Category: Life Lessons

Faking Adulthood

Boy, did I try too hard when I was young.

When you operate in life with low self-esteem, you are always trying to prove yourself. Constantly and to anyone who floats into your life and consciousness.

You are always trying to get people to believe you are worthy of their attention, love, care, inclusion.

When you have low self-esteem, this is very hard to do.

It is hard to sell someone on something you don’t really believe yourself. It is hard when you are filled with dark imaginings and can only dream of having light and love in your life.

I am not fully conversant in how one goes about building self-esteem. I believe it is an individual journey. But I know a lot about tearing one’s self down and tossing it in the junk heap.

It’s rather simple actually.

You just have to stop caring about yourself.

For years, I went out into the world with the firm belief that I didn’t matter. To counter this belief, I was very serious about just about everything. I needed to instill gravitas where I had none.

I loaded my pockets with metaphorical beach rocks. I was very serious. Very grown up. when I was still a child.

It was an odd form of self soothing and comfort. If I didn’t matter, I reckoned, then whatever hurt someone committed against me would barely register on my own internal emotional pain meter.

It did on some level, of course. But the felt impact usually wasn’t strong enough for me to stop what I was doing (or what was being done to me), stand up, turn around, face the perpetrator and simply say, “No. I will not be treated this way.”

I shudder at the irony of how simple that would have been. How other girls could do it without blinking an eye. The mothered daughters.

But that was my concocted game face. I wasn’t like “other girls” so didn’t need (or deserve) what they took for granted. (More another time on how feeling “special” creates a weird sense of entitlement and license.)

When my self-esteem started to develop, a lot of bad things stopped happening and started turning around.

Wayne Dyer famously said: “You teach people how to treat you.” My life started turning around when I decided that I deserved better treatment than I was accustomed to. I was the author and the pen.

It took practice and courage but, eventually, it worked like magic. Such is the trajectory of healing and growth. Glad I am here instead of still being there.

Imagine how validating it was to discover Aldous Huxley felt similarly in his youth. We are advised to walk lightly in this Earth. We are of it but we are also spiritual entities of light and love.

If we but allow those qualities to represent us in our day-to-day life.

Avoid the quicksand.

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.

Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.

When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.

No rhetoric, no tremolos,

no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.

Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,

trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Lightly my darling,

on tiptoes and no luggage,

not even a sponge bag,

completely unencumbered.

Aldous Huxley

(Book: Island [ad] https://amzn.to/3SeAC9P)

Fun, You Say? Maybe

If I have a kindred spirit I look to most often among dead writers. I cleave toward Dorothy Parker. She was raw and incisive in her observations and commentary.

Parker was famously known for her wit and sharp repartee. She also talked – and wrote – about sex more than her contemporaries, especially women.

That set her apart. To approach the subject of sex and relationships with a certain derring-do endeared her to me.

I haven’t yet found the courage to talk about sex as I experienced it in my lifetime. Too heavy and loaded in certain memories and affect.

I admit to a certain enviousness in Parker’s ability to write teasingly and often sardonically about men and sex and love.

When asked to use “horticulture” in a sentence, Parker snapped: “You can lead a whore to culture, but you cant make her think.”

Of high-brow college girls, she quipped: “If all the girls at Vassar were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

A high-brow form of Mae West was Parker. She taunted and teased and treated the subject matter with both a sense of familiarity and emotional distance.

It is not surprising to me that her own romantic and love life was less sizzling than her prose on the subject matter. Sayin’ – as I’ve often said before – ain’t doin’.

Such life experiences often scan better in the written word than they do in reality. I can relate.

Herewith, her poem reflecting on trysts and other manifestations of love and sex at the dawn of its disappearance.

No doubt, like Parker says, some men I knew were a lot of fun.

Good for a good time if not for a long time. Others, not so much

The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk

I was seventy-seven, come August,
  I shall shortly be losing my bloom;
I’ve experienced zephyr and raw gust
  And (symbolical) flood and simoom.

When you come to this time of abatement,
  To this passing from Summer to Fall,
It is manners to issue a statement
  As to what you got out of it all.

So I’ll say, though reflection unnerves me
  And pronouncements I dodge as I can,
That I think (if my memory serves me)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

In my youth, when the crescent was too wan
  To embarrass with beams from above,
By the aid of some local Don Juan
  I fell into the habit of love.

And I learned how to kiss and be merry- an
  Education left better unsung.
My neglect of the waters Pierian
  Was a scandal, when Grandma was young.

Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,
  And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,
I should certainly do as I then did,
  Were I given the chance to repeat.

For contrition is hollow and wraithful,
  And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory’s faithful)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

Dorothy Parker

What A Day

Technologically challenged today.

I merely tried to reboot the internet.

This should not be hard in this day and age.

And it wasn’t hard. It was darn near impossible.

I recently read this New York Times article. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/technology/smartphone-addiction-flip-phone.html

A reporter decided to switch out her smartphone for a flip phone.

In this day and age, that is courage, my friends.

It is a burgeoning movement. Well, burgeoning may be a stretch.

But more and more people are trying to opt out and do a tech and smartphone detox.

The article below in Reader’s Digest magazine was published a couple of years ago.

Same theme as the NYT article. But an even stronger and an even more positive result.

So the irony of this is, I, of course, copied the link to paste it in this post. Not once, it seems but four times!!

I’m done for today.

The dead then slow internet connection left me to write this post late in the day.

I am sharing the burden of my tech frustration with ya’ll.

Which I realize isn’t really even fair.

I am sure you all have plenty of tech and smartphone related frustration stories of your own,

I Quit My Smartphone—And It Changed My Life
https://www.readersdigest.ca/health/healthy-living/i-quit-my-smartphone
I Quit My Smartphone—And It Changed My Life
I Quit My Smartphone—And It Changed My Life
I Quit My Smartphone—And It Changed My Life

Lying Fallow

Here’s a post I wish I had written. It is about the importance – in fact, the necessity bytime – of doing nothing. It is a familiar concept in an agricultural context to let a field lie fallow.

That is, leaving something alone to rest for a period of time to let it replenish itself and regenerate. In the words that used to be popular in social parlance a few years back, making time to “sharpen the saw.”

Many people work themselves to the edge of, or even into actual, burnout. Many don’t feel they have any other choice. Single parents come to mind. And young men in a hurry.

But overworking can be a trap. I have learned that my effectiveness diminishes the more spent I become. I end up going through the motions but without much output or productivity to show for it. I am effectively treading water and sometimes, hardly even that.

Many people work consistently and doggedly toward an ephemeral or ideal goal when they don’t have to. A relentless and unbroken cycle of nonstop work can set us up for devastating downturns or even long-term failure.

The cycle is usually easy to identify. We work like crazy for months, even years, until something in us or around us breaks down or stops working. Our health. A marriage. Kids. Without taking deliberate “fallow time” to regroup and replenish ourselves, this dysfunctional outcome is pretty predictable.

So I seized on this essay by Julie Peters when I found it about the value of doing nothing. I was compelled to share it. I am sharing it because I needed to hear it. Maybe you do, too?

“I’ve been spending a lot of my evenings lately sitting at home watching Netflix.

Not very romantic, I know. On these evenings, after long days of meetings, teaching, yoga, meditation, writing and all the rest of it, I think, shouldn’t I be doing something more productive with my life—or at least more interesting?

We live in a world that privileges work, productivity, and speed, so when I take the time to do nothing in particular, I feel guilty. I am not carpe-ing any diems here. So why do I feel such a strong need to sit on my couch and watch TV shows from the early nineties?

I think it’s for the same reason growing fields need to sometimes lie fallow. Farmers will occasionally plough a field that normally grows a crop like corn or wheat, and simply not seed it for that growing season. The blank, unseeded space is a “fallow field.”

During this time of apparently nothing, the soil is regenerating, and restoring its fertility so that by next season it will be ready to grow. The farmers don’t treat the soil, inject it with fertilizers, plant better seeds, or poke at it with a magic wand. They just get out of the way. 

We want so much to have control over our lives, our health, and our happiness. In the yoga and wellness communities, we have lots of extra tools that we can’t find in conventional medicine. So what do we do? We constantly mess around with our physical issues and mental health—at the expense of the simple, humbling medicine of just getting out of the way.

A yoga teacher friend of mine had a pain in her shoulder, and she had learned all these fabulous techniques to help to release it. She was stretching it, strengthening it, rolling on it with a dowel, lying on golf balls, anything she could think of. After months of incessant pain, she finally went to see her doctor about it who asked, “Have you let it rest?”

We are a culture of human doings, not human beings. We are not in the habit of taking time off to let the body and mind do their mysterious internal work. Have you ever tried going to a coffee shop alone and drinking the coffee—maybe just looking out the window? You feel like a whack-a-mole lifting your head in that sea of noses buried in smartphones, newspapers, and laptops.

It’s hard to trust that just because you can’t see growth or change doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. My writing, for example, benefits greatly when I leave it for a few hours to think about other things.

Ideas come to me while I’m walking the dog or taking a dance class. Giving my instincts a chance to talk to me passively can be helpful. Sometimes it’s also a little scary: if I give myself the space to think and feel properly, I might discover that I need to change something.

So sleep late, watch a dumb movie, stare out the window, or go for a walk. Taking the time to lie fallow, whether it’s a few minutes at the end of the day, or months of quiet after a stressful or traumatic event, can regenerate your creativity, energy, and whatever else you may not even know that you need. Trust your fallow field, and it will be ready when the growing season comes.

Julie Peters

Pablo Neruda Said This

I agree with him.

“You start dying slowly;

if you do not travel,

if you do not read,

If you do not listen to the sounds of life,

If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly:

When you kill your self-esteem,

When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly;

If you become a slave of your habits,

Walking everyday on the same paths…

If you do not change your routine,

If you do not wear different colors

Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly:

If you avoid to feel passion

And their turbulent emotions;

Those which make your eyes glisten

And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly:

If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain

If you do not go after a dream

If you do not allow yourself

At least once in your lifetime

To run away from sensible advice

Don’t let yourself die slowly

Do not forget to be happy!

~ Pablo Neruda

Views Differing

If I needed reminding about the power of ideas, I got it yesterday.

I have long been irked by the lack of civil discourse between political parties on opposing sides of the policy and values fence in my current place of residence.

Unnecessarily hot – often hateful – and somewhat reminiscent of fights among teenagers in a school yard. Equally impotent except that views held by adults have more currency and shape political systems.

Yesterday I was discussing the relative merits of the Canadian and US health care systems. I was born in Canada. My values were shaped there. I benefitted my whole life from free health care when and as I needed it.

I explained my view is that we encourage social stability and suppress violence by providing for the least among us in society. Sure there will be abuses of the system.

But in a country like Canada, I believe we collectively accept it is a necessary cost. (I won’t argue the current state of health care in Canada. Or lack thereof. That is a whole other blog post.)

I decried the story I once read of a young man in his twenties who died after falling into a diabetic coma because he was parsing his insulin use due to the cost. I was appalled that anyone should lose their life for lack of health care.

My American friend has an opposite view. “People should die,” he asserted, “if they can’t afford health care. It is a business not a right.” It would be more than fair to say our views diverge sharply in this regard.

This is someone who does not appear to have had any significant financial or other upheaval from life setbacks that may have altered his point of view.

That said, I appreciated his candor. Even though the attitude astonished me. There was a lot of ensuing discussion about personal responsibility with which I agree. But I know the trap of addiction and am lucky enough to have overcome it.

Otherwise I may well have been one of those who succumbed to the vagaries of my disease due to an addiction I could not overcome.

That conversation cemented my view that capitalism is the key driver of values for many Americans. Sadly, however, there seems to be a paucity of awareness of just plain wrong-headedness about what the term “socialist” means. Which is what a lot of Americans think Canada is.

I was reminded of the term “confirmation bias” whereby people seek out and accept only those views and people who are aligned with what they already believe. I am pretty sure I do the same.

But I find value in trying to get my head around what shapes and drives alternate opinions. What is cooperation and growth but compromise based on mutual respect for each other’s opinions, even if we don’t share them ourselves.

I am unlikely to be swayed by someone arguing the merits of living off roadkill or bush meat, for example, but I get that some people in other cultures do.

I am not going to try to change anyone’s minds about what they believe. Everyone rationalizes their POV according to their own needs. Missionaries all over the world have tried that tactic for centuries with varying degrees of success and usually at a very high cost to the colonized.

And that said, while I may respect their point of view and entitlement to it, I am unlikely to accept a dinner invitation from the roadkill proponents any time soon. Okay, never.

Other Words

A poem I found that I deeply relate to.

“You should dance with the skeletons in your closet.

Learn their names,

So you can ask them to leave.

Have coffee with your demons.

Ask them important questions like,

“What keeps you here?”

Learn what doors they keep finding open,

And kick them out.”

Author Mason Sabre

Personally, I am sick to death of wrestling with the verdammtes things.

Kewpie Dolls

When I was little – maybe 5 or 6 years old – I loved rifling through my grandmother’s vanity in her bedroom.

It was one of those old-fashioned triptych set-ups with three mirrors of which two angled inwards for a full 180 degree view, a low middle shelf and a small rectangular stool to sit on while performing your “toilet.” (That was a word that profoundly confused me as a child mixing it up, as I did, with the other, more familiar, toilet function.)

Sitting there in front of those three mirrors, I felt very grown-up and special. Nanny had the usual array of products for a lady of her age and station in that era. There was a little pot of cheek rouge and a round brush to apply it. Lavender hand lotion. Yardley as I recall.

An ornate metal brush and comb set with a handle and a mirror that matched. Presumably so she could see the back of her hair in the mirror while brushing it. Various accounts back then said hair needed daily brushing of up to 100 strokes to keep it shiny and healthy. That practice likely did wonders for your biceps, too.

Nanny also had one or two bright red lipsticks I loved to try. Nanny allowed it for dressing up. But I still remember her wistfully saying: “My dear, your lips don’t need anything extra. They are red and naturally beautiful just as they are.”

Not that that observation cut any ice with a six year old. Everything grown up was exotic and desirable. I’d sport those bright red lips for as long as she would allow. Or until the next snack of freshly baked molasses cookies and milk wiped my lips clean again.

Healthy children usually enjoy a naturally fresh face, bright eyes, and lovely complexion. It is usually only when the ravages of puberty hit in adolescence that skin care concerns emerge. Hormones promote zits and are hell on skin texture.

Fast forward, sixty years or so. I was disturbed when I recently read and watched videos that were most disconcerting. North West, the issue and oldest daughter of Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, is ten years old. She regularly posts videos documenting her “skin care routine.”

She beats most adults in her attentiveness to the process and product quality. Unsurprisingly, she uses her Mom Kim’s skincare line. “Why,” I ask myself, “is a beautiful child worrying about her skincare routine, much less promoting it online?”

This is so disturbing on so many levels. Sure, I am a devotee of self-care and go through the whole cleanse, tone, moisturize routine regularly. But I am an adult. I need all the help I can get in that department.

But a ten year old?? Really???

Apparently this is a huge social phenomenon these days. Ten year olds shopping for skin care products at Sephora and using high end skin products if their parents can afford them.

I can make the obvious argument that if pre-teens paid as much attention to their education as they do to their looks, they might benefit more in the long run. It sure looks like that insidious message to women about the primacy of their value being their looks and attractiveness is at work.

That little North West is promoting this behavior is even more disturbing for obvious reasons. By an accident of birth, she is a potential role model for other little girls. Other ten year olds might take her direction seriously and follow her lead. Apparently this “pre-teen skin care craze” is catching on.

It’s bad enough that females have been primarily judged on their attractiveness since time immemorial. Now it seems there is a push to get young females into the skin care game well before they are ready or there is any identifiable need.

Profoundly sad. It is hard enough for children to hold on to their innocence and enjoy the relatively carefree days of childhood in this information technology saturated world. Diabolically clever marketing push on someone’s part.

In North West’s case, very likely her famous bottomed mom and bottom line oriented family. And profoundly sad for little girls who do not have the funds to follow suit. And for the parents who have to argue with them about why that particular behavior and attendant financial outlay is premature and misdirected.

I am all for children flirting with the adult roles they will play one day. Playing dress-up and wearing their mother’s high heels for a couple of hours “to see what it’s like” is good fun.

But not this. This trend is something else all together and not a healthy one at that.

Happy Facts

I needed something light and happy today.

Hope you do, too. In any case, that’s what you’re getting.

From Reader’s Digest.

That constant companion and friend in doctor’s waiting rooms everywhere.

Well, up until COVID’s dreaded magazine-sharing buzzkill, at least.

40 Happy Facts That’ll Make Your Day a Little Better
40 Happy Facts That’ll Make Your Day a Little Better

It’s All Been Done

It amuses and befuddles me how life works. Okay. How the Universe works. And even more explicitly than that. How the Universe often comes up with messages meant just for me at the very moment I need them. What’s up with that?

Lest this sound wildly narcissistic, do not imagine I believe myself to be any different than any other human being in this respect.

I believe we all get guidance and messages from “somewhere” about how best to live our lives. I am not at all certain where that “somewhere” is actually located. It might be internal guidance from deep within us. That “still, small voice” of Biblical fame.

It might be from somewhere in the Universe “out there.” Though I admit that concept is a little flaky. Especially if you think about it. Not something you can see, touch or visit.

The concept of god is equally flaky if you think about that for too long either. Explain?

“Well, he has a long grey beard and lives in Heaven and doles out favors and punishments as he sees fit in his all-seeing and all-knowing wisdom. And he makes the call about when you die.” Ya. Well. Okay.

The peace I have made with these “messages” we receive and their attribution is that “something” (not necessarily someone) created all of what is around us. Created “us,” in fact.

And I have no more insight into how it all came about and keeps going than I do into advanced calculus. Or even basic calculus come to think of it.

So I was moved to write about this subject today thanks to my friends of a couple of years now at KN Literary Publishing Services. Today in an email, they shared three quotes.

Which quote feels like exactly what you needed to hear today?

Hi Margot!

#1: “If you let yourself tell those smaller anecdotes or stories, the overarching capital-S Story will eventually rise into view.” — Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir

#2: “You must remember that your story matters. What you write has the power to save a life, sometimes that life is your own.” ― Stalina Goodwin, Make It Write!

#3: “The writer’s life requires courage, patience, empathy, openness. It requires the ability to be alone with oneself. Gentle with oneself. To be disciplined, and at the same time, take risks.” — Dani Shapiro, Still Writing

I am a long-time fan of memoirist Mary Karr. Normally I would choose her quote just because she is so damn smart and most of what she writes is so totally on point.

But I chose #2. Maybe because lately my faith is ebbing a little in this blog writing exercise. Maybe because I well realize my voice is only one of millions out there.

Millions of others are cranking out musings and insights and selling their expertise and knowledge like a mid-West US land office in the late 1800s (in the “real” world and marketplace).

The last line of Stalina Goodwin’s quote served up a timely reminder for me: I write for myself. Yes, in part, to save myself.

Or maybe in the hope I will impart to nameless others how I saved myself. Like the lines on looseleaf, I write every day to capture what I need to stay within those lines.

That is the power of ritual. It is easy to fall off or away from our chosen path if we simply stop doing it. In the past, I have done exactly that. I lived for long, fallow periods in a creative desert where my most intentional act was getting up and out of bed each morning. Depression is a total creative buzzkill.

So thinking back on those “dry” days reenergizes me somewhat. I know it doesn’t mean a tinker’s dam whether I write this daily blog post or not. But here is what I do know.

I know for sure that others feel exactly the same way. Not about blog posts, perhaps, but about going to the office or factory or church or staying in their marriage or even getting up and going out of the house every day.

I know with certainty that most others occasionally question their worth, inherent value and what meaning their life has on this planet.

And just as we all must breathe air, drink water and eat regularly to survive, we need to nurture and regularly revisit what gives our lives meaning. Stop any of these actions for too long and life as we know it (as well as any hope for future creative expression) stops.

As I read further into KN Literary’s observations on the quote I chose, I learned questions of meaning is generic to spiritual writers in particular. And spiritual writers – they caution – are rarely “overnight successes.” Not that that is what I am going for.

The most resonant takeaway was that the wisdom spiritual writers share must be their own. My life has been influenced – and yes, even saved – by dozens of wise and spiritual writers whose works I stumbled across just when I needed them.

What an honor it would be to think that someone read something of mine and it gave them the insight they need to make a difficult and necessary step to move forward in their life.

The lyrics in one of the Barenaked Ladies most iconic songs, says: “It’s all been done before.” The song is largely about the cyclical nature of life and love. It suggests that everything we do and experience has happened before and will inevitably happen again. 

So I know what I write about has been explored and written about many times before. So what? It is undoubtedly true, as good ol’ King Solomon opined: “There is nothing new under the sun.” Or, as good ol’ Will Shakespeare put it, “Therein lies the rub”.

But not everything “under the sun” has been explored or written about by me. So I’ll keep at it for that reason alone, if no other presents.

With that, me and the Universe rest our case.