Category Archives: My Life

Great Expectations and The Simple Life

I have read two great posts recently about how it is all right and even good to choose a simple life over a life that is publicly recognized and acclaimed as successful. We all hear so much about what it means to be a success, how to set goals, and not give up on our ambitions. If we haven’t fulfilled those goals and ambitions we can feel guilty and let down. Maybe we just didn’t try hard enough.

It was nice to read these posts about how it is possible to think that living a quieter life, without lofty goals, is perfectly fine. That there are people who have found the quiet life very rewarding and satisfying. The first post is by David Brooks, The Small, Happy Life. Brooks had asked readers to submit essays about how they found their purpose in life. He was surprised with some of the responses. He said, I expected most contributors would follow the commencement-speech clichés of our high-achieving culture: dream big; set ambitious goals; try to change the world. I will quote from one of the responses he received.

Terence J. Tollaksen responded:

“I have always admired those goal-oriented, stubborn, successful, determined individuals; they make things happen, and the world would be lost without them.” But, he explains, he has always had a “small font purpose.”

“I can say it worked for me. I know it sounds so Midwest, but it’s been wonderful. I have a terrific wife, 5 kids, friends from grade school and high school, college, army, friends locally, and sometimes, best of all, horses, dogs, and cats. Finally, I have a small industrial business that I started and have run for 40 years based on what I now identify as principles of ‘Pope Francis capitalism.’ ”

Oh, for more capitalists like Mr. Tollaksen!

The second post I read was Oh What to Be by Kelly Quirino. In it she describes what is was like for her to be an identified “gifted” child in elementary school at 5 years of age. How the high expectations of her teachers and community created so much stress for her. She would vomit every day before school. Her mother finally withdrew her from the gifted program. Kelly grew up to have a quiet life dedicated to her children. She says:

” I’m not a surgeon, a scientist, a CEO, or a Nobel Prize winner. What I want out of life is to live simply, honestly, and humbly. My ambitions are to show my children that they are loved and to make the world around me a little better, a little more beautiful, and a little more peaceful. In my heart, I feel like this is a worthy way to spend my time in this world.”

Kelly says she still feels guilty at times about her life choices. That she did not fulfill society’s expectations for someone with her abilities. Isn’t it time to redefine success or at least broaden the definition? Can’t there be more than one type of success? I agree we need all those goal-oriented people but we would be lost without all the quiet ones. And we have to allow each of us to chose which life fits us best.

Cherished Mementos

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Some of things I cherish most are the memories I have of my children as they were growing up and the memorabilia from that time I have saved over the years. I have saved some of their art work, letters, cards, and little gifts from them when they were small. I know I have a large box in the garage containing samples of my kids’ art work and school papers. I could not bring myself to throw the stuff out. Many of these mementos from my children are inside my house as well. How can I say which one is most cherished. That seems unfair.

I often come across them when I am going through my dresser drawer, closets or armoire. They evoke memories of my kids at a certain age and feelings of such deep love and the poignancy of times passed and sometimes laughter.

Some of the things might be, a drawing, a hand-made Mother’s Day card, a note from my daughter saying she loves me, a letter from my son away at camp, a box of their baby clothes, the toy elephant I was given by a friend after my son was born that plays “You Are My Sunshine”, or my daughter’s first Mary Jane shoes. I can’t pick just one. Maybe this is why I can’t part with them either.

Some dispassionate person will have to decide the fate of these things after I am no longer of this world.

Baby dress, elephant, and Mary Jane shoes

Some cherished gifts

This is post is my contribution to Cherished Blogfest. You can read other great posts and link up to participate yourself. 🙂

Beauty

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What is considered to be beautiful is always changing, over the years and across cultures. I think the young woman in the above image may have a “wheat belly.” ( a reference to a popular book about gluten free diets). She is a little soft and pudgy according to current beauty standards. Her belly is bulging out a bit.

Opinions about diet are always changing as well. There are so many changes in just the past 20 years. Remember all the talk about low fat diets and heart health. I stayed away from butter and ate margarine for years to find that now we know margarine is actually very bad for you. And then no red meat. I followed that advice as well and did not eat red meat. Now I hear that the low fat diet caused many people to eat too much sugar, which is worse, and that some fats are good for us. And it was artificial sweeteners are good and then they were bad. Now sugar is bad again. Then coffee is good, coffee is bad, or wine is good, wine is bad. White wine is not as good as red. No white wine is ok. Now red is better as long as its organic. Confusing isn’t it.

It is amazing how there are so many books and posts telling us how to be better at everything. How to eat, have sex, be mindful, find purpose and exercise in just the right ways.

This got me thinking about body image in general and women’s body image in particular. I want to be comfortable with my body and it’s image even if it is not the ideal. Women spend a good part of their lives worried about their appearance and weight, scrutinizing their bodies in the mirror to see how they measure up to the latest popular image.

I have read many articles on this topic and this lead to a website called Beauty Redefined. I am sure there are others out there that are as good but I do like a lot of what this one has to say. It belongs to Lexie and Lindsay Kite, who have PhDs in media and body image. In there own words, We have a passion for helping girls and women recognize, reject and resist harmful messages about their bodies and what “beauty” means and looks like. I am learning there is a lot of resistance against all the dieting and the popular media images of beauty. This is a positive thing.

This a great little short film by Em Ford, a very courageous young woman, who demonstrates how women are judged by their appearance. And how some commenters on social media are sociopaths.

There is resistance to dieting as well. In her book Body of Truth, Harriet Brown talks about how she learned to become comfortable with her body at a weight that felt comfortable to her. She makes a convincing argument about the futility of dieting and how all the hype about obesity is overblown. She talks about her own daughter’s struggle with anorexia and how this experience helped her and her family change their attitudes toward food. She includes some of her own process that she developed through therapy to be able to relax about eating and not be obsessed about diet.

Another website I have discovered is Refinery 29 that has some good posts about positive body image and anti-dieting. There is great blog on there called The Anti-Diet Project by Kelsey Miller. She did a recent post about intuitive eating. This has been around for awhile. It is learning to make food neutral and get in touch with your natural appetite and get off the diet merry-go-round. Another post by Kate Harding as part of Refinery 29 Take Back the Beach exposes many of the myths about the virtues of dieting.

I find the posts about positive body image and anti-dieting encouraging. Maybe there is hope that people’s attitudes will change and we can learn self-acceptance.

In the meantime, it is good to keep a sense of humor. There is one health practice that I really believe in, laughter. When we laugh we lower our stress hormones, improve our circulation, increase our endorphins, exercise our lungs and even exercise our core muscles. I believe the part about the core muscles because my daughter pointed out to me, and I confirmed it by looking in the mirror, that my belly moves up and down when I laugh. Besides laughter makes us feel great don’t you think?

Go Set a Watchman To Be Released This Week

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Barnes & Noble announces all pre-orders of the hardcover edition* of Go Set a Watchman placed on BN.com on or before 12pm Eastern time July 13 will be delivered on July 14**, the on-sale date.

Harper Lee’s new book is being released this week. I am due to get my copy in the mail around mid-week according to the nice customer service rep I spoke with at Barnes and Noble. I had pre-ordered the book and then I lost my email record of it.

I am very excited to read this book. If you have been following the story, Harper Lee wrote Go Set A Watchman before she wrote To Kill A Mockingbird but her publisher wanted her to write a book about a younger Scout. So no one ever heard of Go Set A Watchman until recently. Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for To Kill A Mockingbird and then never wrote another book that we knew of.

I am very excited to read this “new” book. And I really don’t want to hear a lot about what the book is about before I read it. I hate spoilers. When I do a review I don’t like to give away the whole story either and spoil it for other people. When I saw a recent headline in the Huffington Post about Atticus Finch, and what his character is like in the new book, I saw red. Every time I see that post I scroll quickly past it. Now that element of surprise has been taken from me. But I am blocking it out until I read the book for myself.

I am the same way about films. I don’t like to read a review that tells the about the entire film before I get a chance to see it. A big part of the pleasure for me is the mystery. Do you like to read reviews that give away the whole story?

Comic Relief

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I loved watching Laurel and Hardy when I was little. Still do. The ability to make people laugh is such a gift. And comedians are a gift to the world. Sharing a couple of laughs with you today.

Thanks to Dave Barry. I spotted this on his blog this morning sent in by one of his readers:

AS FORETOLD IN THE OLD TESTAMENT

Beach closed off after huge hole opens up shooting SNAILS into the sky ‘like a geyser’

THEY CAN ALSO BE MISTAKEN FOR CAMELS

Man mistakenly raises ‘puppies’ for two years – before finding out they’re black bears

I really needed this laugh. Reminds me how important it is to find something to smile and laugh about, especially in current times.

1776

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American Revolution Military Uniforms

Battle of Trenton, the course of the war turns

Betsy Ross American Flag

Declaration of Independence

George Washington 1779

President John Adams

Happy 4th of July to my country. I love the history of our independence. I highly recommend reading David McCullough’s John Adams and 1776. And I recommend the film miniseries John Adams by HBO if you haven’t had a chance to see it. McCullough’s writing is so wonderful in bringing to life the history of our Revolutionary War, its times and people.

I, like many others, took our history and freedom for granted until I read about what a genuine struggle if was for the people involved in that war. We were losing at the beginning. Somehow our forefathers and foremothers had the courage to continue until they succeeded. It is great to read about how the Declaration of Independence was written. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were genius.

Today I am indulging in all things 4th of July like on TCM which has dedicated the day to films about our struggle for independence.

Happy 4th of July!

SOCS-Package in the Mail

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This post is for Stream of Consciousness Saturday which is hosted by Lindaghill. This is a weekly blogging event and everyone is welcome to join. You can join and meet a nice group of writers. The prompt for today is “is.” Check out Linda’s blog and you can read all the rules.

Isn’t it funny how some things we do now people have done almost the same way in the past? It is like what was old is new again. Or a new twist on an old thing. I am talking about ordering merchandise through the mail. In olden days, when people lived out West, or in a remote or rural area, there were not any large stores nearby where they could buy the latest fashions or other items. So they relied on ordering things by mail through catalogues.

People would get excited when the train or coach arrived because it might be carrying an anticipated purchase from a store in Chicago or back East. I get the same excited feeling nowadays when I have ordered books, DVDs or clothes online. It is fun to get the message in my email that my order has shipped and I can track it. The date of delivery stays in the back of my mind until…I realize the day has arrived. I might check a few times outside my front door to see if it’s there. Or I may be surprised when I see the package sitting by my door on a day I did not expect it. It is fun to open the box or large shipping envelope and finally get to see what I bought.

360px-NMP_1780s_House_Interior_Front_Door via wikipedia

1780s House Front Door via wikipedia

Not so different from what people in other times felt about receiving their order in the mail.

The Wells Fargo Wagon from Music Man via Vegas 1A on You Tube:

The first to offer merchandise by catalogue in the United States was Aaron Montgomery Ward in 1872.

The Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776 by Asher Brown Durand

SOCS-Foreign Correspondent

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I have been in a quiet period in my writing. A dry spell, dry as a bone. I am in a quiet period where things are being gathered up and mulled over. When I think of something I’ll phone it in. That is what the newspaper reporters used to do, phone their stories in to the paper, if they were in a hurry with a breaking story or far away like a foreign correspondent. Foreign correspondent sounds so romantic, exciting and glamorous. Note the title correspondent. Like writing a letter. So beautiful.

There was a time when the foreign correspondent could not phone in a story because there were no phone cables across the ocean. Stories had to be sent by sea on a ship. Until the Transatlantic Cable was laid along the ocean floor, you had to wait to hear the news from other countries. I think in many ways that was better. You did not have to hear so much and so soon.

So think of me as an old time foreign correspondent. I will be sending in my stories but they will take a little longer to get here.

|Lindaghill|

SOCS-The Information is Out There

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I first heard ” the information is out there” in a film series based on books by Robert B Parker, the Jesse Stone series. The character who said these words was Luther “Suitcase” Simpson who was a local police detective in a town called Paradise. After he had a brain injury from a gun shot wound, Luther would often come up with these mystical quotes. I love this film series and the cast of actors are just great in it.

This quote reminds me of Synchronicity which is like when information always seems to pop up for me when I have been ruminating about something. I just wrote a post about it yesterday in regards to weight loss called Synchronicity and the BMI.

Another issue that I have been struggling with is how current main stream medicine seems to follow a one-size-fits all mentality which usually involves relying on pharmaceutical treatment of many illnesses and does not consider a holistic approach like stress reduction, body work and meditation to augment the treatment of illness. I have experienced that the whole person is not considered and I am not seen as a unique individual. So up popped another article in my email about this very issue.

So I agree with Luther that when you are looking for the answer in the universe ” the information is out there” and it will be sent to you, sometimes in your email.

|LindaGHill|

Synchronicity and the BMI

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I believe in synchronicity because many times when I am ruminating about an issue up pops the information that I need.

The issue that I have been thinking about for a while is weight gain and obesity in older people (women in particular). And how obesity is defined by the use of certain parameters like the BMI.

I have noticed that as I get older I have accumulated weight with hardly any effort and find it very hard to lose the weight. There are many factors that contribute to weight gain in older women besides just overeating. Let me list a few.

Some of the factors are decreased metabolism, or we don’t need as many calories and don’t burn up the calories as efficiently. This also makes it difficult to lose weight by reducing caloric intake. I know with me my metabolism seems to slow down even more if I restrict calories. Another factor is the natural loss of muscle as we age. Muscle helps our bodies burn calories. Stress from worrying about weight loss, among other things I worry about, can cause increase cortisol which then results in my body wanting to hold onto weight. Many older women have hypothyroidism which again affects the metabolism. And there can be a genetic predisposition and your body’s natural make-up that leads to being a larger size.

For all these reasons and more older people (women) many times end up in the overweight and obese section of the weight chart at the doctor’s office. I say that there needs to be a change at the way we look at weight, and older people should not be compared to younger people when it comes to defining obesity.

There can be dangers with dieting. Dieting often leads to muscle loss instead of fat loss. It is actually dangerous for older people to lose muscle because this can affect balance which can lead to falls and worse. Studies have shown that low weight is worse for recovery from surgery than being overweight.

So today I found a great article on Next Avenue that really resonates with what I have been thinking called ” Why Our Culture is Obsessed with Thinness,” by Patricia Corrigan.

Here is just one of the many excerpts from the article I loved about how nutsy we are about diet that even when women were in hospice with cancer they refused to eat desert.

Consider this: A hospice chef in Wisconsin told a science journalist that many of the dying women who were still able to eat “refused bread, salad dressing, butter, chocolate, desserts and other ‘fattening’ foods.”

You’re on your last lap, and you think it is imperative to pass up salad dressing and say “no” to chocolate?

Another point Patricia makes, which I have been thinking about as well, is that people naturally come in all different shapes and sizes with different genetic make-ups and it is unrealistic and wrong to expect everyone to fit into these narrow parameters that are considered normal by our society.

She also shares information about another author who has written a book about this topic, Harriet Brown “Body of Truth,” which I intend to read. In fact, I could quote Patricia’s whole article verbatim but I will let those interested click on the link above to read for themselves. I will share this information in the article from Harriet Brown’s book:

dieting and weight cycling (aka yo-yo dieting) leads to unhealthy physical and psychological effects

physical and psychological damage comes from being rigid, chaotic and fearful about eating

people unhappy with their weight are more likely to give up on health-positive activities than heavy people who are satisfied with their weight

whether you diet or don’t, you are going to die

Patricia and others have made the point that weight loss has become a big industry with pharmaceuticals and all kinds of diet specialists and diet foods. I suggest, along with Patricia, Harriet and others that we take a critical look at the current cultural spin on weight and start to “change the conversations about weight and health with ourselves, our families, our friends and our doctors.”

I intend to take her article with me to my next doctors appointment.