INTERRUPTIONS - PT. 2

Did you miss me last week? I managed to tangle with a virus that practically robbed me of a Thanksgiving dinner because my appetite up and left town. But I managed to enjoy a lovely dinner at my Ohio daughter's house. 

A month ago I promised you I'd come back with some more thoughts on the topic of Interruptions. The virus last week certainly qualified for the topic of the day. So here goes with Part 2..

Part 1, you may recall, covered the most likely annoyances I call Interruptions--not getting to finish my thought, my sentence, and so on.

Today--well, this is a horse of a different color. Big-time Interruptions. We've all had them. Here are a few you might recognize. Let's start back when we were kids:

• For some reason, you come home from school and learn that "we're moving." First you've heard of it. Never picked up on any clues. Nobody hinted. Just, "get your stuff together and put it in these boxes."
  
• At school--you go to class and there's a totally different person up in front of the class, sitting at the teacher's desk. You have a new teacher. How come? 
• Your best friend since kindergarten moves away.
• The school bus you've ridden ever since forever shows up with a different driver--who looks big and mean and doesn't smile like the nice lady who used to drive.

For a kid, those are Big-Time Interruptions to Life as Usual. Sometimes we know the why behind the change. Sometimes we don't. What we do know is that Things Are Gonna Be Different from Now On.

As an aside--when I ran into those things in my young life, I started to get uneasy. I mean, if those rock-solid parts of my life were shown to be crumbling to dust, what the heck else was gonna happen?

Stay tuned. There's lots more.

Okay, fast-forward, as we say nowadays, to adulthood. You're the parent or teacher or bus driver. Life seems to be rolling along pretty smoothly, considering. (Nobody's life goes only smoothly. Don't let them kid you.)

Then--whap! Interruption. Somebody gets injured in a car accident. You get a medical diagnosis you never thought you'd have to deal with. Your job goes away, for whatever reason. And life is never going to be the same again. That's Interruption.

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I hesitate to bring this up, but since some of you probably watch the news or listen to it in the car as you drive around, or get information on the Internet or from friends--one way or another, you're going to know about a whole bunch of Life Interruptions: wildfires, floods, crime, war, pandemics and other medical emergencies . . . . Whole lives changed in a short time. Families torn apart. Homes destroyed. To name just a few situations.

When we get to this point, we're talking about Life-Changing Decisions. There is, sadly, little opportunity to Go Back to what we once were. Many of us have tried that route. It's closed.

What we can do is go forward. Not, probably, in the way we thought we would go before. Maybe not straight ahead--more of a side step to find a different path. Many of us have had to experience this kind of shuffle--after a death, after the loss of a home or a job or a relationship.

And while that is the most likely way to deal with some of Life's Interruptions, it may be the best thing we can do for ourselves, our families, or our associates. I won't go so far as to say Interruptions are good--that they shake us out of our self-satisfied little rut so we don't stagnate--no, Interruptions may indeed do that, but we'll only see a positive result if we look for it. And, maybe even more important, accept it.

Time line? Heck, no! May take us all our lives. May be resolved in a few days/months/years. But we know we're on the right track if we keep on keepin' on. Who knows? We may help somebody else who's on that same rocky path keep their nerve. Always worth a try.

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There may be more to say on Interruptions, but I'm done with this subject. Next time we'll be looking at a different picture on the calendar--the days will be starting over at "1"--and if I can stay away from viruses and flu bugs, I'll be around to join you in the new month.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child

remember--forward is forward

 

GIVING . . .

Tomorrow in the U.S. we celebrate Thanksgiving Day--a time of offering our thanks for the many blessings we've received.

There's another way to look at Thanks-giving--emphasis on giving. Here's a poem by Alberto Rios, poet laureate of Arizona, that addresses that topic. I hope you like it.

When Giving Is All We Have

Alberto Ríos

                                              One river gives
                                              Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.
We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it,
We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet,
Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,
But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand,
Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.
Together we are simple green. You gave me

What you did not have, and I gave you
What I had to give—together, we made

Something greater from the difference.
 

[Copyright © 2014 by Alberto Ríos. Used with permission of the author.]

Born in 1952, Alberto Ríos is the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona and the author of many poetry collections, including A Small Story about the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 2015). In 1981, he received the Walt Whitman Award for his collection Whispering to Fool the Wind (Sheep Meadow Press, 1982). He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2014 to 2020.

 

 BABY STEPS

[We've become such a society that expects immediate results and instant gratification that I fear we're in danger of remembering some simple ideas--such as, learning takes time.]

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.

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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.

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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.

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    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.

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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

 

 WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES!

That's the name of an old love song, but today I'm not going to explore romance--I want to talk about how much can happen in "24 little hours."

For instance:

• trees that last week had a full compliment of leaves--all colors, including green, are now nearly completely naked
• what used to be a shade tree is now a skeleton--still lovely in its own way, but definitely providing no shade whatsoever
• last week I wore a lightweight denim shirt for a jacket when I went outside; today, I've broken out the lined winter coat that's long enough to cover my tush
• also rummaged through the closet for a long scarf to wind around my neck a couple or three times
• along with the longer lined gloves that have been waiting their turn
• and, to round out the chilly-days wardrobe, the ear warmers (like ear muffs but worn around the back of the neck instead of over the top of the head)

And that's not all. Our current menu has shifted into winter mode:

• Tuscan Bean Soup--full of turkey sausage, cannellini beans, onion, chicken broth, and a bunch of spices and herbs
• rice and pasta dishes: risotto; mac 'n' cheese
• a few frozen dinners - we're partial to Saffron Road oriental meals with rice--dinner in less than less than 8 minutes in the microwave
• also gluten-free pot pies--best done in the conventional oven to brown the pastry
• and the ever-present roast chicken and roast veggies

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I'll admit, all the above didn't happen in a 24-hour period. But it sure seemed like it. Remember the old saying? "If you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes and it'll change." Well, right now, it's "If you don't like the season, wait a day or two and it'll get worse."

We're definitely on the slide down to the winter solstice. October flew by. November is a shorter month, with things going on (elections, Thanksgiving dinner, a family birthday), including the preparations many people make for Christmas. (We often see folks hanging their outdoor lights on Thanksgiving Day afternoon.)

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In order to hang onto whatever grip I have on reality, I try to go with the flow of the 24 hours. Do what I can--what needs to be done--maybe even do some early prep for a later 24-hour period. So if you don't see much of me, remember--I might be inside the house trying to keep up with the differences that rush my way that day.

Wishing you the fortitude you need to press forward.

Blessings,

Thursday's Child