Lane 8, Impossible?

“When everybody tells you that you are being idealistic or impractical, consider the possibility that everybody could be wrong about what is right for you.” — Gilbert Kaplan

Spring Grove, Pennsylvania

Mid Life Celebration readers, I am pleased to introduce our Guest Blogger, Lorie Sheffer, from York, Pennsylvania. Lorie and I graduated from Spring Grove Area High School in 1997 1977. Lorie has a spin on midlife that will entertain and enlighten you. You are in for a treat. Take it away Lorie….

My email box usually contains at least one “Stupid, clueless men” joke a week, sent by my gal pals. The most recent: Q: What is gross stupidity?  A: 144 men in one room.

This is one of the kinder jokes. Most involve man parts and the use/misuse of said parts. I’m not so politically correct or dishonest as to say some of this stuff isn’t pretty darned funny. But underneath it all there is this undercurrent of a battle of the sexes as to who has it rougher, especially when it comes to aging. As a woman who has always had male friends, I seem to find myself defending men more and more often these days.

I was out shopping with my grandson a few years ago and the check out girl at the grocery store, when speaking to him, referred to me as “Mom”. “She’s my grandmother”, Carter corrected her. I actually looked into that sweet little face of his and asked him to “Shut it!”  Actually, since I am trying to be honest, it was more of a hiss. Was I becoming so age obsessed that I had hoped if some kid who had an after school job checking groceries mistook grandma for mom that magically made it so?  As if “Grandmother” is a dirty word.  No wonder my grandson looked puzzled. To a small child, Grandma equals magic!

This was about the time the realization hit me. We women are so obsessed with our changing hormones and expanding waist, our hot flashes and our mood swings, we seem to forget that aging is no picnic for the men, either. We tend to talk about it, while men seem to remain quiet for fear of appearing weak. Notice what the overwhelming theme of the commercials are when “guy shows” are on TV. They usually involve a 50-something couple in claw foot bathtubs (I still don’t understand the tubs), baby boomers giving one another “that look” before dancing down the hallway toward the bedroom, or my personal favorite, the teenaged girls advising newly divorced Dad he would be dateable if he used some man-color on that gray hair of his. (Maybe someone should tell Mr. Clooney and Mr. Gere they would be attractive to women if only they hit the Grecian Formula.)

I honest to God have a male friend who colors his chest hair to cover the gray.  If men aren’t lucky enough to have hair TO color, then surely they can send for some Rogain. Because, grand sense of humor that God seems to have, men start to lose hair where they want it around the same time women sprout hair in places that send them running to the waxing salons in droves.

Our age group is being bombarded by an industry that is literally making billions of dollars by playing to our insecurities, when in fact most times all you need is some dim light and a little patience. Most men would be thrilled to have their wives call them sexy or hot of whatever words we use to describe the above-mentioned George and Richard. I would be willing to bet most men are so concerned with their own age related issues that they don’t notice if our legs (or chins) are freshly shaved.

Test it out; say something nice to your significant other. Give a genuine compliment once a day, and let them know you appreciate them. Really, I think that’s all any of us wants. Maybe if we all just stepped outside of ourselves and tried to see through the eyes of the opposite sex, we would realize that we all have our issues. We’re in this together.

A friend sent me an email forward photo of a pretty teenaged girl, circa 1968; below the photo was the question, “Where are the cute hippie girls from the 60s?”

I scrolled down to another photo, this of a totally naked, very overweight, out shape, gray haired woman in her 60s. She was covered with stretched out and faded tattoos of Woodstock era images. She wore only flip-flops as she walked down the street, head held high.  Amazingly, she looked happy.

Humor goes a long way, so long as the object of the joke is laughing WITH us.  As Robert Browning wrote over a century ago, “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.”

MONEY

Top ten MONEY questions you should have answers to:

1.  Do you spend less than you earn?

2.  What is your net worth (assets minus liabilities)?

3.  Do you have a CPA and Attorney?

4.  Do you have a will?

5.  Is your image tied to your possessions?

6.  How much do you donate to charity?

7.  Do you have a passive income source(s)?

8.  How are your investments and assets diversified?

9.  What size is your rainy day fund?

10.  What’s your retirement date, and plan afterwards?

These are the basic, fundamental questions you should have ready answers to. Money is the one most people struggle with understanding how it works.

There is a Peace that surpasses all anxiety, when we have a solid, practical, and proactive approach to Money.

SPIRIT

Top ten SPIRIT questions you should have answers to:

1.  What is Love?

2.  What is more important than Love?

3.  What is Hate?

4.  What is worse than Hate?

5.  How does the mind or body influence Spirit?

6.  If you or your dearest loved one was dying, what would you do?

7.  How do you count your blessings?

8.  Whom do you thank for your blessings?

9.  How often do you pray?

10.  What’s at the very center of your spiritual beliefs?

These are the basic, fundamental questions you should have ready answers to. If not, you will not have Joy in your Spirit, nor will you have Peace in your Soul.

It’s that simple.

BODY - One of Life's Big Four

Things you should know the answers to:

1.  What’s my weight?

2.  What’s my cholesterol?

3.  What’s my blood pressure?

4.  What’s my BMI (body mass index)?

5.  What’s my trigyliceride level?

6.  What’s my resting heart rate?

7.  What do I do for exercise?

8.  How important are my eating habits?

9.  What are my health goals?

10. What are my health beliefs and habits?

Knowing these is crucial for being personally responsible for your health. Not knowing these is a recipe for disaster. There are no short cuts to finding Peace.

There is a Peace that surpasses all understanding when you have done your best. Making excuses chases Peace away.

MIND

Top Ten MIND questions you should have answers to:

1.  What do I read?

2.  What do I study?

3.  How much time do I spend learning?

4.  How much time do I spend teaching others?

5.  How well do I know my priorities?

6.  What do I watch on TV?

7.  Who are my friends?

8.  How do I stay focused on continuous learning?

9.  What is my IQ?

10.  What should I be learning that I’m not?

Knowing these will give you Peace.  There is no short cut.

Midlife Is Like An Ocean

Midlife Crisis is a household name.

There are two Mid Life Celebration Guest bloggers who are not.

Up first, this Sunday, is Erika Liodice, from Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania.

Erika found Mid Life Celebration and invited me to be a Guest Blogger at her blog, Beyond The Gray.

Lorie Sheffer is also from Pennsylvania, and from my hometown of Spring Grove.  Small World After All.

You’ll find their Midlife perspectives similar, but different.

Carpe diem!

Simplicity is Complicated

Simplicity is an elusive goal sometimes.

Ok, simplicity is elusive most of the time.

But so are a lot of things that are important.  Should that stop us from our pursuit?

There is only one, resounding answer to this question.

And maybe by tomorrow I’ll have my movie soundtrack song(s) to share with the world.  This was a fun, and frustrating, exercise.

And anything but simple.

Should have seen it coming.

Hard To Pick Just One

First thing on the list today, inspired by the Third Day song I’m currently listening to:

1. THANK YOU Mid Life Celebration readers for visiting

It’s simply joyful to know that so many people visit each day. Your visits humble me, inspire me.

Second thing on the list: If a movie was made of your life, what song would be featured?

If it’s easier, what top two or three songs? Hard to pick just one.

Breathtaking

“To Love and be Loved.”

“Wait! That’s it? That’s all you got? Are you kidding me?”, people might be thinking.

And I say, “What? it’s too simple for you?”

Hello. Earth to astonished person. Wake up. Of course it’s simple.

It’s profoundly simple, and yet simply profound.

“To Love and be Loved.”

Most of life is simple. It’s our nature to want to complicate things, to believe, “Everything is important.”

Why?  It’s remains a mystery to this very day.  Perhaps it’s the whole “keeping up with the Jones” syndrome.

Simplicity is the way.  The only way.

By the way, “I’ll bet you still don’t have an answer, do you?”, he thought to himself as he finished writing this blog post.

So I Googled five-a-day bloggers and got 367,000,000 search results, but nothing on the first page described anyone who actually writes five daily blogs.

Okay, no problem, let’s narrow the search, so I typed – “five-a-day bloggers” – using quotation marks to focus the search.

Click here to see the result.

When was the last time you Googled anything and got only one result?

If you are new to Mid Life Celebration, welcome.  Hope you find this (and the other four daily blogs) a refreshing visit in a cyber-world that is overcrowded with people trying to sell us stuff.

None of the five-a-day blogs I write are selling anything.  Maybe hope and inspiration. But nothing that costs money.

Why?  No seriously, why?

If being thankful is such a blessing, why do we spend so little time doing it?  Perhaps the same can be said for being healthy.

If being healthy is such a blessing, why do we spend so little time getting and staying healthy?

I think it’s because we over commit, over schedule, and, under plan. There’s a saying, “Failure to plan is planning to fail.”

I’m addicted to thankfulness.  Grateful for the ability to think about issues like this. Excited to have daily challenges. Encouraged by slow and steady progress toward reconciliation.

Yes indeed, thankfulness is a drug. Don’t forget to take your medicine.

We see it over and over and over, don’t we:

• “Can’t wait for the weekend”.
• “Thought the weekend would never get here”.
• “The week is finally over”.
• “The week was hell”.

If we are truly thankful for our midlife situation, wouldn’t it sound more like this?:

• “Can’t wait to get started again on Monday”.
• “The week flew by”.
• “Wish I had one more day before Saturday”.
• “That was the best week of my life”.

All I’m trying to say is thankfulness places a whole new perspective on how we see the world and our place in it. But you already know that, right?

At mid life, there are many things that can distract us from being present.  And when this occurs, we can not be thankful for even the simple things.

Not being thankful for even the simple things leaves us open to create habits that take us farther and farther from thankfulness.

This should alarm us.  And maybe, just maybe, we should be thankful for our alarm.

Not me.  So what can a person do?  Why not “roll with it“.  A phrase I learned a long time ago.  It means to take whatever you are given and “roll with it“, or make the most of it.

If you can’t change what you are given or presented with, why not make something good from it?  Because if we don’t, then we are destined, it would seem, to complain.  Who wants that? Here, let me demonstrate how simple this concept is. Please pay attention, it’s over in ten seconds.