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

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.

O.k. I saw right through that. Poupi’s clearly a major hunk waiting to reveal his ultra hotness and life lessons to her when the right moment arrives. Despite the high predictability factor, Richard Dreyfus as a crazy but wise tourist named Irv makes the entire movie worth watching. He says to Georgia right around the time she’s noticing Poupi’s physical and emotional hotness,” You’re looking for obstacles rather than magic.” I grabbed my nearby pen and scribbled his quote down.

Loved it!

This quote can be applied to love, life and everything in between. How often do we litter our own pathways with excuses not to do something we want to do instead of just going for it? Why not seek out the magic? Why not dance all the time?

I used to be the queen of looking for obstacles. (I’d open my obstacle closet and search the shelves for just the right ones.) Crazy, painful way to live. Somehow, though, I retrained myself to look for the magic instead, the magic I saw as child. And I loved to dance as a child.

Magic and dancing. Dancing and magic. Hey, they go together. I’m with the Greeks, let’s dance no matter what’s going on in our lives. Letting your body and soul go can only fill your life with magic.

How about you? Do you look for magic? Do you dance?

Muse thanks, G.

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.)

Perhaps, it’s time to redefine the good life and redefine our economy. Why can’t our economy be driven by something other than folks buying junk they don’t need? Why can’t it be about offering services that free us from our shopping shackles or enhance our lives in a way that lasts way beyond the purchase? There’s nothing more depressing than milling around a windowless mall because you don’t know what else to do with yourself. “Do we need some stuff. Yes. What we’ve got stored in our homes and storage facilities goes way beyond that. Oh, I feel lonely, go shopping. Oh, I feel unattractive, go shopping. Oh, I feel like screaming my head off with boredom, go shopping.(Consider reading my essay from a while back called “A shopper discovers life does exist outside the mall.”)

Perhaps, we could start by not raising our children to be shopaholics. Why not raise them to be part of a community, to care about nature, to care about humanity, to care about gathering experiences rather than shoddily made products.

We might also re-develop and support our local economies. Sometime in the 70′s, the newly invented shopping malls started to suck the life out of our Main Street stores. Instead of buying our wares from folks who knew our names, we started to buy them from folks who didn’t know our names. Before long our food followed suit.

I’d love to see some kind of Las Ramblas lined with locally-grown food cafes take shape in my town. When I went to Barcelona,  I loved the fact that folks came out at night and walked up and down the boulevard. Lots of conversations. Lots of hugging. People seemed to know each other. They did some shopping but it seemed subservient to the walking and talking and eating on the Las Ramblas.

Why are we all inside watching reality shows instead of hanging out with other people, sharing stories and laughing? Our minds become filled with what the advertisers on TV want us to buy. (More and more this appears to be pharmaceuticals.)

I’d love to hear what some of you think about redefining the good life. Do you think it needs redefining or do you like it the way it is? How could we change it for the better? Please stop by the blog and tell me what you think! It’s a virtual Las Ramblas …

I want to start off this post by thanking all of my fabulous commenters. Your insightful comments take what I’ve written and stretch it one rebel step further!

According to this Newsweek article, American creativity has been declining since 1990. Possible culprits? Increased television watching, less life hardships, standardized school curriculum and nationalized testing. Teachers say there’s little time for creativity due to curriculum and testing requirements.

The best part of the article?  The demand for MUSES will be way up! Gave me some great ideas for my biz. I’m gushing creative excitement here!

Honestly, I’ve never understood the obsession with school testing. To me, it measures one’s ability to take a test. Is that what the world needs these days? Perhaps, it might be more useful to imagine the world we want to live in and reverse engineer it. Do we want our kids and grandkids to toil for 8+ hours a day in itty bitty cubicles staring at the clock or do we want them to have more creative options?

Did you say “no” to clock staring?

O.k. then how could we reframe school, work and life to accomplish that? Perhaps take a look at this John Gardner quote, “Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.”

What do you smart, creative folks think about teaching kids (if not adults) to grow their own metaphorical plants? About trusting them enough to let them create their own world?

Or should we stay the school, work and life course we’re on?

Muse thx, Giulietta

I love the greeting cards that marry quotes and pictures. The latest one I bought showcases a woman wearing white heels sailing off the curb into a muddy, watery mess. You know her shoes will not survive this gooey “crossing” and she’ll be calf-deep in mud. Yet from the bounce in her step, I can tell she’s going to enjoy ruining those shoes. The following quote accompanied the picture, “Ever notice that ‘what the hell’ is always the right decision?” ~ Unknown Hollywood script writer.

From my own experiences, I’d have to agree with the script writer, sometimes you need to throw caution to the wind and just do it, whatever the it challenging you is. A few Sundays ago on our way home from a family gathering, Jimmy and I drove by one of those honky tonk carnival shows, the ones that breeze into town for four days and breeze out to someone else’s town. We saw the ferris wheel towering above the stores and he said, “want to stop in and take a spin?” (He knows I love ferris wheels and carousels. Am intrigued by the circles they make.)

“No, I need to get back and finish that newspaper column,” I heard myself use as an excuse. Then I thought, “It’s Sunday, I don’t have to do anything. Who is that bore speaking?”

“What the hell,” I said with a renewed sense of life vigor. “Let’s do it.”

And up in the wheel we went. Something refreshingly freeing about gliding up and down through the air. I felt invigorated yet peaceful when I got off.

How about you? Got any “what the hell” experiences you’d like to share?

Muse thx, Giulietta

Recently, a friend asked where I get my blog post ideas. Honestly? They find me. I pick up a greeting card, overhear a conversation, visit someone else’s blog, open a book. Sometimes I have more than two posts that want to be written at the same time. The one yelling “pick me” the loudest usually wins.

Two days ago, I looked out my upstairs bathroom window around 6:30 am to see three cottontail bunnies chasing each other all over the yard. (I thought it was three but it’s probably more like 33. They just look similar.) Up and over our small hill, through the giant hemlock grove, under the blue spruces. Round and round they went. It looked like they were having a grand time.

Then today I picked up a greeting card at this neat one-of-a-kind place called Karmala Boutique. The brightly painted card said “Play with Abandon,” part of a longer quote by Mary Anne Radmacher.  I knew today’s post would be about play or rather lack of it in adults.

I wonder how it came to be that adults created a world for themselves with so little time devoted to play? Even acceptable forms of adult play can seem like work. I’ve gone on several European bike trips where the goal seemed to be — bike as fast as possible and get back to the hotel. I consistently fell behind on these trips because I wanted to enjoy the journey, celebrate being out of the office, stop and take pictures, smell the vineyards and open air, drink in the landscape, smile at baby lambs, talk to folks who lived along the way.

Since we create our reality, we can change it. We can bring back a sense of play to the lives of adults. So, I’m tossing this question out to my brilliant and daring readers, “What would we need to change to reintroduce play to adults and how would that improve the world?”

I appreciate how many of you read my blog every week!

Muse thx, Giulietta

Recently, I saw one of my favorite up and coming singer/songwriters, Kim Jennings. The city of Worcester, Massachusetts, voted her its best female vocalist for 2010. If you ever get a chance to hear her perform in person, you’ll know why. She’s dazzling, daring and dynamic. Because I look for everyone’s life theme, I couldn’t help but notice that two of her songs both contained the same line: nowhere left to hide. She’s definitely come out of her hiding place. Have you?

It’s easy to spend your life hiding out. So many places to shield you from living out in the open. You can hide behind your job titles, your college degrees, your consumer goods. You can hide behind the should’s, must’s, and have to’s. You can hide behind being busy and over-scheduled. You can hide behind your children. You can hide behind a clean house or a manicured lawn. You can hide behind shopping at the mall. You can hide behind your resume. You can hide behind sports teams. You can hide behind the need for a perfect body. You can hide behind the stories you tell about yourself that aren’t even true. You can hide behind your addictions. You can hide behind the reality shows you feel compelled to watch. You can hide behind your own fears.

But do you really want to spend your life hiding behind something or someone else? Do you really want to litter your glorious life path with excuses that make exploration impossible?

I used to hide out behind the lie: You have no right to stand up for yourself. I’d get all upset or angry or sad or depressed because I didn’t say what I wanted to say. I wasted decades not speaking up, not setting boundaries, not challenging what folks in positions of power insisted I had to do.

One day I poked a hole in the lie and saw light streaming through. I ripped open the hole wider and wider. Damn. A whole new world existed out there! One day I squeezed through. I stood on the stage of my own life and I had the lead role!

And you can too.

Do you want to stop hiding behind “fill-in-the-blank”? I’d love to know what you’re hiding behind or used to hide behind. What you share will help others.

Muse thx,

Giulietta

Last Thursday night at karaoke I sang, “I’ll Always Love You,” by Taylor Dayne. Remember her songs from the 80′s? Needless to say, it’s what my mind considers a hard song – maybe equal to one of those double somersault reverse inward pike Olympic dives with a 3.2 level of difficulty. Six months ago, I listened to that song and said, “no way,” snapping it back into the CD case.

In the interim, I started going to a local karaoke night every Thursday. No matter how I felt or what excuse my little mind tried to come up with to worm its way out of the adventure, I showed up with at least 1 or 2 new songs to perform. Needing to sing a new song each week pushed me into unchartered singing territory.

Well, two weeks ago I tried I’ll Always Love You again and actually hit the alleged high parts! Hmm, I thought, “what happened here?” Well, my mind happened. It expanded what it thought I could sing, thus allowing my voice to do the same. If you want to go where you’ve never gone before, you’ll need some buy in from your mind first. It controls our lives as far as I can tell.

Honestly, I had no real fear doing this song. I knew I had to go BIG with my voice to get enough momentum to go FORWARD into the parts that seemed to go up. As my singing teacher Julie explained to me, when we hit high notes, our voice isn’t really going up, it’s going forward.

I now call it the big “let go.” I let the notes out of my body and they roll forward into the universe.

What wants to “let go” in you?

Muse thanks, Giulietta

Yesterday, Jimmy and I drove by a field filled with lots of children wearing red and blue shirts doing some kind of organized exercise. Simultaneously, we turned to each other and said, “Mao’s Cultural Revolution?” Something about it left me with a unsettled feeling. The same feeling I get when I bike by a pre-school in a nearby town where the children spend 6+ hours a day “learning/playing” inside a chain-link fence. It feels like captivity has become the new childhood normal, a radical departure from my own.

I went straight to first grade without attending kindergarten. My mother thought I should climb trees and run wild as long as possible. And run I did — through the woods, the meadows and the streams — with my long hair swishing behind me like a horse’s mane. Despite not attending any kind of pre-school, I entered first grade with such strong reading skills they moved me along with 6 other kids into a second grade reading class, where we stayed for the entire year.

I get the feeling some educational experts believe children do not learn unless they are in designated learning environments. I don’t agree. Children learn naturally and the natural environment has much to teach children of all ages about life, love and the pursuit of happiness. I worry that today’s kids will be burned out and rusted out at 25 because they weren’t given the opportunity to run wild and free before beginning the now premature slog to conventional careerhood.

How often do you see kids frolicking in a meadow without an organized agenda (if you can still find a meadow)? Do you think childhood is endangered? If no, why? If yes, why?

Muse thx,

Giulietta

p.s. For any of you tree lovers reading this, please check out my latest essay, Abracadabra. Also, there’s still time to sign-up for my five week on-line class — Secrets of Personal Essay Writing! It’s a great way to reconnect with your childhood sense of wonder and wildness.

I see people biting their tongues all the time. They don’t agree with what’s being said, yet they do not feel comfortable expressing their opinions. Why? Because we’ve gotten messages from a variety of sources since childhood that encourages us to muffle our opinions. People tell us

a) nice people don’t disagree

b) it will make things worse

c) you’ll upset the other person

d) your boss will fire you

e) you’ll be disliked

f) It’s impossible to express your opinion in a compassionate way.

I found most of these to be false. Speaking up can not only make you feel more powerful, but also improve your relationships with others. How can a friendship survive if one of the friends harbors secret anger at the other? Would you like it if your friend acted weird towards you but kept saying “nope, everything’s fine” when you asked him or her if anything was bothering them?

Frankly, I believe most of us are afraid of our own power, afraid of what our power can do. So, we hide from it and choose the so called safe path. Ironically, it’s really the more dangerous path — for it endangers your health, your dreams, and your happiness.

Opportunities to speak up surround you

You can write a letter to the editor or an opinion piece.
You can join an in-person discussion group on topics of interest.
You can ask a friend out to lunch and reveal something that’s been bothering you.
You can clear some air with a family member that’s been causing you stress.
You can ask a telemarketer to please not call you anymore.
You can write a song.

The more you learn to speak up, the less stressful your life will be.

Muse thx,
Giulietta