Same old, same old? Not so fast....

I spent the last few days "At Home" in Minnesota on the farm where I grew up.  My brother Charlie, whom I haven't seen in awhile, is visiting our mom, and I wanted to spend some time with him.  So away I drove, out of the frying pan and into the freezer!

Although it has changed - buildings have worn out, some of them are even gone, the silo is but a shell these days and the windmill will never turn on it's squeaky axle again - much of it remains the same.  It is, in some ways, a bizarre time warp to go back and sleep in the same room where I spent my years of teenage angst, wondering where life would lead me.  It is probably a good thing I didn't know then what I know now, or I would never have had the courage to leave in the first place!

Lost in Oz...

I have been thinking this week about the shackles that bind us to our past, and how difficult it can be to break them open and run free from the things that keep us rooted in our previous experiences.

I imagine most people, when hearing the term shackle, think of being held captive in slavery.  I don't mean to diminish their experience or their pain, but I think there are other shackles that hold us as firmly in place as the metal cuffs placed on the wrists of the runaways seeking the freedom to live life on their own terms.  The fact that the freed slaves often chose to remain where they were speaks to the difficulty of overcoming our own expectations as eloquently as any words I could ever find.  Casting away what we know and moving freely into whatever the future holds for us is always complicated, and easily resisted.

Skinny is not a dirty word any more....

I am just going to say this once, but it's important, so listen up everyone.  If you want to feel good about yourself, find a pair of pants you don't currently fit into, lose enough weight to pull them on, AND, (this is the really mind warping part) ZIP THEM UP.  It is a guaranteed natural high which will have you short of breath and floating on air all day.  (Ideally, you should be short of breath from the joy of it all.  Of course, you also may be short of breath because to get them zipped, you now cannot sit or breathe, but I consider that a personal issue, and I'm not going there.)

Eye told you so....

"They" say that memory is the first thing to go.  (Seriously.  Who are they, anyway?)  Well, apparently "they" have forgotten, because the first thing to go is not the memory, its the eyes.  You can always tell the people of A Certain Age (and trust me, it's a LOT younger than you think it will be.)  They are the ones holding everything at fingertip length, squinting and turning their heads like a camera lens unsuccessfully trying to focus in on the target.

Someday...

I was listening to a tune on the radio today, "Someday," by Rob Thomas, and the words really jumped out at me.  The song is actually about a broken relationship, starting over and getting it right the second time around.  But I think the words also apply to life generally, or they do to my life, anyway.  The lyrics which particularly caught my attention were as follows:

Maybe someday

We'll figure all this out

We'll put an end to all our doubt

Try to find a way to just feel better now and

Maybe someday we'll live our lives out loud

We'll be better off somehow

Someday.