The Middle Way

Hurrying Through Life

 

Mouth of Columbia River at Astoria, Oregon

I remember my excitement as my 16th birthday approached and with it, that all-important American rite of passage -- getting my driver's license. Cars, the open road, Bruce Springsteen on the radio: those were the days.  

There was another side to my driving experience, though, and it wasn't pretty. Behind the wheel, I became enraged at the smallest infractions of other drivers, frequently sending blistering curses their way. I set a terrible example for my younger brother and sister, something they still mention 40-odd years later.   

This is particularly worthy of mention because in no other area of my life did I exhibit such rage. I know now that I was dealing with a lot of other rage-worthy things in my life. For some reason, though, the only place where I could release that anger was behind the wheel of a car. 

I am a much more balanced person now than I was then. I've learned healthier ways to deal with life's stresses and rarely suffer from eruptions of rage, whether driving or otherwise. I'm still an impatient driver, though, and am easily irritated by the poor behavior of others (which is never in short supply). When I feel that impatience come over me, I invoke a word we came up with last year while spending two weeks in the Pacific Northwest: pacifica -- peaceful. It reminds me of the meandering route we followed along the Pacific Ocean, from the farthest northwest corner of Washington to the Columbia River gorge. 

It also reminds me of a less intense driving style than I'm used to. For two full weeks, I experienced very few of the driving behaviors that most annoy me: tailgating, neglecting to signal turns and lane changes, driving at speeds well above the posted limits on residential streets, speeding through yellow (and red) lights. No one who drives in the more cutthroat eastern half of our country can help but notice this more polite style of driving, and it had a calming effect  on my own behavior.   

It didn't take long to lose that peaceful feeling upon returning home; my own challenge with patience and equanimity remains a work in progress. So it's as an offender myself that I notice the inconsiderate -- and at times dangerous -- driving behavior I see on a daily basis, both from behind the wheel and on long walks through my neighborhood. Things like speeding up to beat yellow lights and weaving  in and out of traffic at dangerous speeds. As a pedestrian, I've learned to pause before venturing into crosswalks despite having the Walk sign; people in my neighborhood regularly run red lights, turn right on red during hours when it's prohibited, and speed excessively on both residential streets and major thoroughfares.    

Within the past week, I've had two cars nearly hit me at speeds far in excess of the posted speed limit on local highways, underestimating how much distance they had between me and other cars.  And I had one heart-stopping reminder this same week of what's at stake when our impatience gets the best of us.  

It happened like this:  I turned onto one of the busiest main arteries in my neighborhood at about  9 on a weekday morning. As I rounded the bend, I noticed a young child, no more than 2 or 3, on his plastic bicycle in the opposing lane. Both I and the cars in front of me stopped, and a young woman in front got out of her van, scooped the child up, and took him to safety. Just then I saw another woman racing across the lawn towards the street. The two women exchanged a few words and then the woman in the van handed the child to his mother. Traffic resumed. 

As I slowly drove away, I remembered my own active toddler -- the Harry Houdini of car seats. He routinely slipped out of the straps, including in places where I could not easily pull over to buckle him back in.  And it wasn't just car seats that failed to restrain him;  by 18 months old, he could throw one leg over his crib rail and silently slide down and scoot off, only a flight of stairs away from potential calamity. Some thirty years after the need for hypervigilance has ended, I remain a light sleeper.  

So I have great sympathy for the young mother whose child wandered off. I also know it only takes a blink of an eye, a few seconds of inattention -- and a car, exceeding the posted 30 mph speed limit by 10 mph or more, as they routinely do on this stretch of road -- for disaster to strike. It's sheer luck that I wasn't one of those unfortunate mothers painted as neglectful when my own very active toddler was growing up.  

Consider this my plea that we all bring our better selves to bear when we're behind the wheel of our cars. I know we're all in a hurry to get to where we're going, but at what cost? Is it worth rear-ending the car in front of you when they stop suddenly because a deer has entered the roadway and you're tailgating? Or causing an accident when you suddenly change lanes without paying adequate attention to other traffic around you?  

We can't make all the idiots go away, but we can all do a better job of making sure we're not behaving that way ourselves. Please -- slow down, and be careful out there.

Cleaning House

For the past week or so I've been carrying around a feeling of imminence -- lots of thoughts and ideas swirling in my head but no organizational theme, no "start here." I'd begin to write something but could feel it trailing off like a thought that's lost its way. 

So instead I began cleaning out drawers and cabinets. I purged books and old documentation for long-gone household goods, rearranged and reorganized kitchenware and glassware, and winnowed out unwanted and unworn clothing. The end result? A bunch of stuff, some of it quite nice, that I'll distribute to friends, family or charitable organizations. 

A new year approaches and I feel a strong need to prepare for its birth. Optimizing the place I call both home and office is a natural part of that process. 

Along with the material detritus, I'm also saying goodbye to situations or thought patterns that haven't served me well --  the volunteer effort where my investment of time yielded more frustration than satisfaction; the time wasted on mindless TV viewing; sharing my every thought about current events on Facebook in the assumption that it will have any impact on people who believe differently (other than to annoy them). 

All this in preparation for spending some time in thoughtful contemplation of my direction next year. Less mindless meandering, more meaningful pursuits. Less complaining about what's wrong with the world, more effort to improve the small corner I call home. Less time seeing only the issues that divide us, more time finding and nurturing the connections we share.

Midlife Rebirth

Many years ago I sat at the kitchen table of the older woman who boarded my dog for me while I tried to figure my life out. She lived out in the country; I lived in a city apartment (no dogs allowed). She was easy to talk to and I often found myself using her as a sounding board for the intense emotions the 20-something me struggled to understand and conquer. 

I remember confiding in her about my fears when I became pregnant. I wasn’t sure we were ready for a child, or how we’d manage the extra expenses and responsibilities of parenthood. Maybe it wasn’t time yet, I told her. 

“It’s never the right time to have a child,” she told me. “Just give up that fantasy right away, if you want to be a parent. You have a child and you make it work, somehow. It takes a leap of faith but once you take it, you’ll find that you’ll be able to manage just fine.” 

She was right. 

Life is a series of such leaps of faith, and most of us experience several in our lifetimes. Leaving my longtime corporate career was another memorable one for me. 

Corporate downsizing had been a way of life at my company for several years by 2008, but when it happened to me, I was still blindsided. The meeting about a department reorganization became an announcement about a 10% staff reduction. Anyone over age 50 was eligible, but only a few were encouraged to stay. 

I wasn’t among them. In a relatively short time, I decided to accept the generous buyout, and settled into the long incubation period leading up to my departure. I remember feeling invisible: still present but no longer a vital part of the organization I’d worked in for so many years. Long-range planning for the newly-configured department excluded those of us who were leaving; new bonds formed among those who were staying, as their ties to the rest of us began to loosen. 

I had over a year to stew over questions like: Will I have enough money in retirement to last the rest of my life? What kind of work do I want to do next? Will anyone want to hire someone my age? How do I build new meaning and purpose when I walk away from the career that’s sustained me – financially and emotionally – for so many years? 

Once I’d left, new issues and concerns joined the ones I was still grappling with. Everyone recommended I take a few months to decompress, but on the day I officially retired, I got two job offers. I didn’t feel like I could say “no” to either, so I accepted both. 

That was nearly 7 years ago. Long enough to say that while I don’t regret my choice, I see how it set back my transition. Instead of taking the time I needed to decompress from one life before beginning another, I jumped right back in. It’s like dating too early after a divorce: you forestall the pain of recovery so that when it all falls apart (again), the unresolved pain returns with a vengeance. 

Some 6 months into my freelance career, I crashed. I spent the summer doing the minimal amount of work required to satisfy my client’s requirements and hours in mindless pursuits like watching television. 

I spent exactly zero time thinking about the future of my post-corporate career. 

But I also pursued an important long-range goal: a major reconstruction of my home. For 4 months, the first floor was a complete shambles, but the end result was a place I’d want to spend a lot of time in. This mattered a lot to me since my home was now my office as well. 

I also established a more disciplined exercise program and joined a new gym close to my house. Some months later I had one of those “aha!” moments when I realized I was organizing my work life around my exercise routine. I figured this was a good indication that I’d finally reached “there” – the other side of my transition.

I was wrong, though. Habits of a working lifetime don’t go away overnight. It takes time to reprogram yourself from one way of life to another.  A year and a half into my “second” life, I was overcome by feelings of intense loneliness and longing for the workplace I was no longer connected to. I didn’t know that I was going through the normal stages everyone cycles through in my situation, and that it isn’t always a linear process.   

Fast-forward to today. I’m busier than I’ve been in years, doing work I love and am uniquely qualified for – much of it for my former employer. On a daily basis, I’m faced with the differences between working there as an employee and working there as a contractor. The “me” of 7 years ago would have found this painful; those connective tissues took a long time to dissolve. 

But now? I’m very clear about my purpose and expiration date.

Don’t get me wrong: I love being engaged again with some of the smartest and most talented people in the world. But when I log off my work computer at night, I leave that world behind. There are no buzzing mobile phones demanding my attention; no conflicting priorities fighting for my attention. There’s just me, with enough time to create the very best work I’m capable of while still having enough time for other important priorities in my life.

 

I’ve come to like that place.

 

---

Resources:

Over the next several months, my former employer will shed a lot of jobs. Many of the people leaving will be where I was 7 years ago: anxious and uncertain about the future. Here are a few resources I’ve found along my journey that might be useful to them, and anyone else who finds themselves in the same place:

• 60 and over? Attend college for free. Here are the programs available at institutions around Ohio; this article lists other states that offer such programs. Speaking of which…
• NowU.com – a service of Gannett. Just go ahead and register when you first reach the site; otherwise they’ll bug you to death until you’ve finished reading the three articles allotted to non-registrants. NowU attempts to be a one-stop shop for all things retirement, and you’re bound to find something of interest there.
• Next Avenue, a service of PBS. Like NowU, Next Avenue is organized in buckets and provides a number of ways to connect (including Facebook and Twitter).
• I’m a huge fan of Pam Slim’s. Second Lifers will find her new book, Body of Work, especially relevant. I love her blog posts, too.
• Encore.org aims to connect Second Lifers with opportunities to make a difference in the nonprofit sector.
• YourEncore offers excellent in-person networking opportunities for people in Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Princeton NJ. They also offer challenging and well-compensated employment for people with the qualifications they’re seeking for client projects or as part of end-to-end solutions teams. YourEncore serves many of the major companies in the consumer, food and life sciences sectors. 

I'm Home

A couple of weeks ago, I met my friend, Claire, at a local craft brewery. We hadn’t seen each other in a while and had a lot of catching up to do. Our conversation ranged from the revelatory to the ordinary – new directions for her, the latest home improvement project for me. It was an emotional evening and, like all our deepest conversations, one that could have only happened with my very English friend in a pub over pints of beer.

As I laid out my plans, Claire asked, “Why do you spend so much money on your house?”

I heard curiosity rather than judgment in her question. She knows I’ve forked out a lot of money in the last 18 years on a house most would consider a starter home and moved out of years ago. If not for resale value, then what?

I couldn’t answer her, or not with anything that made sense to me at the time. Over the next few days, her question stuck with me, working its way through my mind during long, meditative walks. I began to realize it’s all about the imagery of “home” for me.

During 20 years of a difficult marriage, I had recurring dreams about houses. One in particular: a ramshackle place, but with a door that opened into a beautiful series of rooms I’d completely forgotten about. “Why don’t I ever come in here?” I’d ask myself, feeling the sense of peace and happiness I drew from this space.

Over time I realized the dream house was a metaphor for myself, the forgotten rooms those parts of me I hid from the world because I didn’t feel safe enough to express them within my marriage.

Why that came to be is a story for another day. It’s enough to know that I grew into an adult lacking a strong sense of self, learning instead to be the person others wanted me to be. That began to change after the birth of my son when I was 32. Tensions in the marriage increased during my pregnancy and after my son’s birth, and spilled over into my relationships with my parents and siblings. During a particularly spectacular confrontation between my husband and the rest of my family, my tenuous sense of self became shockingly clear to me. As my family pulled me one way and my husband another, I realized there was no “me” other than the one they each called theirs.

But were either of these Barbaras the real me? Who did I think I was? I couldn’t answer that question, either – but I began on a journey to find out, one that eventually led me to leaving my husband.

Divorce removed the chaos from my life but it left a hole as well. Relief at finally being free coexisted with pain and sadness. My deepest grief? Knowing that my son, just 10 years old, would spend the rest of his childhood dividing his time between two homes. The pain of not having him under the same roof every night was visceral.

I found solace in turning the home that had been ours into mine. Slowly but steadily, the house evolved from the drab and dreary place of my dreams into the warm and welcoming place I longed for. At the same time, I began exploring those forgotten “rooms” of myself and – tentatively at first – letting them surface. Many years later, the pain of those days is a distant memory, but the work on my home (and myself) continues.

It’s as difficult now to remember the dowdy house I began with as it is to remember the anxious, uncertain person I used to be. The sense of contentment and peace I feel as I look at the home I’ve created mirrors the satisfaction I feel with the woman I’ve become: the two are intertwined.

The same week I met Claire, I had a houseguest on a cross-country journey of self-discovery. She’s about the same age I was when I began this process and like I was then, she’s looking for home. As we talked, she told me over and over, “I LOVE it here. It’s so warm and welcoming and full of love.”

Well, of course it is – that’s who I am.

 

A Communitarian’s View

Updated: added Additional Resources at end of post

I’ve been engaged in a running conversation on Facebook with friends who don’t support the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. We also wandered into the cost of other government-provided benefits like SNAP (food stamps) and mobile phones. It’s hard to cover all my points and supporting documentation in a Facebook conversation, so I’m expanding it to this space. 

First, in defining myself as a communitarian, I’m trying to establish a foothold outside the usual liberal/conservative terminology. While my political views are decidedly liberal, I’m comfortable with certain conservative viewpoints as well. Ultimately, what I believe in is a system where we, as humans, share a responsibility for each other. I also believe that both government and individuals have important roles to play in meeting that responsibility. 

So let’s get started. 

My ingoing position on Obamacare is this: I strongly supported a “Medicare for all” solution. As a pragmatist, though, I knew this would never fly. What we’ve ended up with is something that dissatisfies everyone, for different reasons. But a few important points: 

• Only in the U.S. would people label a program that relies on private-sector companies to insure its citizens as a “government takeover.” Let’s make sure we don’t miss this point: those who avail themselves of a policy on their state’s exchange will not be paying premiums to the government but to a private insurance company. They may, however, qualify for subsidies provided by the government, depending on their incomes – akin to the earned income tax credit (something enacted and expanded under Republican administrations, and historically considered an acceptable way to conservatives of providing aid).
   
• There’s a reason the ACA was set up the way it was: its key provisions were developed and vetted by Republicans and conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. Don’t believe me? Check out this side-by-side comparison of Obamacare and RomneyCare. 

• What about the affordability of the ACA? My conservative friends believe it will bankrupt us, and cite statistics about the number of employers who are moving full-time employees to part-time in an effort to avoid paying for their benefits. Except…that doesn’t appear to be true, at least not yet. 
  
  Nor will the plans necessarily be as unaffordable as some would have us believe. For the cheapest plan on the Nevada exchange for a healthy 20-year old male, the cost is about $160 – before any subsidies based on their income.  (See Additional Resources at the end of this post for more information on affordability.)
   
• Moving on to tort reform, according to Howard Dean (whom I saw speak the other night), it’s largely driven by the state you live in. According to Dean, in his home state of Vermont, any savings from tort reform would be negligible; Vermont juries don’t tend to give large awards. In other states, it might be more. In any case, tort reform is not a good place to look for national savings because it’s state-driven. And states don’t need to look to the federal government to enact their own tort reform.

 To summarize my feelings on Obamacare: I don’t believe the program is perfect and in fact, think there will be a number of issues as it goes into effect. That doesn’t mean I think we should scrap it. Instead, I’d like to see members of both parties weed out what doesn’t work and continue to look for ways to strengthen and improve it so that it’s both cost-efficient and effective.

 And yes – I’m willing to invest my tax dollars in a program that will cover the majority of our citizens so they don’t have to face the prospect of choosing to treat a health condition over eating: it’s as simple as that.

Moving on to anti-poverty programs.

I plan for this to be the last time I discuss “Obamaphones” – a misnomer if there ever was one. So I will simply point you to the history behind this program (called Lifeline). While it’s true that a 2012 survey found evidence of fraud, the FCC took steps to correct that. As a result: 

“The FCC also slashed 75 percent of available subsidies for the program, which eliminated a “perverse” incentive for some phone companies to enroll ineligible persons. The FCC projects its modifications will save up to $2 billion over three years.” 

But it’s incorrect to say our taxes fund these phones; they’re funded by telecom customers who pay a universal service fee as part of their phone bills (my monthly share is $1.81). Or some telecom customers pay this fee; it’s not government mandated but at the phone company’s discretion. The FCC describes this charge as follows:

Because telephones provide a vital link to emergency services, to government services and to surrounding communities, it has been our nation’s policy to promote telephone service to all households since this service began in the 1930s. The USF helps to make phone service affordable and available to all Americans, including consumers with low incomes, those living in areas where the costs of providing telephone service is high, schools and libraries and rural health care providers. Congress has mandated that all telephone companies providing interstate service must contribute to the USF. Although not required to do so by the government, many carriers choose to pass their contribution costs on to their customers in the form of a line item, often called the “Federal Universal Service Fee” or “Universal Connectivity Fee.”

Last, anti-poverty programs. I will admit that here, I struggle sometimes to understand the insensitivity and anger I see directed towards the less fortunate among us.

Who are we talking about when we talk about food stamp recipients? Well, according to the USDA, it’s about 15 percent of the population, or one in seven Americans. Of those, 47% are children under 18, and 8% are seniors. You can read more here.

Who are these hungry families and how do they get by? They’re not all those for whom “food stamps have become a way of life.” Many are proud and self-reliant people who for one reason or another (including the continuing fall-out from a devastating recession) have fallen on hard times.

And why is all the outrage I see coming from the conservative media machine directed at this population? Where’s the outrage at the agribusiness subsidies, whose funding the House voted to continue? How about the fact that the USDA overpaid farmers over $20 billion last year?

Why does Representative Stephen Fincher, who represents the people living in Dyersburg, Tennessee, believe that, with regard to food stamps, “The role of citizens, of Christianity, of humanity, is to take care of each other, not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country,” -- but not that the farm subsidies of $3.5 million he received from the government from 1999 to 2012 are wrong as well?

And even if you believe that many adults on this assistance don’t deserve it, what about their children? Have we really become a country that would deny basic food security to our young?

The last and most poignant link I’ll end with is a devastating documentary from the BBC on child poverty in America. I encourage everyone to carve out an hour to watch the entire show.

Additional Resources

• Left Behind: Stories from Obamacare's 31 million uninsured
   
• Why the Health Care Law Scares the GOP
• Yes, we know premium prices under Obamacare. No, we don't know if people will think they're affordable
  
  
• Household Food Security in the United States in 2012

• Feeding America

• An Early Look at Premiums and Insurer Participation in Health Insurance Marketplaces, 2014 (Kaiser Family Foundation)

Dreaming the Future, Letting Go of the Past

 

“You say you want to write – so write.” My inner voice, approximately 5 am, June 24, 2013

I dreamed that morning that I was stung by a scorpion while leaving the loading docks of my former employer. And that sucker held on! One of the people with me – an old friend and colleague – finally killed it with an electric current, leaving the stinger behind. We were debating whether we’d fully removed it when I began feeling the poison coursing through my veins. By the time we got to the company cafeteria, I was feeling better. I awoke to the words above.

I took an early retirement package from my employer 5-1/2 years ago, but for the past 4, I’ve continued working for them on a contract basis. It’s been a great gig: I earned enough money to minimize withdrawals from my retirement account and I got to continue doing work I loved on a more leisurely basis.

Those days were up July 1. The company decided to hire a local agency to consolidate the work I and others do for them as well as new work coming down the pike. I completely understand: this is a business decision, just as the ones over the past decade that resulted in so many of us 50-somethings accepting generous early buy-outs. “Don’t take it personally,” one of my favorite Zen teachers says.

I don’t.

But…I’m feeling an echo of the grief I felt in leaving a familiar “home” five years ago, only this time I know it’s really over. And just as with a romantic relationship you struggle to give up, even though you know it’s time to move on, I have a lot of different feelings churning under the surface.

There’s some grief, shown in a resurgence of the loss-filled dreams that began when I rejoined my employer after quitting to move to California in my early 20’s. Six months after that move, tail between my legs, I came home to both my parents’ house and my employer. I’ll remain grateful to the end of my days that both took me back. Awakening from those dreams in the years after I came home, I’d be flooded with relief:  it was only a bad dream.

Now it’s not: what I feared for all those years has come about. And yet, my inner voice says, it’s not a bad dream – it’s an opportunity to explore new work and try out new roles. It’s a chance to become my own distinctive voice rather than a corporate mouthpiece. It’s about welcoming the change rather than running from it.

I like that interpretation better than the old one.

Metaphors of Motherhood

Mother's Day is just around the corner, and it finds me in a reflective mood.

As a young mother, I celebrated new milestones and looked forward to future accomplishments. As a mom whose job is done -- child raised, launched and successfully navigating his world -- the smallest things, remnants of our shared past, lurk in every corner of my memory. 

Today, a brief conversation about well-used childhood blankets brought one such memory to mind. Two days before the space shuttle Challenger blew up, friends from work held a baby shower for me. One of the gifts was a green receiving blanket -- the very one we used to wrap up my son and bring him home from the hospital.

This blanket became my son's anchor, the one thing he had to have when he went to bed at night and the first thing he reached for every morning. Before he spoke his first real words, there was something he used to say all the time: Ahdeedah. It finally dawned on us that it was his name for his blanket.  

Ahdeedah became a household fixture -- and one I had trouble separating him from. On one memorable occasion my efforts to spirit it away for a much needed washing resulted in his stubbornly standing by the washing machine until the cycle had finished. Another time, he realized he'd forgotten it when we were about 5 minutes away from a weekly meeting I attended. I thought his howling would stop by the time he joined the other kids in the nursery, but 5 minutes into my meeting, the caregiver came to get me: he would not be consoled. 

We left.

By the time he went to kindergarten, he no longer relied as much on having his blanket nearby at all times. I was the one who insisted he take it with him for nap time during his all-day kindergarten. And the inevitable happened: just a couple of days into the school year, he left it on the bus. We talked to the driver and the bus company, but we never found it again.

For him? That was that. In a peculiar reversal of roles, it was he who was willing to let it go and I the one who cried.

Many years now separate me from that memory. Yet on the brink of a cross country move that will put many miles between us for the forseeable future, I see all the ways parenting is one long exercise in saying goodbye. That first eagerly anticipated step begins a process that takes our children ever further away from us, one way or another. And they are always more ready for that journey than we are.  

For someone who's never looked back on the past with regret, this later life nostalgia always catches me by surprise. It's different from sadness. It's not about wishing that time could stand still, or wanting to be the center of my son's life as I was when he was little. It's more about finally understanding and appreciating the ties that bind, seeing all the connections that weren't visible before.

And appreciating them in all their beauty: a rich tapestry of our lives together. One that we're not done weaving.

 

To Marcy, who taught me grace

Sometimes people come into your life and you don't realize what you've learned from them until after they're gone.

Marcy was one of those people for me. That's her on the right, in the picture above. We visited with her and her husband, Barry, in their old RV on an unseasonably warm night last December and talked of returning in the spring to take a long bike ride and have a cookout.  

I didn't meet Marcy until several years after a stroke and related illnesses permanently altered the vital woman I can only see through Barry's pictures and memories. The Marcy I knew spent most of her time in a wheelchair. Despite her physical limitations, I never saw her without a big smile and a warm hug. She had a joyful, raucous laugh, and she frequently turned it on herself as she struggled with some small thing most of us can do without thinking.

Even as her world grew smaller, she never lost her sense of joy and delight. When the bank foreclosed on their home, and she and Barry moved into an old RV, she talked about how freeing it was to downsize to just the truly necessary. As a city girl living in the country for the first time, she delighted in the sights, sounds and scents of the abundant life around them. 

I can think of no better words to salute Marcy and her life than those of another friend who left this life too soon:

Cirrus

I'd like to leave
an imprint
on the world
lighter than
I'd formerly meant.
Just a scent, 
not the thud
of the thing
steaming on a plate.
Instead of "I told you so!"
let my epitaph be
the glance, the edge,
the mist. The delicately
attenuated swirl
of an innuendo
instead of the thunderhead.
The rain that fell
when I was ambitious
seemed conspiringly rushed
in my way. But the same rain
today tastes of here and now
because of where it's been.
I'd like to be gentle
with small, great things.
They are larger
than what we think
we came here for.
I'd like to be an eye of light
that opens the air
and burns beyond ambition,
like the sun that can't see us
and is beyond our human reach, 
yet is in us trillions of times over.

- Jack Myers from his posthumously published book of poems, "The Memory of Water."

What I Learned On My Summer Vacation

First, some background: 

Facebook Entry: July 4, 2012

Much to my own surprise, the competitive spirit I didn't think I had has been awakened by a program at my gym. Although I didn't join the Spring Fever program for the competition (or rather generous awards), I've consistently ranked #1 since Day 1. Enter my nemesis, whose name I've smudged out. With only 4 days to go, we're running neck and neck. It's down to the truly crazy, like wearing my Polar tracking device while we walked all over Boston yesterday (including up the 297 steps of the Bunker Hill memorial). But -- it put me back in the lead. 

I am determined to win this thing now :-)

I titled this screen grab “My Nemesis”

Epilogue: despite my enthusiasm and determination, I lost. It was a combination of factors: an equally determined competitor who – like me – wanted to win. And late in the game, a dark horse who waited until the last minute to add lots of points (including one workout she claimed burned 2500 calories in a single day).  

But before I knew about the dark horse, and before I thought all was lost, I spent my last two days in Boston -- on vacation! -- attempting to regain my lead. Crazy squared: I walked 10 miles each day, an expenditure of 5+ hours and 2000+ calories. Had I entered the second day’s walk before we left Boston, I would have come in second. But clued into how to play the game now -- hoard your uploads until the last minute to confound your opponents – I opted to wait until we got to our family rental in Rhode Island, which promised an internet connection it didn’t deliver. I wasn’t able to upload my last day’s walk in time for the contest cutoff. 

Although I was disappointed by my loss, I was also surprised by how this competitive urge spurred me to increase my level of exercise. If you’d told me two months ago that I’d go out and walk 10 miles at a pop, I would have said, “Why?” Now I’m doing it at least once a week. In fact, I’ve upped the time devoted to exercise by at least 50% most days.

Other than discovering my inner competitive spirit, what did I gain from this experience? 

1. I’m capable of doing more. I’ve been exercising an hour a day, five times a week for three years (and regularly but less frequently before that). Along with a healthier diet, it’s one of the ways I’ve lost 40 pounds. Until my gym’s fitness challenge, though, I hadn’t challenged myself to go beyond my regular routine. Once I did, I learned I could do far more than I thought. (This applies to other areas of my life as well.)
   
   
2. I need to eat less than others -- and exercise more, too. Two years ago I joined a program at my gym called “Commit to be Fit,” a 12-week program of exercise and diet pitting teams of people in a friendly competition to lose the most weight. It worked so well I ended up participating two more times, and really cementing healthier eating and exercise habits.
   
   
   

   The worst thing I ate on vacation: the Boot Mill sandwich at Arthur’s Paradise Diner in Lowell, Mass. Eggs, cheese, bacon and potatoes on a bun. (We won’t even talk about how much wine and beer I consumed.)

   ---

   The program also included a test that confirmed what I already suspected: I have a low metabolism. My resting metabolic rate is only 1500 calories a day -- 1800 when you add in the average for daily activity. Through experience, I learned that number is closer to 1600. And to lose weight, I need to stay at the low end of 1200-1400 calories.
   
   So…to both lose weight and maintain that loss, I’m stuck with consuming fewer calories and finding ways to turn up the furnace. Adding an extra hour (or more) to my daily exercise regimen did just that: I lost 3 pounds on vacation, even though I was indulging myself more than usual. And I’ve maintained that weight loss since I came home.
   
   
3. It’s not just about exercise. It’s the daily activity, too. While I was on vacation, I traipsed around tourist sites, biked, hiked, walked and just generally moved around a lot more. I watched zero television and spent far less time sitting in front of a computer. It’s hard to maintain that level of activity since I’ve come home – but I’m going to work on it. 
   
   
4. Feeding the good wolf. I’m going to steer clear of saying “good” and “bad” habits and just say I have some behaviors that contribute to greater well-being and some that don’t. The option to exercise more only came about because I’d already made a commitment to exercise in the first place. Likewise, I don’t stray very far from my healthy eating patterns before yanking myself back again. And the very best way to encourage myself to continue practicing well-being is to remind myself of my successes – not my failures. Success breeds success; continually berating yourself for your failures just serves to keep them at the center of your attention. If you’re like me, that’s a sure recipe for bringing on the exact behavior you want to see less of.

As I took what ended up being a 10 mile walk this morning, I recognized the unique factors that allowed me to do all the things I’m writing about. This includes the privilege of being semi-retired, the legacy of my long career at an incredible company whose retirement plan made that possible. And being 58 with a grown child and no other household or family responsibilities.

I would strongly dislike it if anyone reading this beat up on themselves for not doing more. Instead, I would say practice your own well-being where you are right now. At another time in my life, that meant jogging at pre-dawn or working out at the gym in my office after lunch so I could minimize the time away from my son. 

And – challenge yourself as circumstances change. You might find yourself as surprised as I was with what you’re capable of doing.

 

Really?

 

Like many women, I’m amazed that our national political conversation has returned to a topic I thought we settled long ago: birth control.

As a young woman contemplating my first sexual experience, the most important question after “when” was: how do I make sure I don’t get pregnant? I knew one thing: I wanted control over the decision about when to have a child.

When I entered the workforce in the mid ‘70’s, birth control pills were the only regularly prescribed medication not covered by my company’s insurance plan. That didn’t change until women gained a larger share of responsibility and became more valued contributors.   

Fast forward to 2012 and we’re arguing, again, about whether insurers should cover birth control. The Obama Administration says yes, and mandated that the Affordable Care Act should fully fund those costs. Many conservatives (and the Catholic Church) say no, citing religious and/or First Amendment rights. While I don’t agree with the Catholic Church on this issue, I respect their belief, which has been nothing but consistent as long as I’ve walked this earth (even as every Catholic I’m related to or acquainted with chooses to ignore their teachings on this topic). And while my conservative friends will disagree with me, I think Obama has done an admirable job of trying to work within this constraint while still holding true to the principle of universal coverage. 

Like most non-religious people, I respect those with strong religious beliefs, and my circle includes both close friends and family members who fit that description (including my nephew, who plans to enter the Catholic priesthood). This makes me inclined to roll up my sleeves when faced with religious objections and say, “OK – what can we do to make sure women who want this coverage can obtain it under the same conditions as every other woman in the country, in a way that won’t violate your beliefs?” If self-insured Catholic institutions say that putting the onus on their insurance companies, as Obama proposed, is still a violation, what are other possible solutions? 

The other conservative complaint I see goes something like, “I don’t want to pay for your sex life,” with the implication that covering birth control comes out of your own pocket. Yet that’s how insurance works: it pools the costs of members’ coverage across the insured population. Your premiums help pay the cost of other participants’ health care expenses with the expectation that their premiums will also help pay yours. Do we really want people (or the companies who insure us) choosing what they pay for? Taking this to its logical extreme, should non-smokers be required to pay for a smoker’s lung cancer?  A recovering alcoholic’s liver transplant? 

Keeping insurance costs down involves balancing the pool of participants so that healthy people pay more into the system than they draw from it. The excess funds they generate help pay for the higher costs of those who withdraw more than they pay in. I accept this trade-off as a citizen who values living in a community where we take care of each other. I’m fine with having some of my health care dollars support those who need it more; after all, I might find myself in their shoes someday. 

Many insurers increasingly realize the cost benefits of fully covering the cost of certain health care procedures as part of their wellness programs. That’s one of the reasons why my plan now fully covers annual mammograms for women and colonoscopies for people over 50. Birth control falls within this category as well, particularly for low income women, whose rates of unplanned pregnancy are far higher (and whose complications from pregnancy are correspondingly higher as well). And contrary to what some pundits say, the cost can be considerable, especially for the most effective options and for those with fewer resources.

I’m not comfortable with painting this discussion as a “war on women.” In fact, I’m not comfortable with retreating into either side’s talking points vacuum. What concerns me is that at the same time we’re heading to our usual corners and shouting at each other, many states are making it increasingly difficult for women to have access to affordable health care coverage (including reproductive health services). That means more women will lose access to cervical and breast cancer screenings, testing for sexually transmitted diseases, and other services. This will certainly result in more women dying from preventable diseases. 

 I would like to think this would concern us all.