TAKING OFF THE MASK

There was a song called ‘Where Do You Go To My Lovely’ that came out in 1969 written by Peter Sarstedt, about a couple of young kids who grew up together in Naples but now the Woman travels among the glitterati and knows all the right people and says all the right things etc.

In 1972 Carly Simon wrote the song ‘You’re So Vain’ and still will not say who the person is that she was singing about. I usually think of them as a pair but ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy by Rod Stewart in 1978, would also work with either of the others.

When you think about the way we present ourselves in society, you realize that there is a language (THE LANGUAGE OF CLOTHES - by Alison Lurie) that we use to our advantage to send out a message about the identity we have (or want to convey) to others. Few of us would ever venture out without this ‘protective covering’. It helps us to offer up an image we want to send out and, at the same time, lets others interpret our attire, demeanor, class and colouration for themselves.

Without a word being said, we have already sent out a lot of messages about who we want to be and who we want to tell others we are.

What Sarstedt is asking his childhood friend however, is whether she remembers when she is alone (inside her head) where she came from, and who she really is/was. Carly Simon on the other hand, feels that the Man she is singing about would feel that anybody who knows him, would, of course be talking about him. She feels that he is so Vain that he thinks everything and everyone who knows him is focused on him. Stewart meanwhile is just a bit of a joke, a lame male trying to put out that he is the coolest.

Where you and I fit in among these people is something I will keep to myself and let you decide for yourself. Only you are there, at a time I call, 3 o’clock in the morning, looking inside yourself or at the mirror and seeing who you really are.

Without the Mask, it is a good sign when you still recognize yourself and not like Dorian Grey* have something showing you what you are hiding from the world.

I’ll always go for being part of the solution and that includes when things in my own life need to get better. Reality checks are good for the soul, provided we use them to improve ourselves.

*The Picture of Dorian Grey – short story by Oscar Wilde (1890/1891).

DON'T BLAME ME

Ever notice how some people seen to feel others are the source of their problems. It’s not their fault if fate, kismet, karma or life dealt them a less than perfect life. In fact, you are not making things better when you tell them that we all have things to live with that we don’t like.

Every one of us meanwhile, especially us Women, can catalogue and list many, many things that we do not like about our appearance. From there we can tell you what is wrong with almost anything. When we are on a roll, nothing seems to be going right; then the list goes on and on. Hopefully, however, it’s just because we are having a bad day or better still, a bad couple of hours.

I say, a bad couple of hours because I believe you can stop your whole day from turning into a mess by becoming aware that you have just told someone else (most likely in a whiny voice) about whatever it is that you feel is going wrong for you today.

I’m not breaking new ground here. If it’s not us, it someone within hearing range. The memory will be fresh in most of our minds about how awful it sounds and how sometimes we’d like to tell the person to stop and/or go out of our hearing range because we can’t hear ourselves think.

If it’s you doing the rant/whine/complaint or whatever, be aware that you are at your worst. Your face is contorted, you definitely are not smiling and you are not about to win any prizes for good will or your good attitude.

Think about it and be aware that you can do better and probably should before your whole days goes down the drain as one big downer.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...THE MORE THEY REMAIN THE SAME - PLUS CA CHANGE.

I was thinking earlier about how despite years lived in happiness, self confidence and with mutual love, when we are left alone again, all of our old bad habits seem to reappear as though they never left us.

My first love was a happy one, ended abruptly with a smack on the bottom by my father who saw me and my 6 or 7 year old classmate Claude kissing. Claude moved away by the next year and sadly I never saw him again, although I still point him out when I show people my Kindergarten photo.

Like everyone else, eventually I dated people, although later than most since I was a uniformed, all girl’s school girl until University. Consequently, other than church group boys and within fairly strictly monitored meetings, my dating life was non existent.

I don’t think that this type of life exists anymore, since most schools are coeducational and even when they are not, social events are organized by the schools to mix boys and girls, young men and women earlier than ours were.

Suddenly tossed in the ‘free for all’ of university, I recall my shock at realizing that either nobody cared about my (puritanical) values or were too busy being free of their own for many of the things which my proscribed life considered essential.

We learn about ourselves in our early 20’s because by then we more or less are on our own. Among many lessons, we learn not to loan money, to people we just met, because we are not likely to see it ever again.

We learn that people come in all shapes and sizes and all colours and religions. Some of these we encounter in person for the first time in our young lives. We meet people with belief systems far different than our own. We even meet people who, to our way of thinking, don’t believe in anything we recognize as valid. It takes a long time to sort out what we as individuals and as new adults believe.

We fall in love, sometimes with someone who loves us back. It hurts less when this is the case. We make friends with people and sometimes they remain friends forever and sometimes not.

We enter relationships, some of which die a natural death as we drift off on our separate courses in life. Then again, if we are lucky, we meet someone who loves us who we also love and we become our own families…of two or more.

However, Life changes. Change is the one constant we can predict and expect and be certain of in life, even when we can’t be sure of anything else.

When change via separation forced by illness and death, separation of families by marriage/relationship breakdown and other events that take us away from being a couple to being single again happen, we must teach ourselves again to function in the world as someone no longer part of a pair.

I suspect that we fall back on what we knew before. If this was good, it possibly is good again and we can rely upon ourselves in confidence and believe life will work out for us fairly smoothly.

Where we were spending much of our time in groups, we tend to try and rejoin those groups or ones of new interest to us.

As part of a couple, we changed the habits of our early years and have usually built up a large number of friends while we were part of a couple. Some of these remain our friends, but many, maybe even most, do not since their situation has not changed, ours has.

Throughout my marriage I met, as I had throughout my educational and working life, many Men. I worked in male dominated fields and even my social/intellectual club is mostly populated by Men. Socially as a couple however, we were among many couples usually in second marriages of very long duration.

Men became Friends you saw among other Friends. Men from the past who were on the periphery of my life also became Friends. Everyone was at a distance. I would no more have considered having a meal with a man without his wife, or another couple being present, than I would have met a Single or Married man for a drink, without my Husband or another couple.

But life changes when you find yourself by yourself again and you try to build/rebuild a life. It is necessary, I realize, to forget old associations and labels for the opposite sex that are part of relationships from the distant past. 

It is valid to remember instead that there are Men and there are Women and the interaction we have with each other continues to bewilder and fascinate us both.

Learning how to live among people again, without relying on people who were part of our distant past, may actually require becoming part of new groups and interests that will better reflect our present lives rather than trying to repeat the way we lived on our own in, what has now become, the distant past.

I am finally beginning to understand how we limit ourselves by allowing old dead past relationships populate a present, particularly when trying to rebuild and establish a new life and future as a single person and individual.

BAGGAGE HANDLING

I never realized how much unfinished business I have in my life until I went away this summer and autumn. I now realize with disgust and dismay that the Unfinished Business in my life is there because I still have not dealt with it. Why haven’t I? A good question. It has also been one that, I now realize, I had been afraid to answer.

I was serious when I wrote my essay on October 1^st UNFINISHED BUSINESS STALKS YOU. I had returned home from a trip to have 2 more emails in my Inbox, from ex-boyfriends, both from the distant past.

By October 12^th I also received a phone call from someone I should have been finished with four years ago who I’d hoped to continue avoiding by always checking my Call Waiting. 

Because I realize that I have still left the situation unresolved after the call, I wrote my 'rant' WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID hoping to finally express my dismay and disgust at myself for not ending conclusively and finally something that should have been out of my life forever four years ago.

It would be untrue to say I am indifferent about either of the two men from the distant past who are still in touch with me today, because both, in the past, wanted to marry me. Although I have not been romantically involved with either of them since the original breakup many years ago, and we have only met briefly over the years; there is no way contact with them does not bring back memories of decades past.

I doubt that either of these fellows, who married, raised families and later divorced, wants anything more from me than to occasionally be in touch. What they may want are the memories from the past, someone who doesn’t argue with them, someone who listens to whatever they want to talk about and someone who knew them when.

I have now given some thought to why someone might not be finished with the past. I decided that most often it is probably because you hope to somehow rekindle and revive the relationship. It also could be because you are either not ready or not willing to let the person or the past go completely wherever they (or you) could or should go.

Sometimes it means you are trying to test whether you still have power over them or can hurt them back for whatever hurt you feel they gave you. To me, this is more evident in other couples who have not completely broken apart yet, but must be somewhere in my life too (if I am honest).

It can actually be a problem when you don’t have strong moral, ethical reasons which would make a split inevitable and absolutely final. Instead, you probably reassured yourself  as I did,  that it can do no harm to have these ‘old friends’ around.

You looked upon these people as Friends, you felt that you understood and accepted them. You felt that You knew their minds. In some cases, you also knew their bodies (which for a Woman is knowing all you need to know about a Man that he will never tell you verbally).

Being a Modern Woman, therefore, you and I do what many, possibly most separated Men do. You tell yourself that there seems no reason to make the final break, it is a good defence/excuse against serious attention from someone else you are not serious about. Some day you will get around to finishing it. It all seems so harmless, but it’s not.

These people however, belong to the distant past. There is enough recent history to contend with without letting the distant past and its failed relationships rain on the happy future I  want and know I deserve.

Actually, the great joy I  experienced being totally in Love and having my Love reciprocated, continues to live on in my heart despite being Widowed. Other Women I know continue to feel the same way.

Not much happiness came from these and other relationships the first time around. I did not find happiness until they were out of my life and I gave someone new a chance.

I realize that future happiness can't enter my life until I clear out past failures and leave room for a new person and experiences to brighten and accompany me in the present.

The sooner therefore that I set the old Baggage down, the sooner I  can go out and pick up lighter luggage – until I find the kind that suits me and my future travels better. I think it will be easier to carry and lighter to use and know that I will be much happier with it.

DON'T STOP BELIEVIN'*

The music hits you between the eyes and you realize you are listening to an anthem. You need this today to remind you to keep on going and thinking about what you are trying to accomplish.

I am loaded down with my blog sites, they need dozens of hours of my time to edit them. I sit down and 4 or 5 hours later, I realize I have not moved. If I am lucky I made and poured out my Coffee (and brought it with me) to the computer. If not, hours have passed and I am still in my P.J.’s and probably I am late to meet someone if I don’t leave immediately.

Meanwhile, were I to doubt what I am doing and had I not had proof that someone somewhere is reading what I write, I’d be tempted to do massive deletions and just erase the whole kit and caboodle and put the whole idea away for…what? Another five years. However, I’ve been there, done that.

This is a new endeavour and not only am I looking at it a different way than I have in the past, as a need to work things out on paper and then store the ideas away in a box, but also, I am writing about different things and with different results and to an audience.

So…when I hear this song, I realize that we have to Believe in ourselves, understand what it is we are doing and possibly figure out why so that we understand it is something we need to do.

In a discussion earlier today with someone, putting off what you need to do only keeps you from accomplishing what you feel in your heart you have inside you to do.

Sometimes you just have to ‘bite the bullet’ and say to yourself and everyone else around you…this is my time…NOW OR NEVER. Meanwhile, Don’t Stop Believin’ in yourself and your dream.

*Wikipendia says "Don't Stop Believin'" is a power ballad by American rock band Journey, originally released as a single from their seventh studio album Escape (1981).

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE SAID

At the beginning of the month I was talking about how UNFINISHED BUSINESS STALKS US. When we leave something unsaid or undone and dance around the long overdue goodbye, the situation remains unresolved.

I screen my phone calls most of the time now. While it is true that my current land line does not indicate that a message is waiting, I check to see if I recognize the telephone number before I answer.

Unfortunately, the person(s) I am trying to avoid and do not want to tell outright what I feel still manage to occasionally reach me, much to their surprise and my dismay.

While ‘private caller’ messages are easiest to avoid, you may miss a call from your Doctor and they will not usually leave a message giving you an appointment time (without speaking to you directly). So sometimes you pick up these calls and find out it is someone you keep hoping will never call you again, but here they are live and in person. Oh great!

Then again, you are expecting a call from your nephew who wants you to email him so he can reply, or usually not reply, for a long time. Suddenly it is evening on a holiday and a number that looks like it might be his or your brother who lives out of town is showing on your phone as a call waiting. You drop the person you are speaking to so that you don’t miss this rare call from your brother or nephew. You answer, after all you have been waiting to hear from them for a while. Nope, it’s the guy you normally avoid by screening your calls. Oh goodie!

Adding insult to injury, he has decided to tell you that he has just had a drink of one of your favourite wines – Chateau La Tour Carnet. Do you remember he says that you told me it has only a small production in Bordeaux etc. etc.? He adds, It was pretty good. NEWSFLASH - THANK YOU – I KNOW, and I can’t afford to buy it right now. Nice to know you are enjoying yourself and BY THE WAY, WHY ARE YOU CALLING ME AGAIN?  Whoopee Happy Thanksgiving. NOT.

Yes, I am so glad that you liked me, enough to waste a lot of my time and hang around my place nonstop until I finally (in desperation) moved to a place too small for you to park yourself ever again. So glad your life changed for the better because I got you to finally see a specialist about the constant pain your athletic and work related demands made on your legs. How nice that you now run a couple of miles every morning. YOU'RE WELCOME…GO AWAY.

So, finally I ask the one question that I should have asked, WHY WERE WE EVER TOGETHER? You liked me! And what? I guess that was reason enough for you and me to waste a very long time together. What I should have been saying however was: DO YOU CARE THAT I DESPISE YOU? DO YOU CARE THAT I WISH YOU WOULD GO AWAY FOREVER, so that I never have to tell you myself? Guess not.

What I should have said, quite a lot and yet quite a lot less. GOODBYE would have been good. HAVE A NICE LIFE – Somewhere else far away from me - would have been good. GO AWAY FOREVER would have been excellent. NEVER CALL ME AGAIN would have been best of all.

Karma is a witch sometimes. Too bad I believe what goes around comes around and that every person deserves consideration and respect. Too bad you don’t feel the same way and use the knowledge of how I feel against me.

Until next time, Happy Thanksgiving – I think not. Maybe Happy Hallowe’en and I get the Trick and not the Treat.

Guess what? NO ONE TO BLAME BUT MYSELF…AGAIN. As I said on October 1^st, UNFINISHED BUSINESS STALKS YOU. 

Voila, welcome to the Thanksgiving Day instalment on October 13^th. 

Until next time…because I still haven’t dealt with this properly. As I said before UNFINISHED BUSINESS STALKS YOU…and guess what YOU/I have no one to blame but ourselves.

ONCE IN A BLUE MOON*

We’ve had several ‘Super Moons’ ***this year. We also hear about a Blue Moon**. The latter when used in such expressions as “once in a Blue Moon” usually means something which occurs very rarely.

That’s what I feel about opportunity rarely knocking and therefore providing us with a chance to get up and do something about it.

I think some people could sleep their lives away. Although it might not be nice to say, sleeping too much or sleepwalking through life on auto pilot comes to about the same thing; wasting your life.

Luckily, Once in a Blue Moon, something comes up in life which offers us a chance to extend ourselves outward beyond our comfort zone and actually move our lives in a new direction.

At one point, a couple of years ago, my youngest brother felt I had become so laid back that I could have been Comatose. No longer.

I doubt I’ll ever become a person who spends their time ‘busy being busy’, however, for some reason my life often seems to have many things coming up in one day or one short period of time. I’ve given up trying to figure that out.

The point is, if you can’t get a ‘Jump Start’ for your life any other way and one day you realize today you can do it, GO FOR IT. I also say such occasions make call for taking a Leap of Faith or taking a chance on yourself.

I doubt you will regret it, and if nothing else, you will be trying something new. That in itself might change your life enough to give you some new ideas, activities and a new direction.

*Once in a Blue Moon (song) Sydney Forest 1999 movie Simply Irresistible.  

**BLUE MOON - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_moon A blue moon is an extra full moon that appears in a subdivision of a year, either the third of four full moons in a season or, recently, a second full moon in a month of the common calendar. Metaphorically, a "blue moon" is a rare event, as in the expression "once in a blue moon".

***SUPER MOON: Time and date.com says the following about Super Moons: “A Supermoon occurs when a full moon occurs at the same time as the Moon's closest approach to the Earth. When this happens, the Moon may seem bigger and brighter. A Supermoon can occur more than once a year, as it has in 2014. Although it appears larger, it is only an illusion and there is no difference in the size of a Supermoon and a regular Full Moon. The next Supermoon will be on Monday September 28^th, 2015. 

WE'RE ALL IN THE DANCE*

Earlier today, Google Statistics informed me that my 200+ essays had reached 19,000 readers. The site began around Easter of 2013 after 3 new ideas came to me to write about. Soon however, to my surprise and admittedly (at that point) dismay, I seemed to suddenly have 2 blog/post sites.

I remember coming home in mid May and being quite shocked to find 3,800+ items in my Inbox. 

I immediately announced that the site needed to close as of June 1^st and tried to understand how such a wild number of entries could have come in during the few hours I had been out attending my Niece’s dance concert.

Little did I know that within a year, I would be receiving 200,000 items per month on both sites. The first site seemed never to really be closed down and continued to run parallel with the other. In fact, the Circles were closed to members by Google rules, on the first site, quite a long time ago. This site, had morphed into a community with a small official membership but continues to receive a gigantic incoming tidal wave of posts.  

My writing changed focus over what I wrote from time to time as a young person and while I was working. I try now to think more about the human condition we find ourselves experiencing and the Journey we are taking through life.

I have always spoken personally and deeply with people but realized that too many of those I speak with now seem are like a zombie community of ‘walking wounded’. We all seem to be carrying Baggage which weighs us down emotionally and physically. Nevertheless, I am encouraged that despite this weight we carry, we find the strength and willpower to enjoy life.

Unfortunately, I see too many people harming each other and causing others to feel pain. Sometimes it is inadvertent, other times too much subjectivity means that ‘me first’ trumps decency, civility and consideration.

Because I speak to a lot of people, now extending to Europe on several excursions, I often think about how similar we all are, yet also how different in some ways as well.

I understand very well that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, applies to all of us for Food, Shelter and Clothing but not why our need for contact, companionship and connection with others puts most of us into cities and, all too often, trying to make whatever connection and contact we have with others into more than we probably should.

Were we less aware of our isolation from each other and the sad reality that our needs are not being met very well by our work, our families or other people who populate our personal universe, I wonder whether we would somehow be more at ease with ourselves, those around us, and life in general.

Tonight I thought of the song, We’re All In the Dance – La Meme Chose, which was sung by Feist in the movie Paris Je T’Aime in 2010. We’re all in the Dance and actually, of course, we are. Sometimes we Dance together, sometimes we Dance alone.

I am happy that I have your encouragement and company and often your kind support in words to accompany me and that you and I are on the same journey from time to time at this point in our lives.

I hope I contribute to yours, because I must say Thank You again, because you sure do give me a lift up and help me face the new day with optimism and encouragement.

I know that some of you will be checking in today and walking beside my thoughts and ideas and I will enjoy and be inspired by the beauty that you so wonderfully direct my way in your awe inspiring posts, photographs and writing.

Thank you. 
Emme Bradford

*LE MEME CHOSE/WE’RE ALL IN THE DANCE - Written by Elizabeth Anais and Claude Montheux in 2006/2008 - here is an English version that I found on the internet. La Meme Histoire (French and English combination) sung by Feist in the movie Paris Je T’Aime (Paris I Love You)

Life's a dance, we all have to do
What does the music require?
People are moving together
Close as the flames in a fire

Feel the beat; music and rhyme
While there is time.

We all go 'round and 'round
Partners of lost and found
Looking for one more chance
All I know is,
We're all in the dance

Night and Day, the music plays on
We are all part of the show
While we can hold on to someone
Even though life won't let us go

Feel the beat; music and rhyme
While there is time.

We all go round and round
Partners of lost and found
Looking for one more chance
All I know is,
We're all in the dance

We're all in the dance

We all go round and round
Partners of lost and found
Looking for one more chance
All we know is,
We're all in the dance

CHICK FLICKS

Recently I wrote about how much I enjoy movies such as The Expendables (as in Expendables 3 – hooray) and Fast and Furious # whatever. Keep em coming I say.

Meanwhile, Harlequin Romances are still being read and enjoyed and whether disguised as Historical Fiction, the good old ‘bodice ripper’ is alive and continuing to make Female hearts beat faster. Personally the beginning and end of these books are enough for me, so instead Movies are usually my way of getting my romance transfusion. 

Time and again though, as I come out of an early show, I smile in sympathy at the poor devils (male) waiting patiently with their ‘significant other’ to get into what a sane Woman would consider very obviously a Woman’s movie.

Poor guy, broken in obviously and broken down too. I feel like handing him some Oxygen and pointing to the exit door so he can save himself before it’s too late.

Meanwhile, the North American Woman and the magazine writers who tell her who she is supposed to be, seem to still promote the Having It All and now the 'Equal' sharing of responsibilities around the house. The Woman is (at 77% of the Man's salary) told she is a ‘Business Woman’, and that her time is as valuable as any Man’s. She declares vehemently, to anyone who will listen, that she is strong, invincible, etc. 

Naturally she is also a star, a legend, important, and her time is precious. She is au courant of the latest jargon and to those of us who don't do it, has learned a new way of living that is I suppose, the latest try to change the relationship (battle of the sexes), genetics and hormones and create a level playing field between men and women. 

She sees herself as a dynamo and powerful but she can, she thinks, still turn on being a  Woman again when she needs to. To prove she is sexy, she brings on the Pole Dance and the Slutty Hooker garb. I think she is just trying to speed up the time spent/wasted on Sex. No Intimacy wanted here, it takes too long. 

I suggest the Man involved with this type of Woman worry when there is a new Clock opposite the bed, it saves checking her wrist watch. However, if you are already holding her Purse, you are ready for therapy because you are actually already Her Bitch. 

I notice among Men there is a pack mentality spending more time together as a group going on long after College and showing no sign of couples forming. Safety in Numbers perhaps. It may be the only way these fellows can try and figure out what today's Women want from them, if anything.* 

All this aside, I personally give myself a pass to watch mushy, improbably romantic movies in which everyone goes to bed happy and sighing in satisfaction. Whatever works to keep us hoping and believing in Love and Fidelity and sweet perfect people being out there somewhere.

I say, there is no reason Lightening can’t strike twice. My entire Marriage was among many happily married second marriages, that incidentally, are still going strong today. The younger generation though may not be as lucky because they seem able to get together and split up pretty easily and don't hang around long when the going gets tough. 

Nevertheless I still hope that somehow Men will have been resuscitated in time for my Nieces to somehow discover there is still a Man out there for each of them, actually just like dear old Dad and earlier generations of Men.  

It might take a Miracle but I hope that the broken Men who now parrot ‘Happy Life, Happy Wife’ can some day again enjoy saying ‘I enjoy being a Man’. Maybe it will be possible when they find Woman who likes Men to be Men and Women to be Women and probably thinks ‘I wouldn’t trade being a Woman for all the Tea in China'.


*University writing by Women that All Sex is Rape and a Woman needs a Man like a Fish needs a Bicycle or some such is what makes me wonder whether another gender is evolving.

ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN THIS...

I have become a real believer in Fresh Starts. Every morning can be the dawning of a new day. It could be the first day of the rest of your life. I don't really know why suddenly one day Polyanna woke up and replaced the person who figured this is as good as it gets and, it might just be time to Suck it Up.

Regardless of how or when, the two views are part of the same person, one figuring SAME OLD, SAME OLD (or worse S.S.D.D.*) and the other saying WHY NOT GO AND GIVE IT A SHOT; WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?

A good point that, Do we have to hit rock bottom and have run out of options before we try something new or is there something inside us that gets us to get up to a new day and give something new a try without having completely run out of options beforehand?

I believe we can change, every one of us, but only when we are ready to do so. It won’t be on a specific day or at a predetermined time either. I think it is just when we personally are ready to dip our toe into the (surprisingly) warm water of change.

Sometimes it does take a calamity or a disaster to make us say, What’s The Worst That Can Happen? and figure that Anything Is Better Than...what is currently happening. However, it doesn’t need to be hitting Rock Bottom; it may be just that the Sun came up this morning or we decided to take a risk because it felt like it would be O.K.

Whatever moves you, do it in your own time, in your own way and you can own it and make it yours as you head in the new direction and into your happier future.

* S.S.D.D. - Same S--- Different Day

Also - song – Falling by Donna Weston 1999 from the movie Simply Irresistible which I think of as: Where do we go from here?

WHO'S GOT YOUR BACK?

When the chips are down, when the going gets tough, who do you turn to? Who can you rely on? Who has your back? Who is your ‘Wingman’?

Most of us can think of someone who has been there for us recently. It surprisingly may not be the same person who was there at another time, but all this shows you is that sometimes we need to take a good 360 degree look around us.

It’s a strange feeling to realize that someone we always thought was behind us and would be with us for the rest of our lives, really is not going to be someone we can count on. All the signs were there, but luckily, till now, we never had to find out the hard way that we were wrong.

Relatives, as some of us have recently found out, turn out, even going back a generation or more, to still be annoyed or indignant about something that some other relative, DID or DID NOT do, many, many years ago. I now say that I refuse to fight the previous generations battles; I have enough of my own, thank you very much, without taking on something from a previous generation.

I was, for example, astonished to hear that one Cousin years ago had called the Police to evict another Cousin from their home in the U.S.  Meanwhile, other people of my own generation no longer speak to one of more of their Siblings. Oddly some of them seemed to be the mostly closely knit families when we were growing up.

Since my own Parents couldn’t please any of their relatives when I was growing up, I didn’t expect much support from our relatives either. This has proven to be a good decision, now perhaps more than ever and seems to be running up to the present time.

Disappointing about the relatives? Yes, a bit, but not as much as realizing that somewhere along the road, the Friend, Lover, Partner or Spouse, we thought we could count on, isn’t going to be there and has really let us down.

After reflecting on this I suggest that it might be a good idea for each of us to take that look around you and carefully consider that you may have been assuming that the past with someone applies to today. Maybe instead, it’s time to thank those who really are and continue to be present and appreciate and acknowledge with a grateful heart those supporting us now.

FEAR PARALYSES US

How many times do we let ourselves be held back by Fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of what might happen, fear of embarrassing ourselves or just the easiest fear to have, fear of failing.

I recall a friend of mine falling into a chair next to me during final exams. He came in unshaven and amazingly a total Basket Case. I could feel the stress. At the time, I didn’t realize how many people feel this way about tests. All I thought was Bud’s parents were probably demanding great results and what I was watching was the price he was paying to get them.

Meanwhile, maybe I was lucky that I was getting zero encouragement from my relatives. As a never ending source of ‘free’, possibly even ‘well-meaning’ advice, many reasons why I should quit seemed to present themselves. These same people and their children are still telling me what I am doing wrong. Incidentally, I am still ignoring them and possibly, by now, they know it.

However, even back then at final exam time, and ever since, because I was paying for my own education, the only one I had to please was myself. I had no fear that I would ever get anything but discouraged and doubt myself were I to pay any attention to other people's judgement and opinions.

Luckily, I had nice parents to make up for the rest of the family. They were not Cheerleaders and maybe when you are young this matters when so many other parents are convinced that they are breeding and rearing champions.

In the long run however, my own determination and accomplishments have taught me that competing against myself is the only competition that matters. I also learned that success is sometimes measured in small accomplishments and that the Tortoise (in Aesop's fable) who perseveres gets where it is going and is successful.

Fear can hold you up. Fear can let you feel there is no point in trying. Fear can be cumulative and paralyse you into thinking that one area of success is the only one that matters.

Why not instead look at the many successes you have already had? Build on your strengths not your imagined weaknesses. 

So I will never be a brilliant (or any kind of) scientist; there are a dozen things I do better and feel successful at; being successful with people being just one of them. Being comfortable within myself is another. Neither is a small thing I can assure you, especially when you look around the personal failures from people failing as people (as in human beings).

In fact, many of the super smart science people I have met, couldn’t have a conversation with anyone other than another scientist. I speak from personal experience incidentally. Even 20 years down the road of life, after a hiatus I noticed that their social skills weren’t much improved than when I had last seen them. 

In fact, some of them are probably talking to themselves more than ever because they continue to spend too much time alone. Others have alienated those who cared for them so badly that they never tried again.

Meanwhile, what on the surface, years later at first appears to be someone who is detached, laid back, cool and collected, is someone hiding behind some theories I last heard 20 years ago, long ago rewarmed and rehashed into terminal boredom for all who know them. No one will ever please these people, because no one will ever know them well enough to care for, or be cared for by them.

Nevertheless, what is someone worth? Usually this means, how much money did they make! A poor way of calculating success methinks.

Oh well, the Humane society, Greenpeace or some other organization may ultimately use whatever Money these people made/hoarded/accumulated, more wisely than they did. Undoubtedly, more people will benefit from their Will than did from their presence. I suggest you start now to make sure you are not among them. 

Start now to overcome your fear of failure and start thinking of your successes. It’s risky to give your trust to a new venture, a new person, a new challenge. It puts you out there and you might, it is possible, not succeed, by some hypothetical measure.

At the end of the day though, you and they will still be living with yourself…maybe you however will have found someone else who finds it possible to live with you too. Stranger things have happened when you put yourself out there.

You will, I assure you learn that you are both only as beautiful and as successful as you let yourself feel you are. 

Have a little faith in yourself. It will, I believe take you farther than your fears ever could. In addition, your success will have some substance to it because you will own it. 

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL

Heart of Gold, 24 Karat, Authentic, Genuine, Real. All words trying to describe quality, undiluted.

Ultimately a person, like 24 Karat Gold needs to be mixed or alloyed with another metal to make it stronger because otherwise it is so soft, pure and malleable that you can bend and even break it with your hands.

Beauty is said that it is in the ‘eye of the beholder’; in the eye of the person who looks upon it. I think this means that the person who sees beauty in something is also the one who is also the one who is capable of appreciating it.  

Historically however, some beauty is recognized universally. Some creations, most often in art, are recognized universally and groups can agree that certain places and things are worthy of being part of the shared World Heritage of Mankind.

As individuals, we are said to respond to something beautiful more readily than something that is not. When that beauty is both internal and external, in a person especially, I think there is something within us that responds to the honest and genuine qualities we see in the other person. It is as if something light and pure shines through, and this resonates within us and is in harmony with our inner better nature. 

I think of how instinctively and naturally we smile and are charmed by the joyfulness of the very young child or baby animal. We see in front of us a bundle of energy and spontaneity caroming through life, bouncing off the walls, rebounding off of the floor and generally curious and full of wonder at the bright, shiny new world in front of it. 

When we meet someone we feel understands us we feel we can be natural and honest with them both easily and spontaneously. I think our soul sings in harmony expressing happiness and elation.

In what seems to be an ever coarsening world around us, we somewhat wistfully need to acknowledge that most of us have needed to toughen up in order to survive what life deals out to us. The carapace we build around ourselves can actually become so tough that little light ever penetrates the defensive perimeter we have built around ourselves.

When we bring out the best in others or they seem to be offering it to us, it behooves us to take a moment and appreciate that something rare and beautiful is before us. It is pure and good and therefore also fragile and vulnerable. 

Let us hope that we have not lost the capacity to recognize, enjoy and appreciate, if only for a moment that someone is offering us a beautiful gift. It has the potential to change us for the better and we should, when we can, welcome such constructive chances to change ourselves for the better. 

I truly want to be the change that I want to see in the world that Gandhi spoke of. I want to be part of the group of people who lets the best spirit go forward. Because of this I am teaching myself to consciously hold back when feeling anger and hurt from expressing my anger and hurt back. 

I would rather pass on good things than bad. There is already enough pain in the world without any of us adding to it. I accept very easily now that I cannot please everyone and recognize also that not everyone can please me. 

I urge you to make a conscious resolution to look for the best rather than the worst in those you meet today and every day. You will be pleasantly surprised to see more beauty than ever before. I assure you that the people around you will respond differently to you because you are responding differently to them.

I think that this is another of the small steps, including Smiling, which as you know I consider addictive and contagious, which we can take towards making this world a better place. In any case; it works for me. Maybe it’ll work for you if you give it a try.

LESSONS FROM THE WORKING WORLD

Thankfully it is many years now since I worked in a Pressure Cooker atmosphere. Like everyone else who works, you have the job you are officially being paid to do. Beyond this however, somehow you must quickly learn how to sidestep the potential minefields amidst that home of toxic waste, office politics. 

For most of my working life, I really needed the job so choking down office politics and not aligning myself among any of the cliques, particularly petty and malicious when Women were involved, was something I somehow had to try and do. It did not make working life great fun, but it did make me realize a couple of important things.

There are some people who are Busy Being Busy. I once suggested using a  lighter over a coworkers desk, if dumping the whole mess onto the floor didn’t work, as a potential solution to the many piles of paper permanently piled on top of it.

There are other people who seem to sail through life with plenty of time to make dates, trade for their personal portfolio’s, have long conversations with their friends and still somehow get the credit for your work and theirs.

Like it or not, this is the Reality we all deal with when interacting with other people; each subjectively concerned with their own world and its members.

Another thing I learned was that you can be as overworked and overloaded as you like, but when someone decides you are leaving, you immediately become Expendable. Since very often this is not a personal decision (though you are effected personally and might feel it is), you can say your Goodbyes, and pass on your work to the 3 or 4 people most directly concerned, who incidentally probably should have been doing it all along anyway.

Then about a week after leaving, stop having Nightmares about how much Work you have to have done by the end of the week. It has blessedly become somebody else’s problem.

Every big city has its Workaholics. Even in Paris, they have those who consider their lives to be Metro-Boulot-Dodo (Commute-Work-Sleep), just like the rest of us. Maybe they are doing what they feel they need to but then again, maybe they aren't doing anything of value except spinning on the same treadmill every day.

What I am saying is that you are not Indispensable; you can and will be replaced, at some point, so Quit Taking Yourself So Seriously. The world is neither a cold and cruel place, nor is the weight of it resting on your narrow little shoulders either. Try to infuse some Objectivity into your work life.

While you are at it, take a new approach with your Home-Real Life too. Incidentally you should have one. If you don’t I suggest getting one soon. As we all know, time flies. 

The Friends you have now can’t wait forever for you to make time for them at some future date. Use your life or lose your life to an impersonal career. It won't keep you happy or warm or loved or cared for. You may make some money. Later you can pay for someone to keep you company.

When you die alone and unloved, you will have come full circle, your heirs will enjoy your money even if you wouldn't or couldn't.