Face-to-Face as Life Adjusts

 'While the pandemic has created a bubble of semi-solitude that, for some, has allowed for clarity of introspection, it has also fostered an increased dependency on technology. As we reached out to friends near and far over email, phones and Zoom, we have connected but have also reinforced our isolation. And we have become comfortable with it. Like donning a too-small sweater, we stretched its sleeves to make it seem more comfortable.'

I wrote this today in response to Diana Baur's post on Medium.com, Romance and Privacy in Overexposed Times. 

Cell phones travel with us, keeping company with the ubiquitous water bottle we never seem to be able to leave at home. They tether us to a form of human contact that has nothing at all to do with companionship. 

We 'touch base' and 'check in'. We scroll through Instagram and Facebook for snippets of someone's day, pleased that they had a good time, but not entirely happy, in comparison, with how we spent ours even though we did exactly what we wanted to do.

I have become fascinated with the psychological effects of the pandemic that has been with us for more than a year and a half. In setting out to discover the changes to my own habits, I fear that some may have become permanent and that aspects of my pre-pandemic mindset have altered in ways that will restrict my future desires much as the mandates and precautions have changed my present actions.

The desire to travel, something I consider one of the important aspects of my life, has been tamped down by virus restrictions and slow recovery around the world. I still add to my planning book for the next adventure, soak up words in books written in and about Italy and keep my meager language skills alive with dubbed documentaries and Duolingo. I am hopeful that I can return to the part of the world that holds half my soul in its hands.

My reality, right now, is very different than it was when I returned from Rome on March 1, 2020. I stepped off the plane looking forward to a return to Europe in mid-March. Then the world started tipping on its axis and what seemed a minor inconvenience became a major upheaval. It seems so long ago and where have we gone since then?

Inward.

That is a good thing but also what I fear. That time ticked away in semi-isolation will forever change my outlook and that of others. Vaccinations have eased concerns a little, but I still see the hesitation on both sides of an anticipated hug. My small weekly group of girlfriends went to extraordinary effort to see each other last winter when we gave up on Zoom and sat huddled under blankets around an outdoor fire on blistering cold nights just so we could see each other face-to-face (or partially face-to-face, as it were).

We adjusted. We stocked up on scarce things. We stopped shopping as a means of entertainment, concerned that stagnated jobs might dry up reserves altogether. Libraries were closed and online services stepped up as books were downloaded to pass the time. Stores closed. Restaurants, too. Even parks and museums. 

Since then, we have become accustomed to doing without extraneous things, and that money we feared would dissipate, actually stuck around. 

Habits altered to fit the circumstances. Many cleaned and purged, going from selling clutter on Facebook to offering it on FB Buy Nothing pages. Charitable mindsets strengthened. As I explore the aspects of my altered life, I will discover more nuances, some that I like and a few I will miss. My travel bug? Well, circumstances being what they are in my life, I am tied to home for the foreseeable future. But I will nurture it carefully so that I am ready when the next chapter begins.

The Only Constant is.....

There is a rime of frost on the deck railing. The ground is painted with it. The rising sun has begun to clear a path through the trees and it illuminates the bark of its neighbors deeper into the woods than before.

It is November and winter is close by. Our first snow was in October and it created an ethereal world of unique color. Change is in the air, at least for nature.

Thinking back over the past too-many months, we have adjusted to many changes of our own. Summers, for instance, have always had days filled with laughter and camaraderie, food grilled and shared, close conversations murmured late into the night in front of flickering bonfires. Trips to the beach, travel to foreign lands, hugging and touching and connections made without a care in the world. Our winters, with layers of snow insulating us, kept us mostly indoors as we shared tables groaning with food and cozy visits where we removed our snowy boots in the hall and reached for warming cups of tea after a generous hug. We read, make puzzles, cook sustaining meals, and think.

There has always been a natural balance to our seasons and it is missing this year. Many of us have been too much in our heads for most all of this year. Although it began optimistically, the days and freedoms quickly narrowed to one place and a reluctant sameness ruled. We did what we needed to in order to keep others safe from the virus. In the process, we discovered what we were missing most in our lives. Some things were revelations, others a deep pain to the heart. We have been separated from those who need us most, each of us having to shoulder burdens of grief and distress virtually alone. As the numbers rise, I feel weary of our careful restrictions, but plod on for the good of my family and friends.

I told myself that I am okay with more solitude, okay with phone calls and listening to the joys of others expressed through a handheld device instead of in person. But while I was okay with it for a while, I no longer feel that way. I am missing so much that it hurts.

A big part of this is that my brother’s 62^nd birthday was this week. He died in July. We watched his Ohio funeral on You Tube. As I went through my stash of birthday cards last week, I pulled out Jim’s, smiling at the message. He will like it. I went back through the stack twice more, looking for Jon’s. I always buy my brothers' cards at the same time.

Then I remembered. Tears have been gathering ever since.

I miss hugging something awful.  When the nurse cradled my arm against her hip as she took my blood pressure a few weeks ago, I drank in the feeling of contact. Someone laughed in another room and it felt remarkable. Sue and I, safe for each other right now, worked on a puzzle together for the first time since last winter. It felt marvelous. I am keen on noticing these small pleasures. I drink them in as I would a spectacular sunset. Solitude, something I treasure, a state where I am my most creative, I now find burdensome. I need to find a way out of all this waiting.

I do not mind the thick blanket of leaves on the ground this year as they signal another passage of time that might allow us to reach some semblance of normal soon. I scuff through them on my way to the studio, releasing their crisp autumnal fragrance. I dig out the cozy afghans, draping one over my legs as I settle into the corner of the couch to read. I cook – even better than before – winging it and writing details down when the flavors prompt us to scrape the juices off the plate with a heel of bread. I have forsaken TV in favor of soothing nature films and vlogs on You Tube. They calm my anxiety over what I cannot control and reduced the plethora of negative commentaries filtering into my brain during this contentious month. I bake bread, learn new things. I clean my home and purge out the unused and no longer necessary. I meditate, stilling my fractured mind. I accept what I cannot change (sometimes not particularly gracefully) and pay attention to the blessings that will console me when times are difficult.

It is still too early to put the birdfeeders out. Bears are roaming, foraging for their last few meals before hibernating. Once they do, winter will bring the pleasure of birds nearer to my windows. The cooling air brings with it cozy nights and snow-blown days. Whiteness offers a refreshing vista. The slate is clean for a while. I can draw what I want on it. 

I do not want this winter to have the sameness of the previous nine months, or even the sameness of last winter. With the snowfall, I will clear my own slate in order to welcome new experiences, new thankfulness.

Trying to Understand

My words are stuck in my throat this morning and writing is my only solace for the welling of emotions careening in my head. I can't seem to stop writing. I feel like someone or something died and I need to make sense of it. 

I hardly slept for checking the updated election results throughout the night. Got a few hours towards morning. While my forty minute drive into work this morning looked the same, it sure didn't feel right. 

I have always felt so proud of my country and this election has uncovered things I never even contemplated about how half of our citizens may feel and think.

One can only hope that the rhetoric of his nasty campaign was the result of the heat of his battle, but it is hard to forget his words or actions when contemplating his true nature or to imagine his plans for our country and our relations with the world.  I am still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that there are so many people in this country - who are so different from the people I know - who feel such hatred and bigotry. I am stunned. It has been quite the revelation. 

On the other hand, half our society feels strong, responsible and open to diversity of both people and thought. I'm with them. If nothing else, this has pushed me to dig deeper, be better, be stronger, and more involved.

Rambling, I know, but just trying to work things out in my head and having an awful time of it. 

Life and the Gross Domestic Product

Via www.rowdykittens.com

I just began Tammy Strobel’s book, You Can Buy Happiness (and it’s cheap), yesterday after giving up on the soft mush of Memories from Acorn Hill. I finished the first short story in which everything turned out peachy but couldn’t get more than a chapter into the other one before realizing that reading it would be more of the same and I would gain nothing from the exercise. Life is too short to eat milk-toast.

So I moved on to a non-fiction book for a change of pace. Tammy, who has a blog I check in on frequently called Rowdy Kittens, has pulled all her research and her lifestyle changes into a new book. I am only on page 40, but she has already given me lots to think about.

In her personal life, she has simplified to the nth degree. She and her husband live in a 128 sq. foot home on wheels that they built. Minimal space means minimal clothes, minimal furniture and minimal tablespoons. She loves her lifestyle and I presume her husband embraces it, too, although I am not sure of his thoughts.

Since I have been simplifying for the past two years (but not to this extent, obviously, as one peruses our home), I understand the benefit of removing clutter in both the physical environment as well as within my mind. As things become fuzzier as I grow older, I think this will be all the more important to me. There is also the time lost on maintenance and cleaning to consider. I do not like to devote more time than absolutely necessary to the chores. I want to open up my time to experiences. Hence my dilemma and subsequent epiphany.

An economics major, Tammy has the stats to back up her words. She also quotes other writers and statesmen. This statement from Robert Kennedy gave legs to my thoughts and backbone to my decision to minimize, not only my things, but my exposure to the excessive materialism and the mind-warping violence and ridicule on TV that has become so prevalent.

The first comment is Tammy’s and the second part is quoted in her book. I included the first paragraph of Kennedy’s words because it is also relevant to my point of view.

Below is a quote from Bobby Kennedy on what the Gross National Product means and more importantly what it does not mean.  He would have a made a fine economist...

 "Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. 

"Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans." 

Robert F. Kennedy Address, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, March 18, 1968

As Tammy drills down to her own place of happiness and hones her point of view, I benefit from her observations. Her words resonate with me. Food for thought and they take up minimal physical room.

So, as she delves further into the issue, she questions the wisdom of excessive growth, not only with the GDP, but also on a personal level. The more we make and the more we buy does not increase our core happiness.

Money is not the measure of our contentment and happiness, our experiences are. Things are, well, just things. A bobble-head may remind us of an excellent sport’s event but does it make us happy? Going to the event would. Buying an artificial flower arrangement to match our living room might look nice for a while but then it would just be part of the scene. Bringing in a handful of flowers from the patch we grew by the back door would enchant us every time we walked by it. Once past its prime, a new and different bundle could appear, appreciated for its own uniqueness and brevity of appearance.

It occurs to me that it is unfortunate that we raise our children during the time period of our peak acquisition. We are buying homes, furnishing them, decorating them. We buy toys, swing sets and different sized bikes in rapid succession. We renovate. We move, prompting more acquisitions. They see us buy out of boredom, replace perfectly good cars and fill closets, theirs as well as ours, with clothes. They embrace all this buying and expect something in every store they are dragged to, often becoming frustrated to tantrum level when the random object of their desire is not forthcoming. Then they see their parents buying what they want and the seed is planted. ‘When I grow up…,” becomes an internal mantra and a habit is born. Buying things will make me happy. When I don’t get them, I am angry/sad.

Now, I have no basis in fact to substantiate this next thought and I will learn more with research, but in cultures with extended families close by and where grandparents, aunts and uncles are part of day-to-day living, is the acquisitive influence diluted? For instance, I think we can assume that grandparents are in a stage of life where they pretty much have all they need. They are comfortable with their furniture, have knitted a few afghans to keep warm on chilly nights and they are down to four coffee mugs in the cabinet. Lamps may have seen better days but they see no point in replacing them. The books that line their shelves are fewer than were there in earlier years but are old friends. Pictures lining the wall are of family. Friendships, not things, give them the most pleasure. Family antics make them laugh. Crayoned drawings are taped to their refrigerator.

I think back on the years when my children were growing up. We bought a home, painted, put up wallpaper and decorated while my son was little and my daughter approaching birth. Finances were tight so we made do and did for ourselves. Visits to parks were more the norm than forays to stores. Playing outside was fun and the swing set was in the grammar school playground. We traveled to see family, hooking side trips to the seashore onto the journeys. After a number of years, we built a house in another town and moved. Things were better, our jobs providing more money to spend. Saving wasn’t on the horizon yet. We bought new furniture. While my son was in school and my daughter on half-day kindergarten, I shopped after school let out. She went along on my forays to buy fabric and placemats. I made curtains and pillows. I bought things to decorate our home –a lot of things – it was a country haven, befitting the time, complete with Shaker pegs to hold stuff on the wall when the other surfaces were full.

My son shuns excess stuff in favor of his passions. My daughter fills her home with things. I am getting the picture.

Facing up to responsibility is uncomfortable. I can see how my actions may have subconsciously influenced them. Don't get me wrong, it wasn’t all materialistic. I am glad we filled their childhood with experiences, too. They each have varied interests and a love of the seashore and appreciation for bed and breakfast inns. Visits to parks, boating on lakes and exploration in different areas has had an impact on their lives – I see it now in their choices. I am glad that I never felt the need to buy trinkets emblazoned with logos to remember every trip. I am glad I never felt the compulsion to collect figurines (oh, whoops, there is the Christmas village I put up every year during the holidays). I have had way too many books over the years (all but my favorites have now been sent out into the world for other readers to enjoy). I still need to attack my closets so I am thankful for doors that close tightly. My art supplies will never be reduced except by use.

There is balance in every life, mine and theirs included. Some tip one way or another as we each work through our stages. The groundwork is laid earlier than I thought. Was my mother’s habitual Saturday shopping day part of my foundation? Perhaps. But so was the frugality of those early years when money was tight and we made do. I count myself lucky to have had those days when my best Christmas present of all time was the Barbie clothes my mother painstakingly made for months on end and getting a bike was a really big deal. I have carried the necessity of that philosophy in my pocket my whole life. It colored many of my decisions. I also had the benefit of two grandmotherly points of view when I grew up. One was frugal and loving, the other more critical and cheap. Although at a distance and not visited more than a few times a year, they both had an impact on my development.

Perhaps if there was a Tammy earlier in my life, I would have understood my impact on others more fully and trimmed my sails. Would have saved me from going through this exercise of purging now and, I am sure, enhanced my life’s experiences in the process. Live and learn...again.

It is now obvious that it would have influenced my children’s values as well.

Now that I look back with open eyes, I see that my experiences and growth were probably like that

From www.notesfromtherock.net

of many others of that time. I don’t know if it is my time of life that is dictating my shift in course or the times which are changing because of the accessibility of different points of view via the internet. All in all, there are few things I would alter because, ultimately, they made me who I am. I would have assessed my materialism differently, though. My personal search for happiness was impeded by it and I never knew. As I watch my children make their own choices, I both applaud and lament.

I wouldn't be a mother if I didn't.

 



Perspective in Creation

Toulouse, France

Recently I read a post on A Certain Simplicity where Diana questioned the challenge of change and the driving force behind it.  Whether creative or situational, change is fraught with dips and valleys and can just as suddenly soar you over the top of known experience.  It got me to thinking about it from my perspective.

It is our creative self which strives for more and that won't change as long as we live and think. If Michelangelo was not driven to improve his creations, painting and sculpting again and again, chasing the elusive perfection he craved, would he have grown? Would he have been happier sitting back and contemplating what was done, looking no further? When he took pause, what were his thoughts? Reflection or progression? What of the others? Our creative inner workings build on what we do now and what we did in the past and we have an opportunity to savor the process. That doesn't stop our minds from looking at things from different angles, imagining subtle adjustments which will be filed for future use. It is the foundation for our discontent with things as they are. We are c-r-e-a-t-i-v-e. This is what we live for. It comes with the territory.

In some matters, yes, good is good enough. The glaze may be a little off but it gives us food for thought for next time. Imperfections and repairs may be obvious to others (we imagine) but are in fact virtually invisible in the scheme of things. They are what gives our lives character. A little roughness in our physical surroundings hurts no one and allows us a place to rest without feeling uptight. I love to garden. In the past ten years, I have learned that perfection has no place in a garden. Now I carry that inside and know that, while I 'should' paint that wall and 'should' fix the trim, it doesn't change the pleasures wrought within these walls. The same goes for my art. As Diana so aptly put it, I can relax. My mind whirs with ideas and I would be so grateful if I could pursue even a small portion of the projects in my mind's stash.  Regrettably, I don't have a patron to foot the bills. I pick my battles, let go and enjoy what is. It doesn't quiet my mind, but it gives me more pleasure in the process.

And isn't the process of living what matters most?