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You’ve got to find what you love

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Alfie is seventy-two-years old and decides to leave his wife of forty years, and have a good time. He meets a twenty-something call girl, and dates her. So why not a Ferrari instead of a call girl? you may ask, well, Anthony Hopkins who plays the character Alfie, in the movie,You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, says, “Everyone makes mistakes in life and this guy made a big mistake. It cost him his marriage and probably his life. Fear rules so many of our lives, and in our lives we try to accumulate and gather as much as we can because at the back of our mind,the end is in sight.”

(If you wish to listen to the interview, please click the link)

 

Furthermore, Hopkins states the moral of, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, the latest Woody Allen film is probably,”Carpe diem.”
Anthony Hopkins says, “We live and then we die, so what’s the big deal. Don’t analyze it. I gave up trying to figure it out years ago.” He then quotes a riddle from Yeats and interprets as, “Don’t try to find meaning in life, because you won’t. There may be a meaning, and there may not be one, none of us know, it’s all a mystery, and it’s all a dream.”
I find wisdom in his words, and a sense of relief, that sometimes, when life becomes overwhelming, we create problems that have not yet occurred, and may never happen, so why do we waste time worrying?
Another story taken from Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer, during his commencement address at Stanford University in 2005, also ties in with what Anthony Hopkins says. Jobs talks about death, since doctors initially told him he had three to six months left to live. This changed the way he thought about his life.
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: ‘If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.’ It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
I hope you’re already living the life you love to the fullest. I know some people are struggling, however, we need to stop letting different kinds of fear rule our lives.

Have you found what you love?

How to be good

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Most of us like the idea of being good, and since it can mean different things to each one of us, I’d like to explore this topic a little deeper.

As a little girl, being “good” meant obeying my parents, doing well in school and feeling good when someone told my mother, “She’s a good little girl.”

As we grow older, how to be good is generally associated with giving to others, whether it’s a listening ear, helping someone in need, or volunteering our time for what we perceive to be a “good” cause.

I don’t know if you’ve read the book, How to be Good, by Nick Hornby, but I highly recommend it. Not only is the author male, but his protagonist is a mother, wife and doctor, and Hornby captures the true essence of what it’s like to be a wife living with a grumpy, rude, negative husband, who writes a grumpy, rude, negative newspaper column about things that irritate him in his world

Wanting to file for divorce, something strange happens.Rather than trusting his wife, the Doctor, to heal his back aches and headaches, he finds a quack to heal him. His name is DJ Goodnews, and with his hot hands, he not only cures David’s aches and pains, but transforms him into a good man.

Since David is no longer the same man, and thus can no longer write negative columns, he wants to change his family, including his two kids, aged eight and ten, and forces them to give away half their toys, and one of their computers. Together with DJ Goodnews, who moves in with them, David starts an “adopt a homeless teenager into your home,” neighborhood program.

Being good, is taken to the other extreme, and he shows the consequences of what being too good can do to a family.

It’s interesting to think that there are limits on being good. What’s your opinion?
I shall write mine in the comments section,

What does number 11 mean?

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Since turning 47, number eleven keeps popping up, and I find it comforting, like my own security blanket. I wake up almost every night at 2:11, 4:11, and finally get up at 5:11 when I make strong coffee. As the coffee brews, I microwave the milk in a Pyrex measuring cup, setting the timer for one minute and eleven seconds. Why? I attribute eleven to good fortune, an omen of sorts. Last year, I stapled a check for $1,100,000, to the right of my computer screen. I made it out to me, and Random House signed it. The date on the check is 9/11. Why? I plan on turning a day the world will never forget, into a day I shall always remember.

I pour coffee and hot milk into my favorite dark blue coffee mug; the one with “Michigan Mom,” written in lemon, yellow cursive. This is the mug my problem son gave me in a cardboard box last Christmas. It has been 361 days since I last hugged my son, but the counting stopped yesterday. He is home for the holidays now legally an adult.

Sitting down on my swivel chair, I feel popular today; the way I assume a cheer leader must feel. Thirty-seven people commented on my blog post and my self-confidence is soaring. People care about me and each comment receives my undivided attention.

A loud clanging sound breaks my concentration. Not used to hearing the front door open this early, I forget that my son is home for the holidays. Dressed in gray sweatpants and a Michigan T-shirt, his face hasn’t changed, but his body looks trained for a body building contest.

“Morning,” he says in a voice deeper than the last time he was home. “Any coffee for me?”

“Yes, I made extra,” I say.

His movements are loud. Cabinets open and slam shut. Fridge door closes hard.

“Sleep well? Not too cold?” I ask.

“Not bad. The shed’s a little cold, but Cookie keeps me warm,” he said.

With both hands cupped around the mug, he sits on the leather couch, in darkness.

“Want the TV on?” I ask.

“I never watch TV,” he says.

Is he waiting for me to come over and talk to him? Does he think I’m a selfish mom for spending time looking at my blog comments rather than talking to him?

My shoulders are hunched over, as though hiding my face will lessen my feelings of guilt.

“Want a refill?” I ask, bad conscience lifting me out of the swivel chair. I pick up my mug, making sure “Michigan Mom” faces him as I head towards the leather armchair.

So I want to ask him, “Do you have a girlfriend?” or “What are your grades?” but fear coming across as the inquisitive mom bombarding him with questions. Instead I decide to break the ice by talking about myself first and then, who knows, he might open up and tell me a little about his life in Michigan.

“I just got an e-mail from a German friend Inge,” I say. “She invited me to spend a weekend in San Francisco,” I continue. “She’s earned enough frequent flier miles and invited me to be her guest. Isn’t that nice of her?” I add. After a long pause, my son turns towards me and says, “Why would anyone want to invite you as their friend? You’re no fun and not entertaining.”

Eleven years have passed and the blow hurts even more today. Perhaps there’s more to the number eleven than I know.

I wrote the above short story for my memoir class.
Do any of you see eleven whenever you look at a clock, or is it just me? Does anyone know what it means?

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

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“We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it.” Would you agree?

This morning I listened to Sir Ken Robinson’s presentation on the educational system. I urge you to watch it, if you haven’t already. Not only do I find his speech thought provoking, but he also has an incredible sense of humor.

He claims that, “Creativity is as important in education as literacy and that we should treat it with the same status?”
Do you agree?

Picasso said, “All kids are born artists.” The problem is, how do we remain artists as we grow up? It’s our fear of making mistakes and being wrong that causes our loss of creativity as we grow older.

Sir Ken gave the example of a six-year-old girl who hardly ever paid attention in class. One day, during a drawing lesson, she finally sat still. The teacher asked her, “What are you drawing?” the girl said, “I’m drawing a picture of God.” The teacher responded, “But no one knows what God looks like.” To which the little girl said, “They will in a minute.”

Sir Ken claims that we run our companies in the same way as our educational system. “We stigmatize mistakes, and we run our education system this way, where mistakes are the worst thing we can make, and the result is we’re educating people out of their creative capacities.”

As a writer, I’m teaching myself to become more creative. Classes are offered in creative writing and now I wonder if that’s because we lost our creativity in school and as adults, we’re trying to get it back. Just as Picasso said, “We’re all born artists.” We just have to remain artists as we grow up.

Sir Ken points out something very interesting. Every education system has the same hierarchy of subjects. At the top are mathematics and language, then the humanities and at the bottom, the arts. Even within the arts there’s a hierarchy. Art and music are generally given a higher status than drama and dance. There isn’t an education system in the world that teaches dance everyday, the way we teach mathematics. Why not? Dance is very important as is math. Children dance all the time if they’re allowed to. We all have bodies. As children grow up, we start educating them progressively from the waist up, and then we focus on the heads, and then only one side of the brain.

If you’re a teacher, have children or grandchildren, and even if you look back at your own education, what do you think about education killing creativity?

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