted novel about four really good, slightly odd mixed-up people (like us) as they form couples: shy, worried, and brave. I have given away THOUSANDS of copies.”

“Praying for Sheetrock” by Melissa Fay Greene

“This is one of my favorite nonfiction books ever. It’s about a small backwoods county in Georgia in the 1970s struggling to be included in the progress for civil rights and about the idealists who lead the cause against entrenched racism. It’s a story that reads like a novel, filled with eccentrics and ordinary folks. Lovely in every way. If you read it, you will owe me forever.”

“The Illustrated Rumi” by Jelaluddin Rumi

“I love Rumi so much. I can open this book to any page, read any one of his poems, study any one of the illustrations, and feel spiritually rejuvenated—or at least a little less cranky and self-obsessed.”

“Women Food and God” by Geneen Roth

“This is the most profound and helpful book on healing from the tiny, tiny, tiny issues around eating and body issues that some of us have had for, oh, most of our lives. Charming, wise, funny, and deep.”

Via Radical Reads