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. 

THE MORNING AFTER

I thought I had enough sleep last night, but maybe not. The reason I think this is that I find myself thinking about how life’s best decisions are probably not made when we haven’t had enough sleep.

I am thinking about NIGHT-OWL’S, the ALL-NIGHTER but especially about THE MORNING AFTER.

I have to belatedly concede and accept that the ALL-NIGHTER is probably not conducive or effective either to reasonable communication or problem solving.

It almost doesn’t matter whether you are up all night cramming for final exams, reading, writing, partying or texting your many friends, at home or around the world in other time zones. You can’t and won’t be operating at your optimum capacity, whatever you think.

We all know that it leaves you with ‘bags’ under your eyes and looking tired. However, the most long lasting effect is likely a lot of new Baggage which might be considered the modern take on ‘THE MORNING AFTER’.

Earlier today I was thinking about how years ago I saved a friend from really horrible humiliation by convincing her to put the really self-abasing letter, she felt she HAD TO WRITE into a drawer for the weekend before even considering sending it. 

In those days (yes some of us are still around to remember them) the Post Office (and Banks also) didn’t work on weekends. You may not believe it, but ATM’s were not invented yet either. Imagine!

Anyway, since nothing was going anywhere till after the weekend, I convinced her to reread this awful thing and then send it, if she still really needed to, after she had time to reread and rethink it. Not congratulating myself too much, but a time came, years later when she told me that, thankfully, it had never been sent. Some of us are not so lucky.

As I mentioned earlier today, the days without service, unfortunately are gone. Today we are able to communicate 24/7. I say unfortunately because I can only imagine some of the stuff being said, and sent, in the middle of the night. Since I am often awake, I know whereof I speak. You probably do too.

THE MORNING AFTER takes on a whole new meaning when you hazily remember (and unfortunately have proof) that last night you thought it was a really good idea to TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW…WHAT YOU REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT THEM. You also had to tell everyone you knew where you were at 4 a.m. and ‘share’ what you were doing. Too bad! Too late now!

I guess you can hope that they get so many messages that they have to delete them unread…OR ELSE, you are probably in big trouble with some, or maybe all, of your Mailing List…or whoever is left that will ever bother to speak to you again. After all, they and YouTube have your ‘Selfies’ to prove it.

Welcome to the convenience of today’s world. Too bad we can engage our fingers and devices BEFORE we can engage our Brains. But there you have it.

I’d suggest each of us learn what we are capable of while we are still young enough to not doing anything we might regret for the rest of our lives.

  

Once you know your limitations, you may have a better idea of what you might do to yourself, or others, when you are temporarily insane from sleep deprivation or artificially buoyed up and ready to take on the world.

You might begin by treating anything you use to communicate your inspirations as you would a loaded Gun. It is almost as bad. In fact, in some ways it might be worse because you will probably still be alive in the morning to face the consequences. 

It isn’t your imagination. The 'Whole World' actually does have your words and photos in front of them in their face.

I won’t say KNOCK YOURSELF OUT because you already might have. Just take a minute to figure out how you might actually put the brakes on THE REAL ME next time. Remembering the inevitable pain of the MORNING AFTER just might help a bit.

WHY DON'T YOU SLEEP ON IT?

Some people say that there really isn’t anything like a good night’s sleep to put things into perspective. They may have a point. However, like everyone else, I expect that an occasional sleepless night is probably inevitable.

I call the preoccupations that trouble us in the middle of the night, ‘three o’clock in the morning’. This is the time in the middle of the night when sleep has eluded us, but whatever is bothering us continues to keep us awake. No wonder we can’t sleep, when our thoughts are racing around and around and around.

Strangely, usually one of two things happen when you lose sleep over something that was bothering you. You either get so tired that you stop caring about it, or you finally get such a deep sleep, that the problem no longer has the power to disturb, depress or weigh you down.

I wouldn’t be surprised if doctors who suggest taking two aspirin and giving them a call in the morning, get fewer call backs than do those ready to see their patient’s anytime they ask to see the doctor.

In fact, sometimes I wonder whether many, if not most, of our problems would go away more easily if we just ignored them for a couple of days. 

In the days of ‘snail mail’ I am happy to have once saved a friend serious humiliation by convincing her to delay mailing her self-abasing letter until the postal service resumed on Monday morning.

Unfortunately, today we can share our ideas and reactions 24/7. I suspect that there must be some wild retractions and face-saving going on pretty regularly these days ‘The Morning After’.

I may suggest that we delay quick action and reaction to a problem, especially anything involving the phrase, ‘that’s it, I’ve had enough’. 

I doubt however, that many of us, when faced with something really worrying, can do this. In fact, it seems actually to go against every natural instinct we have to expect us to suddenly be patient and calm at a time when we feel ready to explode.

More likely instead, most of us probably feel a compelling and consuming need to deal with whatever problems we have head on. Unfortunately this sometimes means we want/need to talk them out either with some long suffering friend, or sometimes even with anyone in hearing range.

We somehow convince ourselves that doing something is better than doing nothing. Maybe not. In fact, sometimes I think that telling myself, ‘When in doubt, do nothing’, is the best solution to a troubling problem.

I am convinced that there are times when doing nothing may actually be a better choice, than acting rashly and hastily, in some usually misbegotten attempt to immediately resolve an issue.

Experience has also shown me that ‘All Nighters’ aren’t likely to find most of us making our best decisions or solving important problems well.

If only we could pretend that today’s woes are long resolved and behind us and were somehow able to miraculously skip the stress that usually lies ahead, life would be so much simpler.

Maybe we can’t do that, but maybe we can see that, whoever thought up the saying ‘this too shall pass’ probably knew that few problems look the same the next day.

  

One way I have found, to sometimes help myself when something is worrying me into exhaustion, is to try and completely stop whatever I am doing, and concentrate as hard as I can to remember whatever was bothering me on the same day last year. I usually can’t and I doubt most of us could. 

One thing is almost certain, a year from today something else is probably going to be keeping me/us awake at night. 

Like everyone else, I now accept that an occasional sleepless night is inevitable. I guess it’s just another Life Lesson to remind us that some things happen in life that we need to deal with in order to continue moving forward.

By the way, sometimes I even take my own advice and actually put my problems, and myself, to bed and determine to deal with whatever is bothering me in the morning…after a good night’s sleep.

I THOUGHT OF YOU TODAY

I wondered how you were and what you had been doing since I last saw you. It’s really been a lot longer than I realized since we’ve been in touch. The note I attached to update the old records basically says what I have been doing in one area of my life, but there is so much more that has happened beyond this. Where do I begin? What do I want/need to say?

I could start by saying that I sometimes think of you. It would be true in a sort of general way because I wonder where you are and what you are doing. I remember when we used to talk to each other every day, but I no longer remember when we stopped or why.

I don’t remember your Birthday any more. Years ago I knew it as well as I knew my own. I’d start buying you things weeks before, whenever I saw something I thought you’d like. I remember how I gave you something every day for the week of your Birthday. I used to bring you something I thought you would like, a present or a treat. I was really happy when I gave you things that you didn’t know you needed and especially things you would never get yourself.

  

You meant a lot to me once. I can think about a dozen things we did together. I remember your family, the friends we had in common; the people we saw together and those we saw separately.

Do you remember how we used to be able to tell each other anything? I trusted you, so I know we must have been great friends, because even now, I don’t do trust or love without friendship.

Time, where did it go? I’m trying to remember if there was something definite that changed things between us. Was it you who went away first or was it me?

I thought of you today; I remembered you and a lot of things about you. That is why I dropped you a note. Glad you wrote back. We really must get together soon and catch up. Maybe we’ll get together and have a cup of coffee.

I wish you well. I hope your life is happy. Mine? It’s not too bad. It’s different than before. I don’t know anyone like you, but I can’t say whether this is good or bad. It’s different. I’m glad I got in touch and got to tell you that I thought of you today.

THE PLACE WE CALL HOME

Although I really enjoy new people and experiences, there are times when it is both easier and more comfortable to just relax and enjoy familiar people and things.

Traveling for example, often has a time limit for most of us. After a certain amount of time away, we just want to be home. In my case, no matter how wonderful the place, people or scenery, it gets tiring to be washing and wearing the same limited number of clothes and having to communicate in another language each time I want a cup of coffee or direction. Usually I recognize that it’s time to come home.

Many things in life are like this. It’s almost as if too much of anything, becomes too much of a good thing and we just want to get off at the next stop and take a break. I don’t think this is a bad thing.

Consciously recognizing what we like, and especially what we need in life, lets us appreciate and enjoy the familiar things and people that populate our lives and make it ‘home’ for us.

The security and comfort of the familiar lets us recharge our batteries safely and easily. It enables us to get ready to look outward again in the direction of our lives next new experience and adventure.

BIRDS OF A FEATHER

On Sunday, I fed friends and family in an Easter dinner. Since my entire family was not able to attend, for the first time, I invited a cousin and her husband, a friend who now lives nearby, two of my brothers and my three older nephews. One brother was a surprise attendee. One nephew had gone down because of an all nighter and didn’t, but another did. Everyone got along and some stayed late for quite a long visit.

In the post mortem, my friend said that she’d enjoyed herself. She again met in person family members of mine she had not seen since my wedding all those years ago, but had, of course, often heard about from me.

Our late husbands worked together for a couple of decades and died within two years of each other. She and I have both had cancer, mine 15 years ago and hers recently. In addition, she and her husband knew my husband long before I did as well. Obviously also, we have known each other for a long time.

All of the above also tells you that my friend and I have a particular bond with each other based on many similar experiences in life and having some of the same people in common in the main parts of our lives and experiences.

Today we talked about a survey I’d just completed and some of the ‘odd’ questions they were asking. The study, about how concerned you are about your cancer returning, was bound to be unusual anyway. From experience, we both know that after Cancer, you are changed forever. Widowhood also is always a permanent factor and always will be.

Recently I have realized that I have some friends that I have known for over 40 years. One man was a mentor to me, one of my best friends I met right after college, my doctor I met around the time I met my husband, as is the friend I talk about above. A close friend of my mother’s also became a friend 20 years ago, just after my mother died, her daughter shortly after.

I can’t help but recognize that I have been a very lucky person and have had, and more importantly, continue to have, people around me for a very long time.

Not surprisingly, among the many gifts in life I have been given, these people who have been with me through so many of life’s experiences are among the greatest blessings. They are friends and mainstays in my life.

I consider myself among the most fortunate of people to have their understanding, support and friendship in my life. I am truly grateful.

BALANCING ACT

It’s wonderful to see beautiful children and watch them growing up. They reflect so much the passage of time, but also, show us the future and that it is good and beautiful because they are good and beautiful.

A few years ago a ‘village’ was raising a child. Maybe. However, the heads of that village, at least for that child are their parents. Even today when kids head out for daycare and pre-school younger and younger, it is still the parents who make the difference on what that child will be and become.

I do not fear that children will not grow up the way we did, with the values of our parents, forbears and culture known, remembered and respected, because I know our children are being raised by the children of our parents. I can see them in my family and in the children they are raising.

I therefore know that ultimately they will have nothing to fear from the mad society will live in and that like me, they will rise to the challenge when their upbringing and beliefs are threatened or questioned by their peers.

I remember the shock I felt when I first had freedom from the strictures of my very sheltered upbringing. However, the shock of the world so different from what we were taught and raised to believe, wears off and the foundation beneath is far more solid than we could imagine.

In my own family, my youngest sibling called me one day, many years ago when she was a young woman, and told me that our mother was dismayed (to put it mildly) by this youngest child and the views she was hearing. As soon as I heard what had been said, I realized that our poor mother must have felt a nightmare déjà vu coming at her.

The words of her youngest child were literally the same as she’d heard from me, decades before. Frankly, she must have felt she was losing her mind or shortly would because the younger generations differences from her own beliefs were rearing their ugly heads again.

Here we are, now 20 years since she died and today (and again next week) still celebrating our culture, saying the prayers we were taught and looking with pride at the next generation.

I know it’s not magic. It isn’t an accident that these young children are so good and lovely. I see the balancing act that their parents perform day after day and year after year. 

I see the sacrifices my family has to make for their children, just as our parents made for us. I see all of this and I am proud; of my parents, my heritage, my siblings and their children.

I celebrate Easter with a happy heart, knowing that however much of our time I live in the present; at heart I still draw upon my foundation every day of my life. 

I join my family, today and every day, on the firm ground that is my inheiritance and the lifelong legacy my parents bequeathed to us when they raised us within the village that we grew up in.