• Personal Growth,  Psychology of Life,  Wise Words

    What Do You Believe?

    October 12, 2019

    You live your life based on your beliefs and although you create your beliefs you may not know them.  It is for this reason that you end up making the same relationship mistakes over and over again.  It is for this reason that you must recognize your beliefs so that you can work with them, or get rid of them.

    • How do you recognize your beliefs? 
    • How do you know that you even have beliefs that you are not aware of? 
    • Do you keep on making the same old mistakes over and over again? 
    • Do you repeat relationship mistakes? 
    • Do you keep having the same relationship but with a different person?

    Beliefs are reflected in actions (failed relationships) and in thinking (“it’s hard to find love”).  It is in the thinking and in the actions that you can recognize your beliefs.  Another way to recognize your belief systems is to review your spending.  What are you spending money on?  If a good amount of money is being spent on your home, you have a belief that your home is a priority in your life.

    It is in the thinking that you can make real changes.  It is in the action that you can make things different.

    Do you feel that you are worthy?  Does your life reflect your worthiness?  Look around you, are you feeling valued and validated?  If you are not, it could be your thinking, or it could be your actions, but for sure it is your own beliefs.  You may have a job that pays well, yet you don’t feel valued there.

    You may not believe that you are valuable.  That belief has led you to thinking in a way that invalidates you.  When you receive a compliment you say “that was luck” or perhaps you say to yourself “that Bill is always trying to butter me up”.  So, you take a simple compliment that can validate you and you turn it into something negative so that you can prove your belief that you are not valuable.  Just like that, you have kept yourself down with your thoughts.

    Truly, if you do not want to hear something, you will not hear it.  It is as if you are deaf.  This is your subconscious refusing to change.  Words that you cannot “believe” will not be heard.  Again, this is you desperately hanging onto a belief that is no longer real, no longer true.  You may not even be aware that you are doing this.

    As a young person, did you suffer betrayal?  Did others abuse your trust?  Perhaps you formulated a belief that people cannot be trusted.  You will always seek ways to reinforce this belief until you recognize your belief and commit to experiencing your life in the new instead of in the past.  All beliefs are made of the past.  This does not mean that beliefs are bad, it simply means that your life is better if you recognize them and make peace with them. 

    Beliefs and thinking …. (I am worthless) Neutral event occurs(neighbor gets a promotion)….emotions occur (discouragement)….thinking that reinforces beliefs (I am worthless) and thinking closes the loop.

    JB Drawing

    New events get routed through the same old belief systems that were in place before the new event occurred.

    An example of this might be a young person who loses some money.  Because of their own beliefs about their own self worth, the internal dialogue might be “I’m worthless, I can’t hang onto anything, I’ll never have spending money.”  Instead, as a neutral event, the response might be “I’ll have to retrace my steps and find that money, I think I’ll call the restaurant where I ate.” 

    The first person started out with a negative belief about self and used the neutral event of losing money as a means of reinforcing the negative beliefs the person already had about him/herself.  The second person took a neutral event and went straight to taking action about it.

    JB Drawing

    In order to stay out of the same old treadmill, being open to what is actually occurring in the present moment is a must.  This requires a neutral position rather than a judgmental position.  This is a difficult task.  Putting the past in the past is a major accomplishment.

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  • Baby Boomers,  Economic Equality (A Goal),  Speaking as a Parent

    “Friends” and the Millennial

    September 27, 2019

    I’ve heard it and read it a million times.  This generation of kids doesn’t want to or isn’t growing up.  Millennials are hanging out and living in their parents basements way past the time of the previous generation.  Of course, there are economic reasons for this, yet there is also a hesitation by this generation, to get out there and do life.

    It crossed my mind, based on reruns, and particularly “Friends” reruns that maybe Millennials received a very strange message about growing up from TV.  These six gorgeous people grew up, got apartments close to each other, limited incomes made them roommates – and they proceeded to have a wonderful life.

    Friends kept this charade going for ten years.  They led millions of young people to believe that life was about having fun.  There was very little emphasis on the real world or any real problems.  This isn’t an indictment of the show, it simply is a comment on what we were all viewing for all of those years: white people, always happy, never used drugs, no children, job free, but wealthy, in fashion and always, always perfect friends.  In other words, no reality.  These six people never really got married, they barely had children, never did laundry, cleaned toilets, or had harsh illnesses.  Their lives were a dream of perfection where insurance was completely unnecessary.

    Public Domain

    So, if millennials have wrong ideas about life, who can blame them?  We parents perpetrated those beliefs by participating in the popularity of our televised culture.

    This is the point of view of those who would want to maintain life as it always has been.  Another point of view is that millennials are here to teach us something.  We (parents) moved forward lockstep the same as our parents did.  Perhaps our millennials are telling us that our culture should change.  Baby Boomers followed instructions too much.  We moved forward as expected instead of forward to our dreams and potentials.

    Millennials are also making a very important point.  We Baby Boomers languished in our capitalism for a little too long.  We have been passive believers in a culture that has gone way wrong.  We allowed our children to become victims of predatory capitalism and now they struggle just to get by.  They aren’t in a hurry to live their parents life.

    “Friends” really was nothing but a white culture’s entertainment.  It should not be any indication for reality and in no way should we allow our young people to believe it is anything other than a fun non-reality show. Life does not mirror the show in any way.

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  • Philosophy,  Psychology of Life,  Speaking as a Parent

    Writing is its Own Force

    September 23, 2019

    Sometimes, when I am writing, I do not like the story that I have written. I try to ignore it. I want the story to go away. It is not part of me, and yet it is.

    From All Mothers, Everywhere
    This is one such story.

    I wrote this story out of my experience, both personally and with other parents.

    Because I did not want this story, I got stuck. I could not write and I did not write for a long time. So there is the proof: “what you resist, persists”. I think Carl Jung said that. Here is what I say. Addiction hurts, over and over and over again and always.

    from Casey Dooley

    And even through all of that, this is always Hope, Always & Always.

    by Kurt Meske
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  • Baby Boomers,  Personal Growth,  Psychology of Life,  Womens Issues

    Beauty and the Bras

    August 25, 2019

    Bras
    Photo by Pablo Heimplatz on Unsplash

    I was reviewing all the great Sports Illustrated Swim edition photos published on Instagram.  It is all great fun.  I did get offended though and here is what happened…A 55 year old woman “with silver hair who says she wants to change how society views women over 50”.  The problem is that this woman, looked exactly like all of the other models except she has silver hair.  How is that changing the perception of how people view women over 50?

    The young looks are not youth.  This woman had perfected the young look.  This is the same as all women either do or try to do.  How is that different in any way?  I liked the plus size model and the model with alopecia.  Now those models are different and bring a new point of view to modeling.

    By the time I was twenty five years old, I had a scar on my stomach (straight up and down) from my two caesarean sections.  After breastfeeding several humans, my breasts are no longer perky.  Later, as I got past my forties, I put on a few pounds, a very few, but still.  Ironically, I never got a grey hair until I was 60 years old.  My skin is unbearably white and because of that, I am somewhat allergic to the sun.  When I get too much sun I break out in hives.  When I was in my 40s: I tore my meniscus and so now I sport a few scars there from the surgery.  At 55 years old I was a tiny bit overweight, scarred, with pale skin and long brown – blonde hair.  That is a body that would change the perception of women over 50.  What I mean by that is that, at the time, I was still attractive.  However, no one would have considered putting me on the swimsuit calendar, not without an airbrush.

    That’s my point, we only want to look at young perfection.  We want perfect skin, perfect skin tone and a flat tummy for our swim suit calendars.  We aren’t open to seeing real women, their real skin with sagging breasts and scars on the belly.  We have manufactured sexiness into perfection.  We don’t need to do this.  We can love the bodies we have and present them that way too.  We don’t have to be embarrassed by our imperfections.  They were never imperfections until airbrushes were (in fact) invented.

    I was young when, in the early sixties, women everywhere, were burning their bras.  It was a freeing period in women’s history.  Did we really have to bind our bodies and be uncomfortable and hurt just to leave the house?  Women everywhere were throwing their bras into big burning barrels.  We thought we were on our way to victory and to emancipation!

    Instead, bras came back with a vengeance and this time they were stylized, sexy and 3 times as expensive as they used to be.  If you don’t have perky breasts you can look like you do have perky breasts for $42.00.

    There are lots of beauties in my family, and all of the women, have a story to tell about their own struggle with body beauty.  There are so many stories about that struggle, so very many stories.  Young women are buying botox injections, or purchasing micro-blading for eyebrows, or having fat sucked out of the tummy to bring back that before-baby feeling.  All of this for why?  The body beauty is still so very beautiful at 35 and 40 and all of the way along to our own date with death.  The physical body owns beauty and needs not the artist’s paint in order to be beautiful. 

    Bras & Beauty
    Photo by Chris Benson on Unsplash

    Marketing sexuality as a function of all beautiful young women has pushed our perceptions into a place of non-reality.  This non-reality takes away the gratefulness that we have for the here and now.  For example, the here and now that I am sixty years old and am still sexy.  The here and now of forty-nine that looks like thirty-two and is still gorgeous right now.

    Women, at any age, are beautiful, just as they are.  We don’t need airbrushes and don’t need perky breasts.  We need to be appreciated for who and what we are, right here and right now.

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  • Love and Relationships,  Psychology of Life,  Speaking as a Parent

    Samantha, my Granddaughter’s Mother

    August 2, 2019

    November 2014, on your way to Norfolk

    Samantha;

    You died in the middle of a conversation.  The conversation was on pause, but nonetheless, we were communicating and now we will never communicate with each other again.

    I thought we had time, we always had more time.  It’s so shocking and painful.  What happened?  Did you give up?  Were you upset with me?  You didn’t tell me that you had to go to Hospice.  I would have come.  I would have shown you my love.

    I know that, ultimately, grief will swarm me. 

    No matter who you talk to or how much you talk, you will end up having that moment alone.  That moment is you, alone with your grief.  You will remember, the moments, the emotions, the sights, the sounds and the taste of your relationship.  You will feel it while you stand alone, thinking about the meaning of death.  Sooner or later you must face your grief with only yourself.  Sooner or later you are alone with your grief.

    You may feel the meaningless or you may feel the meaning.  One thing is sure, you are the one who will decide the meaning of your relationship.   Now that your loved one is gone, you will feel the absence, you will feel the loneliness, you can know the truth of your loss. 

    I can’t believe you are gone.  You lost your way and you could not find your way back.  I am so sorry that you didn’t feel how loved you are.  I am so sorry that you did not feel the support of that love.  I am so sorry that we didn’t leave a light shining for your path back to us.  The darkness must have been crushing.  Maybe you thought you would be better soon.  Maybe you thought you could manage for awhile longer.  I don’t know, but I hope it wasn’t too dark for you. 1 August 2019

    Poppy’s lap is the best

    Dear Sophia, my beloved granddaughter;

    Nothing will replace your mother’s love.  Never doubt that she loved you.  She loved you fiercely and gently: both.  She kept you close for as long as she was able.  Your parents always kept your love close.  Everyone of your extended family, thought about you, loved you and worked for your benefit.  If anyone screwed up, it was out of ignorance, not from malice.  We all wanted you safe and loved.  We all wanted you to be happy.  And, your father wanted you most of all. 2 August 2019

    Christmas 2017
    January 2018
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  • Economic Equality (A Goal)

    “This is Us” and How Donald Trump Helped America

    July 21, 2019

    Migrant Mother, photograph by Dorothea Lange

    We left them behind, the poor and disenfranchised.  They were angry and hurt.  Their lives included plenty of suffering.  They could not make ends meet.  If they could hang onto a job, either because they could handle the bad treatment or because the supervisor was decent, they couldn’t get a raise.  They are Americans, tens of thousands of them.  They work at Walmart, Amazon and Sears and every other department store.  They work for McDonald’s, Papa John’s Pizza and Kentucky Fried Chicken and all the other fast food places in America.  They work for $7.50 an hour and felt lucky when they launched up to $10.00 per hour.

    You don’t have to tell them not to buy a Star Bucks coffee daily, they wouldn’t dream of it.  They already know better.  They are responsible for the used ‘everything’ market.  They won’t buy a new washing machine or dryer, not when they can go to Fred’s repair shop and pick up a used one for a couple of hundred dollars.  You won’t find them at the Clinique counter at Macy’s or Dillard’s, they know better.

    They don’t go to the hair dresser or the barber, instead they cut each other’s hair.  They can’t afford the fanciness of the “stylist”.

    Because they are the poor, their children join the military.  It is the only way to get a life if you have no money for college.  Because they join the military, it is the poor who are maimed, dismembered or killed in combat.  They are the few that pay the price for rich men’s conflicts.

    Maybe you don’t see them, maybe you don’t know them.  They are the working poor and there are millions of them in America.

    Our society has never treated them right.  They have always struggled for health care and in fact are the ones who die from lack of health care.  America’s dirty little secret is that the most dangerous risk factor associated with death from breast cancer is poverty, not genetics, not DNA, poverty.  This fact has been true since the early nineties.  It doesn’t matter how healthy you are when you receive the diagnosis, without treatment, you die from this fatal disease.

    On top of the general hell that poverty is, add on that the poverty stricken are the whipping post for all of society’s problems.  The poor are treated badly by everyone.  Our culture has built a myth around the idea that if you work hard you will be rewarded and rewarded well.  Of course, this is a horrible American lie.  Working hard will get you hard work only.  You may or may not be rewarded.  The other side of this myth is that if you are not successful, there must be something wrong with you.  America is wonderful, so YOU are wrong if you are not successful.  Never mind the minimum wage, or even the fact that all around you are people who will take from you.  YOU are the problem because you are poor.

    Homeless in America

    We aren’t all rocket scientists.  We cannot all go to college.  Just because someone works at Papa John’s Pizza, must that person live a life of poverty?  Doesn’t the full time, hard work and contribution of their lives mean a decent life?  Why are those at the bottom of the economic ladder ridiculed, shamed and blamed because of their poverty?

    Why has this country decided to allow congress to artificially deflate the minimum wage?  Congressmen and Senators are paid by big businesses. Congress keeps their promises to big business and refuses to increase the minimum wage.  No one is more hurt by these actions than those millions of people who work for those same big businesses.  Congress should be working for Americans, but instead works for big business and the dollar bill.

    The poor have felt powerless for generations.  Donald Trump came along and pretended to give them power.  He gave them attention and told them that he would do for them.  He is a liar, but they don’t care, because finally, they have some perceived power.

    We can’t blame Donald Trump for his following.  We – the wealthy and middle class America – gave him his following.  We have ignored the poor and poverty stricken for decades.  Worse yet, as managers and supervisors, we are mean grandstanders who put people down.  We are not nice to servers and maids and bellmen.  We make sure they know they are a step down.

    We really needed attention on these central and critical issues.  America cannot continue to ignore poverty stricken Americans.  America should not be ignoring poverty stricken people who are dying from illnesses that can be cured with care.  We must begin taking accountability for what we have acculturated in America. 

    We cannot continue to work at having a class of people to step on and to be “better than”.  We must get real about our commitment to equality.  We must begin to give everyone a place at the table.  We must make sure that all have food and health care.

    Before Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders was a voice in the wilderness.  Now, he is the most coherent candidate of all.  Income inequality has increased unabated since the Reagan era.  It took Donald Trump to show us how nasty and divisive it is for the American people.

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  • Love and Relationships,  Philosophy,  Speaking as a Parent

    Child of Mine, I Have Words for You

    June 27, 2019

    Words, words, words.

    I have so many words for you, child of mine

    I have words for your child too

    I want to let you know what I know of the world

    I want to give you comfort when you are reaching for the cure

    I want you to know what my version of the truth is

    I have words for you and I yearn to speak with you

    ______________________________________________________________________________

    You murder me with your disinterest

    You stab my heart with the shuttering of your eyes

    There was a time when you vehemently wished for the sound of my voice

    That time has passed and where did you go?

    You are present, but judgmental, you have no use for history

    Even when it is your own

    ______________________________________________________________________________

    I’ve learned so much \ and wish to give it on

    Wisdom hard won, needs no more from me

    Can you use the wisdom, the knowledge, the experience

    Have you dismissed the use of any that came before you?

    I care nothing for information that any schoolchild can gain

    I want to tell you life’s great mysteries and the price of love

    ______________________________________________________________________________

    You murder me with your disinterest

    You stab my heart with the shuttering of your eyes

    You have traveled close by for the entirety of your life

    Your body stays, your mind doesn’t engage

               At least not with me

    Child of mine, I have words for you

    Pillars of Creation
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  • Economic Equality (A Goal),  Love and Relationships,  Management,  Psychology of Life

    How to be Useful to the Revolution

    June 10, 2019

    We already know that it is propaganda that has convinced the American public that those who work in fast food and in grocery stores deserve poverty.  We know that the ultra rich have worked very hard to protect property. They do this by ensuring that the vast majority of Americans believe that people deserve minimum wage, because they don’t work hard enough, or haven’t gone to school or aren’t good enough to make enough money for a life.  These are false beliefs. People deserve to have a life. Working people deserve a living wage. We know this.

    We also realize that we Americans are all products of an effective and expensive marketing system that works hard to convince us to attend to our own needs and not bother with the needs of others.  Other countries are poor because they are dumb, or animalistic or ignorant and undeserving.  We have been sold a humongous pack of lies about how to live successfully.  We are the most selfish country on planet Earth.  We use the most resources and do the most damage world wide.

    Please don’t stop reading and don’t start wallowing in guilty.  Let’s take action, real action, effective action.

    How do we help our revolution?  How do we change America?  How do we give truth to power?

    In every work position that we hold, think of people first.  If you are a supervisor, hire at the maximum starting pay.  Give raises, give them lavishly.  $15.00 an hour is but $31,200.00 a year.  Make sure that every human being that works for you earns at least $15.00 an hour.  If someone makes $18.00 an hour, give them 20.00 an hour to increase their abilities in life.

    If you work for a government entity and you can help people by approving applications for food stamps, for college financial aid or any other such agency functions, do it.  Over-approve your budget and then demand more!  Many government positions I have held, I worked with people who were parsimonious, and who treated government funding as if it was their own bank account.  No, this is tax money, taken from the people to be used for the people.  Give it away!  All of it.  Each and every time, you get a chance to approve an application, think of this baby, who will be hungry if you say no.

    This baby deserves your positive vote.

    If you are woke, help others to be woke.  If you don’t have a job that can help others, surely you can speak truth to power.  Demand answers that take into consideration the human factor.  Ask Victoria’s Secret why they use child labor in their cotton fields.  If you don’t receive an answer, then stop buying Victoria’s Secret.  Then spread the word, always, spread the word.  Let us let everyone know who and which companies are taking advantage of human beings.

    The wealthy can only take advantage of us with our permission.  Stop giving legislators and capitalist permission to rape your bank account.  Speak the truth.   We know that the only tax breaks promulgated this year (2019) were for large corporations and wealthy families.  Do everything in your power to vote against those people who made these unfair taxes a reality of our American life.  Do everything in your power to let people know who robbed us of a fair tax economy.  Tell everyone!  You can change this awful reality, just by speaking, talking and helping others.

    Lastly, spread kindness.  Every single time that you want to be angry and punch someone, STOP, reach deep inside of your heart and pull out kindness.  You are in traffic because you have somewhere to go.  Leave others to their ugly behavior.  Be the one, who gives care and thoughtfulness into the universe.

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  • Economic Equality (A Goal),  Psychology of Life,  World Affairs

    Shoes, Karaoke and the Demise of America

    May 23, 2019

    James Corden found out that Celine Dion has ten thousand (10,000) pairs of shoes. During carpool karaoke, James laughingly forced Celine to give away several pair of her shoes. She gripped the shoes lovingly before relinquishing them with anxious words.

    When the Philippines president’s wife, Imelda Marcos, had one thousand (1,000, [I heard it was 2,000]) pairs of “luxury” shoes, the whole world gasped and expressed shock. No one could believe how much greed went into such decisions.

    Of course, there is no comparison between the two. Imelda Marcos was a greedy criminal, who put herself above and before her country’s people. Her and her husband have the Guinness World Record for having stolen the most amount of money from a country. They robbed the country until the poor were starving. Imelda and her husband Ferdinand lived lavishly in palaces, with an unlimited spend budget.

    I don’t want to mistake these two women at all: Imelda Marcos and Celine Dion. The only thing that they have in common is a love for shoes.

    Shoes by Jaclyn Moy, Unsplash


    What I want to address is the view that we Americans have in regards to wealth. Over the weekend, a wealthy philanthropist paid all student loans for a graduating class at Morehouse college. Later, a public comment was made about Oprah Winfrey, something to the effect of “why did she only give a book to the graduating class when she delivered her commencement speech? Why didn’t she pay off the debts of the graduating class?” Of course, this question was meant to be hurtful to Oprah Winfrey…

    What I want to ask, is it ridiculous that Celine Dion has 10,000 pairs of shoes? We have a predatory capitalist society that has murdered and buried the middle class. Do the wealthy owe something to the country that has made them wealthy? Is it ok for unwitting wealthy people to stand aside and allow this country’s poor to suffer hunger and to die from a lack of health care?

    Is it okay for women like Celine Dion to have ten thousand pairs of shoes when there are thousands of women who cannot afford an outfit to wear to a job interview? Is it okay for the wealthy to stand aside, perhaps donating a bit to their churches and synagogues in order to assuage guilt; and to allow the masses of this country to be abolished by predatory capitalism?

    I don’t think that the comment to Oprah was appropriate. I do think that we can ask those that are more fortunate, if they will contribute to making this country a much better place. It’s not enough for us to elect a good president.

    There is so much more that must be done to reverse the trend of predatory capitalism. There is so much more to do to reverse the complete control that the military complex has on our tax dollars. We need to take those dollars and invest in the human beings that live in this country. We must make sure that the minimum wage is a fair one. We must build roads and schools and even libraries. We must make advanced education available to all who want to do the work of it. We must take profit out of health care and recognize that health care is a human right. We must do all of these things to recognize that humans are the greatest wealth of a nation.

    Caleb Woods, Unsplash

    We need to get it right and we need to do it soon, and if we don’t, you can be sure that all is lost. So, Oprah Winfrey, if you’re listening, use your influence, not to sell a product, not to sell a book, but to help this America find its true north.

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  • It is What it is...,  Love and Relationships,  Personal Growth

    Unidimensional Point of View, I Hope That’s Not You

    May 21, 2019

    A UPV is a point of view that you have developed on your own with no input from any other person.

    Notebook by Marcus Spiske, Unsplash

    If the only way you know how to argue is by being aggressive and mean, you are suffering from UPV: Unidimensional Point of View.

    I don’t care who you are, if all you want to do is talk about your own point of view, you are suffering from UPV.

    If you have “heard it all before”, you are suffering from UPV.

    If you are smarter than anyone else, then you are probably suffering from UPV.

    Society serves the purpose of diverse and original thinking shared among others. This sharing helps us to check one’s self. The point is that we live so much better when we are in congress with others. We must have others that are different than we are, and it must be others who are willing to be honest. A sycophant doesn’t help you to learn. A sycophant simply agrees with your unidimensional point of view.

    Notebook by Fabian Grohs, Unsplash

    You can only have a UPV if you are alone, or are so powerful that no one is willing to disagree with you. This is a problem only for anyone who is interested in learning or growing.

    This doesn’t alarm some people. Some people would rather have their own unique point of view than to have humans in their life. They would rather be alone than to invite others into their verbal space. Still others will contrive power and use that power to keep their own opinions without conflict. These are the weak. These are the people who cannot handle a point of view that is different than their own. These folks live inside of their own mind. No other mind invited, nor welcomed.

    Sometimes, many people suffer from UPV as a group, and that is called groupthink. This happens when everyone has the same point of view and no dissenting opinion is allowed.

    If you are comfortable with your belief system, then you are probably suffering from UPV. It takes challenge to be open minded, it takes an uncomfortable feeling in order to consider other beliefs, other opinions and other points of view than your own. It’s painful to hear someone else’s opinion, particularly when it doesn’t reflect your own. Yet it’s healthy.

    If you want to learn, if you want to be part of others lives, if you want to be part of this wide world, you must be practiced at listening. You must be capable of listening to others in order to have them in your life. When this is true, when you want others in your life, when you are open, you can no longer be unidimensional and you become multidimensional. Is this you?

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