Building a solar home
You cannot control how others receive your energy
Perhaps I will always remember this holiday as the one where I finally accepted the truth about other peoples’ reaction to me. Ah, if I could have totally accepted this truth decades ago, my life would have been so much easier:
You cannot control how other people receive your energy. Anything you do or say gets filtered through the lens of whatever they are going through at that moment, which is NOT ABOUT YOU.
Just keep doing your thing with as much integrity and love as possible.
This includes everything I write about here and in my books. Just because I have chosen to learn enough to understand the psychology of midlife transition or passive solar technology, and appreciate the freedom this knowledge has given to me, does not mean anyone else has a clue what I’m talking about.
Even my parents, who taught me much of what I learned as a child, the ones I thought knew EVERYTHING when I was young, have no idea where I’m coming from with most of my ideas and thoughts today. They are living in their own reality and often do not appreciate mine, but that is not about me.
On some level I’m ashamed that it has taken me this long on this beautiful blue planet to appreciate this truth. But on the other hand, it is so freeing to let each of us be where we are right now.
We continue to search for whatever makes our lives feel better.
My New Book – Kindle Edition!
Hey! It’s Small Business Saturday and you cannot find a smaller one than mine! Please consider my new memoir as a great gift for boomers thinking about retirement alternatives. We did something completely different and we’re glad we did, but there were times we weren’t so sure. Some of you have asked when I might have an e-book edition of my new book available for purchase. I just loaded it!
How sacred are our mountains…
After watching an episode of Sacred Journeys on PBS, one which included a bit about the sacredness of mountains in Asian thought, I got to thinking about how important it feels to have a full-time view of the forever changing Spanish Peaks right outside our front windows.
The Spanish Peaks, pictured above, have a centuries-old history of sacredness. Dating back far before the Europeans arrived, this area was a crossroads of the American West. Taos Pueblo, located in northern New Mexico today, has been a major Native American trading center for over 1,000 years. One trail headed north out of Taos into the San Luis Valley, crossing east over Sangre de Cristo Pass, through the gap between Rough Mountain and Sheep Mountain.
Various Native American tribes like the Ute, the Navajo, the Jicarilla Apache and the Comanche passed through this valley regularly. To them the Spanish Peaks stood out because they seemed to emerge out of nowhere up to 13,000 feet running east and west, not north to south like the rest of the Rocky Mountains.
The natives peoples considered this a sacred place of ceremony. As far as they were concerned, this is where mankind first emerged from the womb of the earth. In other words, this was their own Garden of Eden.
The Ute Indians named these two peaks Huajatolla (pronounced Wa-ha-toy-a), meaning the “two breasts” which translates as “Breasts of the Earth”. I loved learning this ancient history, which I first heard about from Robert Mirabal when he came here to perform recently.
We moved here to create a dynamic relationship with these mountains, this landscape and the lovely silence. Mike and I have both traveled to many parts of the world. We now find the inward journey more essential than outward ones.
For us this is a sacred place, one where we can celebrate and appreciate the beauty of nature every single day, while continuing a long tradition of sustainable living.
Want to learn more about what it feels like to say goodbye to city life in order to live more intentionally? Here’s a link to my new memoir.
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What are your life-changing unpredictables?
Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.” – Gilda Radner
When I sit and think about all of the coincidences and chance acquaintances that had to happen for me to be here now, loving my new life in the foothills of southern Colorado, it fascinates me. Life is rich and so complex!
My brother John has been visiting again, which only reminds me of where I came from decades ago, and the lost years of junior high and high school. In my teens I was such a lost soul, walking around without a clue of what I needed to do with this great opportunity called life. One coincidence that changed everything for me was a chance opportunity to live in Bangkok for a few months after high school. I had just started college, but felt no real career direction until I went to live in Asia. Shock and awe is an excellent way of describing what I found there. I thought, how could this whole part of the world be here, and I had no idea of its existence?
The fascination that developed from that brief stay dominated the rest of my 20s. I studied Asian history, learned Chinese, lived in Taiwan and traveled in China a few times. Asia captivated my imagination, only because my Dad’s sabbatical included a trip for any of his kids under the age of 20 to accompany him.
When I look over each decade of my life, I can find at least one life-changing unpredictable event which somehow changed everything in my future.
Go take a look at your own life. Do you have unpredictables there that changed everything for you? German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that it is only while looking back over your life that you may see that it all somehow makes sense.
One of the most unpredictable was our decision to move to a tiny, poor town in southern Colorado to build a solar home from the footers up. Now we live close to nature in “be-here-now” land, and life just keeps getting better…
Boomers’ Views on Election Scams, Medicare Scams and Letting It All Go
Our Boomer Bloggers are feeling frisky this week! Must be the full moon or perhaps the goblins of Halloween are already emerging early just for us… Tom starts us off.
In his post The 0.3 Solution Tom Sightings brings us the latest news from Social Security, and also relates his latest encounter with Medicare. Instead of raising the premiums, is Medicare stealthily cutting services?
As the finale of the never-ending election season draws near, Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting is thinking about life post-election. Not her life – hers will not change – but post-election life for the candidate not moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She has some ideas for one candidate in Ten Post-Election Pursuits for Donald Trump.
On The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide, Rita R. Robison, consumer journalist, writes about new election scams and a drop in IRS scam reports since a huge raid in India.
On the other hand, if you are perhaps looking for an escape from corruption and scams, go try these links:
Too little kindness floating around, so that’s what Carol Cassara is bringing forward at Heart-Soul-Mind. Kindness. Let’s spread it, she suggests, and has two posts with practical ideas for doing just that. Kill the world with kindness, and an inexpensive way to brighten another’s day.
We all get caught up in busy days and a hectic life style, even in retirement. Meryl Baer of Six Decades and Counting took a couple of days off and decided to, if not exactly smell the roses, listen to the sound of the sea, smell the salt water, and enjoy unseasonably warm, beautiful weather. Read about her mini-staycation in An Autumn Respite.
And, to add a little bit of icing on the cake, don’t miss my new post: The Challenge of Being Fully Present in Your Life. This has nothing to do with the world outside your own mind and heart! In case you’re new here, I just same out with a new memoir. Please go check it out!
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 