All It Takes Is A Little Love

We all know someone who draws our admiration like a beautiful flower whenever he or she enters a room. Often if we are totally objective we see that person as someone with rather ordinary looks who has somehow transformed themselves. They become pleasant to both see and be around. It is as though that individual has been able to transcend all of the worries and flaws that plague most of us and look outward to the needs of the people outside of themselves. 

We all encounter bad situations in our lives. Sometimes our problems become chronic and threaten to steal our joy. We begin to second guess ourselves, wonder if we are to blame for all of our troubles. We play mind games that sap our energy and cause us to only see the mistakes we have made, the failures we have endured, We look in the mirror and see an anxious, weary unattractive person. We compare ourselves to others who appear to live in a chronic state of happiness and good fortune. We become our own worst enemies with our pessimism and self accusations. 

The key to those beautiful souls who seem to embody all of the positive characteristics that we so desire is often a spirt of optimism and self love. They have learned the art of forgiving themselves for life’s mistakes. They literally begin each day with uplifting meditations that may include reading, journaling, praying or even just repeating a few compliments or encouragements to themselves. 

I have a long time friend who has endured more than her fair share of tragedy and suffering but somehow she always makes it through such dark moments. She has a habit of keeping sticky notes nearby and jotting down inspiring quotes, prayers or self affirmations that she posts on the medicine cabinet in her bathroom. They are the first thing she sees each morning and by re-reading them she adjusts her attitude into the positive realm. Even though she has them memorized she keeps them visible lest she forget to message herself with encouragement every single day. 

She is not always a burst of sunshine. Sometimes she cries and wonders aloud why her life has been so tough, but most days she is able to look past the negative and set a smile in her heart that radiates from her face. She is almost childlike in her innocent and nonjudgemental embrace of every person she encounters. In making them feel better, she uplifts herself. Those little scraps of paper are her secret weapon over all of the disturbances that constantly push their way into her world. 

We know our inner selves better than anyone. We all have felt fear and anger and jealousy at one time or another. We soon learn that those kind of emotions are real but also destructive to our wellbeing. They cause us to question every aspect of our existence. They create a never ending circle of negativity unless we do something to break the cycle. The key is to begin the process of deliberately looking for the good that we have done. Self affirmation is not about being a narcissist, but about loving and understanding ourselves. A positive outlook about who we are helps us to move toward improvements in those areas that might need some adjustment. Constantly berating ourselves for past deeds that we cannot change is destructive. Self affirmation builds better character. 

Every single person in the world is searching for meaning, wondering why he or she is in a certain place. We want our lives to have impact and we attempt to find our talents and develop them but that is not always as easy a task as it might sound. We are constantly interrupted by global events, problems at work, family crises, personal tragedies. Our efforts get sidetracked. We ignore our own needs in the hectic pace of living. We begin to dwell on everything that feels wrong about us even second guessing our relationships with others. We forget to exercise our minds with affirmations that make us stronger even in times of crisis. 

Self affirmations can be as simple as looking in the mirror, smiling and saying, “I like you!” They can be reminders that we all make mistakes. They might include meditations in which we inspire ourselves to try, try again. Each person knows what personal aspects of their being is wonderful and what needs some repair. Focusing first on what is good provides the impetus to improve. A caveat should always be that in the history of the world no human has ever been perfect, so we have to learn to forgive the mistakes that we are bound to make. 

As far as we know there is no time travel that would allow us to go back in time to change a moment that did not work out well. It’s up to each of us to somehow move beyond the messes that we have already made. We can learn from them and change from them even as it will be okay to grieve them as long as we do not remain in a rut that leads to self loathing. Be that person who always seems to be the light in the room. Embrace yourself and all that is good about you. Remind yourself what those things are every single day. Then greet the world with the love that begins in your own heart. Those positive thoughts really do make things better.

I collect quotes. I suppose it is the teacher in me. I once had a drawer full of inspiring words to use on bulletin boards that I had to create as part of my job. Of course all of those pithy sayings were non-religious words about working hard or being observant and such things. Lately I’ve found myself keeping quotes that are more in line with spirituality. I won’t be creating any bulletin boards but I do a great deal of meditating, something that I greatly enjoy. I suppose that my age and the knowledge that the end of my time here gets a bit closer with each day has prompted me to think a bit of what I have done and not done that might make me a better person. 

I won’t be taking any money or possessions with me but I would like to think that somehow I will have made a positive impact on the tiny circle of life that is mine. With Easter just being celebrated I stole this jewel from a friend named Will that seemed to encapsulate the teachings of Jesus quite well. “Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Such a command seems easy enough but it can be a tall order to actually follow it day after day. We humans have some wonderful traits but also some that make us fall short of the simple command to love. Our anger, jealousy, greed, and hatefulness sometimes get in the way of fulfilling our intent to be good people. Luckily we have many opportunities to sincerely ask for forgiveness and start over again. At my age such opportunities do not seem to be as bountiful as they once were. For that matter given that we never know when the end of our road here on earth will come, we would all do well to set out with determination each day to simply do our best to love one another. 

Another quote that caught my eye and found its way into my collection of wisdom gives an idea of how to do actually see the best rather than the worst in the people we encounter. It tells us to be aware that holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. In other words loving one another sometimes means adjusting our points of view. The woman cleaning the floor where we work should be as important to us as the CEO of the company. The most meager meal is a great gift that feeds us. We should be immensely grateful that we are not going hungry no matter how humble the food may be. We look for miracles in burning bushes rather than seeing that little child laughing and playing as the most wonderful miracle we might ever witness. There are indeed angels all around us willing to help us when we least expect them to lift our burdens. Life is filled with wonder if only we are willing to see. Once we find ourselves noticing the good we ourselves become better.

I have personally had times when I was weary and full of complaints about my lot in life. Sometimes I did not think that I made enough money on my job or that I was as fully appreciated as I should have been. I internally whined and felt sorry for myself instead of looking at the positive aspects of my work that were so evident. That’s why yet another quote that I stumbled upon made me think a bit differently about my own good fortune. The words were quite simple, but powerful,”Your job is the dream of the unemployed…” 

This one smacked me in the stomach. I thought of how lucky I had been in always being employed from the time I was fifteen years old. My bosses and coworkers were kind and helpful. I felt that I was doing something important and while I did not make a fortune I was nonetheless remunerated fairly. The same has been true of every aspect of my life. I have a wonderful house that became a home filled with love. My cars have taken me safely to wherever I needed to go. I’ve had to struggle now and again but everything always turned out okay in the end. I find myself feeling ashamed for ever groaning about my status or income or possessions. I am certain that there are people who would think of my life as a dream. Surely I should be appreciative when I consider how lucky I have been.

Easter is the most profound day of the year. For me it is a holy day that reminds me over and over again of how I should attempt to live my life. The Bible tells me that Jesus died for our sins. There can be no bigger sacrifice than someone laying down his life for others. We are all brothers and sisters with one commandment that should have simplified our relationships with each other. Easter opens my eyes again to remind me of what I must do. I still have time to do my best to get things right. I still have time to love. 

Back in the nineteen nineties, which seem like yesterday and decades ago all at once, a teacher friend warned me about climate change. She was a generally quiet and low key individual so her emotional description of what was coming if we did not change our ways caught my attention even as I silently felt that she was in the throes of an emotional outburst. Contemporaneously one of my sons-in-law began beating the drum of  impending danger with regard to climate as well. Because I was still quite busy with caring for my family and advancing in my career I found such information to be interesting but hardly life changing. Like most people I ignored the signs and kept moving forward with my life. Somehow I did not feel the least bit responsible for the strange weather patterns that seemed to be just another quirk of nature. 

A few years back one of my grandsons who is quite bright and earnest began informing us of his views on what was happening on the earth. He spent much time researching climate and the human impact on it, becoming more and more convinced that natural disasters would be more and more frequent and consequential. He worried that if we did not plan immediately we would one day be caught in a worldwide migration to places that were more comparable with human survival. He spoke of purchasing land in a part of the world that might suffer less than others when the worst began to happen. He felt that having members of of the family live near one another would provide a variety of skills that might become necessary as society broke down. It all sounded a bit like a dystopian science fiction thriller except for the fact that my grandson provided actual facts and showed us trends that were disturbing. Since then I have seen terrible incidents occurring all over the globe.

I have witnessed first hand the changing nature of the seasons. I remember February as a time that was cold day after day even in a southern place like Houston, Texas. As a young girl I walked to school in the proverbial days of freezing. We rarely had snow but winter meant bundling up in heavy coats, wearing hats that covered my ears and donning gloves to keep my hands from becoming too cold. We turned on the heater in our home in November and our Christmases were mostly cold. From January through February we knew that winter was a certainty that sometimes even included snow. 

These days I hardly ever have to use my winter gear beyond a few days here and there. This past February felt more like spring on most days rather than the traditionally coldest month of the year it had been in my youth. We had to cover our plants once this year but mostly spring arrived earlier than ever. The changes are more and more noticeable and I often think of the science minded people who were so insistent that we all had to do something to stem the tide of the damage that had already been done to our earth. 

Over fifty years ago Exxon enlisted the expertise of notable scientists to determine the effect of fossil fuels on our planet. The details that emerged from the research predicted with certainty much of what is happening today, but the mega company chose to fire the researchers and hide the report when they might have been pioneers in changing the way we all live. They literally chose instead to launch a campaign of disinformation that lied about the impact that we humans have on the natural world around us. Those who were like my friend, son-in-law and grandson were made to seem foolish and perhaps a bit hysterical. We all went on ignorantly unaware of the monster at the door.

As I watch millions of acres burning out of control in my home state of Texas I feel regret that I did not pay more attention to the warnings that should have been apparent to anyone with a willingness to consider the evidence. We humans were slowing making our beautiful earth more and more sick. It was so much easier to look away and assume that we would be able to fix any problems with our human ingenuity when the time came to finally react. Sadly, we may have gone too far in our profligate ways to prevent great loss and suffering as dangerous weather events become more and more of a reality. Perhaps we would have been better served to listen to those whose only interest in predicting what might happen had been to help us all. 

The evidence of climate change is all around us and yet it is not the big issue that it should be. If we are worried about human migrations now, we should be even more concerned about how they will look if vast areas of land become uninhabitable. We must understand that sources of water are drying up, making human life in the places they serve less and less likely to be sustained. It is possible that in the coming decades we humans will witness changing dynamics in where and how we are able to exist.

Surely the issues surrounding climate change should be paramount in determining how we live from day to day and whom we choose as our political leaders. Other countries are actively preparing for the difficulties to come while we Americans are mostly stagnant in our efforts. A wave of anti-scientific thinking will be our destruction if we do not join together now to protect our world from ignorance. We can no longer push away the scientific experts and hide the evidence in a vault pretending that all is well. We are in a race against time that should have begun more than fifty years ago. The question is whether or not we are willing to attempt to catch up to where we need to be or if we will wait until disaster is our everyday reality. The fires are burning and we have to do more than just put them out. Will we wake up before it is too late?

Both of my grandmothers always looked old to me. In truth they were only in their sixties when I first remember them but they seemed ancient with their nonchalance about appearances. I sometimes wonder of they were more comfortable with aging than most of us are today. They allowed all of the signs of growing old shine forth without any attempts to mask them with makeup or hair dye or injections of botox. They accepted that they were in the last phase of life with great dignity and little worry about how they might appear to the world. 

Both ladies mostly wore cotton dresses that were fitted at the waist revealing any bulges of extra weight that they might have had. The frocks were comfortable but without much style. The cloth was often patterned with flowers or plaids that did little to differentiate them from a thousand other older women. They were strictly utilitarian and often a bit faded and frayed after much use. Their closets generally held just enough dresses to get them from one wash day to the next. 

My grandmother Minnie Bell worked on a farm so her wardrobe also included overalls and work shirts which she donned to labor in the fields of vegetables that she tended. She nonetheless always changed back into one of her dresses once the outdoor work was done. She dressed as though she had been assigned a set of uniforms to wear each day of the week depending on what duties she was performing. Her shoes were sensible and comfortable. After all she would work in them from before sunrise to late in the night. 

My Grandma Ulrich rarely wore shoes. Instead she padded around her home in her bare feet unless it was a cold day in winter. Then she donned slippers lined with soft fabric to keep warm. I don’t think I ever once saw her wearing a regular pair of shoes. I’m not even sure that she owned a pair. 

Neither of my grandmothers wore makeup or spent much time styling their hair. One let her hair grow long so that she might braid it and allow it to trail down her back. The other grandmother kept her hair cut short and curled into a wavy bob. In my youth it seemed to me as though there was a kind of official agreement among women over sixty to spend little time primping and fussing over appearance. They enjoyed a kind of mutually agreed upon comfort that allowed them to focus on other things than the wrinkles on their faces or the widening of their waists. They let their graying hair be a kind of badge of glory that spoke of their wisdom and joy in being themselves. 

I always thought that both of my grandmothers were beautiful. I did not expect them to look younger than they actually were or to be fashion icons emulating current trends. They left styling to the younger generation and focused outwardly toward the people in their lives. Their daily routines were designed to make everyone around them feel safe, satisfied and loved. If they worried about their physical appearance they never gave any indication of their concerns. They reveled in being mature versions of themselves, sweet matriarchs striving to demonstrate how much their families meant to them. 

In today’s world there is so much pressure on women to continue looking as young as possible even as they age. Our society has an obsession with youthfulness that is so influential that even young girls take note of a stray gray hair or a tiny crease in the skin around the eyes. Women spend time slathering themselves with creams and and skin products designed to imitate the youthful glow of a teenager. They fuss over their clothes and shoes hoping to present an image of being eternally young. It is an exhausting and time consuming process that begins with peer pressure on teens and never seems to abate until they revolt and choose clothing and shoes for comfort rather than style. 

I suppose that there is no reason to appear dowdy or older than we actually are. Nonetheless there is an argument to be made that we should consider how much time and money it is taking to keep ourselves looking as young as possible. We might ask ourselves when it will be okay to simply relax like my grandmothers did. There should come a time when we just allow our inner beauty to be what people see instead of supporting the billion dollar businesses convincing us that it is important to improve ourselves with their products. I know that I am probably just as guilty of this as anyone else who attempts to artificially cover the signs of aging. 

The times of isolation during the pandemic were often difficult, but also freeing. I became like my grandmothers in so many ways. I had a repertoire of seven different iterations of jeans and t-shirts that I combined and repeated day after day. I let my hair grow and removed the polish on my fingers and toes. Like Grandma Ulrich I mostly operated in my bare feet and when I needed shoes my go to choice was usually to wear slippers. I washed and moisturized my face but let dust cover the cosmetics that I had always used to paint rosy cheeks on my face. I was comfortable and happy and more in tune with the rhythm of the world. All of the superficialities melted away because I did not need them. It was a gloriously liberating time that now allows me to feel comfortable being my natural self on most days. I only go into full fashion mode for special occasions now.

A friend recently spoke of how wonderful it is to grow old gracefully. It is extraordinary when we can look at ourselves in the mirror with nothing more that what nature has given us and feel content with what we see. Reaching that point frees us to look outward and discover that the best feelings come from spending most of our time embracing and comforting others. There is so much joy in seeing the world without efforts to change or conform to artificial pressures. Our grandmothers seemed to know that. Perhaps we should follow their example. After all when we remember them we see that they really were beautiful.

It would be difficult to find a person on this earth who did not fail at doing something at least once in a lifetime. The truth is that most people suffer defeat multiple times. Because we are human each of us has endured moments when we were unable to achieve something that meant a great deal to us. This does not mean that we are flawed or inadequate, but simply that we are human. 

Failure comes in many forms, some of which are mostly benign and others which tear our lives apart. I did not pass my driving test on the first try. I did quite well until I attempted to parallel park in between two cones. I became so flustered that I put a bit too much pressure on the accelerator pedal and knocked over one of the orange barriers. The whole process stopped there and I had to go home and lick my wounds while I practiced for weeks never really mastering the art of guiding my vehicle to a nice fit between two immoveable objects. 

I went back for another try and once again the test was smooth sailing until I reached the defining moment of parallel parking. I literally began to shake with terror when I saw those cones seeming to mock me with their bilious color. I took a deep breath and concentrated on moving slowly, deliberately. When I thought I might hit the orange sentinel I pulled out and began my effort again. I was determined not to cause damage this time, but when I had tried multiple times I actually began to cry thinking that I would never in my lifetime be allowed to legally sit in the driver’s seat of a car. 

The proctor for the test asked me to just stop for a moment. He wanted to know how old I was and how many times I had tried and failed to master the art of parallel parking. With a shaky voice I admitted that I had failed the test once before and did not believe that I would ever be successful in my efforts. He calmly noted that I had at least mastered the ability to know when I was about to hit something. He wanted asked how often I engaged in activities which would require me to park my vehicle along a curb between two other vehicles. When I told him that I would probably never have to do such a thing he announced that he was going to give me a passing grade. I was thrilled but to this very day I have been afraid to even try to parallel park, which makes me feel a bit ridiculous.

If this minor failure had been the only thing that had daunted me in my lifetime I would be rather remarkable. Instead like everyone else my life is littered with failed attempts at mastering a technique or, even worse, sustaining an important relationship with someone who was very important to me. Somehow our inability to handle our interactions with other people with calm, respect and wisdom tends to be among our greatest failures as humans. The impact of interpersonal defeat leads to the worst problems in our human experiences. Sometimes they can even result in wars. We would do well to be as aware of the pitfalls of acting without considering the damage we might do to another person as I was about hitting one of those cones when trying to park. 

Our emotions trace through our minds twenty four seven. Our brains can be methodical and thoughtful when suddenly we flare up in anger or disappointment or fear. We say and do things that we never intended. Once the genie is out of the bottle it is so difficult to cram it back inside. We hurt each other and sometimes the damage is so bad that there are no excuses, no passes for good intentions. We fail and it hurts. 

If we constantly remembered that failure is a human trait perhaps we might stop our descent into the kind of frustration that tears us apart. We would think before we act. We would consider what might happen if we react too quickly. We would also be willing to forgive the small slights before they become bigger lethal problems that affect more and more people around us. The first step in curbing our destructive behaviors is in admitting that we are imperfect and that we sometimes need help. It does nothing positive to hide behind our imperfections and failures. Admitting them and working to control them is the first step to finding success. 

We are often hard on ourselves and even harder on others when things fall apart. We forget that we are not going to always get things right on the first try. The most successful individuals are those who are open to the idea of working hard to overcome problems with ourselves and in our relationships. There are no magic pills that make any of us perfect. We are bound to encounter difficult moments that make us question ourselves or the people around us. Understanding our individual limitations and working to improve our failings is not just admirable, but also necessary to maintain our well being. 

A friend posted a wonderful prayer today. It began with admitting that sometimes it feels as though we can’t. We may have a tremendous desire to be our better selves but something is inhibiting us from getting there. Just saying the words “I can’t” is admitting that we are in a state that all humans encounter. Asking for help in overcoming this feeling demonstrates a positive step forward. As my mother used to say true love is accepting someone, including ourselves “warts and all.”