Sometimes that Harper Faulkner Gets a Little too Real

English: A Little Baggage (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I am happily reading your posts and relishing every moment.  It’s 5:25 pm on a Tuesday  and I am pretty pleased with myself that this day has not gone to waste.  Yet.  I did a lovely reorganization of my living quarters that ended up being an exhausting but rewarding endeavour.  Then I click on The Measure of Success .  I read the quotation that’s been on his mind and think ‘Uh Oh’, because then he asks a question.

So the question I am asking myself this morning, and asking you, is what problems in 2012 did you bring with you into 2013 and can you, without needed outside intervention, solve those problems right now, right here, today?

Many of you, my delicious sources of entertainment, often ask questions in your posts.   I always consider them and then sometimes tuck them away for future consideration (avoidance at its best), possibly even find an easy answer for (slightly delusional here), and sometimes I face it head on (though I may not share my thoughts with you).

But it is difficult when HF asks a question.  He seems so sincere in the asking that one feels that answering is unavoidable.  I have been wrestling with my baggage for sometime now – months, and decide at times that it really is not important so there should be no struggle, but its a convenient answer and does not address the issue.  I have even bravely asked myself how I see the me I want to be, but yikes that is really scary so I don’t spend a lot of time on the thought.  But the thought keeps returning.  Again and again.

I did leave a comment for him, but then realized I could not adequately answer in a comment.

We have baggage because it must give us something, provide something – maybe excuses.  I honestly don’t know the answer to that one.

I read on a blog sometime ago, and wish I could remember whose it was, that someone they knew had been in a coma for months, and then suddenly sat up one day and said, “Nothing matters” and then died.  That has taken up residence in my palace of thoughts and while I consider all kinds of possible meanings, I have failed to arrive at any conclusions.

You know in my time as a nurse (many decades) I have been present at a lot of deaths.  Most have been wonderful experiences but some people have expressed that they wish they had done life differently or done something differently or wished they had made different decisions.  Some expressed regret that they had not done enough.  Enough is a pretty personal measurement so who can judge?

When I was younger I used to think that I would die with no regrets, that I would follow every path I could.  But that is a very naive thought because for every path we follow, every choice we make, we leave so many others undone.  Which in some strange way takes me back to the whole baggage thing for there is much that is undone, and yes until I can shed baggage it will be difficult to accomplish.

HF you certainly have stoked the fires of my soul, plainly asking what I have spent so long skirting around.  I don’t even have a whole answer as to the what or the how, but I guess I had better get on with it.  Procrastination is perhaps not as permanent a solution I hoped it was.

Daily Prompt: In Loving Memory and The Last Word

An oil lamp, the symbol of nursing in many countries (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (video game) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

‘Write Your Obituary‘

 

Christine loved words.  And her favorite were the last words.

She lived her life well enough to bring special meaning to the word, ‘Regrets, I’ve had a few”

But they certainly were too few to mention.

She never quite took life seriously enough feeling it was all so transient

And most of tragedy had a good maniacal comedy about it.

Life itself was not a joke to Chris, it was the seriousness that people persist in believing it to be that was funny.

Christine wanted to impart some good to the world so she became a nurse and thought, ‘Yes this is doing good.’

Then she became a teacher of nurses and thought, ‘If I can fill one person with the passion for nursing that I have then that is good.’

Then she became a manager and director thinking she could make the most impact there.

She sat in Queen’s Park on the Emergency Health Services Committee and though, ‘Yes here I can make a difference.’

By the time she retired Christine wondered if in fact she had made even a ripple in the great ocean of health care and then

It occurred to her that she had – not to the great cumbersome machine itself but to individuals which may seem small but in the larger picture is not.

Christine raised two sons who were her pride.  She loved each fiercely and respected them and their families in all the choices of their lives.

She had two great great loves in her life – her grandsons and the opportunity to be in the moment with them every day meant more to her than all the riches on earth.

She thought herself a poet and writer but the best stories stayed deep within.

She wanted her death – well her passing since death itself does not exist – to be a time of great joy and hilarity.

No tears – do not let the best part of her earthly being, the joy, insane laughter and stories be lost to sadness.

Get out and party and laugh.

Talk about the time she and B got lost in the golf club parking lot and could not find their way out.

Talk about the time she and J CSI’d the vacuum cleaner bag.

Talk about the time…the time…

Christine would want you to know that you should be smiling and laughing this very moment

And all of the ‘times’ she remembered are on CD for your viewing pleasure because after

All – She did want the last word!!

 

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Measuring Success

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom. – General George Patton.

I’ve been thinking about challenges lately, overcoming challenges, and what success is. What is a successful person? What is success? That got me wondering about how to measure success. There are a multitude of companies out there who make their success by talking about the measurement of success, and really that is all you can do – talk about it. They purport to motivate, help you define your own meaning of success, and as the presentations are paid for by the company you work for, usually to meet the company’s definition of success.

There are all kinds of tools out there to help you measure, to help you know that yes you are or are not successful. I’m thinking that the only way true way is not by measurement of any sort but by feeling. I’m thinking that success is immeasurable.

We, I, look at someone else and say, “That person is successful.” But when you speak to that person, he or she may not perceive being successful. Is success being satisfied with what you have rather than striving for something you do not have? Are we being deceived for the purpose of gain to believe that we must want, that we should strive?

I have always thought of Demi Moore as successful, someone whose work I admire (although I do acknowledge it is easy to confuse the actor with the character). She would say, I think, she is unsuccessful because her want is unsatisfied. How do we know that? She said, “What scares me is that I’m going to ultimately find out at the end of my life that I’m really not loveable.”

Even if you concede that success is something defined by each person the measurement of success is still feeling and not really measurable at all. Suppose your definition is money. Suppose you have eighty percent of the world’s money but are still not satisfied. It is not the acquisition of money, it is the feeling that it is enough.

Yup I’m thinking success is a feeling and no number of charts, written goals or affirmations can define success.
Feel it. Be it. Don’t measure it by someone else’s yard stick.

5 Minutes of Grateful for the Gypsy Mama

Five minute Fridays are always fun and today Mama has asked for thoughts on ‘Grateful”

5 Minutes of Grateful For the Gypsy Mama

 

I am:

 

Grateful for the words I read each day,

Posted by others struggling to say

A message, of love, of thought, of angst

Shared so we stand not alone but as one.

 

A collective of thought, a collection

Of words and feelings, a connection

Binding our souls and minds as one

All facets of a precious stone.

 

Times up!