Tag: Guest Blogger

 

It’s really not that difficult to find something to appreciate. Gratitude is good for our souls. Studies have shown that living a life of gratitude can make us happier people.

When we walk into a public restroom, we expect it to be clean. We expect there to be soap in the dispenser and paper on the roll. Someone has to do that for us.

When we go out for a meal we expect to be served food. Someone has to process it; someone has to drive it, via truck, to the restaurant. Someone has to prepare it, someone has to clean the restaurant, and someone has to make out the work schedules for the employees they had to hire. Someone had to come build the actual structure. People work to come up with the menu, and then they send it out for someone to print. Someone even had to fell the trees that were trucked to the paper plant to make the paper on which to print the food selections.

There are some jobs that are held in higher regard than others. But can you imagine if the surgical team (someone had to educate them) who is doing, say, a heart transplant, had to first design and build the hospital, design and manufacture their equipment, disinfect the operating room, launder the sheets, transport the patient, make sure the post-op room was clean and waiting and then farm and prepare their meals during their recovery? Every job is an important piece of the whole picture.

If we stop to think about all of the people who are involved in everything we do in our daily lives, it’s easy to feel a sense of gratitude.

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It’s been twelve weeks. Five days a week, an average of forty-five minutes a day. On the rare day it’s exceptionally hot and humid or pouring rain we may only go for twenty-five minutes, but if it’s relatively comfortable we may stay outside for over an hour. Only one day did we cancel, due to lightening and hail.

We have graduated from staying on the sidewalk to climbing some hills and going through uneven fields. On hot days, one of us may even go for a wade in the creek. (One of us not being me.)

Her owner says he can tell she is getting fit. She seems to have dropped a little weight and her behavior is better. She is going to be 16 years old soon, and her energy is boundless.

My hip pain is almost non-existent, the tendonitis in my ankle is at least 75% better and I now sleep through the night. My anxiety is almost entirely manageable. Would I have committed to this daily routine with such enthusiasm had I known that my weight would remain unchanged? I’m honestly not sure. I’d like to say that all of the positive changes would have been more than enough to motivate me, but truthfully, not shedding any weight has been a real downer. Sorting family photos last evening shone a light on the harsh reality that genetics are not on my side. Longevity, yes; slimness, not so much.

I need to send this to Jeff for tomorrow’s posting. I have a little dog waiting for me, and she’s ready for our daily walk. It’s cool and cloudy. We’ll be walking for at least an hour today.

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I just saw a video experiment. A young man dressed like a street person, then acted like he was terribly sick. He fell to the crowded sidewalk, begging for help. Nobody assisted him. He then showered and shaved and changed into a suit. Same scenario, only this time multiple people stopped to help.

There was a lady who used to sit in front of the city market house. She wore lipstick on her forehead and she talked to herself. People made a big arc around her to avoid getting too close when they passed by. The Avoiders were usually people who weren’t from the city, as pretty much all of the regulars there knew her. Instead of making the arc of avoidance, they merely ignored her. I smiled and said Hello and commented on the weather, and she looked like she was going to cry because someone actually spoke to her like she was a human being.

My dear friend was the subject of cruel gossip in her small town. She was The Hoarder. She “looked like a Goddamned bag lady”. After her rather sad and tragic death, one good neighbor commented that she was glad The Bag Lady was dead. She actually smiled and clapped her hands.

It’s typical to hear comments about kids who wear their pants hanging down over the butts with their boxer shorts exposed. I mean, sure it looks incredibly stupid. But is it really all that different from the “hippie freaks” of our day? “Pull your pants up!” sounds pretty much like, “Cut your hair, you hippie freak!”

I heard some of the older folks make rude comments about “the guy with the green hair” at a social event I attended. Who could this loser possibly be? Well, he was a family friend, a graduate student who scored at the top of his class.

There’s a fear factor about anyone who looks or behaves differently.

AND…… there seems to be this horrible idea that some lives are worth more than others because they are more important; more respectable.

Years ago, I listened as the keynote speaker told a group of first year medical students this: “If you can distinguish between a diplomat and a homeless person, if you see more value in the life of a famous/wealthy/successful person than you see in the life of an indigent person who is found in an alleyway, then please feel free to leave. This is not the profession for you.”

Sure, most of us want to present ourselves in a certain way. But perhaps we need to remember that one of the most important men who ever walked the face of this earth did so bearded and barefoot, hair hanging to his shoulders. With his dark Middle Eastern looks, had he lived in this modern world he very well may have been stopped for questioning in any airport in America.

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My Aunt is 92. Her knees bother her, but she is able to live independently. She is aware, though, that her once sharp memory has a few holes in it. It made me sad to see her fret about something over which she has no control.

I told her that the longer we live, the more stuff we have in our brains. If we wouldn’t clean out and toss a few things, it would be terribly cluttered in there and we would have trouble finding what we needed for the day. The rule for an organized closet is to toss things we haven’t worn in a year or two, and if we bring an item in we should take an item out. Maybe the reason she remembers appointments and is still able to drive is because she tossed out the names of people she doesn’t see on a regular basis. Maybe her brain is as neat and organized as her kitchen. Maybe she’s just tossing and deleting old files. Just last week I lost a bill in a stack of junk mail. We need to toss that stuff! She seemed to like that idea.

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I’m learning some things about life from an old dog.  She is given heart medication four times a day, hidden in a piece of potato roll that she sees as a treat. Her eyes are milky with cataracts and she has a crazy little tooth- one of the few that isn’t missing from her mouth- that juts out to the side. This summer she will be 16 years old, which is at the top of the life expectancy for a terrier. She is apparently unaware of all that.

I watch her tail wag from excitement as she stands by the door, ready to go out on our daily adventure/walk. She has the enthusiasm of a puppy. She bounds down the porch step and driveway, head held high. This old dog has not lost her happiness for life; she either has no concept of age or else she just doesn’t care. She’d rather be out exploring than napping in one of her soft dog beds. She never has to be coaxed to get up get moving. Always learning, always exploring, always ready for a new adventure. Maybe that’s her secret to feeling so young.

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