I know not what I do.......yet

It's that time again!

The one where I do something I've never done before.

Each month around the date of my birth (the 28th), I embark on an adventure of some kind, stepping out of my personal comfort zone and into the realm of the unknown. And that's the whole purpose.

As we age, we tend to lose that sense of excitement, anticipation, wonder....call it what you want, but we kind of collapse into a boring, dreary puddle until it's hard to divine any fresh water in our lives. So far, I've had some great experiences, some truly awful ones, and some that I continue today.

I asked for suggestions from friends on my social media site a couple of weeks ago, and got some good ones....as well as some scary ones, at least to me. A trapeze? Zip-lining over alligators? Not sure about those two, in particular. But then there was attending a great mini-conference with Maria Shriver and Martha Beck in Savannah (too late for that one; it was last weekend when I couldn't go), swimming with manatees, acupuncture, hot yoga, some other workout routine whose name escapes me right now, rock climbing. One that's been on my own mental list for quite a while is to ride a bus in my city, and that idea won't go away, so I'm adding it to the master list right now. (I'm sure many of you who live in cities with excellent mass transit systems find this idea comical, but believe me when I say that it's not the same thing in many southern cities at all. I'll just leave it at that for now.)

I haven't decided which adventure to choose yet for the month, but the whole process invigorates me. The process of thinking of things to do and then deciding on one keep my mental systems on "go" and that's a good thing. Carrying the activity out is often physically challenging, and that, too, is a very good thing.

So, stay tuned. By the time I get back here, the latest event will be over and I can share it with all of you.

Be brave enough to live creatively. You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can only get there by hard work, by risking and by not quite knowing what you are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful: Yourself.
Alan Alda

Keep moving forward....

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Walt Disney

I just don't see any other way to do it. The years will march by like soldiers in lock step, one way or the other, whether we choose to vegetate on the sofa or we continue to move forward, open those new doors, and do new things. I choose door #3 instead of the couch.

I'll open one of those new doors every month.That's my commitment for 2014, just like it was for 2011 and 2012. (Read about the idea behind this monthly quest here.) I sat out 2013, at least as far as the "something new every month" is concerned, and I could tell the difference. We really do need that sense of anticipation in our lives to keep the DNA as young as possible, to keep us as fresh and interesting as we can be. It's no wonder we get cranky and grumpy as we age.....we've given up being surprised and delighted by anything unique or challenging.

I spend a lot of time at my gym, mostly working out on my own or with my trainer. I'm not fond of group classes, primarily due to the scheduling, since my calendar is different each day. It makes it hard to pencil in a weekly class that meets at the same time and on the same day, when my pencil's eraser is a well-used tool, frequently finding it necessary to smudge out that class at the last minute.

But my brother teaches a TRX class at my gym every weekend. I've been saying I would attend "someday" for months, so in I went the other day to see what the buzz was all about. 

What does TRX stand for, you say? If you called out the word "torture" you would be close.(Actually it stands for Total body Resistant eXercize. Yeah, they had to stretch that a bit to make it work.) It is an acronym for a total body suspension training system. In other words, torture.You spend a lot of time hanging from the ceiling, performing familiar movements, like bicep curls, sit ups, etc in 3 dimensions.

My brother told me in a short intro before class that it would feel weird at first. Well, THAT was an understatement. It felt a LOT weird, especially when I couldn't figure out how to get my feet in the straps and then flip over without my legs twisting. No one else was having that problem. I still haven't figured it out.

It's humbling to feel so uncoordinated and generally inept. But it's empowering to keep at it and not give up. Do we have to be perfect? I gave that quest up years ago. I'll go back to that class next week, inept or not.

All we need to do is show up for life every day, no matter our age. 

What did YOU anticipate today?

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Walt Disney

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waltdisney132637.html#hzvO8k6iiCqCflTa.99

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/waltdisney132637.html#hzvO8k6iiCqCflTa.99

We begin again.....

60 was bad. Some of you may remember that. (What I know)  It brought us all together here after all.

So,  when my friend, Paula, and I were discussing my approaching 65th birthday, she wanted to know what I had in mind to celebrate. "You must do something," she said. "It's a special one!" Of course, I'm the one who doesn't start thinking about events until the last possible second; Paula, on the other hand, plans events for a living. She won. I threw myself a party last night to celebrate,with a Retro Chinese Buffet at a local Asian restaurant. We had a great time. I'm glad she prevailed.

The point, though, is this: I was willing to acknowledge this birthday. I've settled into the decade nicely, I think.

But I have missed my monthly "thing I've never done before," after a year's hiatus. It adds a sense of anticipation and excitement that is often dulled as we age, a way to challenge ourselves just when we begin to think we've done it all. We haven't. Not by a long shot; it may take some time to come up twelve new things to do, but that's part of the mental gymnastics that go along with the actual activities.

I learned to dance, I tried a hookah lounge, tiled in my kitchen, had my palm read, and went on cruises, just to name a few of the roads I traveled when I did this before. (See more here.) Sometimes I was scared. Often I was nervous. But always I was exhilarated and I learned a lot about myself as a person, regardless of my age. I recommend it to anyone, no matter THEIR age.

I missed it last year. Not right at first; it was actually kind of a relief to not have to come up with something each month. But I realize now that it added a great deal to my life, and I'm ready to begin again. Are YOU ready?

The road ahead....

Stay tuned!

Be your biggest competitor - challenge yourself each day to 

be better than you were yesterday. Kaoru Shinmon

 

Wow! What a ride....

I've shaken my head in the past and "tsk'ed, tsk'ed" when I see them on the road, sometimes weaving in and out of traffic, as if the rules of the road don't apply to them. How foolish, I'd think, these daredevils who climb on, often without the proper equipment to keep them safe. After all, I've muttered to myself, if they kill themselves, they might take one of us with them, plus somebody has to pay to clean up the mess they'll leave on the road. HARRUMPH, I grumbled in my old lady-ishness!

My, my....how times change, don't they? I'm nine months of the way through my year-long journey of rejuvenation, and I have to say that my world has been knocked off its axis already. I can't wait to see how the rest of the year plays out!

This month flowed by, a river of seconds transforming themselves into minutes and hours until the days were nearly done before I decided how to recreate myself once again. The joy that fills my life now is incalculable, on so many levels. Instead of searching for new things to do, unique adventures to grab onto, I find I have choices  each month now, the floodgates opened to a new psyche. I love it. If you pass me on the street today, I might look like the same person.....but you would be wrong. Seriously wrong. 

So I was ready to step a bit farther out of my box, the one whose sides have been torn by my previous months' ventures as I stretched my mind, my body, and ultimately my very existence into a nearly unrecognizable internal landscape.

So, here I was, riding on a motorcyle for the first time. You know, the machine that mothers everywhere shudder whenever the mere word is spoken, the icy fingers of death poking them in the eye with threats of taking their children.....no matter that those children have become adults with briefcases and mortgages of their own. The insidious things kill people. Smear them all over roads or smash them against cement abuttments on highways.  

I climbed on that back of that motorized killer and loved every minute of it. We didn't go far, but we travelled miles outside of the life I had been so stagnant in, the one where fear often ruled the roost. The day was crystal clear and warm, the sky a bowl of blue above us as the wind blew in my face and the motor purred beneath me.

I now understand the attraction, the willingness to taunt an existence that is always practical, safe. Boring.

As Hunter Thompson said, Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, 'Wow! What a Ride!'

And that can apply to riding a motorcyle on a breathtaking fall day or to just plain getting older.

Thanks, again, J. You keep me on my toes in more ways than one!

“The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.”

Leo Buscaglia



Have you hookahed?

The place filled quickly, smoke hanging in the air from the hookahs sitting on the floor next to nearly every table. Sweetness instead of stench, that's one thing I noticed about this smoke, the thing that made it tolerable to even be there. We ate stuffed grape leaves and meat pies while a belly dancer, no wait, an EXOTIC belly dancer according to the menu, shimmered and shimmied around us accompanied by strange, unusual, wonderful music. And something I had never done before.

That was the point, the first of my 12 adventures into the unknown in 2011. For new readers of this blog, I learned of this oral tradition out of the Pyrennes from a book I'm reading called The Second Half of Life by Angeles Arrien. The point is to reivigorate as we age instead of getting old, stagnating, dying to life before our lives even end.

Here's what I learned leading up to the evening at the hookah lounge: It IS hard to find new things to put on my calendar. But that requires mental effort, one of the very points of this exercise. And it demands that I get out of the house! I love my home, where I am enveloped in softness and music and flowers, so I tend to get stuck there, not wanting to leave it for much of anything. Getting OLD.

I also enjoyed anticipating something again, a feeling that has become foreign, remote, as I've aged. It's why time flies for us, whirling faster and faster as the years tick by for us. I remember what it was like waiting for Santa to come when I was a kid. Would the weeks NEVER pass, I thought as I stood in front of the calendar, tapping my foot impatiently, waiting and waiting for the days to disappear? This week I revisited a bit of that joyous anticipation. 

Next month....rock climbing?

The second half of life is the ultimate initiation.

Angeles Arrien

Time passes....with or without you

Well, here we are at the end of another one. They do tend to slip by faster and faster as we each get....well, older and older, don't they? I read somewhere that this unnerving fact is because we encounter fewer events that we have never experienced before as we get older. So, the minutes and hours of our lives begin to slip by unnoticed, spinning through the calendar from January to December, our heads spinning with the rapidity of it all. If we even notice at all.

One of the books I'm reading for a second time right now, when I build my fire outside and sit curled in my blanket before dawn each day, is called The Second Half of Life by Angeles Arrien. It's actually the third time, if you count the first one when I didn't understand what this woman was trying to say at all. I slid it back into my bookcase, thinking, "Now, that's a strange book!" A few years later, I tried again. Arrien envisions aging as a journey through eight gates of wisdom, including folklore and customs from around the world in her metaphorical trip through those gates.

One of the verbal customs she mentioned, and one I immediately identified with, was that of intentionally experiencing something new each month for one year on one's birthday. Last year, I had my daughter take me out on a surfboard, which she found entertaining beyond words. I never did stand up on that surfboard, but I had a blast, totally unexpected since I don't swim very well and can't see a  thing once my glasses are taken away from me.

After that, though, it was taxing to find things that I had never done (taking into consideration that there are things I would NEVER do, even under penalty of death, like jump out of an airplane, or things I can't afford, like go to Paris). So, my year of that experiment lasted a month, when I walked out of the ocean with the surfboard in tow.

But I'm reading the book again now. And I think I'm going to attempt that year-long journey of new experiences again. Arrien mentioned that part of the value IS that we have to be creative to find new roads to follow, and that's the whole point.

Then maybe time will slow down enough to savor the moments again, recapturing some of the newness of life that we take so much for granted when we're younger, growing and learning every day.

I'll start a list tomorrow as we usher in a new year, a list of potential new experiences that can reopen my eyes to the world as a source of joy and challenge. I'll keep you posted. Maybe I'll even take pictures. Stay tuned!

The second half of life is the ultimate initiation.....we are a sacred mystery made manifest. If we truly understand what is required of us at this stage, we are blessed with an enormous opportunity to develop and embody wisdom and character.

Angeles Arrien