solutions

Solutions

You can't improve a situation until you improve yourself. Since you have to start somewhere, don't shrug your shoulders. Plug away. Define the problem. Develop an awareness that change is necessary for solutions to evolve. Solutions come to those who take the personal responsibility of discovering them. Once your solution is discovered, act on your own desire to create a better you. We do a disservice to ourselves and those around us when we ignore problems and fail to stand up and help solve them.

^ That is stolen from "The Daily Boost" which our Marketing Director, Ryan McGrath forwards to all the Intramed Plus staff just about every day.  I like a good affirmation and this daily column is full of those. This one appealed to me particularly because it is a theme I reckon I need to reallllllly delve into...my deep-dream-self dredged up the topic again this morning...I guess I was nudged into sub-conscious conversation by my excesses last night and then brought to my full conscious awareness as the minutes ticked by and I didn't go back to sleep and I tried to recover the word I woke up to ringing in my head but lost as I explored the notion of "how do you want to conduct the rest of your life?".  Again.

It is the wee hours that call forth these self explorations, isn't it?  I go to sleep happy and content and as the night passes I drift down into my submerged storehouse of missteps and misdeeds and left un-dones and come awake with the memory of my various sins as raw and fresh as a crow's breakfast.  Because I have to live with myself I immediately plan a reform.  By noon my resolves are generally forgotten and by bedtime I am absolved again. Thank God it isn't that way every night.  Usually just the nights I give myself too much food, wine and such! Like last night.  And truthfully, the night before also...which was why I collected that Daily Boost.  It spoke to my morning intention to do good going forward.

"How do you want to conduct your life?  Do you have a code of conduct?  Are you the conductor of a great symphony that is your life story?  Are you leading the band in a tune of someone else's composition?  Or are you more like the conductor on a train- you ride along on it and steer and slow and speed it up but that train has its own power and is only affected by your choices and plans if that train is working right and is properly attended?"  These were the questions that cost me that ringing word.  

But the bigger question is intact:  what is your standard?  How do you conduct yourself?  

If I am honest, I am not living up to my expectations.  Yet I spend much more of my energy thinking about the conduct of others and how if they would just do what I want, when I want, how I want I would be happier and my life would be better as theirs surely would too.  That is the correction in course I wish to make.  The one that chooses to take the higher ground myself.  To follow the healthier path without thinking who's head of me or behind.  To take and stay steady on the right track. 

Yes Sister, You Are My Wish Come True

(A Little Thank You Note to the Universe :))

I've just come back from a gathering of the most delicious women.  My Nia Sisters.  We meet on Tuesday evenings to dance and share our spirits and stories.  We eat together afterward but the feast is more about spending time in each other's company.  As we broke up tonight Nancy asked me: "Are we what you wished for?"

It is such a great story I have to tell it again.

I wished for friends.  It was at a point in my life ...we all come to it I guess...I had narrowed my borders so close with the tasks of getting through the work week and being me in my family role so particularly that I had no time or energy or inclination to go outside of that definition of my life.  I had my small nuclear family and a big extended family and a few dear folks that have been faithful through the years in spite of my neglect.  In each of these circles my role was so very defined that  I was bored with my own self.  I was the same me for so long I sometimes felt like a mannequin of me.  And I went on that way for awhile not even minding how still I had become in my life.  Somehow, through some sparkling gift from the Universe, the notion came to me that I was lonely for something/someone/some state of being other than that in which I was rooted.  Not that there was anything wrong in my life.  It was just lacking something.  And so on some New Year's Eve I wished a wish I had never even thought to wish before.  I wished for friends.

I was not specific.  I hardly dared hope that at this stage of living I would have opportunities to meet new people or that if ever I did they would want to have anything to do with the likes of me.  But that is the nature of wishes, isn't it?  To hope beyond the likelihood of  having that hope fulfilled.  And I got so lucky.

There is a path of thought that says that what we can dream up for ourselves can and does become manifest if we allow it to.  In fact, whatever we can imagine for ourselves is set in motion for us by the thought of it alone and all we must do is be present and open to the unfolding.

So last July, wish made and half-forgotten I made an appointment with hypotherapist, Sandy Agee to explore a notion I had for self improvement.  And that is one beginning of the story of the Sisterhood of the Tuesday Night Nia Class.  Sandy invited me to join her dance class on Tuesday nights after I had finished my four session hypnosis therapy with her.  She was so generous to share her group with me and I loved the class from hello.  Never did I imagine how every week would bring me more and more joy..in the dancing...in the music... and in these remarkable women.  And never could I have imagined how full my life would start to feel just from the association with the Nia Sisterhood.  Let me introduce you.

Sandy first.  Sandy Agee is a healer.  She has enormous confidence and intuition...on top of that she is supported by having already had a stellar career in government/administration.  She explores all kinds of healing modalities, is rich with experiences and is ready always for more.  She likes my phrase for the love of clothing and fabrics: to be a "textilian" and she IS one!  Sandy adorns herself when she dresses-I love her taste!  She shares her life with her son Adam who has been quadriplegic for many years and her beloved Walt who is a gastric lymphoma survivor.  She speaks of their independence and success and I know she supports them with her great spirit! 

Nancy Whitlock is our teacher.  I wonder if you can imagine her when I say:  she is all grace, top to bottom, inside and out.  She has a teenager's body and a mass of curly, silver hair.  Dance is what she was made for and somehow she takes us along with her...I don't know how to say it in simple, down-to-Earth words...I arrive at class at the end of the work day feeling like lead has replaced my blood and I am tired and my brain is slogging along barely engaged enough to propel me through the classroom door.  She starts the music and begins the class and leads my sisters and I through familiar steps to get us moving again and then adds new moves and she guides us to breathe and stretch and by the time the class is over I am back to life and feeling younger than I am.When Nancy laughs it sounds like little bells.

Delores Pluto is "still mountain".  She has a responsible downtown job with the department of education and on top of that teaches yoga and knows how laughter is medicine.  Delores plays ukelele and other things and has a song book you can't believe.  She is quietly brilliant and very at home in her skin and I wish she would go to India with me because she would be the one to navigate the crowds and find the temples and know enough of the language ahead of time to locate food and water and shelter and rides. She would probably pick up zithyr and learn how to mesmerize cobras while she was there.  

Our just-retired lady minister, Lisa Thorpe sounds like New York City when she speaks, shoots straight, packs a powerful punch, is painted in bold strokes. Snapping brown eyes and rich colors are the impression you get as she flashes though your presence.  She is very clear about everything and gets you clear too.  I have to hang on tight to keep up with this fireball.  Guess what else:  she is funny!  I would have loved to be in her congregation and I hope someday to get her to hold a service somewhere I can attend.  Just a tiny lapse in your retirement Lisa?

Judy next.  Judy Smith is put-together, confident, direct, engaged and engaging.  She is a southern lady to her cells and a natural manager.  Sometime I need to tell her how much she reminds me of my Aunt LaVerne.  Although she too has just retired, I predict that it will not be too long before Judy has taken up a second career...this time one of her own passion and design. Maybe something mentoring people... Judy has a talent for drawing people out.  She asks the exactly right questions that bring ones truest answers right to the surface and before you know it you are revealed.  Then she spins you positive and smiles that southern lady smile before you know it you are blogging or sketching or off on some other natural path you never dreamed of. 

Our Georgene...I hope she won't be mad when I write that I think of her as elven...no, not like a Santa's elf or an elf on the shelf or a shoemaker's elf....more like the ones we came to know from Tolkien in the Lord of The Rings.  Small-framed and sprite-like in her movements, deep, thoughtful and wise in her intellect and her approach to others.  From the first time I heard I was going to meet Georgene I felt expectant.  I felt I was going to be meeting an old friend.  Turns out she is the only person I have ever met since high school that attended Pine Crest in Ft. Lauderdale.  She is not the Georgene I left behind and lost from Seaford but she is my new friend Georgene Clower that I was lucky enough to find in this treasured circle of sisters.  OH!  If you want to know something good about yourself go to Georgene:  she finds the best thing about a person and makes it sound even better in the telling. Over the last while she has written me letters via email that have been so sweet they have brought me to tears. 

And now for my fellow "token tot", Connie Fogle. I cannot think of her without grinning and that's the truth!  At 53 years old with just weeks between our birthdays, for us to be "tots" in our circle is pretty remarkable and a great joy to each of us to be sure!  I wrote here once that Connie and I are "in sync"....when I read her blog profile I felt I could have been reading my own.  But she is a sunbeam.  She radiates joy and enthusiasm.  She is creative and spontaneous.  She travels like an explorer.  She records and shares her vision of the world through her photography and writing.  Connie samples the world with courage and meets people so easily...She and I are often boisterous when we are together.  I think that worries her but I just love it every time we play and I get to laugh loud and hard!  And I miss her when she is gone off on one of her jaunts and don't get to see her for a week or two. Like now.  She's off with that glorious husband of hers, Carl ("hell yeah") to Maine (sigh) and I hope she is having big fun but I wish I was in the backseat!

And our newest sister, Nan Ford has just started coming out with the class most nights for the supper after dancing and is bringing great new flavor to our lively conversations!  I am looking forward to knowing her better and learning from her too.  It is clear already that she is brainy and deeply spiritual as well as being lots of fun.

In the Spring most of us met at the Blugil in Cherry Grove for a weekend retreat and house party.  We drank wine and made music, we did laughter yoga, made jewelry, danced on the deck and blew soap bubbles into the night, we feasted and rested and talked and laughed.  Around the table that last night I told them about the wish I had made:  that old wish for friends.  It came to me sitting there in that circle of women that my wish had  manifested beyond my own power to imagine.  When we gather we are laughing and talking, serious and funny, planning and dreaming up new adventures for ourselves.  From our Tuesday night dancing and supper I bring back energy and enthusiasm and fresh ideas that carry me through my week.  The music and movements come home with me too (listen...look....ahhhhhhhhhhh) and I find myself dancing down the hall to one of our routines.

Yes Nancy, you all are what I wished for!  You make me want to live a long time and be healthier and a better person than I am!  In the company of my Nia Sisters for the whole ride!  See you Tuesday, and Tuesday and Tuesday and more and more and more!

New Years Eve MorningThoughts on Joy

Yesterday I was kissed by a stranger in the line at the grocery store.  I liked it.  The feeling is one I want to keep close to me always and is described simply in my Word for 2012:  Joy. 

Here is how it happened.  I was loading my holiday weekend feast on the conveyer while the fella ahead of me struggled to pay for his items.  I noticed him first because he was very thin.  Tall and thin and his hair and beard wanted trimming a long time back.  I noticed that although his pile was not large it contained some special stuff...goodies which he appeared he could really use. (yes I am a grocery line peeper)  He had run his card but the reader was declining his PIN#.  He got more and more flustered by the minute trying to call up the numbers.  The girl was sweet and didn't try to hurry the fella but the line behind me was starting to shift and grumble impatiently.  Finally he just threw up his hands and said he would have to come back when he could remember.  All this while I was just barely watching thinking I needed to get my shopping trip done so I could get back to work. But I have felt that panicky blankness when your mind refuses to call up the word or name or number and I found myself saying:  Oh no, I'll get that for you.  That's how I got my kiss!  That man just bent down and kissed me on the face.  I liked that so I hugged him back as hard as I thought he could bear.  He offered to write a check and I told him no and Happy New Year and off he went happy and relieved, with his big old apple pie and other treats! 

I paid for mine and took myself home to unload and get back to work.  But inside I was happy.  Joy-filled.  That I could help somebody and share some of the sparkle of the season, for one thing.  But I felt good about me.  Selfishly, I was just overjoyed that I did a nice thing and I got kissed for it!  Friday is GOOD without embellishment but the extra happiness of that exchange in the grocery store made it almost unbearably good!  I highly recommend this path to joy.  Giving, just 'cause you get a chance to. The feeling is still with me and has been built upon by the happy moments since.  Watching the stars from my patio last night and waking up early this morning to watch the day start with my good cup of coffee in the company of my Christmas Tree (still lovely and fragrant even though it stopped "drinking" the second day we had it! Magic!) and Bear, the nicest dog in the World...Listening to random tunes on my Bose Ipod dock (yes Virginia!  There is a Santa Claus..) and

THEN coming here to post my Thoughts on Joy, the Word for 2012 and stopping in for a peek at Connie's Loose Lemons blog only to find that my Nia Sister By a Different Momma is again in sync with me having written on her own Word for 2012: Exploration.  :) :) :)  I look forward to sharing words with you this year, friend!  I'm looking forward to exploring all the flavors of Joy I can find!  And sharing some of the exploring with my wonderful friends and family and friends-to-be! 

Andiamo! Belle 2012!  (ok, my Italian needs lots more work!)  Happy New Year!  Joy to the World!  May your heart be over-filled with Joy, Peace and Light this whole year long and always!

Waiting for Light on the Eve of the Wednesday Before Thanksgiving

(OR What I would tell my niece if I were to get to play with her this holiday weekend and if she would listen but of course she wouldn't because she is a tweenager.) 

This is it:  Life is Good!  It is fun to grow up and it gets more FUN every year older you grow!!!  In these adolescent years there is some pain but you have to have it to learn what it is and how to live beyond it! You are a  VERY lucky girl! You live in the perfect town in the perfect region and you are born to parents with plenty of resources for you to use to grow the life of your dreams.  Enjoy your artistic nature and enjoy your growing up body and don't worry about ANYTHING!  Mommy and Daddy are busy but if there is ANYTHING you really might need to worry about tell them and let them fix it!

BUT, listen to me now.....

You are not sick. You do not have a mysterious illness with a fancy name. YOU ARE FINE!  Your body is changing and you have a sensitive tummy.  Yes, since you were three months old you have responded to turbulence or disruption in your enviroment by getting sick to your stomach.  Your Mom has this too.  You have very active radar and keen instincts and if you learn to listen to your tummy and embrace this ability it will make your life very interesting.  Eventually you will just "hear" what your tummy is telling you without getting sick.  For now you could just pay attention to what is going on around you when your tummy starts whispering its warnings!  Cultivate that awareness.  I think you will be amazed to realize that that organ at your core is not your enemy but your great ally!  Make friends!

Also dear, you are a Leo.  You need to be in command.  You need to rule your kingdom. That predisposes you to growling and all kinds of displays when you have to yield part of your kingdom to anyone else.  So when Audrey was born you had to get busy claiming and reclaiming your lands and your subjects!  The greatest hardship to you was that your folk's attention was diverted and so Audrey became "the occupation"...and when your growling and charging and tail switching didn't have the needed effect you found another weapon.  Your own health.  You learned that if you had a health issue your folks responded with their attention.  I want to say this to you about that, my little Lioness-it is only a couple of years until you can be in charge of the whole thing!  You will own your own life.   You will have your own "Nation".  You will build palaces to your own liking and choose your subjects based on their worth in your life's design and not only on kinship!  You will earn the admiring attention you crave by pursuing what you love and choose for yourself!

When that time comes, you will not need your illnesses anymore but they may stick to you for awhile...get rid of them now!  They will have less hold on you later the earlier you release them.  When you do, replace them with ART of every kind!  Music and dancing and acting and any old thing thing you fancy, in whatever measure appeals to you.  Ignore the elders when they scold you for not practicing or sticking with a new media.  Explore baby!  Fill yourself with this!

Then know this:  if it gets scary come to me!  I will remind you that you are loved so so much and that you have a great purpose!  That you are first, last and always my lucky Lydia!  You don't need any add-ons or gadgets to have my entire admiration!  And my girl, you will be in my heart this weekend and always.  Even when we do not see each other you are with me and I am with you!  That never changed and never will.  Promise.

So you say you wan' a Devolution? Welllllll ya know....

We all wanna change the World.....

But here's  me: Full-grown, 52 (and a half) years old, college-educated, married, working mother, I have been an adult for 30-some years ...so why the heck is it that lately I get the feeling that I am growing down, instead of up? And this morning, way before light, it was that thought that got me up out of bed.  Those pre-dawn demons stirring up troublesome thoughts again.  Failures and short comings and shoulda-coulda-woulda's.  And for some reason, bits of  the Beatles Revolution 1 were swirling around in my brain

See, it occurs to me this morning that I have fallen way behind.  My current cell phone for example is a Razor.  (are you giggling...)  A couple of years ago my toddler niece, Audrey, was digging through my purse on a car trip and exclaimed "Hey you have a regular phone like ME".  Her Mother, Father, Brother, and Sister were all on their smart phones making dinner reservations, checking the menu, mapping the location, listening to old Led Zeppelin music and playing Angry Birds or something.

I was happy with my regular phone.  It never occurred to me to covet a smart phone.   Until last week I learned about two apps that changed my view.  Stargazer app identifies stellar and planetary objects from where you are to where you point your phone.  You want the name of a constellation:  point your phone.  You see a bright spot in the sky and wonder what you are seeing?  Point your phone.  I want that.  I also want to posses translator app.  You need to convey a thought in Portugese, pull out your phone and tell it the message.  The phone translates that message to Portugese.  I have always wanted a pocket translator.  With a tool like that I could go fearlessly wherever my heart desires.  I do not need a phone to play Angry Birds.  But now that I see a value for that tool that applies to my life.   I covet it alright!

I have jokingly referred to myself as a "dinosaur" or a "techno-dummy" but I did not really buy those labels. Before.  Until recently I thought myself fairly bright, valuing my own opinion above most others. And after all, I that figured out how to hook up our first answering machine and then later the fax and our first cell phone.  I set up our first PC, an Apple II passed down from my Step-dad.  And I wired it for caps (yes, I did. Really. It didn't come with caps.)  I set up our Emachine.  I replaced the modem on that when it was burned out by a lightening hit.  With a manual or guidance from someone with the know how, I felt I could do just about any old thing.

I realized I was opting for simplicity as Ipods, and Iphones, and Ipads, and DVR's and all manner of advances came into daily use without me getting on board.  But really, I always felt very sure I could catch up with the rest of the World if I ever decided I wanted to.

My little laptop computer started acting out about a year ago.  It just got a little slower and slower every time I started it up.  I got help when I found myself cussin' at the thing and going to work without checking my email cause the dang #%#$%# thing couldn't get going by the time I had to leave.  Seems I had loaded too much stuff and needed some RAM.

Joe, The IT Guru at work diagnosed and corrected the problem but shook his head sadly and cautioned that "these old things just don't have the memory the new ones do.."  HUH????  Old?  I just got it in 2006 (Listen children,  that is like last night in grown-up time)...but it was temporarily fine and I loaded some more stuff on it and next thing I knew UP JUMPED THE DEVIL!  Really important stuff stopped working.

I do not know the words to describe the collapse...it culminated in the little machine catching a virus which went out to everyone in my e-address files and that DID include my Work and specifically my Boss.  Not so good.  The laptop went back to IT Joe and after several weeks, stripped of all the falderall I had accumulated, it was returned to me shiny-clean, fast, cured and virus-protected.  I still cannot call up the language to describe the incident or how it was fixed.

Now, I think it isn't so much the breakdown of my laptop that has got me reflecting on my relative backward status.  It is that realization that I could not describe the symptoms as they arose...I cannot explain what went wrong first, what happened next, much less what particular systems were interrupted ("blah blah blah" says my mind).  You should have heard me on the phone that day I learned of the virus with that guy in technical support.  He genuinely tried to help me but at the same time I could imagine him rolling his eyes at his fellow technical support team people.  I surely sounded moronic to a person who really understands how these jobs work! 

The feeling of speaking and hearing words that have NO meaning in the context of your daily doings...the powerlessness of being ignorant and having to rely on others to communicate your troubles and your needs.  That is a waker-upper, my friends!  It was only my good fortune that Mary,  the IT guru's wife and interpreter, took up my cause.  Spoke for me and got my laptop the attention it needed. (Do you think the phone app people list "techno-geek" as a language for the translator function on those smart phones...surely if I can think it, it has already been done!)

So, here in the wee hours of morning when one can't help but reflect...I ask me:  How have I slipped so far behind in the modern World?   More frightening stuff to ponder:  Is it just the gadgets, the tools of modern life that have raced beyond me?  Where else have I fallen behind?  It does seem that I am slower.  I observe a younger, faster-paced crowd at work and play around me, getting a whole lot more accomplished than I ever did.  I wonder.  Is it their mastery of the tools?  Are they more energetic?  Do they sleep less?  Work harder?

And then more comparisons leap to mind.  There are people fitter than me.  How do they find time for all that exercise and what is the source of all their energy?  And there are lots of people with more stuff than I have.  Bigger houses, lots more toys, nicer cars and trappings of every sort.  We make a good living with our two incomes and we can't afford all that stuff!  Where do they get all that money? 

Oh I have some cool stuff too.  I've got a neat little Garmin GPS for traveling fearlessly (a theme appears here) in unknown territory.  My son helped me set up my features so my vehicle on the little screen is a Pirate Ship. :) I have XM radio in my car too, a life expanding tool for me on so many levels.  To be able to listen to every kind of music wherever I am driving is wonderful for me.  OH!  And I have a Kindle e-reader! I love that I can carry a library around in my purse.  And my laptop is working again!  Some people I know do not have these conveniences.  Maybe some would even envy my advantages.

So as it gets lighter those demons are backing off and I am realizing I am where I am by my choices.  I  never was terribly ambitious so I am not rich.  Still I can add what I most want in my life or decide not to add.  No one else has really limited me but me.  What I have and that which I have not is by my own design.  Do I want the fabulous advances in technology to stop or even slow down so I can catch up? Not at all.

But I have felt that powerlessness and I have to wonder.  Is this the same powerlessness experienced by people living in poverty.  Is it this same sense that the World has swept right by them and left them sitting there looking out at comforts and abundance just beyond their reach...If it is, and I think it might be, then there is another comparison to bring into the light of day.

I keep seeing on the news what some are calling a "Revolution" taking place across the United States.  They have named this revolution "Occupy Wall Street". I think the ones getting interviewed on the news are saying they want some of the wealth held by the big financial institutions to shake loose and somehow be distributed down to the poorer,  have-not classes.  Otherwise it is unclear what they want to have changed.

"You say you got a real solution?  Well you know we'd all love to see the plan..."

I think they are asking for reform that will result in a greater percentage of  people having more influence on the way our governments work than they do now.  They contend that 1% of the people (the "rich") control the destinies of the rest of us. But there are so many strata of abundance or it's lack.  I bet the richest guy in the world wishes he had something he does not have and cannot get. So what could change the World to ensure that all are equal have-ers?  I think we each design our lives to have what we have.  Do we have to stop the money system in order to allow some folks to catch up? That just does not make sense. 

"...We all want to change the world, but when you talk about destruction don't you know that you can count me out..."

For years I have claimed immunity saying 'nobody asked me' but now I think the time has come when we can offer our opinions without being asked and this is mine.  It is not original, unique and may not be a solution to everybody's concern with regard to our rich/poor, backward/advanced, fast/slow, complex and simple World.  It is what we have.  Nobody can hope to change the world but everyone can hope to change what might need changing in themselves.  That is what we can each do.  Make the best of what we have from where we are at this moment.  Then we may reach out in whatever way we can with the resources we can share.  Privately.  This is not a matter for government.  Nor is it the governments business how businesses distribute their resources.  My opinion.


"..You say you'll change the constitution....Well you know you better free your mind instead.."

From the inside out we can make real change that we value.  Today I might start changing my world by finding a way to get a smart phone.  Or I might do without one a little longer while I play with my restored laptop and learn more of it's language and ways.  Or maybe for today I'll just let go of this quandry spawned by the early am worries I woke up with and take my dog for a walk. While the sun shines. Leave devolution to the revolutionaries and revolution to my evolution....

"..Cause you know, it's gonna be alright..yeah it's gonna be alright...you know it's gonna be alright.."

 




 



Don't you know it's gonna be alright

".We're all doing what we can..."