Beautiful hope

 

One of my favorites when life feels difficult. Sometimes we cling to the myth because it's all we have.

Lord of All Hopefulness

Song by Ely Cathedral Choir

Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy,
Whose trust, ever child-like, no cares can destroy,
Be there at our waking, and give us, we pray,
Your bliss in our hearts, Lord, at the break of the day.

Lord of all eagerness, Lord of all faith,
Whose strong hands were skilled at the plane and the lathe,
Be there at our labors, and give us, we pray, Your strength in our hearts, Lord, at the noon of the day.

Lord of all kindliness, Lord of all grace,
Your hands swift to welcome, your arms to embrace,
Be there at our homing, and give us, we pray,
Your love in our hearts, Lord, at the eve of the day.

Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm,
Whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm,
Be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray,
Your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Jan Struther Text Only

Love at work

 

I have been physically depleted lately and after being diagnosed with Covid yesterday I understand better why that might be.

I do not feel good, but today is Christmas and as I sat here it occurred to me that we all make gestures based on love.

I did not go to my nephew's house, or have my granddaughters over because I did not want to expose them to this virus. I did not allow them to come pick up gifts or drop them off for the same reason. 

I also realized how important this holiday is to my daughter who is facing another Christmas far from home. She was really counting on our video chat today, so I stirred up enough energy to make that possible and in the doing actually felt a little bit better for a while.

The same is true for my other children. Any attempt I made to make things better for them made things much better for me. 

That is the thing about love. Giving it, or receiving it, works about the same way. It is a gift.

Covid!

 

I can't tell you how many holidays I have been sick and missed all the fun, but there have been lots, especially on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

This year is no exception. I had hives over Thanksgiving and today I have just been diagnosed with Covid.

Typical of me it has not been what I expected at all.. I have not run a temperature over 100 and I have not lost my sense of taste or smell, but I have a terrible horrible no good very bad cough, a stuffy nose, and I ache all over.

Of course my own doctor's office is closed, but after being up nauseous and sick all night long I went to a Prompt Care. 

The hardest part of going to a doctor when I am this sick is the waiting. I got there around 8:30 and left around noon, totally exhausted and dehydrated. Now I am suppose to isolate for 5-10 days, so all the Christmas preparations fall by the wayside.

It is good that I live alone, so no one else is exposed, but it also means caring for myself when I don't feel like doing anything. Not to mention that I will lose a week's pay at work.

I don't know where I caught this or why it choose now to get me. I've lad all the vaccinations and I've even been exposed when Covid first came out. Probably from one of the kids in my class I'm guessing. When they don't feel good they want to sit on my lap a lot more.

Happy Covid Christmas!

Harbingers

 

Sometimes an event changes a life so much that nothing is ever the same again.

This seems to be the year for that.

I know several people, including me, whose lives have been completely altered.

It can be tragic and good all at the same time.

I think the secret is to find that spark of good, or hope, and fan the flames. This is when you really do need to make lemonade out of lemons.

Being useful in any way is one of the best harbingers of what is to come.

Reactors

 

Why is the first feeling many people go to fear, followed by hate?

I think because fear is built into us. It is our way of protecting ourselves from things we may not understand, but once we feel it most things do not require an instant reaction.

A little thought, a little investigation, a little knowledge could end so much pain and sorrow.

Not generalizing is the next step. Just because a green frog scared you does not mean that every frog, or everything green is bad and should be eliminated.

Frogs eat billions of insects and they are a source of food for many animals. The secretions from their skin has led to new painkillers and antibiotics and so much more. 

The same things are true of people from all places, in all colors and all ethnicities.  People from all over the world have contributed to medicine and engineering and agriculture and all those things that make life easier and more worthwhile.

Eliminate greed and the toddler mentality that my god is better than your god, or the idea that any god would want us to destroy each other and this world is a pretty good place.

Surely, as civilized human beings we can evolve into something more than simple reactors.

Games people play

 

My ex-husband and I used to play lots of games. Bridge was one of his favorites and I had the feeling that becoming a Bridge player was something our marriage hinged on. He was a stickler for rules.

On the other hand we played back gammon, double solitaire,  Electronic Detective, Clue, Scrabble and many other games.

Until . . .

I beat him. Once I began winning with any kind of consistency we stopped playing those games.

We were better off playing as partners even though I didn't remember the entire Gorin's Bridge Complete like he did. I was acceptable.

Looking back I suspect part of it was that I could read his face and I knew how he bid better than other people, but there was also the fact that few other people were willing to put up with his lectures on proper  bidding during a game. I've been known  to chug Mylanta while playing Bridge.

I have not really played any games since my divorce except for Upwords. A friend and I played that so much, we wore the faces off the tiles! Now I am playing Suduko, Wordle, Connections and the New York Times mini crossword -- all on my phone and I must admit I do enjoy them.

Excuses, excuses, excuses

 

I have been watching Young Sheldon on Netflix and I really enjoy it.

There are no commercials and no real drama that is concerning.

Unless . . . 

I consider the fact that I can relate to young Sheldon in a big way.

Many of the things he worries about, I worry about, or did as a child. 

Unfortunately I am not a great physicist so I could never get away with most of his behavior.

I have to come up with more plausible reasons for my actions!

Ego

 

The older I become, the easier it becomes to be me. I say this not even sure that I really know who me is, but I am assuming it is when I can be at ease and not have to think before every word and action.

That has happened a few times in the past year and I don't think it is an accident. When I was talking to my scammer I wanted to be sure he knew who I really was. His opinion of me seemed to be better than my own most of the time. Of course now I know that was part of the scam, but it did bring out a more truthful part of me. 

There was a time when I would have been so honored that anyone important wanted to talk to me that I would have gone out of my way to try and impress them. I don't seem to to do that anymore. It's better for me if you know right off the bat that I am who I am.

Of course I still try too hard at work. I want to please our lead teacher, because I need this job. But part of me feels that although I may need to brush up on the current techniques, I still know an awful lot more than some of the people I work with simply because I have thirty years experience. Still, I don't want her job. Day care will always be different than private preschool was in the eighties and nineties.

Being me has its advantages, I'm discovering. My honesty and my experiences catch people off guard now that I am regarded as an older woman. I am not your cookie baking grandma who wears an apron and grows roses in the garden. I can do both those things, but they have never been the focus of my life. 

I've always been a bit adventurous. Sometimes that gets me in trouble, but never anything illegal, just unusual. My ego says I would rather plant a huge sunflower labyrinth in the middle of corn fields, or ride my bike twenty miles out into the country, or make drums, or even meditate to drumming than just sit around and be sweet. Honestly, I'm not all that sweet.

But I am honest and I try to be truthful. My ego requires that much from me. 

Consistency

 

I believe that the most important part of training is consistency.

Whether it is housebreaking a dog, or potty training a child, nothing works better than reinforcing the right action over and over again.

That sounds simple, but many people have trouble being consistent, even people who understand its value and have experience using it.

I find a lack of consistency extremely confusing. 

I had many years experience using it to help my daughter overcome some learning disabilities. 

So it is difficult for me to work with people who are not consistent. I realize it is difficult when there are many children, but I believe the difficulties increase when someone believes they are consistent, but they have become less than hyper-vigilant and because they are the one in charge, no one dares to tell them.

I suppose it is impossible to live intensely hyper-vigilant all the time, but the closer you are to keeping everything the same, the easier it will be for everyone to conform.

Let freedom ring

Imagine suddenly being rudely roused from your bed and hustled off into the night.

You sit in a small cell wondering what is going to become of you.

Later, when you are released, people revile you on the street.

You lose your job, your house, and are denied all contact with your friends and family.

You have not been convicted of any crime, but you have already been charged, tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television.

This is a reality in our country, the land of the free, the home of the brave, the place where gossip mongers seem to enjoy other people's misery and so-called good Christians leap at the chance to be holier than thou.

People don't have to be proven guilty for a community to turn against them, especially if they are not white heterosexuals living carefully within the boundaries of barely civilized bigots.

Those people

 

Stress leads to mistakes.

There is nothing like being afraid to make a mistake that is more likely to cause mistakes.

You can give it names like Attention Deficit, or something else, but is is the fear that really amps up the occurrences.

My ex could forget his coat on a cold day and I never understood that, but now I realize that as a child who would probably be labeled ADD, he had years of expecting to make a mistake. My youngest son was the same, but I never considered myself to be one of those people.

Until now.

People who have this tendency tend to develop ways to avoid it. They become meticulous list makers and people who triple check their work. I guess I was great at coping most of my life. I was always terrified of making mistakes. (For lots of reasons frankly.)

But now that I have been divorced for over 25 years and my children are grown up, I no longer feel quite as much pressure to try to be perfect. I have relaxed a little. Not much, but a little.

So I make more mistakes and I am realizing I do the same things my ex and my son have always done. I was always understanding when it came to my child. Now I wish I had been a bit more understanding of my ex. 

Lifeline

 

The surest way to survive is to have a lifeline.

Whether that is an actual rope with a buoy on the end, or plan for the future,  does not matter all that much. 

In the end it is that the future appears as a possibility with hope.

Hope is something that has wrought miracles.

Miracles not always attached directly to the hope, but often part and parcel of the end result.

So make a plan.

Write down the details.

And hang on to it for all it is worth!

Blips along eternity

 

My life is important to me. It is the only one I have and so, like most people, everything that happens to me seems important.

My best moments and my worst. The glorious and the shameful. The fair and the unfair. To me these events are monumental. I can believe they are the only things that matter in the moment they occur and that they set the tone for the rest of my life.

It is true that within a village, or city, or county, or even a state, these things can seem enormous, but in the course of history most of them will not be remembered. They will not even be a blip on the timeline of the centuries that follow.

Sometimes it is necessary to step back and look at the world from a distance. 

i cannot change the past, but I have much power over the future. My power may stop at the end of my nose, but that is okay. I can choose how I react. I can choose my attitude. I can choose to go forward and make the best out of what is there.

My time on earth, long or short, is all I have, so I need to choose to use it the best way possible. Always starting from this point forward.

Role model

 

Every morning my father got up before the rest of us. He shaved, ran a bath, and then went down to the kitchen to cut up fruit for our mynah bird and monkey. He would fry three pieces of baloney, make toast and coffee and eat breakfast then go up and bathe, shine his shoes and drive thirty miles to work.

Sometimes he would let George, our Cinnamon ring tail monkey, out to run while he did that, which is why I know what was going on. George would run upstairs and jump on my pillow, trying to pull the curlers out of my hair!

I learned so many things from my father. He was a voracious reader and loved both being a student and teaching. He was often working three jobs to make ends meet, but sometimes he would let me skip school and ride with him when he was going to make a speech at some university. That way I got to see them before I had to choose one.

I used to wish he was like other fathers who would go out and throw a ball with their children, or play board games, but mostly he was my idol. I wanted to grow up and be like him and his friends.

Until my mother died and he eventually remarried. Looking back I think he thought he had a lot to offer his new young wife. I think he thought he could put her through college and give her a good life, but that was not the case. She was eventually the end of him. He broke his collar bone and she had him put in a nursing home where he finally died. It was a longer and more complicated story, but it was all sad and I learned one more thing about life.

People teach us by what they do and don't do. Nobody is perfect, but everybody can be a role model in one way or another.