IN MY DREAMS

Most of us wake up some mornings with some remnant of a Dream we had during the night. Occasionally, if we are lucky we remember a little bit about it. More often as we wake up the details slip away.

In my dreams, I don’t especially think that I am working out the problems of the day, although sometimes I feel like I have been running and running and running. It would be nice if all that running took off weight in the morning but it doesn’t mores the pity.

Even while waking however, whether we admit it or not, each of us has a guilty secret and that is a dream about what our perfect world would be. For some of us, another person is in the dream too, although that person may just be a set of characteristics and personality traits that we might like to see.

Sometimes we dream of places we would love to see. I hate to say it, but often the real place is more interesting than we can imagine it. I think of my return last September to Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle on one hot day and actually seeing Venice again 3 months after that first incredible visit.

I don’t know why some places resonate with us and make us so happy but they do. There is something familiar and comfortable about them. Paris surprised me. It started as a week to fill a gap in my schedule on my first trip and ended up being a place and, to my surprise, a people who welcomed me with open arms.

On subsequent trips, to my amazement the magic and the welcome continues, even when I am hours late for an appointment. Quite a surprise and one that showed me, once and for all, that you need sometimes to extend yourself a bit out of your comfort zone and hold your preconceived notions back.

The first and most impressive time I heard someone tell me their dreams was when I was working for the summer between school terms. I will never forget a youngish woman who worked there full time and had 3 children tell me of her happiness.

Since I was about 20 years old myself, her life was definitely not like mine, but she was nice and a pleasant person. Her excitement however, is something any of us understand. She said that all of her life, she had dreamed about having 2 things: a sewing machine and knowing how to type. I was happy for her, and said so, because she was on the eve of having both wishes come true; typing on the job and buying her own sewing machine.

I have to admit though, that even then I knew it would not be as easy for my dreams to be met as hers were…and I was right.

I long ago surpassed any dreams I had in my limited imagination, particularly 
at that time and now mentally rewrite my Bucket List. So far, I am finding that what I have been able to dream up, seems to be achievable at least in terms of travel and geography.

Dreams of people, i.e. the man of my dreams, turned out to be someone completely different from who I ever imagined. He may have passed me on the street dozens of times, but until I met him, I had no idea, that even 4 months before I was born, he was already living next door to where my parents would be living about 25 years later. I was stunned by some of the possible ‘Missed Connections’ there may have been, but maybe destiny and fate had others places and another time in mind.

I am and will always be grateful that we eventually met at the right time and place because, heeding the words of a wealthy but never married uncle, whatever time you got was worth taking and enjoying, because the alternative leaves you alone. He might have added alone for all of the rest of your life, because that was ultimately his fate.

Sometimes I think it is harder to have loved and lost. When I voice this sentiment, there are a lot of people who think I am ungrateful for what I had been given in that so many people never enjoy such a love and life, at all.

The past as we all learn eventually, does not sustain us completely. We are alive and living, not on our memories, but in the present. We need therefore to be ready and open to new experiences.  

In order to be able of fully appreciating the continuing miracle which life offers up to us each day, we need to be open and ready for new experiences. Wherever in life we find ourselves, we need to welcome new ideas, set new goals, and dream new dreams.

PEARLS BEFORE SWINE

You are wasting your time when you see the person you are speaking to go into MEGO (as in MY EYES GLAZE OVER) and tune you out.

You are wasting your time when you muster up all of your courage and call someone you are interested in and they have actually forgotten your name; don’t remember meeting you; definitely mistake you for someone else and generally show that they are not your ‘Missed Connection’ and never will be.

You are wasting your time when not 125 words, but hundreds and maybe thousands more, show you that the person you are trying to talk to, does not and isn’t likely to ever understand a word you are saying.

Hang up as soon as you can and save your breath when the person on the other end is obviously a wrong number…or should have been…and removed themselves from your phone (and your life) long ago.

Discuss leaving a situation while you are still civil to someone (and they to you) when it is obvious that it will never going to work out between you. Prolonging the agony until it gets sordid, for one or both of you, isn’t doing anyone any favours. Never mind offering to ‘be friends’, as you usually do, because that’s not likely either.

I have always said, NEVER SLEEP WITH ANYONE CRAZIER THAN YOURSELF. I mean it. When you realize that even another meeting would be too much and suddenly wonder if speed dating makes more sense, you recognize that you will never get the time you have used up back again.  

  

Make the best of some situations because your friends don’t ask that much back and (unfortunately) this is one time they have. Express your genuine and heartfelt gratitude to God that you are not married (or related) to these people and can go to your own home eventually.

  

This being said, there are times when you need to do something different, go somewhere new, see new people and places and things outside your comfort zone. You may have a DESTINY and it may just be around a new corner.

125 WORDS CAN BE ENOUGH

Recently someone said that you can say a lot in 125 words. I agree although it usually takes me more. Since I’ve just written quite a long essay LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE, I will simply say here that when someone understands you, you won’t need 125 words, but when they don’t, a Million won’t help.

Anytime is a good time to remember those friends and supporters who give us help before, during and after we live our lives. They are encouraging, supportive, have our backs and deserve our praise, if only because they are the most patient and understanding people who we know and love. May we always appreciate them and reciprocate their love and kindness to us.

LIVING WELL IS THE BEST REVENGE

When you are Mad as Hell and you Just Aren’t Going To Take It Anymore, you aren’t likely to realize that you might just be more than a bit out of your mind. 

Yeah, yeah, you’ll show them! Maybe you’ll even decide that you want to crash a plane full of innocent people so that you can prove you will be remembered forever.

Change happens. All the time. In fact, it’s the only thing you can be sure of. This time however, it’s different. It’s personal.

It almost doesn’t matter who wanted the change or why. It is happening, to you, so it’s hitting you where you live. In some cases, quite literally where you live.

You realize that no matter what you say or do, nothing will ever be the same again. A part of you is really, really sad about this. A part of you is scared about what this is going to mean. A part of you is mad about this. This part wants the other person, and sometimes everyone else you know, to realize that you are mad and sad and hurt and want/need to express this.

Most of us have lived long enough to know what we are like when we are really mad or sad or upset. In fact, when we think about it, we remember the last time we were this mad at anybody and anything. It was not a pretty sight and we know it.

I doubt that most of us, however, even at our worst, would kill anyone, (regardless of what we are ranting on about) let alone a planeload of strangers, our spouse and children, or other nightmares the news gleefully reports to us on a regular basis.

We would however, sometimes feel like we need to hurt someone back because we want them to know we feel great hurt and anger too. Sometimes, in fact, all too often, we just can’t keep our feelings about this to ourselves. 

Were we not this devastated, we might actually see this and definitely stop taking it out on ourselves, and definitely not take it that step further to the place where anger has no brains…and neither do we.

Normally, it is not easy to say the meanest thing you can think of out loud and direct it toward another person. However, when you are breaking up a relationship, you are breaking down something in which you and another person shared a lot of trust and feelings. Now you are rejecting or being rejected by this person you trusted with your ‘real’ self and it really hurts. It is human nature to want to relieve this pain or push it out.

If it was something from the past, by now you would be calmer about it, if only out of acceptance that it was not going to change and it is in the past. In fact, after a while most of us have moved on. Whatever changes, rebuilding and renovating it has taken, have already happened.

Now though, here we are again. Sometimes the scenario is all too familiar. You decided to try again and you stuck your neck out and voila, once again, you got hammered.

I know how you feel. I really do, know how you feel. In fact, I think that the recovery sometimes takes longer than the relationship. It’s not because we really don’t want to let it go either. Sometimes actually, we really do want to let it go and the sooner the better. Most, if not all of us, just can’t recover that easily.

We change as much as we can, as soon as we can, and not a minute sooner. If you think about it, you know this is true. Why it is so I don’t know for sure.

I know that my personal philosophy, effects my way of leaving people behind a lot. This is because I always wonder whether, if nothing happens by accident, then the things that happen to us and the people around us are there for a reason. Possibly we are meant to learn something. 

It therefore follows that, maybe even the people that we have problems with, or think we have nothing in common with, are really part of what we are supposed to learn from. Sort of saying each person is either an experience in our life or a lesson. This sometimes prolongs a situation way beyond it's shelf life.

This is something that I have to admit is probably always somewhere at the back of my mind. Even when I think that someone has to go elsewhere to work out their ‘crap’, rather than inflicting it on me; a part of me wonders whether I am supposed to help them.

Well, I’m neither a masochist or a saint, so sometimes I eventually wish them well (with no mean words or fingers to push them out of my life faster). Other times, I need to lash out and be angry and sometimes express it too much to them and, often unfortunately also, to anyone who already knows the whole sad story.

When I think of the above and the poor suffering supporters who are still with me, I feel like giving them a medal. Friends suffer with you before it happens, while it happens, and worse still, after it happens.

As I said, I’m neither a masochist or heading for sainthood at this moment, so the way I try to deal with red hot current anger is to think about it and not try and pretend that I either don’t care or recognize that I care too much to just let it go.

None of us wants to admit that we made a bad choice. We let another person into our life. This in itself was and is a good thing. At least we have the ability to let someone into our lives. I assure you, I’ve met a lot of people who wish they could do this. 

Meanwhile at this moment, we are not all that reassured and congratulating ourselves on being open to new people. In fact, it’s more like investing a lot of time and energy and money into a bad investment; we can’t always cut our losses and move on, even when we start to suspect we should.

The first person you are angry at is yourself. When you realize this, you can pause, even if only temporarily, from plotting your revenge on the one who you feel has hurt you. You can also giving a passing thought to forgiving yourself for having feelings or expectations and trust, for someone, who it turns out, was unworthy of them. Maybe you are right, they were unworthy of your time, energy, trust, friendship or consideration.

But guess what, if you continue to need to show them something, I suggest you slowly, make the change, as soon as you can, to stop directing your anger inward upon yourself or plotting to direct it outward in some gratuitous and fruitless demonstration towards them. 

Such demonstrations are the worst when you suspect or know they probably don't care anyway. Besides no one looks their best when their eyes are swollen from crying and black rivulets of mascara have run down your cheeks.

Instead, as soon as you can, show them that you really are better off without them in your life. Living well, really and truly is actually, the best revenge.

COLLATERAL DAMAGE

I’ve just heard from a cousin that her son is just coming out of a ‘nasty divorce’. Strangely we all know what this means and this almost requires no further details these days.

Among other things, two people have decided that they aren’t getting along. It may be that they want different things now. Almost regardless of the details, one or the other of them feels they can’t continue in the existing relationship and they have decided to split up.

I think about this a lot, especially when I hear there are children. No matter why or when these divorces happen, there are a lot of lives effected permanently. 

The couple and their children are at ground zero but beyond them, their larger families and friends as well need to find a way to adjust and accommodate the new families that this one is breaking up into.

The words ‘nasty divorce’ however are the ones I worry most about. They imply anger, recrimination, blame. These two words also imply a lot of grief. 

Something that was functioning as one thing together is now split into a lot of other things. In addition, there is not a smooth transition happening either.

Usually everyone is angry about something and that is what is on their minds and in their hearts. This is what their lives are now about, and unfortunately this is what they will be about for a long time, possibly forever.

In the ‘perfect world’, where none of us lives, you imagine that two people quietly and calmly agree that they need to lead separate lives. They separate their lives and calmly and easily wish each other well. They are friends and expect they always will be. It is just time to pursue other things and directions separately.

Back on planet earth however, it seems that not only do some of these people have children but also, one or both of them, is not ready to end their relationship without a fight.

Once the lawyers and especially the courts are involved, it becomes a matter of rights and obligations and money matters. The actual nuts and bolts of the split are often worse than the decision that was made to break up.

The way the split itself is done is, I think, most responsible for many years of carrying around the bad feelings, unkindness to each other and other fallout that, I think, makes things worse than they ever needed to be. This is what leaves the bitter taste in our mouths, perhaps even more than the breakup itself did.

I don’t have children of my own but see the children of divorce, whatever their ages now, often having divorces of their own later on. Somehow, even when the parents were mature and reasonable (so rarely the case), there is fallout around whatever arrangement is made for the children of the former family.

Worse still, and I fear, usually the case, the parents anger with each other, the legal wrangling, the dynamics of the split and the ‘new life’ afterwards that each tries to create for themselves and their children, always involves major life changes that are not easily made. All too often, the children are almost asked to take sides against the other parent. Sometimes, sadly one parent or the other demands this from their child.  

We all recover from pain and loss and separation. Like grieving and mourning, each situation is different, yet each situation involves loss and separation and change. We change throughout life anyway, but when we need to adjust and move past this sort of cataclysmic life change, it is understandable that it is harder to view it as a ‘fresh start’ because we are bringing so much of the past along with us.

I don’t look at any loss as being easy, but breakups of relationships really hit us where we live. They take us, and all of those around us at the time, with them. 

We can’t help but feel we have been uprooted, disturbed and distressed and tossed head first into chaos. In some ways, it might be compared to a tornado; a lot of debris from your past life, but we might be grateful no one died. We may also be determined to build something even better.

It is only by allowing ourselves to find and identify what we want and need to do next that we can begin the process of recovering our balance, rebuilding our lives and moving forward.

You may have torn the house down but how you choose to rebuild it can, I think, make a big difference on how quickly you can build a new place for yourself and make it into a happy home of your own.

LOOKING FOR 1 IN A MILLION

One night at Dinner last week the topic of Internet Dating came up. Everyone has on opinion on this. Almost all of us have either used the sites or know someone who has, or is using them. Some people I know have had marriages within their own families that began with an Internet connection.

There is even a site advertising on television for a long time now that says you can improve your marriage (by cheating on your spouse) by using their service. Very classy that, but perhaps ultimately, the most truthful and honest one you might find.

Meanwhile, when speaking about the universal availability of Internet Dating and it’s chances of success, I think of what my brother said, that a lot of people are spending so much time on the Internet that dating is just one more thing they would naturally take care of on the Internet.

I have always wondered about how you screen out the fakes, married men and just plain out and out liars. People assure me that everyone develops their own radar and techniques for assessing whether people are worth meeting, spending time with or having any contact with at all.

A lot of people seem to feel that Internet Dating sites are a way for Women to play the ‘numbers’ game that Men do and not get tied down to a limited number of contacts.

We have all changed. From time to time I like to see older movies. I can tell they are older because when a Woman walks in to a room, the men stand up.

I can see old photos of our bus services. I know they are old because all of the Women are seated and the only people standing are Men. Definitely not something you could imagine today, when it matters not whether a Woman is heavily pregnant, with a stroller and a small baby or toddler; she gets to stand while some Boy or Man enjoys his music or computer game or paper.

No matter how much you hope miracles might happen, and however often you watch The Wizard of Oz and click your heels together, I fear someone who still has good manners is 1,000,000 to 1 against, among the Men today.

I can’t, and actually do not want to turn back the clock. It would be nice however, if the implied Respect that Woman got in the past were still occasionally something that we could see from the Men today for the Women around them. Even if they only applied it to Pregnant or the Elderly, it would be an improvement over the behavior of most of today’s males.

Hate to tell you, but Good Manners are what I (unfortunately) got used to. I feel it’s absence all the more because it was both what I was brought up with and married as well (when I married someone considerably older than myself). Having experienced it for a long time in my life, is it any wonder that it would be something I would miss?

The thing I miss most however is Reliability. I still keep dreaming that there is still someone in the world who still believes as I do, that you say what you mean and you do what you say you will. I guess the only place this is going to happen is in my Dreams, while I am sleeping of course.

Maybe people are finding other things more important, though I can’t imagine what is more important than reliability and trust, whatever else you are doing in life.

Oh well, here’s to that 1 in a Million. Let me know if you meet him on the Internet. It does, after all, reach a larger audience and who knows, maybe on some remote island somewhere, he still exists. Happy hunting!