Dec13

Perception

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“The more I see, the less I know for sure.”― John Lennon

There is a mistake many of us may be making in these days of social media and the advertising of our lives. We tend to believe everything we read and see at face value.

We were told to be wary of the news in sound bites, but do we hold the same level of cautionary awareness to life in Facebook posts and twitter messages? Are our blog posts of amusing incidents indicative of our lives? Are the quick glimpses of happiness posted in Instagram  just brief bits of joy we prefer to look upon while we look away from the day to day?

There is a tendency to believe that other people’s lives are like a TV sitcom where life is full of parties, vacations, and fantastic achievements surrounded by family and friends who offer unconditional love and approval.  The pitfall is that we may look at our own lives and wonder why we are still sitting in your robe, with that bum knee, and the extra 20 pounds, wondering how to pay the bills and why one of the children isn’t speaking to you.

Sometimes life is all of these things. It’s a moody, ungrateful child who is the joy of your life. It’s the vacation where everyone got a stomach bug, and that really is the highpoint. It’s the great job that keeps you awake at night worrying over money and how to get it all done. It’s the enviable relationship that looks so perfect but in reality has a history complete with hurt and disappointment that rivals its’ joyful moments. People tend to see what they want to see.

The moral of this story is that at a time of the yearly holiday card and updates and lavish New Years celebrations where the perception is that everyone else’s life may seem so perfect; keep in mind that there is always another side to every picture or post. The good walks hand in hand with the difficult in everyone’s life and it’s a matter of choice where you put your focus.

“There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.” ― Aldous Huxley

 

Nov20

Attitude and the 100th Post!

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When does one problem take precedence over another? Whose sorrows or worries are more important than another’s and at what point is okay to just roll over and say you can’t take it anymore? My guess is that is never the answer. Once you roll over there is that daunting task of getting back up again. So, many of us just keep going whether we want to or not.  Quietly, or not, going about the business of life. 

It’s the priorities of the world with which I struggle. I can’t be the only person absolutely appalled by the amount of time and effort put into saving the Twinkie?  I understand that jobs hang in the balance but this is obviously a ploy by management to force a settlement that will insure large salaried corporate jobs with cuts to those that can afford it least. Another thing I’m having trouble listening to is the scandal of some repulsive looking little man and his botoxed, silicone enhanced, gaggle that give intelligent woman a bad name. All this while we all but ignore the people dying in their homes across the world from mine in the Middle East and others who are still homeless due to a hurricane in my own backyard. 

I have been unusually quiet over the last few months due to a combination of alternately mourning (friends, family, my past life…pick one) and trying to make several new ventures come together at once. It’s been one of those times where my life resembles a puzzle for which I’ve lost the box.  There is no picture to work off of and I have no idea what it’s going to look like when I’m done. I work better off the picture, but I have a feeling that life is bigger and better when you stop trying to engineer the outcome.  So instead of whining (in public, anyhow) I’ve gotten very quiet, put my head down and gotten to work. Sometimes I look up and like what I see and other times I want to hide in the corner. 

I suppose the key is to measure the good and the bad and possibly remind yourself that we have the choice to focus on what we choose to give attention and the power to make a difference, whether it is a world issue or a personal one. Of course, there are those times when the only thing we have any control over is our attitude and those are the times that we trudge on, keep our fingers crossed, and try to discern what is important and what is just taking up too much space in out world.   

Have a thoughtful and happy Thanksgiving everyone.  Focus on something positive and thank you for following, caring, and reading this, my 100th post! 

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Viktor E. Frankl

 

 

 

Oct24

Impossible?

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It always seems impossible … 
until it’s done.


Nelson Mandela

This week I began step one in the plan to launch the nonprofit I’ve been working on. I suppose it’s not really step one because I’ve been doing many things, including mountains of paper work and putting a board together, but this week began a more public launch.  I made the first steps to teach in a community development organization.  It’s important for me to partner with other local nonprofits in order to make mine successful, so this feels like the beginning. My NPO will have a workplace literacy component, so getting back to teaching adult ESL courses is something I’ve been looking forward to. The students are all recent immigrants and, as always, there are a few students that really knock me out. This time it was a couple from a small African country that had been in the U.S. a mere two months and were already a month in to an English language class. Their lives, and that of their two children, have been difficult, yet there was no trace of self-pity. They have been through things that would have crushed most people, yet they are optimistic. They have lost every material possession, yet they are grateful. There is a mix of pain and beauty in their eyes as they struggle with the language.  It moves my heart in ways I can’t describe and makes me so sure that I am moving in the right direction. I am so honored to have the chance to touch their lives.  People, my own age, starting over with nothing but their spirit and determination for something better.  It is humbling, and it should be.

It made me wonder about people I know. People with every opportunity, yet they continue to be angry for all that isn’t handed to them. Instead of working harder, they continue to find fault with everything around them rarely looking at their own hand in the way their lives have turned out. Is it easier to place blame? Well, maybe in the short run.  Is it narcissism that causes some people to blame everyone around them for their own circumstances?  Is it having so very little that causes others to just work that much harder when life is unfair?

It didn’t take long but I’ve learned more than I taught, and I’m sure that nothing is impossible unless you decide it is.

When I let go of what I am, 
I become what I might be.


Lao Tzu

Oct9

Going Home

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This past weekend I went home.

It seems odd to say that because I have lived in Massachusetts for almost 14 years and moved around quite a bit before landing here.  But, I am a New Yorker at heart and it has nothing to do with geography. New Yorkers are a different breed of people. First of all, they are funnier than any other group of people. That edginess is bred into them.  An “attitude” is a requirement of living there.  As good as all of that feels to me, it is the particular people I left behind that make it home for me. There is nothing like rehashing the time you fell off your bicycle going over the ramp you built in the street with someone who remembers the goofy shoes you wore in first grade. No words can describe the feeling of talking about your first boyfriend or your first baby with the friend who was actually there for it all.  Oh, maybe one word.

Home. I miss it already.

You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.  ~Maya Angelou

Oct1

Destiny, Thanks, and Awards

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 In Japanese there is a beautiful symbol, it can mean fate; destiny; a mysterious force that binds two people together.

It’s no secret to anyone that reads my blog that the last several weeks have been difficult for me. What many of you haven’t seen is the out-pouring of love, which I have been the recipient.  Friends, who I have never met face to face, in the midst of their own personal heartaches and struggles, have spent precious time checking in on me. I believe there are people I have met on here that I will know a lifetime and I sincerely hope this to be true. That Japanese symbol which refused to be posted, although I tried, sums up how I feel about many people, one in particular, who is gone from this world but bound to me forvever.

Luckily, my friends are not the kind of friends that abandon you just because they haven’t heard from you recently.  Along with the love, I’ve also received 10 awards. Thank you and please accept my apologies for taking my sweet time with this.

Mimi from Waiting for the Karma Truck who I am honored to be part of her sisterhood The Sisterhood of the World Bloggers award: (http://waitingforthekarmatruck.com/2012/09/29/acceptance-speeches/)

Maryanne from Lucky Leo, kindly bestowed 8 awards brilliantly given in one fell swoop:(http://maryannemistretta.wordpress.com/2012/09/18/8-more-blog-awards-for-me-and-right-back-to-fellow-bloggers/)

Sticky Quote who couldn’t be any lovelier One Lovely Blog Award: (http://stickynotesandquotes.wordpress.com/2012/08/28/one-lovely-blog-award/) I’m going to make my own hodgepodge of acceptance and give you 7 things and then nominate 10 bloggers.

  1. I have not allowed anyone that I knew pre-blog to read this blog. It’s my dirty little secret. A few people know I have a blog, but I won’t give them the name of it.
  2. I’ve been known to watch the Maury show and scream “you are NOT the father” at the television.  I know, I save it for bad days.
  3. When I was 8, I sang The Partridge Familys’ song I Think I Love You in front of my entire elementary school, on stage, with a microphone. That was the first, last and only time. Everyone is grateful for small favors.
  4. When I was a teenager I shaved the sides of my head and colored it purple. Keep in mind Sid Vicious was still alive and this was actually shocking. I also had my navel pierced long before Brittany Spears was born. She really screwed that up for me.
  5. I could never live further than a short walk from the ocean.
  6. My favorite movie is Moonstruck. It makes me miss home, crave a pizza and wish Olympia Dukakis were my mother.
  7. I’ve been toying with the idea of a tattoo of the symbol for destiny. I’ve always wanted one, but along with an incredible inability to commit in general, I have not been able to commit to any one tattoo.

And the nominees are:

http://aleafinspringtime.wordpress.com/

http://newsofthetimes.org/

http://help-me-rhonda.com/

http://talktodiana.wordpress.com/

http://donnaanddiablo.wordpress.com/

http://waitingforthekarmatruck.com/

http://realwomanshealth.wordpress.com/

http://almostspring.com/

http://maryannemistretta.wordpress.com/

http://jmgoyder.com/

Please pick an award, play along or not. Just know how much I appreciate you all. Sending you all love!