I'll Do It Until God Tells Me Not To

I read the phrase "A Year of Living With Yourself" and asked myself aren't we always living with ourselves? What's this year stuff?

I heard a woman say, after a successful thirty year career, "I really need to take time to focus on my children." Huh? What was she doing all those years before.

How many times have you heard someone say "Now I'm going to live for me."

I don't know about you, but I can't suddenly become someone else, somehow else, a new improved version of me. I've lived with myself, as myself, as far back as my memory goes. Sometimes I cringe at those memories, they weren't always, shall we say, elevated, but they are all mine, not dictated. I've loved myself, hated myself, expressed my joy, my pain, my highs my lows. I've been proud, embarrassed, and sometimes I've whispered close to the sublime.

Being yourself isn't self-centered or selfish, it's all we can be even if we pretend it's not. I can't be you, you can't be me any more than we can be a mountian or a squid, we are our own unique combination of molecules and experiences. We hit the ground at birth and continue on as ourselves in spite of all our self-improvement or theories about self improvement.

Pundits and critics abound with opinions about your life and the way you are living it, but that is all it is, opinions. Opinions don't live in the trenches with us as we hobble through our days and years. Opinions don't live in our DNA. Including this opinion.

Those milestone years, 30, 40, 50, 60, don't know about 70 yet, where people want to own who they are -- is a myth. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. You are all you have ever been. If you know me then you have probably heard me say: I've been young and old, fat and thin, rich and poor, married and single, right and left coaster, sick and healthy, but I have never changed, can't change. I have always been who and what I am, I have always been artsy, liberal, lived on the fringe, and any and all the other adjectives that make up a picture of me. Nothing, nothing, nothing changes who you are. You might be more or less exposed, more or less happy, more or less anything, but the good and bad news is you are always you.

So I will continue to be me until God tells me not to
and punches my lights out.
That is the way it works.


Now on a different note: An Ode to Jerry:

Twas the night after Christmas and all through the house
My bones creaking so loud I woke up the mouse
The cane was close by, close by my chair
I had high hopes of discarding it after the new year
I no longer could snuggle down in my bed
So many pain pills dancing in my head
Off to the doctor I go once again
Jane is beside me my needs to attend
It's a mystery, a puzzle, a quandary to boot
A pain in the back is trouble galoot
Wait and see said the doctor, doctor number three
But for now we need to just let it be
So here I am, doubled over with a cane
My life continues pretty much just the same
The kids had their Christmas in spite of the ice
Jane's and mine also was pretty darn nice
Until this get fixed I'll continue to hobble
Now that Christmas is over and New Year on the 'morrow
It's no fun going to pieces part by part
I just wanted to say that from the bottom of my heart
And is case you are wondering about my mood
I can still say to myself  -- Life Is Good.

May we all keep on living until God punches our light out.
Love, Jan