Any Shiny Thing - Life after 50

Midlife Fiction

The Best Argument for Mindfulness

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One of the joys of my marriage is that Bill and I both like to read, and occasionally to each other. He’ll share a particularly moving passage; I’ll share a turn of phrase that delights. A few days ago he read something that got under my skin, that maybe even changed my life.

He was reading The Ship by C.S. Forester, a beautiful, thick-paged old book published in 1943. Forester wrote the Hornblower series, among other works. Here’s the passage that affected me:

The Captain experienced a feeling of elation…He was a man who was profoundly interested in the art of living. Rembrandt gave him pleasure, and so did the Fifth Symphony; so did bouillabaisse at Marseilles or Southern cooking at New Orleans or a properly served Yorkshire pudding in the North of England; so did a pretty girl or an elegant woman; so did a successful winning hazard from a difficult position at billiards, or a Vienna Coup at bridge; and so did success in battle. These were the things that gilded the bitter pill of life which everyone had to swallow. They were as important as life and death; not because they were very important, but because life and death were not very important.

How profoundly these words affect me! In them I feel the comfort of knowing that life’s difficulties aren’t unique to me. I also understand that there’s a way to build resilience to the bitter pill(s) all of us will eventually be compelled to swallow. It is this: whenever possible we should be fully present, absorbing every sweet morsel of life that’s available to us, storing it in our memories for the hard times.

As Bill and I discussed the passage, he told me that during a recent family blowup – I told you we’re brawlers, apparently. Lately it seems that way – he would have trouble falling asleep. At those times he’d call up the sweet memories of holding our 10-month-old grandson. The two of them have such a bond; after a nap, and after finishing his sippy cup of formula, Andrew will snuggle with Grandpa in the recliner. He’ll examine his toys and talk in his happy, wordless way, occasionally arching back to grab Bill’s nose or hang upside down, studying the world from that perspective before wriggling around to be set on the floor.

I get happy just thinking of that.

Right now, I’m sitting in a quiet hideaway – a part of the cruise ship where we’re spending our spring break before returning to our babysitting duties. The hideaway is silent, thanks to my resourceful sweetheart who found the audio controls and cut the disco music to this cocktail lounge that is deserted at eight in the morning.

Bill sits twenty feet away from me, reading. I see him framed against the sea, and feel almost teary with gratitude that we are still healthy and able, and that we enjoy each other’s company. He makes me laugh; earlier we were considering the size of a new ship. “It’d have to be big,” Bill said. “You figure, four thousand passengers at five hundred pounds each…”

I’m also feeling a bit more understanding about those who seek the finer things in life, not purely for consumption’s sake, or the drive for status, but as a pleasant positive to offset the inevitable negative.

Whatever we have can be taken away. Better to lay in supplies for that cold inevitability. A better argument for mindfulness, I haven’t found.

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Nurse Was Right to Refuse CPR

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A couple weeks ago a nurse made international headlines when she refused to perform CPR on an elderly, dying woman in Bakersfield, California. The tape of the frantic 911 dispatcher was played over and over again. Newscasters spoke of the need to expand “good Samaritan” laws. The country was outraged.

Somewhat surprisingly, the woman’s family declined to sue, saying she had wanted no extreme measures to prolong her life.

Extreme measures? It’s just CPR, right?

Maybe not. In some cases, denying CPR may be the most humane option.

The following is a quote from the horrendously enlightening article, How Doctors Die by Dr. Ken Murray. I read it a year ago but it was so profound, it stayed with me. I’ll never forget this:

Some doctors are so afraid of having their Do Not Resuscitate orders ignored that they have NO CODE tattooed on their chests.

What could cause doctors to fear life-saving measures? Here’s an excerpt of one doctor describing resuscitation measures:

The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the intensive care unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist.

Did you know CPR often breaks ribs? I didn’t either. Here’s more:

Feeding into the problem are unrealistic expectations of what doctors can accomplish. Many people think of CPR as a reliable lifesaver when, in fact, the results are usually poor. If a patient suffers from severe illness, old age, or a terminal disease, the odds of a good outcome from CPR are infinitesimal, while the odds of suffering are overwhelming.

This article in Forbes laments the fact that there was no “Do Not Resuscitate” order on file at the home, and I agree. However, even if you have such an order on file with the facility, over-zealous or lawsuit-shy staff may completely disregard them. “Jack,” who had such orders on file only to have them ignored, was lucky enough to be removed from life support by the doctor who wrote this article. The doctor said:

Although he had thoroughly documented his wishes, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my actions (i.e. complying with Jack’s DNR orders) as a possible homicide.

It’s difficult to imaging leaving a patient to die without taking measures to revive her. However, I read the Murray article before the Bakersfield incident occurred, and thus my first thought was that the nurse was a hero, courageous enough to honor the patient’s wishes. It’s apparent that the family felt the same way.

But I still kind of feel like getting a tattoo.

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Facebook Erases Me, and I Feel Liberated

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A couple days ago my Timeline and Activity Log on Facebook disappeared. Three years of posts, links, and interaction erased! All that remained of me on FB were my About page and photos. I was outraged! I was in despair! So much of my life history zapped into nothingness. How dare they! (Ha ha. Like Facebook owes me anything. A good wake-up call.)

Silver Lining #1

Soon, I got my brains back. I remembered that as a Boomer, I grew up without any of this electronic crap. How important was it, really? Sure, if the photos were ever lost, that would be a bummer, but with digital photography, I’ve got so many photos on my hard drive right now, would I even notice?

Silver Lining #2

But all that Internet history erased, lost as a historical record. I would never be able to back and access it again. And then I thought – Really? Would I ever have done that, seriously? And don’t I feel better to have that big chunk of data scrubbed from their data base? Kind of a relief, even though I’m not one to post topless photos of myself smoking a bong. But still. Clean slate!

Silver Lining #3

Have you ever wondered what you’d do if one of your networks became unusable, say they started charging or went belly-up or redesigned the site in a way that you hated?

When I thought FB erased me, I quickly made an alternate plan. I would leave my page intact, but add a referral to my profile on Google+, LinkedIn, or somewhere else. Who cares where? There’ll always be a place to “live” on the Internet.

Because here’s another stupid situation that suddenly provides a brilliant solution: Have you ever felt frustrated that you’re connecting with the same people on multiple networks? (i.e. Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Goodreads, Google+, etc.)? Doesn’t it seem like overkill? What good is all that duplication?

However, it could be useful, because if you left one platform, you could go somewhere else and most of your friends would still be in touch with you. (If you’re one of those people with 20,000 Twitter followers, I’m sorry. I guess.)

Maybe that’s how this saturation of social networking is going to end up. The people who really like what we have to say, or want to keep up with what we’re doing, will always be with us. The rest? They’ll churn and reattach, to us somehow, or to someone else.

The upside of all this crazy profusion of platforms is we’re all cross-networking. And the result of that? I think we become our own presence, our own brand. If one platform is sold or shuts down or becomes a corporate asshole, we pivot to another. Our followers follow, because we’ve made it a point to be WORTH following. And life goes on. This, I think, is the future, and the only path to true independence as a web-reliant entrepreneur.

For what it’s worth, Facebook restored my life. And I just really don’t care.

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Adulthood: One Size Fits All?

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I was filling out a form the other day, and had to select an age category. Here were the choices: [Read more…]

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Do You Lack Purpose?

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squirrel-1718302_1920After you retire, you sometimes lose your way. People who are working fulltime, and especially those who are also caring for dependent family members, don’t have this luxurious problem. But if you’re lucky enough to have a lot of free time, you sometimes feel guilty, as if you’re wasting your days. [Read more…]

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Who Decides Your Life Course?

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Recently, Oprah said most people, especially women, lead their lives following a course that is not their own.

No kidding.

I mean, you’ve noticed, right? How a woman will partner up with a guy, and pretty soon she sounds like him. Maybe even looks like him, body-wise. She used to be thin, now she’s not. She used to be debt-free, now she’s a spendthrift. Used to be politically apathetic, but now she’s a passionate partisan.

This phenomenon fascinates me. I want to write a book about it, a novel of four women who, over the course of a summer all realize they’ve fallen victim to this. I don’t really want to write about a younger woman – I figure we all did it when in our teens and twenties, but then you start to figure out who you are and what you need, and theoretically, you don’t become the clone anymore. No, the people who interest me are the older women who are still stuck in this mire, whether they know it or not, and whether they change or not.

Of course, this is only a problem if it’s a problem. Sometimes people influence each other for the better. In some ways, I’m my husband’s mini-me, but that’s more a case of God shaking her head in despair and sending me a car salesman, due to the fact that I desperately needed somebody to show me how not to be such a doormat and martyr. But I’m not talking about the good influencers, and neither was Oprah. She said,

Unless you find a course that is truly your own, you betray yourself, and then you’re no different than the person who betrayed or hurt you.

Sometimes pain is sweet. The fact that we’re not “allowed” to clean up the garage, because he insists on things being a certain way, means we get license to complain without actually having to do anything about it. Not taking the reins is a relief, sometimes. So is the feeling of being limited by somebody else – it’s how a lot of us were raised, right? We’re told to be obedient, follow the rules, let the other person go first, give up our seat, be flexible. It becomes a habit. Pretty soon you’re afraid to take the reins, but it’s okay – you’re comfortable with it. Resentful, but comfortable.

Let me ask you this: What if you had no limitations? What if you could do, create, live, or be exactly what you wanted in the days, weeks, months, years to come? What goals would be on your list, and how fantastic would it be to realize those goals? Now, ask yourself what is standing in your way, and what can you do, if anything, to get around it? If you’re tempted to shrug and say, “Nothing,” I have a titillating question for you: are you happier with that answer than with the alternative?

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