Take Back Your Life!

Hey folks!

I’m going to be disobedient and start my post today with a shameless plug for my upcoming on-line essay writing class. To learn more about it, please click on “Secrets of Personal Essay Writing.” Once you learn the secrets, writing a publishable essay becomes a whole lot easier. My in-depth comments on your writing assignments are well worth the price of admission.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about being a “grown up.” The title of this article is a quote by Andre Malraux, a french novelist. I found it in a fab book I’m reading called, “Last Child in the Woods.”  Real juicy if you like to hang out in forests, talk to animals or look at the stars.

So, what’ a grown up anyway? Webster’s defines it as “not childish or immature.” Continuing on I look up childish. “Lacking complexity. Simple.” Aren’t a lot of us grown-ups trying to simplify our lives? Get rid of the complexity. Get rid of the pretention (an antonym of simple)?

I know I am. It’s an ongoing process, but I’m actively reclaiming my child-like ways. For example, I love to go out at night and look up at the stars. Michael Bungay Stanier (Box of Crayons) suggested in a newsletter to go outside, hold up your arms and shout, “How Fantastic.” I’ve been doing that for maybe three years now. At first, I have to admit I felt a bit self-conscious. (Showing excitement? Who me, an adult?) Once I got comfortable with it, I got other grown-ups to do it. Be daring and give it a try tonight — you might grow-down …

Growing up instead of growing down might be the cause of much adult angst out there. It takes a lot of energy to suppress excitement, to stop seeing the awe in life. Eventually, it becomes second-nature until everything in your world takes on an ugly grey cast.

One of the more moving quotes in the Woods book, recounts a story told by a Girl Scout Leader who takes a group of urban children with AIDS to the mountains. In the middle of the night, she steps outside the tent with a nine-year old girl who has never seen stars before. The leader says, “That night, I saw the power of nature on a child. She was a changed person. From that moment on, she saw everything, the camouflaged lizard that everyone else skipped by. She used her senses. She was awake.”

How do we re-awaken ourselves, re-ignite our senses, get back to loving our lives in order to see them as the miracles they are?

Muse thx, Giulietta

Hey cerebral readers,

The other night, I happened to watch a movie called, “My Life In Ruins.” Georgia, a college professor with man troubles, comes to Greece to be a tour guide when she loses her teaching job back in the states. Her tourists find her Greek history talks to be dull and boring, so they consistently give her bad evaluations. She doesn’t learn from her bad evaluations and continues to be out of touch with her tourists and herself.  She complains that all the Greeks do is dance! If their lives are going well — they dance. If their lives are going badly — they dance.

Then she gets assigned a bedraggled bus driver named Poupi who doesn’t speak English. (more…)

I’m so tired of reading in the paper that consumers have to “hit the malls and shop more” to get this economy going that I’ve decided to write my next newspaper column on that topic. This article will be a warm-up.

One of the reasons the economy tanked before was because we all shopped until we dropped. Only we couldn’t get up this time. We’d hit the shopping wall. In all my years of being a consumer trained to buy stuff I didn’t need, I’ve never seen such a shopping frenzy as I did during the years leading up to the crash. People maxing out on 5 credit cards and borrowing against the equity in their homes to buy endless amounts of stuff. Or getting a raise/promotion and running out and buying a new, more expensive home — thus, negating the raise and then some. (Saw this many times.)

I’m sure many of you know that buying junk we don’t need is an addiction. The “high” doesn’t last very long and it’s always followed by the scary and depressing realization that you have to pay for it by prolonging your stint as an indentured servant to a corporation, a credit card company or someone else. (Not to mention it all ends up in the landfills and/or the oceans.) (more…)