Looking At My Life From A Different Angle

How I “stood on my hands” allegorically

One morning, I read a great story by Bryan Ye — his How To Wake Up at 5 A.M. Every Day. Since I had woken at 4:30 I decided he knew what he was talking about and wanted to start writing something fun.

I decided to look at my life from a different angle, to look at what I don’t have rather than what I do have. I am normally a “glass half full” person, but I wanted to look at what I’ve missed and how that affected me.

I began a list: I always wanted kids, at one point almost desperately. I wanted my first marriage to last until one of us died. I wanted to be tall and beautiful like my sisters. I wanted to always live an adventurous life. I wanted everyone to love me. I wanted to write a book that would change the world. And so on.

Those provide enough to look at in one go. Let’s take each of these desires and look at them more closely.

I always wanted kids, at one point almost desperately.

In my thirties, I married a man I thought I would live with until death. I assumed we would live the married dream — a nice house, good jobs, and kids. The only problem at first was that he had refused induction into the Army during the Viet Nam War. When the authorities released him from the prison where I met him, they put him on parole. At that point, money did not jingle in our pockets. So we lived in the old second hand, but still intact, tiny travel trailer that I bought while he served his prison term.

But Keith (I always change all names in my stories unless I can check with the person) could do almost anything he set his mind to and he knew his woodworking tools. He fixed our little trailer up and made her into a rather delightful little home. We only lacked a bathroom, but we solved that problem by living behind my parents’ adobe house on a short dirt road in the desert Southwest of the United States.

One other problem confronted me. I wanted kids, but Keith’s childhood had not been an easy one, and the last thing on earth he wanted was to bring children into the world. At first, that did not seem much of a problem but as time went on I encountered more and more children and other women with kids or expecting them.

Soon after he moved in with me, Sufism — one of the things that Keith became interested in while in prison — became important to us both. When he got out of prison he found the Sufi community in our then small town. We began attending their Thursday night meetings where we all danced “dances of universal peace” to the amazing guitar music of Dean, the head of the Sufi House and a Sufi teacher who followed the then-deceased “Sufi Sam” of the San Francisco area.

Eventually, we moved into the Sufi House ourselves and became fully integrated into the community. Dean and his beautiful wife Flora, both of whom went by Arabic Sufi names, he as Abdul Raheem and she as Narmeen, at that time had four children, soon to be joined by another little girl. I began helping to take care of these quite delightful kids and my desire for my own children grew.

However, I still survived until a few years later when Dean and Flora started a school for non-nurse midwives. Then things in the wanting kids arena got really bad. I began working for the school as its secretary and so constantly found myself surrounded by pregnancy, birth, and new babies. At that point, my desire became almost an obsession. And I believe that my body responded to that — I became pregnant. Keith “freaked” and he left the relationship, which had been essentially a common-law marriage but with much more commitment on my side.

The pregnancy miscarried very early and I lost the baby. Keith returned and eventually, we married legally and tried for several years to make the marriage work, with him leaving periodically. Finally, he put an end to it and filed for divorce.

For a long time, I grieved. I really wanted both the marriage and the children. However, when I look back at that time now and compare it to my current life, I can see what a gift not getting either of those things ended up being. I’ve had opportunities to do things I would never have been able to do with children, and thankfully the joy of my current marriage far exceeds what that first one could ever have provided me.

That deals with my first two desires: having children and having my first marriage last until one of us died.

The next desire became that I wanted to be tall and beautiful like my sisters.

Unfortunately, my genes did not allow that — or should I say, fortunately? I take after my father, a very handsome man, but his features did not translate into exceptional feminine beauty. I am not ugly, though I often compare myself to an ugly duckling who never turned into a swan. I am not especially attractive either. I’m pretty ordinary looking, which can be hard when your older and younger sisters display greater beauty.

However with that beauty came problems, especially for my older sister Jewel. Gorgeous as a young woman, she ended up leading a rather miserable life partly as a result of her beauty. I can see now that men — attracted to her physical being — often didn’t even know her inner being. Her beauty and their own fantasies masked it. As a result, her life ended up quite miserable in many ways.

My younger sister Sara was luckier, though she had a hard time finding the right man in her life, just as Jewel and I did. But she now has found him. I don’t think she would consider exchanging her honey, Bill, for someone else any more than I would consider exchanging my dear Rafe.

As for my height, while I was a whole foot shorter than Keith, Rafe and I fit together perfectly — and in far more ways than just height.

I wanted to always live an adventurous life, like I had while sailing with Keith.

This desire belonged to a young woman, and the two years that we spent helping friends finish their boat and sail it into the Caribbean gave me wonderful memories. But actually I lead a very adventurous life now with Rafe.

For instance, in 2018 we drove to Alaska because we had been selected to drive the road in Denali National Park after most of the tourists went home. It ended up as a wonderful trip in all ways. Going north we went through four different Canadian provinces. The whole trip blessed me with some amazing wildlife and other photographs!

In 2019 we again went to Alaska but took the ferry from Bellingham in Washington State up to Skagway. Then we drove the Campbell Highway north to the Arctic Ocean and stayed in the fascinating native village of Tuck right on the ocean. Though we didn't stay there for long, about 24 hours, we had a wonderful time there as well as on the trips both ways. Again I enjoyed some amazing photo opportunities. The whole three-month journey provided a great adventure.

More recently we drove a new to us little RV to the Texas Gulf Coast where we visited Mustang Island and Goose Island State Parks. Then we went to the Padre Island National Sea Shore. Again we saw wonderful scenery and animals — the Brown Pelican below included.

We have also had many shorter trips. Earlier in our marriage, we traveled to England twice, New Zealand twice, and Madera — a lovely Portuguese island off the coast of Morocco. Now we travel by vehicle or boat as it is hard for Rafe to fly because of his back. But we travel a great deal, and each trip gives us great adventure, but different from what I had envisioned at age 26.

I wanted everyone to love me.

With age, I realized that this cannot ever happen. Nor would I really want it to, for people exist who I do not even want to know, much less have a close relationship with. As I dealt with some of the dysfunction that existed in my family of origin I learned that more important things exist than popularity — self-knowledge, and respect among them. Being able to relate closely to the ones I love and share deeply with them makes another. And having a personal connection with the spiritual force I am comfortable calling God provides perhaps the most important part of my current life — a much happier life than anything I imagined at age 26.

I wanted to write a book that would change the world.

While this would still make me ecstatic, I am quite sure now that it is pretty much impossible for me or perhaps any human being.

People will always remain people. Wars, murders, famines, racism, sexism, climate change, depressions, and all sorts of evils will always stalk humanity. We bring most of them on ourselves. Yes, sometimes natural forces cause a disaster, but we ourselves create most of the disasters for mankind.

Still, I can write from my own experience and hope that a few people or perhaps more will find it interesting, helpful, or a bit enlightening. If that happens I feel more than rewarded.

As I thought about it it seemed that there might well be some research that would show the benefits of this kind of shift in thinking. So I checked and found lots of information available on the Internet. Here I will share a bit.

The Mayo Clinic listed the following health benefits for positive thinking along with a bit more explanation:

- Increased life span - Lower rates of depression - Lower levels of distress - Greater resistance to the common cold - Better psychological and physical well-being - Better cardiovascular health and reduced risk of death from cardiovascular disease - Better coping skills during hardships and times of stress

It’s unclear why people who engage in positive thinking experience these health benefits. One theory is that having a positive outlook enables you to cope better with stressful situations, which reduces the harmful health effects of stress on your body.

It’s also thought that positive and optimistic people tend to live healthier lifestyles — they get more physical activity, follow a healthier diet, and don’t smoke or drink alcohol in excess.

The John Hopkins Medicine website gives us the great news that even if you come from a family with heart problems, remaining positive reduces your chances of having a heart attack or other heart problems within the next 25 years by 33% compared to negative thinkers. That shows an amazing difference.

Why does this difference exist? The site goes on:

The mechanism for the connection between health and positivity remains murky, but researchers suspect that people who are more positive may be better protected against the inflammatory damage of stress. Another possibility is that hope and positivity help people make better health and life decisions and focus more on long-term goals. Studies also find that negative emotions can weaken immune response.

And many more conditions than just heart disease respond similarly:

Additional studies have found that a positive attitude improves outcomes and life satisfaction across a spectrum of conditions — including traumatic brain injury, stroke and brain tumors.

They also suggest that just smiling more, thinking of the positive side when some inconvenient thing happens, and trying to grow our resiliency — or the ability to adapt to loss or stress — will help us be more positive. They also suggest we can increase our resiliency if we maintain good relations with friends and family, accept that things do change, and work on solving problems rather than just expecting them to disappear.

Plenty of evidence exists that working to stay positive about things can make us happier and healthier. This is especially important now during our current pandemic. So please keep that smile on your face and enjoy your life!

Thank you for reading this story. Hopefully, it gave you something to think about and enjoy. If you are at interested in more about my travels with Rafe you might enjoy

May your life filled with happiness, satisfaction, and peace.