Life Unraveled

Inspiration is what's left after you let go.  It is everywhere.  And it is not just the cherry on top of the sundae;  it's the whole ice cream shop.  It is not the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box; it's the entire cardboard package, sailor logo and all.  Having searched high and low for a way to express my own intensely scattered observations on the subject of what inspiration means to me these days, this is the best I can come up with.  It is all around us.  Sure, true inspiration can come in those big dramatic 'a-ha!' moments of delightfully powerful life-changing insight, but it can also be as simple as that initial moment of sensory overload erupting from the first sip of strong, black coffee in the morning, the one that lights the fire of the brain and opens our eyes wide to a new day loaded with possibility.  More than anything, inspiration just seems to happen whe...

Another birthday is here.  Hello, 39.    How do I feel about this one?  Well, I'm not sure except to say that I don't feel like 39, whatever the "manual" says that particular age is supposed to feel like.  Truth is, I don't know what age I feel like, and I guess it doesn't matter much.  In a way, I feel happily sandwiched somewhere in between what the manual describes as young and old, a lovely blending of the two that just seems to go together seamlessly like peanut butter and jelly, or peanut butter and chocolate.  Or peanut butter and anything, really.  Mmm.  I do love peanut butter.  Always have, even as a small child.  I guess some things haven't changed much over the years.  But I digress.  Me being me, I have spent a large amount of time recently in awe of the aging process.  What can I say?  That's just me.  I like to analyze things, but not very scientific things.  Forget...

We all want to be liked. We might say we don't, but to varying degrees our behaviors often suggest otherwise. Time and again we are faced with people and situations that make us yearn to be like Sally Field at the podium on Oscar night circa 1985, proclaiming with astonished giddiness as she accepted her Best Actress trophy, "You LIKE me! You really LIKE me!!" The trouble starts when we cannot make such a proclamation. When we are unable to say this, we may wonder what we have done wrong, and what crime we might have committed (in this life or another) to have provoked such a negative response from another human being, searching the archives of our minds to figure out where or when it all went south. Even if there is not enough evidence found for our own conviction--and there typically never is--the best we can hope for is to repeat in our minds the one statement that, at least temporarily, seems destined to rescue us from the damage caused by someone's unjust d...