Lessons Learned
This week my husband and I are on “vacation”. For some, vacation means a new environment, new experiences and new places. For us, most of our vacations happen in the same place. In purchasing a little get-away cottage a few years ago, our vacations center around this house.
Over the past three years we have done some improvements to the home- some cosmetic like painting various rooms and others necessary maintenance which involves furnace and fireplace professionals. We try hard to strike a balance between puttering around the home and playing in the area: kayaking, hiking, biking, etc.
On this trip we have a few things to do. While I was transplanting plants from home, my husband was repairing the rotted boards on a gate. Part of the repair requires that he notch out both ends of a 2 x 4 so that they join with the uprights of the gate. As he was chiseling the piece he commented, “Your dad showed me how to do this.” I smiled, remembering how my dad loved to putter around with projects. I can see his capable hands- the one pointer finger slightly shorter than others due to a wood shop incident.
After my husband said his comment, I started thinking about others who showed me different ways to do things: how to hammer in small nails by holding the nail with a needle nose plier until the nail gets started, how to pin two pieces of fabric together ensuring that the pins are perpendicular to the needle of the machine. And I have learned things not necessarily from my elders. One of my childhood friends showed me how to make grilled cheese in the skillet using a spatula to smoosh down the bread. We were about nine or ten at the time and I amazed at her cooking ability as my mother never let me near the kitchen let alone the stove until I was an adult. I still make grilled cheese the same way.
I heard an interview of a woman who was experiencing the final stages of her parents’ dementia. As she was struggling through the emotional rollercoaster of guilt, helplessness, loss, and grief she was explaining her feelings to another friend. That friend said, “What is the final lesson your parents are teaching you through this?” It struck the interviewee as it struck me that regardless of the difficulty, there is always a lesson to be learned and/or to impart.
Even though it is eight, five, three, and almost one year past, since our parents (father-in-law, mother, father, mother-in-law respectively) have died, I am still reflecting, ruminating and learning from the last stages of our parents’ lives. I have learned to forgive and to extend grace to myself and others, especially when the end did not unfold as I thought it would. I realize now that each of the players in this last act were doing the best they could under the circumstances. That lesson of grace has helped me as I deal with others. Life is too short not to extend grace to one another.
What about you? What have you learned directly from others? What are the memories surrounding that lesson? What can you impart to someone else? A child, grandchild, neighbor, niece, nephew? A friend? If you were to give your final life lesson, what would that be?
Too Late?
Do you ever feel that you are too late? Too late to accomplish much in your life? Too old to respond to God's call? Too worn out to be of any use?
Lately I have been reading more of the Bible and deepening my prayer life. In doing so I am wondering, "Why wasn't I this committed years ago?" I feel that God is teaching me much yet I cannot help wondering what I missed out because of my past lack luster commitment.
I have also felt that I have missed out on what could've been professionally. What would've happened if I made a career out of hospital nursing? What would've happened if I didn't take time off to raise kids? What would've happened if I had followed my heart with exploring creative endeavors and occupations during college?
Well, I will never know and in some ways that is okay. I have had a varied path and it all is good.
But now that I have started on this writing endeavor, I sometimes wonder if it is too late. Perhaps I will run out of time before I get going? Why does it take me so long to learn things?
I have been thinking of things that I wished I learned earlier:
- To enjoy the moment
- To laugh more
- To reach out to others more
- To be more vulnerable
- To take risks
- To not be so serious
What about you? What things have you learned? Are you still learning? Do you feel that it is too late? Is there anything you wished you learned earlier in life?
I love to hear stories about older individuals accomplishing feats in their "dotage". (Perhaps because I am closer to that season of life than not, it speaks to me.) Some of those who accomplished in their later years:
- Paul Cezanne had first art exhibition at age 56
- Julia Child began PBS cooking show at age 51
- John Glenn went into space at age 77
- Grandma Moses started painting at 76
- Peter Roget invented the thesaurus at age 73
- Colonel Sanders started KFC at age 65 (using his first Social Security check for $100!)
- Diana Nyad swam from Cuba to Florida at age 64
I think I have shared before, but the jazz band at my parents' retirement community was called "The Never Too Late" band.
Learn Anything Lately?
My poor daffodils hanging on during the cold weather.
What did you learn in 2016? Life lessons, an academic subject, a life skill? What knowledge, information or skill are you currently pursuing?
This is the time of year when I think we all could use a boost both physically and mentally. Here in the mid-Atlantic all of our blooming daffodils and cherry trees are under a blanket of snow and ice. The winds have been fierce and the temperature cold. After a relatively mild winter it is hard to believe that now we are getting an arctic blast three days before the arrival of spring.
I am ready to shake off the snow, ice and winter debris and get ready for new growth.
I am ready to learn something new.
I am ready to physically and mentally move- to get my sluggish winter body out and about as well as firing up my hibernating brain cells.
The thing about learning is that it is never too late. I know a woman who started taking piano lessons in her nineties. She had always wanted to do so and never had the opportunity. So, her family purchased a keyboard for her to use in her retirement apartment and a piano teacher comes and gives her lessons every Saturday.
There is a wonderful book, Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman by the late Alice Steinbach. Ms. Steinbach traveled to various places in the world taking lessons and courses on specific topics: French cooking in Paris, Border Collie training in Scotland, Japanese arts in Kyoto to name a few. Most of us will never have the resources nor the time as Ms. Steinbach did but we can be inspired by her openness and curiosity.
What about you? What is something you have always wanted to learn? Piano lessons? Art classes? Fixing a complicated meal? Maybe a trip to Paris is not in the cards right now, but could you try fixing a French meal a la Julia Child?
My husband and I are planning to attend a class at the CSA farm where we purchase our meat. They will be demonstrating how to cut up a whole chicken. We get whole roasters through them but have never done anything with the chickens except, well, roast them whole. I have looked at various cook books on the cutting up of a chicken but I need the hands-on visual instruction.
I am looking forward to it.
Doesn't matter what the subject or activity might be, once we experience and learn something new, we have shifted our brain and muscle usage. The adage, use it or lose it, applies to both our brain neurons and our muscle cells. When we challenge ourselves with having to use our brain in new experiences, we improve our brain neurons and increase the synapses which send and receive information. Our physical challenges increase our muscle fibers which in turn produce stronger and leaner muscles as well as improvement in all the cardiac, immunity, endocrinological aspects of exercise.
Learning enhances our confidence, our mood, and our outlook on life. It improves our day.
It is the spring that is awaiting to be released.
Learn Something New?
Image found: www.westlothian.gov.uk/adultlearning
Did you learn something today?
I always feel like I have had a successful day when I have learned or done something new. It could be as simple as a new recipe, an historic fact, a revelation about a relationship or a mathematical equation. Whatever it might be, it feels good to stretch the "little grey cells" (as Hercules Poirot would say).
Although I do find that if I do not intentionally plan on learning, doing or reading, then I settle into an existence routine. It is a routine whereby my world doesn't expand. It becomes very self-contained. After all, I am very limited in what I know. It is boring to only have to think of that. So if I don't purposefully challenge myself to explore new ideas I find that I am stagnant- in my thinking, in my doing and even in my speaking.
Ways I try to keep the "little grey cells" healthy:
- Read classic literature
- Learn a language
- Learn a new piece of music
- Read about a subject (art, history, sciences, anything in the dewey decimal library system)
- Engage in The Great Courses (www.greatcourses.com); www.coursera.org, or Great Decision class (www.fpa.org/great_decisions)
What about you? Do you have an existence-routine kind of life? How can you rise above that? Do you want to? What types of learning do you like? Is it learning a new skill or physical activity? Do you like classroom lecture? Are you a visual, auditory, read-write or kinesthetic learner?
Have you learned something new today?