That’s a fib of a title, because I came upon two stellar pieces of advice recently that I’m going to share. The two bits ‘o wise counsel were not new in an, AHA! Light bulb moment! sense, (I’ve heard them, somewhere…and now can’t recall when and where). [1] But they stuck in my mind, like chewing gum to the bottom of my cerebral sneakers, because these two cautions remind me of the troubles of a dear friend, and my late mother, whose respective burdens would have been lightened so much (IMO) if they’d taken the following counsel to heart.
* The past is to be learned from, not lived in.
* When you engage in nostalgia, go for a visit, don’t take up residence.
Moiself has several files/lists of sage advice I’ve collected over the years. Much of it is observations benefiting from the life experiences and wisdom of others; some of it is rather obvious; some of it profound; some of it comical, some a combination of all three and more. I can’t figure out why I’m feeling…something I (mis?) interpret as magnanimous…I’ll just blame it on the recent eclipse (because, Science). So, moiself gonna share a random sampling of my favorites.
I’ve listed attributions when possible (although most of what follows was apparently uttered/written by that artful and wise wonder of the world, Anonymous).
Does the clown upset/frighten/bore you?
Don’t blame the clown for acting like a clown –
you’re the one who went to the circus. [2]
You have two lives – the second begins when you realize you only have one.
(Attributed to Confucius)
We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this, and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
( Roger Ebert, American film critic and author )
If you think you’re enlightened, go visit your family.
( Ram Dass, American teacher of spirituality )
The answer to bad speech is good speech, not censorship.
( ACLU )
To believe you’re justified in feeling “upstaged,”
you also have to believe two things:
that there is such a thing as a stage, and that you are entitled to all of it.
( Carolyn Hax )
I don’t think I’m old, but I know I’m not young.
( Ray Romano, American comedian and actor )
When people show you who they are, believe them.
( Maya Angelo, American poet, writer, educator, activist )
No matter how high sits the throne
What sits on it is like your own.
(Yip Harburg, American atheist activist, songwriter/poet [3] )
There is a difference between making good choices and *having* good choices.
“Yes” to anything will always mean “no” to something else.
Remember: it’s better to be alone than to wish you were alone.
Why is it that when people die, we make such an effort to turn them into saints? Especially when the entire reason we loved them so much in the first place is because they weren’t.
( Alison Arngrim, American actor, from her memoir, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch:
How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated )
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off.
( Gloria Steinem [4] )
You are not required to set yourself on fire to keep other people warm.
Any product or service with the word “beauty” in its title
has a vested interest in making you feel ugly.
The people who deserve your (personal) time are the ones who, consistently, behave as if they’re grateful to have it.
( Carolyn Hax, American writer and advice columnist )
Just because you can’t always doesn’t mean you won’t ever.
( MH )
“No doesn’t mean never; it means not now.”
( Dambisa Moyo, Zambian-born economist, marathoner, author )
I don’t want to live this day as if it were my last.
I want to live this life as if it were my last.
(Greta Christina, American writer, atheist and LGBTQ activist,
from her book, The Way of the Heathen )
The four most dangerous words in the world are: “I will be happy when…”
( moiself )
Grief is the price of love.
You know you’re an adult when you can be right
without proving the other person wrong.
When hard times come, remember:
your track record for surviving your bad days is 100%.
The place to be happy is here.
The time to be happy is now.
The way to be happy is to help make others so.
( Robert Ingersoll, 19th century American lawyer, writer, orator,
civil and women’s rights and agnostic rights activist )
The thing about advice is knowing when to ignore it.
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Department Of About That Living In The Past
Have any other of y’all assigned female at birth womenfolk been minding your own beeswax, avoiding support hose but appreciating comfortable footwear, when out of the proverbial nowhere you turn 50 and certain types of catalogs aimed at certain demographics take up residence in your mailbox?
I remember the first one, due to its obsequious name: As We Change. ® [5] Which, moiself supposes, is catchier than the As We Want To Barf When We Read Such Ham-Fisted Euphemisms catalog.
Like many former snail mail catalogs, AWC is now a social media page. But it was a mailbox infester when I turned 50 – it found me. By the third time it found me, instead of immediately tossing it into the recycle bin, I was curious as to its contents, and began thumbing through its pages. My impression was that the magazine was trying to convince moiself that I was ready to don cruise wear 24/7, and that I was in the market for shaping swimsuits and supportive undergarments ®, comfy shoes, and “tastefully fashionable jewelry”… (f your idea of tastefully fashionable is necklaces and bracelets which try to combine Gen X insouciance, Lillian Vernon catalog panache, and all-of-these-dangly-things-won’t-get-in-the-way-of-your-nursing-home-tracheotomy practicality, into a unique kind of…accessory).
At the halfway point of the catalog, without warning the wares for sale changed: seasonal potpourris and scented candles gave way to several pages of “personal wellness enhancement” devices, if you know what I mean and I think you do. Most of them battery operated.
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Department Of Speaking Of Life Advice: When Is The Last Time You Updated
And/Or Rethought Your Medical Directive(s)?
“Many of us believe we know how we’d choose to die. We have a sense of how we’d respond to a diagnosis of an incurable illness. This week, we revisit a 2019 episode featuring one family’s decades-long conversation about dying. What they found is that the people we are when death is far in the distance may not be the people we become when death is near.
In 1950, A 3-year-old girl from Tennessee contracted polio. Within days, Dianne Odell couldn’t walk. Then she couldn’t breathe. Her life was saved by a miraculous, monstrous device – the iron lung.
Over the years, new types of respirators allowed many polio patients to escape the iron lung. Not Dianne – she had a spinal condition that made it her only option. So she stayed flat on her back, encapsulated from the neck down in the long, noisy, cylindrical tube for 58 years.
In an interview shortly before her death, Dianne said people often had the same blunt reaction about what they would want in her situation.
Dianne Odell:
‘Most of them said, “I’d rather be dead. I couldn’t live that way. I’d rather be dead.”
Nobody would rather be dead.
They think in the spur of the moment, but there’s always tomorrow.’
There is always tomorrow. Dianne saw her choice very differently than the people looking in from the outside. It’s one thing to say you would not want to live for 58 years in an iron lung, but that is not the choice that confronted Diane. The choice was always, do you want to see tomorrow?
(excerpts, my emphases, from intro to the Hidden Brain podcast, The ventilator )
I’d rather be dead. I’d rather be dead than be a burden on my family/live that way….
Some of us trusincerely hold that opinion. And moiself would bet that many of us think we’re *supposed* to think that such a sentiment is the brave/practical, situationally rational way to view our (inevitable) demise, particularly if extending our life – read: prolonging our death – would involve complex and painful medical interventions. Most of us probably hold a combination of both convictions (we either believe we would rather be dead than burdensome, or would like to believe it). But the choices are never so black and white, especially in the rapidly advancing fields of critical/end-of-life care.
It used to be that if you were incurably ill or severely injured and needed a respirator or feeding tube, then that was it – you’d be tethered to those devices until your death. Thus, people signed DNR orders and medical directives accordingly (“I don’t want to live that way;” “Pull the plug, don’t plug me in”). But what if, given the particulars of your illness or injury, the feeding tube and/or respirator or other medical devices are not a life sentence of hospitalization and dependency; rather, they are bridge treatments that allow your body to heal, and can be removed/discontinued after your body has rebuild its own capacity to breath and intake food?
The latter scenario is often he case now, what with the increasingly improved and fine-tuned technologies and medications. But, what if you signed your DNR, or your no-feeding-tube/respirator medical directive years ago, in light of what you knew about the technologies of that particular time? And when the time comes to act on the directives you signed or wishes you expressed years ago, what if, as Hidden Brain host Shankar Vedamtan puts it, you discover questions you hadn’t considered?
“What if the seemingly rational choices you prefer when you’re healthy no longer make sense to you when you’re actually confronting death?
Today, we look at how one family grappled with the same question. Over the decades, they talk deeply about the choices they would want to make in the face of an incurable illness or terrible injury.”
Valuable, if perhaps uncomfortable, issues to consider. Check it out here.
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Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [6]
* * *
Parting Shot: I love it when/I hate it when…
Just as moiself is reaching the point of no return as I read about my fellow human beings warring against others, their religious fanaticism and persecution of anyone they deem The Other, their polluting of their own habitats and general disregard for the health of the only planet we call home…I love it when someone poses a question of such existential deepness that it restores my belief in humanity’s ultimate ability to unite and tackle the intellectual lassitude which plagues our species:
* * *
May we discern how to follow good advice and ignore bad;
May we update/reconsider our medical directives;
May we be able to get that picture of mole asses out of our minds;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
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[1] Knowing moiself, probably a podcast.
[2] Okay, exceptions for this one. Some children are dragged to the circus – both literally and metaphorically – by their parents.
[3] Harburg wrote the lyrics for Over The Rainbow, and all the songs in The Wizard of Oz.
[4] Not gonna explain who she is. If you don’t know, WTF are you doing reading this blog?
[5] Yeah, I know, what are they gonna call it: As We Wake Up One Day And Say, Holy Fuck, I’m Getting’ Up There.
[6] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
