The Adult Child

There are a few difficult stages in life I am aware of and will try my hardest to prevent total self-destruction. Those times when you stop and say - Who Am I?

life post college, entering your vocation, empty nesting, retirement...

The latest growing pain is... the Adult Child. A delicate mix of desiring to make decisions on your own, yet battling the opinions and guidance of the people who have parented you for the past 20+ years. Unfortunately they do not have an 'off' switch.

The irony of it is, no matter how hard we try to break away, to develop our own thoughts, to make our own decisions, to pave our own paths, we are a product of our childhood. We are brainwashed, biased, and bonded to our parents.

While trimming (painting) the ceiling of a friend's house, my father sat on my shoulder, "Slow down! Haste makes waste, Kate..."

While considering the productivity of my day and whether the laundry should get done that afternoon, my mother whispered, "Maybe tomorrow..."

While embarking on a trip to the airport to pick up a friend after dark, my father made his way to my ears, "Buckle up, watch for deer!"

Although most consider insanity when voices enter their minds, there is comfort in knowing I am most likely not the only one - what do you hear?

525,600... decisions

Everyday we make an incalculable number of decisions, and we have become experts at it.

honey nut cheerios or regular?
blue shirt or gray?
shower or snooze button?

Every so often we find ourselves presented with a decision of great impact and our rhythmic decision making tactics are launched out the window and time stops.

peace corps or business school?
job A or job B?
mr(s). right or mr(s). almost right?

Although we are never really sure of the outcome of the path we did not choose, we are mostly relieved when we are content with the one we did choose.
How many decisions in our life, like the decisions above, are good vs. better? We often are forced to choose between two appealing paths, otherwise what effort would a decision take?

Where some may say, win/win - look at it again... why choose good when you could have better?

Better takes sacrifice, Better takes patience, Better takes you outside comforts. And perhaps that scares us into Good. It is important to analyze our decisions to ensure we are not settling for Good - and if not today, when?

And when time does start again, there is no day but today... or life is yours to miss.

102... And Counting

Elizabeth "Libby" Tresp - November 13, 1906

Swallow this:
Life Expectancy - 47 years

Wars/Battles - WWI, II, Cold War, Korean, Vietnam, Stalingrad, D-Day, Pearl Harbor, Cuban Missle Crisis, Iraq, Pakistan, Desert Storm

Threatening Diseases - Polio, Tuberculosis, Smallpox, Pneumonia, Influenza, HIV, Cancer, Heart Failure

People like - Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Picasso, Babe Ruth, Al Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, Amelia Earhart, Anne Frank, Henry Ford...

The Great Depression - Nuclear Weapons - Establishment of 5 US States - Communist China - Landing on the Moon - The Transistor (and all that is computers) - Internet - Plastic - Haley's Comet (twice) - Parachutes - Titanic - Crossword puzzles - Grocery Stores - Daylight Savings - Commercial Radio Broadcast - Women Gain Right to Vote - Prohibition - King Tut's Tomb - Talking Movies - Winnie the Pooh - Bubble Gum - Mickey Mouse - Sliced Bread (not a joke) - Dictionary - Pluto - Air Conditioning - Splitting an Atom - FDRs New Deal - Monopoly - The Hoover Dam - The Panama Canal - Manhattan Project - Mount Rushmore - T-shirt - Microwave - Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Flight around the World - Color TV - Disneyworld - Sputnik - McDonalds - Velcro - Berlin Wall - Olympic Games - Oklahoma City Bombing - Mt. Saint Helens - Y2K......

And she always tells me, "If we would all just take responsibility for ourselves, where would this world be? Yet we can't even do that..."

Is it so simple? Are you taking honest responsibility (integrity) for yourself?

Peter Pan

Don't ask for help you're all alone
Pressure
You'll have to answer to your own
Pressure
I'm sure you'll have some cosmic rationale...

-billy joel

Life is full of pressures. It amazes me how much stress our bodies can handle (let's not get into all the social, financial, and workplace pressure there is). What is most curious is we create unnecessary pressures on ourselves, and in turn isolate ourselves from others. Is Billy on to something here?

We perceive others' expectations of us and place them on ourselves. We judge ourselves according to those standards and avoid them before they can judge us. And you bet we come with creative excuses for why - or why not. It is exhausting to think about.

My worth is defined by my salary - Pressure.
I need to dress a certain way to portray an image - Pressure.
I am not living the way my parents want me to, therefore they are not proud of me - Pressure.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

Returning to childhood was never appealing, but perhaps there are times we all wish to escape from the world in our minds and the pressures we create and be a lost boy again...

Lasik Living

One of my earlier memories...

I returned to my first grade classroom to find a small pink, teddy-bear printed case on my desk. My heart pounded with excitement, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Sealing my ownership to this object, my mother's handwriting in black sharpie fashioned - KATELIN F.

In addition to seeing half way across the state, these rosy colored glasses provided me with a vision of a world of wonder, imagination, and enchantment. It would be 17 years before the 6 year old would take off her rosy colored glasses and live in the Lasik world.

How long are we willing to wait before we choose to see clearly?
"The truth is not afraid of your questions, the question is - are you afraid of the truth?"

We spend our lives with these enormous glasses on - conforming truth to fit what we feel our needs and desires are. It is only fitting that with our changing needs, desires, experiences - our redefined truth changes as well. It is the vicious cycle of worsening vision and the need for thicker lenses, making it even more difficult to see/accept the actual truth.
When will we gain the courage and choose to free ourselves of these glasses, sharpen our vision by conforming our life to the truth, literally change the shape of your cornea and you will see better than you have ever seen before.

There is nothing like 20/15 vision.