Waking up on the Wrong Side of 50

I recently read Did I Say That Out Loud? Midlife Indignities and How to Survive Them by Kristin Van OgTrop. In it she states that a thoughtful man said we all needed to ask ourselves the following questions:

1. Who am I?
2. Where am I going?
3. Why am I going there?

So I pose the questions to you. Can you answer them?

Think of this as a check in for New Year’s resolutions.

1. Someone who needs to lose weight
2. To start on a path of healthier eating and moderate exercise
3. Because my cholesterol is high and I need to adjust my lifestyle

or

1. Someone who hates their job
2. To a job search link
3. Because I deserve to find a job that doesn’t crush my soul

Now these might be a bit literal, but you get the idea: These questions allow you to quickly take stock of what’s important to you, and what isn’t, and what you can do to get to a place that you want to be.

So on this fine Monday halfway through the first month of the year, take stock. Ask yourself those three questions and look at your answers. What is one small step that can get you closer to where you want to be.

How would you answer those three questions?

Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Melody Beattie

My new routine is to close out the night with a list of things that happened that day- good, bad, gratitude or to look forward to. These are a sample from the previous week.

1. Mel Brooks memoir a little pompous
2. I really don’t like the taste of many wines
3. Had wonderful at home face masque
4. Am reading a book about the birth of MOMA, then saw some paintings that I had just read about- really added to the experience
5. Easily beat my family in trivial pursuit
6. Hadn’t talked to my friend C in a bit and it was nice to text a little
7. I prefer sauna to steam room
8. Last tuition payment in the books!
9. My favorite jam stand wasn’t at the farmers market this week
10. Have been doing cuticle cream every night but they are still dry

How did your week go?

All losses have their own private complications, and, whether we acknowledge them or not, their lasting consequences will show up somewhere- in the next relationship, in a drunken fight, in a panic attack, in jealousy. That’s why we should honour the heartbreaks that matter deeply to us, however insignificant we fear they might seem to someone else. The bigger challenge is how to carry those losses inside us without letting them distract us too much from our lives. Natasha Lun- Conversations on Love

Loss.

We all experience it.

We all experience it differently.

When someone is grieving, it is not up to us to decide how they should grieve. Grief, loss, recovery from these things is a very private matter, and there is no “right” way to get over loss.

I think we often think that there is a timeline on grief: you lose a parent and you should grieve for six months, and then after that, life is great. We lose a great job: one month. Serious illness: three months. But each of us comes with our own set of background experience, we all come with different personalities. No two people are the same and therefor no two people will experience grief and loss in the same way.

We have to allow ourselves the space to grieve and get over loss in the way that is best for us as individuals.

However…

Lun states, we do need to be able to get on with our lives, so the challenge becomes how do we acknowledge loss, grieve the way we need to, and still get on with our lives?

If your grief, recovery from a loss is hampering your day to day, is it time to try to figure out how to handle the situation better?

I think when people say that someone should be “over” something, what they might be trying to say is that there comes a point where you must move forward, because if you don’t move forward you are no longer living. If ten years after a divorce you are still talking about all the things your ex did that annoyed you, maybe you should ask yourself why you are still stuck in this loop. Are you still grieving the loss of a marriage, or is it something else? I have no doubt that people grieve for former relationships forever- hurt and love can last a lifetime- but are you living your best life by still starting out conversations and journal entries with- remember that time my ex did … You can still hurt, the loss can still sting, but is there a better way to deal with it?

Now it’s your turn:

How do you recover from loss?

Do you think people recover differently?

How do you get past your heartbreak and move on while still being true to your grief process?

Discuss

I appreciate a good documentary. The problem is, what exactly is a good documentary? What I think makes a good doc might not necessarily be what someone else thinks is good. So how should we think about docs?

1. Should a documentary be entertaining? A few years ago I saw a doc Three Identical Strangers about triplets who were separated at birth as part of a social experiment trying to solve the whole nature/nurture dilemma. I thought this was a highly entertaining, and mind blowing, film. I was all in for the ride of these men. It made me like and recommend the film to others. It did not get nominated for an Oscar even though it did well in the theaters. Does making it entertaining detract from the seriousness of the subject matter?
2. Should a documentary take a side/stance or should it flat out tell a story as down the middle as possible? When I go to a doc, I want to learn about something, or look at a different perspective of something. Should a doc present more than one side to a story? If it only shows one side, is it more of a propaganda piece?
3. Should the maker of the doc be present in the doc? I recently saw All That Breathes. ATB is on the shortlist for an Oscar nod, and has received much critical acclaim. The style is the fly on the wall, wherein the filmmaker just documents the people he is filming- no directorial interaction. Though an interesting story, I came out not learning as much as I would have liked because the subjects were often mum- Should the director have jumped in with some questions? Conversely, in From Where They Stood, the documentarian was very present, asking questions, and this got to be distracting. What is the line the filmmaker should be taking?
4. How narrowly focused should a doc be? Should a doc include the entire timeline of something, or should it focus specifically on a small piece? How do you make the decision as to how much to include?
5. How long should a doc be? I find that long docs get to be tedious. But does a director need a lot of space to tell the story properly? Moonage Daydream is 2h14m. As this is basically a collage of David Bowie, I thought the story should have been capped out at 90 minutes because I felt it got repetitive. But was there a need for it to be this long?

Your turn:

Do you like documentaries? Why or why not?

What do you think makes a good doc?

Do you have a favorite documentary?

Discuss