Feb 24 2008
Doomsayers
I come from a family of doomsayers.
You want a worse case scenario we can provide one.
We gots the “nobody-loves-me-I’m-gonna-end-up-being-a-bag-lady” scenario.
You can pick and choose from buffet of prolonged and painful deaths. All alone. In a nursing home. If you’re lucky.
Why try new things when it’s just going to end in failure. Better to stay home where it’s safe. Until the roof caves in.
We also tend to exaggerate.
I don’t really come from a family of doomsayers. It’s more like my mom is prone to Portents Of Doom. It seems like most of my life I’ve heard about how I’ll find out soon enough how badly my life will suck when I’m my mom’s age.
Of course, now that I have passed one of my mom’s benchmarked ages and haven’t imploded in some way, I’m lucky. What was interesting was that I was out with her brother the other day. He’s just a couple years younger than my mom and he was saying something along the lines of, “Well, I want to do this before I lose my sight and hearing and can’t get around…”
I said, “Oh, so you expect to feel worse as you get older?”
He said, “Oh. Yeah. I guess so.”
He smiled after he said this because he knows that I’d like him to have a more positive outlook.
It’s interesting to hang out with my mom and uncle - I see why I don’t take many risks!
I think it’s wise to plan for unforeseen events and buy insurance. However, I don’t think it’s written in stone that the warranty on our body ends at age 65 and then things start failing or falling off.
I don’t expect the worse to happen to me and really, I haven’t experienced “the worse.”
Life is filled with daily joys. Notice them. I’ve read somewhere that Love is like a rose and roses have thorns. Yet without the rose, there would be no thorns.
There are always small joys in life. The stranger who holds the elevator for you. The velvety moss that grows between the sidewalk seams. The bus driver that sees you running and waits for you. The morning coffee ritual.
Seek and you will find. Why not seek good things?
I pass these trees on the way to work. People were rushing by, hurrying to catch the bus or get to work.
I have to get up early like a lot of workers. I spend almost 3 hours commuting.
The beauty of these trees stopped me in my tracks.
Stop and smell the roses. They are out there and their scent is sweet.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I think your mother and mine share a lot…I was raised with that Pidgeon of Doom, too.
Right On!
Slowing down and taking in life around me is something that I’ve attempted to do over the past couple of weeks. It took some adjusting because I move fast, talk fast, and work in a fast pace environment.
I’m so glad that you stay optimistic.
Christine: “Pigeon of Doom” ??? Hmmm…kinda fits in with something that happened to me today. It will be the topic of my next post …
UT: fast-fast-fast seems to be a NYC thing or so it seems. Back when I was a florist I’d take phone orders and the NYC florists would just turbo-talk the info at me. I couldn’t write fast enough! I could barely understand them and my asking them to repeat themselves made them even more impatient!
When I called the NYC florist they’d be impatient and what they considered my slow talking!
My dad is fast-fast-fast and Do It Now. When I’m around that kind of impatient fast energy, I feel stressed.
I am naturally optimistic but I also try to work on staying optimistic! Sometimes it can be hard - life can give you some bad times and negative people can be like black holes attempting to drag you into the darkness with them!
I keep getting to the comment page and then getting sidetracked! Ack!
New blog (new link). And… I think my family is also a family of doomsayers. They all freaked when I told them I was traveling to Australia… ALONE. hahaha. I survived. I want to travel some more, alone. hahah. It’s hard to break the confines of the environment we were raised in, but it can be done!
Shoot… forgot to change the link… NOW it’s changed!
Sue: Saw your new blog - cool! Wish I had time to read it. Sigh. I am sooo behind on my blog reading. As well as writing for my blog. Thanks for sending me the new link.
I would not think traveling to Australia solo would be freaky. Then again, I haven’t done any extensive solo and overseas traveling! It’s one thing to fly overseas to stay with friends, another to do everything solo!
In my immediate family, I’m probably the most hmm, ambitious which seems goofy since I haven’t been all that ambitious most of my life! Just goes to show you how safe my family plays it!
How Great it would be to live with no fear at all … i am somewhere in the middle.
those are some swell looking trees. As for the doom and gloom it could be an old school thing. My grandmother was very much like that.
I’m kind’a like that I think. I always prepare for the worst. But the really great thing about being like that is that if you’ve been expecting the very worst, whatever it is that really DOES happen seems really wonderful in comparison. It’s like, “Oh only a cast for six weeks! That’s fantabulous! I thought amputation for certain!!!!” Reality always seems peachy keen when the imaginary world looked so daunting.
eric: Life would be incredible if we lived without fear! We’d think a lot clearer! I think we’d also be nicer to one another. It may not be intentional and more of a side effect but if we didn’t have fear (at least not the physically life-threatening ones) we wouldn’t fear things like, oh, someone else might take something from you (love, money, food).
Ricardo: I haven’t heard the word “swell” as an adjective in ages! I like it! It brings me back, not to my own “old days” but just to all those old movies I used to watch where men dressed in suits and the women were in dresses most times (”Leave It To Beaver”) and if something looked swell, they looked “full up with goodness.”
Gloom and doom is probably very old school - especially amongst people who have an “old country” they emigrated from!
Jill: Well..you do think on the bright side in a very twisty funny way!
Yes, it’s an odd sort of optimism, but it seems to work for me.
Jill: if it ain’ broke, don’t fix it