believe

To Start Anew…

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Fall is the season that most poets considered the middle age of life.  Spring is all about renewal. Summer represents the high-falootin’ days of youth.  Winter; cold and miserable…leading to death’s door.  So said the poets of yesteryear.  Well, I am here to claim that any season, of any year of your life, could become your season to begin anew.  I myself decided that I no longer wanted to live dreading each day of my existence.  This is my short tale of how I found the courage to start afresh and find my happier life.  I hope you will find some inspiration from this and get the gumption to laugh at fear and believe in yourself.

Life begins.  You are born.  You grow.  You thrive.  Every person has had different experiences in their youth.  Many have whimsical tales of the atrocities of their youth which become hilarious horror stories to share.  In most cases, they are never as bad as what many others experienced.  We might joke about clothes passed on from elder siblings (yes, I wore my older brother’s clothing).  We tell tales of psychotic parents and the types of punishment they doled out.  Whatever the torture, we survived.  It molded us into the adults we became.  As we moved from childhood to teenage-dom there were undeniably, more challenges.

If you ask any adult now, most will say they were never as bad as the teenagers are now.  Hmmmm.  If you were to actually start thinking about (shall we call them adventures) of your early double digit years, you might find that you were also a thorn in your parents’ side.  High school and the need to belong, finding your own identity, learning, growing.  To make it even more fun, the physical changes from youth to pre-adulthood.  Ugh…I would never want to relieve those days again.  We move along to early adulthood.  Welcome to your twenties!

You are an adult.  You are dreaming big on what you want to do in life.  Oftentimes finding a job meant actually greatly lowering your expectations.  Parents still viewed you as a child.  You had big ideas on your future life.  If you were brave, you followed your dream no matter what anyone said.  If you were trained, like most of the sheep in our society, you did what you were told to do and let life slowly start crushing your rose-coloured world.  It happened to numerous people (myself included) and in many cases it was because older, “wiser” people wanted what was best for you.  They didn’t want you reaching for the stars or dreaming big because they didn’t want you to get hurt.  It was done out of love, but in the end you were miserable.  Misery bred more misery.

You might have married someone thinking:  “This will make things better!”  You jumped from job to job hoping:  “This will be the one!”  This is where many found themselves saying that glorious phrase: “Life got in the way.”  Such a sad little phrase, but many truly believed this.  I myself was one of those for a very long time and then I literally (yes literally) decided that I could take control of my life.

Practice.  Yes, it took practice and EXTREME patience.  I disliked many things going on in my life and I felt trapped.  I had not control.  I pitied myself.  Then I made the conscious effort to STOP the internal, infernal negative voices.  From there, I started focusing on what I call the “silver linings” of life.  No matter how negative things seemed to be in my life, I would find the positive.

EXAMPLE:

NEGATIVE:  Stuck in traffic  /  POSITIVE:  I was listening to an audio book so I would actually be able to hear more.

NEGATIVE:  I got rear-ended / POSITIVE:  I was hit by an honest person who paid for the repairs.

NEGATIVE:  I did what my boss told me to do and was reprimanded later for not following policy /  POSITIVE:  I learned procedure and learned who I could trust and not trust.

These may sound like silly examples, but the fact is that our society is based on sarcasm.  Comedians make fun of people.  Embarrassing people and posting it on Facebook, or YouTube, so that it can go viral, is a new goal.   Gossip at work about who is the most stupid or the ugliest is a favourite past-time.  Even the daily news focuses on the negative.  You can break free!  How?

One day, I decided that, although in the Fall of my life, I could start anew.  I could find a place that would make me happy.  Best of all, I whole-heartedly believed it.  With my whole body and soul I trusted it would happen.  Did it work?  You betcha!!

It is the place where I work now.  Timeline:  from online resume to interview to second interview to job acceptance was one week.  My new job has people who are supportive and friendly.  Yes, the job is hectic and fast-paced, but I feel alive and grateful.

Moral of the story:

  •  Don’t be afraid to start anew.  So many famous people started new careers in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond (helloooo KFC…Colonel Sanders)
  • Believe in yourself.  You have lived your life and learned many things.
  • Let go!  Sometimes not fretting is all it takes to make everything better.

 

 

 

One Step at a Time…

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“…One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind…”  Thank you Neil Armstrong. Neil will always be remembered and quoted for saying this phrase when this astronaut landed on the moon.  It is a phrase that can be applied to many phases of our lives.  The most memorable comparison for me is when I get informed that any child has gone from crawling to walking.  Yes…one small step…

I am sure you have noticed a trend in my writings regarding children.  I am amazed at their tenacity.  I adore their independence. I marvel at their simple wisdom.  We adults oftentimes lose perspective of our lives because we have been educated.  We are taught to follow certain paths in our schooling.  From kindergarten to elementary school. From middle school to high school.  Perhaps we have advanced to College courses or even University.  Education is very important and yet I admire the free spirit of the young.  Don’t get me wrong, being brought up by universal standards of quality (and the wooden spoon of “tough love”)  I can now appreciate even more the wonderful open qualities of youth.

It was repugnant to me when my parents would refer to me as the “Pepsi” generation. I believed it was supposed to mean something like “you are so spoiled you don’t drink water, you drink Pepsi.”  I still haven’t really figured it out, but it sounds about right.  (Note:  my parents never purchased name brand so that is why I assumed this was something they heard and adopted).  Anyway, every generation goes through the “you have no idea what it was like when I was growing up.”  To be fair to my parents, they were right.  They were raised in a village with many many siblings (no, not 4 or 5…try 8 or 9).  Schooling was done by grade 3 due to farming obligations.  They worked hard to make their lives better and better for their children.

Wiseguy and I had started our lives in a less-than-prominent-societal situation.  We fell in love (so cliche), but it was true.  We moved into an apartment.  No real funds.  First and last month’s rent.  No furniture….seriously….no furniture.  A room on the 11th floor of an apartment building with a wonderful balcony.  Our view of the sky was magical.  There were no buildings around us.  We could actually see the CN Tower in Toronto from our balcony is Mississauga (yes, that is a city in Ontario, Canada).  Yes, we were that weird couple that got together for love and not money.

So, our lives as a couple began as one small step.  We found each other.  We became best friends.  We knew that we could live as a family.  We decided to throw caution to the wind and move in together.  A simple one bedroom apartment.  A small starter home.  We married a year later.  There were many doubters.  There were many personal and family consequences.  Again, we decided to do what we thought and believed was best for us.  Many doubted. Many disbelieved.  There were those beautiful few who believed in us and they are always remembered and special in our hearts.

The years have passed, sometimes feeling slow but nowadays feeling so quick.  We have raised 3 beautiful children.  We look at our wonderful grandchildren and I am in awe whenever I see them.  I was once asked why I quiz children and “bother” them.  I honestly answer, “I don’t bother them.  They are smart and I LOVE hearing their answers.”

Children are magnificent!  I can tell you honestly that what they think about is waaaaaay more interesting than what you have to work on at work.  Their minds are agile and fresh and ingenious.  You used to think like that until you got pigeonholed at school.  Think the same.  Act the same.  Behave the same.

Yes, our world is comprised of structure and rules.    I am not saying this a bad thing.  However, sometimes thinking and behaving “abnormally” can be fun!  Grab a box of crayons and a colouring book but DON’T colour inside the lines.  Oh I know there are new colouring books for adults…very intricate and detail oriented.  Your mind goes CRAZY if you colour outside the lines.   Even better, get a children’s colouring book and colour a monkey purple and green and pink.  Believe me, not colouring to “specific norms” will feel really weird and almost heart wrenching.  I slowly got over the “brown monkey” syndrome when I coloured my monkey green and yellow and my granddaughter said, “Here, add some pink to his head.”  Hmmm, sharing and good advice from the eyes from a child.  Monkey can be different just like people are different.

I just received a text (yes, I am a modern Baba a.k.a. grandma in Eurospeak) that my youngest grandson took his first steps yesterday.   Little “Jumpin’ Jack” will be one on May 19th so Mr. “I’m-on-the-move” has decided that there are too many adventures in life that he needs to explore and got his groove on early.  Congratulations little JJ (Jumpin’ Jack!)  May your new elevated levels of adventure be as fun and exciting as you hope them to be.  May your bumps and bruises heal quickly.  May you always know that every adventure you undertake will always start with one step at a time.