Recently I shared some pictures from Mom’s latest adventure, and the most common response I heard was “I am so jealous!” While this response no longer perplexes me anymore, it still manages to take me aback just a little. Yes, I know it’s an understandable response to seeing pictures of someone else doing something interesting in an interesting place, but it’s not my response for the simple reason if that it was a place I really wanted to be, I would already be there.
It’s important to keep in mind that “irritating” is not the same thing as “bad,” particularly when it comes to people.
Among other summer projects, I’m devoting time and energy toward better health and general life balance because:
A) It’s just a good idea.
and B) To better help my son obtain healthier life balance in his life.
Today, for instance, I went outside for some direct sunlight, not for tanning purposes, but for some Vitamin D. Having precisely zero interest in overdoing it, I set a timer, but when the timer went off I was surprised at how reluctant I was to get up and go back inside. I did anyway though, and with visions of a young turtle in my head as I did so.
Why a young turtle?
Because I once found a young turtle dead on the side of the road, not because he’d been run over, but because he’d been sunning himself and, as near as I could tell, had been enjoying himself so much that he couldn’t tell he was baking himself to death in the process.
Sometimes I like to remind myself that some people used to passionately argue that powered flight was a scientific, or at least a practical, impossibility.
Sometimes it’s all too easy to become jaded and to no longer see the wonders of the world as anything other than commonplace. That’s why it’s so helpful to view things through the eyes of a child now and then. Case in point:
What I saw: Just another Skype session.
What my son saw: “I’m looking into another state right now!”
Some days victories come in small doses, but even lesser victories are victories none the less.
Some days . . . okay, most days of late, I’m struck by the oddity of me being a voice of cautious optimism for the future. That’s a pretty far cry from the kid I used to be, the kid who was convinced that the world would self-destruct long before he got the chance to see 21.
(Spoiler: That kid did get the chance to see 21, as well as 31 and . . . you know what? I’m just going to stop there.)
Maybe I just like being contrary.
Today on this date yet another in a long string of temps moved into the White House.
(Inspired by something I read on social media.)
To me, this is from a Buddhist perspective or whatever, sometimes people who are working out their political beliefs, they can rage against the man, and yet at the same time can be oblivious to their own way of stepping on the foot of the person right next to them.
While the past few weeks for me have been consumed by all the trials and tribulations that come from a flu-wracked household, as the saying goes, “Worse things happen at sea every day.”
Unfortunately, sometimes those “worse things” happen on land too. While we were coughing the nights away here, a dear friend of ours lost her home, possessions . . . and cats to fire.
Kind of puts things in perspective, don’t it?
As bad as this is for you, Ms. K., please take comfort like we do in the fact that we didn’t lose you in the fire too.
