One Person, One Change

Thank you all for your comments and wise words. One thing that jumped out at me was the universal desire for people to be treated with dignity, kindness, and equality. This came from all over the world. This one desire. Oh sure, we want our collective governments to play fair, get out of the hate game, and do right by us and the world. But the overwhelming response was for people to treat each other as equals. And no matter where you are from, there are always those that want to elevate themselves at your expense. They think they are better because they may have more money, education, status, power. But they are not better, they only have more money, education, status, and power. And we cannot change that. The only thing we have power over is ourselves.

But that power can change the world. One mind at a time. One change at a time.

I have made some changes in my mind over the last few months. I no longer accept e-mails from friends and family that are cloaked in jokes, patriotism, stories, etc., but are actually hidden hate bombs. You know the ones - they start out nice or interesting, but end with you feeling bad, or at least uneasy. They are usually against Obama, immigrants, other nations, other nationalities, other races, the poor. They always have a target. They always have an agenda. Needless to say, this has not made me popular with said family and friends. (And I get far fewer e-mails.) But I felt I needed to make a stand. Just one person, one change. 

What about you? Have you made any changes lately that you feel strongly about?

Small World

I was thinking about how when I was a child, I thought the world to be an immense space. So large that the mind had a hard time grasping the idea of so many people, lands, cultures. Now, because of technology, we realize it is a very small globe, actually. That we are connected to the world, and it's peoples, in a very intimate way. We can communicate with individuals, not just second-hand through newspapers or journalists. We can, through blogging, reach out and touch real people.

In the US, it has changed politics forever. Between the election in 2000 and the election in 2008, the blogging world exploded. For the first time, our politicians could not lie to us, and then just keep repeating the lie, until we had no choice but to accept it. Ditto for our business leaders. The world of blogging has changed all that. U-Tube has changed all that. The truth is already out there, and you can bet someone has it on tape somewhere.  All we have to do is link to each other, share information, and the ability to pull the wool over our eyes decreases exponentially. The power goes back to the people.

In that light, I would like to ask you a few questions. I have never had the honor to be able to do such a thing, with so many people. You are reading this blog from all over the world, by the thousands! Absolutely incredible! So here goes:

Where you live, what is it like right now?

How/would you like to see change?

Thanks, and have a great day, night, whatever! 

Awards

I have received two awards over the last few weeks that I am just now acknowledging. (Sorry.) I thank you so much for thinking of me when presenting awards to blogs that you find enjoyable. We all write, not knowing if anything we write is of any interest to others. Rest assured, that I thoroughly enjoy both of your blogs, and thank you so much. The Chic Geek and Women of a Certain Age, you are both wonderful and interesting writers. Both awards had the same text:

"This blog invests and believes in the Proximity - nearness in space, time and relationships. These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in prizes or self-aggrandizement! Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers! Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this clever-written text into the body of this award."

Please feel free to enjoy this award and to pass on if you would like to - no pressure! I am still trying to figure out how to display awards on my blog - just in case you all wonder why they haven't appeared in a pretty little row like so many more techno-savy blogs - geeesh!

Musings from the deep - sweet and soulful

Lost in Translation - trying to do it all

Goddessoftheconfluence - Nepal's friend

Kathy's campground capers - life in a campground

La rubia habla! - life as a new high school teacher

Midlife, menopause, mistakes, and random stuff - love those animals

Not Rocket Science - midlife musings

Star-forever-young - moving to America

These are just a few of my favorite blogs - most of the others are well-known, and well-loved!

Blog of Note

Wow! I have no idea why I was picked as a Blog of Note - but I feel very humbled. I have read some of your comments to my last post, and I can't wait to visit your sites, as well. We are all together on this journey through life, and blogging has given me the ability to share my thoughts, and to learn from yours.

Thank you so much for visiting!

In that Moment...

I was trying to have a conversation with my daughter today while her toddler bounced around the room, either hurting himself or getting into something he shouldn't. The conversation was about trying to hang on in this economy. Her husband has a lucrative sales job that is not as lucrative as it was last year. Like most young families, she is trying to stretch herself and their resources, to make ends meet. In between picking him up to kiss an owie and tell him to get off/out of something, she sounded harried and exhausted, but also strangely happy.

I started thinking about happiness. How you can always be happy if you are in the moment. By that I mean, just taking a small second to be aware of all the good that is around you. Just right at that very moment. 

I remember finding out I had a brain tumor. I was 33 years old, with a six year old daughter, and one eighteen months. My mother had died when I was six, so this year of my daughter's life was very poignant for me. 

It came out of the blue - one minute I was just fine - swimming a mile a day in the community pool and the next I was on my way to LA for some serious surgery. I was diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma - which is a tumor wrapped around the acoustic nerve on the brainstem side. It was thought to be benign, but not in a good location, and rather large in size. In the end, I lost my hearing on one side, my face was temporarily and completely paralyzed on one side, one eye not tearing at all. I had to wear this ugly eye patch that was see-through. To say I was odd looking is an understatement! But whenever I started to feel sorry for myself, in that moment, all I could feel was incredibly lucky! Lucky to be alive, lucky to have a beautiful family, an incredible husband, to have a future. There were so many others dealing with so much more. So, because it was so easy to feel sorry for myself, and my family needed me to be strong, I tried to stay in the moment as much as possible. It really was the only way to get through it and recover. 

I sensed my daughter doing that today. She was busy, harassed, worried. But then her son would do something endearing or funny. And in that exact moment she was happy. Nothing else mattered.

Midlife Shuffle, Contd.

So do you think the weirdness of these days are because of our age? Or is it because of our age relative to our economic and social upheaval? Many of us are not exactly doing what we thought we would be doing at this stage of our lives. Or would we be going through this shuffle of our friends, priorities, likes, dislikes, tolerances, world view, anyway? I remember my father becoming less social and more alone during a stage in his midlife - and I thought it strange at the time. But the literature says this is often the case - more alone time, self-assessment, less patience for bs. But also a marvelous love of each moment, nature, animals, a heart brimming for all the magnificence in this world. Reconnecting with old friends. I'm reading a wonderful book recommended by a fellow blogger. Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart". Seems timely. She has others that I will read, also. So is this a time when we decide how we want the last years of our lives to look?

P.S. Thank you to Chic Geek for the award - all about that tomorrow!

Midlife Shuffle

Lately I have been thinking about my particular age, and where it fits into human development literature. And I really believe the mid-fifties are completely left out. It seems to jump from adulthood to late adulthood. Yet, I sense this time to be of great importance. I, for one, am going through as big a restructure in identity as I did in my twenties. What about you?