Here's to my song of life

One of my favorite “what life is really about” pieces of writing was penned by the very, very wise female columnist, Mary Schmich. It garnered her the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2012. Reading it slowly (and it’s best said out loud) takes about five minutes and holds, in my humble opinion, some of the best third party advice I've ever absorbed.

Prior to Schmich’s award for her most sage thoughts, her gem of creation was immortalized worldwide on radio and music label by the brilliant film director, Baz Luhrman (of “Moulin Rouge,” “Australia,” and “The Great Gatsby” movie fame) when he recorded the commentary and it set to music.

I should listen to it more often, because there is many a day when I still need to be reminded of what matters most.

This self-proposed “song of life” is the reality check.

If you are familiar with the words, then you will understand when I declare I am among the people  (now well over 40 years of age) who really don’t know what they want to do with their life.

However, not knowing doesn’t mean I'm in chaos or unhappy.  Where I am-- or am not-- in this great big world, and that things will continue to change, makes for great adventure.

I only get one shot at this particular shift on Earth and I'm keeping the door open to further possibilities, known and unknown, until long after my hair is completely grey and thinning.

"Don't worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you . . . on some idle Tuesday."

So don’t text and drive. Period.

Oh, yes, and I'm supposed to dance, even if it's only in my living room by myself—and sometimes I do, like a champion from the “Dancing with the Stars” TV show—and I win—every time.

What I know for sure is that I should dance more often with my “G-force.” Dancing definitely is better in twos, at midnight, even if I step on your toes.  

The words of wisdom also encourage us to “Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on.”

That quote resonated with me on Saturday night in the midst of a phenomenal local restaurant soiree, watching the night unfold in a crowd of people I barely knew, while sitting across from friends who trumpet “life out loud,” and sitting next to the man with whom I so cherish my time, that all of us in that room were millionaires in our gatherings, enjoying the root of all that matters—the moment. 

We were together in precious commonalities of laughter, acceptance, and great conversations. Those are the gifts that trump all the negatives out there.

The song of life commentary is “Wear Sunscreen.” Read it. YouTube it. Take it to heart.

The Very Best Moments

If you had to name one—and only one—moment in your life that was your “very best,” what would it be? Could you honestly do that? 

I thought I could. I even picked “that one time when . . . “ and gave it due credence, but then right in behind it another good memory vying for best flowed in on the breeze of my many gratitudes.

Homemade macaroni and cheese can move me. It can move me to swoon, time and time again, over the very best moment when the warm cheesy gobs oozing over the spoon reach the palate and drown the senses in comfort and carbs. 

I was recently reminded never to underestimate the power of a dinner invite to a meal prepared with love for the purpose of conversation and appreciation that includes my homemade macaroni and cheese. “It can be refuge in a digital, confusing, pressure-cooked world.” Homemade macaroni and cheese? Yes indeed, spoonfuls of it (especially the ones snuck from the dish of leftovers) can create some of the very best moments.

Slipping under the flannel sheets of my bed on a cold winter’s night after the electric blanket has been turned on—no question one of the very best moments of my day.

I keep a diary. I’ve been doing that since I was 11 years old. Sure, I’ve missed a time or two here and there, and yet I always return to the page where some of the very best moments are the ones I write in permanent ink.

I watched my first granddaughter delivered through my daughter’s caesarean section. I laid my eyes on that living miracle in the moment before she was touched by a doctor’s hand about to deliver her from the womb into the world. It was a remarkable best moment.

Facing the church congregation as I said my wedding vows, when once upon a time I was married, that too, a very best moment, even though it is long since gone into the history books.

A photograph that hangs on my living room wall captures the happy moment on a playground slide in the mid-1990’s, when my three daughters, then “Littles,” smiled back at me. Oh, so very much a best moment.

Holding hands in the night with my special someone while we sleep—my favourite best moment. 

Listening to snow melt off my roof, watching my cats play, checking my bank account when its not in overdraft. Oh my, those make the list too.

Seeing my father today, at 90, healthy and wise, smile back at me from across the kitchen table, during that meal prepared with love by my mother for the purpose of conversation and appreciation of family. We were there—a very best moment.

If you had to name one—and only one—moment in your life that was your “very best,” what would it be? Could you honestly do that?  I hope not.

Thinking back to now

I’ve believed it for years and years. I am exactly where I am supposed to be. 

I believe in the words of the “Desiderata” - created in 1927 - and I carry it with me always. I most especially believe in the part that says– “Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the Universe is unfolding as it should.”

So it shouldn’t surprise me that I am here once again on the crest of memory of a cold January day five years ago that unfolded, as I know it to be, into the most defining moment of my life thus far.

That was the day I learned what it meant to be alive.

Yet I am here wrestling with a muddled bag of alphabets and trying most desperately to pull them into some kind of meaningful scrabble—again—a checkerboard of words of value about what I know to be true about that day, when life changed in an instant. 

First of all I am compelled to remind anyone who reads this how important it is to practice three golden rules any time someone needs to share feelings on their grief, loss, and crisis.

“Mouth shut, ears open, presence available.” 

Really try hard to be the ears and not the mouth. It isn’t easy. Most of us in crisis aren’t asking for your advice. We just need to be heard. Put away your opinions. Shut up and listen.

Furthermore, and I say this with the upmost humility and respect for the journeys of others. Purpose is sacred to each of us—this I know for sure—and I respect yours, whatever it may be.

I’m still ever edging outwards in healing from my own storm damage.

Mark Nepo wrote, “The current of life requires us to stand up, again and again, and we are not defeated when we are worn down, just exposed anew at a deeper level.”  This I believe.

I am puzzled by many things, some worth piecing together and some, not so much. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I think about.

I think again about that question posed to me some time ago by a friend. “What’s the goal of your life, Beth?”

Much to my surprise I couldn’t answer it promptly and that bugged me—a lot.

I felt stymied in some internal way, as if the fact that I couldn’t answer the question meant I didn’t know what I wanted or what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

Eventually it dawned on me that, yes, of course, I know what my goal is. It’s what I live for and in one way or another I write about it all the time. It was the primary lesson I learned when I came face to face with the suicide of a loved one.

Nepo writes “That we insist on keeping old wounds alive, is our curse.” He’s right. It’s what we focus on that manifests itself.

“When I focus on the rake of experience and how its fingers dug into me and the many feet that have walked over me, there is no end to the life of my pain. But when I focus on the soil of heart and how it has been turned over, there is no end to the mix of feelings that defy my want to name them. Tragedy stays alive by feeling what’s been done to us. Peace comes alive by living with the result.”

What is the goal of my life? My goal is to be happy. I deserve to be happy. We all do.

The happiness balance is tedious, constant work. Sometimes I do it well, sometimes I do appallingly, but I do the work anyway, because life is short and thank the Universe, I’m still here.

Plugged back in to the once unplugged

In May 2012 I’d had enough of cult television and cancelled my satellite subscription, leaving me with only “Netflix” movies. I lived in that bubble until just before Christmas 2016 when I decided to re-engage with the “media-ogre” world.

I had had four years of commercial-free living, save the banner along the right-hand panel of my favorite online weather website, which repeatedly depicted a computer-generated “before and after” wrinkled face of a woman in an advertisement for some obscure miracle facelift company. “Google” also had tried to influence me too, of course, mapping out my favorite go-to websites and placing them strategically along the top of any number of pages I visited. 

However, seeing as how I lived in a rather structured “online bubble” that involved learning about sailing, most of the advertising was for boring stuff like braided halyard lines or pulley wheels for my mast.

No tv satellite meant I didn’t watch comedy series, no “CSI” or “NCIS,” no hyped-up news programs, no Hollywood or music award shows, no cartoons, no political rhetoric, no drama. Life was simple and most of all my decisions about “stuff” weren’t based on what the “boob tube” told me to buy, say, do, or believe. 

This is not to say that I didn’t keep up with world events. I listened to the radio a lot, read the good old newspaper, or clicked the headlining news story online and scanned it for the parts that interested me.

This also is not to say I didn’t miss out on a lot of really good informative television by walking away—and hence one of the reasons why I decided to step back in to the digital race and get myself re-rooted in an optional course of life.

I hadn’t seen really good high definition television in forever, save going to a friend’s house where the tv was on, or sitting in the entertainment lounge at my local tv dealership watching the small hairs on the back necks of the football players sway as the brutes ran the field for a touchdown. It was time to check in.

I can only imagine what I must have looked like to a seasoned “televisionee” as I watched—bug-eyed—my first hour-long current television series in more than four years, dipped every few minutes in the most amazing commercials for shampoo, cars, “Viagra,” ocean cruise lines “to where!!”, the newest mobile technologies, and of course “GEICO,” ads in which the lizard hasn’t aged at all since I last him in 2012 (it must be that miracle facelift!!)

So far I’ve been “Bachelorized,” “Pawn Starred,” and watched zombies walk the earth, dragging that one foot—which I gather is a popular pastime for couch potatoes? Good heavens.

But perhaps the best of all the shows I have wandered in and out of over the past three weeks was the “Golden Globe Awards,” broadcast live on Sunday night from “good ol’ Hollywood,” which hasn’t changed a bit. 

It’s still glitzy, glamorous, and full of opinions—the most memorable of which being that of Meryl Streep, who in her “understated” yet dignified speech reminded us out here in “La La Land” that we’re in for a rather unwelcome change.