DO OVER

There are times when we wish LIFE would give us a chance for a DO OVER. When we have experienced a rough couple of weeks, we would really like to maybe have missed some of it. Too bad we can’t just skip the bad parts. 

If not, too bad we can’t just get to the part where everything is either the way it was, or even just O.K. again. Sometimes we probably wish we could just go back and DO OVER the thing that we feel got us into the situation we are in now.

The movie Click with Adam Sandler tried to show how one person can try to meet all of his obligations and also to, by stopping life, move past times that each of us would prefer to have somehow avoided.

The last two weeks seemed to be a period for me that it would have been nice to be away from. The only really ridiculous part was the amount of food I spilled on my clothes, especially when eating while standing up at a wine (while actually Champagne) tasting. Not surprisingly, I think that Risotto, however good, is better to eat than to wear. 

Some things really were not much fun. You’ve been there too I am sure but possibly in a different way than I have been this time.

Two weeks ago Monday, I was going to visit a friend in hospital (actually Palliative care). I was ready to pick up a nice (not smelly) flowering plant and was just making a quick phone call to let the caregiver know I was on my way. To my shock and dismay, my friend throughout all of my adult years, had passed away the Saturday before, moments after his wife had left for home.

When you hear that someone has left us, you often experience disbelief that the world still seems to be going on around us as if nothing had happened. Sometimes this is as much of a shock as trying somehow to say goodbye to someone who played such an important part in our life.

In addition, though I really, really hate to admit it, and Stoical as I try to be about Cancer; once you’ve had it, you will always be looking over your shoulder…just in case it has come back.

It doesn’t matter whether you try always to only worry about something when there is something to worry about and not live your life worrying about things that haven’t even happened yet, but might. 

Suddenly you have an all consuming thing that has to be attended to...NOW. 

It’s almost as if any unusual thing can bring back the experience and sit it right in your face as if it had never been out of your life. 

The good thing is that you know where to go and who to ask and soon know that, as in my case, it was something completely different and soon dealt with.

Other things seem to pile on when you get this conjunction of trials and tribulations. If you’re not careful, you can build any Molehill into a Mountain.

However, life teaches us that there are times when we need to pause, take a breath and think. 

Our experiences teach us that, life is made up of many things. Some of these are easy, predictable and usually we glide by them as part of the routine we have built into our lives to take us through the relatively normal days. Thankfully there are a lot of those.

It’s when we get thrown out of our routine and have to consider what we need to do to deal with a set of new experiences, small and large, that having lived and learned comes in handy.

While each of us has some trying times, we also recognize that we are living and learning. That we have lived and learned is obvious when we know that whatever is happening now, we will move on to something else eventually.

Maybe the silver lining in this particular set of clouds is that my tear ducts finally may have unclogged and the ‘bags’ under my eyes will now get smaller. The strange thing I was worried about has again turned out to be nothing special and it is good I did not stay freaked out about it for long.

The passing of my friend, will stay with me in memory and in the knowledge that I had the gift of his integrity and wise counsel in my life to guide me throughout the years and will always have it in remembrance and gratitude.

Life maybe actually needs to be lived moving forward. Perhaps the DO OVER is something we outgrow as we find that we are able to take what we have learned before and more easily deal with the tougher weeks, until we are again ready to move forward again.

MOVING FORWARD

Most of us would like to feel we are moving forward as we move through life. In the past few years, life has been compared to a journey. This implies movement and by implication forward movement.

Possibly there is something within us that wants to, and possibly needs to, see some progress, some change, and also reassurance of one sort or another that we are ‘getting somewhere’, moving forward, progressing, accomplishing something.

It isn’t that we are all impatient and driven, but more that our lives need milestones and events with which we celebrate and encourage ourselves that we are ‘on the right track’ and going in the right direction.

We accept that ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’, in other words that everything will not be done in a day and that achieving some worthwhile goal, requires time. We eventually understand that life requires learning both patience and perseverance.

Sometimes we are stalled, we are delayed, we encounter obstacles. Some of these are beyond our control. When this is the case, we learn ways to work with them, go through them or better still, go around them.

Some obstacles are of our own making. These come from within us and reveal our reservations and fears of the unknown. With these we learn that we need to work on ourselves in order to move behind the ways we hold ourselves back. When we do we are often surprised how much easier it is to move forward when you are not sabotaging ourselves.

Ideally, we would leap frog over anything that gets in our way and soon feel we had moved forward again. In real life, however, sometimes we need to delay and defer some things until we are able to learn enough and educate ourselves, particularly when specialized training is necessary.

Sometimes we seem to be an impatient lot. Some of us have come to want something and want it now. We have learned to tolerate, accept, and more incredibly still, to excuse our own impatience, and that of others.

Sometimes we sugar coat aggressive behaviour and call it drive and motivation. While this sometimes enables some people to achieve their goals, despite the cost to everyone else, some of today’s manifestations are not very attractive, logical, considerate or actually not anything other than selfish and stupid.

The life well lived, on the other hand, has to take into account that living well requires a certain amount of restraint, patience, and consideration of others. Each of us needs to recognize our skills and aptitudes in order to effectively employ the resources we have available.

A willingness to learn something new about ourselves, and often the world around us every day, is probably one of the best tools each of us has available. Ultimately, as someone said recently, there aren’t many shortcuts in life, it requires you to live it.

By the time we can stop and look back, we realize that, so far, we have usually experienced more than we expected to and had a lot of surprises and adventures along the way.

TURN AROUND

Today, someone posted that it doesn't matter how far you have gone down a road, you can still turn around. I agree.

The Road Less Traveled may have seemed a good idea at the time, but for some of us, living a solitary life isn't something we want to do for the rest of our lives.

Changes come to you, and at you also, whether you like them or not. There is no denying that Permanent ones involving loss are among the most difficult. However, no living, breathing person should want to stay in the same place forever.

My Mother and I both recognized that we'd already had a husband. Nothing was going to change the fact that our lives would never be the same again. However, Black never suited either of us, and sooner rather than later, you need to do what you can to move on.

I find, that a lot of things contribute towards a new outlook and help us make the changes we need to. 

In my case, in the last couple of years, travelling to Spain, across the Mediterranean coast to northern Italy has reintroduced me to a world that is more colourful and warmer both in their climate, attitude, decor, food and colours. 

I recognize that I have switched back to the 'sunnier' side in a lot of things in my life. I am happy to say that happily this direction is more familiar to me as a person than mourning ever was. 

Sometimes we have to become aware that we have been running on the spot for quite a long time. Often, in fact, we may have been running on empty without knowing it.

Once you recognize this, you can consider how much more time you want to spend there. I am convinced that in this area, as in everything else in life, no one can change us but ourselves. 

I still find I am able to see the future as a more interesting place than the past. 

In fact, I think, now that I have turned around, that I actually spend more time looking forward than I do in the present. I think that this change of direction will be worth it, even if I had to retrace a few steps before I found a new footing.

LIVING IN A DIGITAL WORLD

Quantities of superficial information bombard us 24/7. More than ever before, the Media comes to us. In fact, filtering out the quantity, and locating sufficient quality, to be well informed is probably more of a challenge than ever.

It therefore requires a degree of interest, combined with persistence and learning in order to make judgements about what aspect of a myriad of subjects it might actually be worthwhile to pay attention to and follow.

The greatest downside to the staggering amount of information so readily available, is filtering out the quantity, and actually locating relevant qualitative information.

The Generations before The Millennials (born 1982-2001) gradually accepted the need for technology but still watched television and the ‘mainstream media’ in real time; The Millennial group does not. Instead they grew up with these new sources of communication and technologies, and automatically incorporated them into their lives.

They are the first group which has ‘Grown Up Digital’ (in the words of Don Tapscott) and there is no way to consider them without their link to their technology. Quite simply technology has changed the way all of us receive information, as well as, poses implications for both the future and the world economy.

The Media today comes to us all wherever we are, but especially to those who know how to access it wherever they are and they use it at their convenience.

The Millennials, having grown up with each stage of the new technology incorporated and useful in their everyday lives use they familiarity with it to instantly tell everyone they know what they find important.

As a result the things that go ‘viral’ reach massive audiences in very short periods of time and virtually have a life of their own. However, just because it has gone ‘viral’ doesn’t mean it is relevant, important or true.

Today, it is more and more likely that it is only after the ‘news’ is everywhere that we can see that they/we should probably have waited until the whole story was out there before reacting.

I have recently written about how we now live in a world in which we can communicate with each other universally 24/7.

The upside of a 24/7 world, is an awareness that we are all together on one planet and are interrelated with each other in our responsibility to each other and the effects we can have on the future of our planet.

What I think is the downside of these new means of communication is our ability, and our propensity to react BEFORE, either our Brain is engaged or we have all of the facts. We are now able to send everyone we know our unfiltered and immediate reactions to whatever we see and hear.

I mused about the type of ‘Morning After’ a lot of people probably wake up to after texting everyone they know, often with Selfies and possibly even YouTube to witness the need they felt to tell everyone What They Really Thought about something in the middle of the night.

Under the surface however, you sense some personal detachment by The Millennials since their connections are actually not with everyone but mainly with their networks and friends. This stems from the fact that they seem almost umbilically attached, in a wireless way of course, to their devices. By devices I mean their technology: i.e. iPods or androids or iPhones or tablets etc.  

The rest of us often find that, although we may be standing in front of them, we usually sense and feel that something or someone else has their attention, not us. Most of us come to this conclusion because they spend a lot of time looking away from the live person in front of them and replying to whoever has just (and will continue to) send them text messages.

I sometimes wonder if this extends even to their own friends too. I say this because pictures abound of them in groups or even couples, both texting someone in their networks. It is possible, some of them might even be texting the person across from them. The photos seem to follow them everywhere; on dates, in theatres, on benches in an art gallery…almost anywhere, or in fact, everywhere.

Sometimes you just can’t help feeling they obviously find someone else on their devices more interesting than you. I personally suspect it is true, their attention is somewhere else. Most of us however have been forced to accept that this is what they do and how most of them are.

I don’t have much advice on what to do about this except to suggest we define no tech zones in the life you/we have with them. I suggest (tongue in cheek) you text them if you want something.

I also suggest that if it is a family gathering, send them all to another room. It will leave some space for others to sit, and also spare you from having to look at the back of a laptop or the top of their heads as they text someone else.

When dinner is ready give them a 5 minute warning, otherwise you might need to be prepared to wait a few extra minutes for them while they ‘tear’ themselves away from whatever they were doing.

They are the first group to come of age in the new Millennium and also the first group to have ‘Grown Up Digital’. They use the technology naturally and can access information easily (sometimes perhaps too superficially) but have made it an integral part of their lives.

There is something to be said about the amount of information that is available leading to learning something up to and beyond what you might ever have had access to before.

Meanwhile, being able to communicate with the world and to sense and feel and actually recognize that we are all united and cohabit on one planet, might enable us to recognize our responsibility to our planet, and each other, in ways we have not considered before.

The new technological universality is likely to require new thinking. It likely will lead to the development of new institutions and new ways of interacting with each other.

Perhaps the new language so many of us are learning to speak, will help us to discover new solutions to old problems and teach us something new about ourselves and the others with whom we share the planet. 

THE MILLENNIALS – GENERATION Y

It is interesting to think of a group coming of age as being part of the New Millennium. They definitely are a new and different generation from those who preceded them and interesting because some of these differences are new to us in so large a group.

The Millennials are also sometimes called Gen Y or Echo Boomers. The Echo Boomer title comes from the generation’s size relative to the Baby Boom. For obvious reasons the title Millennials made a lot more sense than several other (mostly awful) and very lame names.

After a lot of attempts to define this group by age or world events, it is now thought that their cohort should be those people born between 1982 to 1999 or possibly 2001. (1982-1999 or 1982-2001) Some think the cut off should be about 1994. Regardless, as of 2012, the estimated size of the group is around 80 million in the United States.

Who they are, are the children of Baby Boomers or Generation Xers. While some call them Generation Me, because they are considered confident and tolerant; others feel they are called this because they are impatient, have a short attention span and are narcissistic. Generally, I personally find them very polite, civic minded and nice.

Although, they seem generally optimistic about the future, some of them appear to feel change is needed within existing institutions and that, in fact new institutions will need to be created to reflect the changing world in which we will be living, in the future.

They are socially, and probably will be, politically active. It is said that they may support same-sex marriage and legalization of marijuana, yet be less supportive of abortion, but still be pro-choice.

I think they have grown up understanding through technological advances that we are all inhabitants together of one planet and it shows. They seem to have a consciousness of the future of the planet and their own future being interwoven. 

They, and the Planet we all share, is something they take seriously. Animal testing for medical purposes is not accepted. Recycling is something they grew up with and believe is our responsibility and obligation.

Most of them are required to do volunteer work of some sort in order to graduate from high school. I think many of them will continue to support those things and causes they believe in.

Under the surface however, you sense some detachment since their connections are actually not with everyone but mainly with their networks and friends. This stems from the fact that they seem almost umbilically attached, in a wireless way of course, to their devices. By devices I mean their technology: i.e. iPods or Androids or iPhones or Tablets etc.

They are the first group which has ‘Grown Up Digital’ (in the words of Don Tapscott) and there is no way to consider them without their link to their technology. They grew up with these new sources of communication and technologies, and automatically incorporated them into their lives.

While, the generational groups before The Millennials gradually accepted the need for technology but still watched television and the ‘mainstream media’ in real time; this group does not. The Media comes to them wherever they are and they use it at their convenience.

They instantly tell everyone they know what they find important. As a result the things that go ‘viral’ reach massive audiences in very short periods of time and virtually have a life of their own. Just because it has gone ‘viral’ however, doesn’t mean it is relevant, important or true.

The greatest downside to the staggering amount of information so readily available, is filtering out the quantity and actually locating relevant qualitative information.

Meanwhile, although you may be standing in front of them, you usually sense and feel that something or someone else has their attention, not you. You can’t help feeling that their attention is elsewhere, because it probably is. They spend a lot of time looking away from the live person in front of them and replying to whoever has just (and will continue to) send them text messages.

Most of us however have been forced to accept that this is what they do and how most of them are. In self defence some parents have declared areas of the house no technology zones. I suggest (tongue in cheek) you text them if you want something, including a 5 minute warning about when you want them to join you for dinner.

It doesn’t help discipline or communication that their parents seem to treat them as ‘Trophy Kids’. Some people feel that these ‘children’ were only required to show up in order to merit the approval of their proud parents. This may be why some of them appear to have a sense of entitlement and narcissism.

The term ‘Helicopter Parent’ (always hovering around them) has been created to describe their parent’s presence in, possibly too many, parts of their lives. Some people feel that the parents are ‘hovering’ and so involved with their children’s lives that they are possibly compensating for something missing in their own lives.

To others these ‘Helicopter Parents’ seem to not be letting their children be responsible for their own decisions and/or make the sorts of decisions they will need to make in order to grow into self-sufficient and independent adults.

With record levels of underemployment (19.1% in 2012), youth poverty, unemployment and similar conditions have led to record numbers continuing to live with their parents, including 1 in 2 of new college graduates still unemployed or underemployed.

In other countries, especially in Europe, countries such as Greece, Spain, France and Italy have groups similar to those called the Millennials. Some of these leave their countries in order to try and find work in other places.

Many Millennials around the world are actually failing to establish a career or seem otherwise to be excluded from the labour market. Others are earning only minimum wages, which some predict will continue to be a problem for the next decade.

Technology has so transformed our society that for it to become the better place Millennials optimistically hope it will be, both new ways of thinking within existing institutions, as well as, new institutions, will have to be created.

This being said, if you can get their attention, they often offer a different approach and outlook about life and seem to be seeing the world with new eyes. Where they will take us in the future is still unknown but there is a good chance it may be a different place than any group that has preceded it since the older Boomers took a shot at changing the world they grew up in.

LIVE LONG ENOUGH AND...

Live long enough and you start to realize that not everything that happens is important. Some things in life are just that, LIFE. 

What I mean is that we neither love nor hate everything that happens; in fact, some things hardly require anything at all from us and are so routine we scarcely notice them.

Life Lessons are the things we learn from experience. It is hard sometimes to explain to young children that it’s only by living through something that you learn from it. For example, most of us remember our first love. Sometimes it makes us smile to realize how naive we were. However, it is in remembering that we can consider how far we have come and sometimes what we have lost along the way.

I am a great believer in second chances. I give almost everyone I know a second chance. Experience however, has taught me that many, if not most, things do happen for a reason. Drifting apart or splitting up whether involving a friendship or a romance, usually happens for a very good reason.

When things change in a relationship we sometimes need to consider what is happening and why. Whoever initiates the change is likely trying to change something in themselves that they feel has either been missing from their lives or not developed enough to take them where they want to be.

We can’t always think of changes in ourselves or others as a trial or ordeal that we somehow need to tolerate and endure. Sometimes it is not so much a matter of ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ but a recognition by you or your friend that your direction in life is diverging.

One of my friends was horrified that I had begun working in the financial sector years ago. She was more artistically inclined and I think she felt people working in the financial sector were too materialistic. She also traveled a lot and I think perhaps that both my career choices and hers eventually meant our paths diverged.

I meanwhile was, and continue to be, appalled by people that base the worth of a person on their financial net worth and/or possessions. To me, what someone is worth would never be based on money or possessions. To me, relationships with people and what type of person someone is, continues to be how I value people.

I have also learned to be more comfortable with accepting that some relationships are situational. This means that when you interact with someone because of a mutual interest or to meet a goal, either personal or relating to your work, there may come a time when one or both of you need to move on to other things separately.

I used to tough it out, particularly in my personal relationships and friendships, because I believed that ‘everything happens for a reason’. I thought that even difficult situations should play out. There was something to be learned here. Possibly.

I think today I spend less time hanging around until the bitter end. I think that something I might have had to learn along the way instead has been when to say goodbye. By accepting that just because some people pass by us in life, it doesn’t mean that we need to expect more of a situation than a brief meeting and a passing glance.

I still feel that things happen for a reason. I feel happy to think that I still can feel comfort and reassurance in feeling that ‘no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should’ as the Desiderata poem told us.

Today, I give new experiences more of a chance to come into my life by leaving some room for them.

The past is after all, The Past. I can’t do much to change what already happened, except to take the lessons I learned from it with me as I move forward into the Future.

I find there is quite a lot of living to do right now, in The Present, to keep most of us pretty busy, without spinning our wheels and going over the same old story. This is especially important when we consider that just ahead of us, the rest of our life awaits us.