Simple Wisdom

Tommy and I were talking yesterday; he’s a good friend of mine from high school, and a kid from the block from back in the day.  It’s interesting talking to him now after so many years.  We can recall what it was that we found interesting in each other so many years ago.  We could carry a good conversation.  Yes, Tommy was a boy, and I a girl, but that wasn’t an uncommon match for me as far as friendships went.  I admit, most of my friends were boys.  I had girlfriends as well, but boys were just easier to talk to.  You just talked…about stuff…and there wasn’t anything else to it.  They didn’t judge you, they didn’t read between the lines of what you said, and they certainly didn’t partake in petty gossip.  Let me say here that…

I

REALLY

HATE

Gossip!

I hate to stereotype my own gender, but come on ladies!  What a waste of time and words!  Honestly, if a girl, and ESPECIALLY a woman, partakes in gossip, it is clearly because there is absolutely nothing interesting going on in her own life.  Furthermore, if you have to embellish a story to make everything into a Lifetime Movie Network feature, then you obviously have a bigger problem than anyone could have imagined, but guess what?  They did imagine, and you just made yourself look like an ass.  It’s as simple as that.

Tommy and I were talking about writing a book about every day wisdom such as the wisdom found in not gossiping.  It’s not ground-breaking wisdom that will change the course of man (or maybe it will), but just random tidbits of information that people ought to have learned by the time they grew up.  It’s like there was a break in the roadmap of their life somewhere that kept them from learning a lesson that is necessary to sustain a decent life.  Too, it’s not complicated wisdom; it’s simple.  It’s a matter of why-don’t-people-KNOW-these-things?  It’s baffling.

Aside from gossip, let me throw another example out there.  Fast food chains don’t make your kids fat.  YOU make your kids fat.  It’s your fault as a parent.  I hate that the media is constantly slamming McDonalds for having high fat, high calorie meals.  MCDONALDS DOESN’T MAKE MEALS!  IT’S NOT REAL FOOD!  Why don’t people know that?  French fries are not a vegetable and chicken nuggets are ground up reject chicken goop - it’s junk food!  However, it is necessary to have every once in a while.

Key being:  EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE!

For instance, when two of your three children (one of your two, five of your six, eight of your ten, and so on) are sick, it’s nice that places like McDonalds exist to tide you over to the next, more better prepared, and more thought-out meal.  AND, for crying out loud, they now have apples in their meals!  Skip the caramel, get milk, do better with the choices you have.  It’s not like McDonalds hires an army of armed men dressed in Ronald McDonald costumes to stand on every street corner forcing cars into their parking lot at gunpoint.  “Order the mutha’ friggin fries, biyoch!”

Here is another bit of wisdom:  being fit isn’t hard, nor is it expensive.  You don’t really need to pay billions of dollars for diet books, special food, shake weights, belts, pills, juices, and other weight-loss-in-a-box kits.  I’ll tell you the secret:

MOVE! 

 That’s it.  It’s simple.  Get UP!  Move one foot in front of the other and walk somewhere.  Calories out over calories in…that’s how you lose weight.  In the meantime, make sure you don’t under-eat, and make your calories count.  Eat less McDonalds and more whole foods such as fresh cuts of meat, fruit, veggies, and whole grains.  Beware of processed food that is not really food at all.  For example, steak and gravy in the frozen food section is NOT steak.  It’s crap.  It’s a food wannabe.  Eat less of that, and splurge a little for a steak from the meat department.  THEN cook those foods well.  Never deep-fry anything!  That’s just gross.  Oil is nasty when it soaks into your food like a marinade.  Do that LESS.  Instead, think smart and broil, saute, bake…etc.

While you’re eating better, do something physically active that you enjoy.  I like to run…a lot…either vigorously, or for long distances.  I like to ride my bike, often with my husband, out to the lake close to our house.  I love to hike.  I also love to play at the park with my kids.  Find what you love doing that is physically active and do that.  You’ll be surprised.  It becomes addicting (even more so than McDonald’s french fries) because being physically active makes you happy!  Yay, everyone wants to be happy!  Right?

While I’m on a roll, and now that I may have already sparked several issues for debate, I’ll just throw one more thing out there.  It’s not up to someone else in life to make us happy!  What?  Yes, it’s true.  Not our parents, our friends, our kids, nor our spouses.  We alone are responsible for that.  Gasp!

I was a latch-key kid growing up.  Both of my parents worked, and I grew up in a time where at eight-years-old we knew how to open the door, lock ourselves in, make ourselves a snack, do our homework, and be responsible.  It was a time when kids didn’t set the house on fire, take prescription medications, or have sex in their bedrooms before their age had two-digits in it (hopefully the first digit being a two and the second way up close to nine, and preferably there will be a wedding ring involved).  Guess what?  Kids, for the most part, still don’t do those things.  Kids, for the most part, can be taught to be responsible and trustworthy – two characteristics that my parents instilled in me for which I am forever grateful – and in the meantime there really isn’t some big, bad man with a beard lurking around every corner waiting to snatch them away.  Precautions are necessary, but don’t suffocate your children.

My parents leaned more on the side of uninvolved than suffocating.  That is another story altogether, and also not a good place to be, but I have to give them their credits where they are due.  One of the greatest things my parents never did was rushing in to save me from a pit of hell if I dug myself into it.  Instead, they left me to figure out how to crawl out, that way I would be better equipped and would have a marked path should I lose my way again.  At least I’m guessing that was the intention of their plan.  If not, then they made a really wonderful mistake.  Brilliant they were at teaching us (or not teaching us) kids those types of things.

About five years into my marriage I found myself down in one of those holes.  It seemed very deep and endless.  It consumed me.  Marriage problems!  BIG ones.  We weren’t communicating.  We weren’t connecting.  HE WASN’T MAKING ME HAPPY ANYMORE!

I remember going into my mother’s dance studio and breaking down in tears.  It started out as a touching moment.  After all, it took a lot of guts to come in and…well…spill them all over the floor.  I expected there to be lots of endearing tears, hugs, and her taking my side.  To my surprise, my mother got MAD!  REALLY MAD!  She said, “So what?  His job isn’t to make you happy.  You make yourself happy.  Sometimes you’re really going to be in love and sometimes you really want to leave.  Sometimes you even pack your bags with tears and wonder where to go, but the important thing is that you go HOME and talk to him about this!”

Do you know what another best thing was that my parents may, or may not have, intentionally done for me?  They didn’t give me a place to go once I became a full-grown adult.  My husband and the family that we created was my home.  So, that’s where I went.

I drove back that day from my mother’s dance studio.  Surprised, clueless, and baffled, I entered the doors of the house that my husband and I shared with our two little girls, and you know what?  We eventually figured it out.  It wasn’t easy.  As a matter of fact, it was really freaking hard, but we made it through.  Instead of having in-laws, brothers, sisters, friends, aunts, uncles, and Dr. Phil help us out, we figured our way out of that hole together.  To our surprise, when we came out on the other side, we were much stronger.  I can’t lie and say that we haven’t fallen into even more holes every now and then because we have, and we will.  That’s life.  Relationships are hard.  However, we learn as life goes on how much relationships are worth every effort we have inside of us.  They are worth it because we must learn in life the raw truth that nothing is perfect – people aren’t perfect, we aren’t perfect, and situations aren’t perfect.  Life is raw.  A good point to reach is coming to peace with those raw edges in life, in relationships, and within ourselves.  Somehow, the raw edges is where everything becomes so breathtakingly beautiful.

Time spent in marriage has taught me that I’m thankful for things I never knew I was thankful for, such as being in a good marriage where sometimes we aren’t happy, but most of the time we are.  I’m thankful that sometimes we don’t communicate, but most of the time we do.  I’m thankful that we have faith.  I’m thankful that my husband doesn’t drink and isn’t abusive, which are definitely signs of the types of problems that, for safety reasons, call for intervention from loved ones, experts, and a way out.

The point in all of this is, we have to learn how to make ourselves happy and when we do that, we have the energy to take care of each other, even when times are tough.  If we figure ourselves out – how to care for our own physical and mental well-being – we become better people on this earth.  We have the confidence and the energy to contribute more.  We are really there for our friends when they need us, we hold up our spouses when they are down, and we certainly don’t go around telling every Tom, the neighbor, Dick, the mailman, and Harriett, the barista at Starbucks, about it.  We take responsibility for ourselves and our actions.  We realize that no one owes us happiness and that McDonalds doesn’t make us fat.  We realize that if we just do right by our family and friends, in the end, everything will be okay.  Perhaps we may even teach someone a little something useful along the way.