Category Archives: Philosophy of Life

The Importance of Cherishing Myself

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Tasha full f aceOn the rare occasions when I have been without anyone to cook for except myself I found that I had very little interest in making my own meals. While I truly love to cook for my friends and my family, in my experience, it brings me been little to no pleasure to cook just for me. Lately, I haven’t had to deal with that problem, and while I hope I won’t have to in the future, if I do, I will try to think differently. This attitude may be why most if not all of the retirement and assisted living communities have food plans included in their fees, as well as dining rooms that serve up to three meals a day.

For most of us cherishing ourselves is not easy. It’s not something that comes naturally, and there’s a reason for that. While because they don’t know much about being an individual, very young children are naturally unselfish, once they learn to think of themselves as “me” most of their parents begin teaching them to share. “Sharing is caring” becomes a kind of guidance with which to approach both giving and doing. This is all very well until we begin to leave ourselves out of the sharing equation. It is vital to remember ourselves when we share. I am happier and more content when I include myself in my decisions and actions concerning others.

What can make us forget to do that is that often it feels better to give than to receive. Giving can even make us feel a bit superior to the recipient, a kind of pat on the head. It can also incline us to wish to be thanked or even to be given back to in some way. If or when we do not get a return on our gift, we may grow resentful. This then can create a feeling of martyrdom or even bitterness as in: “I did thus and such for them and got nothing back,” or “Look what I gave them and what did they give me?!”

If we cherish others at our own expense and forget to cherish ourselves, we do both the recipient and ourselves a disservice. It is not difficult to think of ways to cherish ourselves. However given that it may feel more virtuous to focus on others, it may also be easier to do so. Yet small acts on our own behalf can make a big difference. For instance: remembering to buy and prepare a kind of tea I like along with the one that Stephen prefers starts my morning happily. Remembering to ask him to join me in doing tasks or walking enhances my day.

My own small acts of kindness to myself, like taking the time to sit with my feet up and read a fun book for at least an hour a day, or occasionally stopping what I am doing and going out on the porch for a breath of fresh air make me feel good. I also appreciate it when I remember to do a bit of stretching or some exercise. When I discover a new pair of socks at my favorite online provider, or a pretty but unnecessary item of clothing in our local thrift store, I no longer feel guilty giving this to myself. Sharing means giving equally, not depriving oneself. If I encounter any guilt when I do something for me, I remind myself that I deserve to be cherished, and I smile and tell myself, “I love you too.”

The Many Ways of Cherishing, Part One

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Dad with Snake Dictionary definitions of “cherish” tell us it comes from words that imply caring and holding dear. The French word “cher,” or “cherie” meaning dear one is often used as a term of endearment, especially in Europe. That and those we cherish are what and whom we hold in our hearts as precious. Keeping, implying more than just a momentary affection, is another dictionary definition of cherishing. I was thinking of this as I contemplated Father’s Day and the memories I cherish of my late dad.

I fondly remember our many sand castles we built on the beach over the years. On occasional weekends would go to my Great Aunt Alice’s beach cottage so he could get away from the incessant telephone calls from clients who thought they were having horticultural emergencies. No cell phones disturbed our peace, nor was there even a landline to the simple, somewhat primitive beach shack our family slept in. Our daylight hours were spent on the sand, in the water or weeding the beach grass from the path to it. He considered that his way of repaying his aunt for her kindness in lending us the cottage.

If there were big waves left over from a storm in the days before we delighted in jumping hem together. Standing waist deep in the water he would hold tight to my hands and I would leap as high as i could with him, while the waves battered at us before they threw themselves onto the beach. He would call us “brave girl” and “brave boy” as we waited for the next one to crest around us. The exhilaration of it is vivid in my mind even today.

This and other cherished images from my young years are fun to dwell on. I keep them in my heart, along with those of other dear ones, some of who have departed this life and others of whom live at a distance, whom I seldom see. I also think about and spend time caring for friends and family nearby. I do my best to keep in touch and make sure we stay current with one another’s lives. I do this with email or phone calls, or even texts nowadays. The many forms of communication are a great help to me in my efforts

However, in my attempts to cherish I have learned that not everyone looks at life in the same way. For instance as in the tale of the monkey who fearing it would drown, so kindly put a fish into a tree, I try not offer help just because I think it is needed. I also must be mindful not to impose my values on a loved one who may have a perspective differing from mine. Most important, I must make sure think before I speak to hear what I am about to say and make sure that my words come across as loving. Sarcasm has never served me well, nor have clever comments or observations that may unintentionally wound. Cherishing takes many forms; being mindful is an important one

 

I love to hear from readers and I do cherish each and every one of you.

The Preciousness of Remembering

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When I was a child Little Tasha 4and death or even disaster was to be spoken of, someone would say, “Not in front of the children.” The subject would be changed or I would be told to go off and play so the adults could continue their discussion. Yet because we had animals, death and change were part of my life. I witnessed the drowning of baby ducks and the demise of baby chicks. It was hard when a dog got into my pet rabbits’ pen and maimed them. My aunt’s gardener had to–as I was told, “put them out of their suffering.” Death was no stranger to my childhood. I am neither uncomfortable with it nor afraid of it.

Still, it does have an effect. The recent passing of a dear friend has brought a sense of immediacy to my relationships, and prompted a renewed sense of attention to my way of thinking about life. She and I used to speak each morning except Sundays. More than once I said to Stephen, “One day the phone will not ring at 9:30 every day.” Then indeed that day did come. While I miss my friend, I know she is in a much more comfortable and happy place than she has been for some time. Though I do miss her calls I also rejoice for her.

I am happy to have pleasant memories of our time together. That is the saving grace of partings. It is also a reminder to focus when I am with a dear one and to be present in order to have something to remember. More and more as I get older I have come to realize that endings come whether we want them to or not. We have no way of knowing whether or not any given conversation, meeting or interaction with another may be our last. I do not say this because I have a morbid fear of endings but rather as a reminder that any time we spend with another may be significant.

When we are children we have no understanding of how it is that things change or perhaps end. That ignorance may even be important to children’s comfort and sense of security. Most adults grow accustomed to change and learn to flow with it. It may be an aspect of maturity in human beings to be able to do that. In my life there have been many changes I could never have anticipated. Being able to adapt to them has been crucial to my happiness. Developing a sense of detachment to an anticipated condition of permanence has been not only valuable but also essential.

When I was a child, I could buy an ice cream cone for a nickel. Now even the smallest one costs 50 times that. The decor in my parents’ living room changed once in my memory. Today many people redecorate frequently. Then divorce was rare, people stayed at the same job for most of their lives, I could go on and on about how it used to be. My point is that change is more than ever a constant in most lives. For our comfort it is important to be able to deal with all forms of change, whether of décor or of circumstances. When I make the time to focus my attention and to appreciate what is happening, whether with a relationship or an experience, I have much less regret when it ends.

Perspective Makes All the Difference

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Cherry Blossoms on a rainy dayAt the time I was born my mother was newly come to the US, a bride of less than a year. Except for my father, she was very much alone in a big city, and I was her only companion for quite a while. I have often thought that my persistently positive perspective on life may have had its roots in my trying to cheer her up when she was sad and missing her family and friends back in her home country. Over the years since I have come to understand the power of a positive perspective on a potentially negative situation or experience.

This has become essential to my work. When I tell people I am a writer, they often ask me what I write. If I say I write essays, it sounds as though I am writing from a scholarly point of view. If I say I do inspirational writing, it sounds as though I am coming from a religious perspective. In truth, what I am doing in my columns is to simply present a different or alternative point of view from that which some might take about any given situation or experience. I write to be helpful, but it is self help I write about. Helping others to help themselves is my intention and my goal.

There is little we can do about circumstances. Daily life presents us with issues and difficulties we must deal with. The school of experience is our ever-present teacher, one we cannot escape no matter what we do. I’ve often felt that maturity or adulthood truly begins when we’re willing to learn from this teacher rather than moan, groan and feel as though we are victims of fate, circumstance or those who might perpetrate it. It is a lot easier to complain than it is to “bite the bullet” and admit there might be something to learn from any given situation.

I believe the expression “bite the bullet” comes from battlefield medicine when in the days gone by the surgeon had to amputate or otherwise operate without anesthesia. After whiskey was poured liberally into the patient, a bullet was put between his jaws to bite down on as a way to keep from crying out. Whether this is actually true or not it makes a good metaphor. When our focus is put not on complaint or disappointment but on what can be gained from whatever is happening to us, coping becomes easier and wisdom more accessible.

In my own life right now I am dealing with a change in lifestyle and a need to take better care of myself. I have learned that much of what I used to take for granted, I no longer can. Exercise is not an option it is a necessity. I need to do additional work on my body to restore it to better working order. I could complain, or even bemoan my fate. Instead I rejoice that I now have a good way to lose weight, that I can become stronger and healthier with effort and that it is good and helpful to be made to do that. Therefore I bless these circumstances and state firmly that I am exceedingly grateful for them.

Smiles and Frowns can Grow on You

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My first husband was in the ROTC in college. After his graduation we went to El Paso to live while he attended officers’ school. My little girl took her first steps there. We lived in a small housing complex with other young families. I became friend with another of the mothers in her twenties. She was from Oklahoma. One of the first things I noticed about her was that living in that hot, dry climate had scored deep frown and squint wrinkles in her youthful skin. Seeing them I determined right then that if I was going to have wrinkles at least they would be pleasant ones, and so I trained myself to notice whenever I started to squint or frown. Then as I caught myself, I would stop.

Some research on the Internet revealed that it takes more muscles for a genuine smile than it does for a frown. Furthermore, the act of smiling exercises the facial muscles and brings more blood to nourish the cells of the face. This I turn helps make us look younger and prettier. More important, so far as I m concerned is that the act of smiling releases endorphins in the brain. These are feel good hormones that makes us feel happier. So as we do so, we smile more and so forth. This is called a positive feedback loop.

One does not always feel like smiling. Some days it seems like the whole world is conspiring to create problems for you. Now certainly you do not feel like smiling. However, you can take heart. Even a pretend smile releases he feel good endorphins. I learned this from Thicht Nhat Hahn, the well-known teacher of meditation. If you make even a small smile it will release some of those feel good endorphins and make you feel better and more like really smiling.

The subject of this column was sparked by the visit of an old and dear friend who came over recently for lunch. He told us that a little while ago when he was interviewing for a job his interviewer asked him, “Do your cheeks hurt?” He said they didn’t and asked why. “Because you never seem to stop smiling,” came the reply. He does indeed smile a lot, and he is a very happy person. I expect there is a connection there. For myself ever since I can remember I have always enjoyed smiling at people. It does make me feel good and sometimes I get a smile in return.

Years ago I did find that it was unwise to smile at strangers on the subway because they might get the wrong idea and try to follow me home. It is also true that in some societies, smiles are considered bad form and indicate something less than friendliness. An article in Wikepedia suggests that smiles may have evolved from a grimace of fear. However, perhaps this worked to make people less fearful and happier, who knows. It has been said that in our youth we have the face God gave us, and in our elder years we have the face we have given ourselves. This is a good enough reason to smile as often as possible.

Tasha Halpert

Saving What Is Useful

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useful bags.jpg  When my mother and I went to Russia in 1991 among the places we visited was the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. It was very impressive. My favorite part was the room with six Rembrandts. Sitting among them was an extraordinary experience. As we left we bought some postcards and other souvenirs and when none seemed to be forthcoming, asked for a bag to put them in. The cashier gave us a sour look then finally dug out a used plastic bag– an obvious treasure from her hoard and placed our items in it. Recycled bags were more common there than new ones were then.

I certainly do save and either use or recycle lots of plastic bags, however I have a stash of various sizes of paper bags as well as small gift boxes that threatens to erupt from its container. Some are saved for when we give people gifts. The ones with decorations for Christmas or birthday, for instance come in very handy. Others with no decorations or simply printed with the name of a store can be used for any occasion, and also for carrying things. I only wish I knew just how many of these decorated bags I would need in the near future so I could pass some of them on to others.

I simply cannot bear to throw out anything that is ultimately useful. Take for instance the elastics that come on things. I haven’t bought any rubber elastics for years. They come in various sizes, shapes and colors, mostly on vegetables. The small bag I have stays full because what I use gets replaced. Twisty ties are something else I tend to save. They too come in various lengths and are useful for tying up many things as well as substituting for the difficult to reuse flat plastic closures most bread bags come with. The long ones are good for wrapping around electric cords and small tools.

I seldom use paper towels unless I want to clean up a mess, thus saving paper. I tear appeal letters and ads for insurance and so forth on 81/2 by 11 sheets with a blank side into thirds, pinch them together with a clip and use them to make my grocery and “to do” lists. Smaller scraps of paper become notes, though I have to be careful not to lose those. String of any length of course gets reused, as does ribbon, and of course wrapping paper. Unless it’s torn, I fold and save Christmas and birthday wrapping paper, as did my parents.

Being of a saving nature runs in my family. My father once told me he found an envelope among his mother’s things with bits of string in it labeled “pieces of string too small to use.” However I have since heard this story from other sources, so it may have been something he borrowed rather than experienced. My mother, my father, my grandmother and my other relatives all followed the Yankee thrift rule: recycle, reuse or do without, so it’s not surprising I developed this habit and needless to say as I have discovered, passed it on to my children.

A Little at a Time

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My Buddha by the sink

My mother was an artist. She went to art school and studied sculpture as a young woman. Later when my brothers were both in school she studied painting at the Boston Museum of Art. She had a studio over the garage where she occasionally worked. She also kept her art materials there along with lots of interesting women’s magazines. I loved to go up and read them. From them I learned many helpful household hints. I still remember one that told how to change a bed by walking around it only once. I used to do that. Now Stephen and I make ours together.

It may have been then or it could have been later on in my life that I came across the twenty minute system for accomplishing lengthy tasks. The article suggested allotting twenty minutes daily or whenever convenient, to a chore that was normally postponed because it might take too long or be otherwise tedious. When I tried the suggestion I was pleasantly surprised to see that it worked. One example was that instead of cleaning out all the bureau drawers, or every shelf in the pantry at once, take twenty minutes to clean and tidy one, stop and do another on another day.

At one time I practiced this technique quite frequently, however it slipped into the mists at the back of my mind. Recently I was reminded of it. What happened was this: For a very long time I had postponed cleaning out the refrigerator. Week after week each time I wrote out a new to do list, that particular task was at the top. Still I found reasons not to. Then I noticed how sticky one of the racks on the refrigerator door was. I decided to clean it off then and there. Because there were many small jars to be removed, washed off and replaced, it took me about twenty minutes or so to complete the task.

As I shut the refrigerator door I remembered the household hint from so long ago and laughed. The next day I cleaned off the second shelf of the door. Several days later I washed off the whole bottom shelf of the refrigerator. Today I cleaned the oven, and so it goes. Each task that takes around twenty minutes to complete adds up eventually to a thorough cleaning and tidying. I will probably go through my bureau drawers next, and perhaps after that a couple of other tasks I can think of that need attention.

I remember hearing someone say once that when he thought about what he had to do, it always seemed far more daunting than it turned out to be once he actually began to do it. The same holds true for me about the time spent doing something. Dividing a task into smaller segments works much better for me these days than trying to get it all done at once. As well, it spreads out over all the different times spent, the feeling of satisfaction I get from my small yet necessary accomplishment.

Tasha Halpert

 

Growing Up By Myself

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Bed Friends 1

When I was growing up I lived a couple of miles from a small seaside town on a large property that belonged to my Great Aunt Alice. I didn’t have any siblings until I was almost nine. Virtually an only child, I was surrounded by busy adults and often told to stop bothering them and find something to do. A voracious reader, when I wasn’t nose deep in a book, I played games of pretend, making believe I was someone other than a lonely child in an isolated neighborhood with only herself to rely on for amusement.

I had quite a collection of teddy bears, dolls and other stuffed animals. When I was small I was sure they came alive at night. This belief was influenced by Johnny Gruelle’s Raggedy Ann and Andy books. These innocent stories about a group of toys that had adventures were written in the early 1900s and became even more popular in the 30’s and 40’s. In these stories, ice cream cones grew on trees, cupcakes and hot dogs could be plucked from bushes and lemonade and sodas were available in puddles and brooks.

Raggedy Ann’s magical woods full of “fairies and elves and everything” held all sorts of fun inventions that I yearned to experience for myself. I loved the stories and used to watch my toys to see whether they too might have adventures while I was sleeping. Sometimes I thought I spotted them in different positions than I had left them, though I could never be sure.

Later I moved on to books by Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexander Dumas, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Then I wanted to be a pirate or have exciting adventures when I became a grown up. I made bows and arrows out of handy branches and tied string to my father’s hoe and rake to make a hobby horse. If my father needed his rake he knew where to look–in my lilac bush “stable.”

My family believed in fresh air and I spent a lot of time all year round out of doors in nature. Where we lived I was fortunate in having a large open area to play in There were all kinds of trees to climb and large fields of tall grass that I made into my private jungle. My pretend life was much more interesting than my actual one. The world I lived in as a young child was without TV or any form of electronic toy or game. I had to use my imagination to conjure up my entertainment.

I wonder if my childhood led me to grow up looking at the world from a different perspective than most. Steeped in nature and in the creativity of my mind, its sights and sounds enhanced my imaginary life. Today I perceive links and patterns everywhere. I find significance in synchronicity and receive messages from the nature around me. The world was and is alive for me in a way today’s youth may not discover. With the current focus on electronics, most children will not have my opportunities. I learned to listen to and observe nature and found there a sense of companionship and of comfort that is with me still.

Shine On Harvest Moon by Tasha Halpert

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Onions on Display

Once upon a time harvesting was done by hand. The farmer and his helpers scythed their way through their fields or picked their way through their orchards and gardens, gathering in grain, fruit and vegetables to store away or take to market. Most children today have no idea what a scythe or a flail is, or how to winnow. Yet though the ways of doing it have changed, fall is still harvest time, and we look to the shortening days to gather in what has grown.

In the month of September the harvest full moon shines brightly. At that time there are often gatherings and parties. The bright moon reminds us to say goodbye to the summer growing season and greet the time of reaping. This applies both that which we have planted earlier in the year and been tending, and that which has grown from the seeds we have planted in our lives. It is time to begin to reap what we have sown and tended over the last months.

For children today fall means school and the beginning of lessons. At one time in the past children too worked in the fields helping to bring in the harvest. I remember when I was small, my mother put up jars of fruit and vegetables. She made jelly from grapes and other fruit gathered locally. My great aunt’s gardener harvested and stored root vegetables in root cellar dug into the earth of her garden. In our basement was a small barrel of potatoes also harvested from her garden.

Although i no longer have a garden, every spring I look forward to the swelling of buds and the growth of all the nature around me. I also feel a sense of creativity blown in by the winds that stir up the soil and stimulate the air. In my mind I plant the seeds of projects I hope to accomplish as well as plan what I hope to learn in the months ahead. Spring is a time of promise. In the springtime of life youthful ardor makes ambitious plans for what is to be designed and built.

Then it is time to carry out the plans made and take care of the seeds planted. Tending the garden of my life is a task I have grown into as the years have gone by. In the beginning I was much less organized. I took on more than I could sensibly handle; all too often I planted too many seeds. As I grew to understand the folly of my ways I learned better no matter how hard I tried, what I could and what I could not accomplish. The knowledge and the understanding I have gained has also been part of the harvest of my years.

Friendships both seasonal and perennial are another important aspect of the seeds planted earlier in my life. The bounty of my experience as I have learned and grown is another. My most precious gain of all is perhaps the unfolding knowledge of who I am and what I can do as well as the extent of my potential. As I look back to the springtime of my life I realize how richly rewarding the harvest from my garden is, and how very grateful I am for it all.