A Simple Challenge

When I exercise I like to listen to music and think about things. I call it "going to my happy place" until the workout is over, but it's also my attempt to make good use of the time, mentally as well as physically.  Other times I talk with friends who are working out as well, and that helps pass the time pleasantly.

Today I did both. I had one ear bud in on the far side of my head; on the other side I listened to two of my friends carry on a discussion. I was not involved in their conversation at first--just a Listening Tom, as it were. Not until I made an uninvited comment about their topic of hair, and gave my eavesdropping away.

When both gentlemen had finished their workouts, one man left. The other, a friend of mine from church whose wife is a mentor to me, stayed behind to talk. We talked about kids in college and other genteel topics before turning to global issues. I shared with him some of our takeaways from a trip to Belize many years ago. He shared with me some of his takeaways from Guatemala. We discussed our own country, and the problems we face domestically in what can seem like a broken system in so many ways and on so many fronts.

I cannot solve the world's problems. I can't solve America's problems. I don't know any one individual who can. I have a laundry list of my own issues that I can't even seem to solve. And talking about them all leaves me overwhelmed and depressed. Which then leaves me inert. Which validates my personal status quo and leaves me with my collection, intact, of really great reasons why I am powerless to do anything about anything.

But before we both became disheartened over our own personal failure to "fix" things on a grand scale, my friend Frank suggested we take it down a notch.

"What one thing," he asked, "can you do, right here, perhaps in your own neighborhood, to make things better?"

Frank mentors students. He has a passion for it. And he is changing lives, one at a time.


My friend wisely noted that generally what "moves" us is God stirring in our hearts. I have a passion for the environment, specifically avian species. I believe that passion is God-given. I also believe it was placed in my heart for a purpose. Our own red-cockaded woodpecker (pictured at left) is on the Endangered List due to lack of suitable habitat; www.birdlife.org reports that more than 1,300 bird species are threatened worldwide with extinction as of 2012. Of these 1,300, almost 200 species are so rare as to be categorized as "on the brink of extinction." While I am unspeakably sad about this awful fact, it is even more sad to me that I have yet to determine how to best express my passion in a constructive and meaningful way.

Most of us have stirrings that compel us to get involved in something. Many of us listen to those stirrings and become active in our passion or passions. So that is my question to you:  What one thing can you do or are you doing locally--in your city, or neighborhood, or on your street, or inside the four walls of your home--to make things better?

I thank you in advance for your thoughtful input and truly look forward to reading your comments. I'll be thinking too.

Who Loves Ya, Baby?

    
Theo Kojak played an important role in my upbringing. He and my mother had some sort of thing on the side, or so it seemed, along with a whole lot of other women back in the '70s. My sister and I heard, "Who loves ya, baby?" about as often as we heard, "Does a wild bear live in the woods?" But that is a post for another day.

Telly Savalas, if we're honest, was an inordinately unattractive man. No offense to bald-headed men or people of Greek descent, but he was not what you would call an Adonis. (There is Greek, and then there is Greek...) So why all the swooning, Mom?

Why did you love him, Mom? It was a fair question for a 13-year-old kid to ask her mother in 1973.  My answer to his question, "who loves you?" back then was, "Not you I hope." Let's face it, he didn't look a thing like Donny Osmond.

But Kojak's question is also a fair one. And it is being asked again, by corporate America, as it is always asked, on February 14.

Who loves YOU, baby?

For women, Valentine's Day can be bittersweet (pun intended.) It invokes a series of mental floggings that attempt to answer the question: "Who loves me?" Am I in a relationship? If I'm not, what is wrong with me? If I am, is that relationship working? Where is the relationship going? Will it last? What if it doesn't last? If it doesn't last, what will I do? Will I be lonely? Will I always be alone? Will someone remember me on that stupid day? (It's pretty messy in there, between those  double-x chromosome ears.) We spend a lot of time trying to answer Theo Kojak's question. And many of us, myself included, get it wrong every time.

Corporate America wants the answer to the question to be demonstrated at the cash register. Flowers, jewelry, candy, cards, a plush animal holding a puffy red keyboard with the words, "You're my tweetie," on it. We have been trained to associate a price tag with depth of feeling.

But unless and until the answer to the question, "Who loves ya, baby?" is ME, it can be difficult for anyone else to love you. That is the beauty, the genuine beauty, of Theo Kojak.

He was confident, strong, fearless, yes. All those things are true. But even if you are not those things, you can still be just like him. Because Theo Kojak was the best Theo Kojak he could be, flaws and all. And who else, really, could have been him better? Who else, alive on this planet today, or anyone else who has come and gone, or who WILL come and go, can do you better than you?

Now really, you gotta love that.

So whether you have a big nose, a bald head, a curious oral fixation, wear a stupid hat, are slightly overweight, or have any one of a million different flaws or idiosyncrasies that make you the unique and beautiful person that you are, Be the best you you can be. BeYOUtiful. And when the answer to the question, "Who loves ya, baby?" is unequivocally, "I love me," you'll be amazed at how unimportant external justification can be. And how much of a people magnet you have curiously become.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Toddy Time

Wow. It's been, like, two years since I wrote anything...at least wrote anything here, on the blog. Where have those two years gone? Things happen so slowly, day to day, and yet, when I look backward at the time I cannot regain, it seems to have slipped through my fingers. And I feel left with nothing--or at least very little--to show for it.

And so now you know, if you didn't already, that my glass of pinot is perpetually half EMPTY. My first thought is never (at least not without great effort) focused on what I have accomplished. And my second thought is rarely focused on what wonderful opportunities might still lie ahead. Those of you who can do that have my genuine envy. I have squandered so many minutes that it leaves me feeling ungrateful and a wee bit sick to my stomach.

But apparently not enough to actually DO anything about it.

Still though, if I am honest with myself, I have done some stuff. ("Check the records," says Bill Murray in "Scrooged"....) We successfully launched our girlchild into her first year of college. Much of my time was poured into her, with activities at school and elsewhere. During her senior year I devoted myself to building her resume, finding scholarships and filling out forms. I do not begrudge the time invested at all.

I also finished another book. This one is historical fiction, and I await an answer from a New York literary agent concerning that project.

The rest of my days were spent cooking and cleaning, exercising and fellowshipping, reading and chatting up our parrot. Every evening I sat down with my husband and a glass of wine, and we talked it out.

Did I squander some time? Yes. I could fairly be accused of pissing some time away. We each get 1,440 minutes every single orbit. Funny how that number, which seems so large for things like car repair bills or cormorants shot in one day during hunting season, feels so, well, minute (as in small) when it's your freakin' LIFE.

And I do recognize, cognitively, that there is much stuff still left for me to do. I do not know what that looks like yet, but I hope and pray I will be open to opening the door, when those opportunities knock. There will be more assignments for this old gal, and more decisions to be made, and more pinot to be drunk as my husband and I mull over the events of the last 1,440 minutes each evening.

We all must make our peace with the accounting of our days, because each second that ticks off will not return. The only "return" I may ever see will be based on how I invested that time. Some days it is a good investment just to sit with my girlchild on my lap and breathe in the scent of her hair. Other days a good investment might look like making a batch of ambrosia for a certain neighbor who has been an angel to her mother-in-law. Ambrosia is what angels eat, after all. Often it is just taking a breath and having a chat with God, about someone who has suddenly crossed my mind.

At my moment of judgment, will I be called to justify how I chose to spend my time? I do not know. (I trust He will not see my woefully inadequate self at all, but His own son in my place. I'm putting a lot of eggs in that basket.) Will He look straight at me, through me, seeing my soul and my good intentions and my faults and inadequacies and bad judgment calls and just plain laziness, and accuse me of pissing my life away? I cannot say. But one thing I've learned in 25 years of evening toddy time with my husband:

I have drunk enough wine to know that one man's piss is another man's pinot.