SINGING
There was always music in my childhood home, whether it was a record playing or Grandma dancing to Armenian folk music. From infancy on, music was an important part of my life.
Musicals were really big in our household — the Rodgers and Hammerstein ones, especially. When I was sick I’d take my medicine to the tune of “A Spoonful of Sugar” from Mary Poppins. I fantasized about being one of the adorable, Von Trapp children in “The Sound of Music”. I empathized with being a dame in “South Pacific” and washing men “right out of my hair”. How I longed to ride with a handsome cowboy in a surry “with the fringe on the top”, like in “Oklahoma!”.
Show tunes were a very useful means of conveying mood. When leaving the house we’d sing “So long, farewell…” from “The Sound of Music”. If I was hungry, I’d use a tune from “Oliver” and adopt an English, cockney accent to ask “please sir, can I have some more”.
I grew up thinking show-tunes were a standard means of communication. But when I went to school and sang, “I feel pretty, oh so pretty…” in the classroom, my teacher wasn’t amused. Personally, I think if there was more singing and less talking in school, everyone would be a whole lot happier.
Musicals were also my guide to what a relationship between a man and woman should be like. And I’m not talking about a “Phantom of the Opera” kind of relationship. Back then, men did the wooin’, women allowed themselves to be wooed, and there were no grey areas in-between.
The love of your life would recognize you, or you would recognize each other, magically. Blue birds, or some other harbinger of future happiness, would hover overhead. You wouldn’t have to figure it out all on your own.
Your eyes and those of your intended beloved would meet, and that would be it. Gorgeous guy falls in love with shy woman. He adores her , “worships the ground she walks on”. They get married. She gives him kids. He gives her a house, car, credit cards, cash, and a nightly headache.
The boys I met were never as handsome or rakish as those in the musicals. Nor did they always say the right things to make me feel “pretty, oh so pretty”. And there were other disappointments. A guy shouldn’t turn out to be a major loser in the intelligence department. A gal shouldn’t receive a marriage proposal without ever getting a ring.
As I grew into a teen, my musical tastes changed. I increasingly turned to opera, rock and folk music for relationship guidance. I’d get sick, think I was dying, and have fantasies of making every boy who ignored me feel sorry. I was Mimi in “La Boheme”, singing my heart out to my boyfriend while I died of consumption. I was Cio-Cio San in “Madame Butterfly”, despondent over my no-good, cheatin’, sailor husband. I was the tragic Maria in the Romeo-and-Juliet tale of gang warfare in “West Side Story”.
I wanted to get rid of my dark, Cher-like looks. I’d rather be the kind of lady “with green eyes and golden-hair” Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young crooned about in “Genevieve”. I wished I could run upstate to Woodstock, which sounded pretty nifty in their song. But I was on the young side during the heyday of the socially-conscious music of the 60’s and 70’s. So no-way would my parental units allow me to do more than iron a peace sign on my jeans. Like, bummer, Man.
If you're enjoying this over coffee, tea, or whatever, please consider buying me a cup!STICKY LIPS
I usually carry lip balm in my pocket. It’s one of my standard pocket items. I always keep it in my right pocket, so I’ll know where it is.
Just a few minutes ago, while reading email, I reached into my right pocket to fish it out. Alas, it was not there. Evidently I left it on my night stand. Obviously I was not being mindful when I dressed this morning.
No big deal, I have a spare in my desk. It’s not my usual Burt’s Bees® brand, but rather it’s a free sample I got at the dentist’s office. That’s why it’s my spare.
Anyway, I slid open the drawer and reached in, groping until I touched the smooth plastic cylinder. While still perusing my email, I pulled off the white cap and applied it. Feeling it glide across my lips, I pressed them together to spread it evenly, but then my lips stuck together!
Eewww, it must have gone bad because it was really sticky. I’d never experienced that before, but it was my spare and a free sample at that. You usually get what you pay for.
Then I looked at the tube and what a surprise I got. It wasn’t lip balm after all. It was glue stick!
Now, I like to pride myself on being mindful and living in the moment. However, by not being mindful in what I was doing today, I not only forgot to pack my lip balm, but I accidently glued my lips together.
How easy it is to get caught up in something and forget to practice mindfulness, which usually leads to finding its evil twin — accident.
Being mindful is the cornerstone to performing all our tasks efficiently and error free. It’s what shifts an event away from the haphazard winds of serendipity into the cradle of certainty.
Doing things mindfully is a credo professed by many groups. Athletes undergo stringent training to keep their minds alert. This allows them to perform feats of hand-eye coordination in fractions of a second. Scientists become so engrossed in their experiments that they can almost feel any slight deviation in the phenomena they are manipulating. Yogis engaged in deep meditation are so in-tune to each nuance present in every moment that they can physically change their heart rate, blood pressure, and other bodily functions thought to be controlled by our autonomic nervous system. All major religions discuss the need for choosing courses of action mindfully.
Engaging in tasks while preoccupied not only increases the chance for something to go wrong, it also robs the task of its importance. If the task is important enough for us to do, then it deserves our full attention.
That’s not to say we can’t multitask. I for one am not particularly good at multitasking, but I do know people who appear capable of clearing their minds of extraneous thoughts enough to focus and split their attention in several directions. The key, I think, is staying focused and quickly shifting from one task to another.
My problem with multi-tasking is my inability to funnel those extraneous thoughts from my consciousness. I can be easily distracted. Hence, I end up doing things like gluing my lips together.
Being mindful is the goal, but being human can cause a detour from that goal. So, when this happens, I forgive myself, clean up the mess, and continue with renewed focus. Now, as soon as I wipe this glue off my lips, I can get on with that renewed focus!
If you're enjoying this over coffee, tea, or whatever, please consider buying me a cup!
