Tuesday, November 12, 2024

November 12--The Direction of Your Devotion

The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.  --Mitch Albom

    These are wise words Mr. Albom offered. I am at the stage in life where I ask myself, "Am I being a useful human being?" Answers vary. I wonder if I'm having too much fun. I tell myself that I can "rest on my laurels"--I raised two useful humans, so I did my job. Being an introvert, I appreciate solitary activities like painting and gardening to balance my hours playing pickleball and doing simulated patient gigs. I gather from what I am writing that meaning in life is in direct proportion to a person's comfort in his/her own skin. With that comfort, the devotion described above comes quite naturally. 
    Workin' on it,
        Leta
One of my wintertime devotions...

Monday, November 11, 2024

November 11--Love Would Be Better

Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.  --Anton Chekhov

    Amen to that! The cruelty that is abounding in our world today is baffling to me. It is physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Abusing others (in our seemingly infinite variety of ways) takes effort--STOP IT! Why after all these centuries do we still think war and killing solve anything? Alas, the majority of Americans apparently want cruelty and abuse because they just elected a leader who is the poster child for those things. 
    From Richard Rohr in his Daily Meditation of Nov 10:
I’m convinced that beneath the ugly manifestations of our present evils—political corruption, ecological devastation, warring against one another, hating each other based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or nationality—the greatest dis-ease facing us right now is our profound and painful sense of disconnection. We feel disconnected from God certainly, but also from ourselves (especially our bodies), from each other, and from our world. Our sense of this fourfold isolation is plunging humanity into increasingly destructive behavior and much mental distress. 
    We are seeing the gross failure of our public education and religious systems. They have not done the job of "showing a person who he should be." There is a mandate in the Oklahoma public school system now that requires teaching the Bible as part of lesson plans. Fortunately there is a lawsuit attempting to stop this. How about teaching a civics lesson on separation of church and state?!?!
    Climbing down from my soap box now,
        Leta 

Sunday, November 10, 2024

November 10--"Oh, The Places You'll Go!" (Dr. Seuss)

Real love is a pilgrimage. It happens when there is no strategy, but it is very rare because most people are strategists.  --Anita Brookner

    My strategy in April of 1982 was just to go to a Royals game, because I love baseball. That pilgrimage ended up in a "real love" marriage of 38 years and counting. Who knew?!?!!?
    Speaking of pilgrimages... later this week I will be embarking on another 1000-mile journey back to northeast Ohio to hang with my niece and her family for a couple of weeks, including the Thanksgiving holiday. Yes, I do the drive by myself. I have learned to break it up mentally into 50-mile blocks. The first day is eight blocks (400 miles) and the second day is twelve blocks (600 miles). It's mental gymnastics, I know, but 50 miles is much easier to conquer mentally than 600. Being a self-proclaimed math nerd, this works for me 😉😉 Plus the joy of being with my niece and maybe (!!) beating her at Rummikub keeps me energized through the miles. 
    Much to do to get ready to sail east!
        Leta

Saturday, November 9, 2024

November 9--Make Something!

If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them... they could perceive what they have made of us.  --Albert Camus

Love is an ideal thing; marriage a real thing: A confusion of the real and the ideal never goes unpunished. --Johann Wolfgang Goethe

    The second quote came from one of my daily readings and it made me smile. 
    Cutting off my Google news feed has given me insight into how much time I spent reading "news." I have determined that painting is going to be the activity at home that saves my sanity over the next four years. I just finished the painting below. I am going to give my two most recent paintings to my grandsons for Christmas. It is important for me to give them Grammie-created things. Both will have a crocheted blanket, a Christmas stocking and a painting. I want to encourage their creativity in every way I can, to help them understand that we create to bring forth what is in us and it is all good. Our creativity is first and foremost to please us. If someone else digs our work, that's cool but not essential. 
    Hanging onto "one day at a time" and "this, too, shall pass."
        Leta
By yours truly

Friday, November 8, 2024

November 8--Going Into Ostrich Mode

Human relationships don't belong to engineering, mathematics, chess, which offer problems that can be perfectly solved. Human relationships grow, like trees. 
--J. G. Priestley

    I'm thinking right now of one of the gnarly Dr. Seuss trees. There are a lot of ugly relationships out there. I have locked away my Google News app for the next four years. I cannot bear to watch the revenge and destruction that is about to be unleashed. 
    Along with Wednesday's election news, I learned that the husband of a golfing friend had passed. This reminded me of one of my mother's uplifting sayings:

It's never so bad that it couldn't be worse. 
    Alas, so true.
        Leta
Artist: John Beckley

Thursday, November 7, 2024

November 7--So Much We Don't Know

We do know that no one gets wise enough to really understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try.  --Louise Erdrich

    I have been doing some "deep-dive" work lately relative to my experience growing up with my mother and the younger of my two brothers. My brother worked with Dad and his family lived nearby, so I was around the kitchen table with him and my mom every day. It was the primary site of ongoing verbal and emotional abuse, labeled as "just teasing." (I advise you, dear readers, to be very wary of those words.) 
    What my deep-dive has ultimately pointed out is that I have no clue about their lives before I came on the scene, leaving me in no position to judge them. What caused my mom to become a codependent food addict who ultimately killed herself via bulimia? What caused my brother to become a sister-hating narcissist? They both had trauma in their lives just like me. That's a good point--we all have had traumatic experiences. This does not condone bad behavior, but it does encourage us to cut each other some slack. I forgive my mother and brother as they were just doing their jobs (in the big-picture-cosmic-sense) the best they knew how. 
    As forgiveness expands, so does personal freedom.
        Leta


Wednesday, November 6, 2024

November 6-- In Tears

In youth we learn; in age we understand.  --Marie Von Ebner Eschenbach

   

    I am embarrassed to be a U.S. citizen. 
        Leta