One day at a time…

June 27, 2014

“Count each separate day as a separate life.”  (Seneca), as seen on the Jack’s Winning Words blog.

It actually should be easy for us to do this, if only we didn’t have the tendency to carry over yesterday’s issues and problems. Life is more like a serial TV drama or the old cliff-hanger serial movies for many of us. Yet if you start each day with the attitude that this day IS your life, maybe you’d be more inclined to live it more fully, love those around you more fervently and enjoy just being alive more freely.

I think there are insects that basically have a one-day lifespan. There entire life is lived out in that day, so it is a frenzy of activities, including mating and laying the eggs for the next one-day generation to come. I suppose that we shouldn’t live each day like that, but if you appreciate and treat each day as if it was your last day on earth, perhaps you would be better able to appreciate the things and people around you and not dwell so much on negative things.

man daydreamingI wouldn’t recommend spending too much time daydreaming about what you might do if you knew that each day might be your last; that, after all would be wasting the precious time of that day. Rather, start each day with the mindset of meeting new people, making new friends, helping new people, dong new things, taking in new sights and sounds and flavors, learning new things – essentially being alive and being more aware of it. Many of us don’t start each day that way and wander through the day like zombies – animated but not really alive.

I’m reminded by this saying of the movie “Groundhog Day” in which Bill Murray is stuck in a cycle of each day being a repeat of the same day – Groundhog Day. In that movie, Murray’s character becomes aware of the situation and uses the constantly repeating day to train himself in medicine and on how to play the piano and other thins that he would not otherwise be able to do. While it is impossible to get as much done as he did by repeating the same day over and over, it is possible to learn something each day, to do something each day to be a better person, to help someone or to make progress on something like learning to play the piano. Like Murray’s character, you need to be aware of what you can do and set out to do it.

So today is today. Yesterday is in the past and worrying about tomorrow accomplishes nothing happy dogtoday. Put your focus upon living today like it is your life, because for all you know, it is. I start out each morning with a ritual that involves my dog Sadie. She jumps up on the bed and we celebrate the fact that it’s a new day and we both woke up this morning. The celebration involves a lot of petting of Sadie, which starts her day off right and there is little better way to start my day that getting some of the unconditional love that a dog can share, even if it does involve a lot of licking.

I’d love to stay and chat some more but I’ve got a life to live today. I’ve enjoyed this time that we spent together, but now I have things to do, people to meet and places to go – a life to live.

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Posted by Norm Werner

“Eleven Hints for Life” – 1 of 11

March 10, 2014

1. It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return. But what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel. – Unknown

This is the first of 11 posts based upon this little string “11 Hints for Life” that I found while searching for quotes and saying about life. You can go find all 11 now if you wish by just Googling the title; but I intend to take them one by one and delve a little deeper into each one.  Most of them tend to revolve around relationships that one can have as we go through life.

The first hint can be viewed from many different angles, but the result is always the same. Whether it is a parent or sibling or it is a potential life mate. The point is not to wait to tell them that you love them. It is always especially poignant to hear someone say at a funeral, “I never got to tell him that I loved him.” That happens a lot in families. We grow up and grow distant. We get involved and focused upon ourselves and our lives and often forget to tell those who raised us that we still love them, until it is too late. The same can happen with brothers and sisters.

In most of those family cases, it’s not that you aren’t loved in return; it’s really that both of you have just forgotten to express that love to each other. The enemy of love is not hate, it is apathy. Stay in touch and never miss an opportunity at family gatherings or wherever to let those that you love know how you feel.  Don’t let family funerals become “coulda, woulda, shoulda”-fests about never getting to say “I love you.”

But what of those who aren’t family and for whom we feel that we have love and yet cannot seem to find the way to express it to them.  The reluctance to express your love for someone is usually driven mainly by the fear of rejection; the fear of the embarrassment of laying your heart and soul open and on the line and having both trampled by rejection.

I recall one of those pop-up proposals that sometimes make the news or which occur in the middle of an event of some sort and are captured on video for all to see later. In this case the young man dropped to one knee, opened a ring case and asked the young lady, “Will you marry me?” She said, “No.” Wow, how must that guy have felt? That is the nightmare that we have that causes the fear of expressing our love in the first place.

Unrequited love is often a misguided, one-sided affair that is mainly in our minds. Many times, especially in the young; it may really be lust or infatuation and not really love. Love takes time to develop and mature. The old saying, “It was love at first sight”, is not really true. It could be that you like someone at first sight or even were attracted to hen at first sight, but love – I don’t think so. Love comes from below the surface and you don’t get below the surface on first sight.

A relationship that can eventually turn into mutual love can also start out horribly out of sync. One party can be way ahead of the other in the relationship and in their feelings, at least in their mind. It is important to understand that when it happens and to try to get a handle on where the other party is in the relationship. You can’t just walk up to someone who may barely know that you exist and blurt out, “I love you.”  That’s not what the opening quote is trying to say. Getting up the courage to eventually say,” I love you” starts with getting up the courage to say, ”Hi, my name is…” and goes on from there. Give love time to develop in both parties. If it is meant to be, it will be. The first step to love is friendship.

Unrequited love may also be a consequence of the circumstances. Perhaps the person that you feel love for is already in a relationship with another. You have to accept that and move on. If you can, file those feeling s away, in case you need them again in the future. Think of how many stories you’ve heard about people getting back together after both had separate lives with others, yet they still had love for each other somewhere in the backs of their minds. By the time that they got back together they were also mature enough to really understand what love is.

Obviously, dealing with unrequited love is easier said (and written about) than done. Thousands of books, articles, poems and songs have been written about it, but is still hurts when it happens to you. It is important that you accept that and move on with your life, rather than letting your feelings for that person become an obsession. Obsessions tend to be crippling things that do no good in our lives. We have all at least heard the term stalking. Stalking is what can happen when unrequited love becomes an obsession. Have you ever heard of a good ending in a case of stalking? If you are at that tipping-point in an imagined relationship or have already begun to stalk someone, it is time to get some serious help. Fortunately, things don’t usually go that far.

So, I guess the bottom-line hint for today is to find a way, the best way for the situation, to let those that you have love for, know of your feelings. You may have to work at it, if the relationship is out of sync to begin with or it may just be something that you need to say to a family loved-one at every opportunity that you get. Either way, don’t end up regretting that you never told that person that you loved them.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Reflections about life…

March 8, 2014

I came across two quotes that I really like because they focus upon a couple of aspects of life that we need to understand or at least acknowledge. The first saying deals with the need to think about things and plan a bit in life –

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser – John W. Gardner

At its most basic level this little quote is saying that in life we get no “do-overs”, there is no eraser; no ability to say “Ooppsie, can I do that again?” I thought almost immediately about a toy from my childhood that is still popular today – the Etch-A-Sketch. What a fun, and at the same time frustrating, toy that was. You could make really neat drawing on one, draw anything really; however, you absolutely had to really think it out and plan it out ahead of time, because there was no way to pick up the etching stylus inside and move it to a new location. It would be like putting your pencil on the paper and not being allowed to lift it again until the drawing is done. You can now get Etch-A-Sketch as a free app for your smartphone, if you’re up to dealing with a lot of frustration, give it a try. And as inspiration for what can be done without an eraser, click here to see a gallery of Etch-A-Sketch art or here to watch a YouTube video of an Etch-A-Sketch in action, albeit in the hands of a very patient artist.

When you think about it life is like that. Time is our stylus (or pencil) and we don’t get to stop time and go back or erase what we’ve done, if we’ve drawn ourselves into a corner. Our pencils are on the paper, so to speak and we can only move forward through time with the drawings that are our lives.

The other saying that seemed to fit is this one that is also about time –

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards – Doren Kierkegaard

Our lives are often analyzed by looking back over events or decisions; it’s sort of like the stock market where everyone’s an expert on what happened yesterday and no one has a clue what will happen tomorrow. Actually the expert opinion about what caused the rise or dip in the market yesterday is subject to widely different interpretations; so there really aren’t any experts on that either.

What we strive to do sometimes is to look back at situations and reflect on our own actions. Why did we do that? What did we say that? What was I thinking? Reflections like that on the past help us organize and archive or experiences and thoughts about them into our knowledge base and eventually jell into what we call wisdom. Of course, by the time many of us become wise, the thing that we are wisest about may well be how differently things might have been had we only known then. There is a thin line sometimes between wisdom and regret.

I think one take-away from combining the thoughts from those two quotes is that you need to think things out before you draw a mistake into your life and that one way to help with that is to reflect upon, learn from the past and build your storehouse of wisdom; however, you cannot spend all of your time reflecting upon the past nor planning for the future; you have a today to live, so get on with it.

 

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Posted by Norm Werner

Life’s not a carnival…

February 20, 2013

“If everything’s a carnival, there’s no carnival left.” (Victor Hugo), from the Jack’s Winning Words blog. In Jack’s post he explains that Hugo was using the word carnival within the context of the times, which referred to the heavy and lady in carnivale costumeoften decadent celebrations right before Lent – sort of like what takes place in New Orleans and Rio. I’m sure that Fat Tuesday is often followed by Hangover Wednesday in both places.

In the broader context I suppose that if life just one big party to you then there’s nothing special about going to a party. Vacations, for instance, wouldn’t seem so special if we all lived in the sunny, tropical places that we love to visit. Graduations are only special because of the work that it takes to get to that day. Special events and special days in our lives are special because they are out of the ordinary, everyday experiences.

We hear occasionally of someone’s life being a “whirlwind”, which may be another way to say a carnival; but, not necessarily in a good way. Usually we hear about someone’s whirlwind lifestyle after something has happened to cut their life short. It is then that we look back on what looked at the time to be such a wonderful life and take pity on the poor soul that was trapped in that whirlwind. How often have we learned after they were gone at relatively young ages how miserable some of the biggest stars of the sports and entertainment world really were? They looked so happy while accepting the accolades or prancing down the red carpets of their whirlwind lives.

So, be happy that your life’s not a carnival, because that makes finally getting to the carnival all the more fun.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Thinking about a life not lived…

August 26, 2012

I’m attending my 50th high school reunion in September. One is given pause to reflect on a life lived since high school, especially since the organizing committee had ask for a write-up about what you’ve been doing since high school. That was a daunting task – trying to summarize a life lived in a page or two.

I got to tell my stories of going off to college, meeting and wedding the love of my life, going off to exotic places (Iran) and dangerous places (Viet Nam), having children and a career in business, living in several states and finally settling in to Milford for a great life in the Village of Milford.

Recently I got an email from the reunion organizers listing people from our class that they could not locate and people that have died.  Sadly, my best friend from high school was among those listed as deceased. I was really sorry to hear that, since I was looking forward to talking with him about his life. I went off to college at the University of Illinois and he, on a full-ride scholarship headed off to Harvard. I only saw him briefly once after we both left, during the summer break between our freshman and sophomore years at college. He was struggling a bit with both the academic load and the fact that even having a full-tuition scholarship didn’t really cover the cost of going to Harvard. I guess I’ll never know how is life turned out, but he did live until a few years ago, so at least he had a life.

One of the other names that is on the deceased list was a guy I knew, but wasn’t really buds with in high school. From what I can tell he went off to Viet Nam and was an early casualty there. That started me thinking about the consequences of a life not lived. There was a romance and marriage that never took place and children that were not born. There was work that someone else did in his place, little league games that he didn’t get to attend,  a church pew just a little more empty because he was not there and so much more. Who can say for sure how his home town or state or even the nation might have been changed had he come home from that war. I suppose that the same “what if” thoughts can be had about any life that is cut short like that.

I’ve decided that I’ll not spend my time at the reunion guessing what might have been; there’s to much catching up to do on what actually was. I’ve been getting some indications from email and Facebook postings about the lives of some of my old friends from High School. Of course, I’m sure that none of our teachers from that era remain alive; which is a shame, since it would be nice to go back and thanks them for the start they gave me.  I’ll post again after the event to let you know how it went.

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Posted by Norm Werner

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