Women are certainly in the news these days. There appears to be a very good chance that we will have a woman President of the United States before long. The female half of the human race is certainly on the move. In honor of a changing world for women a certain meme is circulating on Facebook. It asks parents not to teach their daughters to long for the glass slipper but to develop a desire to break the glass ceiling. Unfortunately this line of thinking seems to insinuate an either or kind of world. Instead I see the opportunities for women as choices along a continuum. Hopefully we are free to choose exactly where we wish to reside.
I’m a hard charging competitive person. Most people don’t see that characteristic in me unless they get to know me very well. I don’t like to lose and I strive to be number one. It’s my nature to shoot for the stars and I often get there. In school I was told that I was not the intellectual equal of my honors class peers and so I set out to prove my detractors wrong. It wasn’t that difficult to demonstrate that I have the ability to hang with anyone. All it took was determination and lots of hard work. Nobody had to motivate me to be my best. It just came naturally to me. Continue reading “The Looking Glass”
We all need money to survive in this world. We have to purchase food, pay rent, buy a bare minimum of clothing, and find the money for healthcare. There are extras that make our lives easier like owning a car, investing in an education, having a phone, and getting access to a television or radio. I’ve lived on a shoestring that didn’t allow for the cost of air conditioning even in severe summer heat and I’ve known the luxury of being middle class and having enough leftover money for savings, entertainment and vacations. I’ll be the first to say that money does make life better and less stressful but there is a fine line between having enough to live decently and being so obsessed with having more and more money that it becomes a driving force that overtakes us. Sometimes we humans become as greedy as the fisherman’s wife who was never satisfied with the financial blessings that she received. She always wanted more, more, more and never managed to find the happiness that eluded her. The truth is that aside from the basic human needs some of the most important things that we treasure don’t cost a dime. 
As I prepare to do some traveling tomorrow I find myself being unfocused and filled with random thoughts. I suspect that I’m in checklist mode as I make certain that the the mail will stop, the bags are packed, and my plants are watered among a hundred other little details that have to be covered before we drive away. Going on a trip brings out my obsessive compulsive tendencies big time. 
I once drove through a neighborhood and spotted an obviously abandoned house whose walls were literally covered with a sprawling bougainvillea plant that had grown out of control. The blooms were a magnificent deep wine color and they were winding around the crumbling wooden structure in profusion. What should have been a dreary scene of a long neglected property was instead a glorious feast for the eyes. I’ve often thought about that lovely image and seen it as a kind of metaphor for life’s difficulties. It seems that the more stressed a bougainvillea vine becomes the more beautiful and hardy are its flowers. The bougainvillea is a determined survivor often flourishing in the harshest of environments.
All It Takes Is A Little Love 