Complications

To be loved for who I am.  Is there any greater gift than that?

It is one of the joys of childhood.  To love and be loved seems like such a simple thing.

Then we grow up and the world begins to tell us who we can love and how and when and somehow it all gets very complicated.

People do very unloving things in the name of love, but I think those are misnomers!  We are designed to be the direct product of love!  We are love materialized!  I have never seen a baby born with a tag on its toe that said, love this child while he is young, or beautiful, or perfect, or with the right people in the right place, and as long as he stays in his place.

Wherever we are, whoever we are with, whatever we are trying to do, we are part of a divine plan that springs from love.

People shouldn't dabble in divinity.  That is the business of the gods.

Finally

Life has a strange way of circling around.

Growing up I lived about three blocks from my grandmother, but because I was small and streets are busy and paternal grandmothers and mothers don't always hit it off, I seldom saw her.  My cousin and his mother lived with her in a house that seemed both mysterious and exotic to me.

There was a gigantic weeping willow in the back yard and tucked up underneath it was a log cabin I yearned to play in.  The living room  sported a grand piano and huge harp that I only heard played on Christmas Eve, but they evoked a feeling of richness that fed my imagination for the rest of the year.

Grandmother's beds were big ornate pieces with kneelers that I used like stair steps on the only night I ever spent with her.  She had swords hung crisscrossed on the wall, a cozy nook in the kitchen where she let me eat doggie bones while I fed them to her four huge dogs, two collies and two English spaniels.

Dinner was in the formal dining room where we sat at the big table and made snowy mountains out of rice topped by evergreen tree peas and hamburger bears!  And even though the formality of the room and table were pretty much the same at home, the game of eating was a novelty I loved!

Her basement was filled with old things, a wicker stroller with parasol topper and tricycle from long ago.  The family den was packed with every conceivable cowboy toy in existence, from forts to real looking horses and farms. But these were my cousin's toys, not mine.  He dressed like a miniature cowboy, the sort I saw on television with tiny pearl snap buttons and boots and even a real cowboy hat.  I was both in awe and a little bit jealous of him.

I never really got to know him.  When my grandparents were divorced he moved away with grandmother and lived first in Colorado and later Texas.  I saw him again about twenty five years ago and then we lost track of each other.

Yesterday I received a letter from him!  He lives an hour south of me and is disabled.  I am meeting him and taking him to lunch next Friday.  Finally, after a lifetime of not knowing each other, maybe we can be friends. 

I am so excited.

My world

I am truly the biggest danger to me that exists in my world.

I am offered a million choices a day, but unlike my ancestors I have the wherewithal to choose many things they had no chance of getting.  I can buy almost any food I want to eat.  I have a car to ride in.  I have electric lights so I can stay up at night, not to work, but to entertain myself with books or television, or an unending fount of movies.

Life is good, but so bad for me too.  The more luxuries I have the more my body struggles to survive them!

I was designed to walk, hunt for my food and sleep when it is dark so that I can survive the harsh elements outside.  But I don't live outside.  I live in a nice warm house.  And instead of avoiding predators who want to eat me I need to avoid those who want me addicted to their high fat, high sugar, high salt foods. 

It is a never ending battle.  Advertisers assault me on the radio, billboards and television.  Grocery stores follow up with thunder storms in the produce section and lights that come on when I enter the frozen food aisle, as if I were a bit of royalty and they are lighting the way for me. 

Grandmas with sweet smiles stand behind counters full of samples like the witch in Hansel and Gretal, trying to fatten me up.

And I?

I am supposed to turn down all these treasures and treats or suffer the consequences.  Fighting for my life begins inside of me and its an epic battle.

Do you see what I see

I wish there was some kind of medicine that could cure people of short sightedness.  Glasses only correct eyes, but there is a world of thinking behind those eyes.

Most people have a "company" side of themselves that they put out to the world, a side that is safe to show but superficial in many respects.  Get closer to them and the real person starts to appear. 

Once in a blue moon I am shocked at the monster behind the mask, but most of the time I am in awe at the softness and beauty curled up behind that grown up face.  There are truly evil people in this world, but there are many more surprisingly good and sometimes even extraordinary people closer to me than I ever dreamed possible.

Given half a chance faces turn towards the light and become beacons themselves. Then every day words can weave themselves into songs.  Songs like magic cloaks that, instead of making their wearers invisible, bring the world into better focus.

Fairy tales and myths are rich but reality sometimes staggers my imagination and I wish the world could see what I see.

Mickey Mouse

I remember the old Mickey Mouse Club, the one that ran in black and white after school way back in 1957.  I cherished those little black ears we got for Christmas and wore them when I watched.  It had a lasting effect on me.

To this day I can teach things by putting them to the tune of the song, M, I, C (see you real soon) song they sang at the end.  I've taught children their addresses this way, to spell their names, and other important things! It's catchy and easily translated into almost anything.

I loved the days Jimmie opened the vault with his magic words.  The little programs spoke right to my childish heart.  Love stories for a seven year old.  And on "Anything can happen day" I was excited to see what it would be.  The horses that hung from their shoulders by straps ignited my own creativity. 

I thought Karen and Cubby were the two cutest little kids in the world.  I wanted to cuddle them and play with them!  It never occurred to me that they were probably as old as I was.  And through the years I always felt like I "knew" the actors personally if they first appeared on the Mickey Mouse Club!  Don Grady and Johnny Crawford were my favorites even though their names had been different on the show.

When I got my first record player for Christmas I was eleven years old and the two records that came with it were The Mickey Mouse Club and Alvin And The Chipmunks!  I played them so many times I probably still know the songs by heart.

It's important to pay attention to the things we use to entertain children.  The effect can be longer reaching than anyone ever dreams.  Here I am still dreaming of the Mickey Mouse Club fifty six years later!

Words

Rich man, poor man, baker man, thief.  Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief!  A game where little girls pointed to the buttons on their clothing while reciting the words to see who they'd marry. 
 
"Just do it!"  "live well laugh often and love much,” "Four legs good, two legs bad," We like slogans that sum it all up and make it simple. Mantras, prayers, words guaranteed to make everything all right.  The recipe for success!

"Mix it all well and throw it in the oven for baby and me!"  Easy!  Simply recite the words, toe the line and life will come with Disney birds and John William's French horns to signify that you got it right.

"Healthy, wealthy and wise."  A catch phrase that sums up what everyone wants to be and if you don't achieve that, then there is an intimation that you did something wrong!  

The real world is simpler and more complicated.  We want rules.  We need rules, but then we get confused and think the rules are the beginning and the end in this world.  "Rules were made to be broken."  Progress comes from stepping outside the box.  "That's the way it's always been done." is the poorest excuse for doing anything I know of.

Bullies run around terrified that if anything changes they will lose control so they shout simple words to confuse the rest of us who mostly want to "live and let live."

Maybe it's time to "slow down you move too fast" not necessarily to make anything last, but so there is time to think rationally.  Stop this "go with the flow" business and think about what is really being said and what is really happening.  We are not the helpless product of our environment.  We are it's creators!

Let's create a world where every single human being is truly free to be themselves, to find a life and a love that is personally satisfying and contributes to the public well being.  How it is done is up to them as long as it doesn't infringe upon the rights of others.

Plodding along

Just desserts, now that is a concept!

I wonder if we ever really get our just desserts or if I even want to!  Cause if there is justice in this world there is also vengeance.  And if those two exist, there is a decider somewhere deciding which it should be!

Some people see god as the great decider.  Others think there is karma.  I kinda think I have free will and with that comes other people's free will.  It is what it is and I have to deal with it.

The vagaries of that keep me on my feet.  It also is a great opportunity to learn tolerance and patience and the difference between reacting and responding. 

For some reason the universe has seen fit to bless me a million times over.  I know I haven't done anything to deserve that.

Sometimes that makes me a little nervous because it could easily go the other way, but I can't think like that or I won't appreciate anything. 

All those little platitudes have some merit.  I just keep plodding along doing the best I can.

Every journey has a beginning

This morning I set out in the dark, ice crystals sparkling on all my car's windows, slush sluicing up around my tires, the heater gushing cold air on fingers still cold from carrying my suitcase from the house to the car.

I felt like the lone survivor in some end of the world film moving along through deserted city-scapes in the eerie green glow of sodium vapor lights.

Feeling guilty about leaving my friend's home so early, yet eager to avoid the impending storm, I turned on the radio.  Smoky blues filled the car, dark music, the devil's music, music to spin tales by as I crossed the great Mississippi.  I wondered if I slid on the ice, would I slide straight into the river below and be swallowed up forever without anyone ever knowing where I was?
  
Silly musings of an overly dramatic mind which of course came to nothing.

For the first hour, snow and sleet pelted my car and then I began to gain on the storm.   As the weather got better the landscape changed into snow covered trees and farms.  I stopped for the first coffee of the day.  Street lights dimmed.  Skies grew lighter.  Traffic increased until by the time I got home I was back in the old familiar world I used to live in.

Every journey has a beginning, but sometimes they wrap around each other in such convoluted ways that it's hard to tell when one is ending and another begins.

Divine spark

I think each of us has to find the divine spark within us.  Some of us call it God, or the god within.  Some call it our center.  There are probably hundreds of names, but what it is called doesn't really matter.

What matters is that I recognize it and honor it.

This is the place where I discover what really matters to me.  It is the foundation of my chosen life.  Beyond the vagaries of birthplace, or genes.  Beyond popular demand.  Beyond anything and everything that requires something outside of me.

It is who I really am.  Who I grow up to be.  What I make of myself to myself.

Once I find it, I am me.  I can live with myself and appreciate my own company.

It takes a while for most of us.  We are probably born with it, but it is carefully weeded out of us by a world that finds more comfort in conformity than honor.  Honor begins by honoring myself.  Knowing who I am and respecting my right to be this person, so that I am not threatened by other people being who they are.

It is this place that makes being alone okay and being with most others okay.  It is the place where I know I can trust myself to make calm, compassionate, reasonable decisions and they will be in both my best interests and those around me.

It is not a doctrine, or mantra, or even a set of rules or laws.  It simply is who I am.

The trials and tribulations of the electronic age

I am like Pavlov's dog.  A little light flickers and I don't salivate, but my heart leaps.

That light is my phone, my connection to those I love best on a regular basis and it always flickers just before they appear. Like those movies where the music rises, birds sing and sunlight diffuses everything into a blur of bliss, my phone chirps or rings to tell me a loved one is near.  In thought if not actuality.

I am very attuned to this phone.  It can flicker across the room and I see it.  I don't always hear it, though.  It has different settings and seems to reset itself to silent or vibrate with regularity.  That is a source of frustration for me,but it is also a lesson.  If I throw it across the room, I don't just hurt its little feelings, I might potentially crush it and it would never talk to me again.  So I learn patience and restraint!

Years ago I lived with my parents and four siblings in a mad mad world of frenzied activity.  Then I had a spouse and three children.  The world was even more chaotic because I was in charge.  After that there was a period of time where I had a small dog who depended on me. 

Now I live with four mute leafy beings who tremble slightly whenever I start talking about eating more leafy green vegetables, and a small electronic pet who puts Furby to shame.  It may not be soft or cuddly, but it speaks to me in the voices of those I love and chirps sweetly when they text.

I think of generations of women who lived alone on the prairie in tiny houses, or apartments in big cities before the advent of such devices.  When their children flew the nest they were left talking to themselves during the long cold winter hours when they couldn't get out.

I am so much luckier.

Veggie tales

Baked asparagus, roasted brussels sprouts, all kinds of green leaves I never really thought about eating before!

It seems this is to be the month of vegetables.  Good for cholesterol and weight and just overall health. 

Now if it would just warm up a bit, I would be outside walking more.

It's Spring!

It's spring in the Heartland.  Time to get out and walk! 

Get out the parkas, hats, scarves and mittens, all the extra weight is bound to make losing weight more effective.

According to the weather station it is 24 degrees and feels like 9!

I won't quibble with that.

Sacrifice!

In the old days when people wanted something they made a sacrifice and hoped for the best.  Even if the hoped for outcome did not materialize, perhaps especially if it did not materialize, killing something was cathartic.

That form of release is frowned upon today.

If an administration wants to appear benevolent they allow the people to create groups to speak for the masses.  That group sacrifices one of its members by making him the head of the group and he becomes their whipping boy.

The administration doesn't have to budge and the group expends all their energy on in-fighting with one common focal point -- their chairperson.  If they can't budge the people who count, they badger the ones with no power.

There is no real catharsis in this kind of behavior.  It is totally unsatisfying for everyone -- except the administration who is spared having to deal with an older experienced person who knows better than to become involved in these things.

That's just the way things are and depending on where you stand; it works.

Sunshine

Morning has broken....and it is sunny out!

I cannot imagine being an animal and having to live outside all winter in the wet and cold and gloom.  Whenever the sun shines I feel like a mama bear waking up and coming out of hibernation.

Then I step outside and nearly kill myself on the front steps because they are a sheet of ice!  At least bears walk on the grass.

I'm going back out though and I'm going to walk!  I have missed walking more than anything this winter.  It has just been too cold and too wet.  The only bad thing about losing all this weight is that I also lost my insulation!

So.... it's time to bundle up and get out in that sunshine!

That's all folks!

I finally got out of bed after one o'clock yesterday!

It was time!

And I finally walked around the park at four o'clock.

It was way past time!

Life has a way of creeping up on me and I get lost in the living.

No matter how bad I feel today I still feel better than at any other time in my life.

And that, folks, is progress.

"Mommy"

Motherhood is an enigma of the highest sort.  Biologically it makes sense that we should need to promote and preserve the species, but motherhood goes way beyond that.

One species of mother will die to protect another that she has claimed as her child.

However a child comes to me, once it is mine, there is a symbiotic relationship that goes beyond the physical into the mystical.

Growing up I loved my mother.  No matter how much we clashed I needed her and when I was grown up I thought I knew love, through her, through my father, my siblings, my husband, my friends. Then I met my children and each one filled me with so much more love that I was astounded.  The depth, the concentration, the extraordinary relationship is indescribable.

It is not a bottomless pit of giving.  It is more like a transfiguration.  Each child bonds with me, feeding me, nurturing me so that I become a better human being.  I want to be whatever I need to be, do whatever I need to do. I even know I can live without the child if it is in his or her best interests.  It is as close to selflessness as I will ever be.

I am far from perfect, but I am so much better than I would have been if I no one had ever called me, "mommy."

Time Left Over

Forrest Gump succeeded because his momma loved him.  She never made excuses for who he was or tried to stuff him down into a pre-made mold.  She gave him the gift of a positive outlook.  He did the best he knew how, thought it was good enough and most of the time it was!

That's about as good as it gets.

It's good to have people out to protect our rights and it's even better when life is fair, but when all is said and done -- it is what it is.  Learning to live with that and make the most of it is the biggest difference between a good life and a struggle.

So many of life's tragedies are made worse by the way people look at them.  There is a time to be sad and even a time for outrage, but ultimately there is a lot more time left over and I don't want to be defined by the bad things in my life.

Wallowing is for pigs not people.

Listen, learn, look around.  Find something fascinating and go for it!  That's the freedom of being human.

Talking

You talk.  My ears luxuriate in the words.

Every sound is music to me.  Every nuance fascinating.  Every topic exactly what I am interested in.

I talk.  You listen raptly.

Your comments are thoughtful.  Your reactions exactly what I expect.

Isn't it amazing?

We can never talk enough, let alone too much.

To sleep perchance to dream

Sometimes I awaken from dreams disoriented and worn out.

Imagine careening down a bicycle path in a too big car.  The person driving pays no attention to me, the terrified child strapped into the window seat staring out over the abyss below.

It is my dream so I am really the driver too!  

Everything in this dream is me.  I am the director, producer, and actors all rolled into one.  It is a cosmic cartoon as seen by some dark script writer snuggled up in the middle of my brain.

My dreams engulf me with feelings, familiar feelings whose seeds began before I was old enough to have any control over my life.

Now I do have control though and I need to remember that!  Embrace it!

Sustainable relationships

People say so many things they don't mean.  It seems like a kindness until reality strikes.  Then it's a shock.

Experience teaches me that the truth is always better -- right from the start.  If that isn't possible, then the sooner the better.

It doesn't mean I don't put my best foot forward.  I might learn something by doing that, but I just can't wear anyone else's shoes and expect them to fit.

Trying to be something I am not becomes trying after a while, impossible in the long run.  That's why marriages fail after seven years and long time friends eventually fall out.

Truly sustainable relationships are built on love, not infatuation, or dreams, or desire, or any perishable sort of illusion. Vows of steel cannot create something from material that isn't there.

The eternal spark uniting souls for all eternity is cloaked by lots of fluff just waiting to be ignited, but I think the safety net around it is rarely breached.  Most of the time relationships come and go like food in a refrigerator.  There is an expiration date.  I just don't know what it is and that is probably a good thing.  It means hope springs eternal even if nothing else does.

But when two people do discover each others inner core, it is amazing.  They think each others thoughts, dream each others dreams, feel each others feelings.  Life becomes symbiotic.  It feels like magic, but it is simple love, the kind that spans all time.

A book a part

I can never remember having too many books to read.

When I was three I asked my mother for a reading corner like I saw in a book.  She thought I was silly.

By the time I was ten I had read all the Junior Classic books in our bookcase.  I was allowed to buy one book whenever Scholastic books had their little sale at school and our school allowed us to check out two books a week.

The public library was too far away for me to go alone and my mother wasn't all that enthralled by books.  My father was so busy working it never occurred to me to ask him for anything except for help on the occasional homework if mom couldn't do it.

I was literally starved for reading material until I was old enough to read the books in my father's library.  By then I was also old enough to get to the public library.

Now I live close to the library, volunteer in a school library, and can get to the used Book Barn, or go online.  I know other people who enjoy reading.  Life is good!

One of the best gifts I have ever been given was the very book a young professor read when he was fourteen and discovered he was a dyed in the wool English major.  It has his marks and notes in the margins.  It is like a modern archeological dig!  Not only am I enjoying the book, but the insight into its reader is awesome.

That is the beautiful thing about books.  They are filled with stories about their subjects and the people who wrote them and the people who read them!  I am only a book apart from some of the most fascinating people in the world.

Cotton Tail Bunny

My reflection grins at me, reaches out and hugs me close.

I look around expecting to see a little cotton tailed bunny disappearing from the corner of my eye.

I smell flowers that haven't yet bloomed, that haven't even stuck their little noses above ground.

I see sunshine through the gray clouds that hover over my house.

Spring comes late to my life, but it was definitely worth waiting for!

Dare to dream

Dreams can be disappointments waiting to happen, or they can come true in ways I never believed possible.

I don't know how to explain the difference between daring to dream and expectations.  It is very subtle.

Daring to dream is more of a hope than an expectation.

When a dream comes true, the world feels surreal.  Like I have just been given a beautiful gift that is even better than anyone could ever imagine.  The reality surpasses the original because it wasn't an expectation and the warmth that floods through me is like spring time.

It is a new beginning, the start of something beautiful.

The good life

Lions and tigers and elephants trumpeting and roaring in a tropical rain forest, while I eat Cobb salad and scrumptious tidbits from an artful plate.

Gorillas pounding their chests and humongous butterflies fluttering on ancient vine covered trees! 

It's a dream!  It's a fantasy!  It's lunch in the Rain Forest Cafe!

Follow that up with Spiderman shoes and dinosaur hunting and story time for five year olds and you've pretty much summed up my day.

Except for hamburgers and french fries the way mom made them and then a nice hot bath...

Does life get any better than this?

Every day's a new day

I left the Honda to play with some other automobiles today and went off with friends of my own.

A large gray mouse invited us to a pizza party where we played air hockey and tried our hand at throwing all sorts of balls, had our pictures sketched and watched a show.

After that we found ourselves putting pictures on a tree and playing with a small ram and a large elephant.  It was a day filled with magical memories, chocked full of cookies and icing and lots of fun.

You don't have to fall into a rabbit hole to do the unlikely.  Look at the world through the eyes of a child and super surprises pop up at every corner.  The world is full of wonder.

Tonight I will sleep like a baby.

Up up and away!

Once every six months or so it is time to pack up the every day world and set out on an adventure!

Not a Greek Odyssey sort of adventure.  I don't have ten years.  I simply have four days and the whole adventure has to be sandwiched in between the first and last day when my traveling will be done by a Honda and not a great Greek Sailing Vessel with fifty rowers.  I do have a wind bag, but it is unreliable at best.

It is winter in the north and neither the Honda nor I are inclined to be ski bunnies, so I chose to go south.

Grabbing a bag of blue tortilla chips for me, I fed the Honda and we set off, but before I go any further let me assure you I am not going as far south as you might suppose at this point.

Tonight, after stabling the Honda, I dined on crab Rangoon, string beans, several unidentifiable dishes and plum ice cream.

Now I am writing because every great adventure should have a journal.

Tomorrow I will rise and set off into the sunrise to rendezvous with a fellow adventurer.

Who knows what we will do!  If we go fast enough maybe we will go back in time and meet Santa in his sleigh, or a loose pumpkin, or maybe even a stray firecracker.   Whatever happens I am sure it will be much different than walking around my little park back home.

Can you hear me?

An inability to express complicated thoughts does not mean those thoughts and feelings don't exist.

I am surprised at the people who seem to believe that because someone does not speak their language clearly they are somehow inferior.  I imagine myself in a foreign country, even one where I have a very rudimentary grasp of the language, and I know I would sound very childish, or even dim witted if I had to express myself.

Likewise, poverty does not make me a second class citizen.  In truth money does not make me a first class one either, but that is another story.  I have been on both sides of the poverty line and I was the same person the whole time. 

I see insane behaviors by well meaning people all the time.  Speaking very slowly in English or in pigeon English is the universal language?  Shouting is even better?   Only in America!

Or maybe not.  Perhaps every culture has a group of people who think their way is the only way. Hubris is universal.  It is also so destructive.

Getting past preconceived ideas is the biggest barrier to peace.  Rather than focusing on all our differences, I wish we could focus on our similarities and celebrate our differences.  It is the odd thought that comes up with new ideas, new ways, new cures.

It is worth taking the time to understand each other.

Walking on sunshine

If something seems to be too good to be true, it probably is.  How many times have I heard that?  And it is generally true. 

Getting something for nothing is unrealistic.  Free lunches usually come with all kinds of strings, but what about those things that are actually worked for?  

A labor of love can seem so ridiculously easy in retrospect that one forgets how hard it was.  The fact that the suffering seemed to be less than expected doesn't negate the work.

The pauses in the past, those times when there were so many clouds that the sunshine was a brief and rare interlude, might lead one to believe that all of life is this way; flashes of light followed by darkness when in fact it is usually flashes of darkness followed by light.

I think this is the hero's journey, or it can be.  Modern day heroes may not be fighting dragons or gorgons, but the darkness and danger is just as real.  Coming through that and reaching the mountain top is not the end.  This is when heroes are separated from mountain climbers.

Once the hero finally begins walking on sunshine he knows that his life is a gift not only to himself but to others.  He is obligated to a standard of living and helping others that cannot be ignored. 

There are no free lunches, but there are incredible opportunities for those who seize them.

The Dark Side

The other day I was flipping channels and I came across a church choir singing.  I was suddenly struck by their faces.  They all looked pained, like they were suffering!  Today  I was getting ready for one of my volunteer jobs and I found myself thinking, well, I have something to talk about today.  I've gained some weight.

It suddenly dawned on me that I have been groomed to be unhappy, to believe that suffering is good in some way.  Our society finds some kind of satisfaction in being unhappy.  It is often what we talk about, how we fit in.  That is a sobering thought.

There is a release in sharing sorrows and problems and there is a sort of grim joy in realizing my problems are not as great as others might be, but I think perhaps our culture likes suffering for its own sake.  It's who we are. 

Where did that come from?

It has taken me years to step out of the hovering gloom that was my constant companion growing up and though much of my first forty years.  I always assumed it was because there was something wrong with me, but I'm not so sure now.

I don't take any sort of drugs to make me feel better.  I just learned to look at my world from a different perspective.  Maybe I also had to unlearn the gloom lesson, even if I didn't realize I was doing that.

Sometimes accused of being a "Pollyanna" I find that looking for the bright side is much more satisfying for me now.  Living in the moment, knowing that in this moment I can deal with almost anything helps too.  The dark side is always available, I just choose not to focus so much on it anymore.

Disappointment

Nothing hurts like disappointment.  If I'm not careful it makes me into a pessimist.  I would rather think the worst and be pleasantly surprised than think the best and be disappointed.

But it happens. 

And the only thing I can do when it does rear its ugly crumby awful little head is deal with it.

Of course the first thing that comes to mind is meeting it head on and chopping off that ugly appendage, but that is just the child in me reacting.  I know I can't really do that.  I can't kick it in the shins, or punch it in the nose either. 

Creating new problems certainly won't help me in the long run, so I step back and try to make a rational response instead.  That often means coming to a compromise -- with myself first of all.  I have to reconcile all those lost dreams with the reality before me.

Later, when the booboo is kissed and covered up with a Band Aid, I'm glad I didn't do any of the awful things I thought of in the beginning and years later, when I look back, I see what a tiny glitch it really was.

Still, sometimes all that gets me from here to there is the kiss and the Band Aid.  And maybe a few hugs too.

Disappointment hurts, but it's not the end of the world as I know it.  I gotta remember that.

Magic and Merlin and Reality, oh my

Life is like one of those big balls that keep revealing little treasures as they are unwound.

I never know what is coming up next, but it is usually interesting and often fun.

The secret seems to be to always have hope, but avoid expectations and believe that, "this or something better will manifest."

It really requires patience and faith, two big ingredients that distinguish one person from another. When those people from the sixties say, "hang in there," it's really good advice. 

And if I can BELIEVE it I think that might even change the whole outcome.  Making me sort of my own personal wizard, a Merlin of the highest sort, directing my own life instead of handing it over to someone else.

Slow and steady magic.

Judgement

Above board and open.  It is my chosen way.

That doesn't mean to be a tell all, or to air the family laundry in public.  It just means I am more comfortable being myself than I used to be.

Discretion is always the better part of valor.  If Auntie Matilda will be unhappy knowing that little Arnold plays with snakes, it's just better not to bring the subject up, but if he plays with fire, then, by all means, bring it to the forefront.

There are no hard and fast rules for things like this.  Do no harm comes about as close as I can think of.  Life is a judgement call from the word go.  The better my judgement, the better my world will be.