Posted on by BWThomas

New experiences, old celebrations. Seeing things through the eyes of a child helps us see old things as if they are new again.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Look at everything as though you are seeing it for the first time, with eyes of a child, fresh with wonder. Joseph Cornell

Today is Halloween and at Toastmasters last Thursday I learned for some new immigrants that came to Canada as children, Halloween was the celebration they felt they could fit in with everyone else. They too could have a costume and trick or treat without differences being front and center.

One of the things we most want in life is to belong. We celebrate differently and have different celebrations but these sometimes divide us instead of bringing us together. When our sports teams are doing well we rally around them all hoping for victory and feeling oneness as we are joined in supporting our team.

On Friday, my husband and I attended a cross-cultural, cross-religion wedding/nikah. It was a wonderful celebration for a couple starting their journey as a married couple. One of the beautiful ceremonies was the bride’s father placed a green belt around the bride’s waist signifying she must prepare for her new life.

One of the reasons we have celebrations around life transitions is to help us prepare for the change in our life. Weddings, births, and deaths are significant transitions where life will never be the same again. We are happy to share our joy and need to share our sorrow to get through the transitions of life.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is God’s handwriting. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tonight my daughter and I will take her son out for his first Halloween. We won’t get candy (what does a six-month-old need candy for), but we will be out in the hustle and bustle enjoying the fun. I was the one that took the kids out trick or treating and it was the end of a happy tradition when they were past trick-and-treating age. Often my daughter’s friends came with us; one year some of the friends thought it would be more fun on their own, so off they went, soon returning when they realized they had more fun in our little group.  

Now it is time for new traditions as our grandson experiences each new celebration. We will take out our Cock-a-poo, Lulu, this evening. We used to be out trick or treating accompanied by our Scottie, Krypto. Life changes and we have to change with it. It won’t be long before our grandson won’t still be trick and treating, or he won’t live close enough to us to see him at Halloween, especially when it is on a weeknight. He’ll be dressed as a lion cub tonight, the first of many costumes he’ll wear over the years. This is the year of firsts, and we are enjoying each new thing as he experiences them. We can’t see things as he sees them, but watching him helps us to see things a little differently, and enjoy the small things in life we take for granted.

Having children obviously changes your priorities, but when you start to see life through these innocent eyes and seeing everything for the first time, you appreciate the small things. Nick Cannon

Things are revealed through the memories we have of them. Remembering a thing means seeing it only then for the first time. Cesare Pavese

Sometimes all it takes is a little hand reaching for yours to remind you that these are, without a doubt, the best years of your life. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Other people’s business may seem more interesting than our own, but we are still better off minding our own.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

My mom taught me a lot. A lot about minding your own business and leaving other people’s business alone. And let them think what they want. Ray Charles

Are we meddlers, do we just need to get in there and fix things that aren’t our business, and yet we leave things that are our business unfixed? I hate to admit it but I fall into this category. I just want to make sure everything works out for everyone, but people can and should make their own plans, and make sure their schedules don’t clash. What am I doing in the middle?

If this person shows up at this place at the same time as another person, there will be a clash, and we don’t want that to happen. But, if we aren’t part of the proceedings maybe we should stay out of it. We tell ourselves that, but it is hard to stay out of other people’s business. We think a little advice here, a point of interest there. I found a cute little quote. “Hey, I found your nose. It was in my business again.”

Do we have our business in such order that we can mind someone else’s business? Wouldn’t that energy be better looking after our own business? How far does letting people look after their own business go? Where does helping those who need help, sometimes when they don’t want our help come into play?

What is the point where our business stops and someone else’s begins as a family, society, country, and world? What would my life look like if I really minded my own business in the extreme sense?

When we try to help the homeless aren’t we minding their business? When we try to help addicts? When we get into abortion debates, isn’t that someone else’s business? What if we took extreme ownership of our own lives and left others to take extreme ownership of theirs? Would our society be better, or worse?

This life is mine alone. So I have stopped asking people for directions to places they’ve never been. Glendon Doyle

Another cute little quote, “Don’t worry about what I’m doing. Worry about why you’re worried about what I’m doing.” It’s a good question, why are we so worried about what other people are doing? Are we complicating what should be a simple life by getting into other people’s business?

Are we doing our best to live the best life we can with dignity, honesty, truth, and gratitude for what we have and not envying others for what they have? If we are keeping our relationships as free from drama as we can, making sure we can look after our own affairs as long as possible, isn’t that a worthy goal? We can’t fix other people’s problems and often our help is not wanted, appreciated, or accepted. If we look after our life and deal with our problems when they are as small as possible we may impact other people’s lives in a good way because at least our problems don’t get inflicted on them.

Mom has done well to stay out of everyone’s business. She offers advice if asked and listens when we want to talk, and has minded her own business so she is not a burden on anyone. I try, but I don’t think I mind my business and stay out of other people’s business as well as Mom and Dad did.

Taking extreme ownership of their lives was what earlier generations had to do. If they didn’t make something happen in their lives no one else was going to do it. We can learn a lot from earlier generations, from reading books of wisdom and taking a long view of where our decisions are taking us.

Do we find other people’s business more interesting than our own?

One never gets a second chance to make a first impression, but remember first impression is not the last chance to make a good impression. Unknown

The biggest fool is the one who minds the business of others rather than minding his very own. Unknown

A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people’s business. Eric Hoffer

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more, have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Good Reads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Are we living in rhythm with the seasons? Are we in sync with the season of life we are in?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances. Maya Angelou

This was a glorious fall weekend perfect for getting out and enjoying walks, fall fairs, and spending time outside. When we live in a four-season climate we know that winter is coming and that means we must take advantage of the good weather while we have it.

The squirrels are busy getting ready for winter and we need to be busy too. I’ve never lived in anything but a four-season climate and even though I hate to see summer come to a close there is beauty in every season. Autumn in all its splendor is something to behold.

We never know if we have another beautiful fall weekend coming or if the one we just experienced is the last one where we can walk with a light jacket or no jacket at all. Last Thursday evening two friends and I got together to celebrate a birthday and we brought out our winter coats for the first time. I was sure it was cold enough to kill the tomatoes but they are hanging on, I might get to pick a few more in the days to come.

Time is moving on, it waits for no one and we need to make the most of the time we have. We can’t go for a walk in the sunshine when we want to; we have to take that walk when the sun is shining. There are seasons in life and we have to work with the seasons, we can’t manipulate the seasons to our will. We may wish it were different but we still have to plant in the spring and reap in the fall. It wouldn’t do me much good to be planting my tomatoes now.

We may wish we didn’t have to do things in their time, it isn’t always convenient. If we live with the rhythm of life instead of going against the rhythm life will work better for us. Are we living fully in the rhythm of life, are we making the most of the season we are in? I watch our daughter with her six-month-old son; she is fully engaged in full-time mothering. I am enjoying my role and it is so much easier to be a grandma than to be a mother.

When the rhythm of life changes – dance to the new beat! Unknown

Had I not had my son and daughter when I had them it would be impossible now.  It is hard for women to find time for motherhood when the pressure to excel in careers and make the most of the opportunities in front of them is so pushed in our culture. Isn’t creating a family one of the best things we do in our lives? Time to create a family takes away from earning money, but what are we earning all the money for if we don’t have a family? Is it just to have a better car, travel to more exotic places, eat at better restaurants, and buy more expensive clothes?

I might not like to admit it, but I am in the fall of my life. It is time for reaping, and being a grandma is one of the rewards. There is beauty in every season, and if we are in rhythm with the season of our lives will we be happier than if we are out of rhythm with the season we are in? Women and men have to live with the natural rhythms of life, but women have to be more in tune with the rhythms of their life. We might think it isn’t fair but it is what it is.

Are we living in rhythm with the seasons of life?

Life is a dance of time and energy. Keeping the two in good rhythm is the beauty of life. Sadhguru

The rhythm of life is intricate but orderly, tenacious but fragile. To keep that in mind is to build the key to survival. Shirley Hufstedler

The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind and the harmony of the soul create the symphony of life. B.K.S. Iyengar

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you for reading my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Choices we make create the life we have. If we want a better life we need to make better choices.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

The best way to prepare for death is to live life to its fullest. John Bytheway

This week I’ve finally gotten back to the gym. I didn’t think it would take this long but I’ve done some morning exercises and even though it isn’t much, working out at the gym wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, and I wasn’t as sore as I expected.

The lesson learned is a little bit of exercise will do more for us than we think. A little bit of everything that is good for us will probably do more for us than we think, the flip side is a little bit of what is bad for us will do more for us than we think as well.

We replace our bad habits with good habits and we feel good, we pat ourselves on the back because life is going in a good direction. If we start replacing our good habits with bad ones our lives can slip in ways we never thought they would and they slip quickly.

Another birthday is rolling around and I can’t believe how high the number is getting but if everyone around me is getting older how could I not be as well? The girls at the gym are so young, and slim, it’s a new set from when I last went in March of 2020.

How many people will never go to a gym again because they quit in 2020 when everything shut down? How many people have better lives than they had then because they’ve taken stock and made some changes? How many marriages haven’t survived? How many families suffered in countless ways? How many looked at their lives and saw changes they needed to make and are making them and reaping rewards they never thought they could reap? We need to embrace change throughout our lives. We may love certain times of our lives more than other times but we never get them again. We have to create new lovely times to enjoy.

Keep moving forward. It’s the way to live life. Leo Martin Ganace

Our grandson is no longer an infant; he’s already six months old and already eating solid food. Time doesn’t wait for us and what some people have accomplished in the same years I’ve had, amazes me. We think we’d do so much better if we got a do-over, what if that’s not the way to look at it? What if the way to look at it is, I’m here, and it’s okay, but it could be better? How can I make it better? What could I do now, with what I have to make tomorrow, next year, five, and even ten and twenty years down the future better? Who can we help, who can we encourage, and who can we inspire?

Are we all we could be? What could we do if we knew we couldn’t fail? What if we tried and failed, would it be so bad, or would our life be elevated by trying? It’s not missing the mark that is so bad; it’s not having a mark to miss. We need an aim, there are times in my life when I’ve been aimless and it wasn’t good. Sometimes I think we get the idea that to have a better life we need to demolish everything in the one we have and start over. It might be true sometimes but most of the time we need to work with what we have. Do we really think a new husband or wife won’t bring their own baggage, the baggage we won’t like, and won’t know what to do with? Maybe the baggage we have is enough and if we deal with it, we can be surprised by what we can make of the life we have, right here, right now.

This is why I love Jordan Peterson’s books, “12 Rules for Life, and Beyond Order” they are about dealing with what we have, where we are, and taking up a load that is good for us and society. He tells us being responsible is more important than chasing happiness and will give us a greater sense of accomplishment. I think he’s right, love is a verb, not a feeling, and sometimes we want the feeling but not the work. Joyce Meyer tells us everyone can find someone to love because everyone needs love. She doesn’t mean someone who will love us, she means someone we can pour our love onto in ways that make their life better. A kind word and a smile as we go about our day can encourage others and make us feel better. Helping out at a homeless shelter, food bank, or animal shelter will uplift our lives.

Are there choices we could be making that would elevate our lives? We sometimes think big choices are more important, but is it the small choices we make every day that might make the most difference in our lives?

We make a living by what we get. But we make a life by what we give. Winston Churchill

The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new. Socrates

Whatever good things we build end up building us. Jim Rohn

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Choosing our attitude will help us endure to the end. Gratitude will help us enjoy the journey.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life. Louise Hay

I’ve been listening to Joyce Meyer while I paint. One of the things I like about her is she talks about what she has gone through, the lessons she’s learned along the way, and how we each have lessons to learn all the time.

I’ve written before how I believe faith gives us strength to draw on that if we didn’t have faith what would we draw on? Where would we find the strength when we feel we don’t have the power to go on?

Assisted suicide will be available to the severely depressed by next year in Canada if the reports I’m hearing are correct. I worry some people; especially young people with depression might give up on life, themselves, and the probability that they have better days ahead.

We know people who profess a deep belief in God also face depression so it is not that finding faith in something greater than ourselves is the answer, but one of the passages that Mom and Dad talked about the most was that we must, “Endure to the end.”

Why would it be important to endure to the end if in the enduring we weren’t to learn things we might not learn any other way? Joyce Meyer endured sexual abuse by her father and now says she wonders if part of her having to endure that is so she can help others who have had to endure it. She said she used to think, “If only I hadn’t been sexually abused.”

We have to be careful when we use, “if only,” we could have done, been, accomplished, believed, achieved, or aimed at something better than what we have. We are who we are, we are where we are, and we’ve experienced what we’ve experienced, we can’t change the past but we can go forward and examine each choice we have to make, and decide to make the most positive choice we are capable in that moment.

We won’t be perfect and the choice that seemed best might not turn out to be the best, and we have to live with that and forgive ourselves. Sometimes we have to face life going forward knowing some of the things we enjoyed most in life are behind us. If we can find the faith to know that there are still things ahead that will bring us joy, and make our hearts sing even if we don’t know what they are yet we can continue to take the next step and the one after that.

We see our life when we look backward, but we can’t see our life going forward. Going forward is always a leap of faith. We might need faith as we start a marriage, family, new job, business, or retirement. We may need to move to a new locale and leave behind all we’ve known for years. We may be the partner left behind because of death or divorce. Changes to our health may mean we can’t live the life we thought we could live.

If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present. Lao Tzu

Today I am going back to the gym. I can’t believe it has taken me this long, but it is hard to fit things back into our lives once we’ve moved something into that time slot, even if it is just sitting in front of the TV after dinner. In preparation, I made a big dinner last night so we would have leftovers tonight. My plan is to go right after work before I settle into something else and with dinner made I have no excuse.

We may think about how to fit exercise into our life. But, at a certain age, if we don’t make time to keep ourselves fit and healthy, we won’t end up fit and healthy in our later years. When I look at Joyce Meyer I think there is a woman that is aging well, and she says she has been going to the gym for eleven years. This means she didn’t start going to the gym until she was probably in her sixties.

If we don’t have an active life we will have to bring activity into our lives in some way, because inactivity is not conducive to healthy aging. The more we do, the more we can do, and we may look back at things we thought we couldn’t do and wonder why we even thought it would be a challenge. This might be dealing with a difficult person, dealing with a physical challenge, making a change in our lives, or accepting a change we didn’t want. Whatever we are facing we have to go through it. If we go through it believing we can make the best of it, learn some lessons, and find the strength to face even greater challenges as we forge on in life we will have a better life than if we face everything with a poor attitude.

The best or the worst ahead of us may be up to how we look at things, and the attitude we bring to our lives.

In life, we tend to get what we expect. Start expecting the best for yourself. Since life is a do-it-yourself project, why not also believe in miracles? You have the freedom of choice. Why not expect miracles to occur in your life? Change your thinking to change your life. To do this write your goals, work hard, be smart, and expect the best. Make miracles happen. Mark F. LaMour

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion, you’re wasting your life. Jackie Robinson

Look at what you’ve got and make the best of it. It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Unknown

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to everyone that reads my books. A special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the purchase price through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

We want to get better, improve, and make progress, but what do we want to get better at?

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Do your best, and be a little better than you are. Gordon B. Hinckley

We read a book and it resonates with us, we might even think we got this. We can remember some of the talking points and we use them impressing everyone with our new outlook on life. It might be easy to impress a few people and even ourselves for a while, but does our life reflect the philosophy we are parroting? This is what catches up many people. Living up to the advice we give is hard, but trying to impress others is easy.

How many of us when we listen to people speak, especially those that preach to us about how we should change our lives, be more environmentally conscious, be more virtuous, generous, or have more of a heart for the poor and down trodden would like to take a peek in their lives and see how they measure up using their own yardstick?

It’s a good question, how do we measure up using our own yardstick? Are we able to meet the expectations we expect of others? I recently heard someone talking about someone’s child being, “So rude” and I questioned if their own children were so much better when the short time I spent with the child she was well-mannered, easy to be with, interested in what was going on, and contributing to the conversation in an intelligent way. I’m thinking what a nice young lady she’s growing up to be. I wonder are we looking at the same child. Of course, the time I spent with her was short and she could be on her best behavior, but kids can’t be expected to only be on their best behavior to be a good kid. We might be setting the bar too high and then no one is good enough.

We can get into conversations we don’t see eye to eye on, but we aren’t even having the same conversation. That happened between my son and husband at dinner the other night. I said, “You aren’t talking about the same thing.” This happens at my house all the time, and between my husband and me, often. Is this something we’ve developed over the years so we aren’t having, “Me too” conversations?

There is nothing wrong with making a good impression in fact it is encouraged but it is a letdown when we meet someone, we are so impressed with their ideas, what we think their life is about, and then we find out their life is more of a train-wreck than our own.

You’ve got one job, and that is to get better. Derrick Rose                                               

There is no one that has more theories about relationships, marriages, or raising children than those who are on the sidelines instead of in the trenches. Wayne Dyer said he had theories about raising children, until he had children, and then he had children but no theories.

I had a neighbor when we first moved in who called himself a fancy gardener. I took it as a poke at my attempts at gardening, but he never planted one tree, shrub, or flower all the while he lived in the house. My yard is not a work of art but the backyard is full of trees and shrubs. I’m not happy with how my front garden looks except perhaps for brief moments in the spring. It is a labor of love that doesn’t get enough labor, but hope springs eternal, and I have high hopes that one day it will become what I envision.

No matter what yardstick we use to judge ourselves we will find ourselves coming up short of our expectations. Wouldn’t it be sad if we were all we thought we could be, because what would we do for the rest of our lives if we had nothing left to learn, nothing left to do and aspire to, and nothing to improve? Life is growth and I think we need to find ways to grow and develop until the end of our lives, if we are to be happy, and be a blessing to ourselves and other people.

Seeking pleasure and happiness is not a good way to live our lives because many of the things that we must get through, to look back on our lives with pride, did not bring us happiness at the time. Some of the things we’ve done to feel pleasure and fleeting happiness do not fill us with pride when we look back on them. Life is about choices and the better our choices, the better our lives will be, and some of the hardest choices give us the best lives. Will our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren be proud of the person we became? I think that is a measure to aspire to.

Aspire not to have more, but to be more. Oscar Romero

Don’t just aspire to make a living. Aspire to make a difference. Denzel Washington

If you aspire to the highest place, it is no disgrace to stop at the second, or even the third, place. Marcus Tullius Cicero

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to those who read my books, and a special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

Gratitude and happiness. Thanks to those that do the heavy lifting in life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

When gratitude becomes an essential foundation in our lives, miracles start to appear everywhere. Emmanuel Dagher

It is good to be grateful for all the good we have in our lives and the people who provide what we need and want to live a good life. Thanks to those that provide the food we eat each day, those that keep the lights on, the sewer system working, and the energy that heats our homes, and powers our world.

We women in our hubris sometimes talk like we don’t need men in our lives but the world doesn’t work very well without them. It is a personal choice if we don’t want to share our lives with a man, but we all benefit from their work. We should never think building a society that works with all the interdependence we have would be easy to replicate.

Our society was built with men doing the work for society and women doing their work for the family. It might have been a little patronizing to be told “Don’t worry your pretty little head about it.” But, it was also comforting. When there is a power outage men go out and fix it. When there is any type of disaster men are there to do what they can to protect life.

The fact that women can take care of their children without a man is a testament to the society that has been built to make it possible. If women lived in groups and men were roaming around doing what they pleased, and taking what they wanted, women and children would be in a pretty bad way.

When you are grateful, fear disappears and abundance appears. Tory Robbins

Most of us don’t want to go back to how things used to be, and even if we think we’d like to, we’d pick and choose what we want to keep, and what we want to change. This is the sign of a good society, we have choices. Life isn’t necessarily easier when we have choices, but we love choice, even when we don’t know out of our myriad of choices what choices we should make.

Positive psychology has been criticized for its failure to acknowledge the value of negative emotions. Barbara Held from Bowdoin College in Maine, says “Positive psychology has been too negative about negativity and too positive about positivity.”

Life is about suffering, setbacks, disappointments, frustrations, and change. One of the choices we sometimes make is to put ourselves in danger and mostly we get away with it. Just because most people do not take advantage of us if we are drunk, does not mean that someone won’t. Our society can’t protect us from bad choices, but we can learn from them.

If we are grateful for all the lessons we learn in life, for everyone that contributes to our lives, for the opportunities that present themselves, and give thanks for all we have we can live in a state of gratitude.

Does an attitude of gratitude make a difference in our lives?

Living in a state of gratitude is the gateway to grace. Arianna Huffington

When we give cheerfully and accept gratefully, everyone is blessed. Maya Angelou

Gratitude opens the door to the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. You open the door through gratitude. Deepak Chopra

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to those that read my books. A special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale.

Posted on by BWThomas

The art of living well, aging well, and dying well are all one.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

Today is the oldest you’ve ever been and the youngest you’ll ever be again. Unknown

Aging in place is getting thrown around like it’s a new thing. Most people have lived at home or with relatives until they died and nursing homes are relatively new.

If we are lucky we will get old, and if we are really lucky we won’t live past the time we can take care of ourselves. Living in our own home is now called aging in place. A huge segment of the population is getting to the years where health decline can put them in a nursing home. We may not be able to eliminate the possibility of needing nursing care but we can make it less likely if we keep ourselves healthy, active, and engaged in life.

Frailty is one of the big problems we will need to combat if we want to age well. We need to eat well and be active most days of the week and not become too thin as we age. If we unintentionally lose ten pounds or more in a year this can be a sign of increasing frailty. Exercise like walking and weight training will help keep our muscles strong even if we can only do a small amount. If we do as much as we can for as long as we can, we will be able to do more, longer.

We got Mom a walker and it is giving her increased mobility as it stabilizes her more than a cane, it has a seat so she can rest, which enables her to walk a little farther to build up her stamina. Some people don’t like using the aids we can take advantage of, but it is better to use the aids and stay active than to not use the aids and become inactive.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well-used brings happy death. Leonardi de Vinci

A positive attitude, keeping our mind active and engaging with other people, hobbies, reading, and staying in touch with family and friends will help to stave off the ravages of age. The more we do, the more we can continue to do.

Diet and exercise are important throughout our lives and remain important as we age. Aging well is in fact living well, which in turn may impact dying well.

If we want to stay in our homes longer we may need to think about what our needs will be as we age. Will we be able to create a barrier-free environment if it is needed?

When Mom bought the home she is in she looked for one that is barrier-free. It is not a senior’s complex but it has a level entry and everything she needs is on one floor. The basement is finished and she can still go up and down the stairs unaided but she doesn’t need to go downstairs for anything if it gets difficult. She is close to stores, banks, and other services.

Sometimes we would like to pretend we don’t have to prepare for old age, but unless we die young we will have to prepare for it, and the better we prepare for it the more choices we will have.

We will have to accept what life has in store for us, but we also have choices to make that will impact how we age.

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one. Epicurus

Aging is just another word for living. Cindy Joseph

Getting old is like climbing a mountain; you get a little out of breath, but the view is much better. Ingrid Bergman

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to those that read my books. A special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.

Posted on by BWThomas

There will be bends in the road, and how we navigate them will determine our life.

Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas

To persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man. Euripides

We are at the beginning the middle or maybe getting toward the end of a journey. We can feel like we can’t go on, the road is too hard, the reward is too little, or something has changed along the way. If this is a shared journey we may be letting someone else down.

How many people are looking at each other across the table one thinking they need to continue to press on and the other thinking they need to close the business, end the marriage, or make some other drastic change they don’t agree on?  It is hard to continue through life and finish what we start as individuals, we start a course of study we later learn we hate, we start a fitness program we have a hard time fitting into our schedule, or we get part way through something and wonder if it’s worth it.

In life, we need to know when to hold em, when to fold em, and when to quit. In real life, it isn’t always easy to know. We are also told it is always darkest before dawn. We’ve been holding on for so long, in a job, a business, a marriage and it wouldn’t take much to quit, or maybe we would like to continue but our partner is done. Our dream may end because of someone else’s decision. How are we to handle this?

In a partnership, it’s over when one of us says it’s over. That is the inherent weakness in partnerships, but what two people or a group of people can accomplish often can’t be accomplished on our own. In a partnership, we are not only counting on ourselves to have fortitude and forbearance but on our partner as well. How do we deal with the loss, with the betrayal in failing to live up to until death do us part?

Even if our own partnership seems strong, watching another one disintegrate can be hard on our relationship. We look at what is going on in another relationship and wonder about ours. Especially when someone we respected and thought we knew does something that seems out of character, this can shake us to our core. If we didn’t know them as well as we thought we did, do we know ourselves as well as we think we do, or our partner?

Your present circumstances don’t determine where you can go, they merely determine where you start. Nido Qubein

Navigating life isn’t always easy but it gets especially perilous when foundations we’ve built our life on that we thought were rock solid are shaken. Thinking anything in life is rock solid may be our downfall. We hear about people falling from grace all the time. Companies we’ve known all our lives go out of business. Couples we’ve looked up to get divorced.

What do we hold onto when nothing about us seems solid? This is the time for faith in something bigger than ourselves. It isn’t always easy to find faith in our time of need. But when I read about those who have overcome the truly great challenges in life faith often plays a role. When we read their stories often they could only take life one step at a time and with gratitude that they were still on their journey, and faith that they would get through it, they came out the other side stronger.

We may think I have faith and gratitude, but how do I help my partner have it? This is tough, we have to let people have their own journey, and they might make mistakes that affect us, but that too is part of the journey. We can’t control others no matter how much we want to, or how much better we think we could make their life if they would just listen to us and do what we suggest.

Haven’t we had times in our lives when we could have saved ourselves a lot of pain if we listened to those wiser than ourselves, but we wouldn’t have learned what we learned? We don’t live our lives singularly, we affect others on our journey, and they affect us on ours. Sometimes we are going hand in hand toward the same goal, sometimes we are not, but we have to be able to deal with what comes and realize we won’t always do the right thing, or make the right decision, and nor will others. Life can be a wild ride, we need to fasten our seatbelts, and sometimes all we can do is hope we have the strength to continue in truth, dignity, gratitude, and faith.

If a bend is coming up the road how will we navigate it?

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. Winston Churchill

A bend in the road is not the end of the road… unless you fail to make the turn. Helen Keller

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. Walter Elliot

Thank you for reading this post. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you will come back and read some more. Have a blessed day, filled with gratitude, joy, and love.

To subscribe, comment, and see archives or categories of posts click on the picture and scroll to the end.

Thank you to those that read my books. A special thank you to those that leave a review on Goodreads and Amazon. If you click on the Amazon link and purchase an item I receive a small percentage of the sale through the Amazon affiliate program.