Tag Archives: happiness

Ouch! Hey! and, Yay!

It can be hard for parents to make the changes they see would be best for their families. Every good idea seems like a Sisyphean struggle.

Sometimes it’s useful to start very small. Let’s begin with a short, very simplified review of behavior modification from Psych 101. We’ve got positive reinforcement (YAY), negative reinforcement (also YAY) and punishment by application – life does something to you (OUCH), or withdrawal, when life takes something away (HEY!).

Let’s say it is noonish on a pleasant day, I have a break, and decide to take a walk outside. I will enjoy the breeze, the birds singing, a chance to move and clear my head. I will come back to the desk feeling invigorated. I have been positively reinforced. I did an action, or stopped an action, that resulted in something good (my uplifted mood).

A few hours later, it will be about 3 PM and I may have the beginning of a headache. I glance at my water bottle and realize I am way behind on fluids, so I drink a few glugs of water. In short order, the headache dissipates. I have been negatively reinforced: I did a desirable action, and something bad went away.

Punishment, on the other hand, is entirely different. If, feeling a bit bored, I decide to scroll through the news of the day, I might feel depressed and then realize I have wasted my break reading bad news (HEY!).  Or, I may notice the beginnings of a headache and, instead of a drink of water, start with a few chunks of delicious, smooth dark chocolate and then (OUCH) my headache may well get worse.

The point of this little meander through intro psych lessons is that, when making changes, maybe it will progress better if you find ways to start with positive and negative reinforcement rather than what will seem like punishments.

For example, let’s say you think that at least one weekend afternoon of family time without devices would be a good start. Teens and even younger children may not agree. Wrestling their phones and tablets away is feasible, but they will consider this HEY!, and their resulting dopamine withdrawal symptoms to be OUCH for them; their miserable behavior may be a big OUCH for you.  But if a family activity inherently means no devices and then everyone has fun, we now have a big YAY in place the OUCH and HEY! What might that include?

Being outdoors in nature, where devices may not work properly anyway. A movie outing. A museum that requires devices be silent and away. Physical activities. Someplace where there is no phone or internet signal. Or just take a deep breath and impose device-off mode around a slice of a day and spend it in actively doing things that would not be improved by device distractions. Have fun. Don’t lecture about how fun it was (that’s an OUCH). If your kid mentions it was pretty fun, you can agree and take that as YAY – an invitation to repeat as possible.

Hard Changes

Most of us have some changes to make. And most changes are not so easy. That’s why people postpone them, or poke at the edges, or just pretend the problem will go away by itself. Sometimes people convince themselves there isn’t even a problem, really; that it just depends how you look at it. Maybe so. But maybe there’s something that needs changing.

Let’s say you have a teenage child, or a child approaching the teens. S/he is cranky, sullen, uncooperative with chores, sulks during family meals and resists being on time for school and other appointments. S/he wants to spend time alone, in the bedroom, with electronics. The child is depressed and/or anxious and/or obsessive and/or perpetually angry. You know the situation will change, one way or the other. Everything changes. If you do nothing, you are gambling that your child will continue down this road and somehow, at 18 or 19 or 20, wake up, shake themselves off like a wet Golden Retriever and come out of their bedroom, smile and say, “Wow! How could I have been so wrong?!”

Yeah, I doubt it, too.

If you have this situation and need to take it on, it can be hard to know where to start. Here’s a suggestion: if the situation is not a crisis, then the most practical first step may be to start with yourself.

You will have to change. Perhaps you have to start the change process by being sure that all the adults in the house are on the same page in your expectations. Perhaps you need to get yourself on the right path.

You go first. You get enough fresh air, and time in nature, and sleep, and healthy nutrition, and balanced physical activity. You strive to do interesting and challenging things in what little free time you have. You will, quite naturally and incidentally, spend less passive screen time. You’ll be leading from strength rather than being a target for adolescents’ favorite criticism: that we adults are hypocrites. You’ll be in a much better stance to steer positive changes for your tween or teen.  

It’s Just an Experiment

You know how it is. You want to make a change. Something needs to change. Maybe the kitchen needs organizing, or you need to sleep better, or be less stressed…whatever it may be. You want to get it “right.” And that’s where the freeze happens. “Right.  It has to be right.”

But what if there’s no way to know what is right for you without experimenting?

For all the chatter the past few years about science, and following science, there seems to be a misunderstanding of what science is. Science is more of a verb that a noun. It has more in common with, Hey, let’s try THIS and see what happens, than with learning a few things and deciding that’s it – that’s all there is to know.  You can see the difference in real time when SpaceX runs another experiment with the super heavy and the personnel there are excited about how much they’re learning and thus able to improve, while some people in the press call it a “failure.”  No, “failure” would be not doing or, having done, failing to study and learn. That’s failure.

At an individual level, let’s say you decide to take guitar lessons. You have no idea how to do anything with a guitar, but it’s been a long-time dream. Unless you are younger than five, you surely wouldn’t pick up the guitar, strum at it, and wonder why you didn’t sound like Carlos or Angus or Eric or Brian or whomever. You would have to spend many hours, experiment after experiment, building and reinforcing the new neural connections and fine motor skills that lead to the ability to play guitar. You would not call the outcome after the first, or tenth, or thirtieth, lesson a “failure,” properly, unless you gave up in impatient disgust and stuck the guitar in the closet, where it will peek at you through the clothes hanging in front of it and reproach your surrender until you sigh and try again or give the guitar away.

If you are looking at making a change, and feeling stuck, reframe what you are doing as experimenting.  Move the coffee mugs to that cabinet, over there, closer to the coffee maker, and see how you like it.  Buy a battery-operated alarm clock and leave your phone in the kitchen overnight for a few weeks and see what happens. Try turning screens off during meals, or leaving the audio off in the car, for a month or so.

Start the experiment, and then pay attention. That’s a critical part of an experiment. What happens in the absence of the old behavior? What seems better? What’s harder? What is your theory on why it’s better or worse? Can you build another little experiment – not a long-term commitment – on this one? It’s an experiment, for goodness’ sake, not a marriage.  That is science, and that is a way to get unstuck, make changes and work around any lurking perfectionism.

Boundaries, Fences and the Berlin Wall

My cousin George died a few years ago, still with Soviet bullet fragments in one leg from his part in helping people escape from East Germany to the west. He had been a young man seemingly allergic to caution and willing to risk death to help others through what was intended to be an implacable barrier, the old Berlin Wall.

There are walls, and fences, and boundaries. The fences around our back yard allow bunnies to slip from one yard to the next. Yesterday, a squirrel chased a small bunny – not much bigger than said squirrel. The bunny escaped under the fence; the squirrel scurried up the fence to be sure the bunny was banished to the neighbor’s yard. The bunny, meanwhile, scampered right back into our yard. Up above, the squirrel looked left and right for the bunny. They had, apparently, an issue with boundaries.

Boundaries.  Twenty-plus years ago, boundaries were discussed most often in therapy, helping clients, often victims of emotional, physical and/or sexual abuse, learn how to put up practical, realistic limits for interactions with others. As the topic became more commonly known, wise writers and speakers (Brene Brown, for example) provided practical and inspiring information about developing and maintaining these healthy limits.

Like anything else, though, something good can be misused.

Medications that are essential to reduce some pain for someone in the final stages of cancer kill non-patients via drug abuse.

Entire genres of horror movies revolve around practical items used as devices of mayhem.

And the important psychological concept of boundaries – that we are each distinct beings and have a right to dignity and mutual respect ¬ is weaponized, like so much else in therapy, by far too many people.

As an example, consider the meme that “No is a complete sentence.”  That’s fine, as far it goes. But how often is that level of curtness warranted?

Husband: “Would you like to go out for ice cream?”

Lori: “No.”

Okay, for one thing, unless I am on a medically required pre-surg fast I wouldn’t ever say no to ice cream, so it’s ludicrous on that count. Secondly, it’s just rude. “No.” Better: no, thank you; tomorrow would be better, or, No, not this instant; could we go after I finish this paperwork?

No is a complete sentence, and optimally a loud one, when someone behaves inappropriately – then drawing attention to the need to stop an encroachment makes “NO! NO! NO!” a complete paragraph.

But the magical complete “No” is the least of my concerns. What happens more is the application of “I’m setting a boundary” when the person (usually a gaslighting partner or manipulative family member) really means, I’ve decided to be mean to you and I am using the magic hall pass word of boundary to get away with it. It’s totally legitimate to set a boundary. Yet, when used to justify inconsiderate behavior, it becomes a useful tool gone bad, a well-oiled emotional chainsaw in the wrong hands.

Of course, there are many people who refuse to accept reasonable boundaries.

For example, the fact, grandparents, that your (and my) fantasy of grandparent-life looked one way does not impose that script on our adult children. Whether we like it or not, they largely write that script and we can be enthusiastic about our roles, or be miserable grumbles and find ourselves little more than walk-ons.

Adult children who are not financially dependent on you do not need your unsolicited guidance on what they should be doing with their money. That conversation reasonably happens when they breach their “I’m a grownup boundary” by asking for money. They have, at that point, called you up from the Parent Reserves to Active Duty, and at that point you can ask questions, like, exactly what are they proposing to “pay off” with your IRA distribution for the entire year? Counter their complaints about boundaries that they are the ones opening that door.

When someone brings up the boundary word, it is time to breathe, ask some clarifying questions, and then take some time to reflect.

Does this feel like gameplaying – do the “boundaries” in this relationship keep shifting like quicksand?

Can you discern the difference between your disappointment and actual manipulation and meanness?

Does this sound as if the person is using psychological terminology to justify distancing from family? Is it possible that there are factors you don’t know about, or don’t sufficiently understand, that make this reasonable to them and for them at this time? This is entirely separate from you being disappointed.  Example: if big family holidays include family members who have been cruel, or abusive, or harshly critical, or have bullying senses of “humor” towards this person, the person placing a boundary up is acting in reasonable self-interest.

Usually, in the short term, the uncomfortable fact is that you can’t change the situation; you must figure out how to adapt. Pushing against the decision will, inadvertently, reinforce the decision; your arguments, tears and complaints will be interpreted as more evidence of disrespect for their asserted interpersonal boundaries – whether they are emotional boundaries, actual physical distance, or the dire separation equivalent to the old Berlin Wall.

Loneliness can kill you…part 3

This is the third of three posts. This one focuses on the art of conversation:  being better at conversation will help you overcome loneliness.  As noted in part 2 of this series, a lot of people struggle with reflection and/or asking questions that elicit a deeper conversation.

So, here are two strategies to help with these.

Reflection:  reflection has to do with being able to identify how someone else feels, and mirror that back to them with your expression and your words.  Laughing when someone tells you something sad (it happens, trust me) is not good. Identifying all negative emotions as some form of “mad” or “angry” is not helpful, either.  Sometimes, when you are watching a show, put it on mute and try to verbalize the emotions that characters are experiencing. Then go back and watch with the sound on. See how you did. Experiment with mimicking their facial expressions and see what feelings you experience; the imitated expression can trigger a shadow of the other person’s emotion via our mirror neurons.  If your emotional vocabulary is lacking, do an online search for Dr. Gloria Wilcox’ “The Feeling Wheel” for a research-based set of some of the many emotion words.

Asking questions:  there are plenty of sources for “conversation starters.” I have used Gary Chapman’s conversation starter cards for couples and for families with clients, as well as a discount store’s set of conversation starters for couples, families, and general-use conversation. Basically, at this writing, for about $1.25, you can get about 100 sample conversation starters. Here’s how to practice by yourself: pull a random card, look at the question, make up an answer someone might give, and see how many questions you can come up with related to that answer.

Random example:

Who was your favorite teacher?

And, here are just a few of the many possible questions to take the conversation further:

  1. What was special about this teacher?
  2. What is one of your favorite memories about being in that teacher’s class?
  3. Did other students feel the same way? Why or why not?
  4. How did having this teacher help you out in future classes with other, not-so-great teachers?
  5. If you could meet this teacher now, what would you want to say?
  6. Have you had any opportunities to help others the way this teacher helped you? What was that like for you?
  7. If you were going to encapsulate what you learned from this teacher as a “life lesson,” what would it be? How has that lesson reverberated for you since those days?
  8. Did you ever have a teacher who was sort of the evil opposite of this teacher? Who helped you get through that school year?

Practice making up questions. You won’t be peppering people with multiple questions; the goal isn’t to overwhelm people with an endless interrogation. The idea is to develop confidence that you can invite someone to have a richer conversation by asking a thoughtful question or two, and have the kind of dialogue that helps heal the loneliness that you, and perhaps they, are experiencing.

Because loneliness can kill you.

Loneliness can kill you, Part 2

Connecting with others is vital to overcome loneliness.  Just being around people, including your spouse, children, parents, other family members and friends, is no guarantee you will feel connected.

In one of the marriage prep/marriage enrichment workshops I facilitate for the Diocese of St. Petersburg, I teach (in part) listening skills that help enrich conversations and allow deeper understanding and connection.

Here are some simple steps to better listening:

  1. Eye contact – or related means of showing dedicated attention. Put the phone down; mute the big screen. Obviously, don’t turn from driving to make eye contact, but give attention.
  2. Reflect: reflecting is giving feedback that lets the other person know you are listening and understanding. Think of reflection in 3 levels:
    1. Content: what information is being relayed? Here is where summarizing or paraphrasing feedback can indicate you are paying attention. Sometimes this is all you need, as when making sure you’ve got necessary information.
    1. Emotion: when it’s more than just basic information, how does the speaker feel about the situation? Happy? Anxious? Worried? Sad? Annoyed or angry?  Reflecting words that indicate a grasp for the emotion(s) being expressed helps the person speaking understand that you have an interest and concern in how they feel. This be as simple as, “That’s great news; you must be so relieved,” when, for example, medical tests come back clear.
    1. Meaning: depending on the topic, and your relationship with the person, you may have insight into what the topic means to them; its significance to their life, hopes and dreams.  Feedback that touches on the meaning this must have indicates you have been paying attention – not just now, but in the past, too. If someone has been working towards a promotion and their annual review is 4.5 out of 5, they may be disappointed instead of pleased. Just complimenting the 4.5 when, to them, it means the promotion just became unlikely will indicate you haven’t been paying attention to their work-related conversations.
  3. Ask questions: elicit more information and keep on reflecting all through the process. Avoid “why” as an early question, as it can trigger defensiveness, but when you’ve demonstrated concern and interest, the “why’s” can be asked.
  4. Show support; this doesn’t mean agreeing, but some emotional support if something is clearly a big deal to the person speaking makes a difference.
  5. Empathize and encourage.

A lot of people struggle with reflecting and asking questions.  More on that in Part 3 of Loneliness can kill you.

Loneliness can kill you…Part 1

According to new research from the journal Nature, Human Behavior published on January 3, 2025, loneliness and social isolation lead to molecular changes that, in my simple terms, seem to set the body up for serious problems – increased risk for dementia, depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, and early death.  The researchers’ recommendations include routinely asking about loneliness and isolation, the way a health professional asks about sleep habits, alcohol use, and drug use.

If you are lonely on an ongoing basis, this is for you.

Loneliness can strike through no fault of one’s own.

Losing your spouse, for example, or a best friend, will almost inevitably lead to a long stretch of deep loneliness during the initial year or so of grief, and can continue beyond, as the bereaved person struggles to outsource some of that emotional, intellectual and spiritual intimacy to other relationships. In a healthy marriage, you share all sorts of confidences with a spouse that you simply might not share with anyone else – fears, dreams for the future, spiritual insights and struggles, and the warmth of shared memories that are no one else’s but the two of yours.  Somehow, some of that must be extended to others, and depth built over time. It an absolutely monumental task to parcel out these small slices of the immeasurable depth of a healthy marriage.

Moving, alone, to a new city, for a new job, can be exciting, but the reality can include aching loneliness when everyone at the new job goes home to their lives and you go to your apartment and try to figure out how to build a life. Developing the big, and small, connections that make a place feel like home can be daunting, and for most people, it takes longer than they had ever anticipated.

Loneliness hits other people, too. Those who are living primarily second-hand, separated by screens and trying to substitute electronic connections for human ones, are often intensely lonely. Some people interact with others in person, but the conversations are shallow, guarded and therefore nearly empty of connection and meaning. This type of loneliness can be even more painful, because it seems inexplicable; how can a person live with family or a partner and yet feel deeply lonely?

So, what to do? Unfortunately, the impetus is mostly on the lonely people to do something differently.

Here are some suggestions I would give to a client in such a situation.

  1. Go to church or synagogue. If you are grieving, try to go back to your own – but if that’s painful, go somewhere else, at least for now. If you are new to the area, just find a place that seems like a possibility. Then go to the hospitality time afterwards. Introduce yourself, and invite people to tell you about the faith community. Do not stand around with your cup of coffee and wait for people to notice you. Set a goal: perhaps that you will introduce yourself to three people, get their names, and ask a little about this community. See what happens. Try to focus on the other person; make the conversation a chance to get to know them and about their community – not about you. If it goes fairly well, go back the next week, greet those three people (and anyone else you met) by name if you can, re-introduce yourself without taking them forgetting your name personally, and see if you can meet a couple of other people. Within a month, you will have some acquaintance with a dozen or more people and have a solid idea if this community offers activities for education, worship and service for you to join.
  2. Even if you usually like to do things solo join at least one activity – one exercise class, one art class, one talk at the local bookstore, etc. – on a regular basis. Get to be a regular. Greet other people.
  3. Volunteer in your community. Do this with others. Doing good solo is beautiful, but if you’re not getting out of your head and focused on others in an interactive way, you are missing part of the point.
  4. Be friendly but don’t try to bully people into being your friends. For example, if you are new to the area, don’t wear out your welcome with the neighbors who came over to introduce themselves on moving day.
  5. Please do not use alcohol or other substances, or resort to hanging out having drinks as a way to cut loneliness.
  6. Be patient and keep trying! Think of these steps as experiments. Track what happens over time; be willing to change to a different experiment if the first one isn’t working after a month or so.

As you can see, the remedies for loneliness all include getting out of your head and into the world. Focusing on others, in small ways (such as greeting them and showing interest) to big ones (such as volunteering), is a critical part of overcoming loneliness. This can be really hard, because loneliness tends to make people even more withdrawn, more insular – it is a self-perpetuating problem unless you boldly step out, even with small but courageous steps, into focus on others.

More about connecting with others in Loneliness can Kill You, Part 2, coming soon.

7 Things to do When Life Is Crazy

Sometimes, life just goes horribly sidewise.  This week, like most weeks, I spent time with people who have lost their homes to natural disasters, lost their job, had loved ones die, and sometimes are grappling with multiple serious problems.  The world seems crazy, you can feel like you’re going mad, and it is oh-so-easy to slide into attempts to numb the pain that are ultimately harmful.

It’s easy to advise people on what NOT to do – don’t drink alcohol. Don’t use drugs. Don’t eat a lot of junk food. Don’t let yourself scroll through social media and/or your newsfeed for extended periods of times. It’s easier, though, to “do” than to “not do.”  Anyone who has tried to break a bad habit knows that; it’s easier to “eat an apple” than to “not smoke/drink/eat a bag of cheesy poofs the size of a pillow.”

So, here are seven things to do – and keep doing – when life is crazy

  1. Say grace. Say grace when you get to sit at a table and say grace – together – when you eating a granola bar in the shade after another few hours of trying to make sense of the debris that used to be your home.  Say grace when you are out on a hike, just about out of water, and have miles to go. G.K. Chesterton famously noted he said grace when he sat down to write, to draw, etc.  A moment of gratitude shifts the focus from the mud to the mountaintop.
  2. Put the social media/news scrolling down and, instead, watch something that will make you laugh, preferably either an episode of a sitcom or a funny movie. Why? These require sustained attention, will bring a focus on characters who have ups and downs, and have the potential to make you laugh. Laughter releases dopamine – that feel-good chemistry that helps you heal.  Make it better and share that humor break with someone else. Sharing laughter with the person you love helps that sense of connection that seems strained, or even lost, when life has gone crazy.
  3. Eat food that is good for you. Ongoing extreme stress causes havoc in your body, including your brain, and getting decent nutrition is essential to your well-being, now and later.  I did the price comparison:  a precooked chicken, a bag of salad, some fruit and a little something else healthy, for example, feeds two or four people far cheaper than most or all fast food. Your brain will thank you.
  4. Listen to music that is soothing: piano or guitar, instrumental jazz, classical, baroque:  as tempting as it may be to listen to “angry” music because you feel so angry about what’s become of your life, that will only reinforce your distress.  Let peace soak into you, however slowly it may come.
  5. Check in with other people every day. Reach out to someone to see how s/he is doing. It helps us get out of our own heads, our experiences, and feel less alone.
  6. Get outside, preferably in the morning, for natural light exposure. You don’t need to bake in the sun; just get out there. Take a walk if you can.  Early natural light helps the brain regulate the sleep/wake cycle, setting you up for a healthy rhythm of melatonin production over the course of the day.
  7. Ask God to show you where He is at work in the events of your life, because when life goes crazy, the fog can make God’s loving presence hard to detect. Ask for the grace to notice the helping hands, the kind words, the moments of clarity.

I’m sorry if life has gone crazy. It is scary, and lonely, and disorienting when disaster strikes. If you find that you are sinking, reach out for help:  call your local helpline (in Pinellas County, FL the number is 1-888-431-1998, for the new Care About Me program that helps match those in crisis with an appropriate mental health provider).  Call a friend, a family member, or, if you are feeling unsafe and considering suicide or plan to harm yourself or others, go seek immediate help via 911 or go to an emergency service location.  When life has gone crazy, it is natural to feel frightened, confused and even helpless, but remember that none of us were designed to “handle it all.” We are, in fact, designed so that our strengths are distributed so that each has something to offer but none has every gift and ability.  Please reach out for help if you feel you are sinking.

Random Life Lessons

Here, on a beautiful autumn day, are a few life lessons I’ve picked up on the way…perhaps one will be useful to you.

Walking in the morning, before sunrise, can lead to being stopped by law enforcement, who, upon getting a look at me from the front (wrinkles and rosary beads) say things like, “Oh. I thought you were a kid out breaking into cars.”  Wearing a reflective vest and a skort, instead of baggy gym shorts, has solved that problem. Either that or I have succeeded in looking old from behind. The lessons: be reflective and dress appropriately to the task at hand.

Don’t save special stuff for special occasions.  Eventually someone else will just throw your treasure away or it will end up, sad and dusty, on a thrift store shelf. Use it up, whether it’s that fancy cocoa mix someone gave you at Christmas or your grandmother’s crystal. Drink sweet tea out of a fancy goblet.

Not from personal experience (see a prior post about this issue) If you change your hairstyle and/or color on a regular basis, you might not be the best candidate for a tattoo. The same goes if you try to destroy or at least hide any photos of you from five or more years ago because you can’t believe you left the house looking like that.

If there is something you really want to do, and it’s realistic for you, then pick a reasonable time frame (say, one year) and reverse engineer backwards all the way to tomorrow. If you want to achieve “X” – your G.E.D., your master’s degree, a marathon, writing your first book – there will be something specific that you do and/or don’t do tomorrow that is different than yesterday. Then the next day, you will, again, do/not do something different because you have this goal. If it’s your G.E.D., and you want to pass by one year from now, then the first thing to do is look up where to go for information. Then call the place. Then go. Then decide what you will give up to make time to study. Then do that: give up some of that time to study. Learn how to study (a lot of people get to college without knowing how to study; no shaming). And study again and again. Enlist people who will encourage you because it will be hard and discouraging and there will be people who try to pull you off course.

Don’t spend time around people who discourage you when you are trying to become a better person. If you have thought things through, and realized you must change some habit or adopt a new plan for life, and wise people agree it is a good move, then be very skeptical about the motivation of people who try to interfere.

Unless you have doctor’s orders to the contrary, odds are that alcohol is not your friend. Remember when Pinot told you what a great dancer you were at your cousin’s wedding?  Or how some kind of brown liquor helped you straighten out that miscommunication with your in-laws? Yeah, not your friend. Besides, alcohol is eager to share bad things: disrupted sleep, increased risk of cancer (it’s a major factor in a number of types of cancer), dementia, prematurely aging skin and who knows what else. Disclaimer: I don’t drink and I’m not in recovery, which means this one comes from 1) observing life and 2) reading the medical research.

Be wary of people who think it is funny to scare animals. A guest who tries to frighten your cat because it’s “funny” when the cat’s fur stands on end needs to go away and not visit again. This is a red flag, no matter how “nice” you thought this person was. They exert power by terrifying others; is that nice? No. If a five-year-old could easily explain it, I shouldn’t have to say another word.

The above does not include the person who is willing to make an absolute ass of themselves trying to scare a squirrel, bunny, rat, lizard, etc., out from under their parked car so they can leave without killing it. 

Try, if you can, to be patient with people who act as if they didn’t need to let you know about something they wanted you to know about because they put it on social media. Give yourself permission to explain that you don’t spend time looking for something you ought to know on social media. Unless you do, in which case you have bigger problems, perhaps, than missing one person’s newscast.

And, in closing, bear in mind that one person’s life lesson is not necessarily yours…but then again, maybe it could be.

The Best Years

When I was in high school, many adults told me I ought to really enjoy those years because they were “the best years of [my] life.”

Well, for me, high school itself was not, overall, such a great time, and having a bunch of grownups assert that it would turn out to be so was not encouraging at all. From where I am now, I feel sorry for a lot of those adults, because if that was their experience, they must have had pretty miserable adult lives.

Very often, we’ve adopted the idea that some certain time comprises the “best years of life.”  Consider the people who postpone marriage and family because they believe that their 20’s are “the best years of life” and they want to be “free” to travel/build a career/be self-indulgent/whatever.  Some of them will regret later that they did not make different choices (ask any therapist, priest, minister or rabbi).

On the other hand, some of us have our lives unfold in a different order: responsibility precedes higher education, and career-building comes largely after active-duty parenting. What, in the long haul, did I “miss out” on? Not a thing, and this was clear all along the way because I refused to take the bait on some certain time being “the best years” as if it were a prize category.

How about framing things up this way: each period of life is the “best” for what it is meant to be. As it says in Ecclesiastes, 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in His time.”  And in its time, too.  There are some things that our 20s tend to be best for; and for some things, our 40s, 50s, 60s.  Yes, biologically, the 20s are peak time for having babies, and yes, forms of learning that require sheer memorization are best pursued prior to the 40s.  High-level analysis and wisdom, on the other hand, peak later than memorization and keep rolling, usually long after we start fumbling for the reading glasses we put down someplace and then find on our head.

There are different challenges, joys, and heartaches all along the way. Fortunately, our priorities change, or ought to. For God’s sake, who wants to be over 50 and as terrified of other people’s opinions as the typical 15-year-old? 

Are you tempted to feel discouraged? Does it feel as if all doors are shut because some events, some struggles, or perhaps your own regrettable choices, have meant you have lost a chance at the “best years”? Please reconsider. Make a different set of choices or just one different choice today. Then, perhaps, unexpectedly “best” years start today. You probably won’t be able to tell right away. Usually, we only see this when there’s enough distance to look back at today, tomorrow and the next day.