MY MUSINGS – MID-MARCH

I am changing. I am making different choices. To what? I don’t know yet. But some things concern the following – Why do people choose the lie? When truth is in plain sight? Friends and relatives watch Tucker Carlson. Disbelieve the amazing growth of the economy and the list of positive changes in American life. AND, choose to believe Tucker Carlson? It is a conscious choice. I could go on and on because I feel bad for my desire for all people to get a chance.  Ok. You can label me however you choose to, but I don’t care. It is my blog and Jay is speaking. Just know that growing old is not easy. And not very fun, but I must say that I am surprised at myself. And, I am the one who is in the room with me. And, I must not cry because crying messes up my eyes. Clogged tear ducts.

Belief Systems. I am happy to say that I love democracy, and I don’t like autocratic people. Or régimes. I don’t want a king. No room for mistakes

And if a person believes that what Tucker Carlson says is true, then it is true for that person. And truth staring that person in the face is only the tip of the iceberg for that person. The truth is unknown and your guess is as good as mine . But I think this is what is happening.  Ugh.

I tend not to like that person.

I can see that the truth is happening with my own eyes. 

In acting class, I would try to get all complicated with emotional motivations, and Strasberg would say, “She’s cooking a turkey.  COOK THE DAMN TURKEY!!! The lines are said as she is cooking….”

Bottom line – you create your own reality and I do not want to spend my days living the negative. I cannot live with the negative. I need a pony in shit. The afternoon sun is shining in my patio door and it is warm and wonderful. The Neighborhood pigeons shit on my patio for good luck and I have a half full glass of water to drink. I am not a Pollyanna but I must surround myself with the good people and things. Not reality????? It is as real for me as your negativity is for you. I used to think reality checks were important. I still do but now I look for the lesson I need to learn to move on. What is life trying to get me to learn? What point have I been missing? I am still working on this one . I don’t like admitting that I am/ was wrong. Oops.

I need to find the positive in the aches and pains of getting old and the clear in dizzy. That is how I get through my day. Constantly remembering why I am grateful and happy to keep going in my adopted country and here to stay and choose to stay and missing my family and letting them go. Life will either teach them or it won’t.

It is all Cheap Speech. I don’t want to participate in cheap speech, e.g. lies Cheap Speech. I cannot control what others do. Is there anything that we can do?

“The most important steps to counter cheap speech are the hardest to take. We need to rebuild civil society to strengthen reliable intermediaries and institutions that engage in truth telling. As a starting point, think of all the institutions Mr. Trump tried to undermine: the free press, the opposition party, his own party, the judiciary and the F.B.I., to name just a few. And we need an educational effort — including among older Americans, who are actually the most likely to spread political misinformation — to inculcate the values of truth, respect for science and the rule of law.

This is easier said than done. It will require an all-hands-on-deck mobilization and not just the government: civics groups, bar and professional associations, religious institutions, labor unions and businesses all have a role to play.

The future of American democracy in the cheap speech era is hardly ensured. We don’t have all the solutions and can’t even foresee political problems that will come with the next technological shift. But legal and political action taken now has the best chance of giving voters the tools to make competent decisions and reject election lies that will continue to spew forth on every platform that can be built to threaten the foundation of our democracy.”

– – (author unknown)

This is my thought for this morning as I start this new day with a hot cup of coffee. I have edited it to read nuclear instead of atomic because today is different than before. The following are the words of C.S. Lewis –

“In one way we think a great deal too much of the nuclear bomb. “How are we to live in a  nuclear age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.” In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. ⁣

Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the nuclear bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors – anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.⁣

This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by a nuclear bomb, I let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things – praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.”

KNOW YOURSELF 

Know yourself, they say 

and don’t be led astray

but how can I know who I am 

when I’m different every day.

Some days I am the smart one 

with the answers people need 

and some days I’m the strong one 

standing up to take the lead.

On other days I’m sure 

that if the wind blew me too hard 

I would shatter like a glass

into a million tiny shards.

And on those days I cower 

and I hide out from the world

waiting on my inner child

to blossom and unfurl.

And each day I’m surprised 

by the newness that I see

the things I’m finding out

the complexity of me.

So how to know yourself 

when you’re all things rolled in one? 

you simply must decide

to love whatever you become.

By Donna Ashworth

_________________

You’ve been getting older since the day you were born.

You wished it faster for many a year, 

now you wish it would slow down and stop.

But asking your body to stop getting older, is begging for your growth to stop too.

Your growth as a human, as a soul.

For it’s only when you accept how time affects your body, that you can actually reap the benefits of the wisdom it brings with it.

Each line is a lesson learned or a hardship endured.

Those frown lines were once worries which you fought through.

Or perhaps it’s a line of laughter, a wonderful mark to bear.

Each grey hair is a shimmering stripe of life you have earned.

A story you can share with those who need to hear how you survived.

Your tale could be their saving.

Your purpose as a woman is to age my friend, 

to grow more wise, more powerful, more beautiful.

Let the world see the beauty time has in store for you.

Trust that you are who you are meant to be now.

It’s time.

You’ve been ‘growing’ older, since the day you were born, 

what a wonderful thing.

—By Donna Ashworth

Mr. Rogers –

“As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has or ever will have something inside that is unique to all time. It’s our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression.”  

This Week

Maybe you could start this week with a brave heart,

Leave the failures of the past on your pillow when you wake.

Maybe you could start this week with a clean slate.

Fresh eyes,

And hope in your soul.

Maybe you could start this week by congratulating yourself on getting through,

So many weeks.

So many times.

So many wiped slates.

So many bold new beginnings.

Maybe you could start this week,

With kindness.

For yourself,

First.

Just to see, if the thing you have been waiting for,

Was always yours to give,

Actually.

And not out there, in someone else’s hands,

After all.

By Donna Ashworth

Best, Jay and thanks to the writers I have used to make my point. And, apologies for mistakes.