Picking up the apples

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could. 

~Louise Erdrich  (from her book: The Painted Drum)

I am also literally reminded of how much fruit goes to waste in the community garden: apples, pears, plums, berries. There is bounty all around us, provided by nature, and so many people ignore it. Why? Why do we take these gifts for granted? I'll never understand it. It's hard work to pluck the fruit and to process it in different ways, but so rewarding when you take stock some weeks later of how much fruit you've managed to freeze down, make jams and jellies from, conserve (spiced pears come to mind, or plums in rum), or eat. Thanksgiving Day takes on a whole new meaning for me when I realize how much the early settlers depended on the bounty of the land for their survival. So while the analogy above is about apples as opportunities to live one's life in the most meaningful way possible, the actuality of picking up the apples also provides us with food to keep us alive. When you see how apples are produced, you will be less inclined to waste them by letting them lie on the ground or hang unpicked in the trees. And the reality of the bounty given to us will usher in new ways of looking at our life here on earth. So then we won't waste our lives or the bounty given us. 

Random reflections on this autumn day

• I'm one year retired. No regrets. I love my free time and am enjoying life in a whole new way. 
• Since I retired, I've published three books: a poetry collection (Movements Through the Landscape); a memoir about growing up in Tarrytown, New York (A Town and a Valley. Growing Up in Tarrytown and the Hudson Valley); and a meditative book about gardening (The Gifts of a Garden). All of them are available for purchase on Amazon. I am working very hard to market the latter book, although I'd like all of the books to sell a bit if possible. Sending prayers into the universe for support.
• Marketing books is a job unto itself. I wonder how well other authors do this job.
• Forty years ago, I started working at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. A wonderful workplace, one I will never forget. It changed my life in all good ways and showed me what good leadership really is (professional generosity and wishing others well). 
• I think about those friends and colleagues who are no longer with us. I wish they were still here--Liza, Thu, Debby. You left us too soon. 
• I think about friends who are ill and what they go through every day, living with anxiety and the knowledge that they cannot do what they once could do. 
• Enjoyed visiting the new Munch Museum: Munchmuseet in Oslo today with my husband. We visited the old Munch Museum at Tøyen when I first came to Oslo; I was only vaguely aware then of Edvard Munch's paintings. Over the years I've developed an appreciation of his works. The museum is worth visiting. 
• We ate dinner at Villa Paradiso (Italian restaurant) afterward. I thought how nice it was to do this together, go out on a Saturday afternoon, and I mentioned to him that we should do things like this more often. He agreed. He will be retiring soon, so it will be interesting to see what life will be like then when we have more time together. 
• Munch was preoccupied with sickness, death, mortality (his mother and sister died of tuberculosis when he was young). Illness in general, including mental illness. His was not a very happy life. But he was an amazing artist. The acknowledgment of our mortality. Some say it becomes more acute once one turns sixty. All I know is that I've been living with this knowledge since I was a teenager and watched my father experience heart attacks and strokes. His first heart attack occurred when I was twelve years old; he died when I was twenty-nine. Mortality became real to me as well once I read Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem 'Spring and Fall--to a young child' as a teenager. Perhaps I shouldn't have read it and internalized it. But I did, and it has stuck with me since then, especially the last two lines: 'It is the blight man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for'. Do we mourn for ourselves, for the knowledge that our lives will eventually merge into the river of time that sweeps us all onward?
• Everyone ages. Some are more afraid of it than others. Some feel the need to change their faces and looks in order to stay young-looking. But it doesn't really work. It changes how you look even if it may make you look younger, and if you are a celebrity, everyone comments. If it changes how you look, does that change who you are? Do you really believe that you are younger? I don't judge others if they want to go down this road, but I think it is probably easier to just accept the gradual changes associated with aging. Look in the mirror. Or don't. My mother would have said 'just live your life. Get on with it'. She was right about so many things. 
• Does having faith make it easier to deal with one's mortality? Perhaps. I'd rather have faith than not have it. But no one knows what life is like after death, since no one has come back to tell us about it, except Christ. And one must accept his words about eternity, in faith. 
• Faith is defined as 'complete trust or confidence in someone or something'; also 'a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof'. Our society requires proof, evidence, hard facts. Hard to come by where the afterlife is concerned. If someone we once knew and loved rose from the dead before our eyes, I think we would freak out completely. 
• I am now a gardener. That is my identity for at least six months of the year. I am happy in that knowledge. Working with the earth completes me. I don't need much else when I am in my garden. My soul is happy there. It's where I find God. That's all that matters to me. 
• I share my garden photos with others, and they tell me that I am a master gardener. It's nice to hear, but it's not why I share the photos. I want to share the beauty that my soul 'sees'. I hope that others find peace and serenity the way I have found it. That's why I wrote 'The Gifts of a Garden'. 
• I think about so many things when I am working in my garden. There is something about weeding that encourages reflection. I connect with my garden in a silent communion; we talk without the actual utterance of words, but they are uttered in my head. I've learned that if you treat living things well, they will shine. They will do their best to be the best versions of themselves that they can be. If it's true for flowers and plants, it's true for humans (and animals) too.
• As a country (the USA), we need less emphasis on what divides us, and more emphasis on what unites us. The media have had far too much to say about what divides us. But we can choose to listen to it, or to not listen to it. I choose the latter, most of the time. Many women I know have done the same. There is no point in becoming an angry person if that anger does not lead you in the right direction, toward something positive--changing yourself or the situations that infuriate you. If you are constantly angry at everything, your anger is not rational or logical. 
• The orange-haired man appears to be imploding. It had to happen at one point. He's an old man now and he looks it. His behavior borders on deranged. How he's kept up the facade for this long is anyone's guess. 
• As Tania Tetlow--the new president (first woman president) of Fordham University--states, 'we build a common good with ethics, empathy, and faith'. Not with amorality, hardness of heart, and lack of faith. Humans must have hope in order to go on. Our job as Christians is to appeal to that hope in every person we meet. 

The killing of Freya

Much has been written about the murder of Freya, the young female walrus who made the fatal mistake of entering Norwegian waters. It has been uplifting to read that many Norwegians absolutely do not support the needless and cruel shooting of an animal that brought joy to so many. The authorities who made the decision to shoot her are callous and should be held accountable. But they won't be. Because this is Norway anno 2022, where no one is held accountable for anything they do. I saw and experienced that often in my former workplace. If you try to get the name of a person 'responsible' for a particular policy, action, or statement, you won't get it. You'll get the names of people in the department that made the decision, yes, but you'll never get to know who actually made the decision to do this or that, in this case, to kill Freya. This is done to 'protect' the person who made the decision from hate mail, threats, and so on. Understandable? Unfortunately, yes, because in our day and age there are so many nutcases that walk the streets looking for someone on whom they can vent their aggression and craziness. But it never had to come to the point of killing Freya, and someone should be held responsible. There were so many other alternatives available, and the authorities settled on the easiest one--pick up a gun and kill the animal(s) causing the problem. That is often the alternative that is chosen in Norway. It is not a nation that opts to learn how to coexist peacefully with wildlife. 

My husband calls me 'dyrenes venn', which translated to English means 'friend of the animals'. He says it affectionately when I tell him about the bumblebees that died in the garden flowers, or the cat that takes a nap in my greenhouse, or the birds that take a communal bath in the birdbath. He knows that my interests lie in preserving life of all kinds to the best of my ability. I am not their literal friend, rather a protector of some sort. I sometimes feel like I am channeling my mother, because she used to behave the same way. That doesn't mean that I am able to prevent them being killed all of the time. I do step on (and kill) ants and other insects, but I don't do it intentionally. Every time I see an ant on a city sidewalk scurrying across the pavement, I step around it because I know that it's on its way home to the anthill after a busy day. Not so different from us humans. My garden has revealed the connection to all life that exists, no matter how small and insignificant, from the tiny ants to the larger brown slugs (which the garden board would like us to kill but which I cannot bring myself to do any longer), to the large crows and magpies that frequent the garden. I have a particular fondness for the light brown spiders that scurry around on the greenhouse floor when I disturb them in my hunt for a rake or other tool. They are harmless, more afraid of me than I ever could be of them (I'm not afraid of them). My husband likes spiders as well; he does not kill them and actually welcomes them in his boat because they do the job they were put here on earth to do and don't bother anyone. Even yellow jackets, as annoying as they are, have a job to do. I'm not always sure what it is, but I am not interested in killing them for no reason. And that is the crux of the matter--killing any living thing for no reason is just plain wrong. Doing so places you in the realm of the psychopaths. 

Reverence for life. I have that reverence and perhaps have always had it, but it is full-on now, I think because I am getting older. Our lives and the lives around us--human and animal alike--are short. It makes no sense to end lives needlessly. It's just cruel and shows that we lack empathy for living beings of all kinds. In that respect, I am beginning to consider the use of animals for food. We still eat meat, but much less than we used to, because I see that animals suffer at our hands in the meat industry. I saw that last summer when we stayed at a historic hotel that also raised chickens 'humanely', as the owners proclaimed. I didn't think the conditions for the little chicks were so humane; thousands of them were packed into a huge sunless garage with small windows, and fed and watered there. They never roamed outdoors, never felt the sun on their bodies, never foraged for insects and food on their own. I thought that if this was humane treatment, what does inhumane treatment look like? Perhaps I don't want to know. 

I want to live in a world that doesn't kill beings like Freya, who seemed to like being around humans. Whenever we establish any sort of bond with animals, birds, and insects, we are responsible for how we treat them. That means that we should not pursue those bonds if we are not willing to step up to the plate to protect the beings in question. It means that we don't encourage dangerous wildlife to become human-friendly. It means that we do not kill them unless our lives are actually threatened by them in a one-on-one confrontation as sometimes happens. I am not advocating for the anthropomorphization of animals (attributing human characteristics or behavior to an animal). I am simply saying that learning to coexist with them is the best policy. Let them go about their business as we go about ours. 

Freya's needless death, her murder, has been news now for the past few days. The media will move on from her and her death will be forgotten or relegated to the back burner in the relentless quest for more important stories. But I will not forget her, nor will I forget how Norway treated her. The way a country treats animals has a lot to say about the country. The lack of empathy for Freya tells me all I need to know. 

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I'm adding a postscript to this article, an update as to what the authorities have done with the body of Freya. They transported her body from Sandvika harbor to Ås, where the veterinary institute on the Ås university campus autopsied her. The distance from Sandvika to Ås is about 26 miles. God knows when and how they transported her; no one even knows at what time they shot her. Transport probably happened at night when no one was around to protest. That would be appropriately cowardly for these types of authorities. So to be completely clear: they had the money to move her dead body 26 miles so that she could be autopsied, but not the money to sedate her and to move her further out to sea, which probably would have cost far less. They took the easy way out as I wrote in my previous post about Freya. I hope their consciences plague them for the rest of their lives. 

Another way of looking at it

Another way of looking at life's detours.......

Grateful for the friends who didn't make life a competition

My favorite line--the friends who didn't make life a competition, but rather a grand adventure that became better together. I'm so grateful for my closest friends, because we have shared some wonderful adventures together, and have not wasted our lives competing with each other. We care about each other and love each other, and always have each other's backs. I consider myself blessed to have such friends in my life. 

Quotes for weary souls

It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit. --Robert Louis Stevenson

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search of it when he has grown old. For no age is too early or too late for the health of the soul. –Epicurus

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body. --Abraham Maslow

Rest when you're weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work. --Ralph Marston

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do. --Eric Hoffer

Some of our life experience makes us weary of love and make it difficult to forgive others. –Parvathy

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary. --Joyce Meyer

We can be tired, weary and emotionally distraught, but after spending time alone with God, we find that He injects into our bodies energy, power and strength. --Charles Stanley

Christian, learn from Christ how you ought to love Christ. Learn a love that is tender, wise, strong; love with tenderness, not passion, wisdom, not foolishness, and strength, lest you become weary and turn away from the love of the Lord. --Saint Bernard

If we grow weary and give up, the goal remains for someone else to achieve. --Zig Ziglar

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. --Paul the Apostle

We shall not grow weary of waiting upon God if we remember how long and how graciously He once waited for us. --Charles Spurgeon

I would go to the deeps a hundred times to cheer a downcast spirit. It is good for me to have been afflicted, that I might know how to speak a word in season to one that is weary. --Charles Spurgeon

I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral. --Robert Louis Stevenson

 

Pauses, trial runs, and life lessons

Nearly three months working from home, and I’ve learned more about myself. The learning never really ends. One of the biggest surprises was that I don’t miss going to an actual place of work. I’ve gone into work about four times since lockdown started, to update files and directories on the hospital network that I don’t have access to from home, and to water the plants. I thought I would miss whatever little social interactions there are, but I don’t. They are so few these days anyway that they no longer really matter—a short conversation in the hallway, but mostly just greeting co-workers when I run into them in the hallways. No long conversations, no lunches, no after-work get-togethers. These are things of the past, my distant past. Like most other things relegated to the past, you can miss them or not. It won’t make too much difference. The river of life carries us ever onward, toward new and unexplored destinations to which I look forward.

I view this time as a trial run for retirement. I’ve discovered that I’ll be fine. I enjoy having control over my time, my plans, and my daily schedule. I won’t miss meetings (virtual or otherwise), and I won’t miss deadlines, filing reports, waiting for answers to emails (that rarely come), or the perpetual babble about new visions and new ways to solve problems that no one really wants to solve, or that no one has the budgets to solve. Because in the final analysis, what would solve so many problems is to have the manpower to really effect change. But we cannot have that. So we go on pretending that problems that require manpower, are solvable without it. It’s a catch-22 and I’m tired of playing the game. I won’t anymore. I’ve also discovered that I’m practically-oriented; if I see a solution to a problem, I want to implement it. That’s not always allowed, for some of the reasons mentioned above.

I’ve also discovered that I’m not a particularly loyal person anymore in a work context. I was, once upon a time, but circumstances change and you come to realize that loyalty is often viewed by management as blind obedience. I can’t do that—be blindly obedient. I wasn’t raised that way; additionally, Catholic education encouraged us to think for ourselves, look at both sides, and make reasoned decisions accordingly. Facts were important, and truth was something to be aimed at. I cannot pretend that ‘the emperor is wearing new clothes’ when he or she is in fact naked. I am not loyal in that way, and never will be. It’s one of the reasons that I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican; I grew up in a bipartisan family and plan on remaining bipartisan. There are good reasons for that, which I’ll write about in another post. Suffice it to say that trying to see both sides is something that more leaders should add to their skills toolbox. Being honest about specific situations is another one.

I’ve also discovered that for all the different ways we have to communicate, we don’t really communicate effectively in a work context. We’ve lost the ability to listen well; I am not saying people don’t listen to each other, but they come to most encounters with their own agenda (myself included), and it’s very hard to catch oneself while behaving that way. It mostly amounts to learning to shut up. One can start there and move forward. I think our current political leaders could learn to do the same. Because once you learn to shut up, empathy starts to rear its head. There is no empathy without real listening. ‘Listen unto others as you would have them listen unto you’. Learning to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes is a question of training, and it’s hard work. I have two friends with debilitating neurological illnesses, and what they complain about the most is the lack of empathy they deal with every day. They do not feel ‘seen’ or listened to, and that is a complaint that many elderly in our society also have. My mother used to say that she felt invisible the older she got. She was not an aggressive person; had she been so, outcomes might have been different. My mother and those in her generation grew up differently. Society at present is harsh, dog-eat-dog, intent on measuring how young, successful, beautiful, handsome, or wealthy you are, at all costs. If you don’t measure up, you’re not worth much. Old age is viewed as your own fault, about which you should do something. It’s viewed as an illness or a problem, not as a natural evolution. And yet, all living persons will get old and die one day. That’s just life. No amount of wishful thinking or plastic surgery will prevent that.

I’ve also realized that I’m ‘so over’ much that strikes me as stupid or inane. I have no patience for listening to bullshit, and no patience for people who do not use their intelligence. I have no patience for unkind people; if you want to be in my circle, kindness is one of the keys for entrance. I won’t be unkind toward unkind people; I just simply walk away from them. I won’t give them the opportunity to unleash their rage or frustration on me or others. I am not interested in what they have to say. I have given such people more leeway in my life previously, but no more. If you are unhappy with your life, stay away from me, unless you want me to list up all of the things in your life for which you should be grateful. Go out and take a walk in nature, do volunteer work, or stop watching the inanity on television and social media. Change your life. It can be done.

A long road and the journey along it

Twenty years ago, I defended my doctoral work, after six long years of toil in the lab and in my office writing up the results of my hard work. While I no longer work in the lab full-time, I am and have been responsible for students (PhD and Masters) who do. One of the PhD students is finishing up her own work and hopes to submit her thesis early next year. We got to talking recently about the long journey that makes up the entirety of doctoral work. You don't reflect so much upon the journey when you are experiencing it, but when you are close to finishing or are finished (or are twenty years down the road), you realize just what an incredible and strange journey it's been. As the Grateful Dead sing "Lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it's been" (from their song Truckin'). The PhD journey is difficult, frustrating, tears-inducing, overwhelming, nerve-wracking, as well as intellectually-stimulating, mind-expanding, and rewarding on so many levels. When you're done, you realize what you have accomplished, and you realize mostly that the journey is about persistence. If you persist, you'll get there. There are hindrances along the way--demotivating mentors, indifferent mentors, projects that don't work out and need to be abandoned in favor of others, bad prioritizing, journals that refuse your articles, lack of funding--the list is long. If you persist in the face of all the hindrances, you'll realize that doctoral work is a microcosm of what life is all about. Nowadays a PhD takes about four years to complete with a requirement for at least two published articles and one manuscript; back in my day it took about six years with a requirement for at least five published articles. Four or six years in the space of an average lifespan is really not a lot of years, but when you're going through it, it can feel like forever.

Persistence is the key word for much of life. There are many hindrances along life's road. Some of them threaten to overwhelm us, and for some people, perhaps the hindrances are too many and they give up. But most people do not, and once you reach middle age, you realize that the journey is about persisting and overcoming obstacles. It is also about enjoying the ride, but happiness is rather fleeting, and is not a goal in and of itself. If there is happiness, it is found in the journey itself. So many students have said that to me, that they realized how much they really did enjoy the difficulties they faced, even though in the face of them, they complained and were frustrated. I know, because I was too. I know too that I have dealt with many obstacles since my PhD years, and not all of them led to pleasant places even though I overcame them. But in the midst of the unhappiness, there was the journey, the road, the way forward and the way out. I persisted, struggled, and made my way along the road, like so many before me and many that will come after me. Like my student now, who has had many more obstacles than I ever had. But she has persisted, and come to discover that she likes research, so much so that she can envision a future where she will make room for the intellectual pursuits of research. The funny thing about difficult journeys; you insist that you just want to get to the end of the journey, but when you do, you realize one thing. Ursula Le Guin says it best:
“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”

Quotes about Life

You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, love like you'll never be hurt, sing like there's nobody listening, and live like it's heaven on earth.   

― William W. Purkey

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

― Oscar Wilde

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

― Albert Einstein

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

― Albert Einstein

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

― Allen Saunders

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

― George Bernard Shaw

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

― Mark Twain

If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there.

― George Harrison

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.

― Virginia Woolf

Get busy living or get busy dying.

― Stephen King, Different Seasons

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

― Søren Kierkegaard

It isn't what you have or who you are or where you are or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about it.

― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

Until you value yourself

Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.    (M. Scott Peck)

I posted some little pearls of wisdom from the psychiatrist M. Scott Peck recently, but it is this particular quote that has stayed with me since then, so I know that it struck a chord in me. I have been preoccupied with this very thing since I started my blog in May of 2010—the idea that my time is valuable, that it is worth something and that it is important to use it well. Some of you may be thinking that this sounds strange. Didn’t I value myself and my time before then? The answer is yes, I did, but I often lived in an unaware state, perhaps thinking that I had all the time in the world to do this or that, to change my life, to pursue this or that hobby, or to get involved in this or that cause. But now I know better. Life is short. And my saying this is not about my being unduly or morbidly focused on mortality and a certain end, although that would be a good enough reason in and of itself to get up and get moving on the things I want to do and accomplish before I leave this life. It’s about being focused on living, on being a part of life, in all ways possible. It’s about living now and giving and getting as much out of life as is humanly possible. It’s about getting up off the couch and not watching too much TV or sitting in front of the computer for too long, it’s about not buying into everything that is written in the newspapers or in magazines, it’s about thinking for yourself and valuing your own ideas and creativity. It’s about not letting work take over your life to the exclusion of your family or your creativity. It’s not necessarily about parachute jumping or extreme sports (unless you really want to do that!—I don’t). But I do want to step up to my own plate—be present in my own life, be aware of the opportunities and freedoms that have been given to me. Because they are not few, I have realized that. We are given so many opportunities each day to be present to ourselves and to others. The question is whether we stay aware during our daily lives, or if we just end up doing things by rote, living according to worn-out routines, and not doing anything about it. There is comfort in old routines, that must be said, and I am not for discarding all of them just for the sake of doing so. But it’s important to figure out when to let go of things that don’t work for us anymore or when to let go of certain people who drag us down because they don’t want you to rise because it means that they might have to. And by letting go I mean, putting things and people in their rightful places and rising above their petty concerns, envy and negativity, not necessarily pushing them out of our lives completely. And that takes a change of mindset. It may not mean quitting your demoralizing job if you cannot for economic reasons, but it may mean separating yourself mentally from that job and rising above it in order to survive mentally and emotionally. It may mean a radical change in how you look at that job. It may mean a radical change in how you look at the people in your life as well. There are always some few people who are naysayers no matter what you do and say; instead of letting them get the better of you, just let go of their words. Don’t give their words any power over you. It is amazing how easily that can happen, almost as though there is a little person who lives inside each of us just waiting to be fed the negative words. We suck up the validation of ourselves as ‘not good enough’; we suck up the negativity and feel as though we deserve it--deserve the derision, negative comments, hostility, aggression or envy. We think that if we rise, it has to be at the cost of the happiness of others. It’s not true. This is negativity at work—this is what happens when we do not value ourselves. Because if we do not value ourselves and if we let the negativity in ourselves and from others win over us, we will not think about our time as something to be valued, and we will remain passive observers in our own lives because it will be easier not to rock our own boats or the boats of others.