Like most people, the holidays hold a very special place in my heart. For me, those holidays are Thanksgiving and Christmas. For you, the holidays might be Ramadan or Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or Diwali. As is true of so many, many things, the different holidays we celebrate speak much more to what we treasure, what we share in common—the decorating of homes, the lighting of candles or oil lamps, the exchange of gifts, the singing of songs, a time for reflection and charitable actions—than to what divides us. But number one among these things we share and celebrate—the most precious gift of all—is gathering with family and friends for a festive meal. Family and friends—nothing matters more than the people we love.

Reflecting on that, I started thinking about other things many of us hold dear in common. I hope you will find much of what you treasure among them. I welcome any additions you’d like to make in the comments section.          

Our Health and the Health of Those We Love

New York Times bestselling author Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors among others) famously said, “When you have your health, you have everything. When you do not have your health, nothing else matters at all.” 

Exercise is often touted as the best medicine. Running, biking, swimming, dancing the night away, traveling across the globe, which means lots of walking once you get off that plane. Ed and I regularly clock 10,000+ steps a day in cities like London and Copenhagen. Many of our friends enjoy hiking in the mountains. And one of my neighbors is big on white-water rafting. Did I neglect to mention we are all Boomers? I hope we can do these things for many years to come. These activities enrich our lives and by their very nature, strengthen our bodies, but no one is immune to injury or stroke or cancer. What’s needed to protect our health—the health of each of us and the people we hold dear—is quality healthcare. Affordable quality healthcare. We in the U.S. are now feeling the truth of this like never before.

Though America was a come-lately to government funding for any kind of healthcare, President Lyndon Johnson’s Social Security Amendments of 1965 gave health insurance through Medicare to Americans 65 and older, and sliding scale coverage through Medicaid for people under 65 with a limited income. I remember how grateful my grandmother was for Medicare. A woman who had lived in poverty all her life, working in a factory while raising five children, she knew what a great and sorely needed gift Medicare was to the American people.

Forty-five years later, President Barrack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. Prior to the passage of the ACA, commonly referred to as “Obamacare”, people with pre-existing conditions could be refused health coverage or charged a higher rate for their plan. Sometimes much higher. The ACA put an end to that. It also reduced the costs of healthcare for those eligible and established limits on out-of-pocket expenses. At one point, I was on the ACA and it was a significant help in time of need.

We all need healthcare, and in a country as wealthy as the U.S., that should not be an issue. Almost 70% of the world’s population has some kind of universal healthcare, including 27 European Union countries and the United Kingdom. For a brief moment, in 2023, when fourteen Democratic senators co-sponsored Bernie Sanders Medicare for All bill, it seemed we might get our own single-payer system, with the government providing healthcare for all Americans,. But the measure stalled in Congress and then the 2024 elections happened. Though 100 Democratic House members tried to revive it last spring, their efforts failed. Now, some states have cut Medicaid (more may follow) and ACA premiums are predicted to skyrocket. Our healthcare—and thus, our health—is under threat by the president, his GOP-dominated Congress and the billionaires who literally make a killing, perhaps many killings, from private healthcare.

The Natural World

“I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.” — John Burroughs, 19^th century naturalist (No relation to Augustin Burroughs quoted above.)

As I write this, I’ve just returned from my daily ramble through the streets of my town. It’s a grey November afternoon, but the Japanese maples are a lustrous red and from the high point of my wandering, I paused to look out across the valley to the mountains beyond. It’s a magnificent view, one I never tire of. I walk to savor such beauty as much as I do to keep my body strong and healthy.

But nature offers yet another benefit, one that often goes unremarked, and the J. Burroughs quote above captures it perfectly. In its vastness, the natural world tends to dwarf our human struggles, or at least put them in perspective. A balm for troubled thoughts or an aching heart. When you sit beneath a tree that’s centuries old, as Ed and I have done at London’s Kew Gardens, you remember that the human experience has been a long and varied road, far from smooth and sometimes downright horrifying, but also one of great learning and achievement, of astounding creativity and, at many moments, one of goodness and generosity to others. The Earth truly is our mother and we must protect her.

Literature

We have a card on our kitchen wall, a hunched-up geezer in a crumpled coat with an armload of books, captioned: Wear the old coat and buy the new book. Oddly enough, the quote is from Austin Phelps, an American clergyman born in 1820. I know nothing more about him, but I do know he nailed it on this one. Our house attests to the veracity of his words. Books fill every available space, even spaces that weren’t meant for books, e.g., next to chairs, piled on stairwells, spilling over dresser tops. It’s a lifetime love affair. For me, it began at age two when I got my first little Golden Books—nineteen cents apiece—each week at the grocery store for “being good.” Since I was always “good”, my Golden Books stacked up quickly. By age five, I was taking out books from the local library and reading them myself. Tell me a story—a request, a need, almost as old as language itself.

Indeed, storytelling has existed for thousands of years. Tens of thousands if we count the cave drawings discovered in France at Lascaux and Chauvet, some of which appear to represent visual narratives. In ancient Greece and Rome, people gathered by the hundreds on the hillsides to hear the adventures of Odysseus, Homer’s epic poem The Iliad, and the animal fables spun by Aesop himself.

Around 700 BCE, many of these stories and poems began to be written down. Though the first printing press was still two-thousand years away, recording the stories helped spread them to new audiences around the globe. The importance of this journey—storytelling to story writing to mass printing of stories—cannot be overstated. Literature allows us both to reflect on our own “odyssey” and to step beyond ourselves. To understand our place in the human condition—those most basic shared experiences and emotions that define what it is to be alive in this world: Birth, growth, joy, sorrow, fear, hope, disappointment, love, anger, death.

Now that books are increasingly featuring AI-generated content—the details on this are murky, and sources disagree over how much and in what manner—the future of literature feels uncertain. I can only say that AI books will not—cannot—give us the truth of the human condition. Humans: It takes one to know one.

Theatre

One of the greatest writers to ever capture the essence of human experience was William Shakespeare. His narratives were acted out on stage, but their veracity is proven by the audiences that continue to pack the Globe Theatre in London for every performance of his work more than four-hundred years later.

The power of theatre lies in its immediacy, its face-to-face connection between actors/story/audience. The story begins, building and building to its climax—wham!—before continuing to its resolution. With the exception of a brief interval for longer works, there is no “putting the play down” as we do multiple times when reading a book. At the close of an especially electrifying performance, an audible second of silence occurs before the house goes wild with applause.

There was some real concern that COVID would be the end of theatres. Thankfully, this has not turned out to be true.  There are some 240 theatres in London and more than 100 (including off-Broadway venues) in New York City. And great playwrights continue to emerge. Kate Hamill, Rajiv Joseph, Jeffrey Hatcher, Eboni Booth.

Music

“Music is the universal language of mankind.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I cannot remember a time when music was not core to my being, a state that only catapulted into the wild blue after my dad gave me a transistor radio with earphones when I was six. Suddenly, I could listen to music (clandestinely, tee-hee) until the local radio station went off the air at midnight. And I did, all the way into high school. The Beatles. Bob Dylan. The Supremes. The Temptations. The Byrds. Simon & Garfunkel. The Mamas and the Papas. Smokey Robinson. And about a zillion others. Has there ever been such an explosion of brilliant music before or since?      

When the Beatles released their “White Album” on Nov. 22, 1968, I hiked most of a mile in the late fall chill through a field of briars—in the fashion of the time, capri jeans and flats with no socks, which left my ankles to the mercy of the thorny plants—to get a copy from a local department store. A small price to pay, I thought as I placed the first record on the turntable, for having these 30 new songs by the rock group that flipped my world and defined a generation.                           

In college, I took a class in playwriting. The professor spoke of musical theatre as well and introduced us to opera. He played a recording of Puccini’s “O mio babbino caro” (“Oh, my dear Papa”) from the opera Gianni Schicchi. I. Was. Hooked. At just a hair over two minutes, it’s one of the most incredibly beautiful, emotional pieces of music I have ever encountered. After many decades, I still can’t hear it without tearing up.

And, altering Longfellow’s quote a tad, music also has charms to soothe the savage “beast.” When my dear kitty, Coosh (Mercutio), was alive, we had a nightly routine I dubbed “Music with Mommy.” This ritual occurred during what I call my “decompression time”—a half-hour at the end of the day when I sit on my bed and play solitaire, letting the pressures of life slide off me, while I listen to music—Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Schubert and other classical masters, played by brilliant musicians like Joshua Bell. Cooshy always jumped up on the bed and rested beside me for the duration. If I was a little behind on getting started, Coosh would stand by the staircase until I got the message.

Art

When, as a college student, I first encountered several of the great art galleries of the world—the Louvre in Paris, the Tate Britain and the National Gallery in London, the Uffizi Gallery in Florence—I had to see everything (though even I could not cover all 35,000 artworks in the Louvre). And it wasn’t that I had never seen art before. My mother had trained as an artist, so we did the two-hour drive every few years to visit the fabled Art Institute of Chicago. But having stood spellbound before Van Gogh’s The Bedroom and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix and Toulouse-Lautrec’s At the Moulin Rouge, I craved more. Much more. So, even as I journeyed beyond that semester in Europe, beyond college, into the wide world, I continued to seek out the great art galleries both at home and abroad. I still do.

One might imagine being a writer, dealing in words rather than images, I would not be so deeply affected by paintings, but the best works of art speak as eloquently to the human condition as any work of literature or theatre. Writers, painters, dancers, musicians, actors—we all deal heavily in emotion because before we are artists we are human beings, and who among us has not known the majesty and the wonder expressed in van Gogh’s The Starry Night or experienced the utter despair portrayed so movingly in John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott?          

Democracy, Social Justice, Peace, Generosity

“Whatever happened to the idea…that we all do better when we all do better?” –Paul Wellstone, progressive senator from Minnesota (1991-2002), addressing a sheet metal workers’ union.

Our democracy has chugged along for 236 years, imperfectly—yes—but intact. And through the decades, now centuries, “we the people” have made progress toward that “more perfect union” outlined in the Constitution, though not infrequently in the style of a two-steps forward, one-step back foxtrot. For example, the 19^th Amendment gave women the right to vote in 1920, but Black and Indigenous women were restricted from exercising this right by a tangle of state laws that also prevented the men in these populations from voting. And Native Americans were not even recognized as full citizens until The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924!    

But despite the muddles—inherent in a true democracy where many voices contend—those of us who believe that all people are created equal have continued to press for the full realization of that highest of ideals. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Acts of 1965, it seemed we were finally getting somewhere. Even when Nixon’s role was revealed in the 1972 Watergate scandal, masterminding the cover-up for the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters by CREEP—that darkly comic and amazingly accurate acronym for Tricky Dick’s Committee to Re-Elect the President—even then, justice prevailed and Nixon resigned one step ahead of his certain impeachment.

And now, we who hold dear our Constitution, our First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, to “peaceably assemble and petition the Government for a redress of grievances”, we must continue to rise up and say NO! to what is, in fact, a dictatorship by the billionaires, for the billionaires and to hell with the rest of us. The millions of Americans who have come out to protest at the “No Kings” rallies this past year is heartening, but our system of checks and balances established by the founders remains in grave danger. The majority of the Supreme Court is in the pockets of the uber rich and there’s a president at the helm who believes no one can restrain his power—Congress be damned.

We must continue to stand together and stand up for each other, including our immigrants, for are we not—with the exception of the badly-treated Indigenous Americans—all immigrants?     

For all we hold dear, we cannot—must not—fail.

I love to travel but I’m always happy to return home. Back to my hood and my wonderful neighbors. Back to my town with its progressive vibe and happy inclusive sense of community. This past October, though, was different. It was difficult returning from Amsterdam, unsettling. Everything feels so uncertain in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Healthcare. Environmental protections. Social Security. Public funding for our schools and universities, for medical research and disaster relief. Our civil rights. Our voting rights. Democracy itself. All hanging by a very tenuous thread. All subject to a very real threat. A shadow dogging us even on the sunniest of days. How do we live within this shadow? Not just survive, but thrive?

Uncertainty. The very word makes us itch. I mean, we love surprise parties, but no one hosts an uncertainty celebration. No one says, oh, what a lovely uncertainty! In reality, though, uncertainty is all we ever have. From the moment of our birth anything can happen, but most of the time we don’t feel threatened so we don’t dwell on this truth. We tend to view life as something we can act upon and that, if carried out thoughtfully and with a clear purpose, our actions will steer the course of our future more or less in the direction we wish. We apply for college or a job. The outcome is uncertain, and we will likely be disappointed if we aren’t accepted, but we don’t perceive it as a threat. We just apply to another college, another job. Something will turn up. You can’t always get what you want, as the Rolling Stones reminded us in a song, but if you try sometimes, you just might find you get what you need. A great tune with a reassuring message. But what if the most basic things one needs are under threat? What if the land of one’s birth is being steered by the rich and the powerful toward fascism? How can one not be distressed, depressed?

Yes We CAN!

Uncertainty of the magnitude we now face can make us feel like bolting the doors and crawling under the covers until “everything’s okay” again, but that’s not living. It is hard to remain unscathed by the dark threats around us, but it is imperative to remember that uncertainty is just that: By its very definition, it is NOT certain. And acting as if the outcome we fear is a fait accompli only allows it to become so—the surest way to hand those who would destroy our democracy the victory they crave.

As a recent People Power United email I received reminds us: Fascism doesn’t arrive with fanfare or sudden violence. It creeps in quietly — through lies, fear, and apathy — eroding rights, silencing dissent, and consolidating power until resistance seems impossible. History has shown what happens when people wait too long to act. The cost of silence is always freedom. But, PPU adds: The courage of ordinary people stops fascism—and it starts with us.

The time for action is NOW. It’s a time for getting together with others—friends, neighbors, our community—and standing strong. A time for saying “Hell no, we won’t give up our country, our freedoms, our rights, our healthcare, the fight to save our planet. There’s 340 million of us and only a handful of you gluttonous greedsters who would destroy it all.”  

If six-year-old Ruby Bridges could face the hordes of angry, name-calling white bigots—yes, grown-ups, parents of young children themselves—when she became the first Black student to attend William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1959, then we can all rise together and say a resounding NO WAY! to the dismantling of our government and our rights.

History buff that I am, I would like to note here that it was the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education that ruled (1954) separating children in public schools on the basis of race was unconstitutional. And it was a Republican president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, who presided over the country when Ruby entered the all-white school. Oh, for a Supreme Court again like that one! Or a Republican president who valued civil rights.

As someone who grew up watching the Civil Rights marches of the 1960s and later marched to protest the Vietnam War, I can tell you there is nothing so powerful, so feel-good as joining with others to fight for what is right, what is just. If you participated in one of the more than 2,500 “No Kings” protests this past October 18, then you probably know what I mean. It was a celebration of love for justice, freedom and democracy, one of the largest single-day protests in American history. Even deep red Texas had its share of “No Kings” events, with more than 20,000 participating in the Austin protest alone. People are rising up, coming together, saying This is OUR country and we will not stand by silently while the billionaires and fascists destroy it. [For a list of the 281 organizations that worked to make the recent “No Kings” day a success, click here. They deserve our heartfelt thanks.]

Photo by Leo_Visions on Unsplash

Celebrate Life!

Defending our rights is crucial if we are to remain a free people, but enjoying our freedom is equally vital to our well-being. In the title up top, I chose to capitalize LIVING because I believe it to be the key word. Uncertainty, as I said, goes on forever. It is always with us. But life, the life of each of us is finite, precious. Carpe diem! Seize the day! Need a few suggestions? Try these.

Go out to enjoy live music with friends. Or make some music of your own. Ed and I love to play our guitars, while our neighbor J. likes to make some good noise on his drum kit.

Host a potluck for your neighbors—we do this frequently in my hood and it always boosts everyone’s spirits.  

Set aside at least one hour every day to pursue a project you love. An hour that is sacrosanct, meaning not for doing laundry or grocery shopping. Not for mopping the kitchen floor or raking leaves—unless you love raking leaves, in which case, please come to my house. We’ve got billions of them! No, during this special hour, you paint pictures, write stories, read those books you’ve been dying to get to, refinish that antique armoire you bought at a yard sale six years ago with the dream of giving it a new life, print and compile a scrapbook of your most cherished photos, learn to play an instrument—as long as you’re here, it’s never too late.  

And definitely let yourself get silly. It’s not just fun, it’s vital. The other day, needing a release from the omnipresent cloud of dark threats, I put Jerry Lee Lewis on the CD player and danced wildly around the kitchen, singing along—at top volume—to “Great Balls of Fire.” Which left me feeling lighter, happier, stronger. Not a bad outcome for a song that clocks at just 2 minutes and 34 seconds!  

Uncertainty. It’s the condition of life. It’s the road ahead. But it doesn’t always foreshadow disaster. Today, for example, was forecast to be cold and dark and rain-soaked, but three minutes ago the sun broke through the clouds, lighting up the autumn trees in their dazzling oranges and yellows, and the temp is mild. A perfect day for a walk, so I’m out the door. As singer/songwriter Jackson Browne said, “Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around. Go on and make a joyful sound.” 

(NOTE: As I’m due for another “sanity break,” I’m leaving you with a post I wrote in September 2022, when I thought I knew what disaster looked like. Apropos of the ideas expressed in this month’s blog, I still had more to learn. Lesson: Never ask what else could go wrong. But I’ll be back with a brand new post in November, refreshed and ready to resume the good fight.)

Many years ago, while reading Vanessa Redgrave: An Autobiography, I came across this arresting line: Never go to the theatre with your head full of what you don’t like. Words Redgrave attributed to her father, actor Michael Redgrave. I was reminded of this wise counsel recently while perusing the program notes for a dance performance—A.I.M by Kyle Abraham—at Jacob’s Pillow. Abraham’s troupe is noted for blending a wide range of dance styles in its repertoire, an approach that has made the company “one of the most consistently excellent troupes working today” (The New York Times).

But A.I.M’s notable achievement might never have come about. In an interview with LifeandTimes.com, Abraham recalled going to see the Joffrey Ballet at age 16. He did not go to see the ballet as a form—Abraham was a club dancer then—but to see some dances within the company’s piece Billboards because they were performed to a song cycle by pop superstar Prince. Yet that night, as they say, changed Kyle Abraham’s life. What he witnessed on that stage inspired him to step outside the narrow confines of his own experience in dance, to begin exploring and creating what he now calls his “postmodern gumbo…a hybrid of movement sensibilities inspired by a lot of postmodern, modern, contemporary, and ballet forms and even some social-dance vernaculars as well.”

But what if Abraham had gone to Billboards convinced there was nothing of value in ballet itself? If he had closed his mind, his sensibilities to everything but the Prince song cycle? How much in life do we miss because we “go to the theatre” with our minds made up? Or engage in discussions to talk but not to listen? Or simply close our eyes to what is inconvenient to see or disturbing to consider? And why do we do this? I mean, what risk is there in exploring a subject further or considering other takes on a topic?  It commits us to nothing. And it just might open up our life as it did Kyle Abraham’s.

If You’re Right, Then I’m Wrong

We tend to fear challenges to our beliefs. Psychology even has a name for this inclination: belief perseverance. Picture an Inquisition dude at Galileo’s trial in the 1630s—hands over ears, vigorously shaking his head—“No,no,no! The Earth does NOT revolve around the Sun. God’s greatest creation is the center of the universe!” Or Earl Landgrebe, GOP congressman from Indiana, famously defending Nixon in August 1974—just days after the Watergate tapes came to light. “Don’t confuse me with the facts,” Landgrebe said. “I’ve got a closed mind.”

Belief perseverance (also referred to as “conceptual conservatism”) prompts us to actively reject any and all information that contradicts or outright proves our convictions false or flimsy. And if we step back for a moment, it’s easy to understand why this not-infrequently annoying trait is so powerful. After all, our beliefs can feel like the glue that holds us together as we try to make sense of a constantly changing, complex world.

But that doesn’t alter the danger refusing to reconsider our beliefs can pose to ourselves and others (think of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol and the movement to “Stop the Steal!” when there was no steal). Even in far less fraught circumstances, it’s still a losing strategy. A diminution of self. A blind eye that puts us at the mercy of anyone with a desire to pull the wool over it for their own ends.   

At some level, we all recognize this. I mean, what adult still believes in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus? Growth is the result of challenges to our assumptions. It’s evidenced by a viewpoint that expands far beyond the narrow focus of early home life to encompass a panoramic vista of the human condition and the world in all its contradictions.

If we’re lucky, those challenges just keep on coming. If we’re wise, we embrace them. Allow them to enrich our understanding and, thus, our experiences throughout our lifetime.

Identity Crisis

We also fear losing our identity—how we see ourselves and wish to be seen by others. So we tend to seek out and embrace anything and anyone who affirms our picture of ourselves and the world around us. Psychologists call this confirmation bias.  As a concept, it’s the photo-negative of belief perseverance. In everyday speak, it’s called wishful thinking. It’s like the child who, wanting to go to the picnic her parents caution may be rained out, desperately searches a gray sky for signs of sunshine.

When I was 12, I wrote passionate poems about the evils of science. A child of my times, as we all are, I could only see science as the atomic bombs that wiped out Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as the Agent Orange that defoliated Vietnam—part of the “herbicidal warfare” waged there by the U.S., sickening and killing the Vietnamese and our soldiers in the process. As the napalm bombs that left huge areas of unquenchable fire in their wake. I loved the Byrd’s song “5D (Fifth Dimension)” with its line: And I saw the great blunder my teachers had made, scientific delirium madness.

I still love that song for its embrace of a loving universe, but I have learned a lot since then. Allowed a lot of facts in. Realized that my take on science in 1967 contained some truth, but ignored many, many other truths. Because along with weapons of mass destruction, science has created life-saving medicines and technologies—where would we be today without the COVID vaccines? Science created deadly herbicides like glyphosate, but science is also working to prevent further bio-diversity erosion and the poisoning of our earth, air and water. A team at MIT recently developed a portable desalination unit that removes particles and salts from ocean water to render it safe for drinking. The machine weighs just 22 pounds and requires less power to run than a cell phone charger. It can even be driven by a portable solar pane. Science has been destruction. It has also, and more often, been life and hope.

Asking questions, listening to others, testing their ideas—and yours—teaches you virtually everything is far more complex than it first appears. When I was young, I had clear-cut solutions to all of society’s many problems. Well, I’m still in the same fights I was then—the struggle for racial equality, for the rights of women and LGBTQ+ persons, for preserving the earth and all its creatures (great and small), for universal healthcare and high-quality public education. Yes, I’m still in those fights, but now I understand the solutions are more complicated than I first thought. And the questions not infrequently outnumber the answers. This can feel overwhelming at times but, as every good scientist knows, it’s the questions that drive the most significant, the most enduring solutions. Anyone can act, but to act intelligently—that’s a different, and far better, course.

I’ve Got It All Together (Not)

Admitting to ourselves and others that we don’t “have it all together”—that we harbor uncertainties, have gaps in our knowledge, or are totally clueless about the issue at hand—can make us feel very vulnerable. “I’ve got it all together” is the mantra of our age. Social media has made it possible for people to “package” their lives for public consumption: See me. I’m in my beautiful home, surrounded by my perfect family (the kids all spectacularly successful), dining at elegant places and traveling the world without a care. It’s a dream life!  

In most instances, I’m willing to bet, the only solid truth in that carefully-scripted presentation is the dream part. Which is ironic because a truly secure person can admit to screw-ups and uncertainty. A truly secure person knows that no one “has it all together.” A truly secure person is open to new ideas and different takes.

Like a self-described club dancer who goes to the ballet to see how they’re dancing to Prince and comes away profoundly changed.

Kyle Abraham could have gone to Billboards with a head full of what he didn’t like. He could have refused to be influenced by anything else, fearing it would weaken his identity as a club dancer. But instead, he opened his mind to the possibilities. And that opening up made him a stronger dancer, a magnificent choreographer, one able to draw from the rich diversity of dance the world offers.

Everyone can learn from others. Even my cats, Tibby and Coosh, understood this. One of their favorite treats was butter wrappers, especially on a warmish day when a rich layer of the good stuff stuck to the wax paper. But butter wrappers can be a real challenge, as Coosh discovered. With every lick, the wrapper slid along the tiled floor, making it hard for him to get a satisfying mouthful. His brother Tibby, however, quickly developed a strategy—place one paw on the wrapper to keep it from sliding. A couple of wrappers later, I noticed Coosh had adopted Tibby’s technique.

Cooshy didn’t defend his (unsatisfying) practice. He didn’t feel it made him “less of a cat” to copy his brother. He simply grasped that Tibby’s method resulted in MORE of the good stuff. You’d have to be stupid not to adopt it.

How sad it would be if we encountered every new experience, every new idea or piece of information with our mind already made up. If we never expanded our understanding or outlook. Never grew beyond the Tooth Fairy. Because growth is life.     

A new day breaks. You rise, your head full of plans—the project(s) you’ll (hopefully) start, or (finally) finish: the new fitness routine that will (hopefully) get you into trim shape; that attic space you’ll (hopefully) clear up and reclaim for much-needed bookshelves; the invites you’ll send to a half-dozen good friends, setting a firm date (finally) for that informal drinks-and-chat get-together you’ve been talking about forever on Facebook. The morning’s sunny. The sky’s blue. It’s a day to savor and act!     

… By nightfall, you’re beating yourself up with all you had hoped to accomplish, but didn’t finish, or maybe didn’t even get to start. The water pipe in the basement broke and you spent the morning scrambling for a plumber. Then there was the incorrect medical bill that took ninety minutes to straighten out as you were bounced from one AI-powered bot to another—oh, for a real person to talk to! And when you started dinner, you realized you didn’t have the carrots the recipe required, so you took a quick run to the grocery, but that still devoured a half hour…

The day feels a failure. Like too many days perhaps. You woke up looking forward to the day. You fall asleep castigating yourself for not doing more.

We humans are very forward-looking creatures. Always making plans. Dreaming BIG. Certain we’re about to overcome those hurdles blocking our path. And just as easily shattered when those plans and dreams don’t materialize as expected. Trust me, I am writing about this because I know this struggle so well.   

Yes, it’s easy to look at all you haven’t done, but perhaps we might do better to pause regularly and consider everything we have accomplished.   

The Daily Check-Up

You planned to finish mulching the front and backs gardens today but you’ve used up the four bags of red cedar you bought last month, so you run out to the garden center to buy two more bags. Now, you don’t have the time to lay down the mulch. And it’s almost August!

You hoped to finish another chapter on the rough draft of your novel, but it turned out to involve more research than you expected, so by the time you did your googling, arranged your notes and jotted a rough outline, it was 3:30. Time to pick up the kids from school.

You were determined that today you would finally finish painting that dining room wall—the one that’s been sporting large swaths of mesh tape and joint compound since the carpenter repaired all those hairline cracks (“tired plaster” they call it—ah, the joys of an 1890s house!) …but that tooth that’s been signaling distress off and on the past two weeks? Today, distress turned to unignorable AGONY which led to an hour at the dentist, which led to an emergency root canal at the endodontist—an inconvenient half-hour drive from the dentist. Nothing got done.    

In each of these scenarios, you’re left feeling bummed. Nothing accomplished. But hold on a minute.

That’s not quite true.

In the case of your garden, you now have the mulch you need to control weeds, conserve ground moisture, prevent erosion, and—time saver!—reduce maintenance.

Regarding your novel, you can’t proceed on the writing until you do the research, and now you have! All systems go. That’s progress. And perhaps the research even inspired an idea for a new character, a wonderful, dastardly villainy-villain!

The plan to paint the dining room wall that was scrapped by the emergency root canal, yes that day is kaput. Over. But you can rest happy tonight knowing the tooth is taken care of—it won’t mess up tomorrow.

Gaining a Better Perspective: The Have-Done List 

We tend to set ourselves up for disappointment and distress by planning days that make no allowance for the frequent intrusions of real life. But life has always contained a large quantity of must-do-nows, can’t-avoid-any-longers, and oh crap! surprises. During the 1,500 years it took to build Stonehenge, surely there were numerous days when boggy weather put the kibosh on moving those gigantic Sarsen stones, via rolling logs, through the muck and mud.

Our dreams and projects must take into account the mundane and the unexpected. We do have to accept reality and go with the flow, but that doesn’t mean we have to drown in despair and frustration. 

Instead of focusing on what you didn’t accomplish on your wish list today, jot down—as you go—each thing you did achieve. A Have Done list. As with all projects, it’s the accrual that counts. That “tired plaster” repair I mentioned? That’s one from my own list. As I write, it’s a third-done (it actually involved three rooms, a hallway and a ceiling). It wasn’t a broken pipe or root canal that stopped me—temporarily. It was climate change. Painting in 95-degree weather, not advisable. But the temps are starting to cool now. I’ll soon be up on that step ladder, paintbrush in hand. Meanwhile, the world continues to spin. The sky hasn’t fallen in.

Tracking in real time the progress you make on each of your projects and goals sets you up for a sense of success and well-being at the annual reckoning.

The Annual Reckoning

This end-of-year review—and that year might run from June to June or September to September, whatever—is when you get a better sense of all you truly have accomplished despite the pesky disruptions of real life.

Remember that novel you were convinced would never get written? Now, the rough draft is long done and you’re well into the second revision. A final polish after that and you’re ready to write a synopsis and search for an agent. Or skip the agent and approach indie presses. Or self-publish. Or simply write another novel if that’s what makes you happy.  

Perhaps you updated and improved your resume this past year. Maybe started interviews for a job you hope will use more of your talents, challenge your creativity. You might even have found the perfect gig!

Possibly, you made all the arrangements for your dream trip and it’s about to happen—literally, you are going to circle the globe! New York to Italy where you’ll sail the canals of Venice in a gondola, visit the Sistine Chapel in Rome, and marvel at the art in Florence’s Uffizi Gallery before flying on to enjoy the beaches of Goa and the grandeur of the Taj Mahal in India. Then it’s off to Japan to see the shrines and temples of Kyoto and the Peace Memorial Park and Museum in Hiroshima, followed by a long weekend with old college friends in San Francisco before returning to the East Coast. You thought you’d never get it all put together—the flights, the accommodations—but you have. Bon vogage!

A year is a long time. Three-hundred and sixty-five days to make progress on those projects and dreams. That old trope—life is like a river, it just keeps moving—is true, so we must go with the flow. There’s really no deadline (other than the one nature finally imposes on us all). So, when you’re feeling frustrated or overwhelmed, put that distress on pause for a moment, step back, and consider all you have accomplished in life so far. 

The Tally of a Life So Far  

You artwork isn’t (yet) hanging in The Metropolitan Museum of Art or The National Gallery or The Louvre, but you’ve participated in dozens of local and regional shows, sold over a hundred paintings, and received some very positive reviews in the media.

You’ve taught first grade for a decade now, in which time more than 250 children learned to read and write because of your skill, dedication and patience. Thank you. America needs all the thoughtful, educated citizens it can get.  

You never had the time or money to get your law degree, but through your work as a paralegal for the ACLU, you’ve made vital contributions assisting attorneys in critical cases regarding voting rights, free speech and gender discrimination. You’ve helped to protect our constitutional rights and made life better for thousands, perhaps millions of your fellow human beings.

You haven’t (yet) found an agent for your novels, but literary magazines have grabbed up every short story you’ve submitted.

You raised a child, or two, or three. And given those children the belief that they are worth loving and the assurance that they are truly cherished. This is no small thing.

As I said upfront, we humans are a forward-looking bunch. Too often taking for granted all we’ve accomplished and focusing solely on what we haven’t yet achieved. But true perspective involves taking the long view. And those days when everything seems to conspire against your hopes and dreams? On those days, take a cue from songwriter/singer Jimmy Buffett: “Breathe in, breathe out, move on.”

Our memories are made up of the sights, the sounds, the smells, the emotional feel of a moment in time. And, of course, the presence—or absence—of people around us. A sunny day at a beach with a group of friends is a very different experience than a solo moonlit stroll along a deserted stretch of shoreline.

One of my most powerful—and enduring—memories takes me back to an evening more than fifty years ago. A sleepout on the shore of Lake Michigan on a warm July night at Girl Scout camp. Two counselors and thirty-some girls collecting wood and building a fire, roasting marshmallows and singing songs to the strumming of one of the counselor’s guitar, our faces rimmed in firelight, until we crawled into our sleeping bags, where I lay mesmerized by the hundreds of stars overhead, so many, many more than one can see in a city or even a small town, eventually drifting off to the rhythmic slap of the waves and the counselor’s song about a girl becoming a woman, a line from it—it’s given with pride, it’s given with joy—forever with me, etched in the memory of a summer’s evening, its hours among the most peaceful I’ve ever spent on the planet.  

I was fully present in the moment.

Ain’t Nothin’ Like the Real Thing

Fully present in the moment. Being where you are. When did we lose that? The question first arose for me at The National Gallery in the year after The Plague. The “natural” flow of art galleries up until then tended to be two or three people pausing before a painting, reading the posted info card about the painter/the subject/whether it was on loan or part of the gallery’s permanent collection, then taking some time to LOOK at the actual work. To consider the painting’s perspective and the artist’s technique—the colors, textures, shapes—the emotional impact of the whole. If the connection was powerful and the number of people waiting to view the painting not too pressing, one might linger a little longer, relish the brilliant golden light inviting us to take a seat beneath the twinkling stars in Van Gogh’s Café Terrace at Night.  

Our last several visits to The National Gallery and other art venues at home and abroad revealed a disturbing trend. Art appreciation has become photo accumulation.  Everyone rushing through, snapping pics with their cellphone of each painting and its accompanying card before dashing on to do the same with all the other paintings. They view the painting through their camera lens but never raise their eyes to the actual work. Two-to-three seconds per painting. No pausing to marvel at the rich depth of Van Gogh’s wheatfields or the heat generated by the intense reds and oranges of Degas’ Combing the Hair (La Coiffure). No moment given to the grief and the injustice, the brutality and heartbreak of Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Gray where the innocent, blind-folded 17-year-old queen of just nine days gropes the air to find the chopping block where she will be beheaded, guided by the Lieutenant of the Tower with much tenderness and sorrow, while her maids swoon, weeping, in the background scant minutes before this travesty is carried out. The best of art is meant to make us FEEL.

There are over 2,300 paintings in The National Gallery. It is not possible to view them all in one visit, or even several visits, just as it’s not possible to listen to all the symphonies of Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky in one evening. And to sample a few bars of each, flitting from one to the next, or more aptly in this case, to record a few bars of each on a cellphone, would be to miss them all. Their brilliance, their heartbreak and joy, their deathless beauty and power to move us, generation after generation.   

And I can 99.99% guarantee you, those zillion quickie snaps of artworks and the snippets of symphonies—they will never be viewed or listened to again. Life moves on. Be where you are.

Not Now, I’m Busy

Imagine a lovely summer’s day, sunny, a light breeze blowing. Eight friends—young women in their twenties—gathered around a table outdoors in the courtyard of a local bakery, drinking coffee and munching on delicious muffins and cookies. You’d expect the conversation to be flying fast and furious, punctuated by plenty of laughter.

But it wasn’t. Instead, everyone was busily engaged with their cellphones. Texting, texting, texting. In the half-hour Ed and I sat at the next table, none of these women spoke a word to the others. Or acknowledged each other’s presence in any way. I recalled all the afternoon and evening outings with my college friends—the chatter, the laughter, the feel-good camaraderie of those precious hours shared with the dozen or so women who made my college years fabulous and unforgettable. 

And it’s not only the young—those who have grown up with a cellphone in hand, as if it were a surgically-welded enhancement—that ignore the real people around them. Couples in their 40s, 50s, 60s out for a drink or dinner at a nice restaurant spend the evening on their phones! Are they indifferent to one another? Bored by each other?  Ed and I, having earned our living in the years since we first met by writing and editing—in other words, working from home—spend virtually all our days together, but we have never run out of conversation. There’s always something new—new in the world, new in our individual projects, a fresh idea, an amusing anecdote—to share, to talk over, to laugh about.

But, to my mind, the saddest example of cellphone addiction is to be found on playgrounds and in parks, in coffee shops and cafes, wherever parents take their young children to play or enjoy a snack. I’m not talking toddlers on cellphones. I’m talking parents! Parents scrolling and texting while their toddler begs, “Look at me, Mommy/Daddy!” Or crumples straw wrappers and doodles on napkins in silence.

I witness this sad phenomenon regularly in the café where I go to write several mornings a week. There’s a preschool center next door, so parents often pick up their kid and come to the coffee shop for a snack. They could be asking the child about their morning—what did they do? What games did they play? Did they learn any new songs or paint a picture? Did the teacher read them a story? But they almost never do. And by the time the child’s five, the parent and kid are both on phones.  

As a mom who relished walking with my kids, sharing meals at home or in restaurants with them, who cuddled up with them to read stories, who delighted in taking them to the local university’s horse barn with a bag of carrots to make the “horsies happy”, who got down on the floor and played with them daily—as a parent, I cannot imagine missing all that joy, that love, for what? Effing endless text sessions?  And as a former first-grade teacher, I know how deadly it is for a child’s social, emotional, and intellectual development to be deprived of that early parent-child interaction.                                                       

Our phones have become a shield, a way of avoiding each other. For our own sake and theirs, we must be with those we purport to love—our children, our partner, our friends. Human connection, face to face—if there’s anything that can save us, that can save this world, that’s it.

I Can’t Hear You—And I Don’t Want To

I live in a beautiful town that banks along a river. Hills and mountains rise majestically in the distance. On a clear summer’s day, one of my favorite bike rides crosses a disused rail bridge that carries me over the river, through rolling farm fields and woodland, the breeze lifting my hair, cooling my face on even the hottest days. It’s a feast for the senses. If one is paying attention. But it seems we have added yet another layer to those high-tech distractors that shut out the world around us: Earbuds.

In the past year, the number of people sporting those little white ear-stoppers has increased substantially. Well over half the people I see on the bike path are wearing buds, cycling in a world of their own. Some are jabbering on the phone, but many are silent, listening to Spotify perhaps or tuning into the latest podcast. Completely tuned out, they could be anywhere. No need to bike the scenic backroads or enjoy a drink at a café with friends or family. No need to stroll the streets of New York or hike the mountains of Vermont. The people I’ve encountered with earbuds seem to want this disconnect. Passing them on the bike path or downtown, they stare straight through everyone with never a smile or even a nod to acknowledge the existence of others. Their silence speaks loudly: Leave me alone!

But in public spaces—the bike path, crowded city streets, busy intersections—there is no alone. Tuning out the world could prove fatal, not just for those who sport earbuds, but for the innocent others their “deaf to the world” puts at risk. When passing people on the bike path, cyclists are supposed to call out “On your left!” so other cyclists and walkers know to stick close to the right side. But the earbud cyclists don’t hear the warning. They may drift left at the crucial moment and badly injure, even kill someone, including themselves.

The Only Moment We Ever Have

I’m always looking for hope in the world and during a recent bike ride, I was happy to observe several moms who were cycling with their young children, talking them through the ride in a warm, loving way. Teaching them how to travel the bike path safely and responding when the child pointed out various things that caught their attention—a flat rock placed as a settee along the path that someone had decorated with colorful painted cats. Parent and child were engaged with each other and the larger world. They were fully present in the moment.

And what is life but a succession of moments? Blink and the moment is gone. Go through the days with earbuds embedded, staring at a screen, and your life…is gone. The only moment we ever have is this one. Don’t miss it!