BRIDGES AND CONNECTING

This week I took some time to photograph bridges. It's a concept that I find fascinated, both it its literal application as well as in its figurative sense.

Bridges create interesting pattern changes. The business of life travels over instead of through other elements of life and nature. Bridges can leave places fairly undisturbed, and yet allow a glimpse, for those passing by, of a world that exists different from the bridge.

Bridges integrate the flow of humanity with the earth's topography. For all that we do try to shape and change the world to our use and our liking, there are times where we have to, or choose to compromise; where, for ease of access of speed of travel we bridge things.

What are we missing, I wonder, choosing the shorter, easier, more direct route? How is the world changed or impacted by our traveling on the bridge? The lily pads in the still water remain motionless and undisturbed as the busy world of man passes over.

How much quiet stillness goes unseen and inexperienced as man rushes across bridges towards purpose? There is oftentimes such a contrast in beingness between what is happening on the bridge and what is happening beneath the bridge.

BALANCE AND HAPPINESS: KEY COMPONENTS OF THE SWEET SPOT

I've been doing a lot of writing for work these days. Lately that's included some work around balance and "rightness". In the writing I've been doing I speak of a "sweet spot" where everything in your life comes together.

The sweet spot in life is an interesting place, in that it's not A place. There's not one sweet spot where, when the stars are aligned everyone congregates. If you were able to map people's sweet spots and tell them to go stand in their sweet spot so that we can get a lay of the land, you'd see people all over the place.

Sure there'd be enclaves of collectives, but probably not as many as we might expect, and they'd have to be moving all the time in order to stay in their sweet spot. The pattern we'd gaze out over would be almost unrecognizable and nothing repeatable.

That's the way happiness is. It's unique and changing and doesn't always make a lot of sense to others. Yet happiness is something that we pursue with a passion. There's a line from a Sarah Teasdale poem that comes to mind when I think of happiness and the sweet spot and that is:

For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstasy
Give all you have been, or could be.

Why then do so many people "save" their sweet spot time for after work, or for weekends, or for "when I retire?" Why is it that so many people have come to feel that the sweet spot has to be earned, or is a privilege, or that you can have too much of it, or that too much isn't good? We are on this earth for such a short while. It would seem to me that as brief as our time is, wouldn't it be great to be happy?

Coming full circle I come back to balance and rightness and the very personal nature of how that plays out. I realize that I have patterns of balance in my life that invite happiness in and allow it to take hold and be a real part of my day to day life. As I investigate the nature of my personal sweet spot, I see balance as an important component.

Wishing you balance and happiness in the pursuit of your very personal sweet spot.

Hugs,

Betsy

CHICKEN LITTLE IS ALIVE AND WELL IN MY HEAD

"THE SKY IS FALLING!! THE SKY IS FALLING!!"

Where does that internal voice come from that is always whispering in my ear, telling me that the car may die at any point, that my job can go away instantly, that those who love me will leave me, that...?

The legacy of worrying and the sense of pending disaster is with me always. I used to say that the fruit didn't fall far from the tree. My Mom was a worrier and I'm a worrier - I have inherited the "W" gene as well.

There is good news! Where, at one point in my life worrying spun me away from anchors and solid ground. Now it occupies a small corner where it is isolated and where it mostly spins on itself. Where, at one point, worry used to own me and drive me with pain, and fear, and a sense of pending disaster, it no longer has that power over me. Except for it's little corner where it lives. My life is full to overflowing with sunshine, and brilliance and beauty, and peace, and power, and prosperity, and love... all good stuff thank you!

How did I accomplish this transformation? Nope, not with drugs or medication. Nope not with alcohol, although that would have been the vehicle of choice had I gone in that direction. Worry in my life was defeated by meditation and gratitude.

You see I have a ritual, every morning of sitting quietly and doing energy work with my body, mind, and spirit. I journal every morning about the things that I'm grateful for in my life. You know, I can fill pages with gratitude! 

I have also come to terms with my personal Chicken Little as I have tremendous compassion for that part of me that, for whatever reason, feels that it can protect me by helping me to pre-live all of the possible disasters that might befall me - just so I'm ready. Yes, I can honestly say I love my Chicken Little, but I no longer give this "Lizard Brain" part of me the authority that it used to have. 

My meditation is pretty simple, my goal is to develop mindfulness around my breathing, and around the present moment. In that end, for Chicken Little and I, the present moment is all I really have.

Hugs,
Betsy

LIFE AS A HOUSE OF CARDS

When I was a child I used to go and stay with my grandparents in the summers at their cottage on a lake in Connecticut. It was a warm and inviting place lovingly built by my grandfather. On rainy days, when my brother's and I couldn't go out and play we'd stay inside and oftentimes play card games like canasta or hearts. Sometimes we'd just simply use the cards to build things, carefully stacking cards. We'd create precarious structures of whole decks, only to have a slight breeze or a wobble of the card table bring them all down. I tell this story because I am seeing some parallels lately in the world around me.

Recently I "retired" though I use that word with tremendous reserve as I have yet to set foot on a golf course or go and travel in Europe. Neither have I had time to go and participate in the activities at the senior center, or even take as much time off as I'd like for my photography. When I left my 8 tho 5 job at the factory, I took on a much more daunting role and that is as an entrepreneur. 

I recently read an article that said that with longer life expectancy it is not out of the question to have more than one career in one's life. I suppose I am a living example of what that article is talking about. I have been working at this for three years now and I've come to some understandings around my 8 to 5 job that I don't think I really appreciated while I was actually living it. 

I recently had a conversation with my daughter who lives with me and it was clearly one that I had never had to have before. In this entrepreneurial life that I have built for myself I have a couple of hard and fast rules that I don't waiver from. One of those is that I am, at any given time completely liquid - I maintain very little debt and my goal is to have no debt. this means that buying anything becomes a conversation around current needs, future needs, and reserves.

These are very different conversations than ones around a paycheck where I'd simply say, "not till Friday when I get paid." 

In my new life as an entrepreneur I have come to better appreciate the tenuous connectivity that binds products and service to value and that does or doesn't generate income and pay bills. In my new role I better understand the importance of expectations and results. In a sense, I have come to better understand the house of cards that we live in as we navigate a commercial existence based on a government regulated infrastructure.

This life is certainly an interesting and different mix of controls than my other life. What I do love about it, despite the tenuousness of it, is the FREEDOM. I have never known such Freedom in the work that I do, and neither have I worked with such dedication. 

I get now, better than ever, that we live in a world of uncertainties. So most important for me is to be truly grateful for this house of cards that forms the infrastructure of my current life.

Hugs,
Betsy

OUR LIVES ARE FULL OF SHORTCUTS AND CAMEO APPEARANCES

LOL... BFF... LMAO... Our lives are full of shortcuts and cameo appearances. There is so much that we have to process in any given day, at any given moment, that our brain is forced to resort to shortcuts and abbreviated definitions and categorizations. 

Those faces that we see but don't really SEE; those conversations that we have, but don't really ENGAGE in - it seems the faster life goes the shallower the depth that we operate at. What would happen if we slowed our lives down? What would happen if we took the time to FEEL and EXPERIENCE our lives in deeper and more profound ways?

Are we so afraid that we might miss something in our doing and being that we end up missing most of it as we merely sample, touch upon, and give things a cursory pass? Are we so driven to taste everything that we don't savor anything?

What does it mean to live deeply and to connect with what we do have the opportunity to experience in a rooted and familiar way? Perhaps it's time to engage in a way that provides an opportunity to really connect us to our world and to move with it, not over it.

Words - Just wind over vocal chords?

I have been away from my writing for awhile and the internal urging is to get back to it.

Language fascinates me. It is loaded with innuendo and emotion and meaning and it is simply wind over vocal chords. That bears repeating: it is SIMPLY wind over vocal chords. Language has started wars, ended lives, broken hearts. It has rallied nations, inspired change and moved people in a myriad of ways both emotionally and physically.

As I think about language and words I believe that they are worth being mindful of. What words do I use most frequently? How do I talk to people? Do I talk differently to different people and why?

There is a resonance in words that belies the simplicity of wind over vocal chords and dives deeply into the human psyche. The word resonance comes to mind when I think of meaningful use of words. If I were to create a visual around words, words are like an oscilloscope. They create resonance or wave lengths that are then tuned in to other wave lengths in order to make connections. Communication is a vibratory thing and words are the vehicle that is used to change the levels of vibration.

These thoughts lead me to music... but those thoughts are for another day.

Hugs,
Betsy

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

International Women's Day, today. Way to go ladies! So how far have I really come? To frame it in a time capsule I'll put it in the context of my life.

I've had a little of 60 years to "experience" life as a woman. And I have to say that, whether I like it or not my gender has majorly shaped my life and continues to do so. That being said. I am also very clear that despite the parameters life hands me, I WRITE THE STORY.

I am reminded of that quote by Mahatma Gandhi, "You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind." I have always taken great care to ensure that my mind always had the opportunity to know and experience FREEDOM, even if my body did not.

I have lived with societal pressures and dictates and mores for many, many years. In that time I have managed to break free of these societal bonds at various times and really know the delight and exuberance and pure empowerment of total acceptance and expressive freedom. 

The moments of pure freedom I have known? They have been a sustaining torch, a light, that has kept me moving  during those other times when all I really wanted to do was curl up in a ball and quit. Is this just a "women's thing"? I don't believe so. The human struggle for acceptance and equality is universal.

The journey from birth to death is about figuring out what works and doing it. It's about honoring all the other journeys that you come up against along the way and celebrating each other's wins, each brilliant spot in each other's path, knowing that there will also be dark moments, and long nights that these moments of brilliance will help us each move through.

After 60 years, for myself, Love has become the common denominator. When I peel away the layers, the behaviors the mores and dictates and look at the brilliance and the FREEDOM I see only LOVE.

Wishing you Love on the most auspicious International Women's Day.

Hugs,
Betsy