I have a rather sassy granddaughter. She reminds me much more of my mother and mother-in-law than of myself or my daughters. I suppose that I secretly enjoy that she is so much more willing to assert herself than I ever was. I spent most of my childhood and teenage years being quiet and polite and even a bit repressed. I was truly afraid to be the person that I wanted to be or to express the opinions that rattled inside my brain. My granddaughter doesn’t even come close to being like that.
Don’t get me wrong. She is never rude or rebellious. In fact her teachers love her to death because she is such an outstanding young lady. Nonetheless she doesn’t mind speaking up when she senses injustice and she possesses a certain childlike wisdom that is beguiling. When her mother and I stew over problems she invariably arrives at conclusions and solutions that make great sense. In that regard she sometimes seems to be the reincarnation of my mother-in-law, a woman who always seemed able to reach the most rational and meaningful conclusions in even the most dire situations. Continue reading “On Becoming Our Best Selves”
If you follow my blogs regularly you had to know that I would not be able to resist the temptation to write about Donald Trump. For those of you who tend to be off put by political dialogue the short version of my analysis is that The Donald is and always has been a fake, a charlatan, a super salesman and huckster. Which is to say that he is a politician on steroids. Frankly I don’t think that we have seen a truly real and noble leader in my lifetime with the exception of Jimmy Carter who was eventually eaten alive by the usual folk who hang around the halls of government. Donald Trump is little more than a caricature of the political animal. If I thought that he had even a ghost of a chance of becoming the President of the United States I would be investigating the possibility of sitting out the next many years in Canada. Luckily I believe that rational Americans are already beginning to see through the smoke and mirrors that have been his stock and trade throughout his career.
We all know people who seem to have incredibly bad luck. Perhaps one of those people may even be you. We find ourselves wondering why this is so. How is it possible, we ask, that some among us lead seemingly charmed lives and others get pounded by fate over and over again? Is there really some cosmic karma that chooses unsuspecting souls for the worst possible situations? Aren’t the laws of probability supposed to work out in favor of distributing both the good and the bad? Why does God allow some to suffer while others appear to never have a care in the world? As humans we sometimes contemplate such things but never really understand what the true answers may be.
For as long as I can remember I have always had something fun to do on the Fourth of July. There has always been someone hosting a big party or Mike and I have been traveling. I don’t recall ever just sitting at home with no destination in mind. This year was far different from any of my previous celebrations and I found the experience to be enlightening.
