Brief Moments - Lessons Learned

"... This is how she now believes life happens.  One small thing at a time.  A series of inconsequential junctions, any or none of which can lead to salvation or disaster. There are no grand moments where a person does or does not perform the act that defines their humanity. There are only moments that appear briefly, to be this way...."  

~Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

A very regular, usual, normal weekday morning. Coffee cup in hand, I walked to the front window, checking the skies to see what the day's weather might bring. My mood was almost as dark as the threatening clouds. No particular reason for this state of mind although it could have been the combination of realizing we were in for another cold and rainy day, a morning phone call that was mildly upsetting, and news of an acquaintance's recent monetary windfall.   

Looking to my left I saw a drenched, ragged and shaggy-haired homeless man rummaging through the neighbor's recycle bin. This old man had two filled-to-the-bursting-point garbage bags teetering precariously on top of other sacks and bags stuffed into his two-wheeled cart. I watched as the man assiduously rearranged the bags and eventually found an empty one, which he used to hold the several beer and soda pop cans nestled throughout the bin.

I'm accustomed to experiencing epiphanies that send my thoughts spinning, forcing me to rethink and reassess. I welcome these instances as they usually give me a good jolt to the senses and a reason to reexamine my mind-set or my mood. 

This morning I not only received an epiphany, I also got a good, metaphorical kick in the behind! 

Standing in a warm, secure and comfortable home, drinking fresh, hot coffee, looking across my small, tidy and flower-filled front garden, observing another human being as he struggled to simply survive, I understood all over again just how much I have to be grateful for. 

It's good to have these brief moments of clarity--and vow to carry the lesson throughout my day. 

Learning How to Grow Old

[The dawning of 2017's Mother's Day spurred me to revisit and rework a previous post]

There are many days when I am sure I'm channeling my mom. My beloved mom, who died in 1998 at 83 years of age (pictured at 69 years). I feel her near to me and can almost see her in the mirror. I recall Mom said she had the same experience--seeing her own mom when she looked in the mirror.

Those days when I sense my mom so close began to happen more frequently when I reached 70 years of age. 

I recall my mom watching younger women, either on screen or out and about in our town. She seemed to delight in their youth and beauty, agility and energy. There wasn't any sense of wishing for what was past. I recall marveling at that. I certainly hadn't reached the same emotional plane.  

In my 40s (even 50s and 60s) I continued to compare myself to other younger, prettier, more able and capable women. I wanted that young skin, that youthful bounce, those sidelong admiring glances.

Of course, I totally forgot that even the 20-year old me always found fault with herself. So, the decades really had nothing to do with the perception and attitude I carried. 

I can only surmise the end-of-seventh-decade emotional evolution my mom may have experienced. It may not have come to her as vividly as with me.

Almost ten years ago, just before 70 seeped into my psyche and made herself at home, there were a few weeks when that age felt very, very uncomfortable, sounded very, very old, didn't seem to fit any place in my consciousness. 

Then one day it all made so much sense and I began to experience ease in my own skin, an acceptance of the continual changes in my body, acceptance of the fact that it's silly and futile to attempt to look or act like something I'm not. 

Now, as I navigate this 80th year of my life, what I experience most often is an appreciation of the glory and beauty in the never-ending cycle of life. It is as it should be. True, I continue to carry way too much pride and I am certainly not sanguine about the many physical limitations, aches and pains that are a constant in my life. 

I do know that all of "being" is nothing more or less than a process. As the inimitable Groucho Marx (of all people!) observed, "Life is a whim of several [trillion] cells to be with you for a while." 

To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, 

and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living. 

~ Henri Amiel

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Understanding the Journey

For many years I’ve collected quotations from the famous, infamous or unknown. In a few words, a quote has the ability to elucidate and help me gather my often wordy thoughts.

Home is where your journey begins.

The quote above comes from a small ceramic sign hanging by the front entrance to my home. I wasn’t sure what the anonymous author meant by the phrase, or even what the phrase meant to me, however those words and the Arts and Crafts style of the plaque enticed me to buy it.

It’s entirely possible I have too much mulling time on my hands, but all in all I’ve spent quite a few hours dwelling on the words. Originally I thought of the word “journey” as simply meaning physical travel, not the “journey” of the mind. That’s an odd thing for me as I usually think in metaphorical terms.

It’s also entirely possible my growing awareness of time’s speedy passing has given me new ways of contemplating my mental “journey.”

As a child and all through my long life, my HOME has always been vitally important to me.   

I grew up in a very small house on a very small plot of land on the outskirts of a very small farming community. Of course, I didn’t realize the house was small, didn’t know until years later that the plot of land which seemed so vast to my child-eyes was truly less than a quarter of an acre.

Mother prepared three hearty, healthful meals a day for her family of four. She hummed to herself as she cooked and as she scrubbed, painted and polished every square inch of the (essentially ramshackle) two bedroom home. Home was where mother read to my brother and me—especially every evening before our bedtime—fostering a lifelong love of books and reading.

Home was what Dad left early each morning and returned to each evening after a long day of trudging the streets of our city repairing decrepit elevators in old office buildings and retirement homes.

At an age which now seems so very, very young and immature, I left my family home and began my journey as a married woman. Meager as our income was, over the years the two of us made each of our one, two, three or more apartments into "homes" which nurtured us as we planned for our future.

Our “journey” as a family began with the birth of our first child. Soon after we were able to buy a house—a new house, a tract house, a tiny house, yet a house two energetic and malleable young adults would eventually make into our true “home sweet home.”  

Add a few years to this young family’s journey and our second child was born.

Over the next sixteen years our family of four moved five more times, two of those moves took us across the country; eventually we came back again (for good) to the state in which I was born.

The physical journeys from home were never as life-altering as the many emotional journeys I’ve either had to travel or have chosen to travel.

Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey.

It reminds us to cherish each moment, 

because it will never come again.

What we leave behind 

is not as important as how we have lived.

~Star Trek’s Captain Jean-Luc Picard

Coming Out of the World

Some of the greatest pleasures in my life happen when a friend, or some friends, and I are discussing the ways in which we see our world and our place on this third planet from the sun. 

A few days ago I met one on one with a friend I hadn't seen for about four months. I've known this man for almost 10 years. As we always do, my friend and I touched on many subjects. At least once each time we meet one of us brings up the subject of how much we both miss a dearly loved mutual friend who died four years ago. 

On this evening my friend said he could hardly wait until he "saw" our friend again, indicating that yes, he felt he would see this friend in her physical body! It may not be simple hyperbole: I think my jaw did drop as I realized just how profoundly he has moved to someone who professes a belief in a god figure and in an anthropomorphic afterlife. For him, "afterlife" means when he dies he will see, in human form, his departed friends and family.

I certainly do not have any interest in attempting to disabuse him of this fervent belief. It gives him solace, and his connections via this new path have become the foundation for the promotion of his burgeoning counseling business

As I drove away from our meeting, I recalled part of a quote by Barbara Holleroth, a UU Pastoral Counselor: "... the leaf does not fall out of the world when it leaves the tree.  It has a different way and place to be within it." 

When I returned home, I found the entire quote: 

It is sometimes said that we are born as strangers into the world and that we leave it when we die.  But in all probability we do not come into the world at all.  Rather, we come out of it, in the same way that a leaf comes out of the tree or a baby from its mother's body.  We emerge from deep within its range of possibilities, and when we die we do not so much stop living as take on a different form.  So the leaf does not fall out of the world when it leaves the tree.  It has a different way and place to be within it. 

Holleroth's statement is erudite and perceptive. In no way does she negate the feelings of "believers" (although it seems to me she does dispel the notion that the human form stays intact after death), and she certainly does not invalidate the more scientific-minded. In other words, life's energy is ever present, never ending, never dying but simply changing form. 

You'll drift apart, it's true, but you'll be 

out in the open, part of everything alive again.

~Philip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass