Happy Valentine's Day: Bah Humbug!

It's HERE again.

That insidious holiday for lovers, replete with hearts and roses and couples everywhere. Where does that leave the rest of us, the ones who aren't one half of a couple or used to be half but now are......less than that?

I could offer "hearts and flowers" platitudes here like.....

**You don't NEED to be half of a couple to be worthy!

**Buy yourself some flowers.

**Go out to dinner with treasured friends and toast one another for your strength and brilliance.

**Light some candles and put on the music YOU love.

**Treat it like any other day!


But I won't. You might throw me out of the room.

Here's the truth: Valentine's Day is for lovers. Period. There's nothing anyone can say that takes the sting out of it for singles. I've had some romantic, incredible Valentine's Day celebrations as part of a couple,  but I've sat alone under the Golden Arches, too.

Now, I'm not saying that all of those great suggestions aren't true. They are. And more power to those of you who actually take some of that advice and flaunt your single-ness in a fancy restaurant with your BFF. 

But once we experience a fantastic Feb 14th. only to have it taken from us, it hurts. Now we have a basis for comparison and it's not pretty. 

What to do? 

I have a default position in life. It has served me well, and it might be a perfect time to pull it out here. 

“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.” 

John Holmes

Find someone who could use your time and attention and shower them with that goodness. The fact that you do it on February 14th is merely added icing on the cake! 

For both of you.

Breaking up is hard to do......

At any age.

I find myself in the silliest situations, even though one would think that I had learned enough by now to avoid the yawning potholes of life.

Again, one would be wrong.

Why would a woman of my age, the age at which she just got her first social security check, find herself writing a blog about "breaking up"?

Yet, that woman is me. 

The breakup happened several months ago, but the ripples from that unfortunate event only finished gurgling within the past couple of weeks.

The problem, I guess, is that I have this notion that decency is possible even AFTER a relationship ends. That two people who have been intimate can continue to maintain a positive connection once the intimacy is over. (I will show my age here a bit by confessing that I've never moved from a relationship to a "friends with benefits" configuration. I do keep my options open at all times, though.)

I believe that life is too short to collect bad karma by collecting enemies along the journey of life. And I've managed that in most cases. But this last one, not so much, although I have tried.

We broke up (at my instigation) and agreed to remain friends.  We still have common interests, like college football, music, and eating out in memorable places. Why not continue to share those interests? Only one of us really meant it, though. Again, silly me.

I even reached out after a period of time and, upon my invitation, we attended a musical event along with dinner, a friendly occasion on a Sunday afternoon. I thought he needed to actually see how this could work and he agreed.....at the table. But, once we went our separate ways, he continued to keep those ways very separate. The door slammed and hasn't opened again.

And since this is the only configuration he seems to know after a relationship split, I gave him what he wanted all along: another "ex" to add to a string of similar beads. 

Maybe I'm naive. But I still think it's just sad.

GAME OVER

I was wondering......

Life is perplexing, wonderful, terrifying, and often inexplicable. And as we mature, the answers come no more quickly, believe me. There are just MORE questions.  

Like.....

~~~where cyberspace actually IS. Can I go there to find that story I wrote and never saw again? I know we have clouds where we can now save important stuff, but do the clouds mix with all that space....somewhere?

~~~how the nifty keyfinder device that was the rage two Christmases ago helps me when I'm standing in the parking lot at work and can't find my keys? In the rain. After I've dropped my purse and book in a puddle.

~~~why more men don't understand why dancing is often called "a vertical expression of a horizontal act"?

~~~how doing nothing under someone else's direction can be so exhausting, but if you're home trying to get some rest, it's different?

~~~where that guy behind me in the monster truck thinks I'm going to go when all three lanes are bumper to bumper as far as we both can see? Vertical, maybe?

~~~the customer service person who is obviously in India. Is he having trouble understanding ME, too? Is there a point to all this miscommunication?

~~~when does the "CALL IN THE NEXT FIVE MINUTES!" start on those ads that run continuously? Is the person in India matching up the ads with the local time....around the globe? And what time zone is HE using to start that process?

~~~did God think it was funny to create men and women from the mud of two different planets? I can't speak for you, but I am not amused.

~~~why people in other parts of the country don't know about shaking clothes out before you put them on? Here in the South we know what can lurk in clothes, waiting to crawl on your neck after you put that robe on. Is it scorpions in the West? Ladybugs somewhere else?

~~~why men over about 60 continue to search for younger women? The women in their own age group know for a fact that many of those men can't....you know.....even with that little blue pill available. And a doctor saying, "Since you have heart problems, you can't use the pill, but you can go ahead and TRY if you really want to" does tend to make women a tad nervous. Just a tad.

~~~and what about those younger women when they find out what's NOT going to happen with their Sugar Daddy? Some will be OK with.......well, never mind.

~~~why some people won't pass a police car, even if it's traveling at 25 mph in a 40 mph zone?

~~~those double turn lanes where drivers won't use the second one, especially if it's new? Everyone continues to line up in the original lane, like lemmings unable to get out of order, while the new lane sits empty and unused.

I'm confused.

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.” 

Me and God......

“The deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reason power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.” 

Albert Einstein

So many folks believe they own God. Not only do they own him, they know what’s he’s thinking, how he wants things done, and how to find him.

These proprietors of God expect to be his lone spokesperson, as well as the sole arbiter of your behavior and mine. They point to a weighty tome or tablets as their blueprint, insisting that he transmitted “THE PLAN” upon which their edicts rely, the many rules for knowing and following God. There is an overlay of a belief that morality flows only from that source; that those who aren't lock-stepping behind them cannot possibly live a principled, ethical, life replete with love for others. 

Never mind that the whole PLAN was written by flawed folks like them—and me, too—even the part about how this plan got to us in the first place. By humans simply relating how God delivered all this information through flaming bushes, or entrusted to a sinner (again, one like you or me) who went to a mountaintop, or storytellers writing the tales down. There’s a lot of room for misinterpretation about who God really is and what he wants, when mortals are in charge of the details.

God and I have been compatriots at various points in my life. Once even in a highly ritualized way, complete with incense, candles..... and mere men who came to presume they WERE God. We had a falling out, though, and went our separate ways. It seemed to me that there is a whole lot of evil he could take care of if he got more involved. So, why doesn't he? What’s up with the “hands-off” approach to beings he supposedly created and loved so much? Why leave us hanging over--and tumbling into--the abyss so often? 

And the default position of “As humans we can’t understand why God does what he does. We have to trust Him” has never convinced me that God can get away with being complicit in children being tortured, for example. It certainly isn't the "free will" of those innocent victims that’s to blame, is it? Nonsense is nonsense even when formalized in celestial language.

Plus, many so-called paths to him insert an intermediary between the two of us, the creator of vastness and I. Did he set us up in a beautiful idyllic Garden only to distance himself from us as soon as we messed up? We are needy people and he seems to take a lot of coffee breaks.

Today, we talk. We cry on each other’s shoulders when we need a friend and everyone else disappears. We can have disagreements about how things are going, yet friends do that, don’t they? But we operate on our own terms. No intermediaries—human or mythical—are necessary. I’m thinking that the creator of the Universe doesn't need any help understanding my heart. He (or maybe he is a she, just to throw in another incendiary device to the conversation!) has taught me a great deal about loving and serving others, about living an ethical life, about savoring the moment and appreciating what I have right now instead of living in the past or the future. The Universe--or God or Allah or "the right path" or whatever we choose to call it-- has taught me that I don't need to know. I can simply sit in awe and accept and learn.

This is a relationship, much like all such relationships: complicated, messy, perplexing, and very personal. 

It works for me.

Holiday-Induced Happiness?

Halloween barely takes off its mask these days before the Christmas music begins. Glittering trees appear overnight in malls and retail stores, almost as if required as part of November 1st. Maybe all those saints decreed it or something.

We complain about this rush to Christmas, but have you noticed that a warm fuzzy blanket of good will descends at the same time? Maybe this is why we grumble, but we don't object too vehemently. (The one aberration here is the chaos that ensues on Black Friday--or maybe even Thanksgiving Day--but that's a topic for another day. Plus, some people are just crazy, no matter the season.)

People are kinder during this time. I've even had strangers step aside for me as we both approach a common check-out line. Whoa!! In July, they have shoved me out of my planted position in that same line as we purchased our fireworks. Creating a few more, actually. 

We smile more at each other, wishing the mailman, the gas station attendant, the bag boy a cheery "Happy Holiday!" or "Merry Christmas!" And we all seem to mean it. Movements to fill various voids for others in need pop up in front of stores all over town. People who don't give a penny to a pauper any other time of the year do so now.

The roads are not only less populated as vacations begin, our traffic-induced tirades and stress levels diminish, too. Perhaps some of the smiling that began in those areas already mentioned spills over to our vehicles, too. (Unless two of us are eyeing the one remaining parking space in the back 40 of the mall, then all bets are off, of course.)

Twinkling lights, beautiful music, gracious attitudes and helping hands--maybe we could stretch this season from one end of the calendar to the other. Even those of us who are not religious constructionists can identify with this holiday of Ho-Ho-Ho Happiness. What's not to love about peace and goodwill? Isn't that what we all want, no matter what shape our star is--or even if we have no star at all?

“There's more, much more, to Christmas Than candlelight and cheer; It's the spirit of sweet friendship That brightens all year. It's thoughtfulness and kindness, It's hope reborn again, For peace, for understanding, And for goodwill to men!”

Wild pitches.....

Curve balls. Stolen bases. Wild pitches.

Life's analagous relationship to sports comes naturally, doesn't it? It's one reason I love to watch competition on the field of play. (Another one is the fact that I can watch huge, muscular men in tight uniforms, but that makes me sound creepy, so let's move on.)

As we age, we learn never to leave the room until the game is over. Even if the home team is down by 10 at the beginning of the ninth inning. Wellsprings of strength can be tapped, the tide turns, and there goes the scoreboard, reflecting what no one would have thought possible mere minutes before.

Much like our lives. Just when we think we have everything under control, here comes that wild pitch, knocking us out of the batter's box--or even to the ground. But, like the player knocked on his butt in the dust, we must get up, too. Unexpected events demand fortitude, courage, and faith in ourselves, a surety that grows the more innings we play.

Recently, I lost a contract that provided 95% of my income. Luckily this isn't the first time I've had to dodge a ball. My teeth rattled when I hit the ground, but I got back up and dusted myself off before the next pitch left the pitcher's glove.

This kind of assurance is only attained over the course of time; time and the resultant knowledge that we are capable of facing and handling whatever life throws at us. When we are young and new in a game, every curve ball or wild pitch seem like a catastrophe. The experiences, however, can lend us cumulative strength as we mature.

As long as we pay attention over time, learn to trust ourselves, and above all, stay in the game.

“Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records."

The headliner........

You should be the headliner in your own life.

Just picture it: Your name in lights!

Yes, you. The woman with her arm draped over the frig door, contemplating one more meal for the hordes who drift through your house (some of whom actually live there), eating, traipsing dirt into your living room, dragging dirty sports paraphernalia behind them like aliens stuck to their backsides. And then eating again. That arm is actually holding you up, isn't it? Your energy is gone, your food, too--and so are the dreams you once had for yourself.

To write.

To sing.

To paint.

To dance.

To soar.

But you refuse to add your own name to the calendar. Everyone else's lives are there, dates marked in red. The kids, your spouse, your family, his family, the pets. But not you.

"I'm not sure what [person A] will need on Friday, so go on ahead to the art show without me. It's OK."

"No, I can't plan anything with the [girls' night out group, the sorority, the reunion planning committee]; the cat has a vet appointment."

"Sorry......I can't."

"Not sure....."

"I'd love to go, but....."

Goals? Dreams? How about just one night out to do what YOU want to do? Do you even remember what that is?

 What's wrong with using that red pen to schedule an art class, a writing group, a hot bath behind a locked door?

No one else will do it for you. They're too busy eating.

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. 
― Mae West