Tag: the future

Getting Older Changes Your Reality

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 13 Comments


How many times have you said “I wish I knew then what I know now”?

Makes getting older sound much more appealing, doesn’t it?

It is a basic fact that older people have a larger pool of information to pull from when it comes to shaping their reality. Many years worth of pooling. 

And not all that’s drawn from the pool is useful.

Would middle schoolers benefit from the knowledge that other kids can be bullies and things brighten up once they get to high school? Would college kids be more successful if they knew the intricacies of moving up in the working world? Would millennials be better off if they realized how important health care and savings plans will be thirty years in their future?

Unfortunately, human beings learn from personal experience. Not that all personal experiences are soul building and world awakening. I have never smoked in my life but I knew then and know now how bad a habit it is. I’ve never had a broken bone nor had an emotional trauma experience before I was 25.

Does that mean I should have experienced all of the above to be a more well rounded senior adult?

When I chose the topic Getting Older Changes Your Reality I was thinking about reality from a senior point of view. My body has changed, my energy level has changed, my hormones definitely have changed, forcing me to adapt in ways I never imagined when I was 30.

These kinds of changes cannot be planned for. You can be fit all of your life and still lack energy to hike to the furthest soccer field. You could watch your sugar intake all your life and still turn into a diabetic. You could go to college and major in Anthropology just to work on computers in a bank 10 years later. (I knew someone that happened to…)

What you can Do and what you can Be changes as your reality changes. You may have wanted one child and would up with three. You may have wanted to move to Paris when you were young and still find yourself in suburbia. Often your youthful reality is not your future reality.

One pleasant surprise of my senior reality is that I’m finally getting to do some the things I wanted to do in my youthful reality. I’ve touched the Eiffel Tower and walked through Roman ruins. I’ve had wonderful grandkids who have made me feel young again (mentally, at least), and have the time to continue art art projects I started in my 20s.

I still worry about money and my health and if I’ll wake up tomorrow to enjoy another day. But those are things I have minimum control over, so I do what I can and let time take the wheel.

As you get older you find that the things you worry about today won’t matter much tomorrow. You have no say about political candidates, company policies, and illness such as cancer. You have no control over who lives and who passes on. You don’t even really know if there’s an afterlife. 

Getting older changes your reality, and you finally get that you have less control over you life than you thought. What will be will be and all that.

All you can do is choose the swirly bumpy road instead of the straight one, and see what happens.

You will wind up at the same place anyway.

 

 

 

Faerie Paths — The Future

~ humoringthegoddess ~ Leave a comment

 

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

~ Eleanor Roosevelt

 

 

 

Which Books Would You Bring?

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 20 Comments

It’s the beginning of a Glorious Day here in the Midwest.

Being alone with my dogs and cat and fish and computer and crafts room and my messy closet floor, there will be a lot of things I’ll want to accomplish that I can’t always accomplish with company around.

But you know me. That’s not what this particular blog is about.

I had an idea in the shower this morning, and I’d LOVE to hear back from all of you. The more the merrier.

I really enjoyed the end scene in the movie “The Time Machine” with Rod Taylor, where George comes back from the future to grab three books to take back with him. It goes something like this:

Filby: He must have taken something with him.
Mrs. Watchett: Nothing, except three books.
Filby: Which three books?
Mrs. Watchett: I don’t know. Is it important?
Filby: No, I suppose not. Only – what three books would you have taken?

I thought about throwing you/us onto a deserted island or in an isolated cabin in the woods, but then you/we would have more to worry about than what books to read. Food, tools, medicine, is all too much to think about on this beautiful morning.

So here is the question:

If you time traveled into the future (or into the past), which three books would you take?

This time around I’m going to put restrictions on the question. Like being specific on the time period, (forward OR past), what you have in YOUR library (vs. stopping at the bookstore first), and only three books.

After all, those are the choices George had.

And, as a side, if you feel like it, are the three books the first three that came to mind, or did you think about it for a bit first?

I’ll go first. And it’s really hard.

I ran downstairs, tripping over my Tears crafts bins, and looked at my shelves. Ack! An eclectic mix, for sure. Seeing as they have to be books from MY library, for reading I’d take Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien; for art, the History of Art (1st Edition) by H.W. Janson (1982); and for poetry, The Illustrated Household Book of Poetry Charles A Dana 11th Edition,  1868.

None of these books are “modern” in the sense of the word; I’m ashamed I don’t have any current poetry or updated art books. I tossed around bringing a book of Shakespeare or Edgar Allen Poe stories and poems, but their rhetoric might not be as entertaining after the 375th read.

If I had time to think about it, or had time to run to the bookstore or library, my choices may have been different. But, for what I have, for what I would have to share with others for eternity, would be a little bit of entertainment through the ages.

After all, how could you not enjoy a happy ending?

“At last they rode over the downs and took the East Road, and then Merry and Pippin rode on to Buckland and already they were singing again as they went. But Sam turned to Bywater, and so came back up the Hill, as day was ending once more. And he went on, and there was yellow light, and fire within; and the evening meal was ready, and he was expected. And Rose drew him in, and set him in his chair, and put little Elanor upon his lap. He drew a deep breath. ‘Well, I’m back,’ he said.”

 

 

One Step at a Time

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 10 Comments
Pat Fitzgerald

I look around cautiously … my breathing slow, steady, rhythmic.

I listen … John Wick (of all movies) fighting and umph-ing and ack-ing and uh-king in the background. But that’s all. John Wick is riding a horse through city streets, no less. That’s some feat.

It is the day after New Year’s Day. Celebrated New Year’s Eve with my family, spent yesterday with my brother-in-law, reorienting him to the outside world a little. It was a good day.

I look around again … cautiously.

Has the bad luck from 2020 followed me into this Saturday matinee? Is the boogeyman waiting for me to take a misstep so he/she/it can jump on me with both feet?

I didn’t really have a horrible 2020. I lost two people I loved, which was heartbreaking. I cleaned out a hoarder house and had to give up a totally new start on my retirement plans by giving up a few projects/things I wanted to do.

I did have blessings every day. I have a partner who supports me, a dog who hangs with me, a cat that loves me. I have improved my blog ratings and found dozens of fantastic artists to share with you and cleaned places in my house that haven’t felt the dust rag or seen the light of day in 15 years. My mammogram was negative, as was my Covid test.

So the positives really do outweigh the negatives.

But I’ve also become more spacy in 2020. I have dropped more, forgotten more, cut more fingers and gotten more black and blue marks than in years previous. According to my partner I am forgetting more and understanding less. 

I find myself watching every step going down the steps and making sure 10 times the stove is off and am self-conscious walking across the snow. I get flashes of what it would be like to slip on the stairs and come crashing down a level, to slice my finger off cutting an onion, or slipping in the shower.

I hate suddenly becoming so self-conscious.

Think of all the things we did when we were younger. We all have episodes where we should have wound up in the hospital — or worse. But we played, we took chances, we goofed off and put our lives in fast forward.

I watch 2021 spread slowly across the world and my life and don’t want to live in fast forward any more. 

I find myself taking smaller bites and relishing each, individual one. I have lost some sense of smell, but take one spray of scent every morning. I text friends when I don’t really have much to say, and hang with my grandkids even when they are off playing with each other. 

2020 was a year of nightmares — but not being able to move forward is a nightmare, too.

Let’s make the most of the possibilities of 2021 — just maybe one step at a time.

 

Faerie Paths — Let Go

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 4 Comments

Luncheon of the Boating Party, Renoir

 

We must be willing to let go of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. – Joseph Campbell

 

 

Another Chance

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 4 Comments

Hot Flashes and Cold FeetAs I’m always saying, the clock ticks eternally forward. While we all notice the seconds, no one feels it as much as one who has already spent a good deal of their life counting.

I’m not going to lie. I want to live forever. I don’t have a strong, religious faith in place, so I have no idea what’s in store once I close my eyes for good. I haven’t left a whole lot behind for posterity, except maybe a refinanced mortgage and a unicorn collection. I’ve made a few people smile with my writing through the years, but standing on the beach or walking through the woods or watching a funny TV show leaves a smile on their lips, too.

And sooner or later my name will blow away in the dust of time, as billions have before me. But I will have had an accomplishment that will keep its mark in me through the Great Barrier and beyond.

I’m a grandmother for the second time.

This time my grandbaby’s entrance was a little shaky. It’s amazing how something that seems so simple on the outside can be so complicated inside. Life is a miracle. There is no doubt. How we get from a spermy and eggy into a president or opera singer I will leave to the biology majors. But so many things can go wrong on the familiar path we all walk that you have to stop and think — and thank — something, someone, else for getting all parties through.

Second grandbaby is a boy, and he and mom are doing just fine now. It brought back memories of one of my past pregnancies — one where the outcome wasn’t so positive. But that was 35 years ago, and this is now, and fate has smiled on our family and friends and brought another soccer player into the family. His older sibling is starting kindergarten tomorrow, so what a better off-to-school treat than a baby brother.

How appropriate his arrival came after my last post about Getting On Track. About sometimes feeling like a loser because I go up to the cabin to write but I often do anything BUT write.  Half way through my retreat the Goddess and Buddha and whomever else had other plans for my idle time. And it wasn’t writing. Nor was it windchimes in the breeze or naps in the afternoon.

It was welcoming another being into the world.

It was being there for mom and dad and CJ and Papa and Nana and Great Grandpa Lyle and Great Grandma Katie as the new baby came wrinkled and breathless into this world.

It was preparing the world for a new chance to get it right. It was dreams of baseball and homework and trick-or-treating with yet another child of the world. Another chance to get it right. To make the world right.

You can’t ask for a better chance for an afterlife than that.

The Gazing Ball

~ humoringthegoddess ~ 5 Comments

gazing-globe-12When you look into the gazing ball, what do you see?

Do you make a wish?

Do you see infinity?

Is it a reflection? Or an inflection?

You are never too old to look into the gazing ball.

The reflection is only the beginning.

I feel a new project on the horizon.

A new chance to

Create

Play

Research and

Wander.

What do YOU see when you look into the gazing ball?