Category: Life

Susannah Says

Anyone who has lost touch with old friends and then circled back with them years later is often taken aback. Not necessarily at how they have aged but at how grown up and mature their kids have become.

This is a nod to Susannah (nee Margison) Everett. A fraternal twin to Gordon and born within a few weeks of my own son, Cameron in 1986. Her parents Jennifer and Douglas are longtime friends.

Lest I bury the lead (and pretty much already have), Susannah switched tracks after law school and decided not to pursue law as a lifetime career.

She opened her own business as a coach to other professional women advising them on how to manifest their dreams. I can think of no-one better suited to that calling.

I’m sharing this post that she recently published. I often do that when I come across someone else’s words that I wish I had written.

The words and sentiments Susannah shares are strong both in vulnerability and wisdom. Similar to Susannah, I left a law career “to do my own thing.” The parameters for women to ascend in the profession of law are tight and restrictive (especially for older women as I was when I was called to the bar).

To me, it meant the road ahead in law was fated to be nothing else if not dull and predictable and not terribly satisfying. The cachet and status of a law career often reads better on paper than it plays out in reality, except for a favored few.

Susannah left law awhile back and married a doctor. She is a beautiful and happy young woman doing her own thing.

And she is clearly wise beyond her years. As you will glean from her words below. Not a bad outcome for Doug and Jenny’s kid. 🙂 The same kid I last saw when she was wearing diapers and a onesie.

She done growed.

A few years ago, I felt rejected and that rejection felt MONUMENTAL.

I was wallowing in what I’d lost. The fun I would have had. The experience I would have gained. The lost financial upside.

Then someone said something to me that felt like the pick-me-up my heart (and ego) really needed. Want to know what it was?

“Susannah, this is the BEST thing that could have happened to you”.

You know what? That comment became like an omen. It lit up something in me that was determined to get over the pain of the rejection and capitalize on the opportunity it presented.

The reality was that (now lost) opportunity wasn’t all it was cracked up to be when I sat down and thought about it.

I was settling.

I had been “playing small”

Better things were not only out there, but attainable.

And the longer I was focused on the lost opportunity and tried to get it back, the less space I had for something better.

As soon as I started playing with the ideas that “rejection is just redirection” and “if it’s not this it’s something better” and that “life doesn’t happen TO you, it happens FOR you”, magic (it felt like magic) started happening.

The bigger, better, more perfectly suited opportunities started showing up.

While it’s important to honour the feelings that come with rejection, it’s also important to keep them and the situation into perspective.

What if being rejected was the best thing that could have happened? What would be possible?

You owe it to yourself to find out.

Vellichor

Isn’t that a beautiful word? Want to know what it means? Do you think you know how to pronounce it?

Pronunciation is easy: velly – core. And it means this:

“The pensive nostalgia and temporality of used bookstores; the feeling evoked by the scent of old books or paper.”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vellichor

This word and its definition triggered a thousand pleasant memories. Of the library at the University of New Brunswick – my first alma mater. Of wonderful old bookstores I would saunter through in Toronto or London, England. There were many smaller and obscure bookstores I would happen upon in my travels that evoked similar feelings.

The feelings evoked by the ambience and smell were always the same. Comfort. Coziness. Class and certainty. Books that were old enough to emit that odor had obviously been around a while. That spoke to their longevity and value.

Vellichor is as much an emotional response as much as anything else. It evokes the Zeitgeist of a slower and simpler time. I could spend a full afternoon wandering from one section to another in a bookstore or library in search of nothing in particular.

Bookstores and libraries are designed for browsing and browse I did. For hours on end. I fear its’ passing.

“Big box” bookstores have subsumed countless numbers of small “Mom and Pop” bookstores. Indeed, that very phenomenon was the plot line (along with the eventual romantic hookup between Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks) in the 90s hit movie, You’ve Got Mail.

Ryan owned a small children’s bookstore she inherited from her mother called The Shop Around the Corner. Hanks played the “villain” Joe Fox whose family owned business was mega bookstores. (Think Chapters, and Barnes & Noble, etc.) The two unbeknown to each other business rivals meet online and strike up a romance not knowing each other’s true identities.

And that is the plot wrinkle that the movie revolves around. Two business rivals with widely divergent business philosophies. Spoiler alert: Ryan finally decides to sell the shop as the new Fox Bookstore crushes her sales. Love wins out in the end. (Why else make the movie?)

But I bet Fox Books didn’t have the vellichor of The Shop Around the Corner. That quality cannot be bought or sold. Like fine wine or delicate soft cheeses, the aroma of fusty old books must gestate and develop slowly.

Another wonderful book turned movie along the same lines was 84, Charing Cross Road. That plot centers around a twenty year correspondence between US author Helene Hanff and UK resident Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers, located at the eponymous address in London, England.

The film featured Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins with a sweet and simple tale of a long friendship that unfolds in letters based on the writers’ mutual love and respect for books.

A reviewer notes how much The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, a novel comprised of only letters between the characters, owes to 84, Charing Cross Road. Each book (which later became movies) ooze simplicity and charm for what I fear is becoming a bygone era.

I’m not sure anyone even has the time and patience for that type of correspondence anymore. In a world where children are no longer even taught cursive writing, it is hard to imagine that era will come again. It is a great cultural and experiential loss.

Musty libraries and bookstores account for some on my happiest memories. I didn’t have a word to describe what it was about them that I loved so much before. Now I do. Vellichor.

Wherever and whenever I find it still exists, I shall deliberately seek it out. Like a muzzled wild boar seeking out truffles. The comparison may not be particularly flattering at first glance but the urgency and intensity of the hunt is completely in synch.

Books are an addiction I have for which I have no intention of seeking a cure.

Fun At Funerals

Funerals. Bad word. Right up there with shingles, scabies, dog poop and malaria as unwanted life events. Ew.

Yet, they are inevitable. People we love will die. People we don’t love will die. Lots of people we don’t know will die. And we will die.

Here I am borrowing loosely from the LGBTQ anthem: “We’re here. We’re queer. Get used to it.” I say: “We’re here. We’re mortal. Get used to it.” Admittedly not anywhere near as mellifluous.

But are funerals the absolutely worst occasions we have to take part in? That pretty much depends on the above associations. Did you love the deceased? Did you hate the deceased while s/he was living? Did you even know him or her?

The answer to these questions will definitely inform the tone and your emotional response to the funeral you are attending. Although it begs the question, if you didn’t even know the person, what were you doing at their funeral anyway?

My mother used to regularly visit funeral homes in her home town whether she knew the deceased or not. She always stayed afterwards for the free food and baked goodies.

A nutritional mainstay of her diet for a good number of her later years actually. But this is not about my mother so I won’t go there. Not directly at any rate.

I am trying to say that not all funerals are bad. Some engender relief. Some engender gratitude for the release from pain and suffering. Some have unwelcome but noteworthy comic elements.

I have the worst funny story about my great-uncle’s funeral back in the last century. To say Great Uncle Leigh was not a religious man would have been a dramatic understatement.

He worked nearly his whole life as a logger in the backwoods of provincial New Brunswick, Canada and later as a carpenter and house builder. Leigh deftly managed to dodge the marriage and kids trap as a young man. However, as old age and decrepitude started to set in, he apparently felt it wise to give up his bachelor status.

He tossed his single lifestyle in favor of a comely widow hovering in about his age range. A comely widow whose baking and cooking skills were locally renowned. It could be said Uncle Leigh knew exactly which side his bread was buttered on.

The only gaping and discernible gap between them was Millie’s feverish commitment to God, and the Baptist church and Uncle Leigh’s religious avoidance of all of it. Not only did he avoid church as an attendee but he also avoided any of its teachings. Uncle Leigh was a proudly devout heathen through and through.

So he and the widow did the deed. Got married, I mean. Some years and many, many apple pies later, Millie passed. In due course, Leigh got older and sick and soon followed Millie on the path into Heaven’s kitchen. (Though, heathen that he was, that point is certainly debatable.)

A funeral was arranged. Without a church to call home and no preacher who knew him personally, there was no religious eulogist familiar enough with him to summarize his life and character. The pastor of Millie’s church was summoned.

Now as an audience member in the family pew, it certainly seemed to me that the ad hoc preacher did not know anything at all about what – or more precisely – who he was talking about.

Then the preacher man’s eulogy launched into a passionate anecdote about sitting – for a time – beside Uncle Leigh on his deathbed. The preacher fairly swooned as he shared his ecstatic news with the assembled gathering.

According to him, our beloved Uncle Leigh, “in his waning hours,” “had accepted salvation and the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal Savior.” Apparently this happened just as Uncle Leigh was hovering on the brink of passing over to his “final reward.”

Sitting amongst other relatives in the family pew, including my mother, I did not take this news well. The image of sweet but tough and resolute old heathen Uncle Leigh accepting the Lord Jesus Christ into his house, let alone into his bedroom and heart, hit me entirely the wrong way.

I struggled to suppress a chuckle. As the preacher droned on about the salvation of dear Uncle Leigh’s immortal soul, the rising chuckle gained momentum.

It was everything I could do not guffaw out loud, in what I knew would have been a most inappropriate and shameful outburst.

Still I was doubled over in my seat in the pew, holding my sides, rocking quietly, in an attempt to regain some self-control. At a point, I just jumped up and fled the sanctuary. The laughter exploded out of me once I was safely out of anyone’s hearing in the hall outside.

If you had actually known Uncle Leigh, the absurdity of the preacher’s announcement was too ridiculous for words. It took me several minutes to compose myself.

But compose myself I finally did. I slithered quietly back into the sanctuary and settled into my seat in the family pew – once again, the very model of grief and decorum.

The little break I took meant the funeral had moved on to another speaker, blessedly. My composure and the family’s dignity were intact.

Then, on my shoulder, I felt a gentle tap. I looked around and saw a white glove covered hand and behind that the sweetest and most compassionate-looking elderly lady with tightly curled blue hair and a tender expression of sympathy.

“There, there, dear,” she comforted me. “I know that grief can be overwhelming when you lose a dear one.” I should have been happy she completely misread the reason I fled the sanctuary.

As it happened, her overture had the unfortunate effect of forcing me to once again repress laughter bubbling up within me. Admittedly, I was pretty emotional. But in the entirely wrong way for the occasion at hand.

I smiled broadly, patted her gloved hand still on my shoulder, and whispered sincere thanks for her kindness and concern.

It may have been Uncle Leigh we gathered to bury that day and whose life we celebrated, but, in retrospect, I feel I dodged a bullet.

At the very least, I managed to save the family’s dignity and my own on that sad and sombre and august occasion.

Seriously close call.

Better Late Than Never

An interesting English language idiom.

I was traveling today so my blog post is late – but “better late than never” say I.

It’s been a recurring fact in my life. I got to do many things later in life than was “normal.”

A happy marriage, for example, which I presently enjoy. Late but the miracle is that it happened at all.

I went to law school much later than my peers did with recently graduated undergrad colleagues, but I did it. Better late than never.

It’s a useful phrase and philosophy. It is much too easy to give in to the perception that it is too late to try something new. Whether that is mountain climbing or a graduate degree or that year off you’ve been meaning to take since you started working decades ago. Or sailing the world.

Whatever it is, if you have a hankering to dust off a dream, go for it. Learn piano. Write a book (personally relevant). Start a blog. (also personally relevant). Travel to Machu Picchu (which good friends recently did with their adult kids). Learn to ballroom dance or take up oil painting.

Whatever you didn’t do when you wanted to do it because life was serious and you needed to settle down and be responsible.

I once had a boyfriend who wanted to change direction and ditch law school. He dreamt of opening a bar instead of taking the bar. But he became a corporate lawyer and life took off in that direction.

He’s retired now and I’ve often wondered if he ever took up that challenge. It would warm my soul to think he had.

I did some digging around on the interweb and found some other familiar examples of “better than never.” The examples should resonate with some of you.

—  The dress arrived after the dance but better late than never—I’ll wear it to the next event.

—  I handed in my term paper a day late, but it was better late than never because the teacher only marked it down one grade.

—  Our flight was delayed 5 hours but better late than never because they closed the airport after the plane departed.

—  We only arrived at the game at halftime but better late than never.

— Just come over now—it’s better late than never and Grandpa would really appreciate the effort.

—  We just received the report. We should have had it yesterday but it’s better late than never.

—  A: Sorry it took me a year to pay you back the $500 I borrowed. 
  B: Thanks, it’s better late than never.

—  Unfortunately, we arrived when dessert was being served but it was better late than never.

Synonyms

  • it’s high time
  • not a moment too soon

I’m sorry this post was so hideously late today. The vagaries of travel. But it’s been published before midnight. The daily writing streak of the past nine months is still unbroken.

Better late than never. 🙂

New Year, Old Me

Hope is a wondrous thing. I’d even go so far as to say it is lifesaving.

In the face of all challenges and heartbreak, hope can rise. Bidden sometimes. At other times, it just seems to pop up. The proverbial beacon of light and direction sitting off in the distance that appears to us, seemingly out of nowhere.

I sometimes wonder how often that very scenario played out for mariners of old. In the middle of being mercilessly tossed about on savage seas with death but a rogue wave away, off in the distance, the lookout spots a lighthouse.

Hope rises. Life continues. The sailors get to live another day.

As we mark this first day of a new year in our calendar, we are similarly touched by hope for the year to come. Hope for renewal. Hope for freedom from pain – emotional and/or physical. Hope for better news. Hope for sanity and peace of mind.

It is, of course, a false construct. Today is no different than yesterday in reality. We are not Cinderella who transforms into a princess and steps into a radically altered lifestyle. Of course, at her midnight, she reverted to her previous state. But altered.

The prince she had met and dazzled set out to find her again. That particular “New Year’s Eve” did not make the changes in her life that night. They foretold them.

Change happens like that for most of us, too. Whatever deficiencies we want to address in our life often have to be faced full-on in an instant. Then the slow process of change gets underway. The outcome we want may take weeks, months or years to accomplish. Then, one day, if we’re lucky and have worked hard enough, we are there.

I had this experience with both drinking and smoking. There was a time when I could not imagine my lifestyle would ever be other than what it was. I took some sense of satisfaction in cultivating the image of a hard-working, hard-living journalist for whom alcohol and nicotine were mandatory kit in the trade. An Ernest Hemingway-compatible type of broad.

Confirmation of a pregnancy stopped smoking in its tracks. I inherited my father’s Dutch will of iron. Ditching drink took a little longer. But with almost 24 years of sobriety behind me now, I can hardly remember how or why alcohol was ever part of my life at all.

Yet through it all, I am still me. For better or worse.

I have certainly changed from my younger self. But the essence of who I am is still there. I believe it is that way for most of us. Change does not always present with glaring neon signs in our day-to-day lives. I still have laundry to fold, beds to make, meals to make and dear friends to connect with. Life goes on.

This eventuality can be a hard learning during the egocentricity of youth phase. For some that phase lasts a lifetime. When I learned the phrase “hissy fit,” I recall how mortified and impressed I was by its’ resonance. “Boo.” “Hiss.” “I don’t wanna.” Ya. That sounded pretty similar to me having a temper tantrum.

I am beginning to find some solace in the immutable fact of my own humanity. That is allowing me to ease up on myself. The big ambitions I had for my life as a youth have been abandoned or pretty much dissipated.

And oddly, I find myself these days in the exact situation I always secretly craved. A happy home life. A wonderful and satisfying marriage to a man I think is the coolest dude on Planet Earth. I had similar feelings about my beloved Yorkie, Bailey. Not that I am drawing comparisons between the two, I only mean to say that when I love someone or something, I am all in.

So I did not create a long and unwieldy and unrealistic list of New Year’s resolutions meant to kick in today. There are a few things and unhelpful habits I want to discard. There are a few things I want to do more of. Others I want to do less of.

Like watching TV news as I said recently. That activity is like voluntarily setting yourself up to develop brain fungus. Ptooey. Don’t need it. Don’t want it.

I find myself drifting back to the homely arts and wishing to strengthen my connection to nature. I want to do more of nothing and less constant of the constant unending to-do lists and busywork. It is high time.

You see life goes on with or without us. That is a hard and fundamental learning we all must get eventually. In the face of that truism, we discover the parameters of own life and what we can realistically achieve for our own happiness and that of others around us.

Peggy Lee, the legendary lounge singer from the last century, sang a song called: “Is That All There Is?”

Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing
Let’s break out the booze and have a ball
If that’s all there is

I know what you must be saying to yourselves
“If that’s the way she feels about it, why doesn’t she just end it all?”
Oh, no. Not me
I’m not ready for that final disappointment
Cause I know just as well as I’m standing here talking to you
When that final moment comes and I’m breathing my last breath,
I’ll be saying to myself … is that all there is?

https://genius.com/Peggy-lee-is-that-all-there-is-lyrics

I’m going to follow Peggy Lee’s advice. One day, you may discover all of your hopes and dreams and expectations may sit shattered on the sidewalk outside your house.

You may be left to wonder why you lived this life at all and what it was all about. That realization has finally hit me. I’m a grain of sand on a beach. A single star in the heavens.

No matter. I have friends and some family members who love me. I love them back. I plan to keep writing and, as Peggy advises, “hope to keep dancing and having a ball.”

Minus the booze, of course.

123123

So here we are. December 31, 2023. New Year’s Eve 2023. What a year it’s been.

The world in which I am growing older seems nothing like the world I grew up in. And yet in some respects, it is exactly the same.

I lived through Watergate and Nixon’s “resignation.” A wise and timely choice that he made to avoid the impeachment motion that would have ousted him from the Presidency anyway.

Today, we are dealing with the non-stop histrionics of another corrupt and ambitious soul who is determined to reclaim the Presidential office. Whatever else Richard Nixon was, he exhibited a modicum of decency in certain regards.

Respect for women for starters. His vile thoughts contained within his inner circle. No suggestion of insurrection.

War is raging in the Ukraine and the Gaza strip. Though less invested in these wars than Vietnam personnel wise, the US Congress still votes billions for support for its preferred victors in both conflicts. War is good business, after all.

The headlines of 2023 were full of doom and gloom. Unprecedented wildfires of such scope and intensity as have never been seen in the world before. Not in our time anyway. And so the alarm bells about the negative effects of climate change are rung harder and louder.

Billionaires traveling to the moon in their customized spaceships. Moon travel now a business model designed to rack up even more millions for their coffers. These shrewd businesspeople don’t have stars in their eyes or great dreams for the evolution and betterment of humanity. They have a keen eye on their bottom line.

All of this demonstrates a world badly out of balance with the fundamental laws of nature. I often read that billionaires wealth can be compared to the mental illness of hoarding. The disconnect between what they really need and what they want is incalculable.

And yet, we must adjust to the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. Our only personal defense to all of this external craziness in my opinion is rigorous environmental and personal mental hygiene.

I am no longer watching TV news, for example. It has drifted so far from the fundamental ethics of journalism that I once practiced as to be unrecognizable.

Female journalists who once consciously worked to present a professional and respectable image now focus on their sex appeal. Where has the thinking gone that women professionals needed to restrain exuding their inherent sexuality to be taken seriously? Another quaint and old-fashioned notion.

I am choosing to eat more consciously. Don’t get me wrong. I occasionally enjoy fast food as much as anyone. But beyond the dictates of a good dietary regime is the pleasure that comes from “home cooking.” I’m not a saint and drift away from healthy eating more often than I care to admit. But I am conscious of it and aware that healthy eating is my choice.

I’ve taken up yoga again. I had forgotten how important that discipline is. And demanding. I’ve always laughed at those who see yoga as a simple and not at all strenuous exercise. You try holding a spinal twist or tree pose for several minutes. You’ll soon discover how essential strength and balance are to the practice.

So better habits – mentally and physically are on my list of New Year’s resolutions. Wisely I started them a few weeks ago so as not to experience the tapering off on resolutions at the end of January that so many experience.

When I quit alcohol for good, I started in October 1999 on Thanksgiving Day. That way I had a few weeks of sobriety under my belt before the new year and new millennium in the year 2000. After 23 years of sobriety, that strategy and resolution seems to have worked out.

I am doing the usual stock taking today. Reflecting on the year that just passed and hopeful for positive change in the year ahead. It is ever thus.

I should mention this is my last post for 2023. My 293rd to be exact. I’ll remind you how it started. On March 14 during a writing retreat in New Smyrna Beach of this year just past, I set out to write a daily blog post for one full year. I am flabbergasted by how close that one year anniversary is now.

The logic when I started was to grease the wheels of my internal writing machine in aid of finally revving up the engine of creativity to write “that book” – a memoir still conceived to explore the consequences and my strategies for surviving a violence and addiction addled childhood in a small town Canadian provincial backwater.

So there’s one resolution I will need to make and resolve in the new year. After the one year anniversary for this blog, then what? I am still writing for me. I’ve connected with a few kindred spirits along the way in the form of regular readers. That’s encouraging.

Like most of 2024 or any future speculation, there will be countless unknowns. And like every new year and every day on the planet, I will live as I always do. Hoping for the best while being prepared for the worst.

Buckle up, folks. Whatever else comes in 2024, it will inevitably challenge and change us. For my part, I think I’ll head to the kitchen now and prepare a “colorful” and nutritious New Year’s Eve brunch.

That outcome I can say with some certainty, is something I can control and look forward to. We all do what we can when we can as we can. Happy New Year, folks! See you next year.

Flying Apart

I try to be even tempered about flying commercial airlines these days. What choice do I have? But it is not an experience I ever look forward to.

In the old days (twenty+ years ago), I used to love flying. Airplanes took me to some pretty cool places around the world: Argentina, South Korea, India, Egypt, Europe, Costa Rica, Hong Kong and all over Canada, to name a few destinations.

I was also accustomed to some rough road travel outside the Western world. I’m thinking of being part of a mule train for three days in the Himalayas. The ten days I spent riding across the Andes on horseback with an adventurous group of fellow travelers.

And fighting for breathing room on some of the oldest and ricketiest so-called buses in India. Vast numbers of locals sat on the roof and hung off the sides. Talk about held together by duct tape and chewing gum.

I loved that kind of traveling. Not only were the experiences cool, but they made for interesting memories. Now airline travel is just about as rough and memories of the experiences are not so great.

I loved flying and air travel so much I applied to become a flight attendant when I was 17. Too young, I learned. “Write back to us when you turn 19,” they wrote encouragingly in my rejection letter.

By then, I’d been accepted at university and my life went in an entirely different direction. I always wonder how life would have turned out had I reapplied to the airline instead of university when I was 19. Life is all about choices and I’d made mine.

In short flights between my home province of New Brunswick to see my Dad in Newfoundland, we almost anticipated being blocked out of St. John’s by fog. That meant rerouting us to Gander in the days when airlines paid for the hotel and supplied meal vouchers. It was the very epitome of excitement when we were teenagers.

Fast forward several decades later. Free meals for flight delays? Ha. Helpful airline personnel? If they are civil, I feel I have scored major. Forget efficiency. I just paid $200 to transport an empty box on this flight with me as baggage. (Yes. Really. It was less expensive than shipping the goods I will put in it another way, but seriously?)

My husband was a pilot with Pan American World Airways back in the day. They served prime rib roast beef prepared in an on board oven in first class with cloth napkins, free wine and real silver cutlery. The linen napkins had a small buttonhole so gentlemen could attach them to their shirt. Bygone era.

So when this Youtube video by Robert Reich popped up, it made sense of a lot going on in the aviation industry these days. As intelligent, funny and charming as economist Robert Reich is, his message is most discouraging.

Even my husband – a bona fide world traveler and former commercial airline pilot who had flown too many hours in his career to even count – is a most reluctant airline passenger these days. We have settled for embellishing our everyday meals with the linen napkins he kept as souvenirs from aviation’s Golden Age.

Airline travel is never going to be again what airline travel once was. Robert Reich explains why. It’s about 6 minutes long.

The Egocentricity of Bad Luck

I don’t know about you, but I find it hard not to take bad luck personally.

I have this belief in karma. So when bad luck happens, I don’t just blame happenstance.

I mentally review my list of recent behaviors as if to find the source of the bad luck. As if I somehow “created” it. Sometimes I believe I do.

That actually seems a bit silly. It reads as if I believe there is some kind of “tit for tat” accounting system in the Universe that rewards people (okay, me) for my good behavior and punishes for my bad behavior.

If the Universe IS trying to punish and teach me a lesson, it is a little bit of overkill. I beat myself up thoroughly enough over real or imagined harm I have done to others.

I can be spleeny and petty, I grant you. I am trying to come to grips with that. But I also have deep spiritual faith. So I actually do believe on some level that bad actions are punished and good behavior is rewarded. Eventually. Granted, it may be on our deathbed.

I know that seems a little silly. It is hard to imagine “god” (whoever or whatever we conceive him/her to be), sitting up on a big white cloud doing accounting all day.

I mean, given the size of the world population, god’s accounting firm in charge of “good” and “bad” behavior must be vast. And I can think of no greater irony for someone who has lived a life worthy enough to land them in heaven to spend an eternity doing accounting in god’s firm. Of any kind.

So my spleeniness challenges me. It is embarrassing to disclose what a kick I get out of my revenge fantasies. “I will do this bad thing to this abuser” and “that bad thing to that other abuser.” The fantasies get so convoluted and ornate that I can be very well pleased with myself for their sheer creativity.

What I am supposed to do for spiritual and emotional growth in the face of “bad luck” – I have read – is to let go. Release the offending incident and the offenders. Karma is supposed to have its way with them. Rotten fruit eventually falls from the tree and all that.

It is laudable when business success is attributed strictly to “good luck” and “talent” and “hard work.” It rarely is the whole picture.

Ruthlessness is an essential quality when your primary goals are to beat the competition and rise to the top of however you define success. Wealth. Power. Privilege. Access. Freedom.

Most of us want to get there or to some semblance of there. Not a great many do.

Those who do are not always eager to share the secrets of their success at the outset. Well, at least not until they are well-settled and satisfied with the level of success they have personally achieved.

Or they get old and start stock-taking. It is usually only then they can turn around to face the masses and imbue them with the “wisdom” they gained to get where they got.

When the superrich encounter bad luck, I am sure they just mow their competition down. They don’t give a fiddler’s fig about the impact steamrollering the opposition will have if less than ethical strategies work in their best interest.

So when bad luck descends, where do you go with it in your mind? Do you use “stock excuses”? “If I hadn’t done this, then that wouldn’t have happened.” “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all.” And so on.

The truth is we don’t always necessarily know why bad luck happens. We just know it is part of life. The losses and insults we have to process are on a very wide continuum indeed. There is a planet of difference between losing an expensive pair of glasses and losing a limb in combat.

But processing bad luck goes through some predictable stages. And ultimately, the response always comes back to what we can and cannot control about the bad luck that has befallen us.

We can go to an optician to replace a pair of glasses. We can undertake the difficult process of rehabilitation in the face of a lost limb. Though the losses vary in scope, whatever issue you are facing must ultimately be addressed in the same way.

So use whatever justification is necessary in the face of bad luck to process and make sense of it for yourself. Maybe it is your karma. Maybe it isn’t. Maybe you should have been more careful with those glasses. Maybe you should have never signed up with the military.

Every action we take has inherent risks. Heck, every day on the planet is a risk. Some people who got up this morning won’t see tomorrow.

I do find it helpful to try to put my bad luck in perspective. There is that old Chinese proverb about the farmer whose horse runs away. Everyone sees it as bad luck until the escaped horse returns with a herd of mares, thus adding to his wealth.

The caution is inherent in Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, If: “If you can meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.”

Maybe my recent bad luck has nothing whatsoever to do with me or karma or the wrong place at the wrong time. But as I said initially, it is sometimes hard to recognize that in the first blush of searing disappointment or loss.

I need to keep working on keeping myself emotionally and spiritually balanced in the face of “bad luck.” Thankfully, in this instance at least, nobody died.

For that, I feel grateful and profoundly lucky. Always.

Dylan’s Prayer

This morning, I was searching for a prayer.

I need to find one for my special someone.

I need one for my friends.

I need one for me.

Why hadn’t I realized until just now that this Bob Dylan song is basically a prayer in the form of a poem that is sung?

Artists are tricky that way.

I believe the trick to getting older is staying mentally young. It’s an inside job.

As our bodies and our lives evolve and change, we have the option to cave into these limitations. Or we can use corporal limitations to be free in our minds.

There is no value in an old jock endlessly reminiscing about bygone glory days on the football field.

There is no value in a beautiful woman tracking, tracing and bemoaning every new wrinkle and loss of fullness in her face.

You don’t need body strength to paint, read, write, listen to (or create) music.

What you need is a young heart, mind and spirit. How you do that is up to you. Spend time around children and watch them play. Bring food or flowers to friends or strangers. Dance. Laugh. Always, always laugh.

Because as tragic and heavy as life can be, hard things can be reframed with mirth and light. Comedians make a living off this.

The journey of life is short though it may seem long. Don’t waste more minutes than necessary stuck in the mud of dark feelings on the side of life’s road.

Those immutable elements of reframing are always available as they are an inherent part of you.

May you stay forever young.

“May God bless and keep you always

May your wishes all come true

May you always do for others

And let others do for you

May you build a ladder to the stars

And climb on every rung

May you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous

May you grow up to be true

May you always know the truth

And see the lights surrounding you

May you always be courageous

Stand upright and be strong

And may you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy

May your feet always be swift

May you have a strong foundation

When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful

May your song always be sung

And may you stay forever young.”

Bob Dylan, https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/forever-young/

This Way or That

I watched an encaenia address online by actor/comedian Jim Carrey in which he told the graduating class they would consistently have two choices moving forward in their lives: love or fear. It made me deeply uncomfortable.

Fear is my old buddy. My go-to companion when I face something new and scary. In the old days, it was before a date maybe. Or before starting a new job. Or traveling somewhere I’d never been before to do something I’d never tried.

I know fear intimately and had spent years building that relationship. It is comfortable like wearing a broken in pair of slippers is comfortable or slipping into a well-worn bathrobe.

Fear has not served me particularly well, however. It often scuppered new opportunities before they had a chance to develop. Bear in mind that younger me was pretty much an emotional basket case, somewhat beyond a normal young person’s insecurities.

I had a tiny, little suitcase full of tricks I pulled out regularly to get me through daily life. An innate intelligence. A strong survival instinct. A pleasing and mostly acquiescent personality.

What I tried to hide – unsuccessfully – was the trunk of insecurities that suitcase sat on top of. I could suss out negative perspectives and opinions people were going to have of me before I even met them. I was my own self-contained judge, jury and executioner in social and work situations before I even showed up.

For the most part, my little bag of tricks worked sufficiently to allow me to “get by” in life. My father explicitly expressed that as a reasonable expectation for me. For my Dad, “getting by” was sufficient. Happiness and success were unrealistic, and mostly unattainable, life goals.

I was one of those kids who was held in sway by parental neuroses and limitations for far longer than I am comfortable admitting. In retrospect, it is clear from their own failures that they had no authority to advise anyone on the ingredients for making a happy life.

At a point, I honestly believed taking advice from anyone other than them would have, in some weird way, meant disrespecting them. After all, they knew me best, I believed. Didn’t they? Over time, I came to realize that wasn’t true. How could they? I didn’t even know myself.

So choosing love as a starting point is something of a weird choice for me. My old buddy fear largely dictates the script. “They’ll hate me.” “They are out to get me.” “I won’t measure up.” And because I leaned into that mantra in the past, fear turned out to be most often correct.

What shook me out of it? Seeing my parents as they were and not as I conceived them to be was the starting point. Learning that love is an action and not just words was another. They loved me and said it often – in their own way and within their own limited view of what love was.

That turning point also came – a little later than I care to admit – when I realized my children did not need to hear me natter on or share my wisdom about avoiding life mistakes. All they needed from me was love and support.

Instead of absorbing my well-meaning but misplaced advice, they were and are completely capable of figuring out the rest for themselves. I’ve got two smart kids.

So the internal struggle between choosing love over fear is still at play within me. I have recently been choosing fear and revenge fantasies over acceptance and opening my heart to the consequences of a crushing disappointment.

All my spiritual readings tell me there is learning to be had here. To face disappointment as if you had actually chosen it. That the Universe is folding as it should.

Fear takes all together too much pleasure in the petty and picayune scenarios it is able to devise that are – I realize – completely and utterly within my own head. I am at a learning crossroads. And I hate it.

I appreciate the comfort and utility of my old bathrobe and slippers. Even though they embarrass me, I am loathe to cast them aside to see what better offerings might be out there for me.

I may be talking in circles because I am in the middle of one. Unsure of what to do next or what the best course of action is. The only comfort I take from this rumination is that at least I am still thinking about.

I have not acted on my petty revenge fantasies or anything similarly boneheaded. I believe I am being encouraged to let go, shed my fear, work through my disappointment and see what might be on the other side of this emotional mountain.

I will either sit at this dreary way station and fester in a misery I am electing to hang on to. Or I can put on my hiking boots and start walking. The choice is – I realize -entirely up to me.

Fear or love. What’s it going to be?