Simple joy of family....

I don't know what is universal to share - but as a personal note I just want to say how very much I love my family. Everyone is gathering - everyone is happy to see each other. We're crowding into a 2-bedroom apartment, eschewing the opportunity to have some sleep across the street at a hotel, because no one wants to be separate. So out comes the air mattress and extra sheets for the couch!!

With togetherness our agenda, it matters little what we plan "to do". "Doing" is so very secondary to "being". The doing will include (of course) cooking and eating, waiting for the next to arrive, followed by some surprises in the stockings and one gift for/from each (drew names this year).

In wishing you a Merry Christmas, I don't choose to be politically correct in my language because the holiday is about love, by whatever construct one defines it. Setting aside time to be together creates a holiday of tremendous magnitude. Simply joyous.

Simple is as simple does...

Joe and I were up until 2 a.m. working a jigsaw and gabbing. Lesson observed: in the jigsaw puzzle of life, if you take care of the obvious, the inscrutible becomes less so.

Simply city....

So now we live in the city. I can tell because it's never dark and never quiet. There's a sense that whatever "IT" is, it's never done - always in process. I've been varying degrees of sick with a cold for the last month, and struggling to understand what's kicking my usually robust immune system. My conclusion is what I just mentioned - not yet finding my sense of accomplishment.

Of course, country living is no different. One season's tasks roll right into the next season's responsibilities and round and round it goes. But at least there are touch-points in that lifestyle where you feel - DONE! Perhaps that's why everyone local feels compelled to share the number of quarts and pints they canned during harvest time. Something done, counted, put away. In the winter, the driveway is shovelled/not shovelled. It may not last long, but there is a moment when that chore is DONE. Pruning...DONE. Planting...DONE. Over time, those moments of accomplishment can get swallowed up in a sense of circular repetition, but they are there and you grasp them!

My new job is developmental - building a new business. Orders received give that momentary feeling - DONE! But worrying about the nebulous task of identifying and meeting shifting market needs, risking stale merchandise vs amply stocking for immediate needs, etc.... Not yet much sense of DONE at work.

At home --- what can I say!! To get a sense of DONE, I need to break it into smaller portions. But to find a place for the bikes means finding shelving for CDs so library bookshelf can move to a spot already occupied by items needing to be shifted somewhere else once that somewhere else is created...~~~

When it comes right down to it, my sense of accomplishment may need to be completely separate. Knit a scarf - DONE! Put together a jigsaw puzzle - DONE! Sew a bed skirt - DONE! Perhaps, for the sake of my immune system, I should complicate life a little by adding in small finite tasks which have beginnings with ends in sight.

Maybe MORE is the new LESS, when it's all said and done.

Simple Self-Deception

We recently made the choice to complicate our lives and move to the city. Ironically, to do so, we had to undergo a huge process of simplification. After 15 years in the same large house with 2-story barn, we had accumulated a large quanitity of the detritus from postponed decision-making and a fair amount of self-deception. After grueling days of multiple garage sales, dozens of trips to drop items off at the Goodwill, multiple loads of tonnage to the recycling center, we spent 2 days loading a 26' Penzke truck to the brim and moved into our 2-bedroom apartment overlooking the city. No more yard to mow or rake. No more snow to shovel. No more self-deception. Our newest acquisition was the humbling awareness that simplicity is actually hard work. It requires honesty, courage and boldness as well as persistent endeavor. Quiet retreat from the challenges at hand is no substitute for the joy of accomplishing true simplicity.

Cost and deficits of independence

Proofreading a stamp journal for my husband, I am reminded how many countries have split off to become "independent" in my lifetime. Triggered by a casual mention of Katanga and South Kasai declaring their independence from the Congo Democratic Republic in 1960, my mind jumps ahead to vague knowledge of many splinterings of countries into "independent" states. More recently, in the interest of political correctness, we have seen a splintering of self-identification into ever-narrower categories - eschewing the identification of "human" for one increasingly narrow: "Native American," "Polish-American," etc. I really don't want to be bothered to enumerate. In our own tiny area of rural Wisconsin, we have yet another splintering of the local Lutherans. This seems to be something of a tradition with them.

Whatever happened to associating with those with whom we differ - or even those with whom we VARY? Likes clumping together with likes allows our skills of tolerance to atrophy from disuse -- a cultural/global disaster in the making.

I like life to be comfortable - but I'm afraid of creating a non-challenging environment for myself as it leads to a dependency on non-challenge. If I loose the skills to cope with variables that surprise me and are beyond my control, then I will need, eventually, to annihilate (in one way or another) those factors that don't fit my norm.

Whatever happened to thinking on the way to the 21st Century!!

A number of smart adults met regularly some years ago to address the local problem of poor "critical thinking" skills noted in our school district. Solutions were elusive. The problem has remained and floats in my head almost daily.  I observe a broad abstention from critical thinking in all parts of our Society and find it most disconcerting since it is counter to inate human nature.  Just look at babies and watch awhile and you will see that critical thought is one of the most basic driving forces in our nature.  How does it get conditioned out of us on such a broad scale?
Dusting has given me the answer!  I was cleaning a neglected bookshelf and randomly opened, "Reclaiming Childhood," by William Crain.  On page 161 toward the center of the page I read:

".......overly difficult instruction presents another danger: It undermines the child's independence. When, to take a contemporary example, we assign a child a math problem that is too difficult for her, she has no recourse but to thur to the back of the book to see if she got the right answer. And because she doesn't fully u nderstand the solution, she must accept on faith whatever the 'smarter' person or the book says is true.  She learns to depend on external authority rather than to think for herself."

Pushing to "cover" a broad spectrum of material in the schools is counterproductive to the purposes of a public education in a democracy.  Many teachers/administrators, during our childrens' school years, spoke of "exposing" the children to knowledge.  Nowhere was it part of the agenda to challenge them to think things through - nor even to give them time to mull and contemplate.  Measuring and recording the outcome of each day's educational endeavor reduces children to survival mode and shifts their focus to understanding and appeasing the authority rather than to developing skills and thinking strategies to ferret out the truth for themselves as they participate in lives of their own choosing.

We have created (at no small expense to the taxpayer) an unthinking, malleable mass of humanity easily swayed by marketers and politicians (sorry for the redundancy).

What do I say is the solution?  JUST STOP IT!!  Stop over-scheduling, over-instructing, over-analysing, over-assessing, over-structuring our children. Stop depriving our society of fully dimensional adults who still enjoy thinking for themselves.

One-day challenge

Try going one complete day spending absolutely no money - no charges to a card - no online orders - etc.  It's a bit harder than you think.  You may find yourself reaching into your pocket for change for a vending machine...  Nothing creates a clearer picture of how consumer-oriented we are than to "fast" from consumerism for an entire day.  Stock up ahead - fill the tank with gas - be sure there's food in the fridge, etc.  When you succeed with one day - try a week.  It's truly a consciousness-raising activity :)