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.

I’ll Be Brief

I aim to write a 2-3 minute blog post every day. And for most of the past 65 days, I have. Sometimes four minutes long which I consider excessive. I ain’t all that. I love that what I write sometimes surprises me. Like chasing a rabbit down a hole and finding yourself having a delicious and carefully prepared tea with some interesting characters.

As I consider how to approach this piece you are reading, I am reminded of a quote attributed to various literary luminaries. Often believed to be from Mark Twain but it was really Blaise Pascal: “I’m sorry that this was such a long lett­er, but I didn’t have time to write you a short one.” 

We faceless bureaucrats often changed the text of that original quote to throw in politicians’ speeches for the laugh: “I am sorry I am giving such a long speech. I didn’t have time to write a short one.”

Today’s blog length is a deliberate choice. A short blog so I can focus on other writing. So I can organize some things I have been letting slip to the back burner.

One of those back-burner issues is taxes. I have about a month’s leeway on submitting everything with no taxes to pay. But I need the accursed annual nuisance off my plate.

The laundry needs folding. The fridge needs offloading. Mail must be posted. Unsuitable items must be returned to merchants. So today, and for most of tomorrow, I am going to focus on those.

I will see what new things the world has to show me and what insight or amusement I can gain from them. My car is stocked with a bottle of birdseed in case I see some compatriot Canada Geese looking for grub. It is always a pleasant activity to watch them gobbling up corn and sunflower seeds.

And yes, I almost forgot. We bought a new house. Closes in about three weeks. Now there is a major distraction if ever there was one.

There will no doubt be more to say about that acquisition. I am in the giddy-overwhelmed stage where we have to check all the boxes before closing and then actually move. If I survive, I shall let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, if this blog post is more than a minute, I will hang a picture of myself on the WordPress Wall of Shame. Surely there must be such a thing.

Live and Let Live

“I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them. After my father died, the book that sort of saved my life was Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. Because of that experience, I firmly believe there are books whose greatness actually enables you to live, to do something. And sometimes, human beings need story and narrative more than they need nourishment and food.”— Emma Thompson in @oprah’s O Magazine.

I have a whole book I want to write about this phenomenon. Books and messages show up when you most need them. It is a real thing.

I want to write a book that is an homage to the many self-help geniuses who emerged in the middle of my life as I was facing different challenges. I was a single parent of two babies. Their father turned out to be financially and emotionally inadequate. My family had utterly let me down and abandoned me.

But my book coaches tell me I am not yet well-enough known to succeed at that type of “healing anthology.” Success in their view, understandably, means how many books will fly off the shelf. More sales, more profit. Duh.

I am really glad I am out from behind the paywall. I get to write whatever I want within the realms of good taste and what I hope is, readability. I don’t much give a care about that really. I mean, it is impossible to know what will strike other people’s fancy. I am mostly here to develop my own writing voice and to find out what I really think and feel about things.

So I have had the exact same relationship with books that Emma Thompson refers to. At the very moment guidance is needed, a book popped up in my life to comfort me or provide insight or help me find a resolution. For a girl that felt pretty odd and alone for much of her life, those books were nothing short of lifesavers.

I remember with fondness and some amusement the book The Dance of Anger by Dr. Harriet Lerner. Her book nailed and accurately described problem-solving in troubled families. Instead of tackling and working on issues to resolve them together, raising issues in many families just causes resistance and more turmoil.

The book jacket blurb puts it this way: “Anger is a signal and one worth listening to,” writes Dr. Harriet Lerner. While anger deserves our attention and respect, women still learn to silence their anger, deny it entirely, or vent it in a way that leaves them feeling helpless and powerless. In this engaging and eminently wise book, Dr. Lerner teaches both women and men to identify the true sources of anger and to use it as a powerful vehicle for creating lasting change.”

Did that ever speak to me. People bring up a difficult topic. Feelings get hurt. People hurl insults and blame at each other. The conversation you wanted to have escalates and before you know it, slam. Someone has headed out the door in a swath of anger. The issue – whatever it was – gets left on the floor abandoned and is ignored yet again. Nothing changes. The issue continues to fester.

When I first read Lerner’s book, I fairly danced with excitement. She gets it! Here is a way out of this horrible pattern! This will bring us all closer to each other! I rushed out to the local bookstore and immediately bought three more copies. One for my mother and one for each of my sisters.

Gathered around my kitchen table that evening, I gave my elevator pitch on the book. Why it was helpful to me. How it could help us.”If we all read it,” I reasoned, naively, “We could work at making our relationships better.”

My youngest sister picked up her copy. Glancing at the back cover, she curled her lip in disdain and threw the book down on the table: “You and your psychobabble.”

Yes, well, okay. That did not work. No one will likely be surprised that I have been estranged from her for decades and the relationship is unlikely to right itself in this lifetime.

Author Jeff Brown (https://www.jeffbrown.co) recently posted about a likely reality we need to accept if we have chosen a healing path. Not everyone feels the need to heal. Not everyone has the capacity to face up to their pain and demons. There is wisdom in the German saying made famous in the movie, Cabaret. “Leben und leben lassen.” “Live and let live.”

The choice to stay where you are and not grow is a choice everyone can make. What we don’t have to do is stay there with them or engage with them any longer. That single decision has made my life a much more peaceful and pleasant place to live. Considerably less drama and accumulated emotional clutter.

Fuggedaboutit

I hate being fooled. Or conned. Or realizing someone has tried “to put one over on me.” Whatever that means. I realize everyone has to make a living. But how they make that living is important.

A solar salesman called me today. He is the Texas-based boss of the local solar salesman that we put off last week. No reason to put him off except we are overburdened by other projects and not eager to take on a new one at the minute.

Did that deter them from reaching out to us again after we had already firmly and politely put them off once?

Of course not. Before he could ask me another leading question about how they might make the terms more agreeable and entice us to move forward, I calmly and firmly told him no appeal would work or be tolerated. we had already said no. If/when we decided to proceed and not a minute before, we would be in touch. If he did contact us again, his company would be relegated to our waste bin should we ever decide to proceed with solar. Thank you and goodbye.

I was a consumer reporter on television. The complaints that came into my email were often consumers telling me a salesman caught them at a weak moment. They had signed on to some service or subscription that they really didn’t want and seriously could not afford. This angered me. I have no time for the questionable ethics of “salespeople” who make their living on the backs of others’ weaknesses or vulnerabilities.

I have a particular soft spot for women in this regard. Women are financially disadvantaged compared to men. Not individually, but collectively. I have a particular disdain for pressure on women to be constantly “cooperative” or “nice.” It costs them.

Women regularly denigrate their own needs to keep peace and make others happy. I used to do this a lot. I don’t do it so much anymore. The scales of plenty tipped largely in other people’s favor. Not only was I not rewarded for my acquiesence, I was not given any credit for the opportunity my acquiesence created for them.

Learning boundaries should be a pretty normal part of any child’s upbringing. But it isn’t. Some children grow up with weak or non-existent boundaries and it makes life harder. Some have a very difficult time saying “no” to anyone or anything. Some go in the other direction and become difficult and unpleasant as a matter of course just to protect themselves from being taken advantage of. Neither way works out very well.

Finding out what I deeply care about and what matters most to me makes it easier for me to choose “what hill to die on.” What matters to me has changed over the course of my lifetime. It can change on the spot if I am forced to make choices among limited options. Hmm … Coke Zero or Diet root beer?? I’ll just take ice water, thanks.

Back in the day, I would go right to the wall for causes or issues I deeply believed in. I was a very junior social activist mostly devoted to social vanities or similarly lightweight issues. I overturned the “white shirts only” policy at our uniform-wearing high school. I got my first public taste of humility.

In a couple of years, the whole school dress code broke down and girls in their plain black tunics were wearing the most outrageous colors and styles resplendent with frills and lace and pouffy sleeves. Not sure that effort was worth it. But it did give me my first taste of “be careful what you wish for.”

The whole stress session dealing with the solar salesman today and then dealing with a couple of other external irritants like being overcharged without consultation got to me. For a little while. But the outrage I used to carry over seeming injustice has tempered now. I no longer go to any walls or leap any tall buildings when someone – deliberately or collaterally – annoys me.

I move on. I fuggedaboutit. Seems healthier all around for them and most especially for me.

Heaven or Hell? Your Choice

I lived a large part of my life as a flibbertigibbet. I know people who have lived in the same house in the same city since they were children and became adults. Some moved into their parents’ homes when their parents had either moved or passed on. Actual people married their high school sweethearts and stayed married. I regard them with a mix of wonder and disbelief.

I moved around when I was younger. A lot. I was always sure the next place would be the “best ever.” “It will be perfect!” Never mind that with my background, I did not have the slightest clue how to pull a house together let alone decorate it. Nor did I have sufficient coin for the necessary furnishings and so-called “home elements.”.

I did try interior decorating. Massive failure. I once put a sort of French boudoir black and white rococo style wallpaper in my small bedsit. Once I’d hung the last length of wallpaper, that small bedsit instantaneously became teeny tiny. It felt claustrophobic. Oh well, I thought. That didn’t work. I’ll paint it a solid color. That’ll fix it.

I painted it orange. Not that tasteful mango pastel you might be imagining. Oh no. Think of the vests worn by people doing roadwork. Safety vest orange. I had one quart of flat latex. It did not quite cover the black and white rococo.

Thinking back, when money was tight – as it invariably was – it was my wont to bargain hunt. Clothes. Shoes. Wallpaper. Paint. Buying what I really wanted was always trumped the actual cost. “Oops” paint and I became closely acquainted. So the safety vest orange shade that required four coats to cover hideous black and white wallpaper was probably quite cheap. Almost certainly.

It took time to learn that any place you land can become heaven or hell. Even odder, if you lower your expectations sufficiently to adapt to the environment, even hell can be a pleasant or leastways, interesting, road stop.

I loved the privations of camping and “roughing it” generally. On a memorable cross-Andes horse trek back in the aughts, it was certainly filled with enough excitement and dread to keep the adrenaline flowing. But I am fairly sure that type of vacation would not be everyone’s cup of tea.

Even my longtime, deeply adventurous friend Ursula met her match when a winter snowstorm came up in the middle of the mountains. close to nightfall (Quite a shock as in January it was “mid-summer” in Argentina. Mountains have their own rules.)

In the chaos of getting the horses down quickly to flatter, sheltered land to pitch our tents for the night, Ursula almost backed her horse off a cliff to what would have been certain death. Ursula remembers that snowstorm, nearly falling off a cliff, and dying experience with a certain testiness.

Back down here on terra firma, I am still hell-bent and determined to find a heavenly “forever” home. In my mind’s eye, my home would have everything I ever dreamt of. It would exude and reek of elegance, style, and taste.

I can see the wide, wooden double front doors and the dark grey slate floors of the foyer entrance. In the library just off the front hall to the left, I see through the doors to the low-plush wall-to-wall carpet and mahogany or cherrywood (I am not fussy) floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on both sides of the room. There is a deep-seated leather office chair in front of a mahogany (or cherrywood) desk. Books everywhere.

There are two easy chairs in the middle of the room with brass reading lamps on the end tables. Maybe an ottoman or two. And a dog. Maybe two. There is a large bay window at the back of the room that frames the desk with a wide, cushioned window seat. That upholstered seat looks out on a garden, or maybe an orchard. Trees of some sort at any rate. A birdcage-covered swimming pool is just barely in sight to the left of the property.

The living room across the wide hall from the library would be furnished with two deep, soft sofas facing each other in front of the wood-burning fireplace. The sofas would be set off by a matching easy chair or two with leather inlaid end tables and a large wooden coffee table between them.

The couches would frame a brick or maybe fieldstone, wood-burning fireplace. I adore the smell of burning wood. My dream home would be safe and cozy and, most of all, it would always be there.

You may have already concluded that I have been deeply swayed by (pick one) Alistair Cooke on Masterpiece Theatre or Upstairs, Downstairs (only the Upstairs, thank you), or Downtown Abbey. These are my influencers.

It is still a vague notion at present. Where. When. How. I’ve had bits and bobs of that decorative schemata in former houses but not all elements altogether in the same place. I am not 100% sure what that “forever” home will look like but I will know the place when I see it. I need to acquire the bones before I can start dressing them.

What I am sure of is that it will not have any trace of faux French boudoir black and white rococo wallpaper covered with a seethrough layer of safety vest orange paint. My aesthetic has grown somewhat beyond those days, thankfully.

When Is Enough?

I frequently ask that question these days. I am struck by the similarities in so many posts and blogs I read. Everyone has advice about how to create a happy life. Or how to set goals that will help you achieve your “happily ever after.” Do you ever think about how people figured out life before the advice of strangers from all over the world was available?

Well to start with, I imagine life was much simpler, say, a hundred and fifty years ago. You could look forward to a basic education – if you were lucky. You were expected to marry the most suitable match who probably lived a few houses away. Your future spouse was almost certainly from the same town.

Your parents were likely friends with the parents of your intended or they would certainly have known one another. From church or encounters at the general store or sports and hobbies. Social and geographic boundaries were much smaller and tighter.

The rules for living a good life were generally agreed upon by most of the community. You were born, got married, worked either inside (usually the wife) or outside the home (usually the husband), had kids, then grandkids, retired, got sick, and died. Dead easy.

My dear departed Dad chased the one overriding goal in life he was convinced would make him happy: becoming a millionaire. His admiration for money was a lifelong obsession. He faithfully attended Dale Carnegie courses that taught him How to Win Friends and Influence People. He learned “tricks” about how the wealthy nurtured an aura of money … like always sporting a tan. It encouraged the perception: “A man of means has time to relax in the sun.”

Dad missed one of the fundamental rules of creating wealth that follows the counter-intuitive rule: if you want more of something, you have to give it away. His miserliness always seemed like a synonym for misery. After he lost all his money in middle age, it made him cling to it even more fiercely.

He complimented his wife for saving scraps of wax paper in a kitchen drawer. He refused to buy anything “frivolous.” He balked at buying a package of better quality ham that cost only pennies more than his choice. After retiring from law, he owned and operated an ice cream store. He drove his employees crazy. When someone ordered a banana split, he would drive down to the supermarket … and buy one banana at a time.

To all outward appearances, he had a comfortable life toward its end. A house he owned outright. A luxury car. Steady passive income. Savings in the bank (if not quite a million dollars). But his emotional and financial miserliness cost him his family.

Like many kids in his generation, we were on our own after high school. I marveled with envy at peers whose parents paid for their education or paid for their fees to stay in residence or regularly sent them “care packages.” There was no support for “frivolous” pursuits like university in my Dad’s opinion. Dad once asked an old boyfriend of mine: “What is Margot doing in university? She is only going to get married and have children.”

I often wonder how Dad felt about his life and the goals he accomplished. He kept himself and his second wife safe and comfortable. But he did no community service to speak of. Had very few friends and as time went by, fewer and fewer interests. It seemed he lived his life with an anvil on his heart and soul. He never had enough.

Marketing gurus today push the glamor of high-end vodka and designer purses and shoes and all the symbols of wealth and status. Strategically, they target a younger clientele who are not yet encumbered by families and mortgage payments. This time period of “disposable income” is usually a short phase.

So I come back to my question. When we are setting goals for our lives, what is our absolute endpoint? When and why should we move the goalposts? To whose benefit? I’m convinced the answer can only be found in getting to know ourselves better. I recently read Steve Jobs’ said that a $300 watch and a $30 dollar watch tell the same time.

I learned that lesson early. There were high-end items I wanted and acquired for their quality as much as for their cachet. A Tissot wood watch I bought in Florence, Italy years ago still brings me pleasure aesthetically and sentimentally.

When we are young, we want to hurry up and get on with it. We want it all. We are hungry and eager to explore and experience everything that life can offer. We test our wings and seek out our pack. We build castles in the air then eventually settle for a three-bedroom and two-bathroom house that better suits our lifestyle, our budget, and our needs. Needs is the operative word. Life choices essentially come down to that.

The quicker we learn what makes us happy, the faster we begin to attract those things into our lives. It doesn’t matter what anyone else wants or what the world tells you will make you happy. We learn what is enough, for us. It is up to us to decide when that is.

Mother’s Day

I have written about mothers before. I have written and will continue to write about my own mother. It is a primal bond, yet the relationship can be difficult, no matter what its origin story. I wrote yesterday about idealized motherhood as a special, sacred state. The day-to-day reality can be quite different and difficult. There are common themes in the universal experience of motherhood. Yet each mother’s story is unique. This is one of those unique stories.

Lala and Her Son

“The child was tightly wrapped in the threadbare blanket his mother had taken with her as they were leaving the camp. At the immigration center, she struggled to quell her nerves and quiet her baby. The baby had a cough. The cough needed to be suppressed.

If even a slight cough was detected by an immigration official, the whole family – dad, mom, sister, and baby – might have been diverted to quarantine for suspicion of TB. Getting out of the detention center and on with their lives in Canada could have taken them many more months. The family had already spent what seemed like an eternity in a European refugee camp. Lala wasn’t sure how much more they could survive.

Homemade cough medicine liberally laced with brandy and administered in quantity had quieted her fussy boy before they disembarked at Pier 19 in Halifax. It had been effective in putting him into a deep slumber. Still, Lala worried the effects would wear off and the baby would wake and delay their plans.

The baby’s conception and birth originated in a post-World War II European refugee camp. It was there Lala met her future husband. Both parents were suffering from the brutal treatment and losses imposed by World War II Nazis. The post-War effects of displacement and relocation only compounded the traumatic effects.

At the war’s end, they jumped at the chance to come to Canada to begin life over again. They made it through the customs inspection and boarded the train for Toronto, Ontario.

Thanks to friends and relatives in the similarly displaced post-War community, they were able to buy a house. Eventually, his mother opened a dress store on the ground floor.  The family lived upstairs.

That baby had grown into a bright and mischievous little boy. He remembered spying on naked women through the cracks in the changing room doors. The ladies paid him little attention as he was but a child but he reveled in the memories. He vividly recalled the pretty ladies.

A concern in this family was the little boy’s birth origins. The baby was now a boy. He was short in stature and tended to obesity. Food was comforting for him in a way his traumatized parents could not be. On top of the traumas of war, his father harbored deep fears that his son was not his own. He took out his anxiety on the child.

The story persisted that Lala had been raped by Russian soldiers in the camps and the story muddied the waters of the boy’s origins. His father feared that the boy was the product of that violent act and not his own biological son.

One of the results was that his father measured the boy regularly. He stood him up against a door jamb with a yardstick and pencil to mark his growth. The father made careful note of how tall the boy was.  The boy recalls standing on tippy toes to appear taller to avoid his father’s rage. If the boy’s measurements “came up short,” a physical beating might ensue from deep within the wells of his father’s anger and frustration.

The boy had an older sister whose origins were equally murky. She was not the product of rape. But Lals worried her daughter was the product of another displaced Jewish refugee in the camp. When the daughter discovered her alternate origin story, she flipped out.

She stole her parents’ credit card and flew to Israel to seek out the man she believed might have been her “real father.” Israel is purportedly where he went after the war. The sister had a complete breakdown and was hospitalized in a mental hospital for a time with depression and suicidal ideation.  Her brother was enraged and disdainful.

Her parents flew to Israel to find her and bring her back to Canada. The travel costs and the psychiatrists they paid to have her seen, were a burden on her family’s limited financial resources. Her brother saw all of her “acting out” as a “choice.” In his mind, she was a stupid and selfish brat.

As an academic years later, he would publish a paper called The Myth of Mental Illness. Although he didn’t mention his sister specifically, there is no doubt she was his intellectual inspiration. It is common for those who have grown up sublimating their distress to condemn as weak those who struggle.

Her brother was angry at the financial and emotional cost to his parents. They were not wealthy people and his sister had racked up a hefty credit card bill that his parents were forced to pay off. Her rebellion stirred up troubling memories of the war.

The boy sought comfort in food and his girth expanded in proportion to his loneliness and distress. His Ph.D. thesis explored the lengths that fat people go to appear “normal” in society. Those efforts to “cover” up their fat were a study in learned manipulation that Lala’s grown son transferred to other parts of his life. He would learn to hide his rage under layers of charm and intelligence that took him up the ladder of career success in fairly short order.

He was a product of the abusive background he came from and became a volatile and violent abuser himself. Survival skills bred in post-war European refugee camps and in his family home came in handy for a sad and angry little man-child. He was intent on making up for the miseries his parents suffered that caused him to suffer in kind.

Sadly and perhaps inevitably, he inflicted that suffering on others. Lala’s boy became as twisted as the Russian soldier (allegedly) responsible for his presence on the planet.”