What Makes Life Meanginful?

The opportunity to give a memory, an experience to someone else. Without reward or accolades, a shared moment. 

The chance to take an aging Father bowling so he can see, years later, that you still love the game. The opportunity to watch a young friend laugh as she learns how to play pinball. The crack in a friend's voice when they hear how important a gift they dismissed became in your life. 

  Years ago, my friend Bones gave me a black sheepskin hat. It fit perfectly. I carried it everywhere I traveled. When it was cold, there was the hat. Warm and cozy. It became a symbol or not being alone, of being safe even in the coldest winter night. When life was stressful, I turned the hat inside out and rested my head on it. He tuned out of social media, so I couldn't tell him what impact he had on my life. How meaningful his gift was. 

We aren't the people who determine what is meaningful in another person's life: we merely have the opportunity to open that door for them and sometimes we get to share the memory and gratitude with them. 

The sound in my friend's voice, when he realized he'd done something meaningful in my life, that someone had been worried about him for years and he hadn't known- it changes perspective. The world isn't such a dark or lonely place; it's the little things that have meaning and get us out of our own mental traps. 

May your life be full of meaningful moments, and may you always remember your words and actions can be gifts. 

Critical Self Maintenance

So many people are concerned with what they are entitled to, how other people should treat them, with what they should have.
Yet they don't take care of themselves. They get caught up in their own struggles, never reaching out. They get caught up in their baggage instead of putting to down. Their homes are in disarray, but they get their jobs done. They don't eat right. They don't take care of symptoms when they are manageable, instead they let things snowball until what could have been a bump in the road becomes a one way ticket off the mortal coil. They hold onto their hurts instead of healing.
Some use shopping, collecting material goods they don't need as a pacifier; others food, others drink or take their pills to keep the feelings and thoughts at Bay.
It's a downward spiral that paralyzes many.
No one can stop that spiral except you. No one can make that choice to reach out to friends and supports except you.
I know more dead people than live ones, those folks with sad ones- caught in that spiral: they wanted one thing. Not to feel the way they did but unable to see they weren't in a tunnel facing a train: they were under a night sky. They could have made so many different choices.
I have caught the news. I read the hate. I read the lives of friends accepting their spirals as inevitable.
I know they are wrong, because among the living are those who chose to reach out. Those who chose, one difficult step at a time; to start taking care of themselves. To value themselves and to take the steps to heal and really live.
Each day, I take time to organize, clean, and to make sure I take care of me. Eat, exercise, socialize, keep my environment organized and healthy.
It makes a vast difference.
Someone said to me, after not seeing me in years, they hardly recognized me: excess weight gone, focus sharp, negativity gone. What good is it to allow the unhealthy behaviors and patterns rule your life?
Life is about living, and to really live you've got to take care of you. Look around you, how do you take care of you? Treat yourself with the respect you deserve.

The Human Condition: Approach is Everything

The world pushes: faster, harder, get in line. Treat people with the utmost respect, but fuck them. Entitlement and expectation are weapons, excuses the endless defense. Labels, endless finger pointing. Who is at fault? Sorry, not sorry. Feeling cute, might be an utter piece of shit later but appearances are important?

A few years ago I lived in a tent. A friend had a generator system set up to offer electric to everyone who was living in tents. The price was reasonable. He freely taught anyone who would listen how to monitor their usage, how to pick electronics- especially fans and lights that would not cost a fortune to use. I was amazed how many people didn't ask, didn't listen and got outright outraged when their bill came due at the end of the event.

Life. Life is like that campground. Full of people, caught up in their own stories and desire to be important in their own lives. Moving too fast and pushing too hard to stop and actually evaluate what is really important. It isn't a race. Life is an experience. They burn themselves out, abuse or neglect themselves hoping someone else will intercede to save them like in a Disney movie. They don't understand that all the time they squander- they can't get a refund or stiff the bill.

How we treat each other, how we spend that time, spinning away behind us as our threads wind toward their unknown ends- that is what is key. What is truly important? Time with the people we love. Time working toward the achievements we dream of. Taking walks with friends. Sharing meals. Growing gardens. Joking and watching families be families.

I love moments where I get to witness people doing it right. A girl coming into the store with her dad, to show off a costume- a character she created and made herself. Spending her time, their time working on a dream.

Are you taking time to live? I get it. The excuses. Bills. Expectations. You can work and live. You can balance out the present between working for your future and experiencing now. The next time you feel the urge to jump into annoyance or frustration because instant gratification wasn't in your cards, step outside of yourself. Look at the big picture. Are you reacting like a child throwing a tantrum because someone carried you up a mountain but  brought oranges instead of cookies for a snack? Are you waking up each day thinking about all the things that are right in your world or are you discontent and looking to spread that feeling around?

My life has been change, it has been lessons; sometimes hard ones. I own my mistakes, and my focus is now and tomorrow. In a disconnected world, connect and be human. Sometimes when we let ourselves get caught up in minutiae we miss the real wonder life is.