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Archive for September, 2019

The Purge: Re-Visiting the Process of Shedding Material Things in Our Downsize

Six years ago this month Beth and I downsized and upgraded to Casa Blanco, our tiny little lakeside “retirement” home. It took 3 years to let go of our accumulated “stuff”, not a little bit due to the fact that there was quite a bit of “stuff” that belonged to our kids. We have new neighbors moving in next door, also downsizing, and some of my friends around the country are starting the process. Here’s what I had to say about our experience when we finished our “purge” and as our grandchildren started ramp up the acquisitions of new stuff.

 

In a couple of days we will be one step closer to completing “The Purge”. No, no…not THAT purge. I’m talking about completing the purge of all of the stuff that filled up our larger home with all of its modern storage spaces. Our new home, a tiny 1947 two-bedroom cottage, is 50% to the inch the size of our old home, but it has only 1/3 as much storage. Our purge has partially furnished at least 3 other homes, and the upcoming delivery to “Lovely Daughter” adds another home to the list.

Clothes, art, tchokes…you name it. We’ve been liberated from our stuff.

Have you ever seen George Carlin’s classic riff on “Stuff”? Truly funny stuff (Huh? Huh?), and easily available on YouTube. An entire cottage industry has grown up around the purging of stuff. That’s kinda funny, actually. The concept that you need someone to come in and tell you how to get rid of your stuff. In addition to a few minutes of belly laughs, Carlin gives you the place to look for low-hanging fruit: other people’s stuff! Set a timer, and if them others don’t pick up their stuff, off it goes.

The harder part, if it’s really all that hard at all, is when you are down to the stuff you think you might need someday. You know, like that really interesting, sure to be useful gadget you just had to buy at Sur La Table 10 years ago that’s still in its original packaging. Or those holiday dishes you’ve forgotten to use every Christmas since you got married 25 years ago. Stuff like that. When you literally don’t have a place to put ‘em, this category becomes not at all different from other people’s stuff: if you never used it, it was never really yours, right?

Before I get too self-congratulatory and get injured by patting myself on the back, I should point out that we DO have an attic, and also a tiny little vestigial cellar. Both are filled with unpacked, lovingly examined, and re-packed memories. Sure, I could digitize the photos and upload them to the Cloud. The 55 year old “Teddy Monkey” that hasn’t been cuddled for 2 decades would certainly fit better in an album than a box. It’s here where the line is drawn in our home, that place where “stuff” intersects with memories. Maybe I’m too old school, or perhaps just plain old, but the memories and the things that trigger the memories are safe from the Purge.

The whole exercise has been a helpful and useful one in my never-ending journey on the “want vs. need” highway. Stuff? Firmly on the “want” side of that equation. Every day in our cottage, more joy from less. Letting go of the stuff has also brought me closer to cherished memories, which in turn is bringing me closer to cherished people. Funny, eh? The less room I have for stuff, the more room I come to have for the people who helped me make the memories I’ve been saving. I’m off at the moment to round up a couple of those people, hopefully to create a few more of those memories.

After all, the size of your heart and soul need not be bounded by the kinds of walls that surround your stuff. There can always be room for your memories and the people who made them with you.

 

And with that Beth and I are off to visit family in Rhode Island and friends we made on our Honeymoon 34 years ago!

Harmony, An Introduction: Sunday musings…9/22/19

Sunday musings…

1) Cat. I’m allergic. Pretty sure the barn cat is aware of that.

The barn cat who insists on sitting on my lap while I type “musings…”

2) Fashion. Happens every year around this time. All of the large national papers have a big, glossy magazine filled with the latest creations from the world of fashion. The stuff for women is wacky enough, but have you seen the garbage they have created for men?! Seriously, have you ever seen anyone wear an asymmetric suit larger than the one the guy from the Talking Heads wore in the “Stop Making Sense” tour video?

That trees were felled or energy created to send the electrons over the internet for this crap is criminal. Sheesh.

3) Emmys. Tonight we here in Cleveland will have to choose between the televised spectacles of the Emmy Awards and the Baker Mayfield Show. Both will feature suspense of some sort; it’s a done deal that something or someone will go off the rails in both. With the Browns seemingly on the brink of relevance and the Emmy Awards stepping back from the brink of irrelevance by acknowledging so-called “new media” productions, one of the side effects is that there is a renewed interest in the historical excellence of both. I’ll not bore you with tales of Jim Brown or Otto Graham; it’s really more fun to talk about historically important TV shows IMO.

Parade Magazine listed 20 of the top TV shows of all time. Pretty good list, actually. You probably have seen a bunch of similar lists if you are a TV watcher. Not much to quibble about on a list of 20. I would have added something like Happy Days. Maybe subbed out “Friends” for Seinfeld. Still, pretty good list. What are your favorites? Pretty easy question for me, as is the “favorite movie” question (Shawshank Redemption): Hill Street Blues (medical school) and M*A*S*H (college and med school).

What I love about TV now is both the current “binge-worthy” shows that I can watch like a really long movie (or a non-Stop “Roots”) as well as re-runs and anthologies of classic shows, especially comedies and variety shows. Like Carol Burnett. I am convulsed in spasms of laughter each time I see Tim Conway and the “Elephant” skit that cracks up the entire cast. Another treat with the Emmy Awards and nostalgia is trivia. Did you know that only one person ever turned down The Carol Burnett Show? Bette Midler.

Betting she wishes she had that one back.

4) Harmony. My day job, as you may know, is medical. I am an eye surgeon. My side gigs involve a little bit of creativity and communication. I write both as release/escape and as a service to my colleagues who spend the lion’s share of their work time in front of patients or in the OR. Same thing with speaking; I am either speaking as an educator (sponsored or not), or working behind the scenes representing my fellow clinicians.

This weekend was a bit different, though. My colleague Alice graciously invited me to be the Keynote speaker at the annual educational meeting put on by her group’s foundation. I gave two clinical lectures on topics I am known for and know very well. It was the third talk, though, that was different. At the end of the long day of very technical lectures I gave a talk about the challenges of being happy, especially (in this group) for physicians. This was a talk born out of discussions that Beth and I have had with Megan over the last several months, and the joy of putting it together is that I have been privileged by the inspiration that Megan has given me through her insights. Here, then, is a small introduction to our thoughts as I prepare a “long read” version for a later post.

We have been bombarded with the conflicting impacts of a need to “have it all” and what we are told is the need for something called “work/life balance”. What is implied, if not outright declared, is that happiness can only be achieved if one is able to achieve, or acquire, both. Having it all and a work/life balance, that is. In reality there is no such thing as a work/life balance. It is a false construct. Work is a part of life. It’s all “life”. In a similar vein, what is implied by “having it all” is actually “having everything”. This is, of course, impossible. No one can have everything. You can have it all only if you recognize and accept two tiny little “buts”:

You have to choose what “All” is, and you can’t have it “all” at the same time.

Your choices have consequences, not only in terms of what you choose to include in your “All” but also when you choose to include those things. Happiness occurs not when you have balance because balance never occurs; something is always underweighted (or not chosen at all) so that something may be chosen and emphasized. Happiness occurs when your choices flow into and out of one another in a way that they do not conflict. Think of your favorite song, sung or played in key, each or the pieces parts moving in and out of the spotlight, sometimes leading and other times simply supporting. Megan and I like the image of a fountain, it’s shape and size built by you to reflect the choices you’ve made about what will be part of “All” for you. Water flows up and over, around and through, it’s speed and volume and direction the result of what you need and want at any given time.

Too much flow and you run out of water; you tried to have everything, or you tried to have it “All” at the same time. Too little flow and you wither; life and living is an active pursuit of both mind and body. Harmony occurs when every surface of your fountain is bathed in flow at some point, neither overflowing nor draining away. Your fountain rests in the larger body of water that is humanity, the fountains of friends and family nearby, sharing the collective stream.

Happiness is possible when there is harmony between the choices you have made. You can’t have everything. You can have it all, just not at the same time. You have to choose what “All” is and when you will have each part of it.

I’ll see you next week…

Honeymoon Weekend #34: Sunday musings…9/1/19

Sunday musings…

1) Fly. A young climate activist sailed across the Atlantic rather than fly to a conference to prompt a discussion about the environmental cost of air travel. She hopes to encourage the “climate woke” to fly less.

Sorry. Any trip over 3 hours is torture for me. If it takes longer to drive, pedal, or sail I’m on a plane.

2) Nashville. Pretty cool little city ya got here, Tennessee. Myriad options for drinking and dining layered on top of a truly magnificent music scene. I know that’s no real news to pretty much anyone, but being here to experience it is a tiny revelation.

Shame about the outcome of the Georgia/Vandy game, but still…

3) Connected. The good news: I am able to see pretty much all of my clinical data from the office including notes and tests. The bad news: ditto. Friday was my first full day on our Annual Honeymoon (more in a minute); it was filled with texts and emails and calls about patient issues that were convenient for those not on vacation to have handled during a Friday work day. Unlike many “always on” businesses my staff is largely off on the weekends so I am now somewhat inoculated from contact in all but the most significant emergencies. Also, unlike so many people who cannot turn off their connections lest the boss reach out and their availability to her/him be measured, I am traveling with the boss.

She just has to tell me what she needs and when!

4) Small. As in small world. As crazy small as the world turns out to be without any real effort on my part, the tiniest of friendly gestures can make it downright tiny. When I was an active participant in the Crossfit community, especially in the early pre-2012 or so days, wearing a shirt from CrossFit.com or a Box I might have visited was a guaranteed conversation starter. Heck, I once had a pilot who saw my tee shirt ask to see the Games videos I had on my iPad; the flight attendant brought it up to him in the cockpit while we were in the air. All it took was a noticing what I was wearing and offering a brief, friendly comment or question.

I had one of those moments this morning in our Nashville hotel. A gentleman who looked about my age was wearing a Middlebury Lacrosse tee shirt and I asked him about it. Turns out his son was a 4-year teammate of my nephew, and the two sets of parents had become great friends. We could have chatted for a couple of hours if they didn’t have wedding activities to attend to.

Smaller world moments are only a smile and a friendly question away. They are worth the tiny risk of approaching a stranger.

5) Honeymoon. Beth and I are in Nashville for our 34th Annual Honeymoon trip. What a ride! Without a doubt our marriage is the single most important endeavor we’ve ever undertaken, and so far the most successful thing we’ve ever done. I wish I could tell you that we had a super detailed plan that we laid out and followed all those years ago, but really, there were only two really simple things we did starting in the very beginning. We agreed that we would always talk to one another about everything we were thinking and feeling. No simmering and stewing over whatever might bother us. And we bought into Beth’s brilliant observation that marriage is not a 50/50 proposition, but rather 100/100.

Each of us has committed 100% of who were are and what we have to our marriage.

What does that mean in practice? In the briefest possible explanation what that means is that even when considering something that is vitally important to you, be it your job or some passion you have for whatever, you stop to consider what your decisions mean for your partner. Are you one of those people for whom job and hobby are one and the same? Can’t wait to get to work? Spend all of your non-office time dreaming about your career? Or are you rather that freer spirited soul who works only so that you can walk some other path, one at which you can’t really make a living? No matter. 100/100 means that you consider the effects of your career or passion activity decisions on your partner and your partnership, in our case our marriage.

Of course, all of this requires a huge amount of honesty and generosity, with a healthy dollop of tenderness and empathy. It takes effort. Over time it may become a bit easier simply because you become that which you practice, but in the early years most of us need to learn how to look outward, to hear and see how our personal choices affect that one person with whom we are closest. How do you get there? Well, it certainly helps to be crazy in love, right?! Each time you choose your two over your own one you get a little bit better at understanding how powerful those tiny little gifts to the marriage become as they build over time.

We’ve each been committed to each other, to our marriage, 100%. Two is so much bigger than 1+1.

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