Stop Listening to the Noise!

Everybody has their own idea of how I should live my life — and probably wants to give you a few tips, as well.

I get tons of advice. Some of it is solicited, much of it just floats by in all directions. Everyone seems to think they have an obligation to speak their minds and spew their venom in every direction to anyone who will listen or anyone who attempts to bob and weave around the noise.

I admit I don’t know it all. That being the case, I’m wise enough to know what I don’t know and may choose to seek the wisdom of those who came before me.

Sometimes.

And that’s a really big “Sometimes.”

I’ve lived on planet earth for a good while now. I feel like I’ve learned a few things along the way as I am a responsible, financially stable, educated adult. I’m open to learning more — always — but it’s now up to me to decide the who, what, when and where I will turn for addition information on life and living.

Lately, my world has become a bit polluted with self-proclaimed experts who think they have a perfect recipe of life.

Not their own lives, necessarily. Actually, it’s more like a plethora of folks who think they have figured out the dynamics of the world and are willing to step up and lead the lemmings straight over the cliff.

My mother used to randomly state that “If she was in charge, the world would be different.”

While she might have said those words, she never, ever attempted to force her solutions or ideas on anyone else.

Recently, I’ve had people try to dictate my political beliefs, get me to change my residency to suit their own purposes, tell me what to write and how often to do it, and even where I should go on vacation because “they” always wanted to go there.

Hey, I even had someone try to tell me how to rearrange my furniture as it didn’t appeal to her sense of balance.

When did my world become overpopulated with busy-bodies?

Thanks to the world of technology (which I love, by the way. No harm meant or accusatory finger-pointing), people have an enormous amount of access to facts, figures and bogus rumors on every topic under the sun. And they feel duty bound to spread those facts, figures and rumors far and wide.

The easy answer is to turn off the noise. Disconnect from the Internet. Isolate myself from those who choose to inflict their beliefs and life choices on me. Maybe, as my father used to say when the world seemed to be closing in on him, I should “move 90 million miles into the mountains.” (Yeah, that was his answer to any overwhelming situation — from traffic jams to whatever else plagued his brain in life)

And yet, that “easy” answer isn’t easy. I don’t want to disconnect from the Internet. I want to surround myself with humanity. I definitely have no interest in living life as a hermit some 90 million miles away from civilization (as if such a place actually existed).

Shutting off the noise machine is something that must happen inside my own head.

I consider myself to be the “glass half full” person in most situations. If there’s a way to make a situation valuable or worthwhile, I will seek it out.

As an example of that mental attitude:

Recently, a long planned cruise in Europe announced a “change in itinerary” for our cruise. The change did not suit our plans as my husband and I have visited the re-scheduled ports of call on a previous cruise. We were able to book a new cruise that was more in line with our travel plans for next year, leaving us with a wide open fall vacation season this year — which we promptly filled with a fall trip to some of the New England states. (It’s not Europe but, hey, we get to go somewhere we haven’t been before — I call that a win.)

I choose to be excited. My husband says he is disappointed, maybe even depressed.

I won’t allow the noise (even when it comes from my husband) to control the way I think about a situation.

I need to bring that mind-set into every aspect of my life.

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