Author: Bev

We’ve all lost something, sometime or another.  When something gets lost around the house, I take it personal.

Losing stuff, seriously peeves me.  Why?

Maybe it comes from the concept of “put it back where it belongs.”  Or, “everything has its place.”  Why isn’t it there?

My annoyance with this issue of losing stuff stems from the original effort I’ve taken to organize our stuff in the spirit of efficient household maintenance.

Do you remember the “domestic goddess” of Rosanne Barr’s stand-up comedy?  I might be one of those.  I probably can’t blame my “organizational skills” totally on Barr.  After all I took a charm class in travel school in 1973, and possessed a book touting the etiquette and graces of home-making.  So, there’s that.

We own a small house.  Importantly, we like our home’s tidy size.  I do not wish for a bigger place.

There are limits, however, as to the amount of stuff we can have in our small living space.  This is a good thing as it applies to living simply.  But it requires constant maintenance, kind of like advancing gray hair, an expanding middle, and perms.

Things not “where they belong,” is a battle which I continually lose in my household.  And right now, ours is a household of two.  Hm.  I wonder who doesn’t put things away.

You’ve surely heard of the open concept for living space.  Well, my husband has taken this concept way too far.  If he, had it his way, everything would be left out in the open, and I’m not talking about things psychological here.

My spouse would like nothing to be put “away.”  From food to tools, laundry to books, papers to clothing, my husband would leave it out if left to his own devices.

That is, until something important is “lost.”  Then, we fall back on the old adage, “if mom can’t find it, nobody can find it,” or in our case “if the wife can’t find it, it can’t be found.”

One can lose a game.  We win some and lose some.  Unless we always lose, then it’s not losing the game that hurts, it’s losing hope that can cripple a person, labeled “loser.”

We lose items all the time.  If we call this “misplacing” an item instead of losing it, hope remains that it can be found.  I usually fall back on, “it has to be here somewhere.”

Depending on the value you place on the game or the item, we can recover from these losses.  If truth be told, misplaced items are usually found. 

You know stories of your coffee cup on the car roof, the tissue box in the refrigerator, car keys in the bathroom, and your debit card slipped neatly into that mystery space between the driver’s seat and the middle console of your vehicle.

I once “lost” my wedding ring, found in a McDonald’s carry-out bag.  That one caused a tidy panic for a very long, few minutes.

And, fortunately most of us have been rescued by a Good Samaritan, who found an irreplaceable, lost item, only to return it safely into our hands.  But this brings to mind the troubling difference between lost and stolen.

There was the time, I still haven’t completely recovered from, that I left a favorite item of clothing at a hotel.  It was a plain white cotton blouse with a little bit of stretch, ideal for travel because it was comfortable and went with everything.

After arriving home to discover the blouse missing, I called the hotel to inquire if my blouse had been turned into their “lost and found” department.  It hadn’t.  Hm.

I was referred to “housekeeping,” for further investigation.  Where else would one find a lost item than housekeeping?  No joy there.

The monetary value of that blouse was nominal, at best.  But the practical value to its owner was invaluable, with a commensurate level of distress at its loss, that has never really diminished or resolved.  I temporarily vowed not to stay at that hotel chain again, but, well, time has mellowed me and forgiveness has taken precedence, but I will never forget the loss of that blouse.

So, all things lost, are not found.  Even when we lose weight, sometimes we manage to permanently leave some of it behind.  Other times, we find every pound and then some.

Even when we lose precious people or pets, we seem to find them again in our memories, dreams, visions, photographs, and in everyday items that “remind” us of them.  Thusly let’s celebrate another holiday that I just made up, Lost and Found Day, on May 31^st.

We could personalize Memorial Day this year to commemorate not only those who died in military service, but those we knew and loved who died from wounds sustained in any of life’s battles, whether it be addiction, sickness or disease, heartbreak, or their life timed-out way too soon for us to ably accommodate.

Let’s celebrate together, a united acceptance of things lost, but mostly, all things, found.

 

 

 

I shall tip-off this column with a few tips. This is not an advice column and I am careful not to tip my hand too soon, but let me warn you not to use felt-tip pens, willy-nilly.  The old-fashioned ball-point pen will do.

I have a practical kitchen tip for you.  You might say, “who does she think she is to offer me a tip.”  Well, I am no expert, but not only do I know how to boil water, I’ve learned after all these years how to boil an egg, too.

That might seem random to you, but if nothing else, my thoughts go all random, all the time.  And I’m kind of tickled that I can now boil eggs so that my deviled eggs, or “Jesus eggs” to some of my relatives of relatives, don’t look like they’re pre-chewed or pock-marked like the aftermath of cystic acne.

Just for your information, I have tried all of the other tips offered by the experts on YouTube and the cooking websites about how to boil eggs so as to remove the shells without incident.  I thought baking them would solve all of those problems, but not so much.  They scorched EVERY time, even when I used silicone liners; and they still didn’t peel smoothly.

Also, the big deal about fresh eggs versus “old” eggs, is in my opinion, whoo-hoo, if that’s a sufficient word, or even a word at all.  You may try my tip or ignore it; it’s offered free of charge, as I am no tipster.

The tip that I have for you about boiling eggs is, add a tablespoon or more of baking soda to the water, bring to boil, and boil for 12 minutes.  Rinse with cool water and let the eggs sit in the warm water until you can handle them to peel.  The peel comes off easily with smooth, shiny, boiled eggs.

And my tip for unusually good deviled eggs, is capers and sour pickles, plus all the usual stuff.  Also, the baking soda helps clean the pan in which you boiled the eggs.

Okay, that’s it.  No more tips of that sort.

I have no gambling tip for you, or insider trading tip.  And if you believe there is anything real about cow-tipping, then let’s go snipe-hunting.

Please tip your server, every server, every time you go out to eat a meal in a restaurant.  Twenty percent is standard.  If you receive exceptional service, tip more.  If you received excessively poor service, reduce it a bit, but remember you never know what another person is going through, and if you can afford to eat out, you can afford to tip the server.

Speaking about what we don’t know about people, I believe it’s true that what we see is just the tip of the iceberg, below.  “What you see is what you get,” is a myth.  Some people may be transparent, but in my experience, those folks are “far and few between.”

If you find yourself in tip-top shape, I tip my hat to you.  That is if I had a hat to tip to you.  Random fact, hat-tipping began as a demonstration of vulnerability and trust, as in removing one’s helmet when no danger was present; and only later as a gesture of respect and politeness.

Shorter people get the concept of tippy-toes.  We have to utilize this ballet-skill frequently.  My pantry and kitchen cabinets all require this particular dance of me, on a daily basis.  I guess it improves the calf muscles, or contributes to leg cramps depending on which side of the glass you inhabit, the half-full one or the half-empty one.

One last tip.  This one is geographical.  The world-famous Leaning Tower of Pisa, is no more unsteady on its foundation, than I am tipsy, when writing these tip-words, for your entertainment.  Cheers.

There are all kinds of rest, and I’m a fan of them all.  For an introvert, two types of rest particularly apply: stillness to decompress and solitude to recharge. 

I think introversion is often misunderstood.  Most of us who fit into this category are introspective, but we might also flit quite smoothly into the world as social butterflies.

We can talk among the best of them, if it’s substantive conversation about stuff that matters to us.  But, small-talk is exhausting.

The difference between us and the extroverts among us, is we need to consciously prepare beforehand and recharge after our social forays.  Our psychological and social energies are finite and have to be replenished.

Introverts need a physical and mental exhale after enjoying social interactions.  We regroup, then go “out” again.

Rest from the usual.  Rest from routine activities.  Rest from work.  Most people would call this type of rest, vacation.

I’ve secretly giggled when retired folks say they’re going on vacation.  One could argue that this is an oxymoron or even a paradox; a contradiction in terms.  That is, if you define vacation as time away from “the job.”

However, if you consider a vacation to be, time away from your routine activities or rest from the usual, or same-ole, same-ole, then happy vacay to all ya’ll retirees.  I’m aware that “the beach,” is a favorite destination, a change of geography, and scenery for many who are otherwise land-locked.

For others of us, a connection to art or nature gives us rest.  For years, I’ve found exercise in the form of walking/jogging adjacent to woodlands, both restful and invigorating, physically and creatively.  Many a story idea has emerged in mid-walk.

To all of you “caregivers” out there, rest can also include permission to not be helpful, to do something “unproductive,” or to take a break from taking on the responsibility of the world.  Rest from care.  Have you ever said, when tired, “I don’t care?”  This isn’t rudeness, it’s rest.

Or maybe your respite from care might be spending time alone at home.  Alone can be immensely restful.

Is rest the same thing as relaxation or sleep or vacation?  Is rest only physical?  Is rest only the cessation of work?  We’re told to rest when we’re ill.

Doesn’t one need psychological rest?  To stop thinking, planning, imagining?  Mental illness should surely benefit from rest.  Sometimes don’t you feel the need for rest after awaking from a particularly vigorous dream?

The Sabbath rest is a thing for some Christians.  Instituted by God himself, after creating the world and all within it in six days, He appointed the seventh day, a day of rest.  This we’re told in the epic story of Genesis.  Whew, now that was some work to recover from.  Talk about needing a vacay!

Doesn’t mental work make you just as tired as physical work?  After an epic day of desk-work, (can you say Monday?), one can feel released from the “chain-gang.”

Some folks apparently never rest; thus, we say they are “laid to rest” when they die or bid them adieu with the wish, “rest in peace.”  We’ve all heard someone say, “I’ll rest when I die.”

Rest is one of the more sublime behaviors for the human-being.  This brings me to the ultimate rest, sleep.

Not ones to be described as good sleepers, some of us really treasure rest.  In fact, some nights even though sleep eludes us, we can still rest and rejuvenate, if we allow ourselves the pleasure.

If, instead of counting how many hours of sleep we would get if we go to sleep in the next half hour; we were to just shut down, and allow ourselves to rest, it might be a restful night. We’ve all observed a baby who fights sleep.  Stop being a baby, and rest.

There are moments, particularly after a long day of work, when I curl up in that just-right Goldilocks position, get the My Pillow positioned in that space between my head and neck and reach a position of what can only be described as perfect rest.  It may not result in sleep but it’s satisfying rest.

In fact, I think perhaps one could characterize the baby tucked up in its “fetal position,” inside its waterbed womb, as “growing, in rest.”  Oooh, that sounds like a nice kind of rest.  Regression therapy anyone?  Get some rest.

It’s not necessarily the same thing, but “we all have something.”

Years ago, when writing a book, I came across a news headline about a scientist posted in the North Pole or was it the South Pole, who got cancer.  Unable to get home promptly for treatment, she had to treat herself with whatever supplies and technology she had at hand.  But when finally flighted back to civilization she said, “we’ve all got something, mine happens to be cancer.”

Like that scientist mine might be cancer or another sickness.  Yours might be a battle against a past that still haunts you.  Maybe your something is financial struggle.  Or your fight could be with a difficult relationship that you can’t sever nor reconcile.

But one thing is certain, “we all have something.”  It’s universal.

Then again, “there’s always something.”  We’re never free from some needling something that keeps us “fighting the good fight.”  The Biblical Apostle Paul, had a figurative thorn in his side, literally needling him to stay appreciative.

Why do I always think of Robin Williams’ line in Mrs. Doubtfire, “I am job,” when I write the biblical name, Job? But back to the subject at hand, there is the Old Testament figure, Job who had a trifecta of trouble, testing his loyalty to the God who gave him everything, only to have it all taken away by Satan.

We homeowners often lament that the honey-do, DIY jobs around the house, never end; whining regularly that “there’s always something.”  And what Monday morning doesn’t start out with hope that this time it’ll not be as usual, punctuating the end of the day and the beginning of the week with, “there’s always something.”

Even if you’re “living the dream,” make no mistake, there is always some hindrance, tension, or problem to be overcome.  I think of the one element required in a good plot, whether in a book or film, which is tension.  Something to get out from under.

And don’t you know that’s the thing that drives us forward and drives us crazy at the same time.  I can’t tell you how many times my husband and I have discerned the advent of that element of plot in a movie, much to our dismay, “well, there has to be tension or there would be no movie, eh!”  We’d usually prefer that it skip the cliched problem and move on to the solution.

The underdog always thinks, “if I could just get to be ‘top-dog’ I’d be fulfilled or content, or happy.”  I think it was Rockefeller (John D.) who answered the question put to him, “how much money does it take to make a man happy?  One more dollar.”

“Fighting the good fight,” a line taken from the Apostle Paul’s letter to his protégé, Timothy, is a precept which encourages us all to become better at our humanity.  It’s meant to give us the strength to battle whatever “something” that stands between us and completion of our purpose in life.  And “there’s always something.”

“Gonna try with a little help from my friends…”  That was how the Beatles described our need for some help to deal with the “somethings” that hound us.

I know to the independent sort of folk, “help” is a “four-letter” word of the dirtiest kind.  But sooner or later we’re gonna need some help for something.

One of my favorite songs is, “Giant” by Calvin Harris.  Let me close this with a little something from that song.  Maybe it’ll help you with whatever something you have to deal with this week:

“I would be nothing without you holding me up…  Now I’m strong enough for both of us…  Climb up on my shoulders, tell me what you see…  We’ll be breaking boulders underneath our feet…”

I admit I had a smidgen of trouble coming up with this week’s column.  It wasn’t as severe as writer’s block, but maybe it was writer’s constipation.

Instead of a laxative or even a stool softener, all I needed was a fiber gummy or two, lol.  I crack myself up; maybe just myself, but “we” have fun.

Then, it hit me.  Words.

It all began with that day’s Dictionary.com “word of the day,” sumpsimus.  This word piqued my curiosity.  I often try to suss a word’s meaning with its parts, or bit of Latin roots.

So, I thought of maximus, as in gluteus-maximus or what I interpret as massive muscle or big butt, lol.  Next, I thought of sumptuous, which to me means delectable.  Well, then it got dirtier, as in sump pump.  So, I stopped thinking and researched the word, sumpsimus.

Well, I couldn’t seem to relate to the word sumpsimus, but oh baby did I relate to it’s opposite, mumpsimus, meaning “adherence to an incorrect word or practice while rejecting the correct one, or a person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice.”

I was shopping in a certain supermarket that I frequent, occasionally.  Although the word frequent in the previous sentence means to visit often, I’m compelled to use it.  However, in this I would be lying, so I modified it with the word occasionally.  This word usage most certainly is a breach of the rules of English grammar, but I think you get my drift.

I shop in this store more than occasionally but not as much as I could honestly characterize as often.  Last week I found myself in said grocery store three times, but I stopped in once the month before.  You decide.

At any rate, a visit or two back, that supermarket gave me a new surname.  It’s okay.  My married surname happens to be French and many people overly-Frenchify it by pronouncing it, “Le-Vaughn” or “Le-von.” I’m used to this.

It all started with their app and my trying to get some 99-cent wheat bread for my daughter, named Eleni.  Her unusual name is for another paragraph, perhaps another time.

In order to use digital coupons on select, in-store advertised prices, I’m told I have to use the app on my smart-phone, which is much too smart for me sometimes.  Well, I made a scene at the self-checkout.  I really wanted that 99-cent bread instead of paying full price at a hefty $3.89 or some such exorbitant price, at least in comparison to the .99 promise.  If only.

I tried my app three times before I called for help.  When help came to my rescue, she tried my app for me.  At every attempt, we got stuck on my password, or lack thereof.  I explained that I go through this every time I try to use the app for those digital coupons.  So, together, we tried to reset the password, and we waited and waited for me to get an email allowing me to reset my password, to no avail.  My helper finally overrode the system and let me check out using one of her “secret associate codes” so I could get the .99 bread for Eleni.

My married-surname, LeVan is of French Huguenot derivation.  We’ve often been offered a Jewish heritage with said surname, pronounced, Levine (la-VEEN).  It’s also not uncommon for people, in writing to skip the capital letter in the middle, with Levan, again leaning toward the Hebrew, as in leaven, sounds like heaven.

I get it.  Many official businesses will ALL CAP names and addresses to simplify such things as this in their overly-complicated, or is it over-simplified databases.  So, when LEVAN is all capped, it lends itself to losing the capital V in the middle when reverting out of all-caps.

A few days after the latest debacle trying to use digital coupons, I called the supermarket corporate offices to find out what was up with my app.  A kind, happy, young-sounding representative sussed out that the reason my password wouldn’t work was the misspelling of my surname in their system.  Le Van, two words.

It seems that a year or two ago, that crazy app assigned me the name Le Van, as in the Korean/Vietnamese combo of, LEE VAN.  When she said that they can’t correct this in their system, I acquiesced, “I am neither Korean nor Vietnamese, but okay!”

This made me and that sweet girl at the supermarket call center hysterical for a few seconds.   Probably she or I needed a good laugh that Monday morning.

At any rate, you can call me what you wish.  Even though that mumpsimus grocery store cannot, in their system, correct my name to its proper place in their world, I know who I am.  I was a Barton, first – easy-peasy. Now, it’s more than Barton, it’s LeVan (pronounced, Le-VAN).

And I use my common name, Bev instead of Beverly or my pen name Beverleigh for these columns.  This is because April, I am told, is Earth Month and God knows, I am nothing if not down-to-earth.

Words are the source of so much fun, beau-coup amounts of misunderstanding, beauty, pain, trivia and meaning.  Cheers to using your words frequently, and with flair, finesse, fun, flexibility, friendliness, forthrightness, yet, forgiveness.  An alliteration seemed somehow in order.

How about that Corona virus?  COVID?  China flu?  COVID-19?  What’s the acceptable term, and who says?

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate?  Wear a mask or don’t wear a mask.  Feed a cold, starve a fever or is it the other way around?

Fight the fever or let it run its course?  Ice?  Run a fan and a dehumidifier or infuse healing oils?

Warm liquids or cold fluids?  Tylenol and no ibuprofen?  Or both, combined, in high doses?

I don’t know.  But I think you know, or you think you do.

One thing I’m certain about is one’s level of interest in this virus, or interest about anything, really, is, how has it affected me?  Has my loved one suffered through it?  Has someone I cared for, died from its effects?

Everything is about me.  I didn’t get it, yay.  Whew.  Cheerio then.  All is well as long as I’m well.

I haven’t lost my job or business, my health, my social equilibrium.  I’m good.

My livelihood hasn’t been desolated nor my liveliness diminished, so “it’s all good.”  This is just an extended vacay for me.

I’m working from home, in my pajamas; living the dream.  I mean who can’t Skype, zoom, Face-time, IM, or talk on the phone?  These are the times: the best or the worst, depending on how they work for me.

Self-centered, I’m the center of the universe, don’t you know?  How dare you question my opinions, my choices, my decisions?  Who do you think you are?  Agree with me or the highway.

Empathy.  How could you know how I feel?  I am the arbiter of my feelings.  Don’t you dare eavesdrop on them.  Empathy, where have you gone?

I don’t share; never learned that when I was three.  How dare you care?

Everything’s a secret.  Spying on my feelings is an invasion of my privacy.  I prefer being an enigma, alone.

My eyes don’t leak my motives.  My words reveal nothing about me.  I’m hidden in my silence.

Are you kidding me?  Are you genuinely content in a world of you?  Doesn’t that mirror ever get monotonous?  Dull?  Hazy? 

Others provide perspective, variety, pizazz, color.  Adam, the Genesis man was incomplete, alone.  He needed another, a mate.

I’m defining “mate” in the Aussie sense of the word.  In Oz, everyone can be your mate.  In Australian cinema, I’ve even seen enemies refer to one another as mates.  It’s a universal, other, mate.  Other than me, I, self.

“Other than me” … a counterpart, alternative…to me, who doesn’t agree with me.  Someone who cares about me enough to challenge my oneness, myself, my singularity.  If you don’t have others, please care for yourself enough to ask God to put others on your path; someone who will make you more than you, alone.  Others who cajole you to come outside of yourself, to play.  Make” my plans,” “our plans.”

Ask, “how are you?”  Mean it, genuinely mean it.  Not just a passing greeting to which you expect either no response at all or please God, a rote, “I’m fine, how are you?”  Just don’t make me engage, really engage, with another.

Could we try being real, genuine, honest?  I, for one, need this from the world.  Wouldn’t it be better if we dropped the barriers, the “stone walls,” the dividers and the boxes?  All the things that keep us apart, isolated in our me-ness.

Face it, most of us have been wearing masks since at least high school.  The Corona virus mask is far from the first mask we’ve had to wear in public.

Public masks remind me of the recent death of Prince Phillip.  It occurs to me that some people must wear masks for noble reasons, like duty, in the case of royalty.  Royals must wear masks as they are tasked to serve at the pleasure of the queen/king; not at their own pleasure or whim.  Queen Elizabeth and company cannot afford the uniquely American characteristic of self-serving public life.  They serve a higher power, the church, and the crown.

The lives of those in the House of Windsor are not their own.  They do many things with a masked face.  I wouldn’t play poker with a one of them.

Hiding from reality, the truth, or shame, isn’t new.  In high school we wore masks to protect our real selves from being disliked by others.  But as an adult, I’m thinking that if back then, we had the courage to expose our true selves, being open, genuine, the real deal, “they” may have liked us without the mask.

I awoke from a dream that had me at a meeting in Bedford, a rally sponsored by the You and Me Movement.  A woman with her handful of different colored pills began to offer them to one and all.  I selected a yellow pill but pocketed it, others ingested theirs without question, and yet others defiantly refused them.

Whatever pill you choose, let’s make the medicine about you AND me.  Healing rarely happens to me, alone.  It takes others in concert with me.  Let’s sing in harmony.

 

Do you ever feel like Rip Van Winkle?  You’ve imbibed a boatload of liquor, fell asleep, only to awaken years later to a remarkably changed world.

I toyed with another title for this column.  My second favorite, but way too long was, “Debbie Downer, of Saturday Night Live fame marries the notorious Rip Van Winkle and soon thereafter gives birth to their first child, Woke.”

Imagine for the duration of this missive that you’re elderly, no, an “older adult,” in 2021.  The 1900’s seem to have disappeared at the blink of an eye.  Your cultural comfort zone has vanished.  You’re still getting used to writing the year, beginning with a two.

Just when you got used to a push-button phone after growing up with a rotary-dialer and a party-line; “oops, I’m sorry Jane and Tom, I just picked up to call Aunt Barb; how are your gardens doing…?”  You never liked those portable phones, everybody younger tried to foist onto you.  They felt in your hand like a toy.  Now you’re supposed to adapt to a cell phone.

If you stick to your guns and maintain your nearly obsolete home phone, now called a landline, you have to include what we knew as an area code even to call six houses down, which was always only needed for “long-distance” calls.

Today it’s an ordeal when you have to call a business to solve a problem.  It used to be that you asked the person on the other end of the phone a simple question, and you got a simple answer.  You didn’t need a PhD to find out why your TV cable stopped working and get it fixed.

We used to get local channels 10 and 6, Altoona and Johnstown.  Now we have to select a package or bundle of channels, or do we want something called streaming rather than “regular TV?”  We have a smart TV from which we can “get on the internet” and watch shows in “high definition or HD,” which means nothing to us.  But we have to use three remotes, one of which is voice activated, only if we use the right words, that we once called “clickers,” long after which we used to get up from the couch to turn the channel with a knob.  We have 100s of channel options of nothing worth watching.

Today, it’s hard enough to get a person to pick up the phone, let alone get an answer to our query from the first extension that we reach.  Then how do we discern which “department” we need connected to for our particular problem?

What was once professional journalism, studded with integrity and the five foundational questions of who, what, where, when and how, has changed into an opinion-infested, uber-politically-correct propaganda machine, complete with a loudspeaker called the internet and social media.

I’ve awakened to a civil war unlike any other observed in history.  History itself has been and is being rewritten because people don’t like it.  Divisions and stratifications between groups from families, genders, races, political parties, age-groups, and so on are the rule.  Agreement, even civility is hard to come by; rare commodities.

Language rules have changed too.  The basic constitutional right to free speech, has become a confusion on par with the tower of Babel.  “More” speech is a better description than “free” speech, these days.  But speech is policed by what is called a “woke” generation.  Have these arbiters of truth been asleep like me, but awoke a bit sooner to have obtained all the answers to the questions I’m still stewing over?

We’ve stopped policing violence, tolerating it as if it were justifiable, righteous indignation.  Criminals were rebranded as terrorists sometime while I was asleep.  Now they are defined as activists, fighting for social justice.  Is this the mother of all paradoxes, or what?

This world used to at least sort of make sense to ordinary people like me.  Can we even use the word nonsensical anymore?  Common sense was the norm when I was awake way back when.  Most people held in common a collective, sound, practical judgment concerning everyday matters; we shared a basic understanding and perception about how life was to be best lived.

Before I went to sleep, there was clear meaning in the world.  We understood one another, and feeling understood is key to mental health.  Way back when, things were far from perfect, but life seemed reasonable and negotiable, if not utopian.

Systems are now in place in every walk of life “to make things easier.”  Let me be one to inform you, “these things are not easier!”  From new and “improved” billing statements, and options to pay my bills; to that dumb voice-activated clicker, and hoops we have to jump through to prove our identity, unless we don’t have to prove it at all, life is nothing but more complicated, and is far from easier or improved.

One must practically be a professional sonogram technician to get any personal business done these days.  In fact, as an “older adult,” getting our first COVID vaccine we were instructed to come to the site with a bar code unique to us, provided in the email nailing down our appointment.  When we proudly mastered the bar code thingy, downloaded onto our cell phones, the lovely nurse at the door said, “you don’t need that, we think it was created by a millennial to test the cognizance of ‘older adults.’”  We laughed that tortured laugh, hard earned, and really really wanted to get that bar code that we mastered, scanned by somebody, anybody.

English novelist, George Orwell wrote a book called 1984, in 1949.  We thought back in my day that this book speaking to the future, was absurd.  Think again.

Our leaders point to a future of stress, sadness, doom and gloom even as they spend mind-boggling, unprecedented sums of money we don’t have, to save us from that uncertain future.  By the way what is Bitcoin?  There was a time when gold, silver and other tangible substances had to be vaulted to back up even paper money, but cyber money, oh my.

Many of us used to believe in a God who promised a future of hope, light, generosity, kindness.  It seems that stress, tension, fear and hate have usurped levity joy, gratitude and faith.

The old work-reward system has been replaced with a toil-for-gain, one.  Work had its satisfaction, i.e. “job well done.”  Toil, however, is drudgery, almost like slavery, and it hurts.  Rewards speak for themselves but gain implies greed, avarice, and inequity.  This is the new system.

Mental illness is treated like sex used to be back in my day.  It’s there, but we don’t talk about it.  Whoa baby has that changed.  Sex is nearly all ya’ll talk about, from what gender you “think you are,” of which there are now supposedly dozens, to what rich and powerful someone had sex with whom and was that sex, proper sex, explicit sex which is celebrated in no uncertain terms in popular culture; clandestine sex, abuse, rape, or something else altogether, certainly not sex.

Mental illness is rampant in this “woke” world.  The most “popular” mental illnesses, if you monitor the media, include substance or social addictions, depression, narcissistic personality disorders, sudden wealth syndrome, OCD, bipolar or what used to be manic-depressive disorder, and hundreds of other illnesses of the mind and emotions which are still in their “coming out” phase.

I read a book published in 2019 written by a therapist, about therapy.  She cautioned, “before diagnosing people with depression make sure they are not surrounded by assholes.”  Also, “today everybody moves at the speed of want;” and “change involves the loss of the old and the anxiety of the new.”

We used to read the Bible as our therapy before I went to sleep.  The future we were cautioned about, from 2 Timothy 3:1-5, suggested “terrible times of great stress” when people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, ungrateful, unforgiving, proud, without love, rash and conceited.”  Do you recognize these traits or is it just me because I’ve been sleeping for a while?

Because of this hangover, I can’t be certain that I will ever awaken enough to be labeled “woke.”  But I think an open mind will help in my adaptation to this rapidly changing world.