HEALTHY ATTITUDES (FAITH, COURAGE, COMPASSION)

I've been reading about Nora Ephron (1941-2012), journalist, writer and filmmaker.  She wrote When Harry Met Sally,  Sleepless in Seattle and Julie and Julia.  Ephron's mother and father wrote screenplays for Hollywood movies.  Nora was told by her mother, "Everything is copy." Later when her parents began fighting and drinking, Nora fled.  She wrote letters home.  In a play her parents wrote she discovered scenes from the letters she had written them.  So everything was copy to her parents.  Even Nora herself.  

We've seen this elsewhere.  When I hear preachers use as a sermon example  someone's confidential concerns ("A parishioner once asked me. . . .") I wonder if that parishioner wanted their problem to become copy, even anonymously.  If any one would.

I've also been noticing someone who uses a health scare (now resolved) as a fulcrum, writing and talking about it in posts, books, tweets, podcasts, events, interviews, every available venue.  For months now this has struck me as an unhealthy use of one's potential tragedy--as a route to recognition; a manipulative route perhaps, or a cheap route.  If a child says something adorable, as all children do, and we tweet it, in a sense the child becomes copy, does he not?  Condolences become copy, a child's love, a friend's concern--all become copy.  Someone may wish to be left out of a book, but the writer ignores the wish in the interest of good copy.

I love someone who embraced his personal tragedy with faith, courage and compassion.  Recognition would have been the last thing on his mind. He moved from diagnosis to acceptance with grace.  He didn't blog, tweet, talk, write, publicize, sell, market or in any way look for secondary gain from the heartbreak he was facing.  He trusted the love of God and family and sought only peace.  He never gave up trying and hoping to live, but never made a show of himself.  He wanted no microphone, no camera for his tears.  He thought of himself as a child of God and no better than anyone else. He was a witness. He was young.  I love someone else who died old and was the same way.  

Maybe this doesn't matter.  But maybe it does.  Somehow it seems we have choices to make at every time of life.  I hope I make the right ones.  Nina Naomi

A PLACE TO STOP, THINK AND WONDER, PART II

This week I got to do one of my favorite things--go to a museum. Three in fact. Oh how I love that! 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

We're in a furnished apartment in Princeton, NJ again, just an hour's train ride from New York (Posts: A Place to Stop, Think, and Wonder and Home, Not So Simple).  For many of us walking around a museum is not active enough, I understand that. But when you're in a museum you see every sort, college students, families with prams, couples, school children, lots of people on their own.  Everyone looks interested.  Phones are out but only for picture-taking. No one is rushing.  Everyone is taking their time.  Perhaps these are special occasions for everyone who is there.  None of us get that much time for museum-going. It's a luxury.  

One day we went to the Whitney (Whitney Museum of American Art) and the next day to the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art).  Another day the Met.  I had never been to the Whitney before.  It's located at the end of the High Line (www.thehighline.org), the beautiful public park created on an out-of-use elevated railroad trestle.  The High Line runs from W. 34th near Penn Station to between 10th and 12th streets.  All very clever and sustainable, built around the self-seeded landscape that sprang up during the 25 years the trestle was abandoned. 

The High Line, NYC

The top picture looks like a bucolic setting, doesn't it, but see the adjacent glass buildings in the next photo?  The walkway is filled with people strolling, eating, tipping the street musicians.  Dogs aren't allowed.  Like so much that we find in the famous big cities around the world, this is a fun, creative place.  A showcase really. It makes me wish I lived in one of the world's major cities.  There are so many--Toronto, Vancouver, Berlin, Lisbon, the capital cities in South America . . . .  I feel jealous!

The High Line, NYC

After our walk we went into the Whitney.  The views from every angle are wonderful.  The views in the two photos below are of the same distant roof-top garden and the even more distant 9/11 memorial piercing the sky.  Wouldn't city living be fun if one could afford an apartment with a roof-top garden?  The High Line is free to everyone, but much of the beauty of New York is very, very expensive.  I enjoy just looking at it.   

View from the Whitney

View from the Whitney

The Whitney was having a show on the artist Grant Wood (1891-1942).  He painted the famous American Gothic, 1930.  

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930

I learned that his sister posed for the woman and his dentist, of all things, posed for the man.  There's lots of conflict about the artist's attitude toward the dour Iowans he painted.  But most everyone notices the pitchfork and how that shape is repeated in the man's overalls, facial lines and the windows of the house. The question is, what does that repetition mean?  What struck me is that he could also paint this painting: 

Grant Wood, Sunlit Studio, 1925-26

Of course I looked this up too.  It was his studio in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, above a carriage house where he lived with his mother and adult sister. It can still be visited! How interesting!  But the studio looks more French to me, with the shadows and checkered flooring.  Except for the stylized somewhat foreboding plant in the foreground, with the creepy tongue-like leaves. Maybe they're the equivalent of the pitchfork in the other picture.  Art historians must have sorted all this out.

Then we went to the MoMA. It's so wonderful how museums take us out of ourselves and put us somewhere else.  We can look at a room of paintings of 16th century Dutch peasants and feel what it might have been like to live then, to lift hay into a wagon, to wear a head scarf and apron and call in the goats, or spoon the soup into wooden bowls. That's the way I feel.  

At the MoMA we were thrust into a world of color. I lingered most in front of the Matisse (1869-1954) collection.  The colors are so beautiful! Look at this painting, the wall, the girl's hair, the tablecloth, the fruit.  This is Matisse's daughter.  I expect a child today would be hunched over a screen and the bright hues would be those of a video game.  A cartoon-type painting perhaps, or an illustration. 

Henri Matisse, Interior with a Young Girl, 1905-06

I may not get another day like this for a long, long time.  My own local kingdom (Post: This is Your Kingdom) does not have such famous treasures.  But that's the way life is, isn't it?  We have to find all different kinds of places to stop, think and wonder.  We can each do that.  

HOBBIES ARE WONDERFUL

Let's face it--hobbies are wonderful!  Those times in our lives when we've been too busy or too tired for our hobbies we've lost out, haven't we?  It's like being too busy or tired to have friends. Hobbies absorb us.  Some things that qualify in my mind don't even sound like hobbies--yard work, container gardening, even pulling weeds.  That's something I attack with gusto and when it's done, I feel pride.  My stress is gone.  Some of my friends run even in a chilling rain.  Punishment to me but not to them.  Hobbies are ways to follow our hearts and when we spend an hour doing that our minds are clear, our spirits light.  We can't wait for more time to do it again. 

Exercise hobbies, indoor or outdoor hobbies, intellectual hobbies.  Following the stock market was my dad's hobby.  Not investing, following.  Blogging can be a hobby, both the writing and the reading.  I love that blogs reach people all over the world.  When I check audience stats and see a new reader from Peru or Turkmenistan, Portugal or Brazil it makes me happy.  The Ukraine, S. Korea, Germany, Australia, Russia, the UK, the US, Canada. . . . I wish we all could meet.  I would learn so much!

I think hobbies are by definition worthwhile.  They're never a waste of time.  Doing something for ourselves, getting to know ourselves better and the people with whom we share an interest.  Forgetting our day-to-day concerns.  This is good for our hearts and minds.  Things that take concentration.  Using hammer and nails. Repairing our run-down houses. What a useful hobby! Up-fitting and re-purposing.  Collecting, crafting, creating.  Completing a difficult puzzle, playing the ukulele, swimming or running or canoeing.  

Pine Knoll Shores, NC, Loblolly Dr.

I collect sea glass (and seashells, of course).  So, I'm outside, bending and stooping, in all kinds of weather.  After a storm is best. The place I've found with the most sea glass is on the shore at Atlantic Highlands, NJ, a small Victorian town on the New York Bay.  Luckily, we have relatives there.  Can you imagine how many decades of tumbled broken glass wash up from Manhattan? This is the stash I collected in just one hour's foraging with a 4-year-old nephew this week. We picked through the trash and the seaweed.  I don't find this much glass in a year on our beach in North Carolina. Look at that cobalt blue, such a rare find for me. 
 

Sea Glass from Atlantic Highlands, NJ

Some people like a hobby that completely absorbs the mind but doesn't exhaust the body.  So running is out but writing is in.  Or weight training is out but learning a language is in.  Hobbies help us find our inner rhythm, don't they? When we're in the middle of something that we enjoy we don't worry about the future or ruminate about the past.  We stay right here, in the present.  Centered, not frazzled.  That's healthy, all the experts say. 

I'm taking part in a free Mindful Living Week (www.mindfullivingweek.com), a series of podcasts with presentations, dialogues and guided practices.  Although it requires way more time than I think I can give (who has a spare hour a day ever?), I'm giving it a try.  Today was good.  We're supposed to set an intention and create an inspirational space.  I skipped creating the space and went straight outside and sat under a tree.  But the intention was easy.  I chose one word--release. I can go any direction with that. Release from worry, release from fear, release from self-absorption, release from any negative thing I can think of.  Seems to me all that's left then are the positives.  I'll see where that takes me.   

What's your hobby?  Do you find that worries and regrets haven't a chance when you're absorbed in your hobby? I'm committing to finding new ones and making more time for the old. That's my well-being commitment.  Want to share this goal?  Let's see how we do. Nina Naomi

CREATE A NICE MOMENT FOR YOURSELF

Illustration by Deborah Van Der Schaaf

This desk poster came in FLOW, the creative magazine from the Netherlands (www.flowmagazine.com).  FLOW always includes little keepsakes, paper goods like postcards, for example.  Here's one from this month, a woman happily cooking a healthy soup. 

Illustration by Anne Bentley

She's making a nice moment for herself and likely for someone else as well, standing there still in her work clothes.  I like the thought on the poster but have one important quarrel with it: once a day is not enough.  I bet we all agree on that.  If we are only creating nice moments for ourselves once a day we're not really trying.  Even when I worked full time and more, I found nice moments--walking around our downtown or a neighborhood over lunch, putting flowers on my desk, sharing  a meal with a favorite client, sitting on a bench outside to prepare.  And then of course once home for the day maybe a glass of wine, a good family meal, a tub bath for me, a delicious cool pillow.  And always morning or evening the nice moment of a cup of tea.  I think our best strategy is not to set the bar too high for what pleases us.  Keep our nice moments simple.    

Some people, if they can, do with less to have more.  Think home-schooling or the stay-at-home parent or grandparent, balancing the sense of identity and purpose we get from our jobs with the need for leisure or contributing more to the family.  As the after-school pick-up for a granddaughter we most often find our best moments between 3:30 and 5.  

Some people learn to say "No" more often to free up time for nice moments.  This is harder for women since the social expectation for us to be accommodating is stronger than for men.  But sometimes we must say "no" to a colleague or neighbor or the PTA.  It's not rude to have boundaries, it's self-confident.  Everyone can respect that.  

Australian writer Bronnie Ware (www.bronnieware.com) spent years caring for the dying.  She wrote Regrets of the Dying (2009)  to share what she learned from them.  One thing she learned is that we don't realize until too late what freedom good health brings.  The dying would tell us to honor our dreams while we can.  I resonate to that.  So as many nice moments for ourselves as we can.  String them together.  Pile them up.  Enjoy and Repeat.