Reflections of Joy

It’s funny how life changes who you think you are and what is important to you. Matt and I had kids young which until the last few months I never regretted it. I still don’t regret the choices I have made. At 19 I was pregnant and had an appointment to have an abortion. I chose not to have it and as a result my life was a little tougher but I have an incredible child to show for it. Matt and I married two years after our eldest daughter was born and by twenty-five we had a house and three children. When I look at my kids who are about the same age we were when we had them I can’t believe how fast we grew up. You would think that my regrets would be about lost youth. But they are not; I regret that I never really got to enjoy my kids. We were too busy just trying to provide that we never stopped to enjoy the gifts that we were given. It is possible that I just don’t remember cherishing those moments as they were a long time ago but I find myself wanting to relive those moments. I guess maybe that is the joy of being a grandparent all the fun of having babies around without the responsibility of providing for them. However; I am just vain enough to at 42 decidedly be against being called grandma. I don’t think I will ever let anyone call me grandma but that is a topic for another blog.
Being married for almost twenty-one years is no small feat. There has been good times and bad. There has been laughter and tears and I won’t lie there was a time when I only stayed married because of the kids. But Matt and I both stuck it out and have a great marriage full of memories, respect and love. We are lucky as a lot of marriages don’t make it much less ones started so young with so much responsibility. However, we both find being empty nesters at such a young age difficult. You would think we would be out partying every night trying to make up for our missed youth but I don’t think either of us is programmed that way. We do go to museums, bike, see operas and visit the arboretum but for the most part spend our nights cuddling on the couch watching old movies. Despite all of this something is still missing. In the last few weeks have been talking about adopting another child.
When I first told other people about adopting I caught a lot of resistance. Mainly people just couldn’t understand how we could want to tie ourselves down with another child. But like I said we weren’t programmed to be party animals. Having each other and a family is all that we know. Beyond that after years of struggling we finally are at a place in our lives that we could comfortably support children. Something inside me says that we should share our love, strength and blessings with someone who has seen little of those things. I am aware that this could just be a passing fancy so we have agreed to think research and wait a year before making any serious decisions. But quite honestly I know what my heart is telling me to do. When you are blessed you should share those blessings. I already donate my time and money and I have a job where I feel I make a difference but it’s not enough. I want to see the joy I have for life reflected in someone else’s smile.

Life is a Miracle

dramatic dream (Photo credit: unNickrMe)

 

Life doesn’t always turn out the way we have planned. It takes us to places that we never could have dreamed. Life is about experiencing the unexpected and becoming who we are from those experiences. Good or bad, those experiences mold us into who we are. In the last year I have experienced a lot of change in my life. Two children left home for school. I found out I had skin cancer. They diagnosed me with degenerative osteoarthritis of the knees, but the worst thing that has happened has been the doctor’s inability to diagnose a disease that causes me to have tremors in my hands. Now, one would think that all of this is a bad thing and I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t change some of it if I could. But at a time when I was at my lowest and submerged in self pity, I had a revelation. Life goes on even if you don’t. Albert Einstein probably said it best. ”There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing was a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle”. In that moment I chose to live life as if it were a miracle.
Being faced with your own mortality can do funny things to your perspective of what is important. I have a job that quite honestly I love or did love until I let myself be dragged into management. I started out trying to make a difference in the lives of children and ended up going to meetings and being engrossed in the politics that any business can promote. To me making a difference, which has always been a central theme of my existence, meant that I needed to step down and out of the leadership role and get back to caring for children. Despite noble intentions, there are times where my pride is injured because I am not the boss anymore. However, to me there is more of a miracle in the smile of a child than all the meetings in the world can hold.
I have to admit until faced with my health issues I never thought much about where the next step in my life would take me. It wasn’t as if I was ignoring my future. I have a savings account and a retirement fund, but that’s not really thinking and planning for the future. It is being responsible. Once I really thought about what it was I wanted in the future it became important for me to return to school. I have a great job that I love, but I doubt with two bad knees and an undiagnosable nervous condition I will be able to maintain the rigors of a job that keeps me on my feet for twelve hours a day forever. So I enrolled in school so that one day I might be able to teach. It will be a big change in the end, but I will still be making a difference in other people’s lives which is a miracle in itself.
Once one realizes that life is short, it becomes very important to make the most of what life you have left. Being careful and safe seems less important. My husband and I have had many dreams over the years. But in the last year, it has become a passion of his to brew beer. In the last few months he has been courted by a group of friends on a business deal. One that would set up a brew pub and let him serve his beer to the public. When he approached me with the idea, I almost immediately gave him the permission to spend the money. Realizing your dream is a miracle.
Our lives are a miracle even if most of us forget or don’t realize it. In a moment when I thought my life could get no worse, a realization came to me. Although we may not always control our destiny, we can certainly choose the way we interpret it.

 

Helter Skelter: Life in a Commune

Charles Manson (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am a self proclaimed flower child.  Being both too young to be a hippy and too old to have been reincarnated as one,  I settle for the next best thing a flower child.  In reality I am of generation x but have never related to a generation that had nothing for which to fight.  Over time I have come to appreciate the ideals of the hippy generation.  Because they are a generation known for idolizing sex, drugs and rock and roll it is often forgotten that they also professed love, peace and living in harmony with our environment.  Despite peoples negative attitude toward communal life I think that life would have been quite idyllic.  Maybe this comes from my desire to have had a huge extended family, which I did not, but the thought of living within a group of people all working for the whole and accepting one another unconditionally would be the perfect world for me.  This is probably reflected in my large menagerie of pets.  At any rate I have been reading Helter Skelter over the last few days.  I haven’t finished it and I might have to contradict the impressions I have but it seems that this was the worst case scenario that could happen in a communal environment and during reading this book I have had several questions arise.

The first and foremost was how could these people have been brain washed so thoroughly that they would do anything including murder?   In my opinion Charles Manson was and probably still is very attuned to peoples thoughts and emotions.  He had the ability to understand others thoughts and feelings without them expressing them or even understanding them themselves.  This gave him the the ability to use those emotions and feelings against his followers.  He also recruited teenagers mostly girls into his”‘family”. Its not hard to see how young rebellious females would be attracted to that sort of life.  Nor is hard to believe that his use of drugs, sex and emotional manipulation would make those impressionable youth believe that they were in love with him to the point that they thought he was the returned savior to the world.  Anyone who has encountered a religious fanatic knows that often common sense is overshadowed by religious fervor.

By all accounts Charles Manson is incredibly intelligent if not a genius.  I have little doubt that he is insane and most probably a psychopath.  So my next question is does true genius coincide or come very close to insanity.   I believe that a true genius is able to see things in a different way than the rest of the world.  The insane also see the world in a different way and thus there is most probably a fine line between insanity and genius.  Charles Manson thought that he was receiving special messages about the second coming of Christ through Beetles songs. Whether this was enhanced by his drug use or not is up for debate but he did believe that the Beetles were the four horsemen mentioned in Revelations and  he was Jesus Christ.

So is communal life possible?  I am not sure.  The fall of communism is proof that best laid plans do not always turn out the way we wish.  Power struggles, jealousy and human nature in general could make such a life impossible.  It is a shame though as I still would like a life like that.  I guess I have the next best thing with my animals as beyond the cats no one tries to upsurt my authority and we for the most part all live in love and harmony.

Quest for Organization

My husband and I recently moved.  As we moved box after box (yes, we moved ourselves which will never happen again) I came to the realization that I am most probably a hoarder.  I hoard craft supplies for the most part but cooking utensils are up at the top of the list as well.  At this point in our lives we are downsizing which is great unless you are a hoarder in denial.  I despite excising some of my stuff am still have issues with storage.  So in an effort to become more streamlined and organized I have been haunting Pinterest.  For those she don’t know what Pinterest is its a site where individuals post ideas, pictures and such without having to actually talk to people. So I guess its  a way of feeling connected with the outside world without making much effort.  Despite that its a great place to get recipes and ideas from other people.

Anyway I adopted two separate ideas and put them to work for me.The first idea was to use post-it notes to mark what is in refrigerator storage containers and when it was made.  The other was a template that let me put the post-it notes through the printer to make them preprinted.

I am pretty proud of how they turned out and I am pretty sure I can use this idea for other things as well.I had every intention of posting pictures but I cant seem to find the camera..now you understand my pain..Pictures to follow as soon as I locate the bloody camera.

The Beginning

Hi, my name is Beth and this is my first ever attempt at a blog.  I have recently taken an English course and discovered that I truly enjoy sharing my thoughts and ideas with other people and getting their thoughts and opinions on things as well. That is the inspiration for this blog.  I have no intention of changing the world but would like to make if not everyone’s, my world a little more interesting.

As for who I am, I guess I would describe myself as a young(in my opinion) empty-nester.  I was married young, had children young and now at 42 find myself caught between the spring and fall of life without much to occupy my time.  I have a great job but its work and that is why they pay you.  We all need to live a life beyond our job.  As a result of this both my husband and I find ourselves trying and experiencing things and that is what this blog is about.

I call the blog Hippymethis because I have often been told I must have been a hippie in another life.

Hope you enjoy

Beth