Living in the present, looking forward to…

Bodhi and Fred on the radiator watching something

As Jack and I were driving home late last evening, we both noticed that our conversation was not very uplifting. We were sort of randomly talking about some long-standing difficulties with a couple of family members, the recent illness of a good friend, and how another friend (that we had just run into) didn’t seem good…nothing really big, just all rather gloomy topics. I suddenly saw us as a couple of gray-haired, middle-aged people with more life behind them than ahead. We felt old, and our conversation reflected this.

It also dawned on me that frequently talking about the past, illness, ect., can become a way of life, until we are not really living anymore, we’re just re-living old worn-out scenarios, or mentally dragging along and reworking relationships that should have been let go of long ago; more concerned with what has been, than what we are looking forward to.

As we drove along, I suggested that we start a new conversation, Jack agreed and yet we found it a little challenging to get out of our rut and think different (new) thoughts. But we persisted and the idea popped up to pretend that we were newly-weds just starting our lives together. Jack loved this idea and the whole atmosphere of our trip changed.

A few minutes later as we exited the thruway and gave our ticket to the young woman in the booth, she smiled at Jack and said, “Well hi there happy traveler!” She noticed Luke in the backseat and we put the window down so he could stick his head out and she could pet him. As we pulled away from the toll booth, it occurred to us that we had never run into such a young, lovely, upbeat, friendly, toll booth operator. If was as if we made a mental switch and then literally lined up with the human equivalent of our new mode of thought.

I don’t mind physical aging, but I want to live all the stages of my life and show up every day with a fresh mind, a young mind….open to Life. I want to honor the past but not live in it.

“It is a universal rule, as we all know, that living things produce offspring after their own kind. Thoughts are living things. Indeed they are particularly vital living things, and so thoughts naturally follow this law. Positive thoughts produce positive , harmonious conditions: and negative thoughts produce fear and limitation.”Emmet Fox, from Alter Your Life

***The winner of the skin balm is Dave!******

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Feeling my way along: defining new comfort zones

Judi Dench…love that hair, and greatly admire her

 

I’ve decided to get my hair cut really short before we leave for Mexico. Since my initial leap last fall into the world of short hair, every cut has gotten shorter. The idea came to me yesterday while I was driving home from the grocery store and it was followed by the thought, “Do I dare do this?” What if I don’t like it? What if I am not comfortable with the way I look?

I know that I will love the way it will feel.  I once had this fun idea once about clothes. I thought, “What if i invited a bunch of women over for a clothing exchange, and the only condition would be that all of the items of clothing had to be super-comfortable and lovely to feel but we would choose by feel rather than sight” (we’d be blindfolded or something like that). What different choices I would make!

So much about how I look, when I’m really honest with myself,  has less to do with personal preference and comfort, and is more about how I will appear to others. When does this switch happen…Turning our vision away from what feels good to us, and directing it outward, watching the eyes of others for approval or disapproval. When did my “comfort zone” begin to be dictated by what I thought others wanted or approved of for me?

For years I wore under-wire bras because I thought they looked better. I tried one on the other day, and felt like I was in a medieval garment of torture. …it did however make me look a little more shapely….but who cares? I am not trying to find a mate to procreate, and even if I was single and hoping to find a partner by “fixing things up a little”, he would have every right to claim, “false advertising” when the “naked truth” was revealed. Hopefully, at this stage of life, someone would be attracted to the woman who I am underneath the baggier, wrinkled skin and flesh and we would connect at a deeper, (feeling) level.

Maybe it’s time to consider feeling my way through life, and honoring myself by making decisions that feel good!

“A dream is your creative vision for your life in the future. You must break out of your current comfort zone and become comfortable with the unfamiliar and the unknown”. Denis Waitley

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A worthy use of my time?

The cashmere blanket!

I finally finished my cashmere blanket. It is incredibly soft, cozy, warm and funny looking. The cats love it. I love it…. when I feel it, without looking at it. When I see it, it’s hard not to focus on the crooked lines, and puckered surface. I know that I could have done a better job sewing it, but part of me also knew that no matter how much time I put into cutting perfect squares, piecing them carefully, and finishing things smoothly, eventually it would get dirty, ripped a little, probably one of the cats would throw up on it and it would need to be washed…it is a blanket that is going to get used, everyday, and eventually used up. It is full of  imperfection.

Since I’ve turned 50, my center just keeps getting softer and more bulky. I have an ideal in my head about what my body should look and feel like, and that image is stuck at 25.  But to be honest, I didn’t like the way I looked back then either. It’s only when I look at old photographs that I think, “I looked great. What was there to be critical of!?”

When I close my eyes, I like the way I feel. When I look at myself, I think “Yikes, you look like a middle-aged, grey-haired grandmother!” Why should this be a yikes?  This is right, this is life. I’ve taken it as such a compliment when someone has said that I look younger than my age, but is “looking young” really a worthy use of my time? Isn’t that sort of like packing the perfect blanket away and only taking it out to show others? I want to open up my arms and welcome the supreme gift of being alive in this body, in this moment. I want to use this life to the fullest and not have a well-preserved shell of a person when it is my turn to leave.

“Whoever you are, how superb and how divine is your body or any part of it! I believe in the flesh and the appetites. Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle. Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or am touched from.

The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer. This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds. If I worship any particular thing, it shall be some of the spread of my own body.” Walt Whitman

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A day to celebrate!

Tommy: embracing life 30 years ago!

I was 22 when my oldest son Tom was born. I had always wanted to be a mother, and didn’t have any idea of how young I really was. I was also completely overwhelmed by the responsibility of 24/7 care of another person. I remember one day saying to my mother, “I didn’t know that it was possible to love someone this much, and someday, he is going to leave home!” At which point I broke into tears. My mother just smiled and said, “I know honey, but that is a long way off. Why don’t you go take a nap.”

When I see young mothers now, rushing around like I did, feeling that huge pull of all the other “important” things that need to be done, I feel like saying, “Slow down. There is nothing more important than being with that little guy who will, before you know it, be grown and gone.” But I can still find myself living in the future (or the past)…thinking that true fulfillment will happen at some later point in time, or that I somehow messed up the past irreparably.

Today is a day to celebrate.  And in 2 days, when I will be, for the first time in many years, spending Tom’s birthday with him, it will be a day to celebrate too. It is time to love who we are right now, who is here, who is not, and know that this moment, right now, is as perfect as life can be. No future or past moment will be greater. All of life is now.

“Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now.” Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Looking for something to love (and the winners of the Mary’s Skin Survival Balm)

Kitty tracks!

My mother and I met for breakfast yesterday. As we were getting ready to leave the restaurant, she said, “These are not all that comfortable (pointing to her shoes) I’m going to look for another pair today.” I looked down at her feet. She was wearing sandals. No socks. Even though it was April 2nd, there was still a dusting of snow on the ground from a little storm we had the night before.

I said, “Mom, aren’t your feet cold?” She laughed and said, “I am just so sick of wearing shoes and winter. I am trying to encourage the spring!” I love this about my mother.

I would not have noticed this, or more correctly, appreciated this, a few years ago…when I was not looking for something to love about her. This funny, quirky little thing would have either been annoying or ignored. Yesterday, as I looked at her feet, I felt delighted…she is going to be 84 this year and she is wearing sandals in 30 degree weather…you’ve got to love that!

There is always something to love about everyone. Sometimes it is hard work to see it, but it makes life a lot more enjoyable when I do!

***Susan L. of Canton Ohio won the first skin balm and she chose Sally B. (also of Canton) to receive the second!*****

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