The Road to Whimsy and Serendipity, With Help From The Power of Introverts

Over the past few weeks I’ve been helping a good friend with her mid-life crisis. Though she’s nowhere close to middle age, and even if she were it would be on the lower side. How do we get to these perceived crisis points? On a very strong personal scale I empathize with her. I spent a lot of years in the same place she is. Wallowing in those deep pools of doubt and self-challenge, trying to find the road we need to walk in order to get to where we need to go, or want to be. The much sought after adventurous road that is really about whimsy, serendipity, and wonder. 

I managed to find my road, but not until I exhausted myself with long nights of journal writing on failure, self-loathing, and doubt. And the occasional night staring into the darkness and city lights with only Miles Davis, Etta James, and Charley Parker keeping me company while I pondered why I appeared to be lost in my life. To paraphrase an old Orson Welles commercial, “We will stop no whine before it’s time!” 

The opening salvo of what whimsy can be came to me while reading a foreign correspondent’s autobiography. He said that when he was stuck for a story he would “head down the road, turn left, and then turn left again, and that would be where the story was”. Over time I started to think about what that could imply in a day to day life? 

So I adopted the idea for my travel world, and it worked. In New Orleans I walked up Bourbon to Canal, turned left and then left again, and onto the wonders of Royal Street. I hadn’t done much research for that trip, so I had no idea Royal Street existed. It worked for me in Oregon, on Mt Hebo. I stopped to take a picture of a State Park sign to show someone I’d been in the same place she had the week before. On a whim I turned left up the park road, and left again on the mountain road and came out on top of a brilliant plateau that gave me stunning views, and an unintentional but welcome reminder of my late father. I couldn’t invoke whimsy in my “work a day” world because my time and assignments weren’t my own.

I became a fan of whimsy, and soon enough along came serendipity. That wonderful and occasionally frustrating happenstance where what was initially a problem becomes the inertial catalyst for new and wondrous discoveries. The kind of problems that derailed dates, work solutions, slow Sunday’s in bed with the New York Times, airline reservations, cooking dinner, job applications, hotel bookings, dates, and I think you’re getting the idea. Yes, the dating thing was mentioned twice. In each of these cases my original reaction was wide ranging from outright anger, blood curdling frustration, and soul crushing disbelief. I had yet to accept that the Universe had other plans for the “immediate me”, and I had also yet to learn that overall I wasn’t in total control of the driver’s seat.

All of these things are part of my friend’s crisis. I feel quite badly, and I do mean incredibly badly, that I can’t help her through this other than being supportive of whatever choices she makes. She has to have her own dark nights, hair pulling frustrations, and to live through those negative experiences that eventually open our eyes to the realization that we spend more time on our perceived adversities than we do on our strengths and inner peace.

At this same time I am reading a book by Susan Cain called “Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking”. Turns out it’s really quite normal to want to explore thoughts and ideas in solitude. In the book she demonstrates how badly we treat those who do not participate well in group activities, and how truly dangerous it can be to force people into extroversion. As she explains in the book the Culture of Personality has eclipsed the Culture of Character. The resulting stampede to include everyone in all activities all the time is robbing us of the talents of those who prefer individual thought. One of the great things she says in the book is, ”… if you’re in the backyard sitting under a tree while everyone else is clinking glasses on the patio, you’re more likely to have an apple fall on your head.” Apparently Sir Isaac Newton was an introvert. 

So is Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. Turns out the first Apple computers were not designed by a committee, but by an introvert sitting alone in a separated workspace with walls and doors. Take that you New Groupthink “open space concept” championing real estate sales wonks! Turns out those “open space concepts” have scientific evidence to back up how they actually lower productivity and negatively affect collaborative efforts, and have been doing since the 1960’s.

In my recent travels and my new work-a-day world I spend a lot of time alone. Mostly I prefer it. As anyone who knows me will tell you, I spend a lot of time alone. Long periods, or sometimes not so long periods, of spending time with people tire me out and make me cranky. It’s not that I don’t like people, I love spending time with most people, but I also need a lot of time to myself. Turns out it’s partly genetic, partly environmental, and partly preference. Or as Ms. Cain discovers in an interview with eminent developmental psychologist Jerome Kagan when he exclaims, “Every behaviour has more than one cause.”

When I travel I try to keep my mind open, seeing new things, hearing new sounds, tasting new foods, breathing new air (though sometimes the smell of wide open “country” can smell an awful lot like the inside of a closed up barn), and generally exposing myself to ideas, places and adventures that challenge and expose me to a whole bunch of “new”.

In July of 2012 I spent a solitary weekend in Seattle. On a soft Sunday morning I was waiting for the Chihuly Garden and Glass Exhibit to open at the Seattle Centre. Had someone been there with me I could not have fully seen and heard the following:

I pick up a sweetened Venti Passion Iced Tea from the Starbucks in the courtyard outside the Seattle Center Armoury. It’s warming up just nicely for an early July morning and I want to stay hydrated while I wait for the Chihuly Garden and Glass exhibit to open. I’m looking forward to experiencing glass art. I’ve only seen one Chihuly piece in real life, the one that became a public art amenity outside a high rise apartment building at home.

I sit on a metal bench that wraps itself around a maple tree standing next to an expansive lawn that stretches all the way over to the Pacific Science Center. In the middle distance there’s the homeless guy I saw yesterday, but today he’s not adjusting his private bits in front of children. Today he’s on the grass, sleeping in the sun.

I sit and sip though the straw, feeling really good with the summer air on my face and skin, all while breathing deeply the oxygen richness of the Pacific Coast. The contrasting shades of green on the trees and the well-kept lawn frame an idyllic context of quiet and comfort. One of my favourite live/life things is to stop, listen, and see. It is an indulgent passion for me, one that celebrates my love for detail and my curiosity of people and the multitude ways they present themselves to the world.

Moms are wrangling kids and dads are pushing strollers, all with smiles and looks of mild confusion. They are outside their well-known and familiar, but still comfortable with minds actively engaged on so many disparate challenges at the same time, so as to seem in a low level state of mental disarray.

An older couple sit on a bench behind and across the asphalt path from me. Sitting quietly together and separately, wearing summer weight clothes, reading the Sunday paper. The obvious comfort and trust they get from each other, even in their mutual silence is a palpable thing, heartwarming and inspiring. The chef guy on his break from a nearby café using his wooden drumsticks on anything he can find – not so much.

A Cessna floatplane does a low flyby with the logo of a local TV program, Evening Magazine on its side while a nearby carillon plays an unfamiliar tune. The guy from Dante’s Dog Cart lies down on his back, on the hot asphalt, to frame a group shot for a tourist family with the Space Needle looming behind them. The family is from Atlanta. They’re all laughing and grateful for the hot dog guy’s sacrifice on such a warm day.

A foursome speaking German come up the path from the parking lot, one man with a Seattle Center tourist map in his hand, one with his smartphone held out in front of him. Both point in significantly different directions paying no attention to each other, but both are singularly convinced that the King Tut exhibit is “that way”. They’re both wrong, and the two women of the group just grin at each other behind the men’s back.

Were I not a person given over to reflection of both self and circumstance, I would have missed all of this. Had someone been with me there would have been a distracting element of involvement and obligation. I would have missed these five minutes spent in the light and sounds of everyday people in motion. Instead of snapshots taken over a five minute window, I saw the whole movie playing out as one complete story of context and substance.

I was personally irrelevant to the whole scene, but I was the sole witness and therefore the storyteller. I could not have become that storyteller without those many nights of journal writing, pondering, and self-examination. An extrovert would never have been able to understand my process or the path that led me to see the whole of the experience. I suspect that an extrovert would be frightened of any time spent on introspection. I personally doubt they would have seen much of anything I just described.

I no longer spend late nights with my journals, they’re in storage. Only occasionally do I spend a night staring at the city lights drinking gin with soda, and when I do it’s to figure out a plot hiccup, dialogue problem, or a personal issue that needs pondering. I still listen to Miles Davis, Etta James, and Charley Parker, and like all the music in my life it continues to inspire me. I spend a lot of virtual time with my friend even though she lives quite far away. Technology allows me to metaphorically hold her hand on those dark nights when she needs one, and to send her a virtual hug when she needs one of those, or sometimes when I need to kick her butt into getting some sunshine in her life.

And where does the whimsy and serendipity come into this? What if I hadn’t bought that journalist’s autobiography that I found on the remainder pile? Without his words I would never have been introduced to the idea that a good story is sometimes “down the road, turn left, and left again”, thus encouraging me to take a different look at travel and storytelling. What if I hadn’t seen a TED Talk video with Susan Cain, on an internet link sent to me out of the blue by a friend? Then having that same video inspire me to read her book about the power of introversion? What if, while on a road trip in Oregon, I hadn’t indulged whimsy to take a ride to someplace unknown? I would have missed the serendipity of a stunning mountain vista where I shared a private moment with good memories of my late father. All of these proving to me that whimsy and serendipity exist in my life, and where I hope they will firmly remain.

Finally, introverts like Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak and all their introverted colleagues, who indulged their own kind of “what if?” whimsy, and created technologies that made worldwide communication easy and cheap. With their creations, and me on my own continuing journey, my friend’s dark nights aren’t quite as dark. She still has to see them through because that’s what we as humans need to do, before we find a reason that we don’t have to. But at least she knows she’s not alone on her road to discovering whimsy, and serendipity. After all it was serendipity and whimsy that let our paths cross in the first place, but that’s another story altogether.

“Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain is published by Broadway books, a division of Random House, and is widely available in bookstores, online, and as an e-book in various formats.

Please note that Ms. Cain does not advocate that introverts are “better” than extroverts, only that introversion should be considered the equal of extroversion. I recommend the book to everyone.

The TED Talk video is here:  http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts.html

When This Minute Is Enough

When This Minute Is Enough

As I wandered my corner of the Tropics I would sometimes come across the same character. Not the same as being an individual, but someone of a type. Slightly off focus, eager to help and assist, and truthfully quite harmless.

These are the ones who stayed a season too long, and that season was a long time ago. They are sun weathered, missing teeth, attired in well used shorts and t-shirts from the 5 for $10 shops. They have that punch drunk presentation and appearance you know doesn’t present an imminent concern, but makes you slightly wary in case the unexpected appears.

I would run into them in bars, or lying on the beach. In one bar he was drawing pictures of the customers, and then selling them for whatever they would pay. The crayon drawings were rough and a bit crude in their execution, but contained enough recognizable imagery as to be somewhat realistic. They were customer caricatures. In the crudity was the appeal, the lack of sophistication being the mark of this artist and his life. In each drawing there was the hope and promise that he could have been better, but in this time and place he couldn’t get beyond selling the picture for $8 because that was all the cash the tourists had. The eight dollars was enough for a couple of beers, and there would always be more tourists.

In some ways I envied him. Somehow this life existed solely in moments of drawing and drinking. Creating and forgetting, then moving on to the next moment. Over and over.

Creating is hard work, especially for those who have an infrastructure to support. Kids, partners, houses, social obligations all add up to time stolen from creating. For those who don’t have those issues, creating is still hard work. Very few people can just sit down and write, or draw, or make music, or dance. Everyone has a process unique to them. Sometimes that process is as simple as being alone; sometimes you have to get past your “self” issues. Sometimes it takes nothing more than the sun streaming through a window on a winter’s day with dust hanging in the light shaft, and some baroque music that happens to be on the stereo as you wipe down the kitchen sink.

The mood has been created, an idea has formed, a plot devised, a character moment needs to coalesce, and you know you have “it”. If you are very lucky you will be able to get most of it down on whatever medium is handy, before the thought gets lost in a thousand other thoughts that you need just for today.

I don’t draw, I don’t make music, and I can’t dance to save my life or anyone else’s. I can write. Not much call for writing in tropical bars to sell to the tourists, though an extraneous thought occurs to me that one could create a business model that might. It would only pay drinking money but it’s better than not getting paid at all.

The Tropics are full of writers, and musicians, and artists of all stripes. Some are fabulous, some aren’t, but they all try. Every day they all try within whatever framework of time, talent, and personal economics they have, to create something better than whatever it was they last created.

For me writing is something I have done for years. I have done it quietly and privately as a way of actually getting to be me. I don’t write for money, or fame. I write because I have to, the same way I have to breathe and eat. And I have no interest in fame. None at all, in fact I shun any kind of attention. The work itself is what I love to do, just as it was when I was gainfully employed, and if other people can enjoy that work then I am happy it’s appreciated.

These were some of the thoughts that passed through my mind on a steamy late November afternoon, as I sat drinking beer in the Elbo Room Bar across the street from the beach in Fort Lauderdale. A couple from somewhere in Middle America was being drawn in crayon by a guy who was sipping a beer across from me. He was quick, and rough, missing teeth, and was slightly unfocussed. It was a look I have seen not just in the Tropics but also on the faces of street people across North America. This guy had been at it longer than most, and to his great credit he had a product to sell that people were willing to shell out for. He was less a street person than an entrepreneurial artist. He didn’t have a story of woe looking for a handout, he wanted to sell you a creation that represented him, and you, and the time you shared in a Tropics bar.

 

And that was where the envy started to creep in. I struggle, some days agonizingly so, to create, and yet here was a guy who in ten minutes had captured atmosphere, character, and color in a drawing he sold for $8. The hourly minimum wage in Florida (for non-tipped occupations) is $7.93 as of January 1, 2014. That’s an increase fourteen cents over 2013. I’ll leave the math to you, but once he had his $8 he leaned over and stashed the paper and crayons behind the bar then took off down the beach. It’s rare to see a grown man skipping like a child.

 

As I looked around the bar his artwork was all over walls and under the cabinets and bar rail. His working studio was a bar, he worked in coloured crayons as he drank his beer, and he worked the uncrowded room like a true entertainer. That he was slightly off centre, missing teeth, and looked like he’d seen a punch or two was mostly irrelevant, his life’s passion shone in his eyes as he worked.

He was part of the beach and the bar. He belonged there in ways I never would. He shared his creativity, rough and crude and honest, with the world at large and he did it willingly and without ego and hubris. He was a beach bar artist, and from what I saw he was quite happy with his life.

I couldn’t say if he knew what day it was, or that the time was mid-afternoon. He was happy drawing, drinking, and living this minute of this day. I doubt he knows if he has a future that might have come and gone. Today is the only day he knows, and he’s happy that it’s enough.

Life Is Not A Linear Business

Life is not a linear business. A brutal reminder shoved this back into my face a few days back when I came within three feet of dying violently, and not the graceful way I have long preferred.

Walking home from the pub around the corner is a quiet five minute affair. After a couple pints of craft brewed honey pilsner I am in a mellow and quiet place. I sit in the pub for a couple of hours a few times a week, reading or taking notes for blog posts or story ideas. Every so often I meet a friend or my brother or run into someone I know. Being at the pub is some of my “people time”, the time I spend away from my internal world of writing. It helps remind me that I am not totally alone. The wonderful and friendly staff knows what I’ll be drinking from the moment I walk in, and they have it on my table before I fully sit down. It’s that kind of place, part of the neighbourhood where I choose to live, made up of regulars. Folks who walk there, and home again.

A few days back I’m walking home, crossing the street fifty feet from my front door, and I come within three feet of being a messy new hood ornament on a Nissan Pathfinder. It was about ten years old, light green, clean and looked after. The white guy behind the wheel had medium length brown hair, and one of those half beards that surround the upper lip and chin but not the cheeks. He was one the guys that look stupid wearing it, the kind of guy who wore a mullet 5 years too long. He had just come tearing down the street, speeding through the 30kmh Playground Zone in the adjacent block, and roared into the roundabout outside my apartment nearly taking the front end off a car that already had the right of way. He was driving so fast I wasn’t aware of him until the other car hit the horn.

Then he sees me, already in his path and slams on the brakes, nearly riding up the curb, and my legs. Please try and understand that it takes a lot to make me angry. Few people have seen it, and those that have remember it well and wish they didn't. I choose to live my life quietly, serendipitously, with some thought, and some reason, and when possible foresight. And I have learned to accept that life is a non-linear event, made up of random occurrences and thoughts.

I was quite angry. Many years ago I was trained to use my voice in such a way as to get people’s attention when needed. Control of pitch, volume, and tone are essential when trying to cut through panic and disorder. So I used my best “Command” voice, the one that is loud, succinct, and authoritative. The one the entire neighbourhood suddenly heard and then went silent. Of course I also used my best “Charlton Heston as angry Moses” arm gesture to point directly at our hero’s head while uttering only three words: “YOU – SLOW DOWN!”

Ever since the incompetent engineers that work for the city where I live took out the Stop signs and installed the roundabout, the amount of traffic on my once quiet side street has tripled. They moved the Stop signs a block down to slow the traffic that was using that street as a raceway. Most drivers treat my roundabout as nothing more than a politely challenging chicane. They patently ignore the adjacent block long playground zone, clearly marked at 30kmh, and feel it is their God given right to run over the safety rights of whatever children and seniors that happen to be in their way. After all, how dare anyone get in “their” way? 

Well, I guess I did. It was a nice warm late afternoon when I started crossing the road, a residential side street that doesn’t have lines painted on it. I passed two women chatting on the corner, their adorable small dogs looking on quietly. I was two thirds of the way across when the horn sounded from the driver who had been cut off by our wayward Nissan. I looked up and saw our hero just in time for he and I to both stop abruptly. Three feet away, the distance from my spine to the end of my fingertips, with one very small side step I could have placed my hand on his hood.

The speeding in the playground zone has always been a pet peeve. A lot of years ago I spent many hours of volunteer time working in the field with my local police on traffic safety issues. I even have a nice certificate from the major insurance company here in B.C. thanking me for my commitment to road safety. Speeding in playground zones is not a policing priority, something I understand from experience. However, how can a city redistribute traffic flow so substantially in a neighbourhood to direct it through a speed controlled Playground Zone and not follow up?

So back to the whole non-linear thing. It’s like this, many more years ago than I care to admit, I was in a car accident. The kind that screws up your shoulders and neck, and results in your beloved car never gracing your driveway ever again. The kind that results from the other party making an illegal turn into a one way street, and then going through a red light they can’t see because the light is facing the other way. The kind that happens at 3 a.m. on a Halloween night when you’re on the way home from working a night shift, and going through a green light you can see, on a mostly deserted downtown street.

So far we have only random elements converging on a common point, non-linear lives and activities, unconnected. And then they all collide, t-boned is the common phrase, at a blind corner due to the buildings being right up against the sidewalk. My car hits a pickup truck right behind the passenger door. My car comes to a stop in half a car length; I bang my head on the door post as the car spins 180 degrees, and then come to a stop facing back the way I came, into oncoming headlights. I catch a glimpse of the pickup spinning off down the other street.

Downtown streets in the early morning, more random elements collide. A security guard sees what happens and calls it in, so does a limo load of people behind me. Witnesses to a random collision. Non-linear elements suddenly in the same space. In the end the pickup driver is cited for several infractions. The witnesses all tell the same story, that I had the green light and wasn’t speeding and the pickup coming from the wrong direction. I’m covered.

In the days that followed as I endured insurance visits, doctor visits, sorted out how I couldn’t work, and began physiotherapy I began to realize how non-linear the sequence of events was, and how if even one of those elements had been 1 second later or earlier how different would have been the outcome? Besides the obvious I realized “what if” the limo had been going slightly faster? I would have been hit twice. Then because after such events the human brain sometimes wants existential and spiritual validation, you run the all the permutations over and over, move the variables, the decimal points, the positions of people and cars, and you come to realize that the only variables that mattered were the ones that actually collided with your politely non-linear life. All the other stuff is madness to contemplate, but you have to do it at least once in your life, to make sure the anchor of your life is the awareness that you are alive. You might see yourself as a seemingly random element in a non-linear world, but our innocent and random choices have results and sometimes unintended consequences.

I once did an interview with an executive of a packaged tour travel company. She was interested in the Key West road trip and as I told her of the places and people, she confessed she would be afraid of making a wrong turn and getting lost. So I confessed to her that I had never been “lost”, but sometimes I wound up taking a wrong turn and seeing some places I hadn’t expected. I also told her that was part of the adventure, that the unexpected showed me more than I wanted or thought. Like my experiences at the Negro League’s Baseball Museum or the discovery of the massive War Memorial in Kansas City, or the visit to Harry Truman’s Presidential Library, or how I saw and felt about Mount Rushmore and Little Big Horn.

The non-linear events that mark us, shape us, and form us. The random thoughts that happen late at night, or early morning, or driving, or while sitting next to a random stranger and beginning a conversation that blossoms into a strong friendship. The thoughts we all have that change lives and lead to “ah-hah!” moments.  How much random and non-linear is your life? How much random and non-linear do you allow for, or permit, or even deny?

All of these events and more went through my mind as I quietly walked away from the Nissan. Once more I was walking away from being an arm’s length away from dying violently, again at the hands of a self-involved driver. The only sound that I heard after I finished crossing was the Nissan speeding off down my street, speeding to the Stop sign at the other end of the block. I didn’t hear the women resume their conversation, or the other car drive off, but I knew that both would resume their personal journeys quickly. The guy that leaned on the horn would say “that was close”, the two women would say “What the…?” and the dogs would just stay adorable. All of them random, non-linear, unconnected elements, all safe, until the next time unrelated elements are needed to collide.

Hierarchies

Well, it’s that time again, the time of endings and beginnings, the “New Year”. Not for me. The beginning and end of my personal year is September. It goes back to my school days when summer days of freedom and happiness ended, and once again I was condemned to another year of schoolyard incarceration, and boredom. It’s one reason why as an adult I take my vacations in September. I like to gently thumb my nose at that time of misery and despair. I also like the weather and lack of kiddie crowds.

For most other folks the end of December is the time of lists, resolutions, and reflections. Lists made up of the year’s best and worst, resolutions of personal piety and intended activity, reflections on things that made up the past twelve months of their lives, and what they want for the next twelve. In the following weeks they will, for the most part, stay true to their chosen efforts. The health clubs will be full of the resolutionists making it more difficult for regular members to get on with their daily programs. By the end of February most of them will have gone back to their regular lifestyles, leaving the dedicated to their workouts. Diets will be abandoned except for those who might have someone working with them, or those with Doctors or partners who nag, threaten, and cajole.

Most everyone will read at least one list of best or worst, or they’ll make up their own. In effect these lists will create a hierarchy of happiness and misery, accomplishments and failures, and places and people. A year or so ago I was introduced to the idea of how we create these hierarchies on a blog post by the actor Nicki Clyne.  http://nickiclyne.com/high-five-yourself/

Over the past while I got to thinking about the concept of how we create our personal hierarchies. While I was in the Tropics I had time to do some thinking on it. I felt challenged by the idea of not creating “best” or “worst” lists of experience or feeling. I found I’ve been making lists my entire life, but when I took another look through a new lens it all changed. Did I really like Key West over New Orleans, or Paris over London? Spaghetti over Souvlaki, or omelettes over poached? One love over another? 

When I eliminated personal judgemental hierarchical criteria I found I actually liked more and disliked less. I like Key West and New Orleans, and both are places to which I’ll return, but for different reasons and none of those reasons involve one over the other. Same with Paris and London, they are both different, and both have excited me to visit and experience, so I will return to both and probably on the same trip. 

Food? Well eating the same thing every day is like a prison, and food choices depend on so many factors including emotional ones. Spaghetti is still my comfort food even though I have to be careful with all those carbs! As for one love over another? Love it turns out is just love. Accepted, shared, rejected, or continued. It hurts or excites, burns or fades, but it should never be placed in the same hierarchical terms as cars, books, or travel destinations. Doing so simply devalues the humanity of both people, and the exceptional nature of humans sharing each other.

There are so many lists at this time of year, all of them based on some kind of personal or institutional hierarchical formula. A formula based on behaviour or performance we expect or dislike. A lot of them are simply based on the voyeuristic value of the subject. Best and worst dressed, Lindsay Lohan meltdown moments, the antics of pop porn queen Miley Cyrus, politicians, movies, cars, Bieber blunders, Mayor Ford fails, and oh so many, many more. Then there are your own personal moments. Everywhere you look this week someone’s hierarchies of importance are being placed in your field of view. 

One afternoon in the Tropics, I sat in my office chair watching the mangrove islands, boats, clouds, birds and tides. I pondered which of them I valued more, with the critical value being which of the elements I would prefer not to see. It came as wonderment when I realized that there was no way to make that list work. All of the elements on that list were the elements that made the experience whole. That moment refocused me, with the sudden mental shock of how much we rely on hierarchical reasoning to get through our daily lives.

This year I have decided I have no resolutions, though I have decided to try and even out my eyes on the world and try not to think hierarchically. “What if…” I am thinking, that every moment and person gets the same value as the last, or next? Except for packing and shopping lists I’m done with the idea that an entire year of our lives can be whittled down to ten best or worst. Isn’t every moment with your loved ones the best moment? Especially the loved ones we miss because they’ve  left us?

I discovered while sitting in my Tropics chair that every moment, even the problematic and troublesome ones, were the best moments with my late parents, Aunts, Grandparents, and friends. I could not find a reason for a hierarchy of good or bad, because there will be no more of those moments, making every one as precious as another. 

So for this year I’m going to try and not live hierarchically. I’m going to try and live every good moment as the equal of the last, and treat the inevitable sad moments as equally valuable. I’m not sure how it’s going to work out but being a lazy sort, I’m hoping to save a lot of mental, emotional, and intellectual time and energy by not creating lists.

Happy “You” Year Everybody!