Jane's Jottings

Mundanities and Profanities

recent posts

about

Bonne viveuse

  • Love & Learning in Life

    In our lifetimes we will come across many people, of all beliefs, colors, and classes.  We will like some, and have distaste for others based on the behaviors they display, and their personalities. 

    There is a general understanding that, regardless of how we feel about a stranger, it is wise to show him or her respect.  Sometimes, showing respect is as simple as not saying aloud the judgemental thoughts you are experiencing about them!  Respect is a way to love others.  There are, of course, multiple levels of respect, from minimalistically giving someone space, and staying peacefully quiet in their presence to outright revering someone for their wisdom, their fairness, and – in some cases – their heroism.  

    In the same way that not everyone we meet on this earth is our “cup of tea”, so we are not automatically liked by everyone whom we encounter.  Nor do we need to be.  

    Typically, we bond with individuals who share a similar outlook to ours, or with whom we share a common interest.  Sometimes, we forge friendships with those who have been thrown into the deep end of a situation along with us – maybe, basic training in the military, healthcare vocations, or traumatic scenarios in which we are compelled to join as a team to solve some predicament that affects us all.  

    During the course of our lives, there will be people with whom we develop a strong bond that lasts the course – that is, we stay friends until the day one or other of us passes on to the next world.  There will inevitably be people who breeze in and out of our lives tangentially, and these encounters will seem inconsequential … but that is not necessarily so.  The saying, “for a reason, a season, a lifetime” references that there is purpose behind each individual interaction in life.  

    Some contact occurs for us to showcase kindness during someone else’s sadness.   Challenging, and unexpected, confrontations usually always teach us a lesson – sometimes, the teaching is for us and the other person or people involved.  Often, we realize in hindsight that we could have reacted differently in a given situation.  Such awareness helps us to acquire wisdom and to grow as spirits.  Being human, after all, can be incredibly difficult!  

    It doesn’t matter how old we become, there are days on which we look back with some shame and regret because of how we responded to a given person or situation.  Yet, there are other times that we can be proud of how we handled a given set of circumstances.  Also, when we show grace to other human beings who are having a bad day, and not behaving their best, we store up good will in our own ‘bank account’ for others to show us grace in those same types of situations. 

    Be aware that there are people in life who refuse to see we are each in charge of our own happiness.  Such people inevitably face many bewildering experiences before they finally understand that they have been shooting themselves in the foot.  In the meantime, multiple other individuals who crossed paths with such as these self-saboteurs will pay the price of trying to befriend the head-burying deniers.  

    Balance is everything, in all spheres.  I have realized that it is actually possible to invest too much in a friendship – yes, that sounds ridiculous!  Yet, when someone wants perfection from you – as in, they do not grasp that you are as human as the rest, and expect you to behave altruistically ALL THE TIME – that is a sign of an individual who is mentally messed up.  

    Usually, the person who denies that you are human engages in projection.  So, not only do they dis you for being a human, but they also hypocritically project their own bad behavior onto you.  After you try open, honest discussion, and that doesn’t work, you understand you have to distance yourself for your own sanity.   If you receive any feedback at all, in the aftermath, it serves only to validate your walking away.  Accept that someone who works against him- or herself is disingenuous.  That is NOT your problem!  Take the lesson and move on.

  • Language

    When we learn another language, it teaches us things about our mother tongue, too. Early learning in our own language is by rote, that is, by memorization. It is only once we have a good foundation of the basics that we are able to move on to contextual learning.

    It is therefore only as an adult that I have recognized some English words are compound words, and have broken those composite words into their separate parts. A classic example of this is mermaid. As a child, I learned that this word represented a creature that was half woman and half fish, but no-one ever broke down the word itself to “sea maid”. Even when I learned French – my first foreign language – I never associated that mermaid was a maid of the sea, from the French word for sea, la mer.

    I reflect that the creation of language is so much more intellectual than the learning of an already-established mother tongue. The creation involves logic and reasoning. The learning, initially, is just memorization. It is interesting to contrast and compare other languages with our own language to see how the creative process worked when other languages were formed.

    I have seen the creative process at work in a simple example from one of my children. When our youngest son was almost three years old, he didn’t know the word for ankle, so to tell me that his ankle was hurting, he told me his leg neck was hurting. I found that fascinating and personally very educational.

  • Generational Gifts

    Have you noticed that lucky people have friends from different age groups?  I am quite convinced that we are gifted individuals from varied generations to help us learn about life, and to see our own life challenges from unique angles.  It sounds clichéd to say, but it really is a gift to have friends in an older age bracket.  This concept is the stuff that movies are made of, and the suggestion is very much based in reality.  

    No doubt, there are older people who consider themselves blessed to have friends from younger generations than their own, and this is surely a compliment to those who are older.  The overarching benefit of having some older friends, though, is the access to valuable wisdom that is learned from experience and that older friends can impart to us without sounding sanctimonious.  Yes, by the time one is old enough to be a grandparent, one has also learned the best way to share useful information without irritating the target audience.  It is for this reason that most parents are not as successful at communicating with their progeny as grandparents are; parents of teenagers are still swirling in a big picture background of stress and finding balance.  It all has to do with seasons, reasons, time, patience, the sort of peaceful and reflective existence that gives one the ability to find just the right words to get an important message across. 

    I already appreciated having some older friends in my 30’s, and that admiration grew in my 40’s. The respect I have for my senior friends has only grown stronger the longer I live on this earth (in this lifetime).  There is now an automatic recognition that older friends have been placed in my life to give me something valuable.  I know I must enjoy their company, their humor, their outlook on life as intensely as possible, and that I shall cherish their imparted wisdom ever after.  

  • Vive la Différence

    I have known a local octogenarian for 3 years.  She is a fellow émigrée, though from a different European nation from me.  We have gradually become friends, and share our thoughts on the world at large, the discussion of which includes politics, societal norms – past and present – and generally what is going on in our lives. 

    To me, this woman is loveable because she has a ready sense of humor, often laughing at herself; she has maintained an open mind and exercised the pursuit of interests into her dotage, including travel all around the world; she is a very logical individual who thinks and analyzes soundly; she is observant (that goes hand in hand with interest in what is around her), and she is kind.  I will also say that this lady is practical and pragmatic. 

    Many experiences have made my friend sensible and realistic.  I have no doubt that she was born with a very “capable” personality, though I also believe that life’s elements and challenges have shaped her further into the successfully independent person she is.  

    This is not her real name, but here, I am going to call my friend “Irmgard”.  Irmgard was born in Germany the year that World War II broke out.  Her mother relocated through necessity to a different part of Germany with Irmgard and her brother.  The man of the family was away at war.  There are things that German civilians suffered about which we know very little, if anything at all, because the German people were very ashamed after the end of WWII; they shared as little as possible about the challenges that they had encountered during the war. 

    One thing I learned about Irmgard was that she and her family did not receive as much help from the German government as some did because they were Lutherans.  Catholics, on the other hand, who followed the state religion, were helped much more.  Consequently, even looking back at history, Irmgard still recognizes the injustice of inequality.  She is not bitter about it, just reflective of realities.

    There is another German woman who lives in our area – we shall call her Hannah.  Hannah’s family was Catholic, and therefore experienced a rather different wartime existence from Irmgard’s family.  When Irmgard and Hannah talk about their background beginnings, it is clear that the disparities in their lives impressed almost opposite histories upon them, although they lived through the same war. 

    A specific element plays into the big picture of Irmgard’s experience.  After WWII, she had family in what became East Germany.  When Irmgard traveled east of the Berlin wall to visit distant relatives, she was subjected to intense scrutiny by the authorities – as was everyone visiting from the West.  It was the norm to be questioned about one’s comings and goings, planned activities during the visit, what one did for a living, and how much money one had with them.  To have been connected by blood to East Germany and then be treated as the enemy must have been horrendous.  From what I gather, it sounds like the East German authorities were worse than the actual Soviets.  But that strikes me as the usual way when an invaded people wants to survive and prosper under a foreign invader.  

    Lately, we have encountered intermittent stormy weather, as is usual for the season and this location.  I love to sleep to thunder, wind and rain, all of which I find relaxing to listen to.  Irmgard does not at all enjoy these weather elements at night.  I shared with her about my seasonal affective disorder, and how the light-dark phenomenon works both ways in context.  During the darker days of winter, I fall into a sort of funk, and must find activities to distract me from the shorter days, with less daylight.  Conversely, at nighttime, I need to sleep in a very dark room, without light pollution intruding into my bedroom.  I need daytime light, but I also need nighttime darkness. 

    Irmgard told me that she prefers to have access to some light during the night, and this often means leaving a curtain partially open.  This is especially true when she is traveling; finding one’s way around a strange hotel room at night  amounts to safety.  Irmgard typically stays in hotels that are historic pieces of architecture, and you might imagine the various overhangs and protrusions associated with such antiquity.  

    It occurred to me that Irmgard may well prefer less clamorous weather at nighttime, and some light to guide her path, because she lived through the noise of war and the need to move to a safer place at a moment’s notice.  She has not stated this; it is something I surmise, given her background experiences.  

    These encounters that I have highlight the myriad ways in which individuals on this earth experience life.  We acknowledge that there are many differences, as a matter of course, yet we can only imagine how vast and numerous those varied exposures are.

    I appreciate the ability to see things from someone else’s perspective, to catch a glimpse of life through their eyes.  The practice brings interest, reflection, greater awareness, and – sometimes – it leaves us a little wiser.

    Irmgard once joked that it was nice for us to be friends, given the fact that we were once enemies (our nations).  My response?  “Not in my lifetime.”  I also pointed out that Brits (specifically English) and Germans go back much farther than WWI and WWII; German Saxons invaded Britain and became part of our DNA.  The old tribal connections last eternally.  

    Walk through life with your eyes and ears wide open, and you will enrich your experience, and strengthen your soul.

  • Oil and Water

    Many moons ago, my mother made a declaration about steak:  “When you’re young, you can’t afford it, and when you’re old, you can’t chew it.” I beg to differ on the age front; a good ribeye steak should be tender enough to barely need to chew.  But, this statement of Mother’s was made in Britain, where ribeye steaks only became a thing in the 1980s.  Prior to that time, British butchers traditionally cut beef differently than in the United States.  Expansion of global markets and improvements in transportation has now made the ribeye the favored cut among Britons (as of 2023). 

    The basic tenet of my mother’s conclusion, however, can easily be applied to other elements in life, such as travel.  When one is young, it is easier to travel more of the world on a shoestring budget, because youth can go for hours without sufficient sleep while flying to the farthest reaches of the earth, can make do with uncomfortable sleeping accommodations in hostels, and do not need enough legroom to prevent DVTs when flying long distances. As a typical (traditional) university student, you have not yet earned, and become accustomed to, the creature comforts that come from being an adult in the workforce, with a home, a family and a retirement savings account.  And your bones have not yet begun to speak to you daily about Arthur Itis.  

    That said, the world in which we find ourselves today is not one that beckons to student travelers without some discernment.  There are still areas of the world that are safe for travel, but there are many historical cities that have been overrun by immigrants whose culture does not mesh with the cities in question.  One acquaintance recently shared that his college-age daughter flew to Paris, only to call her father in tears because she had been groped by Muslim immigrants, and no longer felt safe in the city.  Her father paid to fly his daughter home early. 

    Sadly, a culture that treats women like chattels is still the norm in some parts of the world today.  Too many regions espouse a culture in which women are viewed merely as sexual objects, and – certainly – second-class citizens.  My mother related how Indian men on the streets of Mumbai (then Bombay) would grab at her pregnant belly in the late 1950s.  Our father learned not to walk too far away from her.  My elder sister had to fight off a man who attempted to rape her when she backpacked her way to India to see her birthplace as a student nurse in the early 1980s.  My other sister and a friend spent hours in a police station in Cairo after a man groped my sister on a local train in the late 1980s.  Those of you in the know will realize that they wasted their time trying to report the incident.

    Having experienced street vendors literally in your face in Singapore, and burka-clad women giving me the evil eye in Malaysia, I really have no inclination to go and see those areas of the world where civilization is a loosely applied word, and/or where women are complicit in allowing themselves to be mistreated, and are only too eager to see their fellow women abused.  After all, the saying, “United we stand” may come from the Bible, but it rings true, regardless of one’s chosen religion.  A number of ancient and current societies were/are run by women, and this proves that women have the wherewithal to overcome current day challenges in areas of the world that are hostile towards women.  

    Peoples of the world have long been tribal.  This reality is no different today than it was 1000 years ago.  Even within European nations that have historically been caucasian, tribes have been a perennial part of any given country’s makeup.  Scotland’s nine major tribes identified by the Romans have given way to a clan system that today totals 267 officially recognized clans.   Each tribe has its own identity, and its own culture. 

    To ignore both history and current day reality, therefore, and pretend that we are no longer tribal and can all live together peacefully in any given nation of the world is ludicrous, to say the least.  Judeochristian and Mohammedan beliefs cannot truly co-exist, and this is not merely an archaic conclusion from the time of the crusades.  If you closely examine the struggles in specific areas of the west, say between genetically British and non-native Saracens, for example, you will come to the realization that Christians and Muslims mix like oil and water, i.e., not at all.  

    Being open to others who are different from ourselves is admirable.  It increases our understanding of people in the world at large.  It makes us better individuals.  Setting aside our own beliefs and values so that we do not offend others who are different from us is insane.  

    Forcing native peoples to withstand morally corrupt behaviors of the invaders does nothing but remove indigenous freedoms and throw fuel on a smoldering fire.  The tinderbox has been lit.  Don’t be surprised when the box explodes and we see a repeat of the Saracens being thrown out of Europe.  The time WILL come, and – truth be told – it is way past due. 

  • Life Lesson

    These words of wisdom come from Haemin Sunim, a South Korean Zen Buddhist, in his book, When Things Don’t Go Your way. 

    When people retire from the workforce, many have trouble settling down.  They feel lost without the structure that is required when still working outside the home.  It is easy to get around the element of structure by incorporating it into one’s retired life.  One can choose to get up at the same time every day, to eat the same healthy salad for lunch during the week days, to exercise at the local gym on given days of the week.  

    One challenge for some of us in retirement is not the structural framework of our days, but the meaning that we attach to the activities we do.  Many of us want our lives to feel like we are spending our time on “significant” pastimes, things that make a difference to the world around us, and are therefore important.  

    Another question is how to meld one’s days with one’s spouse, or life partner.  Most of us work separately from our significant others, and when we retire, the increased exposure to them is something new that we have to get used to.  Obviously, our life partner is important to us, or else we wouldn’t be with them. However, the old saying, “too much of a good thing” rings true.  Such is human nature that, when faced with too much of a good thing, we lose our appreciation for it.  What was once good can even start to feel negative, or – in the extreme – harmful.  

    There are no perfect people in this world.  While I have always recognized this reality about others and myself, I now realize that I held expectations of others that were too high a standard.  I also see that I have frequently been disappointed in others for behaviors that I display myself.  It may seem fair enough to submit to the philosophy, “I am as human as anyone else”.  However, understanding others’ foibles and our own does not entirely help us to make the world a better place.  

    It is only through the discernment that a ‘friend’ expected perfection from my behavior that my eyes were opened.  This individual fully believed that I should never resort to negativity or any sort – no venting my frustration, no judging others.  If we can avoid judging others, or do it as minimally as possible, that is commendable.  It is also one of the hardest things for human beings to do.  

    I now comprehend the lesson that this person brought to me and my life.  And it was a very necessary lesson, one that was a long time coming.  At first, I thought the lesson was to not be so vulnerable with others, to not be so gung ho to make close friendships with others, to take heed of their effort or reticence.  To not open up and show my true self to anyone, lest they break a confidence.  There is that; it behooves us to use our intuition and let balance lead the way.  But, more than that, the hypocrisy that this individual showed after I gave up on their false friendship, was what really taught me about myself.  

    I now see myself in a different light, and can practice being a better soul in this world.  I also appreciate some associates who once seemed rather faint-hearted to me.  It is not that these people lack passion, but that they show the rest of us how to be kinder in the world.  Strength is not always about sticking up for oneself.  Sometimes, it is about keeping one’s mouth shut, about NOT saying the thought that just crept into your mind, about saving others’ feelings, and focusing on their positive attributes.  I thought I  homed in on others’ good qualities, but – apparently – not enough to consistently overlook what seemed like weakness.  I understand now that what seemed like feebleness was actually wisdom.  

    So, I appreciate the woman who often comes across as abrasive, knowing that she is really hiding a sensitive interior.  I value the friend who seems blindly optimistic for her stalwart efforts to speak only praise.  I acknowledge that God put a false friend in my life to improve me, and I thank Him.  

  • Inspiration

    Over the decades, I have occasionally dipped a toe in a writing club on-line.  One such membership did not last long:  I misunderstood a given mission, and wrote my own version of what I thought was a writing example.  It turned out, the ‘sample’ that I had followed was NOT a model at all, but a writing entry by another member.  There was an ambiguity in the site’s set-up, I have to say … I have seen ambiguities in communication since I was knee high to a grasshopper.  This can be both a blessing and a bane.  

    Perhaps I would have made a good lawyer based on this ability to grasp at a sudden flash of inspiration, a moment of creativity, a different angle.  That said, I suspect that most creativity needed in lawsuits is for the defense team.  There is a basic tenet that a defense lawyer has to believe their client(s) innocent, but I think we all know that there have been many occasions on which defense attorneys have taken on clients for the money, rather than principle.  

    Anyway, the writer whose feelings I hurt was convinced that I had intentionally set out to do her harm.  She practically had a nervous breakdown while spouting vitriol.  There was no point trying to explain anything to her, never mind offering an apology; this fragile creature was in no mental state to hear anything other than her own toddler tantrum.  So, I left the writing group.  

    This experience occurred around the time that I went back to school to change careers.  As it had been more than ten years since I first went to university, none of my original prereq  coursework was applicable to this go-round of schooling.  I recall dreading taking the English Literature class for which I had signed up – yet better English Literature than politics, especially if the politics class would be taught by someone whose views were the polar opposite of mine. 

    English Literature:  “We’ll be analyzing writing to shreds and flogging a dead horse along the way”, I thought.  In fact, the course turned out to be quite enjoyable, AND it encouraged me to start writing poetry.  I felt like my mind was switched on – there are definite advantages to returning to school as a mature student – and I truly believe that God gifted me an ability to write.

    My English professor told the class one day that nothing creative is original; everyone gets their idea for a story, a song, or a particular tune from someone else’s earlier work.  I have since reflected on Ecclesiastes 1:9, which states, “There is nothing new under the sun.”  

    Inspiration is defined as the process of being mentally stimulated to do or feel something, especially to do something creative.  Inspiration is also defined as the drawing in of breath, inhalation.  If you think about it, many of us are inspired from spending time around others, discussing all manner of topics.  You might say, we breathe in their points of view.  

    I recently joined a specialty writing group on a social media platform.  The group came to my attention in the national newspaper that my hubby and I read daily.  As is usually the case, a primary rule of the group is to be respectful to other members, or risk being ejected from the group.  Most members adhere to the rule.  A number of individuals appreciated my input.  

    Then the animals who are more equal than others started to crawl out of the woodwork, getting around the respect rule by leaving ‘innocuous’ comments on “hilarity of today’s posts”, a thinly veiled stab at views that are different from theirs.  Or, there would be a sarcastic mention, “Who knew this site is a thesaurus?” That will teach those who are kind enough to help others!  

    I realized that, since I do not write crime novels, this particular site is superfluous to my needs, and – should I ever take that path – I am smart enough to do my own research to get the technicalities right, without asking others to do all the legwork for me.  Some questions could easily have been satisfactorily researched on the internet.  We quickly discover what works for us and what wastes our time.  Let us just say that I recognized I am in a class on my own.  I duly left the writing group.