Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Decisions, decisions, decisions – our life is a never-ending array of them.  From the minute your feet hit the floor in the morning to the second you fall asleep, you are an elaborate engineer orchestrating those little decisions that help you navigate effectively, or sometimes not effectively, throughout the day.  Should I  hit the snooze button?  Should I walk the dog?  Exercise before work?  Eat a bagel or fruit?  Coffee now or at Starbucks? Should I take the bus or just walk to work?  What projects do I focus on at work all day? What sounds good for lunch?  Should we go out for dinner or stay in?

Life is really a myriad of non-stop decisions  – one after another after another.  The simple daily tasks are the easy choices to make, so easy that we don’t even realize we are making them.  It is when decisions involve possible risk, uncertainty, danger and more importantly, fear, that the going gets tough.  This is the time when we run from making a decision, and just kick the can down the road.   We ignore, don’t accept, or don’t face the fact that by remaining in our current circumstances, whatever they may be, is actually a decision to stay there – digest that one!

WHAT YOU ARE NOT DOING YOU ARE CHOOSING.

So many people are unhappy in their professional lives, and choose to stay there.  Trying to lose weight but just don’t do anything about it – that’s a choice. Putting up with nasty co-workers comments that are demeaning to you and not addressing it – you are choosing to be dumped on.  Ah – how wonderful it is to just continue to be miserable than to choose a different approach.  We all have the capability to choose to change any situation we find ourselves in, or any behavior for that matter. There is no pawning this off on anyone – it’s up to us.  So why do we remain stuck?

Fear of failure.   What if I leave my comfort zone where I am clearly miserable and land in an even worse situation?  What if I leave my disastrous relationship to try to find happiness and I don’t find it?  Harry Potter author JK Rowling’s commencement speech at Harvard University in 2008 speaks volumes to facing failures head on:

So I think it fair to say… I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

She puts so eloquently that failure can allow you to move forward, that making a decision to do something with fear is empowering.  This is the only way we can grow and move forward – don’t accept something that isn’t right for you – take action!  Make the decision to move forward living with the fear, or choose to do nothing and continue to sit on the fence, watching the world go by and feeling like a victim.

Just like the line in the movie Risky Business – sometimes you have to say “what the f*!*”  What’s the worst that can happen?  If you fail, at least you will have tried.  I have a very small analogy to this point – I cut my hair and I cut it short.  I have always wanted short and spiky hair, but was worried that it would look terrible on me, and more importantly, worried as to what others would think of me.    So I stuck with my decision (not realizing it was a decision), to stick with a hair style that I really wanted to change.  Last week I went in for just a trim,  looked in the mirror and realized how much I did not like the length of my hair  -so I told my stylist to chop it – right then and there.  I got off the fence and chose to do what I wanted and throw the fear factor out the window.  It felt amazing.

I know – not as drastic as the crisis that JK Rowling faced, but it is baby steps for me – and this first tiny one felt good.

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Buying a Car

Yuck – my car died and not in a very convenient manner.  While driving to Indianapolis for a work function, the transmission started to go.  It was slipping downwards and I could feel it, but I was hell-bent on arriving at my destination before the car actually died.  I managed to get to Indianapolis, although I was white knuckle driving the whole way.  I found a Lexus dealer online, mapped the address, and when I arrived in town, I exited off the freeway and navigated traffic lights and merge lanes with a vehicle that was lurching me forward and backward and occasionally sideways in order to arrive at my destination.  I drove into the dealer parking lot, and my car expired.

Cars – so convenient yet so costly, such a necessity for most of us but yet so financially impractical.  You purchase a vehicle, and it depreciates the minute you drive it off the lot. There is no long-term value in a car – over a short period of time it declines in price, dependability and quality. Usually, by the time you pay it off, you are ready for another new car, and another car payment.  I am not taking pleasure in this impending purchase.

Since I now have to buy a vehicle as the transmission in my former car is toast,  I am faced with a wide open landscape.   A wide open landscape to me presents a lot of decision-making and I just find myself asking too many questions – Do I want a luxury vehicle?  Do I want something practical?  Should I buy a SUV or sedan?  Used or new?  Warranty or not?  Do I want a BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, Audi?  Do I look at a “green” car or continue in the American tradition of going big or going home?

I guess I am out of touch with my inner car personality and it irritates me that people do evaluate another person by the cars they drive.   I am currently using my daughter’s Corolla since she works in the city and doesn’t use her vehicle, and when I drove it to work on Monday, a co-worker said “Nice Corolla – I saw about 16 of those cars in the high school parking lot on my way into work today”.  Ouch.  Can’t a grown middle-aged woman and senior staff member drive a Corolla?    I need help – I’ve got nowhere to go.  I am suffering from the baby boomers car journey – you are what you drive.

Cars define generations and the culture of the times we live in.  We had the ’57 Chevy, the Cadillac Eldorado,  the Buick Skylark, and the beach convertible.  The sixties arrived with muscle cars, the Mustangs and the Camaro’s, not to mention the “Love Bug” Volkswagon beetle and the hippie counterculture Volkswagen vans.  The 70’s brought the Ford Pinto, the iconic Smoky and the Bandit Pontiac Trans Am,  the Pontiac Firebird, and anything with a vinyl roof.  Enter the 80’s with the IROC-Z, Mazda Miata, or the spiffy 987 AMC Grand Wagoneer.  The generations keep rolling and so do the car makes and models.

I wish that cars had magical powers like wands do in Harry Potter’s world. The wand picks the wizard – the car picks the driver.  Since I cannot stand in a car dealership parking lot and watch as my “chosen” car drives towards me,  I do have my criteria.   Functionality over flash, gently used versus new, SUV model (Chicago’s winters can be brutal), new technology with blue tooth capability `and a “green’ish” car.  There – that is it.  Can I get all of this in an affordable car that will last 200,000 miles, a car that will not define me as a suburbanite mom, hipster, yuppie, urban professional, a snob, or elitist?

I realize that I would do almost anything with the money rather than buy a car,  but that is not my reality.  I have a feeling I am going to delay the inevitable and continue to drive the Toyota Corolla. I mean, after all – if it makes me look like I’m in high school – then why not?  🙂

When Your Parents Are Gone

As I was listening to Elon Musk being interviewed on the Ted Radio Hour the other day, the interviewer commented, “your parents must be so proud of you”.  I have heard this comment a hundred times, but this particular comment at this particular moment, made me realize that my parents are no longer with me and I had nothing to do but stare it right in the face.  Odd to have this occurrence of thought after almost 4 years with them being gone, but I honestly think I have this hole in me that I needed to recognize – and it came with that particular comment.  I thought on this for several days before I could get after this emptiness I have been feeling.  It has been an emptiness that I needed to acknowledge.

Why the emptiness?  When your parents are gone, there are plenty of reasons.  Gone is the protective covering that prevented us from looking at growing old and death.  We have lost the title of “being someone’s child” forever.  We have lost the witnesses to our first steps, first words, first life experiences, and details of growing into adults.  Gone is that crucial connective tissue among all your siblings, the lifeblood of any family unit. Losing a parent means a loss of childhood, of innocence, and a part of oneself.  No other bond exists like the one with a parent.  That unique attention, given just to you, is gone.  The need among all of us to “tell our parents”, to check in with them, call, inform them of any big decisions we are making, and celebrate the victories with, both big and small, is still there, but we have nowhere to go with it.

These losses are significant feelings and emotions to recognize and acknowledge.  They bring along a reality that is a bit different from when your parents were alive.  Your relationships with siblings changes a bit, and it is true that you have to make a concerted effort to get together and to stay in each others lives. It is not for lack of love for one another or lack of desire to see each other – it is lack of focus.  With the major artery being taken out of the family, the focal point of the family is now gone.  The missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle cannot be found, nor replaced.  You have to change your focus to a new way of thinking so things can become clear again, even if it is in a different way.

There are many ways to do this.  With regards to siblings, we only have each other when it comes to witnessing and clinging to the family bond that we had before we became husbands, wives, mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers.  Our relationships with one another have never been more important – cling to them.  Also, as children of our parents, we need to make room in our lives for all of the traditions that we grew up with, not only with our immediate family, but with one another.   It is very important to be fearless – stick to who we are so that our children will have that influence to carry on with them.  State how you feel, share what you think  – these are the things that will resonate with our children when we are gone.

This hole cannot be filled actively, but can be filled with the legacy that our parents have left with us.   Once the pain fades from the loss, this leaves room for remembering our parents with laughter – the family memories, vacation stories, holiday stories, and most importantly – acknowledging them whenever possible.  “My mom would love this”, or “my father would have a fit if he saw me do this” are some of the things I say frequently to myself.   I find this makes a great reference point for me and brings back my very own life standing on its own.  I still am someone’s child and it is that legacy that I choose to carry on.