The Young Man’s Guide for Women
“These six things does the Lord hate: well, actually, eight.” Proverbs
One day I discovered Proverbs. It took me a while to realize they were advice from a very old man — hundreds of years old — to young men. I do think it applies to males AND females, though, so you’ll forgive me if I clean up the machismo a bit.
What is hated is: a proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood. So far, so good.
Then, Solomon says, an imagination that thinks up evil things and feet that run to mischief. Again, great advice. My son could have used that last bit of wisdom. His feet ran to mischief faster than his mother’s feet could run to stop him.
Here’s two favorite bits of Solomon advice: It’s terrible to be a false, lying witness. We all know that from watching Cold Case, Law and Order and our naughty cousin who landed up in Juvie. Here’s one many families would benefit from: “Do not sow discord among your brethren.” Boy, did Solomon know families! Well, he had hundreds.
“My son, leave not thy father’s commandment and forsake not the laws of your mother.” In fact, adds Solomon, tie them around your neck and bind them to your heart. A commandment, after all, is a bright light.
Adultery is one big-time sin. Anyone who knowingly steals a mate is stealing a home, destroying a family, maybe destroying a man or woman’s life in its entirety.
Once there was a young girl named Katherine. She saw a woman’s husband and nothing would do but she would have him. So she spent a year wooing him, first subtly, then more persistently. Finally, blatantly. One weekend, while his wife was out of town, Katherine went to their home, tumbled into the hubby’s bed and was found there in the morning by the man’s wife – surprise! Wife missed him and came home early. It ended the couple’s marriage. It ended their business relationship. Adultery damaged all three.
Proverbs is a nice little life training manual. Check it out.
Meditation for the Day
“Your highest self will never respond to any ordinary half-hearted call, or any milk-and-water endeavor. It can only be reached by your [toughest] effort. It will respond only to the call that is backed up by the whole of you, not part of you; you must be all there in what you are trying to do.” Orison Sweet Marden, philosopher
Action for the Day
I am going to answer the call to change with all my will, my passion, my determination – and take Solomon’s advice. After all, he was wiser – and older — than I will ever be.
I want, I want, I want and even more, I want
“One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish the difference between need and greed.” Don Robinson
As a child, I was told the story of King Midas and his beautiful and beloved little daughter, the Princess Goldeena. King Midas loved gold above all else which is why he named his beautiful daughter Goldeena. One day he saved a stranger from drowning. The mysterious stranger, a magician, rewarded him by making whatever the King touched turn to gold.
King Midas was delighted. He touched an oak tree; its branches and trunk turned to gold. He touched his castle; it turned to gold. He touched his carriage. It suddenly gleamed brightly; it was gold. However, when he touched his food and drink; they, too, turned to solid gold. He was hungry; he was thirsty. He wanted to eat; he wanted to drink. Then, just as he began to realize the down side of this strange gift, he saw his precious daughter run through the corridors, slip and almost fall. He ran and stopped her just in time by catching her – and she turned to gold. He was horrified.
The king ran to the river where he had saved the young man, and cried out to be spared this awful gift. A voice said, “I will return your food and your drink, but you will have to give up all else to regain your daughter.” Of course, the king agreed to do this. He ran home, anxious to see his daughter. She was once again flesh and blood. Just as he moved to embrace her, his castle turned to old stone and crumbling parapets once again. “No,” the king shouted and reached to stroke his gorgeous property. As he did so, Goldeena lifted her little arms to embrace her father once again. And this time for forever, Goldeena was turned to hard gold.
Greed always leads to more greed.
Meditation for the Day
“If you want to find the evils on earth, don’t test for alcohol or drug abuse, test for selfishness and greed.” Unknown
Action for the Day
Today, I’ll concentrate on simplifying my life. I’ll take and use only what I need and be grateful for having it.
Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda
“That’s the woulda, coulda, shoulda. We wish we would have, but we didn’t.” Unknown
A funny thing happened recently. Each morning, as I awoke, I remembered a bit of my life I would live differently if I had a second go at it. Is this normal? Does anyone else ever chew over regrets like a cow chews her cud? The answer is yes. We all do it.
A woman of 60 still yearns for the man she turned down.
A man too scared and poor to follow his dream of a higher education lives with gut wrenching regrets.
We plan to make amends to someone we injured but we wait too long and they’re gone.
We have a rift in our family, a misunderstanding, an angry word. We steel ourselves against reconciliation. “There’s time later,” we think but then in a heartbeat, it’s too late. The mother, father, sister, brother, wife, husband we thought we could never forgive are gone forever. We are haunted with regrets — and sudden memories of all their good qualities. And how we already miss them.
Sometimes we regret career choices or a lack of self discipline that harmed us.
Regrets are normal but they keep us from living in the present. Hamilton Beazley, PhD. author of No
Regrets: A Ten-step program for Living in the Present and Leaving the Past Behind, says “Dwelling on past mistakes or missed opportunities consumes one’s ability to enjoy the present.”
So how do we “erase” haunting regrets? Here’s one method. Rewrite the past. For instance, instead of moaning and groaning about the gal that got away, write down how bad a move it could have been. She’s selfish, lazy, too tied to mama, a spendthrift. Or maybe one marriage might not have been her thing. See what I mean?
Or, you may have grown intellectually and the handsome high school athlete, whose jacket you once wore, now seems dull as dishwater and dumber than a box of rocks.
The flip side is listing all the terrific things you’ve done by taking the road less traveled. My mom changed her life forever when, at age 62, she undid a regret and went to college. Who needs regrets when we can have uplifting satisfaction?
Meditation for the Day
“I love my past. I love my present. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve had, and I’m not sad because I have it no longer.” Colette, French author
Action for the Day
Today, I’ll list anything that haunts me with regrets, figure out why, then decide: Act to change the situation or do a creative paragraph or two on how the opposite decision may have turned out really bad. List all the good things I got to do by taking the path I did. No holds barred. Silly scenarios allowed.
Who Says You Can’t Take it With You?
”They say such nice things about people at their funerals that it makes me sad to realize that I’m going to miss mine by just a few days.” Garrison Keillor, American humorist, creator of radio show A Prairie Home Companion
Some folks love to wander through old cemeteries. It may be a weird hobby but one day, at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, it was pretty intriguing. Wandering over fossilized carriage tracks into a field of raggedly placed headstones, Joan and I found two that cried out for attention. One looked out over the grass decorated broken fencing. It said, “Here lies Captain Ross Marshall (not his name), who died in the battle of Gettysburg.” Next to it was a small stone laid flat on the ground. It read, “And here lies his concubine.” Those two inscriptions gave us much to ponder on the way home. It started us collecting epitaphs — finally, we created our own.
Some of America’s most illustrious citizens left us with real appreciation of their innate humor and joy. Who says you can’t take it with you?
“Together Again,” George Burns and his beloved wife, Gracie Allen; self written
“I told you I was sick!” Found in a Georgia cemetery
“Here lies Ezekial Aikle, Age 102, The Good Die Young.” (Headstonez)
“The Entertainer” He did it all.” Sammy Davis, Jr.
“Called Back”, Emily Dickinson, self written
“Here was buried Thomas Jefferson,
author of the Declaration of American Independence,
of the statute of Virginia for religious freedom,
and father of the University of Virginia.”
Thomas Jefferson, self written
My dear friend Joan: “Now I start a new adventure.”
Mine: “I loved and I wrote. Lucky me.”
Meditation for the Day
Life is too short to fear its end; live each day as if it is forever and forever one day.
Action for the Day
Today, I’ll open my mind and heart to love and laughter and learning, wherever and whenever. And I’ll start RIGHT NOW.
Never Take the Cake
“No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.” Francis Bacon, Elizabethan philosopher
Like all students everywhere I was, as a journalism student, fascinated by some classes and turned off by others. One I adored and would race to was an ethics class. Our professor – Jeff — was tall, skinny as Ichobod Crane, and had great stories to tell us about his long career as a newspaper journalist. I loved the debates that followed, sometimes reaching crescendo level. I loved analyzing the ifs, buts, and maybes of ethics and the moral mazes they led us through.
One of his early reporter stories’ about newsroom gifts seemed like an ethical slam dunk at first. Jeff was working on the staff of a small town newspaper. He wrote a short piece about a local event. The female chair person of the group heard it was Jeff’s birthday the next day and came in that morning, carrying a huge chocolate birthday cake. She marched up to his desk and loudly gushed, “I am soooo pleased with the lovely story you wrote about my club. I made you this cake to thank you.”
Jeff said thanks, took the cake and laid it out on a nearby table. Another young reporter got a knife and some paper plates. What a neat thing, they thought, until they heard a loud bellowing, “Whaaaaat is going on here!!” It was their editor and he was not pleased. He covered the room faster than they had even seen him move. Someone started to explain. They didn’t get past, “That nice lady gave us . . . ” Their editor turned purple in the face and shouted, “Get that cake out of here. We DO NOT, repeat DO NOT accept gifts. End of Story. Get ridda’ the cake!” The chocolate sugar high disappeared in seconds. Jeff never took a gift while a reporter again.
I got it. So later, when a gal who had set me up to write a story I later realized was contrived marched into our newsroom, a gigantic cake held like an Oscar before her and thrust it my way, I blanched. Then I said, sweetly, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones. We are not permitted to accept gifts.” She argued haughtily, “How silly, Why don’t you just take it and give it to the “boys” if you don’t want it?” When I held my ground and said I was sorry but that would be the same thing, wouldn’t it, she changed her tactics. She tucked the sheet cake under her arm like an old parcel, opened her purse and pulled out a sheaf of papers. They were for me, she said. It was her draft of a story she thought I should write for the next day’s paper! I referred her to my editor.
Now, whenever I hear someone shredding ethics, I want to say to the targets of their manipulation, “Don’t take the cake.”
Meditation for the Day
“Truth may be stretched but cannot be broken. It always gets above falsehood as oil does above water.” Miguel de Cervante, author, Don Quixote
Action for the Day
Today and tomorrow, I’ll embrace integrity and say “thanks but no thanks” when someone offers me the cake.
The Playground of Youth
“There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love.” Sophia Loren, Italian film Actress
I once visited a senior community in Maryland that was a shining example of affordable housing. I believed – and believe – that there isn’t enough affordable housing in America so I was pleased to trek through small but charming apartments while folks peered at me as if I was a visiting Emu. Soon, white haired folks were taking me in tow. They wanted me to meet a newly wed couple. And the happy newly weds, arm in arm, wanted to crow a bit. They met at this community; they shared meals at the senior center nearby; they talked and gardened together and fell in love. The entire community filled their flower-filled wedding chapel. The entire community threw rose petals at husband and wife. The entire community felt the hope the two gave them. Mr. Smith is 77; Mrs. Smith is 76. He drags an oxygen tank behind him. She proudly leads a tour of their new cottage; she is delighted with their huge king-size new bed.
A neighbor, 82, starts her day with crossword puzzles. Another gal, age 78, actively campaigns for her favorite presidential candidate. A former mechanic volunteers to teach youngsters how to change a tire, check their car’s fluids and keep their tires inflated properly. Another couple, the wife 82; the husband, 92, won’t move to a senior community. The wife says, laughing, “Oh, we’re not ready for that.”
Most aging experts say being youthful is mostly “attitude, attitude, and attitude.” A Centenarian study from Harvard says these 100 years plus folks not only have good health, they have a sense of humor, a sense of hope, are involved in work or a hobby or volunteer, and they have stress reduction abilities. They also have an ability to deal with any losses that come along. No wonder most of them are donating their bodies to science for study after their deaths. We could take a hint from them, for sure.
My mom, who returned to college and earned her master’s degree at age 62, then built a professional career on it, says she stays young because she eats well, reads and writes constantly, does not smoke and is insatiably curious. She laughs when asked how she manages to look almost 20 years younger, “I’m too busy to get old.” I believe her.
Meditation for the Day
“When we die, do we want people to exclaim, ‘She looked ten years younger,’ or do we want them to say, ‘She lived a great life!’ ” Unknown.
Action for the Day
Today is the first day of the rest of my life. My great life!
All Living Creatures, Great and Small
“When a man has pity on all living creatures then only is he noble.” Buddha
My wedding dress hung in the dressing room, its satin and lace train touching the floor. It was two weeks before my wedding, and I should have been more careful with this lovely if previously used lacy gown. It was all my fault; my roommate Susie agreed.
It was she who first heard the tiny mewling sounds coming from the dressing room. Our cat, Scheherazade, Sherry for short, was pregnant. Susie and I tracked the mewling to the train of my wedding dress. Yup, Sherry agreed with me; it was a very soft satin and a great place to have her four little kitties. Thank goodness my dress was a Goodwill Special. Susie and I watched Sherry wash her little babies and then stretch out, offering them her body and its milk. Our Sherry, always a red terror, was now a gentle, caring, cosseting mama cat.
Later, as a newspaper reporter, I rode along with SPCA and Humane Society animal cruelty officers. I became a voice for dogs beaten by owners to make them more ferocious; animals abandoned by owners with no water, no food, locked in houses filled with debris. I feel the same fury at human monsters who torture a helpless animal as I feel towards murderers. Psychiatrists have learned that serial killers start by torturing animals – practice for doing the same to human victims so I’m not far off course.
What is it their justification? What should keep us from harming animals, birds? Jeremy Bentham, Victorian founder of Utilitarianism –the philosophy that says a moral act is one which produces the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, says, “The question is not, Can they reason? Nor can they talk? But, Can they suffer?”
One evening, Abraham Lincoln was on his way to an affair with friends. Suddenly, he stopped walking even as they spoke, and left the pathway. He leaned over and picked up a fledgling bird, stretched upward and replaced it in its nest. When his friends said they were in a hurry and why did he delay them, he replied, “I could not have slept tonight if I had left that helpless little creature to perish on the ground.”
Ditto, President Lincoln. Ditto.
Meditation for the Day
“It is man’s sympathy with all creatures that first makes him truly a man.” Dr Albert Schweitzer
Action for the Day
Each day as I walk the earth, I will extend my love and protection to all living creatures; they are able to love, able to communicate with us and certainly able to suffer.
That Touch of Mink
“Give me the luxuries of life and I will willingly do without the necessities.” Frank Lloyd Wright, US Architect and designer, quoted in his obituary,
Luxury is, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Today, a group of middle aged women gathered around a pattern table at a fabric store, strangers all sharing delight over patterns of 1940s style hats.
In a Salvation Army thrift store, a man stops everyone in their tracks by admiring a red velvet chaise lounge, soft, cushy, very red. “I could sure use that on a pier. I could lay down, put my reel in the water and fish in comfort,” he suddenly says aloud. His view opens the floodgates of shoppers’ imaginations. A woman holding a stack of books sighed and says softly, “I’d lay on it and read.” When the man turned to her and said, “Yes, that’s right. Read,” she adds softly, “I’d put a soft afghan on it and pull it up to my chin and read all day.” Another woman looks at the tomato colored lounge and adds, “It would be a good place to nurse a baby, with the sun coming in through the window.”
Architect Henry Toombs of Atlanta, age 62, after a long illustrious career (He built Eleanor Roosevelt’s cottage at Warm Springs, Georgia among other projects), decided to learn to sculpt. He went to Italy and studied for a year. When he came back, he built a foundry and hired an apprentice. Before he died, he sculpted a life sized statue of a nude pregnant young woman. His idea of luxury was the same as that of Leontyne Price, a famous opera star. He wanted a bit of time to do whatever he wanted to do.
Sleep can be a luxury as can fresh fruit or one flower. It can be a rare print or an inexpensive poster. A friend who is not rich feels rich because she was able to buy a $20.00 reprint of “Two Lovers” by Chagall online. She had one like it as a child.
Thomas Jefferson once said, “I cannot live without books.”
For me, walking on a deserted beach is the height of luxury; the seashells I find there are more precious to me than diamonds; beach glass more desirable than emeralds. I hold them in my hands and feel like I am holding bits of eternity. To each our own.
Meditation for the Day
All our days are filled with bits of luxuries; we only have to look to see them.
Action for the Day
Today, I won’t regret what I don’t have; I’ll celebrate small luxuries I find along the way.
Just a Drop in the Ocean
“Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.” Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, author, philosopher
A moving concept of generosity is brought to us by Buddhism. The precept says that compassion, the intention and capacity to relieve the suffering of another person or living being is one aspect of generosity. Another precept is “loving kindness”, the intention and capacity to bring joy and happiness to another person or living being.
“It takes time to practice generosity,” says Thich Nhat Hanh, Zen Buddhist monk, author of “For a Future to Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts”. “We may want to help the hungry but we are caught in the problems of our own lives.” How many times do we, after reading of a tragedy that befell an innocent family, or victim of a horrendous crime, want to reach out and help them? But the moment passes and we go on with our lives, touched perhaps but not touching.
Yet, if we embraced generosity, we would be following all faiths’ call for generosity, for compassion for all living creatures and their cries for loving kindness.
‘I undertake to practice generosity, by sharing my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in real need,” says Buddha. Is that very different from “Love thy neighbor as thyself?” Today, we hear these words yet seem not to recognize them. “The first gift is the gift of material resources. The second is to help people rely on themselves. The third is the gift of non-fear,” says Thich Nhat Hanh.
When I was dying, I was sent a message that led to freedom from that fear. So I can understand that precept. Which precept is easiest for you to grasp and which the most difficult? How much can you contribute to either or all of them during your busy day?
Meditation for the Day
“We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.” Mother Teresa of Calcutta
Action for the Day
Each day, as I walk through my life, I’ll be that single drop in the ocean. I’ll add my acts, no matter how small, of compassion and loving spirit to the world. I’ll do what I can to fill the ocean.
Are You a Cat?
“Curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back.” Eugene O’Neill, playwright
Sometimes the only thing that keeps me awake while watching the flood of television reruns is the amazing ingenuity – and amusement – generated by new products. As time marches on with even more reruns, I’ve learned to appreciate at least one newbie invention. It’s for the funny looking but apparently successful Snooz Gard. A little band- aid looking patch is stuck over your nostrils and supposedly pulls apart your otherwise stuffed proboscis openings. The inventor strolls on into camera view and explains how miserable he was and how he began a search to find the NSD, as in No-SnoringDevice. It took him four tries until he created the little gizmo that won him sleep, rescue from nightly elbows in his ribs from Wife and oh, yes, buckets of bucks.
Another man with curiosity to burn was former slave, George Washington Carver. He discovered 450 products can be made from peanuts and other cultivated plants. Isn’t that ironic — a former slave helped Southern farmers to diversify their crops — and save their farms.
Another industry came about in America as a result of the curiosity of a former actor, Isaac Merritt Singer. Guess what he invented? By improving an existing sewing machine, he gave America its first commercial sewing machine . . . and our once prosperous American made ready made clothing industry.
Do you wear blue jeans? Well, say thanks to Levi Strauss, whose curiosity prompted him to look for a way to produce pants tough enough for prospectors and miners. He decided to make them of canvas and then he decided to die them blue to hide dirt and stains. A very wealthy friend of this poor female once said, “Look, I have jeans now, too. They were on sale. They only cost $250.00!” Levi Strauss must be spinning in his grave.
Everything from light bulbs to canned food to can openers to artificial hearts and dried blood plasma and onward and up came from someone’s fertile imagination and curiosity. Their curiosity birthed the question, “What if ???”
And then, How????
Meditation for the Day
“Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” Madame Marie Curie, Physicist, Two Nobel Prizes
Action for the Day
Today, I’ll consider this: “The important thing is to never stop questioning. I’ll never give up my awe with all the mysteries of life. I won’t “grow up” to lose my gift of curiosity.”
