Category: Uncategorized

I recently received my long coveted invitation to Clubhouse and I must admit that yes, I am fascinatingly addicted. It’s vast diversity includes talented intellectuals, highly motivated individuals and emotionally available/vulnerable souls who openly share information, thoughts, experiences and feelings. It’s like tuning into your own topic designated pod cast, radio channel or speaking engagement. You can just listen or, choose to interact, reference the bio of the speaker/s or other like minded individuals in the room. And, your encouraged to personally connect in order to develop relationships. The best part, you can easily exit when your ready to move on. With it’s multi-faceted approach, it may just have the potentiality of stage for connection and healing to many.

Engaging on Clubhouse is like being exported to a collective modern day wisdom realm and you’re not only welcomed there, your accepted and embraced for all your talents, faults and flaws. Its like having your mentor, peer, best friend, sibling, child, parent or grandparent all wrapped into one. There is something about the combination of acceptance and giving, that promotes wellness and while separate from our physically close friends, this platform seems to envelope you like a weighted blanket inviting you to reach your fullest potential as you go deeper and deeper into the security with others.

Now, I haven’t been a super active person with social media, but It’s thought provoking to wonder what our overall societal hunger is now and will be in relation to social media amid and post-COVID. We certainty know that this pandemic has helped many individuals and families find deeper meanings and a deeper sense of responsibility to what actually matters, so perhaps what we need now is something less impulse related, less immediate gratification, less shallow. A topic worth ruminating over. A satiation to our own curiosity, knowledge or emotional needs that we can then share with others in a way that actually facilitates positive change for everyone involved. Something – more real. Who knows, It might be the beginning of an epitaph to our social media structure as we know it today. 

Most of us, having had a goldfish, can remember when we got our first one. Most likely rushing through the pet store as a young child all excited about this new pet; picking the perfect fish from a multitude in the tank, then the perfect bowl, some pebbles, rocks or marbles for the bottom and perhaps, even a bubbler attachment. The store clerk then attempts to sweep up the goldfish we have chosen with a net. If lucky, they get them first try, or not and our anxiety about getting the right fish grows with every swipe of the net. Did we get him? Yes, we finally got it! Its bagged and tied up with a rubber band. We marvel at the newly caught creature, gently coddle and carry it through check out and the drive home to ensure they don’t get too sloshed around. At home, we get the bowl all set up and if the fish is lucky enough to have conscientious new owners, they float in the baggie atop of the bowl to allow acclimation. If not, then the goldfish just gets dumped into the bowl without warning, gasping with shock, lisping to the side and hoping to hell they can just hang on until their body acclimates without too much internal shock and exhaustion.

But what really goes through their mind when they are scooped out, shoved into the baggie, hauled around like a new toy with dizzying visual disturbances, taken on a drive home, dumped in a new cramped space and stared at with distorted faces and wide eyes, flooded with food that they could really care less about? Who knows, but what they soon learn is, oops, can’t go there.. oops can’t go there either… The glass doesn’t allow it. There are boundaries – clear boundaries in this new home. Its smaller than where I came from, less crowded, but I still cannot get out. I can see the other side but it continues to restrict me from moving forward, exploring new things. Over a course of time, the goldfish understands that those in charge will provide what they need. The fish accepts their boundaries, living within its confines, often bored but tries to do the best self-entertainment based on what’s been provided while waiting until some other life altering event occurs.

At some point the owners either graduate them to a larger bowl, add more play toys or playmates, or, maybe the fish dies. Worse yet, the owners feel that the fish has become too problematic and therefore is easily dispensable. The bowl needs cleaned frequently, it’s a pain when leaving for vacation, oh and these cute little goldfish can grow to the size of their bowl! So, the goldfish, seemingly by no fault of their own, becomes a bourbon who either dies from neglect or, is disposed of – down the toilet. We humans view these goldfish toilet burials as humane, it’s a fish and the toilet consist of water, right? Perhaps they can live there if they are alive right? The toilet is flushed, it’s all ok now, they are in direct route to goldfish heaven. Not like real fish who are hit over the head with a stick, gutted, cleaned and eaten… No, not the goldfish, these cute little things get proper burials, we would never conceive of eating goldfish.

I don’t know anybody who would actually eat a real goldfish… Yet truth be told, goldfish do get eaten, a lot of goldfish, in the form of crackers. We just nibble away at these cute harmless goldfish shaped crackers, popping them in our mouth one after the other. Created by a swiss biscuit manufacture in 1958 these goldfish in the bag were brought back to the states in 1962 by Pepperridge Farms (a division of the Campbell Soup Company) as a soup cracker. On the package it actually says they are “soup crackers”, but like me, I bet many of us have never stopped to actually read or see that, but these goldfish are actually made to swim in our soups if we let them. Pepperidge Farms states that 40% of these goldfish crackers contain imprints of an eye and a smile, so let’s feel good about eating as many of these as we want, because in the end, these goldfish also, get a kind of proper goldfish burial too, in the toilet.

 

It’s not the number of packages- you only need one!

Most young people these days have spared us great angst by just wanting gift cards or cash, no lie when I say, it can be a relief. But honestly, what’s better than shopping for that special something for that special someone and giving the gift that you know they will love? Nothing! It’s the beauty of the giver. Knowing the person well enough to anticipate excitement with them before they open the gift, is very magical. When you KNOW that the gift you have chosen for someone will bring joy, then you have done your job well!

There is always that really special something for each person. Do any of us ever forget those really special gifts? I thought not. In the 70s, it was a pair of knee-high tie it up blue suede boots with wooden soles and a watch. In the 80s, it was a purse I really, really wanted. In the 90s, pearls and a stuffed armadillo – yes really, a stuffed armadillo! In the 2000s, it was a oversized denim coat with red removable lining and this decade, it’s got to be the Ughs (always) and the silliest set of box stick matches. One box for every month of the year. They are the bathroom matches and I enjoy switching them out every month.

So, some of these special gifts I still have, some I wish I still had. But either way, remember that those people who go out of their way to get the special gift in an otherwise hectic time of year, know how special you are and know why they are gifting it. Because they are not gifting an item, they are gifting love!

 

Headed over to see this little gal now.
Mom, mamma, mommy, and no I am not from the south, but trust me when I say; in our deepest needs of agony – nearly all humans cry out for mommy or mama and I know I will do the same when the time comes.

Since we are both morning gals, I like to sneak over at early sunrise and surprise her with an egg bite from Starbucks (which she loves) and share my coffee with her.

She is “90 and 1/2” she reminds me, and still such an amazing person. I am grateful for the healing affects this blog will have in our afterlife connection.

I once paid my regards and sympathy to a friend who had lost her father and she smiled and gave a warm hearted laugh. She eased my astonishment by explaining how much she loved him and that they were both fine, in good spirits and essentially the grief and mourning can debilitate us instead of lifting us in celebration.

Terminal care is really difficult and family members who assist others through it, often in the end are left so exhausted and drained of energy from having experienced this suffering so long and given so much emotion towards the efforts, that it can feel very anti-climatic.

So as I celebrate both life and upcoming death with mom this morning over a latte and egg bites, I will remember that our love for one another will never fade and when I get ready to pass beyond in search for her myself, I know she will hear the child in me calling for her.