Author: Bev

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.

 

 

 

 

What Color Are You?

I don’t mean your skin color.  Although the most used color words are white, brown and red.  I don’t know if that’s connected to skin color or not, it might be.

I can understand cultural differences.  Sometimes we all struggle with misunderstandings associated with the different cultures into which we were born and raised.  But I seriously don’t get it when someone can’t get along with a whole group of people, based entirely upon the color of their skin.

But that’s another essay.  In this one, I want to know what your psychological color is.

Yes, there is a psychology of color.  It’s not concerned with what your favorite color is, mine is blue.  But what do certain colors make you feel?

Color me not surprised that dull gray days challenge our emotions.  Color me unamazed that blue sky, puffy white clouds with peaks at a yellow sun, encourage contentment.

Color language is linked to emotion.  For example, “he was red with rage after hearing what they said about him.”  “I was feeling fairly blue last Monday with all that rain and wind.”  “She was positively green even looking at food, after having the stomach flu.”

It’s kind of rare to pinpoint actual scientific evidence regarding the psychology of color.  Factoids are more likely to have been born more from psychological color theory, than from facts that can be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt.

I wear more black, navy and brown in the winter months.  The bright green, yellow, orange, white and blue stuff comes out in the spring and summer.  This might be because clothing designers and manufacturers make summer clothes in those colors and winter clothes in those colors, but some of it might be emotional choices on our part.

This is not a scientific treatise so let’s just have some fun with color.  “Color me excited” to assign some colors to emotions.

Red intimidates me; it’s overstimulating.  Black is solid and comforting.  Green makes me happy and thrive.  Yellow invigorates me.  White is blank and needs something else to complete it.

Your reactions to color may be somewhat different from mine.  However, most people see colors as symbolically and metaphorically similar.

For example, red is probably seen universally as powerful as in the “power tie” on a businessman or red dress or jacket on a woman in business.  Silver is a symbol of innovation, cutting edge, high-tech, and modernity.

Speaking of psychology, the 1970 book, “What Color is Your Parachute,” by Richard Nelson Bolles is an immensely useful book of self-assessment designed to suss out one’s greatest passions, if not your purpose in life.  So, what color are you?

I think I might be purple.  It’s not a color that I wear very often, but I think it speaks to who I am, somehow.

If color can have a temperature or a season, I think purple is a cool color, a winter color.  It’s quite saturated, deep, nearly black, and it’s got red and blue in it, but neither, entirely.

Purple is solid and real; it’s not something contrived or frou-frou.  It doesn’t have so much red that it’s hot nor so much blue that it’s icy cold.  Purple is “just alright with me.”

I wear a lot of bright yellow, green, navy blue and black.  I like to wear brown too, and gray.  I don’t mind wearing orange either.  But no red.

Boy birds must stand out to their fewer in number female counterparts who are dressed in far less outstanding colors.  Those red cardinals, blue jays, gold finches and others make a color spectacle out of themselves to literally get noticed.  “Look at me, choose me, notice me,” they seem to scream from their perches.

I wonder what colors attract what people.  Brothels are often red.  Hospitals tend toward muted greens, aqua, or neutral beige.  Daycare centers are yellow.

Blue sky and yellow sun speak to promise.  Green grass, green leaves, and “greenbacks” would have us living life to the fullest.  But the protective brown bark on trees, mud, and decaying leaves are an almost universally despised color, brown.  How come?

Our office is burgundy, a cool shade of red, with brown and black furniture and floor coverings.  But our bedroom is teal and tan.  The living and dining spaces are I think something called desert sand and patterned winter white with accents of blue.  The kitchen is blue, brown and white.  We’re a bit all over the spectrum of “living color.”

We drive a metallic gray vehicle.  The color selection was deliberate.  Neither my spouse nor I need to stand out in a red car, but we like the fact that our car is a sort of snazzy Euro-style, somewhat apart from all the black, white, and silver vehicles on the highway.

Do you know that there is such a thing as color trends?  The Pantone Color Institute even devises a color of the year based on color psychology.  This year it’s Mocha Mousse and some people are a little mad about it, being mud-brown-based and all.

But doesn’t that descriptive color make you feel just a little bit warm, rich, silky and smooth?  I know that I, for one, could use some feelings of luxurious decadence this year, even if it’s in the form of an arbitrary color.

 

 

 

 

I’m half technologically savvy and half old-school.  I’m HAPA, a Hawaiian word for half, usually used to describe people of mixed ethnicity.

I keep getting spam phone calls from my business accounting software company, “Your most recent update has failed.”  Yep.  You’re darn tootin it has, because I didn’t update.

You see, I’m quite satisfied with the performance of my accounting software, just as it is.  I don’t need it fixed in any way.  According to this Goldilocks, it’s just right.

I honestly use probably one third of that software’s capability.  This is where I’m half old-school and half electronic.  I manually make deposits, well half-manual since I might make automatic electronic payments or I take cell phone pictures of checks, but I don’t use the software to do that for me.  I could, but I don’t.

So, I don’t want another fancy or complicated update to throw a monkey wrench into my well-oiled accounting machine.  Thank you but no thanks.  I’m good.

Every time my husband and I see a notice on any of our many electronic devices that an update is available, imminent, or happening now, we cringe a little bit and there’s probably some eye-rolling involved.  We hate updates.  There’s always a mess to be cleaned up afterwards.

Too many times, everything is wacko after an update.  It has taken days to retrieve material that had been scattered in the wind of an update.  Sometimes all you could do to accommodate an update was to turn it off, unplug, then reboot.

Do we need such frequent updates?  Wouldn’t once a year be enough to keep us current?

It sometimes feels like I just got used to the changes from the last update, when a new update comes along.   Few things stay the same; except for Jesus Christ, who is said to be “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

Whatever happened to the notion, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?”  Ironically, it was Bert Lance, Jimmy Carter’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, who popularized that saying in print.    Lance’s comment formalized his criticism of the government for trying to fix things that weren’t broken.  Now we’ve got a new governmental department of oversight, the DOGE, and here we are, dealing with updates out the yin-yang.

There are updates for everything.  Television, cell phones, social media, computer programs and software, auto electronics, even our job descriptions and expectations scream loudly to be updated, constantly.

Is it so terrible to be dated?  Some of the dated stuff wasn’t so awful.  Take the telephone, for instance.  I remember a green desktop box type phone with a rotary dial that we had when I was a teenager.

It was the time of the party line which meant that our neighbor from across the river might have been on the phone at any time we picked up the receiver to use the phone.  Listening in was possible but not kosher.  However, many a naughty “busybody,” probably a term coined just to describe the gossip circle of mostly ladies who listened in on others with whom they shared a telephone line, breached the party line etiquette.

I secretly wished we had the fancier wall phone, another box but a vertical rectangle, less square than our box with the rounded edges.  These were both updates, however, for the old-fashioned black desk models of old.

The first cell phones were almost too big to hold in your hand.  They looked very much like a massive walkie-talkie type radio with a big antenna.  But it was an upgrade from a hand-held radio, and it was helpful while driving or away from the landline at home.

Our first cell phone was a safety item to accompany our tween aged daughter through a half dozen back yards between our house and her grandma’s house.  It’s been updated a dozen times since then.

I was particularly fond of a candy apple red slider phone on which I could type text messages like lightning with both thumbs, sort of like typing on a full-sized keyboard.  But that phone couldn’t be upgraded anymore and became obsolete.  Boo-hoo.

I still can’t manage typing with both thumbs on my current iPhone.  I peck with my elderly right index finger, which I’m told might be a baby boomer evolution of using the rotary phone.

My iPhone updated again recently.  I’m not crazy about some new configurations of my email landing pages.

Sometime when I can carve out about an hour to work on it, I’ll try to see what I can do to find a new normal with that.  Update – I nearly accidentally found how to revert to the old email landing page.  So, that’s taken care of.

It’s always something when you’re dealing with updates.  I guess they’re here to stay and I’ll have to trade in my comfortable classic flare for the most up to date feature of whatever it is I’m connected to.  But then again there’s not a thing wrong with being HAPA.

 

 

 

 

Taking a trip is embarking on a journey.  If it’s a vacation, your journey could be to the next town over or taking a world cruise.  If your journey is a trip and fall, your journey may be shockingly short, moving from an upright position to a prone one, in the blink of an eye.

Have you ever tripped over your own feet?  Tell me that at least once you tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and to save face you looked around like there was something huge in your path that anyone would have tripped over.

Years ago, I had some sort of issues with my feet and when I walked a familiar hiking path, the small acorns strewn on the ground hurt my feet as if they were massive rocks.  Recently, the tiniest pebble dragged inside from the outdoors hurt my sock-clad foot when I stepped on it in our dining room.

I said to myself, “how could such a tiny thing hurt so much?”  But it’s happened before.  You shouldn’t be surprised by something little causing a bigger ruckus than its size would suggest.

What is it about the potential of little things to cause a big issue?  “Nobody trips over mountains.  It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble.”

Maybe it’s because we’re prepared for a mountain climb to be challenging.  We’re not so prepared for a tiny hillock to give us such formidable trouble.

More than once I’ve fallen on an icy hill that in the summertime was a slight incline.  We’re not prepared for little nuances to make a difference.  They can.

Common sense would have us believe that to get tripped up over something, it should be something large and ominous like a mountain.  But we should have noticed with experience that that’s not what usually happens.  It’s the little thing.

However, just because you stumble doesn’t mean you fall.  Just because you trip doesn’t mean you’re going down for the count.

In fact, the origins of the word “trip,” points to being nimble, stepping lightly, or dancing.  My outdoor hiking sometimes looks, if anyone were to see, like I’m dancing all over the path.

There’s a cool scripture from Psalm 18:33 which says, “He makes me as surefooted as a deer, enabling me to stand on mountain heights.”  This visual has been confirmed by various documentaries where you can see deer, mountain goats, and other four-legged types dancing without a care in the world, along what seems a treacherous mountain path to us two-legged observers.

“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill,” they say.  Obstacles come in all shapes and sizes and they’re often not obvious.  Sometimes a little mole hole might as well be a gully the size of the grand canyon when you’re looking up at trees or the sky or just straight ahead; and you trip over it.

Stumbling blocks or steppingstones?  I guess it’s all in how you look at things.  Either way, your feet are propelling you forward.  Rarely when you trip, will you fall backward.

I once fell in a crosswalk while leaving a grocery store.  I was happy to wait until vehicles had passed, but a rather impatient woman, frantically waved me across while she waited at the little stop sign posted at the crosswalk.  To accommodate her gesture, I trotted into the crosswalk and promptly fell over myself.

It was embarrassing to say the least.  What a klutz.  I didn’t know just yet, but I dropped my debit card in the hubbub of people running to the aid of the elderly woman who fell down on the road.

If she hadn’t rushed me.  Or, maybe what happened after wouldn’t have had the chance to have impacted a couple of us.  I got into the car and about to go to the next errand, I noticed that my debit card was missing.  I went into the store to check if the remote possibility of someone turning my card into the authorities had happened.  It did.  A kind soul turned it in, giving them and me an opportunity to observe a good deed.

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news…” – Isaiah 5:2   Have you ever considered that your feet have options?  Our feet can carry us forward toward a good future.  They can carry us away from danger or calamity.  They can assist our navigation of rocky terrain, help us to stand firm in hope of what’s next, and adjust from walking on one kind of surface to another, in an attitudinal instant.

So to finish the pebble versus mountain quote, I wish everyone the blessing that you will “pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain.”  And to you and me both, I’m hoping that when we walk, our “steps will not be hampered; and if we run, we will not stumble.” – Proverbs 4:12

 

 

 

Surely, we all know or have known a few Renaissance people.  These are the folks who know a little about a lot of things.  Well-rounded is an apt description.

Leonardo di Vinci was considered the archetype of the fourteenth to seventeenth century, homo universalis, ideal “Renaissance man.”  Known primarily for his accomplishments as an artist, di Vinci was also a gifted scientist and inventor.

The definitive “Renaissance man,” di Vinci was skilled across fields as well as knowledgeable beyond his obvious and well-known works.  He came up in the time of the Renaissance when the rebirth of classical (Greek and Roman) education had fertilized his inquiring mind.

I could name a handful of Renaissance people born right here and in our time.  However, I won’t name them because often, they’re humble and would be embarrassed to be mentioned in a public forum.   But I will mention a man, now deceased, who my husband and I often referred to as our “Renaissance man,” Jerry Leeds.

Jerry could fix anything and he could talk, talk, talk about any topic from what’s the best fertilizer for grapes to that symphonic piece you just published, the African Methodist church service last week, to how to fix that small engine that just conked out.  Jerry was well-versed in many disciplines and not all talk; he applied his vast knowledge to the work of his hands.

Being educated formally in the liberal arts or humanities: history, cultural studies, critical thinking, languages, philosophy, social and religious studies, grammar; and generally learning figuratively, where humans have come from and where we’re headed, helps us to fall into the role of Renaissance people.  However, formal education is not the only education.

Necessity breeds resourcefulness and many a Renaissance person had no choice but to “learn how to do it or else.”  Also, travel exposes one to the potential to know a little about a lot.  Willingness and openness to learn is a prerequisite for becoming a Renaissance person.  Apprenticeship with a Renaissance person can by example, mold one into the same.

”Renaissance man,” is not a sexist term nor concept.  This was/is a man in the sense of human, not a person of the male gender.  Many women are Renaissance people.  In fact, I would venture an educated guess that many women are such.

Women have the potential to be the most holistic creatures on earth.  Bearing another human from your body, I dare say, requires something of you beyond the physical.  Having children or not having children does not automatically make you a Renaissance person.  However, bearing a child and raising said child predisposes you toward learning  a little about a lot and then teaching this information to your child.

If you can cook creatively with nothing, sew and mend anything, build a deck, house or carport, do your own taxes, grow food and flowers, lead a committee, do some basic accounting, exercise compassion toward others, navigate the internet and multiple customer service representatives, know God, play an instrument, sing, dance, counsel others who are hurting, nurse their wounds, solve a thousand intersecting problems, read a book or a thousand, appreciate nature and artistic beauty, speak effectively in a meeting or a crowd, and a host of other necessities in life, I think you’re a Renaissance person  I know a few women and men who fit this bill.

You might ask why do I care about being a Renaissance person or that you are one?  If you are a well-rounded individual, you are in a greater position to contribute to society.  Thus, your potential for life-satisfaction is multiplied because you have more resources to draw from when reality gets harsh.

Life is easier when you can recall a song, a poem, a Bible verse, an apropos word or phrase in Spanish, French, or Italian, to address a current sticky situation.  A particular painting, a re-read of a favorite book, a walk in the woods or along a beach, a home-cooked meal or baked good, crafting a piece, pounding a nail, or some such release of skill, might be just the thing to make you smile.  That’s when you’re grateful to be a Renaissance person.