Pot Pourri

A few things I simply have to get off my chest:

1. We all have to work for a living, and most of us don’t get paid for what we really love.  Seek it out in your spare time anyway.  Your older self will thank you for doing so in the future.
2. The older we are, the faster we used to run.  This applies mostly to politics, and lately, mostly in Alberta.  In 2015, we overwhelmingly voted out the Progressive Conservatives after 41 years of “leadership” which was tenuous at best, and decided to give the New Democrat Party a whirl.  Before the NDP even has a chance to dust off the furniture, the conservative right wingers are crying for their precious PC’s back.  Here’s a newsflash: they had 41 years and you – YOU – voted them out in favour of some fresh air.  Give the NDP a chance to get going before you start crying for your familiar, albeit abusive, political parent to come back and love you.  Second newsflash: you don’t get that high in politics without stepping on a lot of people on the way up.  Deal with it.
3. Same goes for the Harper v. Trudeau camp.
4. For the over-leveraged oil slingers:  Try counting your money while holding your breath.  The recession you believe is happening to you right now is only personal.  You over-spent, over-leveraged and over-extended yourselves.  It’s time to answer for it.  The economy is not suffering so much as it is simply taking a break.  The skyrocketing value of everything could not sustain itself longterm and we are now only in what is actually a NORMAL economy.  The fact that you are giving up your family pets before you give up your smokes or 60-inch TV’s is on you, not the government.
5. If, despite Number 4 above, you wish to continue spouting off about this “recession” in Alberta, being “worse than the 80’s”, please make sure that (a) you were alive and cognizant enough to understand the economy in the 1980’s, and (b) please have a look outside your windows and tell me what all those cranes dotting our skyline are doing.
6. Just because you’ve given birth to a child, does not automatically mean that you are EVERYONE’S mother.  I have a mother, and you don’t hold a candle to her so stop trying.
7. Also, women who don’t have children made as conscious a choice as those who did.  Respect both.
8. The weather since Inauguration Day has been unseasonably warm in parts of Canada.  Hot air rises.  Coincidence?  I think not.  It also furthers the claim by realists that climate change is not, in fact, a “hoax”.
9. It IS possible to sustain an economy without gang-raping the environment.  Our demand for oil, plastics and the like will not diminish.  However, we can do so more responsibly and slow the pace of our gluttonous consumption.  The answers are so simple an 8 year old could explain them to you.  I know just such an 8 year old girl who would love to speak to you, and likely shame you into submission in the process.
10. It’s also possible to drive a 1994 Ford Bronco and get better gas mileage and have fewer emissions than many new vehicles being churned out today.  Regular maintenance and responsible disposal of oils and parts is key.  Don’t buy new when you can keep what you have running.
11. Stop glorifying being “busy”.  You’re not busy.  And no one cares.  You’re just over-extending yourselves and one day you’ll wake up dead wondering why you bothered.  It’s okay to take a break and do sweet f**k all.
12. And lastly, ADOPT SHELTER PETS.

It’s not rocket science, people.

My own meandering experience.

Dear Readers, those of you who are still with me, I sincerely regret my absence from my own blog of late. I have no explanation other than Life sometimes gets in the way of what you really want to do and so now, after re-reading some posts of other bloggers’, I realize that I, too, must jump back in the fray if I am to do what I really want to do and that is, simply, to write.

On the other hand, the time I have been away has allowed me to make several observations as well as to learn a few things along the way. The following is a potpourri of sorts of these revelations which seem obvious when written down, but were quite eye-opening when they first occurred to me:

Finding Joy and, more importantly, allowing Joy to find You:

I don’t keep a large circle of friends and I will openly admit that I frequently assess and evaluate the need for certain people in my life. Occasionally, these needs fall short and I am forced, for want of a better term, to trim the fat. This isn’t done out of hate for the person I’ve cut adrift, but more for the sake of my own soul. I am tenaciously and sometimes terrifyingly protective of those that I love, including my own soul. If there is someone in my life who no longer promotes a positive element in my life, then my soul is not being nurtured in the way that it must and so, sometimes regrettably, sometimes with great difficulty, a person has to leave. This is obviously a bittersweet process, but a necessary one just the same. The upside is that having made some room in my life, I have opened the door to other people whom I might never have met, and who have filled those holes in my life with their positivity and creativity and lovely souls. I hope I do the same for them.

Value what you have and stop yearning for what you don’t:

We all occasionally fall prey to the Quest for the Material. This could be items such as new furniture, a new TV, a new car, a new outfit, a new Whatever. We all need Things from time to time, but sometimes that quest to obtain becomes all too engrossing. A recent death in our family, of a not-so-close relative, has allowed me to observe that a person can spend their entire lives accumulating but have very little of true value. This person was for all intents and purposes a recluse. This rendered him a decease hoarder with a bunch of people who rarely gave him the time of day during his lifetime now attempting to, well, hoard his hoard. Again, it is not in tribute of the man or his life or his contribution to their family or society in general that they want his stuff. It is simply that they want his stuff. I pray this is not the legacy I leave when I leave this life.

Accept the faults in others as they evidently accept the faults in you:

There are none of us perfect, and far too few of us try. And this is all right. Harkening back to my first revelation above, keep those who nurture your soul with you, warts and all. While they may not be perfect, they do make a positive contribution to your life and clearly mean well. I butt heads occasionally with those closest to me, but they have a permanent place within the House of Lisa. I just hope I don’t screw it up.

Like Minds:

There are those who say opposites attract. Sometimes they do. My own experience has been, however, that like minds open up your mind and soul to things beyond your own reckoning because they give you a starting point, and then open the door to things you may not have considered yourself. Again, try to do the same in return for those lovely souls who share so much in common with your own, for these people are few and far between. Over the past few months, I have met two people in particular who share such similar interests as I, but the collaboration of ideas and creativity which flows through each of us has grown exponentially as a result.

Take note of where you’ve been, to know where you’re going:

My trip to Scotland last year left me with one thing: the visceral need to return. During my first visit, I learned so much about myself simply by observing the people who live in the place from whence my family came, as well as learning about the people who have lived there over the past several hundred years. I saw similar physical characteristics, personality traits and most importantly to me, similar glints in their eyes as we both looked at the same things and had the same reactions to what we saw. We all take this for granted, particularly if we have lived in the same place all our lives. I have had the benefit of living in many different places across North America and I can tell you firsthand that not all senses of humour, for example, are created equal. This is easily explained since certain regions are made up of certain ethnic groups which share a common thread of thinking and perceptions. But what if you’re the outsider looking in? How do you fit in? Can you ever truly fit in? Not being much of a “joiner” myself, I prefer to observe these conditions before making my move, as it were, and so I have learned through this process that there are places where I am meant to belong, and places I am meant to not. I am not personally affronted by this, but it was heartening to be in two places on this planet where I evidently fit in so seamlessly and that is a true comfort I value beyond the measure of any material good which might take its place.

I’ll leave you with these thoughts for now, but I will undoubtedly share similar observations with you in the future. Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to leave your comments and observations of your own. Slainte mhath!

Facebook is not your friend.

It’s not a competition.

Recently I upgraded my phone to a newer, splashier model which imported a bunch of Facebook contacts to what I thought was my phone’s contact list. Turns out this wasn’t the case and by moving some of those contacts to the phone’s contact library, some of the Facebook contacts were deleted. It happens. No big deal. Or so I thought.

Apparently, some people get personally affronted when they’re deleted from Facebook, intentionally or, as in my case, otherwise.

Let’s get something straight: I don’t for a minute believe anyone has, let’s pick a number out of the air here, 783 friends. What I believe is that your truest friends wouldn’t care if you were on Facebook at all since they’d prefer your company with them be spent in a more novel, face-to-face encounter during which you could actually connect, share ideas, a few laughs, and in the process become better friends.

This collection of “friends” on Facebook is akin to the silly games you can play on Facebook where the highest number of coins, or “friends,” wins. The trouble is, it’s not a competition. Nor should friends be perceived as something worthy only of accumulation as one would accumulate a collection of porcelain pigs or vintage bottlecaps.

Typically, I have bucked this trend where the friends I have on Facebook are actually those I can speak to in real, live situations and people with whom I have a close family or friendship connection. In fact, more than half the people I know aren’t even members of Facebook and we meet and connect only in these alternative manners. It’s a radical concept, I know. I mean, I get to have lunches with them, meet up with them for dinner and drinks, and some of us also get to chat – dare I say it – over the telephone where we can enjoy hearing the other`s voice. In other words, we make time for each other because we matter to each other. And it doesn’t matter to them that they’re not on my Facebook friend list because they know I don’t equate them as simply something meaningless to thoughtlessly accumulate.

Facebook is a playground, or rather, RECESS, for people who might otherwise be adults. It is entertainment only. It should be regarded as nothing more than that and I would caution anyone who uses it specifically to “connect” with people because by limiting your experience and interactions only to Facebook, you are truly missing out on the best parts of life when you can’t share that laugh with your friend and hear her wonderful laugh, or watch the warmth of joy spread over someone’s face as you tell them in person your good news. By collecting virtual “friends” on Facebook, you are cheating yourselves out of the real win.

Put a little love in your heart.

Listening to the radio this morning there were a lot of people calling in voicing their opinions whether Valentine’s Day was simply a cash grab by merchants, in other words a made-up holiday, or whether it was, in fact, a legitimate celebration.

There is a lot of merit to the cash-grab argument, certainly, but this is true of every holiday nowadays.  I see parents who are at best agnostic in their beliefs shelling out mountains of cash on chocolate Easter bunnies and egg decorating paraphernalia.  The same people embrace Halloween more than Christmas.  Then Christmas rolls around, and even bigger bags of money are rolled out, decorations put up, et cetera.

I can offer only my own perspective on Valentine’s Day, given that everyone has understandably different viewpoints on love and relationships:

If you consider our long winters in Canada, and how depressingly cold it can be, isn’t Valentine’s Day a nice way to take a bit of chill out of the air by showing the people for whom you care the most that you don’t take them for granted?  Certainly, there is validity in the “you should do that anyway” camp but, that being said, the same again can be said for Christmas and other holidays where gifts are traditionally exchanged.

Think about it: it’s middle of winter and, in Canada at least, our temperatures can get exceedingly cold adding to the overall impression that Hell hath, in fact, frozen over.  Add to that the bills you’re still trying to figure out how to pay for from Christmas and in some cases, Halloween, depending on how much you go in for ghouls and goblins.  In the near future, you’re also having to consider paying or at least reporting income tax and contributing to your RRSPs.  Many of the companies which employ us have year-end considerations and so their employees are putting in extra hours and effort to meet those deadlines as well.  So, then, would it not be nice to be on the receiving end of a little extra recognition for your efforts in the form of chocolates, dinner, flowers, candy, or even just a romantic stroll in the park?

At least with Valentine’s it truly is the gesture that counts.  One need not spend exorbitant amounts of money to show their favour toward someone, as I proved this year by treating my work friends to little gift bags of candy.  It was my way of spreading a little cheer given the low morale in the office since the Christmas season ended.

I would also point out that all the obligation should not be limited to men showing their gratitude to the women in their lives with extravagant expressions of their affection.  Both partners in the relationship should also recognize the long hours and hard work their significant others put in toward helping finance and maintain the lifestyles to which you have both become accustomed.  This is not to say that you should go out and spend even more money, putting yourselves farther into debt than you had at Christmas, but perhaps a simple “thanks, honey, for putting the garbage out” or “that was an awesome supper, sweetheart” would suffice.  All too often it’s those little gestures that get put by the wayside as time passes in relationships which contribute most to resentment and feelings of dissatisfaction in our relationships, which can have tragic consequences later on.

So, put your yourself in the shoes of the other person for a change, and recognize everything it is that they do to make your life enjoyable by showing them a little love on Valentine’s Day.