ARE YOU REALLY LIVING LIFE?

"I don't want to get to the end of my  life and find that I lived just the length of it.  I want to have lived the width of it as well."
Diane Ackerman

MAYBE THE AMISH HAVE THE RIGHT IDEA!

 For years, I have been fascinated by the Amish.  After watching a 2 hour special on PBS about them recently, I now am more entranced than ever.  My kids live on opposite coasts and the only way I can see them for an extended period of time is to move near one of them parttime, as in renting an apartment.  This is both costly and inconvenient, but do I want to be with my kids?  Absolutely!  So this is what it takes to make that come true.
The Amish, on the other hand, never leave their families!  They live and work in the same communities for generations. They prohibit the use of telephones in their homes (altho they can use public phones), because they feel that if they could talk to others on the phone, then they wouldn't make the effort to see them in person.  And the reason they don't allow themselves to drive (altho they can drive in others' cars) is because they could then get jobs that might take them away from their families and communities.  Their whole way of being centers around the church, cooperation and looking out for one another.  There is no competition, no desire to have a bigger house or a bigger buggy than their neighbor, no me, me, me!
Do I want to be Amish and live without modern conveniences?  T0 be only thought of as part of a group and not admired or valued for who I am as an individual?  To have no choice but to work on the family farm?  Of course not!  But I do find myself frequently wishing we could go back to simpler times, when we weren't always rushing to get somewhere or to accomplish something, when we just sat out on our front porches with our families and neighbors and took life in, one breath at a time.  No multi tasking. No social media.
Our world was a more intimate place, and we were always with the ones we loved and cared about most.  Day after day, night after night.  Now, I am making plans to get that apartment in a new city, making other plans to travel to a different city to be with relatives for the upcoming holiday, making more plans to take care of my elderly parents in yet, another city...........yes, the Amish are probably looking at OUR way of life and thinking that we are the ones who are strange!
And I just might have to agree with them!

DO IT NOW!

"Each morning he'd stack up the letters he'd write.....tomorrow.  And think of the friends he'd fill with delight.....tomorrow.  It was too bad, indeed; he was busy today and hadn't a minute to stop on his way. 'More time I'll give to others,' he'd say.....tomorrow.  But the fact is he died and faded from view and all that he left when the living was through was a mountain of things he intended to do.....tomorrow."
Unknown (from the book of FIVE)

"LIVE YOUR LIFE ON PURPOSE"

From the book, FIVE:
 "Five years....260 weeks....1,825 days, 2,333,000 minutes.  What will you do with it?  What COULD you do with it?.......In just under 5 years, Michelango painted the Sistine Chapel; In less than 5 years, Shakespeare wrote 'Hamlet', 'Othello', 'King Lear', 'Macbeth' and 5 other immortal plays;  In 1961, Julia Child graduated from cooking school wtih a quirky idea for a TV show.  Four years later she won an Emmy as America's favorite TV chef;  At age 30, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was living in a 500 square foot apartment.  Five years later his net worth was $10 billion."
"You have brains in your head and feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You're on your own and you know what you know
And you are the one who'll decide where to go."  Dr. Seuss

"LIFE ENDS AT DEATH AND NOT A MOMENT BEFORE"

I am fortunate enough to still have both my parents- alive and well- at the ages of 88 and 93.  I know that I am in the minority, but it's a good minority in which to be a member!  However, my siblings and I know that the time will come, probably sooner rather than later, that we have to be prepared.  It's quite a juggling act, both emotionally and mentally, to ask our parents specific questions as to their wishes should they become incompacitated and yet, not to convey the idea that we think they are close to dying!  I cannot even imagine what it must be like to be 93 years of age and know that you're lucky if you live another 7 years!
The key here is to accept the fact that we cannot prevent death and the pain that it causes, but we can make the experience better, for both the survivors and the dying.  And that means actually planning for it!
   "The dying want to be treated as living human beings until the moment they die. But often, we 'bury them alive' by thinking of them as their diseases, by acting as if they are incapable of making their own decisions, by negating their opinions, by overlooking their desires, by withholding information from them, and by omitting them from conversations.  Without realizing we are doing so, we rob them of their dignity.  While we should never deny that the dying are dying, we should also never treat them as broken or no longer whole.  Despite their illnesses, they are still whole human beings.
When our loved ones first become sick, it is easy to see them as being whole people with a little bit of disease.  As the illness progresses, however, our loved one seems to become less of a person and more of the disease.  We begin to have difficulty seeing the whole individual.  Seeing beyond the illnesses is one of the most meaningful gifts we can give them.  It is a greater gift to ourselves."  David Kessler
Probably most of us look in the mirror and wonder who that older person is looking back at us, because we still see ourselves as young and vibrant.  Well, the same holds true of those who are dying.  We need to remember that the sick and/or dying were once young, full of hopes and dreams and life.  That is who they still are, deep inside.  Neither age nor disease has taken that away........and we shouldn't either.

LONG STORY, SHORT ENDING

I know this past week has been non-stop Whitney Houston and that has been really annoying and baffling to some people to which I am very close.  "How can they honor a drug addict and alcoholic?" they ask.  But here is how I answer that question.  The proverbial "they" aren't honoring her decline, her fall from grace, but they are honoring who she once was:  a young woman whose future brimmed with light and life.  And by her sharing her gifts with the world, she brightened all our lives as well.  We celebrated her by buying her CD's, watching her movies and yes, expecting more and more of the same.  "To whom much is given, much is expected."  As we do with all celebrities, we put them on pedestals and then when they falter from all the weight of the never ending, unrealistic expectations we put upon them, we click our tongues out of pity and disgust as we watch them fall, ever so far, down that slippery slope of what used to be.
Don't get me wrong.  We, the public, did not cause Whitney's death, nor Michael Jackson's, nor Elvis', nor Heath Ledger's or any of the others who have fallen to drugs and despair.  Even their families cannot be blamed.  Many family members tried, and tried again, to get their sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, the help they needed, but in the end, it was the person, him/herself, who was responsible for his/her own demise.
But, what's the saddest thing of all to me, is to watch the early videos of these young people, how they had their whole lives ahead of them, how they were so young, innocent and full of promise.......until they lost their way.  As they aged- a big curse in Hollywood- they couldn't put the genie back in the bottle, try as they might (ex- Demi Moore and Whitney both partied with their teenaged daughters).  Think of Whitney at age 19, where she first started out on the Merv Griffin show and look now at her 18 year old daughter.  Her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, has had to live with two drug addicted parents all her life and now, the closest person to her in the entire world, has died.  What a starting off point to adulthood that is!  Whitney, on the other hand, had a very strong mother who guided Whitney with rules and boundaries.  Whitney's road ahead of her was bright and exciting; Bobbi Kristina's is scary and full of grief.  Hopefully, because of what BK has experienced, she will have enough support around her that her star can still shine through the clouds and she can make her mom proud.  I do wish this for her.
   I think both Whitney's bodyguards- her real one, and Kevin Costner, spoke so eloquently at the funeral when they reminded us that superstars are real people, with insecurities and  anxieties, just like the rest of us. No matter how good they are at their craft, they still wonder if they measure up to others' standards.  We need to stop ridiculing them when they don't measure up anymore. It reminds me of falling in love.  Those first 6 months or so when we can barely eat, sleep or think clearly, because our brain chemicals are on overdrive (an anthropologist just recently compared this phenomenon as having the same effect on us as cocaine would!) cannot be sustained. We all know this from our own experiences.  How difficult it must be, then, to have to keep trying to top one's own hit record or movie, again and again and again, for years!
Let's just try to remember that these superstars were once young, with childhood dreams just like we had, they went to our high schools, they sang in our churches; they were, for a time, one of us.  Let's applaud their successes......only without the pedestals.
Whitney, yours was a voice that will sing through the ages.

SHORT AND TO THE POINT

I've been wanting to write my thoughts about Whitney Houston's death all week, but have just not had the time to do so.  In the meantime, I just want to quote Robin Roberts from Good Morning America:
"We have to remember that a daughter lost her mother and a mother lost her daughter."  I thought that very poignant, especially since the 3 of them seemed to be a very tight package deal.