Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we celebrate  . . . well, something or other. Is it the pilgrims and Indians? Is it football? Do we actually look at the word thanksgiving and understand anything about it? Let's say yes to all of the above. Here are some other people's words to entertain you between courses of the big dinner. Or during time-outs on the field.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.     --Albert Schweitzer

 

Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I won't feel so thankful then. --Garrison Keillor

Wishing you a day full of the joy of living . . . with many more of the same to come.

 

WASTING TIME

Back in the days of teaching college freshmen to write essays so they could communicate with the written word in other classes and--with perseverance--graduate and even, perhaps, get a real job . . . as I say, back in those days, I had a wonderful mentor who recommended a particular textbook that I practically devoured. Lots of wonderful ideas--tons of examples from writers who knew what they were doing--meaty essays for dissection and consumption. . . .

One suggested topic was this:

• Take a vice and make it into a virtue.
  

Translate "vice" into "something lots of people think is unacceptable behavior."

That's what I'm going to do today--take the (often seen) negative concept "Wasting Time" and see if I can refocus our thinking to make it a citizen in good standing.

-----

My sense of wasting time is influenced--as I suppose it was for many of you readers--by my parents. If I was thinking about something, I was seen to be idle or doing nothing. Thus, I was chastised for wasting time when I could be doing something.

If I was doing something but not speedily, I was wasting time. After all, when that "something" was finished, I could move on to "something else."

Learning these fine distinctions, and others, was a long set of lessons known as Trial and Error. (Mostly error.)

I tried--really and truly--I tried to figure it out. But always there was something that just couldn't become clear.

Many years later, I began to get a glimmer--I was wasting something precious . . . Time. That meant, Time was to be considered worth preserving. Worth having around for a long time. To reinforce this idea, I heard "Waste not, want not." That one I got pretty quickly. Okay, if I don't waste Time, then I won't find myself in a state of want (old-fashioned expression for "lack").

As an aside--you notice that none of these discoveries came in a hurry. Go back three paragraphs--"long set of lessons"--that's what this became. Through most of childhood. And sometimes into adulthood. As I say, long.

Somewhere along the line I began to question; my thinking ran something like this:

• If Time is not to be wasted, then . . . where does it go?
• How do I keep it from disappearing?
• Does it keep accumulating? Stacking up in a silo somewhere, or a warehouse, or in an old trunk in the attic?
• And most important of all: Do I ever get to use it, all this stored-up Time?

Burning questions, I'm sure you'll agree.

-----

Looking at the subject through the lens of years lived, I can now see the fallacies sticking out all over the place.

The whole thing isn't literal. Isn't concrete. Time itself is a man-made concept. (Don't send a flock of emails telling me that isn't true. I'll agree it might not be true, but I believe it, so for me, it is true.)

Time is considered a measurable entity--nothing to be held in the hand, except as a watch or clock that measures Time can be held. The phrase "Time on my hands" was never meant to be taken literally.

And though it may be measurable, Time as we know it isn't finite. I never know how much of it I have to work with--have I used up most of "my Time" here on the planet? Is that the issue with "wasting" Time, fearing we'll run out?

-----

Now take "Wasting"--we all know we shouldn't waste our natural resources, our money, our food. But Time? 

Here's my forever, #1, Best-in-Show question: What happens if we do waste Time?

This measurable entity, this abstraction, this man-made concept--let's suppose it is possible to waste it. Do Time Police show up at the door, demanding entry to discover what I did with the Time I wasted? Will I be charged, tried, and perhaps convicted as a Time Waster? (Anyone know what the penalty is for that?)

Before you get worried, let me tell you what I believe happens. Ready?

"Wasting Time" is one of the ways we allow our creative selves room to work. 

• Artists "see" their subjects--on paper or canvas, in marble, in clay or bronze or silver or fibers.
• Composers "hear" their subjects--in the rustle of leaves or horns honking on a city street or water trickling or rushing or bursting its confinement.
• Writers "feel" the emotions they write about.
• Cooks "taste" in their minds as well as their mouths.
• Woodworkers, carvers, knitters, quilters--all "feel" the texture or strength or beauty of their materials.
• Scientists of all kinds look and think and write--and then share their ideas, think some more, experiment . . . .
• Teachers spend thinking time working out ways to express difficult concepts.

And so many more creatives go about their creative business while doing other chores and tasks.

----

Those of us who been subjected to the discipline of "Don't Waste Time!" have received a wonderful gift. Ready for this? We have been trained to multi-task. Yes, I know some of us are born with that ability. But if you weren't, and you were trying to live out your parents' teachings, you have learned to do two (or more) things at once: While you're doing something that's on the adult's approved list, you were also working out the dance steps, or the quilt pattern, or the way the roof fits onto the little shed, or what color to use when you paint the daffodils?

-----

Waste Time? By all means! You never know what you might invent or think up or turn out if you once let your creative self go whole hog. Try it!

Until next time,

Blessings

Thursday's Child

 MID-NOVEMBER . . .

Well, almost the middle of the month. Close enough.

Facebook folks are well into their month of posting daily gratitudes. Weather is changing daily--yesterday chilly; today a little warmer; tomorrow warmer still; next day cold/rainy/stay-at-home weather. 

I trawled through the long, long list of old blog posts to see what I'd said about gratitude in the past. Don't panic!! I'm not repeating an oldie-but-goodie. I just didn't want to inadvertently say the same stuff I've said before.

Why not? Because there's always something new to be grateful for. Some new blessing we didn't have last week or last month or last year. It's all part of Life Going On.

-----

So, here we are in mid-November, 2022. We're two and a half years away from the complete shutdown COVID-19 brought us in March 2020. We've had to change . . . shift . . . learn new ways to cope . . . figure things out again. Did you notice that? With so many things not happening or products not available or services altering, we had to actually pay attention to our lives. We had to take an active part in living, not just roll along as many of us always had. Now there's a gratitude for you!

Though I'm not in favor of a pandemic to remind me how to be grateful, the lessons are, nevertheless, welcome. Here are a few of them:

• new coping strategies - with shortages of paper products, foods we've always taken for granted, services we've come to rely on, finding alternatives.
• trying new procedures - order groceries online, pick them up in the parking lot of the store; call in orders for prescription refills or order by mail; "visit" a health care person by phone.
• changing habits - no "shopping in person" just to see what the store has (or hasn't); instead, learning to search online for a particular product or a type of product, possibly finding an alternative. Possibly even find a cheaper but just-as-good model, or, a better one!

Granted, all these "new" ways of behaving and living use up time--learning them, trying them out, fine-tuning. All that was time we could've been doing something else. But the positive side is this: we learned how to get along with a different way of doing things, even if they take longer. We haven't had to shut down our lives entirely; just made a few alterations.

An added plus: Some of these "new" ways are actually what we used to do, back in the day. Before Internet. Before virtual big box stores. Before hundreds/thousands of choices to go through before we came to what we wanted. In an odd way, I'm rather grateful that we had the chance to see how we coped back then.

-----

In my neck of the woods, many activities are "back to normal," as folks like to say. Which means, there's not enough concern about new variants on the same old theme of COVID to postpone sports events, holiday dinners, school dances, or family get-togethers. Weddings take place. Funerals take place. We see government leaders on TV without masks on their faces. This "new normal" may last--or not. We'll enjoy it while we can.

So I'm grateful, this November day, for (1) coping strategies learned; (2) new procedures shoring us up; and (3) a chance to change old, established habits. And (4) for reminders that we used to get things done 'way back when.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

BABY STEPS

You’ve no doubt noticed that starting something new is no easy-peasy task.

For example—you retire. Ahead of you are seemingly endless days without your former 8 or 10 or 12 hours per day earmarked for a particular task or series of tasks. So you decide to tackle something new, say, woodworking.

Great! Get some books on woodworking. Go to the library and check out their back issues of magazines devoted to the subject. Find a mentor! (That’s the best of all—good old hands-on, show-me-how teaching.) (And an experienced mentor probably has all the expensive tools you may not want to buy right away. Check out a table saw, and you’ll see what I mean.)

After a few days/weeks/months of perusing the projects available, you decide on one. But—your mentor says, “better start with something smaller” (simpler) (less expensive). And you’re already discouraged. You really want to see that small (you thought) jewelry chest come to life. It’d make a great gift for your wife/daughter/auntie. Hmmm.

Now, why should you be discouraged? Everything has to start somewhere—the biggest, most complicated, and expensive projects—all had a humble beginning.

Discouraged? Well, of course you are! If you’ve lived long enough to be approaching retirement (see paragraph 2 above) you’ve not only learned a lot along the way, you’ve been injected with the idea that NOW is the best time to do anything, and NOW is when it’ll happen.

No Practice. No Trial & Error. No Baby Steps leading to a final goal. Uh-huh.

-----

I’ve now been retired for 15 years. Seems like every day I’m learning something new—not because I forgot how to do something, nor because I’m always trying different things. No, every day’s learning comes with practicing what I’ve been doing for years and years. The take-away for me is this: The longer I practice, the more likely I am to reach beyond where I’ve always been; and at that point, I embark on a new journey of learning. Same subject. Now deeper.

Somewhere I read that writing a novel doesn’t teach you how to write the next one. You learn that when you write it. So writing a novel teaches me how to write this one—and next time . . . . More practice. More trial and error. More learning.

A similar thing happens with painting, which is my current creative activity. I watch YouTube videos, I practice, I learn something, I paint using that technique. Sometimes I remember that technique and use it again and again. Then the next week’s video goes into detail about something else, and I’m on the learning curve again.

-----

Learning also happens when we make mistakes. (Some people say that’s exactly when learning occurs.) 

• Another example from my life: I’ve been knitting since my teens. Learning as I go. Trying new things. Now that knitting is only an occasional activity, I don’t tackle ambitious projects. But I still love the process of producing knitted and purled stitches in patterns. Then comes the day when I’ve been talking with my knitting buddy and not counting stitches or paying attention, and my project has gone into some kind of fit. It no longer looks like a square dishcloth, but now resembles part of an elephant, or maybe a hippopotamus. Backtracking from my mistake causes me to practice how to un-knit, how far back to actually go, and whether I can figure out where I can pick up the pattern again.

-----

Learning can be discouraging. I’ll agree with that about 97%. But why is that?

I suspect it has several causes:
·     Pride – if we’ve learned a lot of stuff already in our lives, why should this new thing take very long?
·     Time – along with our pride, there’s the time element—it keeps speeding up (seems like) and if I don’t learn this new thing pretty soon, I’ll be too old/infirm or lose interest completely.
·      Peer pressure – really? About learning something new? You betcha. Look at any magazine article or online set of classes. How many of them say something like “10 ways to look better in a week” or “7 days to a new you” or “make this table and chairs in a weekend”? Who says it can be done in X number of hours/days/weeks? Better question: Who cares?

My approach may not be yours. But here it is, if you care to hear it:

• It takes as long as it takes.
• It may take longer if you have more to learn. (Remember, those baby steps, practice, trial and error, etc.)
• It may take longer because you get interrupted by Life. (Remember this one? Life is what happens when you’re making plans.)
• It may take longer because you have to let go of somebody else’s expectation—and here’s a good place to remember: you don’t have to tell other people what you plan to do. They’ll give you advice, keep asking when it’s done, and wondering why it’s taking so long.

-----

Baby Steps. Think about a baby learning to walk. First there’s crawling, then standing upright. Next, walking along the couch, holding on. Then a tentative step away from the edge of the couch. A step or two. Then a fall. Unless the baby is hurt, it grunts and gets up again and tries to take off on two feet, no hands. Sometimes it even giggles when it falls. Now that's worth hearing.

Most of us started out like that—so why not use the Baby Steps method the rest of our lives? It worked before.

I leave you with two more words:

• EXPLORE - what you'll be doing while you're learning
• DISCOVER - all part of learning

Have a wonderful week filled with exploration and discovery.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child