Category: Life Lessons

Under Thirty

I heard an odd story today from a Home Depot “associate,” or whatever elevated term they are calling them these days. I remember when labeling theory was all the rage and it was somehow believed that calling something “lesser than” a different name would elevate the dignity of work. That is when janitors became “sanitary engineers.”

So when I heard this story today, I flinched a little. We hear that millennials suffer from being overcoddled as children. These are the graduates of kindergarten programs where “everyone got a medal” or positive feedback no matter how dismal their performance. “Every child is special,” intoned educators. “Every child deserves praise and recognition.”

Granted that is hard to argue until it goes beyond the beyonds. How that somehow got translated into no longer letting children experience the consequences of their actions beats me. In my book, it defies nature.

So this associate told us today about a young person/millennial employee who got angry at a customer. Apparently, he turned on his heel, in front of the customer, “left his post,” as it were, and walked out of work and went home. I was speechless for about a milli-second then rolled my eyes and shook my head. Customer service has been reduced to a level where it often feels as if the person serving you expects you “to make their day,” and not the other way around.

The story got better. This young person showed up at work the next day, unapologetic and worse, endured no consequences for his behavior from management. Not even a stern lecture or reprimand. Perhaps they gave him a medal for being “so special.”

I rant about this not from the perspective of a horrified person, but a deeply saddened one. I do meet upbeat and positive salespeople of all ages. We seem to make each other’s day. Banter and problem-solving together. Considering options. This color or that.

But human nature is such that it takes something like – in truth, I don’t remember how many exactly – 90 or so positive statements to make up for a negative one. This is particularly directed at parents with a view to imbuing their offspring with a positive self-image.

But does it really? What did it for me was accomplishment. Or handling a delicate interpersonal situation well. Like telling someone something hard that had to be said but leaving them with their dignity. I was terrible at all of that as a young adult. It took years and tons of mistakes to wrap my head around it.

I often muse about the unjust society young people are presently stewed in. Paris Hilton is a role model? Because of an accident of birth and good marketing chops? The Kardashians? Marketing on steroids.

It is cruel and unfair for young people to think they can all become rock stars or models or actresses and make a million dollars before their thirtieth birthday. If that is their goal and belief that they deserve it, it is not hard to imagine why they are short-tempered and churlish with the masses they must serve while waiting for their breakthrough contract to be signed.

No doubt countless numbers of ambitious cute guys feel ripped off when it dawns on them their boy band isn’t going to make it in music’s big leagues. They are in for a world of disappointment unless that perspective gets turned around.

Tonight my husband and I ordered takeout pizza. I was exhausted. we had been schlepping around Home Depot all afternoon. I was probably unnecessarily short with the young lady. Certainly not friendly and engaging.

As I was leaving, she walked away from the cash register, waving a hand with acrylic green glitter nails, and sneered, sarcastically: “Hope you have a better day, ma’am.” It was not said kindly. It was unnecessary. A missed opportunity for kindness and compassion.

I was hurt by her dismissive attitude and gratuitous unkindness, and as I said, exhausted. I thought I might call her or her boss to tell them that. But I didn’t. First, I didn’t expect my concerns would be taken seriously. Second, I knew once I had had a good night’s sleep, the slight and the person who made it would fade into oblivion. Green nails and all.

But I did note it as a distressing pattern I encounter too frequently among “service associates” these days.

I admit the tables have turned for this Boomer. I now rarely trust anyone under thirty.

RIP Tina Turner

Talk about a blast from the past. Some can hit you harder than others.

I was scrolling through my news feed. There was Tina Turner whose image has been ubiquitous since her death last week at 83 years old.

The voice I heard in a piece circulating through the CBC television newsfeed was mine. I was a little stunned. That was a while ago.

I remember that night well. I remember cajoling the CBC TV assignment editor into letting me cover the Turner concert. As I recall, he didn’t get what all the fuss was about her.

As I also recall, he only deemed covering Turner newsworthy if I could score an actual face-to-face interview with her. “Okay, “I said. “I will.” But I did not. Getting close to King Charles might have been easier than getting near Tina Turner in the wake of her multiple Grammy award-winning album and single, What’s Love Got to Do With It.

So here is my original piece on Tina Turner’s Fredericton concert in 1985 – blurry camera work and all. A little bit of history about an amazing entertainer and woman. RIP Tina Turner. What a powerhouse she was!

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2212942403853

Mouths of Babes

I remember I liked going to church to hear “Jesus stories.” Jesus sounded like a nice man. And I liked that he seemed to get children. Or he didn’t want to see them suffer. Something like that.

Our elderly neighbor dear Reverend Oakley was always kind and approving of us kids, especially after we came home from Sunday School. I figured he was probably a good friend of that Jesus guy, too. Nice men tend to hang out with nice men.

Rev. Oakley was a war veteran and had a wooden leg. He let us knock our little fists on it and showed us the lower part. Rev. Oakley must have been very brave when he was a soldier.

I remember I loved singing in Sunday School. A favorite was Jesus Loves Me.

So I didn’t quite get my mother’s reaction when one Sunday after church, my sister and I pitched into an enthusiastic rendition of Jesus Loves Me for Rev. Oakley’s exclusive entertainment.

‘Jesus loves me, This I know, ‘Cause Old Oakley told me so” … We went on, “Little ones to him belong, They are weak and he is strong, “YEESSSS, Jesus loves me. YEESSSS, Jesus loves me, YEESSSS, Jesus loves me and then sotto voce and reverentially, of course, “Old Oakley told me so.”

It may have been my Uncle Scott’s fault.

He was a lovely man with a dry wit and frequently took it upon himself to teach us nursery rhymes.

A favorite went like this:

“Spider, spider on the wall, Have you got no brains at all? Can’t you see that wall is plastered. Get off that wall you stupid …… spider.”

Mom would “tsk, tsk” and my father would growl faintly and disapprovingly under his breath. My sister and I could not have been more proud than when we are finally able – word for word – to recite the whole spider poem that Uncle Scott had taught us. Uncle Scott was the best.

I long for the days of innocent wordplay. They seem unlikely to come again. Back then, there seemed to be respect for words and their power. To inform, to entertain, to amuse, or to confound. They were still largely innocent. At least they were to us kids who took such delight. in learning and reciting them. Which is silly to say, of course, because we were the innocents. We weren’t old enough to realize words could be weapons.

Memorizing poems used to be a thing in school. My mother used to recite countless poems verbatim. Such were the mandatories of her education. The Highwayman. The Charge of the Light Brigade. Others whose names have now escaped my memory.

For fun as teenagers, a bunch of us would sit around the living room with Ogden Nash books and read one or more of his poems at a time. Each poem was more humorous and delightful than the next.

Sounds archaic, doesn’t it? Today teenagers sit together anywhere and converse via texts. Language has been stripped down to its’ barest of bare bones. Which is a kind of code for decimation.

Perhaps that is why I cleave to my tale-telling posts. To defend the honor of words. To protect them from oblivion. To gently reminisce about Old Reverend Oakley and dear Uncle Scott.

Thankfully in holding up words, I am not alone in this undertaking. What will the world ever do if all the writers are gone?

Tadpoles and Fireflies

Chasing tadpoles was a great way to spend time on weekends when I was a little girl. Armed with rinsed-out peanut butter bottles with holes in the lid, we’d head for the ponds near the railroad track to collect them.

I don’t think we gave much thought to what we would do with the tadpoles once we caught them. They were fun to watch swimming around in the jars. It was fun to contemplate that those little squirmy black things would one day become frogs. Of course, none of our tadpoles ever did.

There is wonder to be found in the fragility of nature. On other expeditions, we would sit quietly at night watching and then capturing fireflies in our trusty peanut butter jars.

I know now there was something in those activities about chasing and holding on to wonder. As much as I know now about phosphorescence, it never fails to amaze me. As the captive fireflies blinked on and off in their glass prisons, I was sure as a kid they were speaking directly to me if I could but interpret their messages.

The mind of a child isn’t particularly logical. That is both its blessing and its curse. In a freeform brain still unmodified by life’s harsher realizations and realities, a child can imagine damn near anything. And does. The best children’s authors know that and taper their stories to that malleable world of dreams and imaginings. I envy children’s authors for that ability. And they seem to have a lot of fun in the mix.

My friend Canadian Sheree Fitch has published dozens of children’s books It is hard to say what is more delightful and pleasing to the senses: the words or the pictures.

Parenting allows us to revisit the world of childhood which most of us lost touch with somewhere around our transition into puberty. In the course of reading bedtime stories to my children, favorite storylines and characters inevitably emerged. Watching children’s movies with kids transports us back to what was important about that time in our own lives.

Children seek structure and consistency and certainty. The best stories provide that or focus on seeking it out. There is a lot of gratuitous violence in children’s stories. Some academics say that is because childhood is full of nightmares for children. Children are largely powerless and have little to no control over what goes on around them.

I have read that is why the Harry Potter series has been so wildly popular. J.K. Rowling imbued young Harry with qualities and characteristics children long for. He was odd and longed to fit in. He had powers that could only be accessed through rigorous training. He made strong friendships with other weird and different kids like him. From a difficult beginning, Harry Potter took control of his own power and destiny.

That’s an easy sell to kids trying to sort themselves out as they grow up and experimenting with where their powers will lead them in adulthood.

In one of my unversity yearbooks, each faculty’s title page portrayed silhouetted adult graduates as children. On the Law page, a young boy no older than nine wore the black robe and white tabs of a future attorney holding a weighty tome in his little hands. The Engineering faculty was portrayed by a little girl of about seven years old who wore a hard hat and dungarees and held a slide rule and blueprints.

If I have grandchildren one day, I hope to help them explore the world around them beyond the world of bits, bytes, and WhatsApp. I want them to feel confident to test their own part in the world around them. We’ll bake cookies so they will know the magic of making their own creations. We’ll spend more time playing cards and puzzles and board games instead of in front of the television. We’ll wander in nature to encourage their appreciation of the world around them. we might even camp out and make S’mores over a campfire. That will be the greatest act of love. I detest S’mores.

And who knows? We may even find some tadpoles to collect and take home. We may talk about their dreams to become biologists or veterinarians one day. Childhood should be a time of dreams and wonder. In these fragmented times, dreams and wonder that can one day be put into action is needed now even more than ever before.

Things I Think About

What are people going to do in the future with all the digital pictures they take?

Will everyone keep all of their old photos? If so, where will they store them?

What will happen if people come across their grandparents’ old love letters and can’t read cursive?

When will the number of available bytes of storage in the world stop growing? Is there an endpoint?

What will humans do when AI can do everything? (I am not the only one asking that question.)

Will the internet ever crash? What will we do if it does?

When will we actually be able to attend “feelies” – Aldous Huxley’s concept in Brave New World – where feelings are transmitted through the arms of movie chairs?

Is Soma already available by some other name?

Will all world religions one day realize they are all basically saying the same thing and meld into a single world religion in the interest of peace?

Would that single-world religion eliminate religious wars?

Will men and women ever fully appreciate their value to each other and act accordingly?

Will people ever be judged first for what is inside of them and not for what they project on the outside?

Why are people judged more favorably for the amount of money they accumulate instead of the good they do with the money they have?

Will movies ever revert back to producing captivating stories instead of just blowing things up?

Will humanitarianism one day be regarded as a strength and not a weakness?

Why do humans seem to prefer living on the brink of disaster instead of changing how they live to avoid disaster in the first place?

Why are there so many preventable tragedies in the world? What would it take to stop them?

Dream Scenario

Busy! Only natural from time to time but busy still needs to be managed. The last month has been super busy and I’m feeling it. Physically and psychologically. We’ve all been there.

A daughter’s recent ten-day visit (VERY busy, but great in every other way). A pending house purchase. Medical maintenance to attend to. Writing a book. Daily dealing with both the necessaries and nice-to-haves in life. This blog.

When someone else had agency over my daily schedule, daily life was somehow easier. Easier as the priorities were clear. Nothing else got done while the demands of the job had dibs on my time.

I eventually came to realize there was a frustrating paradox. When I had time, I had no money. And when I had money, I had no time. Now, at least, I have sufficient time and money to cover my needs without stressing over the lack of one or the other.

So, now what do I do? The dilemma of spending time is actually no less intense. The shift in priorities has moved away from what I need and must do every day. Now I get to decide what I want to do after I have done what I still need to do. Life is tricky like that. It doesn’t ease up the “to-do” list significantly until and unless we decide it does. I actually like keeping busy.

Retirement from a paid job must be a total buzzkill for workaholics. I am sure they could find other ways to use their time and energy. I have seen many people who derived their entire identity and sense of self from their work. It is their entire raison d’etre. Too many times I saw situations where the work went away and, shortly afterward, so did they. Post-retirement deaths seemed endemic for a while.

I often think slowing down for workaholics is similar to having a toxic tsunami overtake them when they cannot distract their minds from busy work any longer. Workaholism is an addiction for many, they are trying to fill an unfillable hole inside themselves. They can’t seem to face the void or heal the pain and start to break down. Sometimes fatally.

So I deliberately wove in pleasurable activities and pursued other interests even while I was working. Now that I am out from behind the paywall, other activities feed my mind and my soul. One day it might be cracking open a new book. It could also be a bike ride around the neighborhood just to get out to get fresh air and sunshine. I have always enjoyed remodeling and interior decoration.

On days when I am feeling committed and energetic, I go to the gym. I am aiming for that sweet spot where “working out” is more a rewarding activity than a chore. That said, my approach to physical exercise can be all wrong. I jump in with great enthusiasm. I take on every machine by creating an intense series of reps and sets – all of which is highly illogical for a self-described couch potato.

I then kvetch as my muscles hurl obscenities at me for the next three to four days. I swear I actually hear them laughing at me as I toy with the idea of visiting the machines again any time soon. I don’t blame them. I collapse in defeat not long afterward and have to ramp myself up again psychologically to go anywhere near the gym at all. I believe the situation I am describing is called “self-defeating.”

I strive daily for that elusive sweet spot of balance. Not too much of anything. Everything in moderation. Honing my vision and energy in on a few important tasks a day instead of a baker’s dozen. I do better some days than others. It has helped that my definition of success and happiness has evolved.

I derive more pleasure some days by just sitting. Or staring at a lovely landscape off in the distance. Maybe thinking about stuff. Maybe not.

When I contrast these halcyon days with the mad days of busy work fuelled by endless ambition, I breathe a deep sigh of relief. I am happy I do not have to choose not to live like that anymore.

It is a gift I realize is not automatically afforded to everyone. I luxuriate these days in having a hot cup of tea, a new book, and sitting in a comfy chair by a picture window with nothing urgent to do. That is my very definition of living a dream scenario.

Aim For Fulfillment

My life has been focused on healing and transformation. I have worked to turn a dealt hand of lemons into lemonade. When I stumble across advice that sums up what I believe, I want to share it. This was written and published by a psychiatrist in The Washington Post. I love the distinction he makes between happiness and fulfillment.

Happiness is fleeting. Aim for fulfillment. It can be achieved when you accept who you are, make the most of what you have, and are optimistic about the future – Advice by Gregory Scott Brown, a psychiatrist, mental health writer, and author of “The Self-Healing Mind: An Essential Five-Step Practice for Overcoming Anxiety and Depression, and Revitalizing Your Life.”

I recently met with a patient, a man in his late 40s with a soft smile. Minutes into our first session, I learned that his biggest fear was that decades later, he would look back and realize that he had spent his entire life — as he put it — “being sad.”

“What are you hoping to get from our time together?” I asked. “I just want to be happy,” he responded.

As a psychiatrist, I think about happiness and how to achieve it. And thousands of conversations with patients who are chasing happiness have taught me that it can be a distraction from what’s really necessary for a better life — fulfillment.

Happiness is fleeting

Patients often come to see me when they are unhappy with their work or personal life. Many see a period of time in their life, such as the day they got married or when they graduated from college, as their template for happiness.

“If I could just feel that way again, I would be happy,” they tell me.

The problem with this approach is that happiness is an emotion, not a state of being. Emotions such as happiness and sadness aren’t supposed to last. They come and go.

Seeking happiness as the ultimate goal is like running after a moving target. And we may feel even more depressed or anxious because we are setting unrealistic expectations about what is achievable.

Fulfillment is a state of being

Unlike happiness, fulfillment is a state of being. It is achieved when you accept who you are, make the most of what you have, and are optimistic about the future.

I learned this lesson as a psychiatry resident almost 10 years ago. As I witnessed patients die, I noticed that despite age or diagnosis, some seemed to be more at peace than others. I wanted to understand how some people in their final weeks could still be okay.

Fulfillment seemed to be the answer. Patients who were fulfilled could reflect fondly on their life and relationships, have gratitude (sometimes that just meant being grateful for having a few hours without physical pain) and remain optimistic (in some cases, in the promise of an afterlife).

Now, I often ask my patients to “imagine life better” and describe what their fulfilled life might look like. Usually, they realize that it’s a life that is attainable.

One of my patients, a woman in her late 50s, came to see me after going through a difficult divorce. Eventually, she found fulfillment — even amid a difficult transition — by focusing on what she was grateful for, such as her three adult children. She took up new hobbies and rekindled old friendships, which gave her hope for the future.

You, too, can begin to cultivate your life in a way that draws you closer to fulfillment, with a few changes.

Don’t overreact to highs or lows

People who are fulfilled don’t overreact to emotional highs or lows. They are able to appreciate that just as the seasons come and go, so do our emotions.

I recommend the HALT model to my patients as a way to avoid allowing their feelings to get the best of them.

Ask yourself: Am I hungry, angry, lonely or tired?

If you are any or many of those things, here are steps you can take.

  • Eat a nourishing meal.
  • Step away from the situation that’s causing stress, if you can.
  • Practice 4-7-8 breathing: Inhale for four seconds, hold for seven seconds, and exhale for eight seconds.
  • Go for a 10-minute walk.
  • Write down three things that you’re grateful for.
  • Talk to a friend.
  • Do things that make you feel relaxed.
Learn to adapt

Life rarely turns out exactly as we plan, and learning to adapt is a superpower for your mental health.

Adapting doesn’t mean giving up your hopes, dreams or intentions. Instead, it involves making the most of what you have right now, so you can stay focused on creating the life you want.

Some researchers have developed a test for AQ (adaptability quotient) similar to IQ that gauges how adaptable you are.

If you aren’t as adaptable as you’d like, you can start by asking yourself: How willing am I to change, to learn or to make mistakes?

Adapting may require unlearning old habits so you can develop new, more helpful habits. I challenge you to approach your life with curiosity before judgment. You may learn valuable lessons about yourself and the people around you.

How to build relationships

Friends are essential to a healthy life — and they are just as important for our well-being as healthy eating habits or a good night’s sleep. Friends, though, don’t just appear out of thin air, an expert said. Here’s her advice for making new connections and maintaining the old ones.

You may have lost touch with friends during the pandemic and may be eager to reconnect. If you want to maintain the level of effortlessness you had before, here is advice from friendship experts on how to optimize these relationships.

Children who develop supportive, trusting friendships with others their age are more likely to become healthy, happy, and professionally successful adults, studies show. Adults can help foster teen friendships.

Develop meaningful relationships

The Harvard Study of Adult Development showed that quality relationships are important for well-being. This comes at a time when loneliness feels like it’s more common than ever.

Consider your relationships not only an investment in your mental health but also an opportunity to bring you closer to fulfillment. Common interest meetups, group therapy, and religious organizations are great ways to form meaningful connections.

When you meet someone new, ask them how they’re doing and actively listen by affirming your understanding of what they told you. It’s an easy first step in planting the seeds for a long-lasting friendship.

Try not to regret

We all have aspects of our past we would change if we could, but living with regret isn’t helpful for mental health. One study shows that people who are fulfilled choose not to live with deep regret.

This means accepting that although you can’t change your past, you can change the way you think about it.

Ask yourself what lessons you have learned from past experiences. These lessons can teach you how to avoid the same mistakes. In some cases, living without regret can allow you to find gratitude for those lessons.

Many of us could use more happiness in our lives, but as psychiatrist and author Victor Frankl wrote, “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”

Instead of searching for happiness, shift your attention toward finding fulfillment. It may bring you closer to living a better life and experiencing more happiness along the way.

Another Street

It has taken me my whole life to learn the simple lessons in this powerful poem. I refer back to it frequently. It is something of a guidepost that I use to check in on when there is chaos and drama in my life. It helps me sort out my part from the part being played by others or external forces. Hope you find it as helpful as I have.

An Autobiography in Five Chapters
by Portia Nelson

Chapter 1
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in. I am lost….I am helpless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don’t see it. I fall in again.
I can’t believe I am in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it is there.
I fall in….it’s a habit…but my eyes are open.
I know where I am. It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter 5
I walk down a different street.

Lived Experience

Does anyone else have the same problem I have? I am dumbstruck by the number of people who have lived and died on Planet Earth. Neil deGrasse Tyson says approximately 10,000,000,000 (that’s 10 billion for those of you who, like me, are numerically challenged.) Given the world population is hovering around 7 billion. or so, that represents some intense population growth in the past couple of hundred years.

All we can ever know of people who went before us are what we hear about them or stories we read about them. We make huge assumptions about who they were based on hearsay and material artifacts and what people of an earlier time wrote. Our imagination of the lives of our forebears is largely apocryphal.

Understanding how others live today is a lot like that, too. We make assumptions about people that are based on scant and usually superficial information. Or more likely, curated information. I have seen resumes that are the greatest works of fiction ever published. Scandal du jour joker and “alleged” felon George Santos is only the most recent public offender.

I often wonder what daily life must have been like in the old days. Television and movies are great for filling in holes in our imagination. In movies and on TV, we are served curated scenarios that allow us to imagine the lives and lifestyles of those who lived long before we did or very differently. And in astonishing variety. Courtiers, family farmers, aristocrats, or maybe the occasional itinerant pastor who roamed the countryside with his horse and buggy spreading the word of the lord.

What fascinates me are the assumptions we make from what we observe. We can only speculate what is going on intellectually or emotionally inside other people. Past and present. I sometimes feel this frustration watching Holocaust footage. It is not only what you see, that is horrifying, but what you can’t see. Broken, skeletal, barely-clinging-to-life bodies twisted in pain convey some of their reality. But not everything.

One can only imagine the terror and humiliation of young Jewish females shaved bald and stripped naked before being paraded in front of leering Nazi camp guards. What must those young women have been thinking? What questions must they have asked themselves? What panicky racing thoughts did they have? Was their imminent demise clear in their minds or were they actually lulled into the delusion of the gas chambers as showers?

In the Steven Spielberg movie Schindler’s List, there is a particularly poignant scene – among many – where an elegant and clearly wealthy young woman disembarks from one of the trains at a camp. She dismissively gives a healthy handful of Reichsmarks as a tip. Her Jewish compatriot is already wearing the trademark black and grey striped pajamas and humbly takes away her bag. We have only the sad look on his pained face by which to gauge his reaction.

I do not understand evil very well. I do not understand what causes a teenager to walk into a building full of precious human beings with a semi-automatic weapon and deliberately start spraying bullets. Worse, I do not understand how a creature like Alex Jones who identifies as a “broadcaster” could consistently call the Sandy Hook massacre of innocent children a hoax, let alone have anyone believe him. I cannot imagine being a bereaved parent of a child victim futilely defending against that level of evil insanity. Those parents were bullied by people who believed Jones! I often wonder how those parents have made sense of their lives.

The only explanation I can come up with is that when nature is out of balance, life goes out of balance. We are a society wildly out of balance. Important institutions that were nurseries for human souls like communities or churches or extended families and even steady consistent parenting or any kind of certainty have broken down. Combining that with the information overload of our current epoch and mass breakdown was all but certain.

How is anyone supposed to internalize enough sense of self to navigate the exceptionally murky water and future that is presented to young people today? My daughter tells me that is why “mid-century” chic is so popular. People are looking backward more than forward. She also says it is why young people spend sinful amounts of money on gaudy self-care such as colored hair and three-inch acrylic nails. It is a world of “Why not?” and “What does it matter?” It is also a world of addiction. a teen suicide epidemic, easy divorces. All are indicative of a nationwide – even global – and communal loss of direction and purpose.

All of this external frazzle puts the onus back on us to create a better way of being for ourselves and our loved ones. Find a healthy and productive path and walk it with like-minded individuals who want to live better, richer, saner lives. I have a mountaineer friend who cured her booze addiction by climbing on rock and ice faces. I saw many brave if tremulous individuals surrender their to take the white chip in AA meetings as a first step toward sobriety. I know single mothers who go without to give their children everything they can give them.

Pain and obstacles are part of life. But so are joy and love. At an earlier time and maybe still in some places in the world, the interwebs of love in which people live function well enough to hold communities and each other together.

It wasn’t so long ago that a sense of community was widespread and dependable. Not without their own issues or problems to be sure. Where they don’t exist today, it behooves us to keep our counsel and to keep looking for one or create one that works for us.

Playing The Long Game

Many people are searching for “the meaning of life.” It is the biggest of all mysteries. The big question seeks an answer: “Why are we here?” Ultimately solving that mystery comes down to finding an answer that makes sense to us. We learn what matters to us by how we spend our days and find meaning in doing what we love. Spending time in a way that generates consistent rewards and satisfaction is our challenge and life’s work.

Each day, most of us get up, make coffee, pull out our daily “to-do” lists, and saddle up. I used to moan about going to jobs I didn’t like until I came across this reframing: “We don’t have to do this. We GET to do it.”

I learned that every menial, boring, petty job I had prepared me for something else. I was a demonstrator at Walmart as a teenager. I showed the public the great merits of Duralex glasses, spray-on shoeshine, and mandoline food slicers.

I learned the fine art of “salespersonship/manipulation.” I was taught to make a small pyramid out of 8-ounce Duralex drinking glasses. I’d put them in a stiff cardboard box with four sides: three glasses at the bottom, then two, with one on top. Sort of like a teeny-tiny cheerleading squad formation.

I would hand customers a soft rubber ball inviting them to “knock the pyramid down” “to prove their durability. “See?” I would chortle. “They are unbreakable,” Except when they weren’t. One or more of the glasses might shatter and occasionally they did break into little pieces. I would quickly dive in with my backup pitch.

“See? They do not break into shards like ordinary glass. They shatter into small pieces. Like a car windshield. They are so much safer than other glasses. Imagine how they would protect your family? Especially the little ones?” Duralex glasses flew off the shelf. No one wants their precious babies getting nasty and preventable cuts.

It took years to accept what humility has taught me. There were many jobs I took but I felt were “beneath me.” Some were. And others underutilized my capabilities. I eventually learned “How you do anything is how you do everything.”

Human resources types generally like to see a seamless work history with few gaps in a resume, for example. Employers are wary of workforce-age adults taking any more than two weeks a year out from employment to pursue something “frivolous” like travel. Any gap during my working years was judged as suspicious.

I worked for a manager in the federal government who had joined its ranks at 17 years old. He signed up right out of high school and had no post-secondary education. He never traveled farther away than his nearby cottage.

He took no courses except those that were necessary to keep up his job skills. He retired in his mid-50s with a full government pension and then got himself rehired as a consultant at an exorbitant daily rate. Double dipping it is called. Good planning I call it.

I know me and doubt I could have taken that route even if the opportunity had been presented. The term soul-crushing exists for a reason. I look back with gratitude at the many breaks and deviations from my work path. I wrote stories and sometimes they paid for my trip. My writing credentials got me into high-ticket conferences for free. I was exposed to great learning and then got paid for it. That was sweet.

I have landed in a place of security and stability and age-appropriate adventure. Travel was always worth it. Wise people advise you to focus on cultivating relationships with your friends and family as you live your life. At the end, they are what really matters.

The career, the fancy job titles, and the status and prestige may all dry up and blow away. Then you are left with only yourself and with your loved ones. If you are lucky.

So if your workstyle is Type A, overachieving, or workaholic, sit down and have a little chat with yourself and maybe ask why. Those sales stats and successful cases aren’t going to bring you a cup of tea when it most matters. Somewhere along the way, I feel I was lucky enough to have learned that.

Relying on “work” to stick with you for the duration isn’t realistic to count on. I think I started to learn that right around the time I learned the duplicitous claims of Duralex glasses “unbreakability.” The other claim I have refuted is that a secure if soul-deadening, nine-to-five job is the best path for everyone. If I hadn’t taken that dumb job at Walmart, I wouldn’t have had this story to tell.