Holding a vision

Finding the Strength to Let Go of Self

/ Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

I believe our lives are a process of finding and confronting our true Self, and then slowly letting go of it as we age. Some might prefer the word ego in this scenario. I have had this message on my wall for decades:

What is the ego or sense of Self?

ego: a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance, the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for a sense of personal identity.

The way I relate to my sense of Self is to know that as a child and young adult my ‘job’ was to develop my sense of who I was inside, what did I think and value? How should I treat others? How did others see me? This naturally leads to a strong sense of self-consciousness, sometimes painfully so. Then came the time to figure out what I planned to do in the world. How did I hope to change my world? These are the purposes of young adulthood up until our forties or so.

Developing a strong sense of self or ego is a good and necessary part of being human. There is nothing wrong with having a strong ego, but it needs to be regulated. Problems arise when ego affects your decision making process, turning you into a victim, or when it makes you feel superior to others in order to justify your bad behavior. A toxic ego is one that does not learn from bad behavior, but instead blames others, often descending into negativity, resentment, and even violence.

For the past twenty years, my spiritual path has been that of the second part of life. I have been searching for the strength to let go of self. A part of this process is simply getting comfortable with self compassion and death. Although we might think we have a strong sense of self when we are younger, if we are very honest we may find much self-criticism inside. This is all a part of the ego. Like we really did have the power to change any part of our world…

Being close to nature is your best path to realizing your place in the history of time. Please note, there are no other animals or plants that believe they are changing the world. There are no other beings that fear death. They know what their part is, to be born, to live and then die. I have found a gradual process of getting used to the idea of death is the best path for me. At first is was so hard to be with so I would push it away and deny its power. Since I started facing some powerful signs that I won’t be around forever (lung disease and brain injuries) in the past few years, my acceptance has grown like my garden outside my door, bright and beautiful.

What were you born to do?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I heard an expression lately that struck me in a good way and reminded me of my upcoming birthday. Of all the ways there are to say it, I think asking, “What were you born to do?” gets down to the basics of our very existence here on earth. I was born 68 years ago into the mid-1950s, the third kid in a lower middle class family. My Dad was just finishing his PhD at the University of Iowa while my Mom worked nights to keep our family going. No, my family really didn’t need another child, but there I was.

On my first birthday, my Mom made me a cake and then my brother and sister cheered me on as I first learned about the intricacies of blowing out my one candle…

It took me quite a while to figure out what I was born to do and in my case it had little to do with how I earned my living. For as long as I can remember money was never that important to me. Fine qualities of character are what I look for in everyone I meet, and even more so today. Through decades of trusting the wrong people, I learned how to identify those worthy of my trust.

“Experience is the best teacher, and the worst experiences teach the best lessons.”

Through a lifetime of experiences I have learned more and more about who I am and what I value. From these I can now clearly identify what I was born to do:

I was born to love unconditionally, but very selectively.

I was born to love the earth & sun, and conserve nature in all forms.

I was born to travel the world.

I was born to try to understand human nature and animal psychology.

I was born to love dance, beautiful movements, and especially in ice skating.

I was born to love intellectual stimulation, learning, research, books and the visual arts.

I am a natural born plant and flower lover!

So on this, my 68th year on earth, I now wish myself a heartfelt:

Some Romantic Advice From a Sexagenarian!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day To Everyone!

What a crazy celebration this truly is, considering this Hallmark holiday where some get a temporary high from spending lots of money, began as an excuse for pagan partying. Yes, Valentine’s Day began as a raucous annual Roman festival where men stripped naked, grabbed goat or dog skin whips, and spanked young maidens in hopes of increasing their fertility!

As you might guess, in my many decades of romantic experiences I have earned the right to be called a ‘sexagenarian” (better known as a person between 60 and 69 🙂 ) You might have heard that older people spend more time thinking about their past, which only seems natural since we have more past to look back on. It only seems fair that I share a few wise nuggets from my decades as a single and married woman. Here’s the most important romantic advice I can give to you, especially if you are still young:

If you allow someone else to control your emotions, you’ve already lost.

I know, you’re probably thinking, but isn’t love when you don’t control your own emotions? Isn’t that what being “lost in love” is all about? Well, that’s what they’d like you to believe, especially the person who is trying consciously or unconsciously to control you. Which brings me to my second most important piece of human communications advice:

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.  

Now I know this is probably not what you want to hear about falling in love, but I sure wish someone had shared this kind of advice with me when I was young and falling in love on a regular basis.

Now I finally realize that I regularly mistook “falling in love” with having any kind of deep, meaningful conversation with a male I was even slightly attracted to. Now I have these kind of conversations regularly without mistaking them for romance or love. Yes, hormones are awfully powerful, but don’t let them take full control of your emotions or your brain.

We all will make plenty of stupid mistakes when it comes to love, or what we sometimes mistake for love. Just try not to do any lifelong damage to yourself along the way. Trauma is such a painful teacher, and it can keep you stuck emotionally for years.

Falling in love is the BEST high I have ever experienced, even at age 49 when it last happened to me. After that Mike and I decided to fall in love all over again, as many times as possible until we die. Why? Because falling in love rocks!

Postscript: The absolute best book I have ever read on finding success in love is called, “How to Be an Adult in Relationships” by David Richo. Check it out!

How writing can improve your mood and keep your brain moving forward…

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

In the process of writing my last post about AI and writing, I learned quite a bit about exactly how good writing is for our brains. First of all I learned that writing by hand is better for the brain than typing. Although a slower task, research indicates that physically writing things down appears to make the writer become more selective in what they write. What’s more, when you pen words on paper, the neurons in your brain fire signals at rapid speed, enabling you to make more neural connections.

Writing is a stimulating yet strenuous activity for the brain. When you write, all parts of your brain are actively engaged. Thanks to the brain’s neuroplasticity, it can grow and change over time. Just as athletes train their bodies, writers can do the same with their brains.

The process of recalling something, writing it down, and reading it back on paper boosts memory and comprehension, leading to improved cognitive processing. Given that many areas of the brain are engaged, the more you write, the more neural connections are formed within your brain.

Writing every day can benefit everyone, not only professional writers. It improves your memory, builds vocabulary, and refines your communication skills. Writing can also be very relaxing, especially if you lead a busy or stressful life.

When it comes to emotional stability and development, writing can be quite therapeutic. Writing gives some structure and organization to anxious thoughts and feelings. It can help the writer feel more in control of their negative moods, thus helping them get past suppressed difficult or traumatic events.

I have always been a avid writer since I first learned how. Writing is my way to have someone to talk to about difficult thoughts or feelings, a way to process my feelings to make me feel better. These days I find writing to be essential to both my mental health and brain health. Although I sometimes find it quite challenging for my brain, I do need this challenge to keep moving forward after a few serious head injuries.

5 Surprising Benefits of Writing by Hand

Will new AI programs replace the art of writing?

/ Laura Lee Carter / 3 Comments

OpenAI’s artificial intelligence writing program ChatGPT can compose poetry, prose, song lyrics, essays, even news articles. That has ethicists and educators worried about the program’s ease at replacing human ideas with chatbot-generated words. I can already hear the concerns of educators. What about the process of writing your first term paper? Isn’t that an important part of learning?

In the history of our species there have been a number of reasons to create writing so we could record history. The first hieroglyphics were used by Egyptian priests to record important events like wars or stories about their gods and Pharaohs. These were also used to decorate temples and tombs. Writing has been used to communicate with future generations, entertain others as art (poetry, plays, prose, stories), for history and business. For most of these purposes an AI program would have sufficed to communicate. Most of us may not need to learn how to write a poem, an essay or a term paper if we have no interest and we will never need that skill again. The skill we all need and seems to be sorely lacking in our world today is critical thinking.

For most, writing a term paper may be a useless exercise, but for some of us, writing is a lifeline to sanity. I have made a practice of keeping journals my entire life. This practice of self-analysis has always helped me think through what I am experiencing and process the reasoning behind my choices, my way of delving into something I want to know more about within myself.

Now, after a few serious brain injuries, writing is my lifeline to my former self; how I connect the two worlds, the person I used to be and who I am today. My fine mind has served me well, but now it is exhausting and confusing for me to sit down at my computer and put ideas and feelings together in writing, and yet I believe this is an essential exercise in me still being me. No AI program can do this for me, and it is so worth the effort.

The process of creating is vital to the human brain. Films, music, books, poems, works of art can all be programmed into AI today, but should they be? What about the lived experience of each of us? What about the emotions of living a life?

Writing was created for a purpose, and it has served humanity in so many ways. I feel certain that will continue.

What is great about Spanish Peaks Living?

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Nine years ago this month, Mike and I drove down from Fort Collins to choose a few acres in Navajo to buy. We didn’t know much about this area, only that we loved how it felt to our suburban souls. It took us another year to build our passive solar home facing the Spanish Peaks and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains with Mount Mestas to our west.

I was reminded again early this morning why I love living here. I woke up around 6:30 AM to see an unobstructed view of a bright red sunrise to our southeast. This is BIG SKY country to me, where the landscape and the silence are the main characters! Every time I go outside in the morning I stop and feel astounded by the silence. This is what the earth used to be like. Maybe a few bird sounds, but otherwise perfect silence…

Sure there are also unattractive features to this area, but the land is encouraging and haunting all at once, and the summers are glorious!

Our first summer here we had so much fun exploring the back roads and back stories, like this dilapidated adobe schoolhouse slowly sinking back into the earth west of here…

or taking the train up to Fir to hear the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band play in a big mountain meadow.

When I first met Mike he said he wasn’t moving again until he could look at something besides the house across the street.

We found this cartoon in a magazine and laughed together about it. Then we went in search of someplace with truly ‘spectacular views.’

We found those here and so much more…