Reflections

I'm currently reading a book that reveals the internal thoughts of a young twelve year old girl and a snobby female concierge as they live life in a prestigious condo building in Paris, France. This book is beautifully written and contains ideas that provoke thought.

Just the other day a paragraph jumped out at me that I want to share it with you:

We never look beyond our assumptions and, what's worse, we have given up trying to meet others; we just meet ourselves. We don't recognize each other because other people have become our permanent mirrors. If we actually realized this, if we were to become aware of the fact that we are only ever looking at ourselves in the other person, that we are alone in the wilderness, we would go crazy.

I thought this was a profound statement. Could it be true? Am I looking at you to see myself? Am I missing the Peace in your gaze; the Hope in your story; the Joy in your laugh? Am I only taking a piece of you, the one piece that matches closest to what I perceive about myself and stacking it on top of all the other collected pieces from my interactions? Am I trying to reinvent myself each day from these reflections?

What if I don't like what's reflected? If I'm only looking at you to see myself, how will I feel when I see something I don't like. What if you don't laugh at my joke and fail to reflect my humor; and what if you forget to say "thank you" and miss my kindness...will I say it's your problem or will I think that maybe I wasn't as funny or as kind as I perceived myself to be?

What if I love what is reflected? I may think I'm the funniest person in the world or the kindest or the most beautiful. This can't be good either..."pride comes before the fall."

So what to do?

One remedy is to go back to where we started and remember to meet people for who they are, and take ourselves out of the reflection. Who are you? What are your hopes and dreams under the surface of our encounter? What are you about?

Well, I think that's enough for today...my brain hurts from all this thinking. Tonight I will work on seeing my family and friends for who they are and grow to love them all the more...what about you?

Lifestyles of The Chick and Same-Us: The Beginning

This year we were inspired by friends to raise our own chicken. This sounds funny to those of us who are used to buying chicken at the local grocer, without a care to where it was raised. But after reading books like Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, and Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, my interests in this "grow your own" movement were piqued.

So, this summer the kids and I piled into the car and headed to our local farm and feed store where we selected the cutest yellow chicks. All 18 chicks fit inside a large cardboard box and I tried to act brave as we added them to the backseat along with my human chicky-doos. I wasn't sure I could actually do this thing called raising chickens, and had thoughts of just letting them grow old with us and becoming a vegetarian family. My husband solidified my fears when he said, "I sure hope they get ugly," Oh, dear. What have we gotten ourselves in to?

The first two weeks were spent caring for the little chicks. They lived in a special metal container with wood chips to sleep on; a heat lamp so they wouldn't get cold; a self-drip water container; organic chicken feed and lotsa love from the little veterinarians who live with me. The toughest part was protecting them from the hunting dog and the retriever who shared living space with them in the garage these first two weeks. I've never seen our Vizsla on point so much in her whole life, and the Lab would try to snap at them whenever they flapped their wings...she's used to sleeping all day so this was exciting for her.

After two weeks it was time to put them out to pasture in their chicken tractor...

Beauty

It's always startling to realize that you are in a funk. Inward searching, outward procrastination, longing, helplessness and a hardy lack of motivation.

I just visited that place for the last couple of months. Times of transition usually impart such dubious adjectives that we live out in verb. But, this week I felt like I walked through another door, turned a new chapter and turned toward a new perspective.

It happened when I found myself smiling at a sparkly, colorful, unique and glamorous work of art by Dale Chihuly. He is a world famous creator of glass-blown art featuring creatures from the sea. When I look at Chihuly's work, I'm blown away (no pun intended) at how inspired he is. And when I look at a real sea creature, like the jellyfish in this picture, I still think of Chihuly. He has been able to fuse his work so tightly together with reality, that his fans can't help but think of his work when we see the real thing.

This kind of beauty is a surprising remedy to what ails many of us going through transitions, getting ready for Thanksgiving and Christmas and just generally hunckered down in the funk. Noticing the unexpected in life means getting out there, like I did when I found myself in front of that piece of art. Life is beauty...in a falling leaf, a glimmering bauble, the smell of apple cider, a transformed life...

So if the rigors of life have been pushing you down, rise up and turn your head, notice something else, something beautiful.