Author: ferylfiles

We were given weird surveys to take as high school students. I’m not sure those would pass muster today. What crime would you most likely commit? I don’t know, kidnapping the driver of a Bugati for an afternoon of mimosas and touring olive groves? No, that wasn’t the answer I gave, but if I could chat with my younger self, that’s probably what I’d tell her. What do you hope most to be when you’re older? Happy, I wrote. Happy. I suspect that’s because I lived in a home that wasn’t. I wasn’t. They weren’t. Good thing a little life experience and hard-earned wisdom has taught me something different.

I like happiness. I am grateful for happiness when it shows up. I like to share moments of happiness. It’s simply not realistic to be happy all the time and anyone telling you otherwise is probably selling you something. If we can achieve x or y, THEN we’ll be happy. Happiness is just around the corner. Around the bend. Maybe a little more money. Maybe if we lived somewhere else. Maybe if I had everything I ever wanted right at my fingertips, maybe then I can be happy. And getting around that next bend, never really seems to happen. I think of the characters from Kids in the Hall: Brain Candy once they take GLeeMONEX and how tragic they truly are. I used to think if I wasn’t happy, I was sad. If I wasn’t happy, I was angry. If I wasn’t happy, I was depressed. I’ve vaguely known, but in the last year I’ve known on a cellular level that it’s possible to be happy and soul-wrenchingly sorrowful. I can be happy and sad and angry and afraid all at the same time.

Happiness isn’t my goal. Love. The fullness of life. The human experience. Gratitude. Deliberate decisions about love and joy. Those are my goals. Happiness will inevitably be a part of that. I’m thankful for that too. But I don’t chase it like a junkie looking for the next hit and invariably being disappointed because it wasn’t enough or didn’t look like I imagined. Knowing love and being human means tragedy, sorrow, heartache, fury, fear are as ever-present and possible as happiness.

I am grateful for happiness, but I’m under no illusion that it’s the only emotion worth having. I am also thankful for anger because it points me toward righting wrongs and solving injustices. I am thankful for fear because it’s my body and mind warning me to protect itself–that is survival and a will to live and it’s remarkable too. I am thankful for guilt because it tells me I need to and can do better and that I’m not perfect. I am thankful for pain because it teaches me compassion. And I am thankful for every single stabbing ounce of grief because it reminds me just how much love I have.

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I’m thankful for dreams that come true, for ones that don’t, and the ability to change my mind about what I’m dreaming of.

I wanted to be a princess in a castle in a far-away land where they spoke French, an archeologist in Egypt, a business woman (with red power suits and shoulder pads–what can I say, Hollywood is effective at crafting an image) in a tall building in a big city, a historian, a professor, a shopkeeper. I wanted the big romance and the happily ever after. I dreamed all of these things. Dreams carried me to interesting, beautiful places. And sometimes, my wildest dreams came completely true.

I studied French from seventh grade onward. That’s the language of Cendrillon and Perrault. I got to live in Tours, France where weekend excursions often entailed going to any number of chateaux. I learned that being the daughter of a pork butcher is so much better a life than any princess could have, luckier, more loved.

As far as a high-powered business woman, well, any time there was more month than budget, I could always whip up a bunch of earrings to sell. I’ve been making money on jewelry since middle school, and I’m still at it. With these broad, swimmer’s shoulder, thank heavens I don’t have to wear shoulder pads or a red power suit while I do it. I’ve never owned a power suit, red or otherwise. UGH, can you imagine??? Gross.

While I never became an archeologist, I’m surrounded by cats who think they’re gods so in many ways, I have much in common with the Ancient Egyptians. I did study history, I was on the academic path, when it became clear my health (mental/physical/spiritual) would suffer irreparably if I kept going. But my time was not wasted in the process. I got to meet some of the best humans on the planet, travel with them to Russia and Germany, share meals, tell the most insider-baseball nerdy trauma-bonded jokes and laugh ourselves stupid. All the while, I have a thirst to understand people in nuanced, complicated circumstances. (The running joke was the study of history could be summed up with–things were different in different places at different times and it’s much more complicated than we originally thought.) :oP

I got to be a shopkeeper for almost five years. I learned so much about myself, but even more I learned how much people are hurting. How very much everyone longs to be seen and loved and heard. I did not study to be a counselor/therapist/psychiatrist, but I unofficially wore that hat too. People like pretty things, buying gifts for themselves and others. People also like a calm, safe space to just be. I had a Whitman student who came into my shop semi-regularly who would walk in, look around, and take a deep, sighing breath after a hard day. She bought things on occasion, but more importantly, she found a space to get a little peace. What an honor. Learning about my costumers and their needs was beyond what I imagined (that was certainly tempered by book-keeping and slow seasons).

I met, fell in love with, and married THE ONE. I got the big catch. The once in a lifetime. My dream come true. While that dream didn’t last as long as I had hoped, I can in full honesty say if we lived another 30 years together, it still wouldn’t have been long enough. So I have to focus on the best parts of that dream.

And I’m at a point where I get to dream new dreams and push toward different manifestations of old ones. Will I write and publish that book I know is lurking just below the surface of my heart? Will I find ways to teach that don’t follow a rote path? Will I continue to make peaceful, calm spaces for those who need it most?

Am I thankful for dreams? Oh yes–the ones that come true and the ones that don’t. But more than anything, I love the dreams that I can reimagine.

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Have you seen the river otters at Mill Creek? Sightings are not nearly as frequent as I’d like, but they’re wonderful. These critters are diving swimming, rolling, playing, eating in small groups. They remind me of my childhood summers. I am game for fun whether it’s rollerskating, swimming, a dance party, a bagel-baking party, craft night, inventing dirty limericks, writing entertaining stories for my friends.

You can try to schedule fun and arrange the details so that it might fall into place, but really you have to come at it sideways with a little flexibility and sense of adventure. I’m not talking the Clark Griswold “quest for fun” kind of fun. That’s a little scary and frenetic. That could end in tears and/or jail time.

Fun has a lot of overlap with flow for me. Both are places where the brain’s anxious overthinking takes a back seat. You have to be fully present in the moment–Bryan’s famous “be here now” works in crisis, but it’s essential in fun and play, too.

I’m thankful for those in my life who seek fun and make sure I don’t miss out. They dance in the grocery store (to what are seemingly all bangers right now.) They play dress up and make-believe simply because they can. They can make the most mundane activity or chore seem like the best party of all time. They remind me that fun shared is the most fun of all.

[Thank you so much for taking the time to read my blog and thank you so much for those of you who have already given tips. Because of you, the cost of making this platform ad-free has been completely covered with some extra for my coffee budget! woohoo! :o) If you know anyone who would be interested in what I have to say, please feel free to share. And if you feel like you get a little something extra, here’s the link to my tip jar: https://venmo.com/u/Rebecca-Lubbers-1]

Are we talking about the noun related to coziness? Yep. I’m thankful for that. Blankets and flannel sheets, soft cotton, warm slippers, bubble baths, jammies, and a nice bed.

Are we talking about the noun related to solace? Yep. I’m thankful for that, too. Letters, hugs, phone calls and texts, holding me, crying with me, handing me the box of tissues.

My living room has quite a few blankets folded over the ends of the couches. These are gifts made or purchased by loved ones. I’m surrounded by things that are designed to comfort me in both ways. And I offer them to guests so that they too might be comforted.

This life has enough hard things in it that I am absolutely going to acknowledge, celebrate, and appreciate comfort, particularly when it is given as an act of love.

Ooph. I feel like the gratitude challenge list-makers really scraped the bottom of the barrel on this one. Not that I don’t like or appreciate inspiration, I do. But inspiration has a crappy sense of timing, is in no way dependable, and is an elusive beast. Thanks fairy godmother unicorn sprinkle, but the painting is already done, the short story written, the menu planned, the jewelry made, and I could have really used your help about three days ago coming up with solutions to 17 different problems. Where were you? Having Mai Tais on the beach with Henry Cavill somewhere, I’m sure. Jerkface.

Maybe you caught me in a bad moment, reader. Probably because inspiration left me high and dry and here I am having to pretend to appreciate it. It’ll probably appear when I wake up at 3am to feed the cats. I’ll have an idea for a novel, solutions to seven or eight of those problems, a melody to a song, a new cookie recipe. Then I’ll go to sleep and promptly forget all of it.

Go enjoy your tropical cocktail, you unreliable twiggit. I’ll muddle through.