ORPHANED

This evening I feel I should be cooking up some of the fish that I need to have ready for my Family’s Annual Christmas Eve Dinner. I have been told however, that cooking it tomorrow, just before we eat, is much more sensible and will keep it from drying out. This good advice, which comes from much better cooks than me, causes me a great deal of anxiety.

I’ll admit that the fish isn’t really the cause of the anxiety. Even the fact, that by some miracle, 12 meatless (hot and cold) dishes will somehow be ready at the same time, isn't the whole concern either. 

What troubles me today is the changing dynamics within my immediate family. The fact that one brother and his wife are in Florida on holiday this year; that another sister and her husband and my young niece also have decided not to come this year as well, are really much more disappointing. 

Officially, part of these changing attendees aren’t totally surprising since a set of misunderstandings a couple of years ago, destroyed/altered lifelong family traditions a great deal among a couple of families. However, this year, like many of my friends and relatives, I finally also am being forced to accept that some of these problems may not ever be resolved.

We all become Orphans eventually. I was quite proud that when my Father died in 1986, my Mother continued to celebrate important Family occasions and traditions continued. Since several members of my family were married at the time Dad died, Christmas Eve became a day we could count of everyone attending.This made Christmas Day the time the In-laws celebrated together.

With the death of one brother in 1994 and my Mother a year later, we could still be pretty happy and proud that we all attended Christmas Eve each year and generally alternated the venue in sequence between each other for Christmas and Easter.

I suppose I can still feel encouraged that it took our family about 20 years more than that of most of my friends to have to deal with defections, some not attending and some arguments that may not be resolved.

Perhaps, as my closest friend has done for the last several years, I also will decide that an occasion that is important to me is one I will ask others close to me to celebrate. I will call everyone around me, particularly members of my immediate family, and tell them the date and time and welcome them to join me.

This year also we mourn our oldest living relative in our immediate family. He was someone who grew up with my father here in Toronto. He later married my mother’s sister (my godmother). It doesn’t matter that he was 97 when he died on December 21^st and had lived a full and fulfilled life. My parents entire generation has now passed on. We are orphans again.

I think that as I remember my uncle at the services tomorrow, I will give thanks that we had our families with us for as long as we did and be grateful to the previous generation which did it’s best to show us how to live, both at times we were celebrating, as well as, at the times when we needed to grieve.

Then, I will have no choice but to race home to prepare the fish and the other 12 meatless dishes that are our tradition for Christmas Eve. 

Join me briefly in remembering the many Christmas’ and important holidays in our pasts. Celebrate, enjoy, savour and appreciate with me all of the happy times this year.

Beyond enjoying Christmas and the Holiday Season and the New Year, I hope that you and I can perhaps leave a bit of room to imagine and anticipate the plans we intend always to make to be together with those we love. 

If you can, you will also probably be able to join me in your imagination in thinking of the many more happy times you and those you love will share together in the coming years.

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and a very happy and healthy Holiday Season leading into a fine New Year.

APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING

Real life is stranger than fiction. Sunday night once again proved the truth of this to me.

Several times in the past I have written about apparently homeless men who live nearby. Because I live in the centre of a large city, and possibly also because the Salvation Army has an outreach centre nearby, several men spend most of their days on the corners a couple of blocks away from where I live.

A regular stop to a small (usually overcrowded) McDonald's location on my way home, led into a man and his son sitting at an adjacent table telling me a lot about our local street people. Much of what they had to say I could not have imagined.

It turns out that one fellow who has occupied one corner for the past few years has been arrested because he attacked an elderly woman with a knife. She had told him not to feed the pigeons. Particularly now with the scaffolding blocking ‘his’ corner already, this was creating even more of a problem than he, and the pigeons, normally do.

I never imagined that his brother occupied and lived on the opposite corner across the road. This brother did not bother anyone and kept to himself. Problematically however, the one near the scaffolding, would cross the road and fight with his brother. I suppose this was in between smoking and working on his suntan.

Perhaps we might have sensed a change was coming because a couple of weeks ago, a tirade of filthy words came my way as I passed by suntanned brother. Since he had never spoken to or at me before, I was very surprised. In any case, he has gone to jail. I have been told that his quieter brother has been taken into a shelter.

Meanwhile, The Blanket Man, who this year has become belligerent and vocal as well, turns out to be a member of a wealthy city family. Apparently, a friend and I were probably not mistaken in thinking he had a home/house nearby. He was ‘cleaned up’ once in order to attend a family funeral I am told. However, I expect that this was some time ago since usually he is either sockless or shoe less even in winter and only occasionally changes his outfits. More about him in 2016.

I am confused. It does not get any easier to distinguish who really needs help from among our local homeless corner people. A gift to a shelter or towards an organization that feeds these men and others like them is thus far all I can think of.

I resign myself to the fact that it is at least something that I can do which might possibly be of help to them and/or those who understand better what might actually be of practical help to these men, who appear to have some problems physically and perhaps also mentally.

THE BLANKET MAN - 2015 UPDATE

I have written about a Man who I call the Blanket Man twice before (in 2011 and 2013) but I haven’t written anything more about him for a while.

I saw him again yesterday. He was north of where I usually expect to see him. He was dressed in a jacket and had a scarf with several colours on it. His hair was very, very dirty. He seemed to look the way he has, or actually even a little better than usual, because some times he looks very grubby.

Sometimes he has a blanket or sleeping bag draped over his shoulders, is without socks, has on loose shoes without laces. On many occasions he generally looks very dirty and disheveled.

Recently he appears angry or raging, especially in the past year. At other times, seeing him, he is talking to himself and is very belligerent. A friend thinks he lives in a house nearby and says he is likely to stand on the street daring cars to hit him.

I continue to be dismayed and baffled by this person. His appearance seems to indicate that there are some occasions when he seems to pull himself together a bit more than other times. I think various store keepers help him out.

In the past, I wondered if and how he might survive. I have to think that he is on, or needs some sort of medication. He continues, however, to move about on his own power. In general he seems to be someone who needed a bath/shower and cleanup. Yesterday he looked in good spirits and was walking south at a good pace.

As I have often felt in the past, I wish I knew what I might do for him and people like him but I truly don’t know if any direct contact would be of any use or help.

He is not alone in living around my area and, at least 2 other people have lived on the street corner area for most days for, at least the last few years.

My imperfect solution is to donate to a service organization that either provides food or shelter, or both. This does not relieve my feeling of helplessness to someone I think must be unfortunate or having difficulties.

However, I feel that perhaps I can feel that at least someone more qualified than I am with professional training might help this Man or someone else I do not know how to help. 

I wish I could know my donations somehow help him or others who are perhaps like him in some small way.*





 *APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING - 2 on January 22, 2016

BEFORE STRESS RULED OUR LIVES

Once upon a time, in what might seem like Ancient History to non Boomers, people somehow managed to live without concentrating upon reducing their stress. They didn’t add to it either because their/our days were not thought of as a 24/7 continuum.

The stress industry had not exploded around us to make us aware that we were tense and upset and wound up from (among other things) a work day that never ended. Our jobs ended for the day and we went home.

When we went home, ‘after work’ we went home to the other part of our lives, the part that mattered most to us, our homes and families. Rarely would the work part of our life intrude upon the home part of our lives. We and everyone else around us lived like this, so none of the above was unusual.

I remember I was working for a stock broker when the ‘Big Bang’ was about to happen. We were told that business would be running on a 24 hour day and be worldwide in scope. Similarly we heard a lot about a ‘paperless world’ which was and is, coming soon.

To prepare for this ‘new’ world, corporations were going to become leaner, meaner and more efficient. This usually meant that soon fewer people would be doing the work than ever before.

A lot of industries merged, many kinds of companies joined together with many other (previous incompatible) industries. For example risk averse long term thinking banks merged with short term thinking stock brokers. Generally everyone wanted a piece of everyone else’s business.

A lot of these strange multi-industry conglomerations didn’t work out for obvious reasons and such strange bedfellows, as food processing and clothing manufacturing and car parts, often eventually separated back into more logical associations with more those producing or dealing with areas with similar products and services.

What was this time before an industry was devoted to stress and even children suddenly requiring medication to function (Ritalin etc.)? How ever did we manage to stay sane, without others telling us how to fix our lives?

I’d say it actually goes back to a mutual understanding that everyone had that there was a time for all things in life and that we were not trying to merge everything together in one big mixture that came at us nonstop.

When you don’t need two incomes to just keep a roof over your head and constant activity for yourself and your children. Today 60% of all American women work and over 70% of mothers are working. Meanwhile, often many must have other people raising their children.

Ferrying your charges from activity to activity after work extends the day into evening until eventually everyone collapses exhausted into bed.

It was probably in 1980 that Esquire magazine ran an article on how to be poor on $100,000 a year. When all of the obligations and clubs and costs and memberships were calculated, very little was left. Now similar calculations are done for millions of dollars. The amounts are higher and, even allowing for inflation, harder for many more people to ever think of being debt free. Besides there is always someone above us we would like to reach. Perhaps if we could just do that, we would finally be happy.

I think we were happier. We certainly had fewer people telling us what we wanted or needed in life. That may be why.

Some of us believe that space and time may be today’s ultimate luxuries. They are not, however, for sale. With a little effort, however, we might change our own lives for the better by consciously making room in our lives to enjoy the world around us and to take back some of our time for ourselves to enjoy and marvel at what life must have been like before stress ruled our lives.  

WHAT YOU SEE MAY BE WHAT YOU GET

Some time ago I cited the Chantal Kreviazuk song ‘Time’ to illustrate someone who has thought about and wondered about where time has gone.

More recently someone has figured out that we have 28,000 days in an average life. I wonder whether others who lived shorter lives in previous generations fooled around with figuring out the number of days in their lives. Perhaps computers have made the job easy enough that we can indulge and gratify our need for such information. 

Life, when you think about it, doesn’t come with guarantees or assurances or money-back offers. Instead one day we wake up to consciousness and change our lives and those of our parents forever.

Some of us are, or become over time, pretty happy to be alive. Others somehow live out their lives with most of us realizing they aren’t very happy at all.

For some time now I have been convinced that the late Ingrid Bergman had a point when she said, Happiness is good health and a short memory.

The longer you hold onto things, particularly things that did not and will not make you happier about your life, the less likely you are to be happy about them, and probably many other things you would probably normally have enjoyed about your life.

Some people say, life is what you make it. I think that whatever you see or feel about your life, when you decide to view it as a positive rather than a negative, you are perhaps closer to making it better than it otherwise would be.

Where you sit may tell you where you stand on an issue. In a similar way how you interpret an experience may make if feel it is either a good one or a bad one for you. This, might at least be something you can actually effect in your life.

A HOT MESS

You wake up and the first thing you see is your hair ‘all over your head’ as they say in the southern U.S. when they comment on what the rest of us call a ‘bad hair day’. And so it begins…

For some mysterious reason, many days that start out late or with some sort of shaky start, run the risk of being dangerous to your health and well being for the duration.

From this vantage point, you might even start to think that today’s small blips and potholes are the story of your life, instead of a few small incidents along a long and relatively happy journey.

Most of us actually know that many of the temporary problems in front of us at a particular time, aren’t really that hard to change. You can always fix your hair, change your clothes, take better care of yourself and, finally get some long overdue sleep.

Until you are ready however, you won’t change your own perception of yourself and all the things you think make you less than some mythical ‘perfect’ person you have conjured up to compare yourself to.

Only you can climb out of the rut most of us, at one time or another, so easily jump down into. The sooner we take steps to do it, the sooner we lighten up and quit senselessly and needlessly trying to lift and carry far more than we either want or need to.

Climbing back out of one’s personal rut, requires that we change our perceptions about ourselves, and usually also those around us. The sooner we do so however, the sooner we can turn the day, the week, the month and probably the rest of our lives around.

28,000 DAYS & 2,500,000,000 HEARTBEATS

Some time ago I heard and wrote about the fact that we have 2,500,000,000 heartbeats in a lifetime. Recently I have heard that the average lifespan is 75 years and is 28,000 days long.

Why do the number of days make this suddenly seem a very short time? Probably because all of us can count to 28,000 and can imagine it but 2 billion, 500 million is too great to easily comprehend.

Even if we aren’t daunted by the 28,000 days in the average lifespan of 75 years, giving a moment to think about where we are at in our lives at this moment, likely does. Suddenly there’s a lot we would like to do, isn’t there? I know I think so.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about Women and aging. Being a Baby Boomer, I am a member of a giant cohort which were ‘Born at the Right Time’ in terms of being such a large group that our numbers alone have changed our society. Now, like it or not, and I imagine most of us don’t, we will be raising the average age of the population towards being considerably older than it has perhaps ever been.

A few years ago when I saw organizations for ‘Retired Persons’, I could not imagine ‘My Generation’ ever admitting to being old or even older. When someone wanted those of 55, and now 45, to consider themselves older (or dare I say it, elderly) many of us scoffed at the mere idea that they meant us.

Around the same time, the banks, in an effort to attract middle aged customers were selling the possibility of retiring at 55. Since I wasn’t 55 at the time I first heard of this, I paid very little attention. It seems now most people are figuring they will be working till they drop and 55 is either approaching fast or long gone.

Nevertheless whenever you stop counting the odd grey hair and decide that it’s time to cover it, you have crossed the threshold acknowledging your are (like it or not) aging.

A few years ago, I was both charmed and surprised that a few gentlemen still existed in my city, evidenced by some younger men giving up their subway seats to me. Today, however, I am a bit chagrined that both young men and young women, give up their seats to me.

Yikes! Maybe the bags under my eyes are the reason and not a sudden (previously unimaginable) outbreak of good manners in the younger generation.

The fact remains, when your youngest siblings aren’t that young anymore and you are attending nieces and nephews weddings, it may be time to look at where you stand in the life cycle and whether you have some unfinished business that you would like to take care of sooner rather than someday.

This reevaluation of priorities is a good idea at any age, but an even better one for us Boomers since the breaths and the days are likely fewer and there’s still a lot most of us could and would like to do.

CUT YOURSELF SOME SLACK

Most reasonably healthy people do not consider themselves to be contestants for the world record as the ugliest, stupidest, most insecure, most needy or most depressed. Why then do we find so much wrong with us and why do we spend so much time pointing out our imagined weaknesses and shortcomings to others?

I sometimes think that the only person that notices that cold sore we feel is coming up on our lips or that every single thing about us isn’t perfect, is us and our strangely negative perception of ourselves.

It’s not that we lack confidence but that somewhere along the way, we seem to have made a list of either what we might improve or started to evaluate ourselves on some impossible standard of perfection.

Let's face it, using this method, any of us can easily find someone more beautiful, richer, more talented, smarter, more successful etc. etc. etc. Depending on what bothers us personally, the list might get pretty long.

To see ourselves as others see us, there’s something a bit harder to do. Maybe we really should relearn how to count our blessings beginning with thanks for the many people each of us knows who love and care about us.

I think reminding ourselves of this, and all that we do have, instead of waging a daily battle against ourselves about what someone else may have that we don’t, is a good way to stop senselessly sabotaging yourself over and over again.

Few of us will suddenly turn this around and go to the other extreme of becoming flagrant narcissists. I am positive however, that most of us could be a lot happier if we let up on what’s wrong and refocus instead on the many more things that actually are right.

Cut yourself some slack and see how it feels to be happy for a change.

LIGHTENING UP

Not that long ago you could open my closet doors and see a typical city girl closet. A sea of dark colours with a few light tops. Although it still applies to coats, I was happy recently when the cleaners lost something and told their office to look for bright coloured things. To my surprise, it seems I had finally lightened up in a recognizable way.

For some reason, a couple of years ago, yellow and emerald suddenly seemed right. Strangely, in a ‘fake it till you make it’ kind of way, putting lighter and brighter colours around me soon meant that I felt lighter and brighter on the inside as well.

I’m not saying that brighter clothing was the only thing behind this relatively newly found optimism, but it sure didn’t hurt. Maybe it works like blue lenses do on sunglasses to help migraine and dyslexia, and we are relieved.

Canada has a long winter and anyone who lives here knows it. Why then do we add to the dullest days of the year with a sea of black and navy coats? Why do we seem to save all of the bright colours for the ski slopes, when we actually could really use them during the weekdays? No wonder we cheer up in spring when bright colours accompany warmer weather.

While brighter colours outside your self help, it is by adding some colour to your inner perspective that can actually change your life and possibly help you to become a happier person. Change your outlook, change your life.

Life is not long enough for some people, but it often seems too long for those who are unhappy.

I think living becomes happier and easier when we walk and live in a sunnier place inside us. The occasional dull day does not pile on as hard when you have taught yourself to habitually turn things around; when you consider what is possible rather than what isn’t. Worked for me. Just saying!.

OUT OF FOCUS

If you don’t define your life, your life might not have a lot of accomplishment in it. You may have a lot of projects you have started but, over time, it becomes obvious that few things ever get finished.

TOO MANY D.I.Y. PROJECTS

I think that a lack of focus, when combined with a short attention span contributes to a great deal of unfinished business. Even when you have a lot of energy, but run out of ideas or direction for those you do have, you can easily become frustrated and restless.

I suspect that never having discovered a defining passion, interest or purpose, may have a lot to do with it. When nothing inspires you enough to hold your interest, many things will be needed to fill the time. Unfortunately, none of them interest you enough to work on and complete them.

HANGING OUT WITH OTHERS

You might also hope, hanging around with others might somehow, find you some inspiration, give you something to do, or if nothing else, help you pass the time in a convivial and amusing way.

However, in fact, you can easily be a problem to others, because some of them are hoping for the same thing…for others to amuse, entertain and occupy them.

This can work for a while, but usually only until somebody needs to get actually get something done. At this point your demands for others attention leads to the risk of your making a nuisance of yourself. Not funny.

A NEW HOBBY

Some of us develop a 'Hobby' of telling others how to do their jobs or interfering in other ways with other people around them. Your helpful ‘free’ advice, is usually neither helpful nor free. I suspect that most who give ‘free advice’ rarely have taken the trouble to understand themselves, or anyone else fully.

If you were them, you wouldn’t be you. If you were them, you would probably not have done it the way they are doing it or did it.

However, you are not them, you are you. Although you have some ideas about what someone else is doing, it is not yours to do, but theirs. Naturally and logically they need to do it their way, not yours.

KEEPING YOUR OPTIONS OPEN

Leaving all of your options open, may lead to rarely expressing an interest or belief in anything.

As the saying goes, when you believe in nothing; you will believe anything. Too often, possibly because of too much, or too little, sleep, you develop and are captivated by whimsical and even otherwise transparently stupid fantasies.

Normally such things are those that most people don’t have the time or interest to waste their time, and often, money on.

However, just as substantial and useful things interest people who understand life better and are focused, these others are willing and have the time to focus on what almost everyone else considers the absurd, specious and useless. 

MISSING LINKS

When you devote the kind of concentration and dedication to something most people can’t or won’t, you can perhaps get credit for having a lot of imagination. 

However a lack of facts, education, knowledge of laws of physics, chemistry, biology, or logic, and possibly even common sense, simply do not validate your unique perspective of the world.

When we think about it a bit, most of us will admit that we really don't believe that the world is all wrong and we are the only ones on the right track.

ADJUSTING YOUR FOCUS

Should you find that you have some 'spare time' on our hands, you might consider that many people around us and around the world do not have this luxury.

We might also notice and acknowledge that many people are experiencing genuine physical and mental deprivation and pain.

With increased awareness and recognition that we could actually be useful to someone worse off than ourselves, we might perhaps use some of our copious free time in helping them out a bit.

The fact that we will actually be helping ourselves even more than anyone else when we extend ourselves to others may be truer than we care to admit, but we can keep it our little secret. 

LIVING YOUR OWN LIFE

There are people that are highly motivated, energetic, accomplished multi-taskers. They are busy but are organized and energetic and often accomplish a great deal. I think they accomplish so much because they are able to concentrate and focus on reaching their goals.

Another type of person never seems to accomplish much of anything. They may even have a lot of projects they have started but, over time, it is obvious that few things ever get finished. I think that a lack of focus, when combined with a short attention span both contribute to a great deal of unfinished business.

I suspect that they may never have discovered a defining passion, interest or purpose. Because of this many things are needed to fill their time, but none of them interest them enough to work on something and complete it.

If however, you don’t take the time to discover something you want to do, to look within yourself to find what really interests and engrosses you, you are leaving yourself open to letting someone else do it for you.

A second hand way of living through somebody else is fine when we relax and read a work of fiction or see a movie. In real life however, how much of someone else’s life do we want to observe. Instead, with a bit of initial effort,  we might be enjoying our own lives and experience.

Steve Jobs the technology entrepreneur lived only a few years beyond the age of 50. At some point he is quoted as saying: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary”.

In the movie Avenue Montaigne one of the characters speaking to his son says: there comes a point in your life where you stop talking about the time ahead of you and start to think about the time left. 

Whatever your age, you can always think about the time ahead and what you want to do with it. A wise woman Marsha Sinetar wrote a book in 1987, called ‘Do What you Want, the Money will follow’; so will the life you want.  

WHAT DID I DO WRONG?

Many years ago, a friend of mine wrote a horrible letter to her ex-boyfriend. She read it to me and I cringed at the doubts she had about herself and how she was obviously wracking her brain to think of what she had done wrong.

The fact that her boyfriend had left her for some ‘chick’ in a ‘string bikini’ made this beautiful girl doubt everything about herself.

Mercifully, I convinced her to wait a couple of days until the weekend was over and only then mail this letter if she still felt the same way. Years later I heard that she had never mailed it. She thanked me.

What happened to her and what happened to him? She married someone else and had two sons, lived a different life from what she earlier expected but, I suspect a happier one. He married the ‘string bikini chick’ who soon was pregnant and convinced him to work two jobs and make her feel secure but putting their property in her name. Most of us can fill in the blanks here.

This morning I read an article on the Internet about why a Man might break up with a good Woman. The writer felt there were 3 main reasons, none of which the Man would tell you. He said he thought that the reasons were that: the Man felt pressured and inadequate, that the relationship felt competitive and that he didn’t feel respected.

I could see why any one of these reasons could be a ‘deal breaker’. You can too if you think about it.

My friend was expressing insecurity, just as we all do about something in our lives that we doubt and worry about in our lives. In our mind there is always somebody more beautiful, thinner, more accomplished, richer and possibly happier than we are. Meanwhile the person others saw when they looked at my friend could be Kate Upton’s sister.

This happened years ago, but it also happened yesterday, will happen today and again tomorrow. In other words, it will continue happening until we figure out who we are and what we are willing to give to have lasting and fulfilling mutual love in our lives.

We need to think about why we either feel pressured or inadequate or make others feel this way.

We also need to seriously decide whether every area of our life needs to be competitive, even our home life? Can we ever trust ourselves or anyone else in our lives enough to give them the benefit of the doubt and let them in? 

Can we ever teach ourselves to be secure and confident enough to recognize that we can have people in our lives who have our best interests at heart and only want us to love them back?

Can we consider that we don’t respect anyone and can’t because we don’t respect ourselves?

Anyone who has ever felt pressured or inadequate, competitive with someone else or felt a lack of respect in their lives; in other words, everyone you know including yourself; can understand why someone (male or female) feeling any of these things is likely to want to get as far away as they can from the person who makes them feel this way.

The writer of the article gave 3 Reasons a Man Might Break Up With a Good Woman (That He Won’t Tell You). Clayton Olson at YourTango.com spoke to all of us Men and Women. He gave us a lot to think about far into ourselves and went right to the place we really live.

Is it any wonder that we wouldn’t tell someone else why we felt this way about someone else and that it was the ‘deal breaker’ when we can’t even tell ourselves? Something to think about.

DREAMING OUT LOUD

There is no time like the present for working on a plan for your future. In fact, I believe that the sooner you put yourself into your plans, the better. In other words, the sooner you determine what you want to be ‘when you grow up’, the better.

Most of us can remember what we loved to do as children and some of the games and ‘make belief’ characters we played and admired. We also usually had an answer for what we wanted to do when we grew up. 

Some of us had a very definite idea about what we wanted from life and this actually never changed. Because of this many of us realized these early dreams. Others of us ended up doing other things, either because our needs and wants changed or out of necessity to earn a living and make a life for ourselves.

I think however, that wherever we are at in our lives, it is a good idea to think about where we really want to be now and in the future. Let’s be honest, most of us have a ‘Wish List’. 

With a win of the proverbial ‘Million Dollars’ most of us have a dozen or more things we can think of to do with ‘all of that money’. However, aside from ‘winning the lottery’, how much of what we dream about can we hope to achieve, should that lottery win not happen? This is an important question.

Stepping back from the fantasy, how can we make some, or all, of our dreams a reality? From within my own frustration and the work in progress that is my life, I’d say quite a lot of it.

To begin with you have to look at your dreams and think about what they are, particularly which are most important to you. Although you can spend a bit of time thinking about this, most of us know what we want the most. Where we get stuck is in trying to figure out how to get it.

I think the best place to start is to ‘dream out loud’. In other words, let your ‘secret’ dream out into your life. This is the scary part. It is actually what is making your dreams impossible. Fear. 

It will take both courage and determination to finally put your dream out there so you, and people around you can hear about and see it. Whether this means writing it down, or gets a little farther by telling your friends and family what you’ve always wanted, you are actually taking the crucial first step in making your dream possible.

Your fear is what is holding you back, far more than what your dream actually is. I am pretty sure that what you dream about isn’t as crazy as you fear it is. Guess what, you’ll never know, if you keep it a secret!

By letting your dreams out, you confirm that you want something beyond what you have now. You may have a few ideas about how to realize your dreams. Why not take them out for a ride and see where you can put them in your life?

As you do this, you may notice those around you start to feel ready to trust you with their own dreams which they have also been keeping secret and unspoken.

You and those around you might be surprised to find that what you want and what they want is either not so far apart, or quite as impossible as you imagined it might be.

This exchange can help you both, to suggest practical ways and encourage and help each other to move your life closer to what you want it to be. You might suddenly find you have the encouragement and support of those around you in finding practical ways to make your dreams a reality.

Most importantly, your own actions, will have taken the first steps in redirecting your life toward making your dreams possible for you to achieve. I’d say your success is more likely than some secret wishes based on some ‘miracle’ windfall to do it for you.   

911

The day most of us currently living in North America remember vividly has come again. Earlier this year several members of my family visited Ground Zero when they were in New York. One of them became sick, as did another woman nearby from the air around the site.

I guess this giant graveyard still, whatever covers it, remains a giant graveyard in much the same way other graveyards old and new do, whether people deny them or not.

If you have lived long enough, you may have attended the first, or last, Beatles concert. You may have been alive when John Kennedy died.

Like me, you may have been awake when CNN reported that Princess Diana had been in a car crash in Paris, and still awake several hours later when the ambulance finally reached the hospital and she was pronounced dead.

You likely remember where you were on the morning of September 11, 2001 and probably what you saw and heard and felt that day. You also know that as many as 30% of some group of people believe that ‘911 was an inside job’. In other words that we have not been told the truth about it.

Many of these same people, or some like them, still wonder whether Princess Diana was deliberately murdered; others have a theory about President Kennedy, UFO’s and a multitude of other events real or imagined.

I personally do not spend a lot of time thinking about who is doing harm to someone else and what person or group may currently have plans for ‘world domination’.

Once you have been given remission from Cancer, each day and each year are what you celebrate and think about.

When you have lost the person people today call their ‘significant other’, a lot of the spurious and fantastical hold no interest to you, however and whoever tries to involve you in their particular preoccupation.

Instead you take a moment, each year to celebrate your birthday, the day you were told your Cancer was probably behind you, the day your dearest love died. Such days are personal to you and are your own. 

The other days, that the world considers significant to the history of mankind are also important because they let us know both how far we have come as a species and also remind us of how much farther we need to go to learn how to coexist peacefully with our fellow human beings.

On historical days, we pause and remember, our place among others but especially the hopes and fears we have personally lived with and moved through. Probably more than any other thing we come to a point that we realized that 'somethings lost and somethings gained in living every day', as someone wisely said in a song from years ago.

Ultimately, we conclude that, it is our place among the living that we note and commemorate and place our hopes for a better tomorrow upon; having noted the value of the past in making our present what it means to our lives today.