Author: Bev

It has been helpful to me over the years when exercising, to visualize my heart muscle strengthening with each step or movement.  Equally, every time I complete a jigsaw puzzle or hidden object, or matching game, I envision my brain sparking like an old-fashioned sparkler.

Although our brains are not made up of muscle tissue, it’s not amiss to think of the brain as improving its function from “exercising” it.  Like how our muscles grow with exercise, our minds grow healthier by learning new things and making new connections.  The big word associated with this process is “neuroplasticity.”

Just like we stretch our muscles before and after we use them strenuously, we stretch our minds when we’re challenged with new or difficult experiences or intellectual material.  A song lyric that expresses neuroplasticity from a favorite of mine by Brandon Lake, “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” is that “faith isn’t proven like gold until it’s been through the fire.”  We don’t grow mentally or emotionally until we’ve been challenged.

Challenges to our brains, while sometimes feeling overwhelming, just like that peak moment in brisk exercise, on the brink of feeling overcome, lead to a sharper mind, as the near breakdown at that moment in exercise, leads to a stronger body and greater resolve.   The 1979 Michael Jackson hit song, “don’t stop til you get enough” comes immediately to mind.

Keep stretching your mind.  It’s worth it.

Part of the fun in working a challenging word or number or object puzzle is finding patterns.  Pattern recognition is why we retrace our steps when trying to find our keys or that missing sock?  Not that the latter is a particularly fun puzzle.

You’re looking for a familiar pattern.  Almost everything we do involves recognizing a pattern.  We constantly try to replicate how we achieved success the last time; how did I find that document that I needed to complete that job?

In our jobs, in our hobbies, even in our relationships, we rely on finding patterns to thrive.  Our brains get a little bit of a thrill when we recognize a pattern.  “I know that!”

Drivers recognize road, street, and traffic patterns as well as buildings, parks, and other structures, to arrive at the best time to their destination.  Carpenters do math formulas and geometry in their heads or from pencil on wood, to achieve the physical outcome of a building project.

When we do the laundry, we’re working on “patternicity,” the fancy word for sorting objects or thoughts into patterns.  Sorting dry ingredients from wet ones and extra add-ons to a recipe, is patternicity.

Sometimes in our quest for life satisfaction and happiness we conclude that there is a certain meaning in patterns that we’ve observed when that pattern may just be random.  Our interpretations of patterns may become misleading life choices.

I think that most people want to find the cause behind every effect.  Thus, the nonsensical “everything has a reason” placation we tell ourselves.  Random is real too.

Sometimes finding patterns leads to formulating life strategies and conclusions about things that shouldn’t be understood as “guidance,” but rather thought-provoking one-off.  “I thought that meant…” isn’t definitive.

Equally important to our quality of life and our longevity are daily physical, spiritual, and mental exercise.  We’ve got to keep spiritually, mentally and physically active to thrive on this earth.  “Pattern play” might be a fun way to pump up your daily life and health while enjoying said life.

So, the next time someone accusatorially asks you, “what are you doing with your head in a book?”  You can answer “exercising… my brain.”  Or, if you get a sideways look when you get caught playing a game or completing a puzzle on your phone, you can retort, “what? I’m getting my brain exercise.”

I have a love-hate relationship with food.  Food is decidedly my frenemy.

A portmanteau, “frenemy” is the combination of two words, friend and enemy.  Yep, that’s me and food.

Now, this is an obvious problem.  Unlike other addict able substances such as alcohol or drugs, even pica, food is a necessity, and we must consume it to survive and thrive.

One just can’t stop eating if everything in you wants to eat too much.  All or nothing cannot be your eating plan.  This is regrettable for the over-eater.

I’ve often felt that I’d be cool with eating moderately if it were not for that dastardly thing called flavor.  It’s the taste of food that gets me every time.  I can’t get enough of certain flavors.

If the food doesn’t taste good, I easily push away the plate.  So, I’m not too far gone in that I don’t eat anything that doesn’t appeal to my taste buds, just to eat.

Okay, from here on in I want to advise you, the reader, to “do you.”  We all have different tastes, and, in this writing, I refer to my tastes which will undoubtedly make you occasionally cringe in disagreement.  So, “you do you.”

Some people are put out with certain food textures.  For example, creamy foods like mayonnaise or ice cream make certain folks want to hurl.

I’m somewhat divided on the creamy texture.  Don’t get mayo anywhere near me as an unadulterated condiment, e.g. on a sandwich.  That’s just flat out awful, in my opinion.   However, I don’t mind tuna or chicken or egg salad if it goes lightly on the mayo; and pasta or potato salads are okay, again if mayo is used sparingly.

Once many years ago at Ag Days in State College, I had the unexpected pleasure of partaking in the creamiest ice cream that I’d ever eaten before or since.   And I and my family went back to a beach-side gelato booth in Finale Ligure Italy for seconds of the surely smoothest strawberry gelato (gelato alla fregola) ever made.

That said, creamy textured food doesn’t generally feel satisfying to me.  I don’t feel full or finished with creamy textured food.  I guess something more substantial, with a heftier feeling in your mouth is required for the “I’m done” pronouncement.

Creamy cheeses don’t work for me either.  Brie and its compatriots are frankly icky.  I require dry cheese such as Asiago, Dubliner, or Parmesan and the like.  Even cream cheese, which I like in baked goods, can go too far when melted in a casserole, “bluck!”

Now, smoothness is a similar texture to creamy, but I associate smooth with luscious olive or avocado oil which I slather freely on any and every salad I make and, in every stir-fry, concocted in our kitchen.  Smooth as silk cake frosting, Greek yogurt, and pretty much anything chocolate are dreamy additions to the delicious smooth food category approved in our household.

Hot drinks are also smooth and potentially delectable.  I think most soups, if you exclude the popular chunky varieties, fit into a smooth and satisfying category of food.  I wonder if they are satisfying more because of the warmth, they exude than their smooth texture, though.

When smooth transitions to slimy you’ve lost me.  Okra, escargot (the fancy name for snails), and oysters are on my “no-go” list.  And probably mussel too, although they bridge the firm chewy category.

For the most part I’m good with chewy if it doesn’t go over the precipice of rubbery, e.g., squid or octopus or even some clams.   But for some reason I can take the chew of shrimp.  Why does seafood dominate this food category?

I like the ultimate chewy food, jerky.  There’s a store in the strip district of Pittsburgh, PA, that sells just jerky.  Oh yeah, mama.  One must have sturdy teeth to handle meat jerky.  But what a satisfying mouth experience it is to chew and savor the flavorful marinating juices and chew some more until the final swallow on just one piece of jerky.  That’s all it takes.

Why does the crunchy food category equate to snack food?  One is sort of hard pressed to satisfy a crunch craving without opening a bag of something kept in the pantry or snack cupboard.  The crunch of a carrot or apple isn’t the same as the crunch of a pretzel, a cracker, or any sort of chip.

My husband and I even prefer our protein cooked to a bit of a crisp if possible.  I think the Brits call chips, “crisps.”  If crispy is a food texture, I want it.

Other than texture, we all have our preferences for food flavors.  The principal flavors are sweet, savory, sour, bitter, salty and umami.

Yeah, I didn’t know what umami was either until a few years back when I watched a lot of food shows on television and learned a thing or two.  “Umami” is Japanese and literally means, “pleasant savory taste,” equating to something rich, brothy savory and satisfying in the mouth.  Umami is that element that clinches a meal.  It satisfies so that you don’t get up from the table needing something else.

Therefore, I think that umami is my favorite flavor profile.  There is nothing worse for an over-eater or flavor fan than to have eaten a meal that wasn’t satisfying.  Ones feels literally that you “wasted calories.”  Why bother?

I’m good with all the other flavors, probably apart from bitter.  I’m no food scientist and there are likely bitter bits included in food that my rudimentary palate doesn’t discern.  But when I do taste bitter, I’m unhappy so there’s that.

As to food color, muddy, moussey, brown isn’t a bad thing.  I like most brown foods and do not find them unappealing.  The low carb, multigrain surge in food fads has trained me to avoid white foods. Green is good but blue is just odd, for food, except the blueberry.  It’s cheerful to have a dash of red on your plate and black equates with burnt unless we’re talking about black beans which are yummy umami morsels.

So, there you have it.  We all have food likes and dislikes.  Food is everybody’s frenemy.  Just like human friends and enemies, food is a powerful catalyst for community, involvement, engagement and camaraderie.  Pick a food, any food, and Bon Appetit.

 

 

 

 

 

Admittedly, this title is a tad misleading.  However, it is apropos considering my blog is titled “deep thoughts on random stuff.”

So, “get a room” in this case is based on some thoughts a bit deeper emotionally than the usual meaning of begging someone to please cease their public displays of affection.  Rooms in dreams and in song lyrics are often more than just rooms in architecture or design.

Various rooms, as they appear in dreams, represent parts of the self, one’s personality or subconscious.  For example, a living room might allude to your public self, the bathroom is probably your secret self, and the bedroom, your private self.

I recently wrote a column entitled, “Lifelong Learning.”  As it turns out, that must be a theme circulating inside my head in that I dreamt about having a different kind of desk in every room in my house.

As dream theory would have it, I must then be emotionally hard at work on my various aspects of self, private, public, and secret.  Presumably the goal is achieving peace, contentment, satisfaction, even happiness in all those areas.

I’m recently preoccupied with the Pharrell song, “Happy.”  I’ve been stuck in rewind on the line, “happy…clap along if you feel like a room without a roof.”

You’re welcome.  Did I plant a song line in your repeat loop?  It’s kind of like that Cher line, “do you believe in love after love!”  Again, you’re welcome.

Back to “Happy,” I engaged a bit in revelry envisioning Pharrell’s room without a roof.  It was fun, and made me happy, if you will.

My room started out commensurate with the “It’s a small world,” attraction as it was at Disney World in the mid-70s when I first saw it as a young adult.  I remember looking up from a moving seat to a chock-full roofless room of mostly white, sparkly, magical stuff with the “small world” song stuck on repeat.

Walt Disney, innovator in animation said, “if you can dream it, you can do it.”  So, my desk in every room encourages me that my thinking cap is intact and operative in every area of my life.

What does your roofless room look like?  I imagine my neighbor’s roofless room of happiness closely resembles his museum-like “hunting” room.  I’ve never seen anything else like it.

But we don’t have to have an actual room in which to enter a happy place.  We need only our imagination.

I’ve always loved the thought that books can take you anywhere in the world, even to other worlds.  And one of my all-time favorite books is Anne of Green Gables, where heroine Anne Shirley uses her vivid imagination to “see what she can be.”

In 2012, tennis great, Billie Jean King said, “you have to see it to be it.”  It seems a bit corny, but it speaks of the power of vision.

Vision is such a gift.  If you can envision a room without a roof, if you can enter a happy place in your imagination, I believe it’s possible to be happy from your head to your toes, even if it’s only for a blessed moment before you must come back down to earth.

Oh, that we could all be visionaries.  I wonder sometimes if we inhabitants of this planet have allowed our minds to become so glued to the floor that we can’t imagine anything other than the garbage that is fed to us from various media outlets or the multitudinous negative people who pass in and out of our lives, concretely or virtually.

If you were to imagine yourself as a room, what room would that be?  How is it furnished?  What are the colors which dominate the room?

Is your room enclosed with four walls, a ceiling and a floor?  Or is your room outdoors?  Are you a traditional room, a custom room, or a far-out room?

Are the dimensions of your room strictly measured and inside the box?  Or would a carpenter have fits accommodating your vision of your room?

Do me a favor and at least let your room be one without a roof.  Let the sky be your limit.

 

 

 

After having broken another fingernail clear down to the quick, I said to myself, I need to use more tools and less brute strength.  Humans are higher animals after all.  And I think part of that definition is that we know how to use tools, and we have opposable thumbs.

My life is simple in some respects.  For example, if I can do the job with my hands I will do so without the assistance of any gadgets or tools.

However, I couldn’t bake as happily sans gadgets.  One of my favorites is parchment paper which saves me a massive amount of time in clean-up, and that two-tablespoon cookie scoop is a must have gadget for nine out of ten tasks in my kitchen.

My unused blender has been in its place in one of those high kitchen cabinets above the microwave, behind a bunch of flower vases, forever.  I finally donated it and replaced it with the juicer, oft used to support my fresh lemon juice habit.  The juicer had been hidden behind useful but too much clutter in the pantry closet.  It was a win-win tradeoff.

These are some of the gadgets in my life.  Oh, and I broke down and got another electric can opener after mine died a few years ago and we’ve since been using an ancient hand crank one in addition to a heftier new one.  The arthritis in my hand makes those things of little help except as “honey-do” tasks which make me feel needy.

By some definitions, these utilitarian small appliances aren’t gadgets because they’re practical and not novelty enough.  Some definitions of gadget strictly describe a more fanciful contrivance that is considered an ingenious novelty.

Popular lists of commonly used gadgets include some devices which we use all the time in our business and personal life around here.  Isn’t an iPhone or android cell phone considered a normal appendage for most people?  Also, few people choose not to own a television, sound system for music, computers and accompanying printers.

Our gadgets consist mainly of either kitchen helpers or outdoor maintenance tools.  I really don’t think of these as gadgets.  For example, the rake is ideal for gathering piles of leaves, pine cones and yard debris.  However, after I’ve raked these things into a pile, my use of the rake is finished.  I then pick up the piles with my arms and glove-clad hands until every pine needle and leaf are gathered for disposal.  My husband always says, “why don’t you use the fork to pick those up?” a question he knows I will dismiss with my usual manual way of doing it.

A mini, battery-powered chainsaw is an indispensable gadget used for trimming the multitudinous small branches which span our property.  Years ago, a kind neighbor offered his to us when we were completing the task by more manual means and since then we complete that task no other way.

In the kitchen, I try to open jars with those handy little rubber gadgets, running hot water over the lid, or with targeted banging onto a hard surface to unseal the lid from its jarred contents.  If these attempts fail, I honestly move the task to the “honey-do” list.  My particular honey bought a couple of jar-opening gadgets, probably to reduce his list.  Only one of them works for me, but only on small bottles or jars, and I prefer the rubber thingy anyway.  The second one made its way to the donation pile as neither of us could find it of any use.

I guess I’ll conclude where I began, with my fingernails.  To save them, I had purchased and was given a couple of gadgets to peel off sticky labels, tape, etc.  I do use these helpers on occasion, but I’m still prone to start any job with my trusty fingernails.

You see, from this gal’s point of view, a woman who was never a girly girl nor a tomboy, I’ve prided myself on the nice appearance of my hands and feet.  However, over the years as years would have it, my feet have grown bunions, and my toenails injured repeatedly have become a bit of a mess.

With age, my hands have grown ever so slightly deformed from arthritis and my fingernails are somewhat more difficult to maintain, but they remain sort of pretty.  So, when I break a fingernail, it’s not the end of the world, but it’s a true assault on my self-esteem.  “There goes the one thing that isn’t affected by weight fluctuations!”

I know all about the glue remedy and that I can have a professional make them pretty with the aid of prosthetics, but they wouldn’t truly be mine.  Maybe I see my own pretty fingernails as an achievement, dumb as that sounds.

So, I use gadgets when I need them, but I prefer using my two gloved hands.  It’s as simple as that.

I think I can supply a metaphor, or is it a simile, for this preference.  Even though I suffer from seasonal allergies, I refuse to stop walking outdoors all year round.  The sneezing, itchy eyes, coughing, and overall stuffed up head is worth it to walk outdoors with nature all over me.  The broken fingernails are worth the freedom of just working with my hand’s sans all the available gadgets which could make the job “easier.”

 

 

 

 

I grew up hearing the saying, “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” and they meant old people, using dogs as a metaphor.  Becoming an old dog, myself, I’m not sure it’s so universally true that we can’t learn new things at this ripe age.

Some ripe fruits are sweeter, tastier, softer and better because of their age than the prematurely picked ones; others are too ripe and just plain rotten.  New isn’t always better, but sometimes it is.

I know that when I became a grandparent to a newborn, not so long ago, I was quickly and startlingly amazed at all the new and better stuff for, and ways of, raising that precious creation that had been invented by younger brains than my own.  We thought we were cutting edge when we went through that more than thirty years ago.

We hadn’t driven our second vehicle for a while since my spouse and I usually prefer to travel about together.  However, our needs required that we lend out our new vehicle and drive the spare.

Our second car is a vintage sport model which would be considered by most folks as sort of flashy but is frankly difficult to crawl into and out of.  Our daughter learned to drive in that car, and it has been kept in great shape as it holds some significant symbolism to our family, for a variety of reasons.

However, since we bought our new vehicle, that vintage model really felt old to us.  It rattled in an unfamiliar and dated manner.  Crawling in and out of it was as laborious as ever.  Suddenly the new one was more treasured than before.

The things we’ve had to learn to negotiate the highways in the new car and that we now take for granted, may have been more significant than we noticed.  It seems that having to slip back for a moment in time is a blessed reminder of how far we’ve come.

This happens over and over as we grow older.  We are streamlining our business after more than three decades in it and we’ve observed a few things in the process.  Prominently we’ve seen that “the times they are a changing,” which is a song written by Bob Dylan in 1963 and is probably the most universally timeless anthem, ever.

Author, John C. Maxwell wrote, “change is inevitable, growth is optional.”  Change happens continually and whether we like it or not, adapting to it is part of our daily task, and often our daily struggle.

We can either fight em or join em.  “If you can’t beat them, join them” was a popular maxim quoted in 1932 by Senator James E. Watson.  Which do you choose?

I have learned so much while adapting to the use of a new laptop, it’s incomprehensible for this old dog.  Who knew that keyboard shortcuts were so very convenient?  Oh, and I didn’t know, nor did my companion old dog, that the ctl key is short for control, not central.  Duh.

And I will pat myself on my back for learning, unlearning, and re-learning how to use the mouse pad right when I got used to the touch screen because something suddenly and yet inexplicably happened to vanish the touchscreen capability.  I guess I’ll figure that out right after I’ve adjusted to the mouse pad.

I confess that it has not been easy learning these new technological things.  I have spit so much fire in and out of our office in the process of learning that it’s a wonder I haven’t started a countywide wildfire.

But as painful as the learning process and change can be in real time, it is so worth it.  When you look in the rear-view mirror and objectively observe where you were compared to where you are now, oh my.  Gratitude ought to be kicking in hard about now.

Many wise souls have quoted a variation of “you’re never too old to learn,” including Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, C.S. Lewis and Nelson Mandela.  I’m guessing these people were getting older and learning new things when they said such truths.  It was in 1534 that the old dog-new tricks concept of well-established habits in old animals first appeared.

Today’s idiomatic usage of old dog-new tricks might be accurately considered ageist thinking.  I guess given the fact that older people have lived longer than their counterparts, their habits have become more entrenched and thusly more resistant to change.  It is also possible that the older we become the wiser and more reasonably minded we become.

“No muss no fuss” comes to mind.  There are plenty of crasser ways to say it but as you get older, so much of the mess around us just doesn’t matter.  We’ve cleaned up so many messes in our lifetime, we’ve stopped caring about them and just prefer simple and straightforward.

Speaking of lifelong learning, I learned something that I considered profound from a television show, FBI International.  The character, Wes said, “slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”  I think that just might have become this old dog’s new mantra.

One becomes a certain kind of acquaintance with those folks whom you spend time with during a long wait.  It might be a similar camaraderie as co-prisoners, I imagine.

Comrades, we were all waiting in that space, for a similar but not identical reason.  There was the youngish woman with her fidgeting little boy, the smiling man who asked politely if the seat next to me was taken, the couple, of a similar age to my spouse and myself with the self-described impatient husband, and finally, the middle-aged couple waiting for a pair of relatives of their own.

We might have all been blood relatives who rarely see each other but made the effort this time.  It wasn’t vital that we converse, so the infrequent silence wasn’t awkward.  It was just what they call a pregnant pause.

There was a sense of anticipation in the air.  Any of us might be called back to the next step in the journey for which we had all gathered in the first place, then someone or another would ask an inquisitive but not too personal question from our fellows as the wait continued.

We watched the little boy’s fidgeting become almost acrobatic in nature as he consumed vending machine food-like stuff including body-contorting sugar, salt, caffeine and dye.  He stayed blessedly sweet, but his young body had flip-flopped back and forth from a seated to a prone position, several times.  I think we adults marveled at the joys of caffeine and sugar fuel.

The boy and his mom came and went from our shared space a few times.  Soon it was my turn to get up and move.

I thought it remarkable that the man whom his wife described as “really impatient,” seemed at ease with the wait, especially in comparison to that buzzing little boy but also compared to me.   I don’t have anything as syndrome-like as restless legs, but I do have a habit of staying on the move as much as possible.

Because he knows me, my husband knew that it would happen sooner or later, that given a longer wait, I would have to get up and go somewhere.  In fact, he suggested that I go outdoors since it was a nice day.

I stayed put for a few minutes then gave into my need for a bit of a stroll.  I chose to start by heading down a long winding corridor in the building, after all I might be summoned at any moment.

After having done that uncomplicated route a few times without a peep from the powers that be to call me to attention, I began to feel awkward being seen by others, pacing about while they remained happily seated in their waiting chairs.  So, I headed just outside, not so far flung as to be easily called back, but at least walking along a more appropriately seen path for a casual jaunt, I guess.

Back inside, the wait started to become obviously protracted.  Supporting players popped in and out of our now proprietary space where we belonged. The middle-aged couple were joined by an acquaintance of their own who, in checking on them, revealed the reason for their attendance in our little flock of waiters.

Nearby staff held casual conversations of their own which we couldn’t help but be privy to.  My seatmate noted to me that their conversation came around to food having heard me comment that I was increasingly hungry, as the lunch hour had come and gone quite a while ago.

Our pregnant pause had taken on the nearly desperate anticipation of a misty distant craving for anything edible.  I started to covet that child’s non-food junk.

Our little crowd began to take unspoken wagers on who might be called back next. The middle-aged couple disappeared for a bit.  The impatient man got up and moved about some.  We all took turns doing the tap, tap, tap, foot dance unaccompanied by music.

Soon the middle-aged couple resumed their saved position across the small space from me.  The impatient man sat back down, only to be called back with an “I won” exclamation of playful relief, to have escaped the confines of our prison of waiting.

Not long thereafter, I threw my arms up in the touchdown symbol of victory, replete with a little happy dance. I thanked the room for waiting with me and off we went toward the next step of the day’s journey.

This step included some more waiting but this time it was a more solo endeavor.  For some reason I didn’t mind waiting alone. It was somehow peaceful and relaxing.

As I said earlier, I’m usually on the move, with my fitness tracker often registering seven or eight hours of movement out of nine.  But for this two or three hour wait, and albeit being forced to, I was able to slow down to a complete stop for blessed rest and repose.

When I was a little one, not unlike that fidgeting child in the waiting space, we sang a song with the chorus, “whistle while you work.”  I always think of it for some reason when I’m confined in a waiting situation.

I think that song taught us to make the best of our time, no matter what we’re doing.  Just like those coworkers chatted randomly about food and we waiters found something in common to speak to each other about, we passed the potentially anxious time, in jovial camaraderie.

We all won in the end.  We helped each other in the most organic way that one human can help another.  We waited together.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes, don’t you just want to get back to basics?  Wouldn’t it be nice to just extract the essence of things and do away with the extra add-ons that somebody decided is necessary for our lives to be fulfilled.

Personally, I believe I could be a happy camper, without commercials or advertising cluttering up my life.  I can’t think of one “influencer” who has pointed out a product to me that has been life changing.

I’m one of those people who seek out something that I think I need – I confess I rely a bit on Google.  But then, DIY is built into my character and if I can’t essentially do it myself, I seek out “Ms. Google” or “Mr. YouTube” for assistance if my friends and neighbors are preoccupied.

Our bibliophile friend Sherry asked me to write about the word, “essential.”  She feels the word essential is ubiquitous and perhaps over-used.  So here we go, Sherry, this is for you.

Perhaps our culture has been “essentialized.”  You might be under the impression that everything that can be bought is essential to your well-being.  We live in a capitalistic society, based upon buying and selling, profit and loss, “making money,” and work, work, work, or steal it one way or another, if you can’t earn it.

Do we ever stop to think, what is essential?  What is the essence of life, the basics, the core principles, what can’t we do without?

I’m talking here about something crucial, indispensable, or fundamental to your life; not every comfort created by humankind.  Each of our definitions of essential will vary depending on our life’s circumstances.

For example, if you have arthritis in your hands, an electric can opener is probably essential to you, whereas someone with nimble hands can easily make do with a manual twist-type can opener.  A snowblower is not essential to someone without a driveway, or with access to a plow or an able-bodied human with a hand-shovel.

However, I wonder if it’s about time that our society cuts the crap and gets back to what’s essential.  The 1974 Hollies song, The Air That I Breathe, claims in the chorus, “All I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.”  If it only were so simple.

Since the onset of the Pandemic, and mention was made of “essential workers” out on the front lines, the word essential has become a bit over-extended.  “Essential” has become watered down in its impact and instead of pointing to a vital requirement of life, it’s simply a generic term for important.

When a healthcare professional refers to a disease as essential, as in essential hypertension or essential tremors, they are basically saying the cause is unknown.  It’s idiopathic.  Well, how about that!  You just have it, and we don’t know why, what from, or much of anything else, let’s be honest.

The very essence of something is the characteristic which defines it.  For example, the reason we call oils that give plants their characteristic odors, essential oils are because the smell of lavender is characteristic only of lavender, not eucalyptus.

Another word for essential is fundamental.  I like this synonym because it’s based on the word, foundational.  Without a foundation, everything built upon it crumbles; there is no system without a foundation.  Everything built requires a solid foundation.  Essence is that foundation.

Essential is vital.  Without a vital thing in place, without its very nature, it destroys itself if removed.  It’s not just important or necessary, it’s required to exist.

Air to breathe is essential.  And if we’re to believe the Hollies, love is too.

Love is surely vital to life.  Having been married for over forty-five years to a professional percussionist, I might take offense to the “banging gong” reference in the biblical love chapter, I Corinthians 13.  It is said there, essentially, that I can be a notorious orator, a gifted linguist, or impressive activist, but without love I’m just a noise-bag.

I think that one can finesse a gong, but I get the reference to a noisy gong in the “love chapter” and I have no argument with it.  The Beatles were a little bit off when they said, Love Is All Ya Need, because we do need air, and water, and such.  But, love, oh my, love – “faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love.”

The Bible has some good stuff in it.  For example, “Love covers sin.”  This is probably one of the indispensables, or essential qualities of love.  When you’re loved, you’re covered, protected, concealed as a target, enveloped.

Love is essential to life.  Love covers our many foibles.  Have you noticed that when you love somebody, they can be a convicted criminal, a menace to society, be a member of a group you would otherwise despise, possess any number of attributes which people dislike, but you cover them.  They aren’t just anybody, they’re your loved ones and you make excuses for them, protect them, and pardon them.

A lot of things are important in life.  But love is essential to human wholeness.  So, the Hollies were pretty much right.  Love and the air that we breathe are essentially the only essentials in life.