Valuing Sagacity

These many years I have noticed how often journalists disparage Oprah.  From my vantage point of being of a similar age, with the same Meyers Briggs profile (INFJ), I have a clearer understanding of Oprah’s passion for “educating” people.  It’s an innate desire to help people and in Oprah’s case she has the ability to reach millions of people and there can be no doubt that she has had an amazing impact on many of these people.  I’m not deaf to how she may come across to people but I smile at her eagerness with understanding that she’s simply doing what she was born to do. 

       Ah, you may now be saying, I’m speaking out of the same manual as Oprah.  Well, perhaps I am but with rather less success.  One of my observations over the last few years is that the audience for the wisdom of age is really quite small.  In fact, it seems that only those who are also in the same age bracket are interested in learning what their peers have learned and are willing to share.  Was it ever so?  Most likely, since we all know that youth wants to learn from their own mistakes.  Dipping into Plato or Socrates we certainly find that while the youth may have sat around and listened to the old boys, they then went off to fight them some wars or poison their wives.

       There’s also a tendency as one gets older to hark back to the good old days, which is extremely boring.  That’s something wise ones ought to forego because if nothing else, it is futile.  Life ever moves forward and there is no going back.  True sagacity is learning to value those immutable truths that bring harmony, balance, peace and joy into one’s life.  Finding one’s true north on virtues, principles and morality is not simple because life is complex.  One must learn when to be flexible and when things will always, always be black and white.  Those items may be small in one person’s artillery, and larger in another’s.  Mine is not to judge or reason why.  We all value things differently.

       One firm thing in my bag of values “do harm to no one”.  It makes for an easy sleep.

Summing Up 60 Years

Now that I have reached the wise old age of 60 I ask myself “what do I know”?  I can be sarcastic and say “not much” but the truth is that in the last decade I’ve learned that one shouldn’t be afraid to be who they are, that no one is looking.  Embrace life, love nature and enjoy family and friends as much as possible.  Continue to learn and look for adventure in the ordinary.  Lastly, while one should never look back with regret, I really wish that I had learned these things in my 20’s.   How much richer could my life have been, I don’t know, but I go forth for the next 40 plus years eagerly, with anticipation.

One can make bucket lists, lists of goals, plans of all kinds but life has a way of throwing curve balls at us when we are most happy.  I’ve learned that while it’s okay to vent and even curse at the untimeliness of the ball it is useless to try to work against things one has no control over.  Rather it is wise to simply move along with the curve, fix what can be fixed and otherwise learn from the occurrence.  Learning to let go of the control button when ultimately you have no control over the matter has been a great stress reliever.  In particular I know that I have almost no control over outcomes at my place of work so it is futile to work myself into a tizzy about things that I can’t fix.  Instead, I go with the flow, and do the things that I can do well and let those who earn the big bucks figure out what I’ve already seen is a bust.  Lessons along the road of life have been learned well, rarely do I make the same mistake twice.  Having a sense of humour and the ability to laugh at one’s self is priceless.

       One thing I know for sure, joy of living is the key to a long and happy life.

       Life, I salute you!

Life in Any Lane

Have you noticed that it doesn’t seem to matter which lineup you choose, some days the luck is simply not with you?  You can pick the shortest line and just when you think you are next the person has chosen an item without a tag, or worse, she goes into a discussion about heaven only knows what while you stand impatiently tapping your foot.  Or you pick a slightly longer line but you’ve assessed that everyone only has one or two items so the flow should be fast.  Not likely, again someone decides they need to know the origins of the product, they change their mind and the cashier has to call for assistance to get a replacement product or again, who knows what the heck is going on up at the till other than the fact that it is NOT MOVING.  Choosing a lane is happenchance, some days you are lucky and others, well, you get the picture.

       Choosing how we live our life is rather like picking a lane. There are countless choices that have to be made through life, the early ones made by our parents but by the time we enter school there are things we must choose for ourselves.  Just think about how many choices you make in a day, getting out of bed, what clothes to wear, how seriously you want to wash and put on makeup, how fast you want to drive to the bus stop, where you want to sit on the bus, which stop to get off on, bring a lunch or eat out, what task to get to first, how many people you want to connect with that day, what time to leave work, what to have for supper, what to do after supper, which calls to answer; then there is the more serious decisions, like do you want to quarrel with this person, do you want to take up the gauntlet and fight city hall about a certain issue that is really bothering you, do you want to retire at what age, should you change jobs, should you go to the doctor for your check up next month?  Life altering decisions some of them, all in a day, times how many days of your life adds up to a whole lot of lanes!

       We also have choices in how we choose to handle our decisions, our disappointments, our life altering events.  By all these choices we can end up either in a state of grace or a state of chaos.  Which lanes are you choosing?

What a Wonderful World

It’s been an interesting three weeks since my last blog.  I have lived through our province’s State of Emergency feeling a riot of emotions from astonishment, disbelief, admiration, horror and relief as friends and neighbours have suffered through the Flood of the Century.  There are really no words to describe the devastation my own near town has suffered and continues to suffer but I truly admire the way Albertans have rallied around their neighbours to repair their homes and come to grip with the trauma they have been experiencing.

       I’ve also had the joy of working in my garden for the last 3 weeks which has been so wonderful and rewarding.  To see my vision of the yard come into being is beyond delightful.  Over here is the Moonlight Walk (all white flowers along the lawn border), over there is the sweetheart bed, slowly filling up with the pink bleeding hearts, deep red peonies, fire engine red begonias and petunias.  Hanging baskets echo the red begonias along with deep orange ones; pale apricot azaleas reside in black pots.  Interspersed are white marble hens and true to life green frogs.  The fish pond is still a gleam in my eye but I can picture it some weeks hence.

       Summing it all up this vacation has been a wonderful, though small, high school reunion with 12 classmates.  Extremely casual with good food, wine and talk we all made the rounds of each other for excellent catch up and getting reacquainted with each other.  It is very true that we all pick and choose what we feel is important in our lives and as I get older one of the things I feel strongly about is making connections with the people who knew me when I was young.  As part of my pre-retirement research I have read that social interaction is vital to a healthy old age and I find myself going to the next level in building those relationships.  It seems to me that the more we talk to other human beings the more we discover what a small world it really is and in the words of the late, great Louis Armstrong “What a Wonderful World”.