Author: Bev

I, for one, am nearly ecstatic about this extended Autumn we’ve been enjoying.  I know, I know, hunters are probably starting to get tense.

Professional and amateur climate-watchers in Pennsylvania are most likely lamenting that we need the cold weather for this ecological and that conservation issue that I have no need to overly concern myself with.  But for a regular Karen who loves Fall the best of all the seasons, I’m happy as a clam with this weather.

Officially Autumn, which most of us around here call Fall, begins around September and ends with the winter solstice in December.  However, the temperate feel of this transition season, which is also known as sweater-weather, customarily ends long before Christmas when jacket-weather has given way to coat, scarf, hat, and glove-weather.

So, that we are beginning November with highs near seventy degrees, is a bit remarkable.  I’m not complaining.  Autumn, it seems is the favorite season of many.  We aren’t unhappy that due to climate-change or whatever, the season seems to be longer than usual, which is of course a relative concept.  My heating-oil budget is also grateful for this extended temperate weather.

Fall, so named from the phrase, “the fall of the leaf,” has been more commonly used to denote the season in the U.S. since the 1800s.  Deciduous trees shed their leaves this time of year in a vast area of the Northern Hemisphere.

Fall’s seasonal counterpart, Spring, is so named from the phrase, “the spring of the leaf.” Come Spring, everything is blossoming and springing back to life after a long winter’s nap.

Most of us remember daylight saving time’s rules from the saying, “fall back, spring forward.”  It seems to me I read a while back that the House of Representatives passed a bill to banish daylight saving time, but it fell dead in the Senate as some state in the northwest couldn’t cope.  Right when I had hope that there might be more chances to walk outdoors in the winter, before dark, at 5 p.m.!

If your curious which name came first, as in the chicken or egg conundrum, it seems that the word Autumn was used in the 1300s, and the word, Fall was used commonly by the 1500s.  An even earlier name for the season, is “harvest.”

In fact, my favorite greeting for the season, displayed on our front door, is Happy Harvest.  Many people in these parts celebrate harvest with the familiar display of corn stalks, hay bales, pumpkins, gourds, fall berries and vines, and leaves.

Leaves of every color and hue are everywhere this season.  Leaves are controversial – imagine that.  Some say leave the leaves lie, to house all manner of organism over the winter.  Others of a more fastidious nature, wish that every single leaf were picked up and disposed of.  Our household lies somewhere in the middle of the controversy, having nearly every manner of tree, deciduous as well as coniferous, somewhere on our property.

Leaves are a public phenomenon.  Leaves blow from one property to another.  They litter woodland paths.  Wet by dew, leaves become a slippery surface on pavement.  They also color the season with the warmest of glows.

Leaves are the reason for the season, in my book; and the smell of pumpkin spice, cinnamon, gingerbread, and all that stuff.  Hot tea and hot chocolate are drinks de rigueur of Fall; even hot apple cider.

I grew up jumping into massive piles of dead and dying leaves. Don’t tell me I’m too old to jump into a pile of leaves. Tell me I’m too wise to do so.  I’m not as young as I feel or look, I’m as old as I think and behave.

If you’re a hugger, not a “don’t touch me,” kind of person, you’ve probably noticed at least once that when you hugged someone, they emitted a big exhale.  You know when this happens, they’ve been holding perhaps a bunch of stuff in.

Isn’t it about time to exhale?  The term, “bated breath” was first used by Shakespeare in his 1605 Merchant of Venice, and it refers to abating your breathing, stopping it or reducing it, in short, holding one’s breath in excitement, anticipation, or trepidation for what’s next.

Do you recognize any of these instances when you’ve held your breath:  Anything involving a timer; Under water, either literally or figuratively; Against the clock; Holding back your temper/anger; Concentrating on an intricate task; Passenger in a vehicle; Medical procedures; Rushing from one thing to another; Number two – enough said; Awaiting an outcome; Birthing a baby or a project; Waiting for anything; Afraid of something…?

Prior to about the last twenty years, I erroneously thought that when you’re out of breath, say when you’re exercising, it was the inhale that gave you more steam.  However, contrary to my common sense and the fact that inhaling when out of breath never worked, it’s the exhale that renews your energy.

It was from Leslie Sansone, the exercise guru, that I first heard, “if you’re feeling out of breath, blow it out.  That’ll give you more energy.” Or, “don’t hold your breath, ever!”  So, who knew that to exhale is the ticket to better fitness.

About fitness, are you aware that, at least in television and movies, the Brits call good looking, well-toned folks, “fit.”  As in glancing at a muscled man or woman, “they’re really fit.”  And we expect that fit people are healthy people.

Does it follow, in a blanket cause-effect way, that good-looking people are healthier than those less fortunate in the looks department?  I have a pet peeve with people who say things like, “why would he cheat on her, she’s beautiful,” or “why would she leave him, he’s gorgeous?”  Like it’s reasonable to cheat on a homely person.  Don’t get me started.

Back to the exhale.  I think our body’s natural reaction to exertion, or any kind of stressor to the mind which is reflected in the body, is to hold your breath.  One would think that breathing the way that is most beneficial to your health would be an instinct.

Au contraire, when our bodies are in flight or fight mode, while stressed, we tend to not breathe according to the original schematic.  And if fight or flight has become your usual modus operandi, you’ve taught yourself to breathe shallowly and to rarely exhale sharply.

It seems that learning to breathe properly when under stress or exertion, takes as much discipline as training our muscles, including the heart muscle, to work at their maximum potential for strength and endurance.

The feel-good chemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, and endorphins which are released during exercise, kick in big time when we exhale.  These puppies make us feel so good, we might be tempted to exhale constantly instead of going back to the rhythm of, breathe in through the nose, breathe out through the nose.

It takes discipline to learn to exhale sharply, once through the mouth, and then begin to breathe in and out as usual while we exercise.  I guess like any feel-good chemical, we want more of it, including the endorphins that our body produces when we exercise.  Some of us, then exhale, exhale, exhale – perpetual mouth-breathers, as we can’t get enough of that good thing.

It seems that the exhale is potentially an all or nothing kind of thing.  Either we are addicted to exhaling and that’s all we want to do because of how it makes us feel. or, we live with bated breath, holding our breath for eons.  When forced to exhale, the relief of it makes us realize “oh my, I should’ve done that a long time ago.”

Have you ever noticed that when you’re stressed you find, or hear, yourself “blowing it out,” sort of constantly.  I think your body is practicing the exhale, stirring up endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin, to get your mind back to feeling good.  So maybe instinct plays a part in the exhale, after all.

I’m no expert on all this physical stuff, but I am an observer of human behavior.  I’ve noticed an awful lot of people walking around with bated breath because I surmise that they feel if they exhale, they’ll explode, lose control, or die because there is so much pent up inside their vulnerable vessel of a body.

Given the stress of our current times, I’ve written these thoughts to encourage us all to just breathe, including the nice cleansing breath known to every birthing woman; and to exhale, letting all that bottled up stuff find a way of escape.  I’m reminded of a favorite Scripture, “God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

 

Sometimes it’s just utterly relaxing and peaceful to just concentrate on what’s in front of you.  Haven’t you got enough on your plate?

The constant vigilance in looking at the details in the periphery can be exhausting.  Working that machine at the ophthalmologist/optometrist office that tests the integrity of your optic nerve is shockingly tiring.  Concentrating on flashing lights in various degrees of strength and clarity, trying your best to notice all of them, can take it out of you.

You know how you must have peripheral sight in order to legally drive?  Well seeing peripherally means seeing the whole picture, not just what’s in front of your nose. 

Normally I’d be an advocate for socially peripheral vision, but I thought of another point of view on this.  Maybe sometimes it’s alright to just skip all that detail in the periphery and just look at what’s on the plate in front of you. 

Maybe it’s not a bad idea to cut out the periphery and give some space to all the rest of life going on around us.  There is so much going on, all the time.

Concentrating on details can be good and beneficial.  But, do you know the saying by Nietzsche, “the devil is in the details”?  On other words, something may seem simple but upon closer examination of the details, they may reveal problems.

So, if you’re going for simplicity in life, skip the details.  But if you’re the digging-deeper type, details will give you all the information you need or want.

The downside of those pesky details, is, in a word, anxiety.  If we review too frequently, can you say, constantly, in the case of overthinking the details, it does nothing but create unease about the “what ifs” of life in the future.

I’m reminded of a guy in a news story about the Prince and Princess of Wales and their mental health vision for young people.  He commented that we are forced by society to be “over-resilient” and we can’t relax in our vulnerability.  That’s an interesting concept, “over-resilience.”

A standard greeting as we pass one another in the marketplace is, “how are you?”  Most of us unthinkingly reply, “I’m fine, thanks.”

To be honest, I sometimes think before I reply to such niceties, and say forthrightly, “I’m okay.”  “Okay” is code for so-so; I could be better, but I’m resilient.  Most people get the nuance and nod with an affirmative, “yeah, me too.”

Occasionally it’s nice to just relax and let it be, “whatever will be will be, the future’s not ours to see, que sera sera….”  Thank you, Doris Day.

I must confess that I have allowed “the details” of a particularly challenging month, work me into a tizzy now and again.  Now that’s a word you don’t hear all that often these days.

When I looked up the word tizzy in order to confirm that it’s the right word to express my state on the occasional day filled with details that had to be worked out, during a difficult month, I came across an obsolete British synonym, sixpence.  Oddly, that word reminded me of a little children’s book, The Tailor of Gloucester.

In the story, the lesser known of Beatrix Potter’s animal-based tales and my favorite, The Tale of Peter Rabbit being her most famous, the tailor gets worked into a tizzy, or sixpence.  Long story as short as I can make it, the tailor becomes overwrought under the massive pressure to complete an important garment for an important person by a Christmas deadline.

The tailor gets sick and ends up in bed for a forgetful 24-48 hours or so, and the mice in the kitchen of his live-in shop, finish the embroidery on the mayors wedding waistcoat, except they run out of “twist” to complete the final details on the fancy formal vest.  His grumpy cat, Simpkin must go out into the night and spend their last coins on the needed twist so that the amazed and now cognizant tailor can finish the embroidery.

The moral of the story, to me, is that if we work ourselves up into the proverbial tizzy over all the undone details that come at us, sometimes daily, we may miss the good stuff right in front of our noses, and make ourselves sick, to boot.  And sometimes the details take care of themselves, if we back off and let them.

As it turns out, all the details in the periphery of your life might just include people, who are not in the least peripheral to your outcomes.  These people, or details may go unnoticed if you’re not a detail-oriented person.  Or you can acknowledge these folks as not just the details on the edges of your life but as vital support persons responsible collectively for your success in overcoming the challenges you face.

I’ve still got a keen peripheral vision and I want to thank all you “details” in my life.  I appreciate you.  Again, you know who you are.

There are a variety of personality types walking around this big ole world.  With some of these folks we can mount friendships as easily as we change our clothes.  There are others from every ilk with whom we just don’t get along.

The Caregiver personality is one which I admire but is simply not me.  I thought in a misty distant past of becoming a nurse-midwife.  In fact, I formally studied lay-midwifery while pursuing my post graduate degree.

It was the nursing part of midwifery that threw me for a curve.  I think it was partly due to my personality.

As it turns out the Caregiver personality, one of sixteen personality types identified in the 1956, less than scientific but better than a horoscope, personality questionnaire called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), is vastly contrary to my own personality.  I am more of an Idealist or Artist in personality type.

The Caregiver personality is one where the individual who possesses it is energized by interactions with others.  When I understood this simple little quirk of personality, I instantly knew “this is not me, no wonder that I struggle so much in a care-giving role.”

I’m the opposite, I de-compensate after too much interaction.  I need to get alone in order to recover from my outgoing endeavors.  Part of my introvert personality is to thrive for a time on one-on-one interactions, but to become energized by silence and nature.

I hope you never have need of the individual to whom I refer here as a Caregiver.  These human beings are in a category unto themselves.  And, before COVID, these people proved to be vital to our aging society; post-COVID, they remain a vital workforce.

Caregivers may include nurses of various degrees, nurse assistants, private duty carers and companions, as well as social workers; or even non-degreed humans who are called to work with folks in their home-setting.  Caregivers assist us as we age and don’t kid yourself, you may be younger than me or older than me, but we are all aging.  Sooner or later, you’ll need some assistance.

In discussing some problems of aging with a friend, I had to giggle at her sarcasm when she concluded, “golden years, my bleep.”  I get it.

I’m all about positivity, acceptance, and making the best of a given situation.  But I am also a realist who detests denial of reality and inauthentic living.

It is clearly beneficial for one’s mental health to acknowledge the odd blarney moment in life by shouting the f-word and smirking for a second’s relief.  Let’s be real, here.

But back to Caregivers.  They border on super-heroes, in my book.  I clearly can’t do everything, nor probably many things, well; but I am the first to recognize when people fulfill roles which are totally not in my wheelhouse.

Speaking of Caregivers, they have a special dispensation of “personality-grace,” if you ask me.  I’ve seen these folks accept personal psychological assaults day after day without burning out and giving up.

“This is how it goes,” they say.  The implication is, they’ve been there, done that, more than once, and they don’t take it as a personal assault when they’re yelled at, demeaned, spat upon, even hit.  The word, saint, comes to mind.

Caregiver-compassion is on another level than your ordinary understanding.  I feel like I have a good measure of compassion toward my fellow humanity, but my temperament is such that my efforts to care for others can be easily tampered with by ingratitude or hostility.  As an introvert, I withdraw and give up, even if just for a moment.

There is in my mind, a give-and-take of care; a back-and-forth, interaction, if you will.  I’m simply not equipped with the Caregiver personality, to cope, when the interaction breaks down into a one-way street of care-giving, only.

“Understood.”  This is a one word, concise and to the point, reply to a military order, I think.  It’s my belief that to be understood is the most meaningful of gestures from one human to another.   There are no sweeter words than, “I understand.”

“I get it,” is a simple way of saying, “I understand where you’re coming from.”  Caregivers have the miraculous gift of maintaining this kind of understanding with the strangers toward whom they dispense consistent and objective care.  I’m truly in awe.

French philosopher, Albert Camus, said “happiness is the simple harmony between man and the life he leads.”  It’s my full conviction that Caregivers are the divinely appointed people, called to apportion that harmony, and to help us who are aging, to find peace in the life we are now leading.  Thank you.  You know who you are.

It’s college football season, so if you’re not a football fan, please forgive my analogies, that follow.  So, a few football fouls, against the defense, which are relevant to my musings herewith are: “roughing the kicker,” “roughing the passer,” and “pass interference.”

While the offense is just doing their job, fouls perpetrated by the defense, such as contact, holding, pulling, tripping, hands to the face, or cutting off legally, offensively intended movements, are illegal and against the rules of the game.  Roughing the kicker is clearly a defensive ploy.

Surely, you’ve never been defensive, and rebelled against the rules that life has handed to you.  Or, you’ve never put off the unpleasant inevitables of life, by avoiding the rules put into place by the powers that be.

Have you ever been the receiver, blocked from doing what you want to, by pass interference?  Maybe you then found yourself raucously opposing the seemingly unfair rules of the game of life?

I’m reminded here of a form of bucking the system, referred to in the biblical book of Acts as “kicking against the goad.”  This was a literal agrarian concept of using a slender piece of timber sharpened to a point, to prod stubborn oxen into motion.

I don’t know if you’ve had any real-life experience trying to move a large farm animal when they don’t want to move, but I have.  I found myself at the mercy of one or two large rams which did not care to go in the direction they should have and needed to go.

When a stubborn animal foolishly kicks against that sharp goad, it can cause itself unnecessary injury and pain.  Isn’t it frustrating to find yourself unable to explain to that “dumb animal,” that it is in their best interest to move where you are directing them?

In fact, as is often the case in biblical literature, most text is a metaphor for you and me.  When Jesus said, when referring to the goad and the stubborn oxen, he was really speaking to self-willed, headstrong people, “You are only hurting yourself by fighting me.”

It’s often painful at first when we’re goaded into the right direction.  But kicking against the goad only increases the pain.  If we could just make peace with our direction in life and go with the flow for a time, perhaps the good in the new or the change will yield a surprisingly pleasant reality.

Jesus exercised compassion toward the oxen, aka the stubborn human when he said “it is hard for you.” Rebellion is a hard path.  It’s more painful than the path of peace and acceptance, forward.

Have you ever taken a path that you knew was right for you, but it was hard?  Let’s say, you plowed ahead and the difficulty eased, revealing the “necessity” of having taken that path.

I think none of us willingly take the narrow, rocky, or difficult path, in life.  In fact, Scripture reveals a truth in Matthew 7, that most of us gravitate to the wide, most-followed, crowded, easy path, when possible.

So, the next time you’re goaded into the “right direction,” perhaps you’ll do yourself a favor by not kicking against the goad.  Maybe, sit in the pain for a short time until the clouds begin to clear and you can see the sense in what seemed senseless in the beginning.

In your defense, stop roughing the kicker.  Those in your offense, in the game alongside you, are doing their best most of the time to usher you along the path you’ve selected.

“Bring it on, day!”  Sometimes I wish I hadn’t begun my day with those words.  You know what I mean.

One of the positive things about the social media platform, Facebook, is the uplifting sayings which are spread around like germs.  We all could use a bit of encouragement from time to time.  I’ve found some gems along with the germs in those little idioms.

The saying which I pondered in the musings which have become this column goes like this: “Life’s so ironic.  It takes sadness to know happiness, noise to appreciate silence, and absence to value presence.”

I had just come off a week of some difficult moments.  At the peak day of those difficulties, I felt like most of us have at one time or another, that I couldn’t take any more.

Soldiering through is a skill that we can all develop if we are put into tough situations often enough.  So, soldier-through is exactly what I did.

Compared to that day, the next day felt like the sun had risen in my world, for the first time in a while.  It was a truly ta-da moment where I could almost palpate the freedom I felt, compared to the adversity from the day before.

A day can come upon you, which is shockingly difficult, when you expected to “do other things.”  I can’t tell you how often either my husband or I exclaim in numbingly blatant terms, “this is not what I expected to do with this day.”

We just can’t count on what a day will bring.  The saying, “we’ll see what the day brings,” could be restated as, we’ll see what happens.

I’ve seen enough cop shows and mystery movies to have observed a few skeptical police officers question a mystic or medium who has come forward with some information about an impending murder, and say, “if you can see this, why can’t you see who the murderer is?”  Most of us aren’t privy to such information about an upcoming day.

Jesus said, “you won’t know what day or hour I’m coming again.”  I think we are also told in the Bible that we should be alert to signs and signals and not ignore such potential wisdom.

So, most days will bring some surprising events and outcomes.  But when we look back, we might have missed a few subtle clues as to what that day brought.

That’s hindsight for you.  Another valuable saying is, “you live and learn.”

I also have contemplated the concept of the time we’ve been given each day.  A day of twenty-four hours can be spent in a variety of ways with a variety of emotions, goals, hopes, and expectations.

What do you spend your time on?  Are you a spendthrift with your time, or are you just plain thrifty with the time you have?

Now there’s a word; “spendthrift.”  One might think that because the word thrift is contained in the word, that it means that you are thrifty or cautious with your spending.  But it means the opposite, that you throw away money, spending too much, or unwisely.

I complain from time to time about our beloved cats, who are so very finicky that we never know which can of food will suffice their appetites or to which one they will turn up their noses.  It’s a toss-up.  I’m often heard saying, “well that’s another dollar down the drain.”

Are you a big spender as to your time?  Or do you focus on saving time, banking it for another time?

Do you use your time wisely or foolishly?  Or is that just someone else’s judgment of what you do with your time?

Well, today’s another day and here we are, waiting to see what happens.  As most of you, I’ve made some plans, expect certain things to happen based on preparations put into place, and hope for the best.

All the while, also like the rest of you, I’m gonna put one foot in front of the other with the wisdom I’ve got, and do what I do.  It’s yet to be determined what this day will bring.

“He almost made a great play.”  When is almost good enough, and when does it not cut it?

I was about half watching a recorded college football game, which frankly was a bit boring.  So, I just listened while playing a word game on my phone.

What I heard were announcers consistently using the “almost” adverb more than a few times as to the opposing team to “my team.”  “They almost had that first down…. they almost had that tackle….”  Just once, so far, did I hear them say, “it was a ‘clear cut’ first down.”

So, since when is “almost” a reasonable call by football announcers?  It seemed odd to me; and possibly biased toward one team.

This made me think somewhat more deeply about the word and concept of “almost.”  The word refers to “for the most part,” “very little short of,” or “very nearly.” 

“Not quite,” comes to mind.  “Just kidding, not really,” also comes to mind.

Surely this concept came from an indecisive conqueror way back in the stone age.  “I think I want your land, so I’m gonna take this portion and I’ll decide later if I want it all.” 

Is it simply gentler to say, “I almost made it to the finish-line,” than to say, “I didn’t make it to the finish line?”  So, do we use this word to go easy on our ego when we can’t cut it?

For example, do we avoid saying “I can’t” and say instead, “I almost can,” and that suffices in our minds?

Are we dumbing-down, psyching ourselves out, and pretending to be okay by using such words as almost?  Whatever happened to truth, honesty, forthrightness?  Denial is easier, I’m guessing.

So, I almost finished this column when something crazy and important happened which demanded my full attention.  To be honest, I just didn’t finish the column.