A Measured Life

So what do you think it means to live 'a measured life'?  I've heard this said about people I know....not know well, mind you....but acquaintances. It sounds stingy to me. The image I get is one of a Scrooge-like person, barely opening a change purse to pinch out a few coins. If life were a bank account, they'd have millions saved but offer little in return. I see a scale where their heart should be. And what, exactly is the measure?  Is it a cup? A teaspoon? A tablespoon? A bushel?  Is love and compassion ladled out in measured doses? When I'm laid out in that box, the last thing I want people to say about me is that I lived a measured life.  I want them to say that I overflowed with love. That laughter with me was like a waterfall. That the dinners I cooked filled the belly and the soul. That my friends and family never felt hemmed in with me, or limited by boundaries of time or distance.  Now that I think about it, I don't usually "measure" anything. When I cook, I add a little bit of this and a lot of that. When I put a picture on the wall, I don't measure the exact distance from corner to corner to make sure the artwork is centered just so.  I don't balance my checkbook. I've never been a big fan of math. Maybe because it's measured. One right answer. Show your work. Equations. Story problems (yikes!).  Not much room for imagination or coloring outside the lines there.  My life is messy. Different segments of my life spill over into others. Sometimes I let my emotions get the better of me. I cry at Hallmark commercials. I yelp at the movies when something unexpected happens. I am not great at time management (there's that measurement thing again!). Let's put it this way: If I were a Star Trek character, I definitely wouldn't be Mr. Spock. So when I hear a description of someone's life as being measured, it makes me want to run over and muss their hair, yank their tie until it's askew, untie their shoe laces, or tickle them until they squeal.  If you're standing in line at the grocery store some day, looking all serious and counting out your pennies from your little change purse, don't be surprised if a short, middle-aged Italian woman reaches over and flicks your nose. It's just me trying to measure up.

I Can't Hear You

I recently signed up for and began receiving a Quote of the Day from The Frederick Buechner Center's website. Years ago, a very dear friend of mine wrote down the words of a famous Buechner quote that inspire me to this very day. The quote is,  'The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.'  I just sat here and re-read those words three times.  It knocks me out. I feel those words in my soul. They really speak to me and I hear them.  Every time.  So today, my Quote of the Day was about words (a passage originally published in Buechner's book, Now and Then). Buechner begins by saying that words 'get tired and stale the way people do.'  This is especially true, he says, of religious words.  Buechner uses "blessed are the meek" as an example. We've become so used to those words that we don't really hear them any more. I rolled that thought around in my head for a while. I love The Sermon on the Mount and, at first, I disagreed with Buechner.  Those words are powerful. I still feel and hear them even though they are, in Buechner's words, 'too familiar'.  But, I was willing to go along for Buechner's ride and see where he was heading. Here's part of Buechner's point: What if, instead of saying 'blessed are the debonair' we said, 'blessed is Fred Astaire in white tie and tails' ?  Paints a picture, doesn't it?  Buechner urges us to, 'arrange the alphabet into words that are true in the sense that they are true to what you experience to be true. If you have to choose between words that mean more than what you have experienced and words that mean less, choose the ones that mean less because that way you leave room for your hearers to move around in and for yourself to move around in too.'[emphasis added]  We can all talk in platitudes and even Bible verses, but until we start talking in experiences we may be doomed to mouthing empty words and phrases. There's no room to move.....for the spirit to move.  I'd even go a little farther.  We say things such as; the meek, the homeless, the poor, the LGBT community.  Who are they?  We must put faces, experiences and names to these groups. Only then will they be real, have substance, be heard! 

The Other

So I was having a conversation with a colleague the other day about, of all things, politics.  Yes, I know the subject should be verboten but we dared to venture into a realm that has become even more dangerous now than in past decades. Which brings me to my point. Even though we are on opposite sides of the fence (or the aisle if we put it in terms of our government), my colleague and I were able to have a civil conversation and even found some common ground.  Neither of us shouted or made disparaging comments about the other's parentage. We didn't try to sabotage each other at work or blame each other for the state of the state or our nation.  So why can't our chosen representatives do the same? Many of them have been together longer than my colleague and I have been. They go to work and sometimes sit elbow to elbow with other members of congress that are on a different "team".  Why can't they talk to each other and leave the rhetoric for hate radio/television?  I know this probably sounds naïve.  I prefer to label it (if I have to use a label) as humility.  We could all use more leaders and representatives who are humble.  What is it going to take for our nation to come together again?  When I was a little girl, I was terrified by and yet loved the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.  That robot, Gort, and his death ray sent me cowering under a blanket, only to peek out when my older sister said I could look again. Michael Rennie's alien character, Klaatu, was as soothing as Gort was scary. Klaatu was the voice of reason, backed up by his "convincer" -- a death-bringing, zero-tolerance-for- violence robot. Still I knew, even at my early age, it was out of the ordinary for all the people of our planet to come together like they did in the movie for Klaatu's "presentation".  It took a display of his planet's power -- to stop the Earth in it's tracks -- for people to take notice.  It also took a common "foe".  Something that made all of us "we" and the other "them". Maybe instead of aliens with the power to destroy us as "them" we could start thinking of our common problems that can destroy us as "them". Poverty, disease, depletion of our planet's resources, hate, bigotry, hunger.  You get the idea. Or maybe we could start working on that robot......

No Direction [al]

In the words of Joan Rivers (before she became a caricature of herself), "Can we talk?" I know this isn't a matter of prime importance and it certainly won't solve the problems of the world but it remains a constant source of aggravation to me. What in the world has happened to our driving etiquette? Before I start this mini-rant, let me just say that I worry about myself turning into a female version of Andy Rooney. It's scary getting older and sounding more and more like our parents and grandparents. But it's terrifying to imagine myself in a rumpled suit with errant eyebrows hunched over a desk sputtering about the old days.  I'll just have to take the risk and hope that my ramblings -- and my eyebrows -- stay under control.  My main complaint is the utter absence of directionals. Have we discovered that blinkers have calories? Have they become environmentally unfriendly? Is it just not cool to blink?  More and more I realize that less and less of us are using our directionals when we change lanes or make turns.  I've had more people cuss me out on the highway because I didn't intrinsically know that they were trying to change lanes and, when they cut me off within an inch of both of our lives, give me the one finger salute while shaking their heads at my ignorance. Really?  Or how about the people who are ahead of you in traffic and wait for the light to turn green to finally put on their left turn directional?  In this case, better late than never doesn't really apply. I'm still stuck behind you until traffic eases or until someone stops taking my blinker as a challenge and allows me to move over and get around you.  Every night on my way home from work I have to move over two lanes as soon as I get on the highway to avoid an exit-only-split that will take me to the traffic laden nightmare known as I-480.  And every night my blinker is either ignored or misconstrued as a signal for drivers to my left to speed up and block my path to merge.  The really annoying thing is that if my fellow travelers would just let me get over, I'd be one less car in their orbit, one less object to jockey around in their quest to be first and fastest, one less bozo all up in their business.   But instead, my little flashing light is perceived as a challenge,  thrown down like a gauntlet in front of aggressive, overly-competitive drivers.  People! This is not Mad Max!  Blinkers are a courtesy....a way to signal my direction intention.....a symbol of civilized society!  Okay....maybe that last one is a stretch.  But, c'mon. It's what sets us apart from other animals.  What?  Have you ever seen an ape use a blinker?  Exactly.

Raising Children

I have a refrigerator magnet that a friend gave me that says, 'Raising children is like being pecked to death by chickens'.  I might add, by chickens with dull beaks. This is especially true when our children reach deep into their teenage years and early 20s.  They seem to get the idea that if they persist long enough and ask the same question with different phraseology that the answer will change.  For example, our daughter Chelsea has been asking -- in various ways for about 3 years now -- if she can get a tattoo.  Can someone tell me what the great fascination is with body ink?  I've seen too many 60-somethings with faded, saggy body art (to go along with their body parts!) to say yes.  To be honest, I know that I am fortunate that she even bothers to ask.  She is, after all, nearly 21.  She recognizes, however, that even though she is *of age* -- she is also living under her parents' roof (rent free) and that we feed her and provide her with internet access and a cell phone.  More proof that there is no free lunch. Anyway, back to the tattoo.  I know I should let her make her own mistakes -- let her do the stupid things we all did (disco, white lipstick, tube tops).  But the difference is white lipstick wipes off, tube tops become dust rags and disco....well -- there are no videos, thankfully, of me on a checkerboard-lit dance floor.  A tattoo is permanent.  There is no painless way to remove it when you get tired of it. And if you get it where no one else can see it, why bother?  So far, I've convinced her that the human brain doesn't fully "ripen" until the age of 23.  I read somewhere that up to that age, our decision making abilities are still rather primitive. She'll be 21 in January of 2013......I have 2.5 more years to come up with another excuse.