Fifty Years of Pondering

On February 3rd, I turned fifty years old. Looking back, I see that over the years I wore quite a few masks, some of which I chose myself and some which were chosen for me. I formed myself into someone else's expectations more times than I can count. I was true to myself. I talked harshly about myself. I loved. I lost. I was at the peak of happiness, I was in the pits of despair.

All in all, I've lived. Life is not perfectly contained in a box that has our name written upon it. Life spills out of the lines and flows into places that we never quite expected. I've taken some chances and poured my heart and soul into projects and people who let me down completely. But I've also felt the purest of loves that no movie could ever depict accurately.

What is this rambling of a half century about?

It's about being okay with the uncertainty. It's about being okay with falling a hundred times to get back up on that 101st attempt and actually fly. It's about being present with it all. It's about taking control of what is controlling my view of the world around me.

I live in a small mountain valley where our percentage of suicides is quite high per capita. Each and every time that I read a post or a newspaper article about another suicide, my heart aches. But I'm, sadly, not surprised. As a society, we are bombarded with obstacles to our healthy minds and bodies, from negative, awful news streamed into our amygdala 24/7, this device in our hands signaling that it needs our attention in order to bring us down once again. We live in a country that has been divided into two sides, pitting friend against friend, sister against sister, when in the end a divided country is destined to fail. We have a Food & Drug Administration that has, for over a century, allowed the marketing and distribution of poisonous food and drugs to be not only offered but often recommended to an entire population. We have the normalizing of alcohol and drug consumption, literally causing atrophy in the brain, increasing anxiety and depression, and altering the way our brain remembers events, not to mention the breakdown of our liver, our kidneys, and other vital organs. The cards are stacked against us. I understand the extreme overwhelm.

But as humans, we have some choice to push back.

I won't be giving up my phone. I use it for work. I love to take photos. I love to listen to a good podcast, great music, or book. I'll admit, it has become a part of my life. But I can control how much it affects my view of just how good this world truly is. How? By turning the algorithm on its head. I can take concrete action and follow only certain websites and blogs so that they are what show up on my "top stories." I can follow those that I find to be more positive. I can be more mindful with the content that I engage with. Did you know that even "lingering" on content can signal to your algorithm to put more of "that" in your feed? I can intentionally like, share, and save content that fills my cup rather than empties it or makes it boil, thus signaling to the Google gods that this is the kind of content that I want to see regularly. There are many more tactics to change the algorithm of the boss that we cling to in our hand. Here's a great article from Psychology Today on this topic.

I can choose to put clean, whole foods into my body the majority of the time. I can choose to go outside and breathe fresh air into my lungs. I can choose to sit around the backyard campfire in the evening instead of watching Netflix. I can choose to keep my mouth shut while a friend is telling me about her bad day, without trying to fix it or one-up her with my own bad day. I can look to nature for healing. I can make time for the people who fill me up instead of stripping me of my energy. I can turn the phone OFF when I need a minute. I can even LEAVE it at home before I head out to dinner with my husband.

I can unplug in order to plug back into what is right in front of my face.

So that's my two cents as I consider my last fifty years.

Here's to fifty more.