"although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." - helen keller

Some Sunday's are just lovely...

"Happiness is not in another place, but in this place...not for another hour...but for this hour." - Walt Whitman
I didn't accomplish a single thing I wanted to this weekend, and that is OK.

words to live by...

"You is smart. You is kind. You is important." - The Help

this is the lovely Bird vase mentioned in the living space column...really a lovely Bird vase, the artist's name is Bird

'tis true - a pleasantly liveable space is a truly pleasant thing

the quest for the pleasantly livable living space

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." - William Morris

I am on an old quest with a couple of new gurus. It has nothing to do with meditation or spirituality. My goal is to organize, de-clutter and reclaim my living space. And, since my home is not small and we have been in it for 22 years, this will not be an easy process or a short journey. The key is to recognize that these are not "things" I am sorting through - they are memories and I can keep those memories alive without holding on to a houseful of junk.  

I have written about this before because I have struggled with this need to let go of the old and step into the new for years, mostly unsuccessfully. Lately, I've begun to make progress and it feels good.

First, I read an article in O magazine about how they reclaimed their office space. Apparently, those who "traffic in insight and enlightenment" as the article put it, have their own baggage to deal with and judging from the photos in the article, the folks at O hadn't taken out their emotional trash in a LONG time. They described the cluttered chaos as being "in the grips of a mass material psychosis." Know that feeling? I certainly do...    

So, they hired an organizational guru named Peter Walsh. (Google him and you'll see there are entire empires built on our collective need to get organized...) He said he could "help them enormously, but there's going to be a bit of pain." Yep, I know that feeling, too.  

It turns out the problem the O staff has is the same one I have - they "put their collective heart and soul" into their efforts, so the material things associated with those efforts take on more importance than they deserve. This only becomes clear after the purging begins (step one in the reclaiming process) and you see that donating or tossing those things you thought were important has no negative impact on your life, at all. In fact, getting rid of those things improves it.   

"A clean organized office fosters creativity; a messy space makes you feel overwhelmed before you start working," Walsh says, so everything that "serves no essential purpose" has got to go. Work spaces, desk tops, counter tops and table tops are for working, eating, etc. - not putting things on. Chairs and sofas are for sitting - not draping or piling things on. Halls and stairs are for walking - not stacking stuff in. Sounds simple enough...

I used the Walsh method to de-clutter and re-organize my kids' rooms. They are married adults and their rooms were still shrines to their high school and college glory days. Talk about emotional baggage...but, once Mom got the hang of filling up trash bags and making trips to the Goodwill, it became clear that unloading emotional baggage is not only possible, it's exhilarating.     

Enter guru number two. He is a Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, an interior design wizard. A well-organized friend gave me his book, Apartment Therapy: the Eight-Step Home Cure, after seeing what I had accomplished in the new guest rooms. She said the book would take my quest "to the next level" and while I've only begun reading it, I can see she is right.  

One of the things Gillingham-Ryan talks about is how our homes become uncomfortable because they are cluttered and baggage-laden. For example, he says, "When we take something new into our home, we rarely let go of something else. This is how our home gains weight, grows unhealthy and begins to nag at us." By visualizing how you want your home to look, remembering how spaces you feel comfortable in are organized, and using his handy eight-week plan, you can put your home on a diet, help it become more healthy and eventually, stop its whining...

I've not started the eight-week plan yet, but I have been throwing away and donating as I take "Christmas" down and put "year-round" back up. The other day, I made a bold move. Instead of filling the living room mantle with the same pictures that have graced it for years, I polished that mantle with lemon oil and left it empty. A few days later, I bought my first piece of GA Folk Art - a clay vase with some (clay) leaves wrapped around it and a (clay) hummingbird perched on the side. That vase told me it was perfect for that empty mantle and it was right.

I haven't boxed up the old pictures that used to live on the mantle yet, but the smile that bird vase brings me will make doing that a lot easier because now I know that the memories will remain, even if the photos aren't sitting there collecting dust.  

either way...

but wait a minute...maybe it's not the end of the world as we know it after all...

The End of the World?

"It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine." - R.E.M. lyric

So, the big year is here - 2012. This is the year the Mayans supposedly predicted the end of the world; it will take place on Dec. 21, 122112, the Winter Solstice. Sounds pretty spectacular and scary, but according to the Google research I did, it's not true.

In actuality, what ends on or about Dec. 21 is the "largest grand cycle" or "current Long Count" in the Mayan calendar, which tracks time in 1,872,000 day or 5,135 year increments. The Mayans were the dominant civilization in Mexico and Central America between A.D. 250 and 900 and they kept time "on a scale few other cultures have considered," as one website put it.

What happens sometime towards the end of 2012 (the exact date is not clear) is that the Mayan calendar zeros back on itself and restarts. It is a time of transition from one "World Age" to the next - a time for celebration and renewal, not death and destruction. The limited records that exist indicate the Mayan way to mark this kind of event in time was to build new monuments, apply fresh stucco and paint, enjoy public festivities and private celebrations. There was no hoarding food or packing survival kits, just some good old fashioned fun.       

As long as people have existed, they have made predictions about when and how the world will end; so far, none of those predictions have come true. When you think about it, though, it's the end of the world for somebody - multiple somebodies - every day.

People die in car wrecks, plane wrecks and train wrecks; they drown or burn or suffer some horrible crime. Heart attacks, strokes and losing the battle with cancer take people on a daily basis, as do famine and war. Sadly, some don't wait for death to come to them, but instead, end their own lives.

The common thing about all of these deaths is that someone has to say, "Goodbye!" and "Goodbye!" is so hard to say.

As my grandfather died, my grandmother sat in a chair next to his hospital bed, holding his hand and stroking his forehead. When he passed, she knew he was gone, but she sat there, quietly doing the same things. She had such a sad and loving look on her face; it was clear her husband had been precious to her and letting him go was very hard.

As the nurses bustled about and the family came and went, she just sat there, silently, staring at his face, stroking his forehead and holding his hand.

"Mrs. Sinn, it's probably time to go now," one of the nurses said. My grandmother just sat there, as if she couldn't hear, as if she was alone in a world of her own.

A while later, another nurse came in and said the same thing, and the family, now nervously milling about, voiced a similar opinion. She just sat there, silent and far away.  

Finally, she stood up with a poignant look of sad determination on her face and said, "I've been holding this hand my whole life. Once I let go, I will never ever hold this hand again. I not ready to do that, but then I never will be."

And with that, she let go of my grandfather's hand, kissed his forehead one last time and walked away, out of that room and that hospital, never to return. My grandfather's last wish was to be cremated, so she never saw his face again.

During my years as an emergency room social worker, I saw that scene played out again and again...the widow or mother or father or son or daughter at the bedside...holding that hand, stroking that forehead...giving that final kiss...saying, "Goodbye!"

I don't know if, when or how the world will end. I'm glad it sounds like it won't be this Dec. 12 and I'm thankful for every day I don't have to say, "Good bye!" to someone or something near and dear to me. Life is so precious...but then, the Mayans knew that. That's why they marked the passing of time with such fervor and celebration.    

Hope

"Hope is patience with the lamp lit." - Tertullian

Hope is an essential part of the New Year; so is looking back at the past year to review what we got right and what we would do differently if we had the chance. I like doing this in the extreme silence that fills my house once the family leaves and the fun of the holidays has ended. There is no quiet quite as quiet as the quiet that falls on a house after it has been full of happy noise; I like to savor that.  

My New Years ritual centers around a new date book. I marvel at the clean empty pages, wondering what will fill them - good times or bad? I walk through the year ahead, transposing birthdays, anniversaries and dates to remember; and, I look back on the entries that fill last year's pages. So cluttered and chaotic, some of those "weeks at a glance" seem; no wonder, at times, I felt like I couldn't catch my breath.

Details like "dog flea meds" are juxtaposed against major events like "Emmi's surgery" or "anniversary of my mom's death." Work meetings, social gatherings and volunteer commitments chronicle the predictable, while trips and vacations trigger wonderful memories. These things - the trivial, the insignificant and the hugely important - made up last year; again, I wonder what the new year will bring.

This year, I took a long walk with my favorite dog on New Years Day. We went to Fort Yargo and walked around the lake. The sky was bright; the air was crisp and clear. There was a slight breeze and the reflection of the scenery in the lake was lovely, just lovely, in every way. My sense of optimism soared and I marveled at the high hopes that came to me so easily.

"Either this is going to be a really great year or disaster is right around the corner," I thought to myself, trying not to kill the happy buzz with my usual doom and gloom. "It's easy to feel hopeful when things are going well, but will these feelings last when bad things happen?"   

Near the end of the trail I saw a woman, dressed all in blue, walking very, very slowly come out of the forest and make her way towards her car. She looked to be about my age, but was bent, like a person who is sick or weak or profoundly tired. She had on a hat and under it there was no hair. My thought was that she was a cancer patient and the battle was getting the best of her. Yet there she was, at Fort Yargo, taking a walk on New Years Day.

There was a dog in her car and, judging from the white on his face, he was not young. I don't know why he was in the car, except maybe she was too weak to walk him. She seemed barely able to remain upright, herself. As the woman approached her car, the dog's ears perked up and his face lit up and he started rocking back and forth, the way a really excited dog does. When she caught sight of him, waiting so excitedly for her in the car, her sad, ashen-colored, tired but determined looking face lit up and for a moment, she didn't seem sick.  

She greeted him and he greeted her and then they drove off, leaving me feeling humbled by the display of substantive hope and profound optimism I had just seen. If a woman ravaged by cancer can take a walk on a beautiful day and an elderly dog can wait for her, happily, in the car at the park, who was I to question the validity of the hope I was feeling in my healthy, un-hardship challenged life? With that flash of perspective, the dangling fears I had left for what the new year might bring disappeared.

None of us knows what lies ahead or what kind of notations our date books will be filled with. My hope is that whatever the twists and turns, I am able to face, experience and enjoy them with the same courage, tenacity, patience, hope and joy that I witnessed, watching that woman come out of the woods and greet her dog.    

Resolution = Focus

 

“I am still learning.” – Michelangelo

‘Tis the season for resolutions and if you are short on ideas, look no further than the sale flyers in the Sunday paper. Based on what has been price-slashed and/or deeply discounted, we are supposed to begin the New Year by cleaning everything we own, using multiple products and recently-purchased tools. Then, we are to store it all away in plastic bins of various sizes, shapes and colors. 

We are also supposed to organize our homes by buying an array of on-sale home organization aids. We are to weigh frequently (on our brand new scales) and buy exercise wear. Once we don our gay fitness apparel, we should hop on the also deeply discounted exercise device of our choice – yoga mat? balance ball? stationary bike, abs torturer or Wii Fit? and make all of our New Years resolutions come true.   

And, vitamins – don’t forget the vitamins; not to mention the diet pills and weight loss aids, nutritional supplements and miracle products “as seen on TV.” Obviously, there’s no better time than now to stop smoking and seriously consider joint, skin, hair and colon health.

After years of making resolutions and extending them over and over again, like almost-read library books or Redbox videos that put me to sleep, I gave up the idea of the “resolution” and turned to the notion of “process.”

So far, it’s working out. “Lose weight” has become “maintain current weight.” “Eat less and exercise more” has morphed into “maintain a healthy lifestyle” – not such an easy task. 

“Drink less wine and more water” works better as a process than a resolution, as it is on-going and over time, do-able – at least the water part; the same with “listen more,” “talk less,” and “control my temper.” Looking back over the past five years or so, I’ve made considerable progress simply by making these things part of my life, rather than something I do for the first few months of the year. 

The progress, I will admit, is measured in “baby steps,” but, it turns out, you can go a long way using baby steps if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other.  

There’s something about resolutions that is destined to fail. Like bad companions, they’re big, loud and lofty. They’re full of themselves and don’t really care how you and the long term fit into their equation. Quiet process, on the other hand, just keeps on ticking like a chill version of a Timex watch or a Zen version of the Ever Ready Bunny.

I took a break from browsing the resolution-laden Sunday sale papers to read some columns and they were all about resolutions. Some were pro; some were con; others just rambled. One that I took interest in was about the notion of giving the New Year a word, rather than a set of expectations. Apparently, there are entire groups of people who gather to set their word and, while I like the idea of 2012 having it’s own word, I’m glad I’ve never been invited to one of those word-setting groups. 

After some reflection, this year’s word for me is “focus” as in “a center of activity, attraction, or attention; a point of concentration.” The Germans have a term for the way I live. It’s zerrissenheit – the state of torn-to-pieces-hood. If I were younger, I’d probably have a set of letters like ADD, ADHD or whatever to describe the way I spend my time. As it is, I simply need a lot of Post-It notes to keep me on track because I have a hard time sticking to one task long enough to complete it.

Like Michelangelo, I believe we are never too old to stop learning, so I have high hopes for the New Year. And, if I can just baby step my way along the focus path, I believe what I will accomplish by, say, 2015 will be nothing short of amazing – at least to myself. No bins, no exercise gear, no cleaning products or diet pills required – just process-oriented, resolution-free focus. I call that a win-win and 2012’s just beginning.