mindfulness

The Wheel of Time is Exceptional!

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

I entered a completely new landscape in the past few days, a land where women are incredibly powerful and racism does not exist. This land exists in the new series “The Wheel of Time” on Amazon Prime. I should preface this by telling you I never enjoyed fantasy before this. I walked out of the first “Lord of the Rings” movie because I found it all so male and predictable. The “Wheel of Time” is a series of high fantasy novels by American author Robert Jordan and spans 14 volumes. The first volume “The Eye of the World”, was published in January 1990.

This high fantasy has many characters all on a quest to save their world from “the Dark One.” Set in an alternative world very unlike ours, the main characters are dynamic, compelling women who wield amazing and unpredictable powers. Filled with subtlety and rituals, I found this story to be the opposite of most fantasies in that nothing was easily predictable about their quest. First of all, the women were the wise ones and leaders in this world. They held most of the power, unlike human traditional society for the past few centuries. I found it entertaining how sexist I could be in my own mind when the women took charge and ruled the world of The Light. The characters dealt with dilemmas like women needing to mask their power in the past and how they might show no shame when they embrace their power now.

I also enjoyed the way both European and Asian mythologies are displayed, most notably the cyclical nature of time found in Buddhism and Hinduism, and the characters’ respect for nature found in Taoism. The metaphysical concepts of balance and duality are well displayed as well as a creation story where the creator is Light, not the Lord, and the “Dark One” wishes to destroy human life on earth.

I found the casting amazing in that all cultures, skin colors, and languages of people were expressed. It seemed there were no “races” in this world. They also seemed to make a point of not selecting the most beautiful or attractive for the lead roles, all were represented like life itself. So much about the casting was the opposite of traditional Hollywood practices and it struck me how surprised I was with that. I LOVED IT!

The other thing I loved was how much I learned from the characters, both men and women as I watched. For example, there is a group of travelers called “The Way of the Leaf.” They are totally non-violent and their wise woman Ila explains why. At one point in the past Ila’s daughter was killed “for sport” and she wanted revenge! Then she discovered:

“What greater revenge against violence than peace? What greater revenge against death than life? If I can change two peoples’ minds I’ve left the world better than I found it.”

The Wheel of Time created a geologically-interesting, beautifully appointed imaginary world to live in for a while with magic, subtlety and ritual, all things I was encouraged to abhor as a child. Most imaginary worlds have the same basic rules as our present world for me. They just seem too predictable. Not that portrayed in “The Wheel of Time.” I was left guessing the whole time and I loved that.

The Pros and Cons of Writing an Autobiography

/ Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

“Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself : ‘How alive am I willing to be?’” – Anne Lamott

Whether to create an autobiography is my latest writing dilemma. I go back and forth almost every day. I kept a journal from Junior High School on, so I certainly have the material to work with. I also have lots of pictures from my past. Don’t get me wrong. My goal is not to punish anyone. I just want to write something that some might enjoy reading some day.

PROS

I certainly don’t want to get stuck in my past, but on the other hand, wouldn’t it be interesting to see where my mind was at in 9th grade? In college? In my 30s in comparison to my 60s? As a psychologist I would love to study my own transition from my early beliefs as a naive youngster to what I now like to call older and much wiser. Perhaps a study of how a liberated woman’s mind developed, starting in the mid-1950s.

I like to believe my life had meaning. One way to pass on that meaning is to write about it. As a member of the transitional, mid-Baby Boomer generation, from the conservative, sexist 1940s and 50s, to the 60s, 70s and beyond, I wish to acknowledge how much our country changed especially in terms of women’s lives and roles. I lived a non-traditional life of first building a career and delaying marriage. I chose not to have children, choosing instead to get to fully know myself before I brought anyone else into my life.

I lived most of my adult life working and single, enjoying the freedom that brings. I experienced a divorce (at age 45), which at least half of Baby Boomers have been through. I also spent a few years studying the trends in Baby Boomers in my 50s, and then wrote a book about them.

I have a graduate degree in psychology and studied midlife love for a few years after my divorce. I also opened my own version of a dating service in the early 2000s. That’s how I met husband number two, while trolling for matches for my women clients… My second book tells this story: How to Believe In Love Again.

I feel I have lots to share with other Baby Boomers and their children and grandchildren, eventually!

CONS:

What a lot of work! Do I have the stamina at this late date?

I certainly don’t want to get stuck in my past. As far as I’m concerned, I have already spent too much time thinking about what happened ‘back then.’ It seems to be one of my obsessions, and yet I do appreciate all the enticing memories I have from so many trips abroad and a few great love affairs. (You know who you were!) I find my trips down memory lane to be fantastic entertainment for when I’m sick and stuck in bed for days… It just seems like this is the right time to set the record straight in my own mind (before I lose it…LOL!)

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” – Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

And then there’s the whole question of seeing the past honestly and calling an asshole an asshole. On that topic I’m afraid I agree with my hero,

Anne Lamott: “Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

As Anne says, acknowledging and telling our truth is what aging is all about!

“But you can’t get to any of these truths by sitting in a field smiling beatifically, avoiding your anger and damage and grief. Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in – then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.” – Anne Lamott

The movie for academics and us bookish types!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

“So, you went to college. Is your life better because of it?”

First of all, you should know I was raised on college campuses and worked on them my entire adult life as an academic librarian. As kids, we collected pop bottles on campus and I was born at a university hospital. So when I watched the film “Liberal Arts” this morning it spoke to me in so many interesting and unique ways. This screenplay is superb!

This film, which premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2021, deals with so many important aspects of life: love, romance, sex, maturing into adulthood, retirement and what happens to aging academics. The story is told from the perspective of a 35-year-old played by Josh Radnor, who wrote, directs and stars in this little gem. He plays Jesse, an admissions counselor in NYC whose life is on the skids (fully disillusioned and going through a divorce), when he is invited back to his small liberal arts college for a retirement party for one of his favorite professors.

Jesse absolutely loves returning to college. Ah. the feel of total irresponsibility on a small liberal arts college campus! There he meets a few characters who complicate is pathetic life. There’s a beautiful, young woman who he falls in love with over long-distance letter writing, there’s a mysterious elf-like creature who shows up regularly to share his truths. ‘Nat’, played so well by Zac Efron, seems so ethereal that Jesse says at one point, “I’m not even sure you’re real.” There are a few bitter older professors who cause Jesse some serious disillusionment over choosing the academic life, as well as a college kid who is right on the edge of giving up on life all together.

Jesse slowly begins to see that being such an intellectual and expert on books and ideas has stunted his growth in terms of simply living an authentic life. He connects with everyone through books and ideas. When asked at one point why those of us who are lucky enough to go to college should appreciate it, he says, “Because you have time to sit around reading books all day, and you have lots of smart people around to discuss ideas! That’s not true when you leave here…” Yes, college was certainly that for me, and caused one of my greatest disappointment in life. I’ve been seeking intellectual types to talk with my whole adult life. Where are all the intellectuals in rural Huerfano County, Colorado?

When I saw the preview, I thought this would just be a fun romp through the ridiculousness of academia, something I am a bit of a expert on. Oh the stories I could tell… “Liberal Arts” turned out to be one of my most favorite films. It somehow covers most stages of adult life and disillusionment with so many great lines like, “I think being old will be OK. It’s getting there that kicks your ass.”

See this film if you loved getting lost in books, being in college and have felt disillusioned ever since. You know, if you happen to be an academ-idiot like me!

Further thoughts on being an academ-idiot…

What does the censorship of history accomplish?

/ Laura Lee Carter / Leave a comment

Of course I must put my two cents in about those who wish to censor certain school library books, partially so we cannot recognize and acknowledge what happened in our past. I was an academic librarian for twenty-five years, most of which did not include censoring our history.

This is one area where history and psychology agree:

“Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it!”

In counseling we learn that the first step to any type of change or healing process begins with awareness of our past. If we cannot acknowledge what happened to us, we can never change its traumatic effects or how we now perceive it. How can you change that which you do not even recognize as true? Knowing and feeling your past can be so liberating!

You cannot change what you do not even know about.

Denying our history is not the answer. Historically we have certainly done a decent job of downplaying the slaughter of most Native Americans and their culture, not to mention “normalizing” the practice of kidnapping native Africans and enslaving them. When fully witnessed and acknowledged, our history holds much to be ashamed of. The only solution to this terrible record as a nation is to tell the truth about these travesties and then seek some kind of healing.

As Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on the PBS show “Finding Your Roots” states, we should not feel guilty for the sins of our ancestors. We had no part in the choices they made or the societal pressures put upon them. But if we search out and now know the truth in our history, we can then move forward with a knowledge and understanding of how we should act today and every day in our future.

In addition, I must scoff at those idiots who criticize a decision to choose a non-European-American female for our next Supreme Court Justice. For well over two centuries we all knew that the President would nominate a European-American male for the post. The dominant culture made sure of that. And now these idiots feel threatened by one African-American woman on the Court…. GROW UP!

Postscript: When they tried to ban sex education in Utah when I lived there in the 1980s, we used to say: “If ignorance is bliss than Utah is utopia!” Nah, kids will never figure out what sex is if you don’t tell them…

Our perspective on our present and future

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

I just realized this past week my new life theme: “Quit trying so hard!” After struggling my whole life for more, I find great relief in simple contentment, my own version of living in the present.

Acceptance releases everything to be what it already is!

If you pay attention to the messages from our culture, you find a constant barrage of: You can do better. You SHOULD be better. The sky is the limit. No matter what your age, do more! To that I say, why? Yes, I understand why younger folks might benefit from hearing that theme, but get real. With my lung and brain limitations, this is as good as it gets, and I would like to feel good about that.

Another theme I hear all around me these day is the comfort so many of my friends find in their families, especially their grandkids. That is wonderful for them. Mike and I have never been big on family and neither one of us were into kids. Reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw in Denver ages ago: “Thank you for not breeding.” I remember thinking, “Wow, nobody ever thanked me before!”

Mike and I have been environmentalists forever. We believe in building native gardens and solar homes, using fewer natural resources and living a simple life. We find daily meaning and satisfaction living close to nature and we each have our own ongoing creative projects.

The one desire that keeps coming up for me, is a strong ‘need’ to spend some time on a beach somewhere near the ocean before I die. I have spent a few of my most glorious days on earth on the beaches of Cane Garden Bay, Tortola (BVI), on the Kona Coast of Hawaii and at Pattaya in southern Thailand back in the 1970s. So I say, take me away now to any isolated, beautiful beach! I have some purely intuitive urge to go back to where we all came from.

Thank you readers!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

As one more year slips away, I wish to thank all of you who come by here occasionally to see what’s happening in Mike and I’s life. I know we are not action-packed, just 65+ers surviving day by day…

You may sometimes wonder why I write here. The best reason I can think of is to keep myself going. As most of you know, I have been slammed with health problems in the past few years, and the truth is, I don’t know how much longer I can keep writing, but it gives me meaning every time I do it. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother. Don’t worry, I am NOT trying to be an ‘influencer’ here.

In return for your loyalty, I will share a few of my favorite T-shirt sayings I have seen lately. I don’t wear T-shirts, but if I did, these are the ones I’d choose. Perhaps you can relate to a few of them:

From years of living alone:

Sometimes I talk to myself, then we both laugh & laugh!

A Rasta Special:

All dogs are therapy dogs. Most are just freelancing.

From the therapist in me:

Keep talking. I’m diagnosing you.

From the writer in me:

I’m silently correcting your grammar… (And also noticing all misspelling everywhere!)

From the analysis paralysis in me:

Hold on. Let me OVERTHINK this…

And my favorite doormat:

Come in. We are awesome!