Things are quiet from my end lately. Life, however, is loud. The waves of change and challenge are crashing down. With a slow emotional reflex, I am trying to deal with it. My mother and one of my good friends are dealing with the hardball of cancer. While both of them vocalize assurances of “I’m-ok-isms “those of us on the sidelines stand idle, not really knowing what to do. We are simply stuck on the mountain in low gear, foot on the brakes.
The sidelines are a tough place to be. You are not in the action. You are not being poked, prodded, zapped, and forced into MRI tunnels. Far from the action, yet you suffer from malaise, frustration and lethargy? It is not your body filled with chemo, radiation or pain. But yet you stand by just hoping to do or just say the right thing.
So, I’ve decided to amp it up! My mother needs me to help her think through the realities of her future. So I need to start thinking, better, smarter, faster. My friend and I are writing a book and right now she is dealing with energy swings post-chemo. But, I can certainly put pen to paper and keep our dream alive. As of today, I am getting off the bench. We are a team and when one is down, the other rises to keep things going.
This is the blessing of love and relationship. It took me aback for a moment, but I am taking my foot off the breaks. I will continue forward a little slower, but much steadier. I am not interested in my Ferrari styled high gear. But I am moving none-the-less, for them both. I now understand the saying “I feel your pain”.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
It's Always Too Late
Recently, I read an article written by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker about one of her favorite writers, George Eliot. Mead had encountered a quotation attributed to Eliot that reads as follows, “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” Mead thought that neither the wording nor the sentiment sounded like her understanding of George Eliot. So she set out to find the source of the quotation in Eliot’s writings, or to prove that Eliot didn't write it.
After many weeks of investigation, Mead was unable to find the quotation in any of Eliot's work. However, she did learn that it was first published less than a year after the novelist died in 1880. Eliot was famous for writing aphorisms and other quotable text, and this sentence, “It is never too late to be what you might have been,” was published with several other Eliot quotes. The other quotes were each linked to a specific work of Eliot’s, but this particular quotation was not. In the end, Mead had to confess that although she didn’t think the quotation sounded like the George Eliot she knew, she could neither prove not disprove conclusively that Eliot wrote it.
Mead’s suspicions about the quotation came from two directions. First, the sentence frankly sounded far too direct and simplistic for the famously verbose and subtle novelist. More importantly, Mead believes that the idea seems to contradict one of the key themes in Eliot’s most important work, Middlemarch.
The protaganist of that novel, a young woman named Dorothea Brooke, marries a much older man, a scholar whom she perceives to be a first-rate intellectual. To her great dismay and regret, after they marry, she comes to understand that her husband is engaged in tedious, obscure research for a multi-volume work of philosophy that centers on an equally-obscure thesis. In other words, he has been wasting his life toiling endlessly on a project of little merit and less interest to the rest of the world. Rather than being married to a brilliant scholar, Dorothea finds herself tied to a first-rate “ditherer.”
What Dorothea does with her life after this realization is much of the story of Middlemarch. In Rebecca Mead’s reading of the book, the theme is that life—rather than being the stuff of great deeds and great accomplishments and great love affairs—is instead quiet, routine, even dreary for many people. Unlike Jane Austen’s books in which the “best” people are rewarded with happy endings--usually marriage to someone both wealthy and exciting--Eliot’s characters, good and bad, have lives that feel more real. The people she writes about carry on and do the best they can, despite life’s disappointments or setbacks or unfulfilled dreams. In fact, Mead argues, what Eliot is celebrating is the heroism of living a life that doesn't fulfill all of your dreams.
Thus, as Mead says in her article, it seems unlikely that George Eliot would ever have written that “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” Instead, Eliot would more likely have argued that it is always too late to be what you might have been. She gives us characters whose heroism is defined not by the successes in their lives, but by their courageous and persistent efforts to live and to thrive within the realities of daily life, ordinary expectations and small happinesses.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Don't Mention It!
Remember the old advice about topics you’re supposed to avoid in polite company? Religion, politics and money usually make the list. But there’s another subject in our society that is so taboo, we’re not even supposed to think about it, much less discuss it with others. That subject is death. Especially and particularly our own deaths.
Death—the idea of it, the fear of it—is not just discomforting; it’s downright terrifying to most of us. But the fact of the matter is that we are all getting more old than we are young. (That’s true of nearly every Western society, by the way, not just of individuals). The reality is that much as we hate to contemplate it, we’re not going to be around forever. So we try to ignore, dismiss, or avoid any thought of what comes after—after.
And what goes right along with this is an attempt to deny the aging process, too. The logic is clear: if you get older, you’re getting closer to your own personal “D Day.” Therefore, Western culture in particular not only doesn’t honor the notion of aging, we cringe at it, we mock it, and we deny it.
And when we deny both aging and its ultimate consequence, death, we also deny something fundamentally important about ourselves. Human beings seem to have an innate need to create some type of “immortality” for ourselves. For some people, this may center on the idea of an afterlife in some other sphere. But whether we believe in an afterlife or not, most of us also want to know that we will leave an impact here on earth. And, whether we have ever thought about it or not, the choice of whether and what kind of legacy to leave here on earth is ours alone.
We often talk about creating a legacy, and that seems to be the right word. Because ultimately, legacy building is a creative task. it relies upon imagination, hard work and hope: three things without which nothing creative would ever exist. We have dreams for the future; we labor to accomplish them or at least set them in motion, and we rely on a fundamental sense of hope that they will bear fruit in years to come. That's really what legacy is--hope in the future, in things that are lasting and valuable not just for one person or over the span of one life, but well into the future.
What do you hope for the future? What will you create that will live after you? What will be your legacy?
Friday, January 14, 2011
Consider Me Antique
Automatically, when we think of aging in this society, we think of all of the negatives, all the things we lose rather than what we gain.
This is easy because the things that change, fade or decline are mostly physical and the improvements are not. So we look in the mirror every morning and see the crow’s feet and the gray hairs. However, you can’t look in the mirror and “see” wisdom. You can’t try on a new pair of shoes and realize that you know yourself better.
Think of a piece of antique furniture. The chair or dresser is likely to have a few nicks or scratches. The finish may be worn in spots, and the drawers may stick or the chair joints may groan a bit when you sit down. But an antique dealer will tell you that the value of a piece like that doesn’t lie in its being in perfect condition. Far from it. The value is greatest for a piece whose provenance and authenticity can be seen and felt. Ironically, the imperfections of an antique—the very nicks, scratches and other blemishes that show its age--are what make it most valuable.
Similarly, we can look at ourselves and focus on all the little nicks and scars of age. We can fuss over the superficial blemishes, the signs that we are not the perfect specimens we once were. We can try to cover up, remove, fill in, buff out the surface signs of age, or we can do what the antique dealers do—look beneath the façade to see the true value that lies within. And then care for ourselves—about ourselves—in the same way we would a valuable antique—marvel at our resilience, cherish our quality and rejoice in our beauty.
So, from now on consider me antique!
brendology
This is easy because the things that change, fade or decline are mostly physical and the improvements are not. So we look in the mirror every morning and see the crow’s feet and the gray hairs. However, you can’t look in the mirror and “see” wisdom. You can’t try on a new pair of shoes and realize that you know yourself better.
Think of a piece of antique furniture. The chair or dresser is likely to have a few nicks or scratches. The finish may be worn in spots, and the drawers may stick or the chair joints may groan a bit when you sit down. But an antique dealer will tell you that the value of a piece like that doesn’t lie in its being in perfect condition. Far from it. The value is greatest for a piece whose provenance and authenticity can be seen and felt. Ironically, the imperfections of an antique—the very nicks, scratches and other blemishes that show its age--are what make it most valuable.
Similarly, we can look at ourselves and focus on all the little nicks and scars of age. We can fuss over the superficial blemishes, the signs that we are not the perfect specimens we once were. We can try to cover up, remove, fill in, buff out the surface signs of age, or we can do what the antique dealers do—look beneath the façade to see the true value that lies within. And then care for ourselves—about ourselves—in the same way we would a valuable antique—marvel at our resilience, cherish our quality and rejoice in our beauty.
So, from now on consider me antique!
brendology
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Age On Purpose!
We chose the phrase “Age on Purpose” carefully. Doing something “on purpose” means doing it consciously, actively, by choice, not by accident. Getting older does not have to be just something that happens to us. We can view it as a conscious movement through this journey of life. There will almost certainly be times when we’d like to stop the clock or turn it back, but when you know something is inevitable, why not face up to it and take it on wholeheartedly?
Age on purpose” suggests that each of us is ON a path in life. We are headed somewhere, and each of us is accountable for where we are now and where we are going in life. This is true at all ages and all life stages, but maybe especially so now. As the years pile up, each of us is the sum product of a myriad of choices we’ve made up to this point in life, and we will continue to make choices until the day we die. So to say that we are “aging on purpose” connotes that each of us is the travel agent of our own lives, that we are ON a path to somewhere of our own making. If we’re not happy with the path, we can change it. But whatever we choose to do about our path, we are ON it and we must OWN it.
Finally, the words “Age on Purpose” were chosen to try to make an important distinction between activity and purpose. In the course of writing our book, we interviewed a number of people in their fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. We are grateful for their wisdom and their honesty. We learned many things from them. Perhaps the most important thing we learned and which has become central to this book is that there is a big difference between activity and purpose. People are fond of advising older people to stay busy, to keep active. That’s good advice, as far as it goes.
But our learning says it doesn’t go far enough. It’s not enough just to have a lot of activity in our lives. We also need an understanding of what all that activity is for, where it’s taking us, why we choose to focus on certain things and not on others. We’re calling that “purpose”, and it’s fundamental to happiness at every time of life. But it’s different at this stage of life because when we are younger, our days are usually full of things that constantly demand attention: work, marriage, children, friendships, community, and so on. We may not always be clear on what our purpose is in each of these areas, but we have a lot of momentum propelling us along.
With age, many of these elements become less central to life. Children grow up and leave home, careers plateau or retirement looms, marriages sometimes end and social connections that produced friendships often decline or change. We can fill up our days with tasks and errands and hobbies and activities. We can exhaust ourselves running from a community meeting to a lecture to an exercise class to a part-time job. But at the end of the day, what have we accomplished? What is it all for? If we can’t answer those questions, we need to discover our purpose. Stop confusing being busy with being purposeful. Don’t mistake activity for meaning. Let’s get on purpose!
Age on purpose” suggests that each of us is ON a path in life. We are headed somewhere, and each of us is accountable for where we are now and where we are going in life. This is true at all ages and all life stages, but maybe especially so now. As the years pile up, each of us is the sum product of a myriad of choices we’ve made up to this point in life, and we will continue to make choices until the day we die. So to say that we are “aging on purpose” connotes that each of us is the travel agent of our own lives, that we are ON a path to somewhere of our own making. If we’re not happy with the path, we can change it. But whatever we choose to do about our path, we are ON it and we must OWN it.
Finally, the words “Age on Purpose” were chosen to try to make an important distinction between activity and purpose. In the course of writing our book, we interviewed a number of people in their fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. We are grateful for their wisdom and their honesty. We learned many things from them. Perhaps the most important thing we learned and which has become central to this book is that there is a big difference between activity and purpose. People are fond of advising older people to stay busy, to keep active. That’s good advice, as far as it goes.
But our learning says it doesn’t go far enough. It’s not enough just to have a lot of activity in our lives. We also need an understanding of what all that activity is for, where it’s taking us, why we choose to focus on certain things and not on others. We’re calling that “purpose”, and it’s fundamental to happiness at every time of life. But it’s different at this stage of life because when we are younger, our days are usually full of things that constantly demand attention: work, marriage, children, friendships, community, and so on. We may not always be clear on what our purpose is in each of these areas, but we have a lot of momentum propelling us along.
With age, many of these elements become less central to life. Children grow up and leave home, careers plateau or retirement looms, marriages sometimes end and social connections that produced friendships often decline or change. We can fill up our days with tasks and errands and hobbies and activities. We can exhaust ourselves running from a community meeting to a lecture to an exercise class to a part-time job. But at the end of the day, what have we accomplished? What is it all for? If we can’t answer those questions, we need to discover our purpose. Stop confusing being busy with being purposeful. Don’t mistake activity for meaning. Let’s get on purpose!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Procrastination...The Art of Being Ready
Procrastination is the art of waiting until you are ready. People don’t get it, but the older I get the more it becomes clear to me. The irony of today’s reflection is that I achieved above and beyond my “to do” list. Please understand this has nothing to do with my zealous attitude or boundless energy. Actually it has a lot to do with joints, muscles and irreverent brain synapses.
You ever wonder why the folks who gave you lessons about the consequences of procrastinating always seemed to be mid-way in their life journey? As a kid, I remember the finger-in-the-face, pointed discussion about getting things done now and not putting them on hold. This wisdom comes from a place of knowing that tomorrow you might feel a new twinge in your neck and that closet you meant to clean won’t happen. This divine understanding comes from listening to body voice overs that creak and crack when you go up the stairs.
Those standing by while the list grows may say we are procrastinating. But we know we are simply awaiting the harmonious synchronicity of the mind, body and spirit. When it happens, watch out, three "to do' lists get accomplished in a single day, all with a wink and a knowing smile.
You ever wonder why the folks who gave you lessons about the consequences of procrastinating always seemed to be mid-way in their life journey? As a kid, I remember the finger-in-the-face, pointed discussion about getting things done now and not putting them on hold. This wisdom comes from a place of knowing that tomorrow you might feel a new twinge in your neck and that closet you meant to clean won’t happen. This divine understanding comes from listening to body voice overs that creak and crack when you go up the stairs.
Those standing by while the list grows may say we are procrastinating. But we know we are simply awaiting the harmonious synchronicity of the mind, body and spirit. When it happens, watch out, three "to do' lists get accomplished in a single day, all with a wink and a knowing smile.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Busy Doing Nothing
If you ask my 75 year old mother what she is up to on any given day at any given time she will say she is earning her PhD. That's right her Doctorate Degree in "Doing Nothing". Now, before you shrug this off as wasting away her life, hear me out.
In her mind she has fulfilled all life's important roles: wife, mother, grandmother, and employee. She poured all her energies into doing these things and in some cases continues to do these things well. A careful glimpse into her world, shows that the focus has changed significantly from them to "ME". This wisdom comes without apology.
The day starts without rush, in fact no appointments are scheduled until after noon. Each morning she contemplates what her palate would enjoy and settles for nothing less. This culinary delight is followed by a morning walk and 50 reps on the stationary bike on her living room floor. Then it's the daily romp with the Young and the Restless, word puzzles in the afternoon, errand runs, dinner, an indulgent bath and back to bed.
She is not focused on making change the world contributions, legacy building, finding her purpose or any of that crap. Why? Simply because its already done. She, like many her age is happy with herself and her life, exactly as is!. Expressing herself flashing well manicured nails (with designs), she states with conviction, "this TIME is for ME. I do what I want, when I want and it feels wonderful!"
Clearly she knows who she is after all this time. Isnt' that really the goal? There is no struggle to please those around her, to posture in order to feel important, to collect a bunch of stuff you will need to get rid of eventually, to worry about what the neighbors think or even what her 4 daughters think. She is as self aware and assured as they come, "doing nothing" as she claims.
Let us all hope to earn this credential. Where "busy doing nothing" is an honorary degree of a life fully lived. Wow, wouldn't that be "something".
In her mind she has fulfilled all life's important roles: wife, mother, grandmother, and employee. She poured all her energies into doing these things and in some cases continues to do these things well. A careful glimpse into her world, shows that the focus has changed significantly from them to "ME". This wisdom comes without apology.
The day starts without rush, in fact no appointments are scheduled until after noon. Each morning she contemplates what her palate would enjoy and settles for nothing less. This culinary delight is followed by a morning walk and 50 reps on the stationary bike on her living room floor. Then it's the daily romp with the Young and the Restless, word puzzles in the afternoon, errand runs, dinner, an indulgent bath and back to bed.
She is not focused on making change the world contributions, legacy building, finding her purpose or any of that crap. Why? Simply because its already done. She, like many her age is happy with herself and her life, exactly as is!. Expressing herself flashing well manicured nails (with designs), she states with conviction, "this TIME is for ME. I do what I want, when I want and it feels wonderful!"
Clearly she knows who she is after all this time. Isnt' that really the goal? There is no struggle to please those around her, to posture in order to feel important, to collect a bunch of stuff you will need to get rid of eventually, to worry about what the neighbors think or even what her 4 daughters think. She is as self aware and assured as they come, "doing nothing" as she claims.
Let us all hope to earn this credential. Where "busy doing nothing" is an honorary degree of a life fully lived. Wow, wouldn't that be "something".
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