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Next time, I'll read the entire list before I commit to an online challenge. This 30 Day Non-Facebook Prose-Instead-of-Pictures Challenge is getting difficult. Today's challenge:
21.A picture of something you wish you could forget
Everything that has happened to me makes me who I am. Yes, even the bad stuff. Sure, there are things I'm not proud of doing or saying. But that's still part of me and lessons learned.
To me, this challenge is more about regret and shame. In my opinion, regret is the desire to do something that wasn't, while shame is about something that was. A good friend of mine says that shame is anger turned inwards. Being angry at oneself for something that one did or said. I may not be proud of some things, but without them, I would be a different person.
And since I believe that everything that has happened to me or that I've done or that I've said makes me me, my picture of something I wish I could forget would be a big black hole of nothing.
No, that's not being conceited or pretentious, just accepting of who I am.
[Title taken from this.]
We all serve sentences. The difference is in our awareness of our sentences. Some of us intuit our sentences while not explicitly knowing that they're there. Others of us turn a blind eye to them, refusing to acknowledge their existence.
Growing up was one of my sentences. In a small southern town, when the Alpha girls turn against you, there's not much else except to pour yourself into your studies and your hobbies. There's something better waiting after graduation. And an unbearable life was bearable for the most part.
Open-ended sentences are harder to deal with. Those life sentences that actually feel like life sentences. Such as a really rough spell that Mr. Gaelic and I went through at one point in our marriage. The finite is easy. It's the infinite that crushes the bone.
Once again, a sentence is upon me. A sentence that is, thankfully, finite. Four years at the least, thirteen max. Four to pay for private Ivy college, thirteen for full retirement benefits. A friend wasn't satisfied with my reason for working -- to pay for college. She noted that we could always take out a loan to pay for college. Pressing harder, she made me evaluate the why of not wanting to take out a loan. Her pressure made me realize the reason was our dream retirement -- a house in the mountains of western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, or southwestern Virginia. The floor plans are on the computer hard drive. She suggested I print it out, frame it, and put it on my desk.
I did her one better. It's the wallpaper on my office computer.
When an IT person stopped by last week, he asked if that was my house. "Oh, no, that's my retirement house. That's why I'm doing this," as I motioned around the office.
As Nietzsche said, he who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Existentialists, hedonists, skeptics, stoics, epicureans! Finola and Mr. Gaelic are talking philosophers as I'm thinking food. Funny that one of my favorite foodie websites is Epicurious.
Christmas Day is over, but the Christmas season has only just begun. And already the planning is underway for two more holidays quick on Christmas's heels. And just as with Christmas, both of the upcoming holidays have their own set Gaelic-family menu. The holidays? New Year's and Epiphany.
When the kids were young, I would cook a private restaurant-quality dinner for Mr. G and me to have after the kids went to bed. Now teenagers, they stay up later than we do. And get invited to New Year's Eve parties.
- Monday
- Breakfast: cream of wheat
- Supper: pinto beans, okra, rice pilaf
- Tuesday
- Breakfast: pancakes, sausage
- Supper: pork chops, mashed potatoes, green beans
- Wednesday
- Breakfast: soft boiled eggs, toast
- Supper: vegetable soup, homemade bread
- Thursday
- Breakfast: oatmeal
- Supper: tacos, refried beans (use leftover pintos)
- Friday
- Breakfast: cinnamon toast
- Supper: dinner out at New Year's Eve party (family friends so our kids know their kids)
- Saturday
- Brunch: friend's New Year's Day party
- Dinner: neighbor's New Year's Day party
- Supper: ham steak, black eyed peas, collards (traditional Southern New Year's Day feast)
- Sunday
- Breakfast: bacon, eggs, grits, toast
- Dinner: roast chicken, quinoa, pumpkin
Epiphany is next week. Another week to plan. Even though I already know what will be on the menu on the 6th. You, on the other hand, will have to check back next week to find out.
For everyone who commented on yesterday's quote quiz, it was Jenny who came the closest. But I think I drove her to drink. The answer is Nietzsche.
And as Laoch said, "there is a lot of folly in the world."
Today's blog is a quote and a quiz. Who said . . .
"Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution—that is pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?
“A real man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything. Man shall be educated for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly."
I saw a wonderfully thought-provoking tee-shirt last week. It read, “God isn’t a boy’s name.” Shocking!
If you could be a fly on the wall of my house, you’d soon see that I am the great questioner and my husband is the all-powerful answerer. Questions aren’t really questions, so much, as they are statements to segue to conversations.
My all-time famous segue being that the universe itself (whether you believe in the Big Bang theory or in creationism) proves the existence of God. My assertion is/was that all that matter and energy had to come from somewhere. What was there before eternity? If the universe goes on to infinity, how can it be expanding? What is it expanding into if it’s infinite?
My husband grows tired of my questions at times and begins quoting the stoics and the Buddhists. He has engrained in my mind the first truth of Buddha – all life is suffering. His other famous quote is from that stoic Marcus Aurelius who cautioned against spinning like a top after things in the nether realm.
As my husband has found out, being the all-powerful answerer doesn’t guarantee that I’ll accept his answers. I just want a lead-in to a discussion. Sort of like the tee-shirt.
