Category: Guest Bloggers

American Beauty by Lorie Sheffer

“This isn’t life, it’s just stuff. And it’s become more important to you than living. Well, honey, that’s just nuts.” – Lester Burnham, American Beauty (1999)

There seems to be a story I keep hearing over and over again from friends with adult children. Their “kids” have decent jobs and yet they can’t seem to pay their bills. Without batting an eye, the parents are dipping into retirement savings to “help”. With the median family income in this country at just under $50,000 a year, I’m floored when I hear a newly married couple can’t make ends meet on an $80,000 a year combined income.

Some quick research showed me what I had suspected could be at the heart of this seeming sense of entitlement for many of today’s young adults. Growing up, I can’t think of one single friend of mine who lived in a house with more than one bathroom. Many of them shared a bedroom with one or more siblings. Nobody had more than one TV. Most teenagers borrowed the family car. I found that in 1950 the average size of a home in the United States was 983 square feet. In 1970 it was 1,500 square feet, in 1990 it was 2,080 square feet and by 2004 it had risen to 2,349 square feet.

When a friend was visiting from Germany several years ago, he commented on how many SUVs he saw. In Europe, they take public transportation or ride a bike or drive a smaller car. They have to pay a high yearly registration to drive something that uses a lot of gas. Of course gas is much cheaper here in the U.S., he told me. Over there it was around $8.00 a gallon.

When I was growing up we went on a vacation every year. Campers were the big thing back then, as were Howard Johnson’s and their signature orange roofs. For most of us, luxury hotels were something we only saw in the movies. I remember people being upset by the “new luxury condos” that were being built in Ocean City Maryland. They would block the sun in the afternoons, and who was going to rent or buy them anyway? Only rich people could afford those!

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think the problem is big homes and nice cars and extravagant vacations. I think the problem is thinking we HAVE to have those things, even if it means needing to ask for help to pay for that life. Maybe in wanting to see our children achieve The American Dream – which is becoming increasingly larger- we have lost sight of the fact that it all has to be paid for.

While chatting with my son over the phone today, I asked him why he had his wife have never asked us for money. He seemed kind of taken aback. I explained to him that I was preparing to write this post, and asked for his opinion. Bottom line is, he feels it is a good idea to live with less than you can afford instead of more than you can afford. Also, in doing so you tend to learn how to reuse and repurpose, which leaves less of an environmental footprint. (Well done, Grasshopper; well done.)

“ My company sells an image. It’s part of my job to live that image.” – Lester Burnham’s wife, Carolyn.

Projection, By Lorie Sheffer

Have you ever noticed someone will say they can’t stand a personality trait or behavior of another person, and thought to yourself, “But that’s what YOU do!”

Psychological projection is a rather commonly used defense mechanism. We project thoughts or feelings that we have onto someone else. The classic example is the jealous husband who constantly accuses his wife of cheating, when he is the one who is being unfaithful. “Jane” may not like her sister in law, “Edith”, but she won’t admit that, so she will say that she can just tell that “Edith” doesn’t like her. “John” always feels the need to judge others, and yet he accuses “Sam” of always judging him.

If there is someone who gets on your last nerve, sit down and write a list of what you do not like about this person. Put the list away for a few days, and then come back and take a good look at it. Does the list include things you don’t like about yourself? If you substitute your name for the name of the person for whom you have written the list, does it ring true for how YOU behave? For example, if you have written “Joe is so stupid. His grammar is horrible, his social skills are atrocious, etc.” could this mean that you are perhaps insecure about your own social skills and intelligence?

If we pay close attention to what bothers us about others, sometimes we find that it is actually what bothers us about ourselves. We have no control over changing someone else, but if we take a really close look at our own thoughts and feelings, we CAN make changes that will result in our liking ourselves much better. You can’t fix what you are unwilling to see.

Lorie Sheffer – Livin’ On A Prayer

Do you ever use praying about it as a way of trying to avoid doing something about it?  If you know someone who is having a hard time, do you tell him or her that you said a prayer for them and hope that by doing so you have fulfilled your moral obligation? “I’m kinda busy, so I’ll ask The Big Guy to do it.” Because He has so much time on his hands these days.

Illness, divorce, job loss; all can be very isolating. While it’s nice to think that you are being remembered in someone’s prayers, what will mean the world is that handwritten note that says someone is thinking of you.  I know a young man who, while housebound from a bout of severe depression, said that for weeks the one thing that kept him going were the daily emails from a friend. What amounted to a few minutes of her time was a lifeline to the outside world for him. Lawns need to be mowed, houses need to be cleaned, and home cooked meals often become a luxury when someone is in a crisis.

The doing something about it plan works the same when it comes to how we treat our own problems. Would you pray for good health, Twinkie in one hand Marlboro in the other? Pray for a better relationship with your spouse on your way to the neighborhood bar to shoot pool with your buddies? Ask God to parent your children so you can go play golf? How about asking Him for financial guidance and then reward yourself with an afternoon of shopping?

Do we turn it over to God and let Him do all the work, or do we step in and to do some of the heavy lifting ourselves? I’m not a big teller of jokes, but this one seems to fit:

Every night for years, Mary asked God, “Please, Lord, let me win the lottery. I’m a decent person. I work hard. Still, I can’t seem to pay the bills on time. I promise if I win I will share my wealth with those less fortunate.” After ten years of saying this as part of her nightly prayers, God answered her! “God, please, I know I have asked you this for years and years, but I am asking you again. Please, please let me win the lottery so I can send my children to college and pay off some of my bills.” Lying there in her darkened room she heard a voice, deep, clear and unmistakable: “Mary…. This is God. Mary, you have to help me here. If you want to win the lottery, you have got to buy a ticket.”

To read more from Lorie Sheffer, Mid Life Celebration’s featured Guest Blogger, click here. She has her own page. 🙂

Gardening by Lorie Sheffer

March 27, 2011: “Gardening”

I remember reading something not too terribly long ago, about friendship being like a garden. They need to be tended and nurtured or they will wither and die. The analogy failed to include the part about having to pull weeds from time to time. If we are going to look at friendship, or any relationship, as a garden, then don’t we need to also think about the weeds? Weeds can be invasive, crowding out the “good” plants, stealing nutrients and water and leaving them prone to disease and distress. They tend not to notice or care about the good plants they have to take down in their effort to dominate.

Sometimes I think of that garden analogy and realize that it is time to pull some weeds. Sure, every friendship has its ups and downs, its misunderstandings. Those are the ones that need the extra care and attention. The weeds are the relationships that leave you feeling emotionally drained, used, or perturbed most of the time. The weeds tend to be those who, through consistently poor choices, create drama and then try to pull you in. They are the ones who always respond to your down times by telling you how perfect their life is by contrast. The weeds expect you to be there to help them through a crisis, but tend to become unavailable if you ever need to have the favor returned. They don’t respect boundaries.

I am not one to use herbicides in my garden. I don’t like to see that slow withering of the plants. I would rather just put on some gardening gloves and get in there and yank them out by the roots. It seems kinder, in way. In today’s age of technology such as caller ID and voice mail, you would almost have to try to be caught off guard by someone attempting to sabotage your time.

Last week marked the first day of Spring. What a perfect time to take a look at your garden, Tend to it as necessary, plant some new things you feel may be interesting. Spring is also the perfect time to make sure you are ahead of those weeds. Pull them as you see them, before they start to drop seeds or develop strong roots. You’ll save yourself much hard work later in the season and your other plants will be happy for the extra time you have to spend enjoying them.

Guest Blogger Page

It’s so easy to miss the constant change that happens right before our eyes…

Lorie Sheffer has been a featured, weekly blogger at Mid Life Celebration and has her own page of posts. Here’s Lorie’s latest, “Taking Care”:

“If you took as good care of yourself as you do the rest of your family, you wouldn’t be here and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

My doctor said that to me a few years ago. He told me that I was not the first person he had ever said it to. In fact, it is a line he repeats almost daily.

Why do we treat our loved ones better than we treat ourselves? Looking back, I think of the times I would make my grandson’s lunch, taking care to include some raw veggies and fruit slices. Then he would lie down for a half hour nap while I ate the crust he left from his sandwich, multitasking laundry, dishes and wiping sticky fingerprints from the walls. Or those summer days when everyone was having fun swimming in the pool I had just spent all morning cleaning, while I was inside preparing a meal for them to enjoy. I don’t think that I am alone in this, either. At least according to my doctor I’m not.

It is not selfish to say “no.” It does not mean you are negligent if you make someone help him or herself while you take a few minutes for you. One of my very favorite friends, who has obviously learned to take care of herself, said it best this past Christmas. She told me that her husband had said he sure would love to have some fresh baked Christmas cookies. She handed him a cookbook and went out to get a pedicure.

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