Category: Life

Wisdom of the ages

On December 5, 2009

A WOMAN’S LOOK IN THE MIRROR:
Age 3: Looks at herself and sees a Queen!
Age 8: Looks at herself and sees Cinderella/Sleeping Beauty.
Age 15: Looks at herself and sees herself as Cinderella/Sleeping Beauty/Cheerleader or if she is PMS’ing: sees Fat/Pimples/UGLY (“Mom I can’t go to school looking like this!”)
Age 20: Looks at herself and sees “too fat/too thin, too short/too tall, too straight/too curly”- but decides she’s going anyway.
Age 30: Looks at herself and sees “too fat/too thin, too short/too tall, too straight/too curly”- but decides she doesn’t have time to fix it, she’s going anyway.
Age 40: Looks at herself and sees “too fat/too thin, too short/too tall, too straight/too curly”- but says, “At least, I’m clean” and goes anyway.
Age 50: Looks at herself and sees “I am” and goes wherever she wants to go.
Age 60: Looks at herself and reminds herself of all the people who can’t even see themselves in the mirror anymore. Goes out and conquers the world.
Age 70: Looks at herself & sees wisdom, laughter and ability, goes out and enjoys life.
Age 80: Doesn’t bother to look. Just puts on a purple hat and goes out to have fun with the world.

The above text was one of those “Words of Wisdom” kinds of things that were circulating around the internet a few years ago. Human beings are the ultimate pattern seeking creatures. We attempt to make sense of this time we spend on earth by looking for patterns. We seek the pattern and thus feel safer because the world becomes understandable. By dividing age up into decades and defining each decade we think we have defined a life.

Lifer

By Hilarie

On November 29, 2009

In Life

I wrote the following piece about 10 years ago. I recently put it up on my Facebook page because so many old/new friends, who hadn’t been along on my journey, asked me how I happened to end up in Sweden and I didn’t know how to compress 30 or 40 years into a few paragraphs. I havent changed anything in the piece. But keep in mind that its now been 22 years since I moved here and my son is now 18 and on the verge of taking those first steps into adulthood.

“Oh, I’m a lifer.”
That’s what I usually say to describe myself to other Americans regarding my relationship to Sweden. To most people, being a lifer connotes being under a life sentence, as a prisoner in a jail would be. I don’t see it that way. Whenever I meet other American women here in Sweden, the conversation sooner or later comes around to how did we get here, or why are we here, or how long have we been here or how long will we be staying. The statement “I’m a lifer” seems to answer all those questions for me, short and sweetly. I’ve started seeing it more as being committed to a life. The fact that the life that I have committed myself to is a life in Sweden instead of my beloved New York City is finally starting to not amaze me. Normal life is now my life here in Stockholm. It wasn’t the easiest journey to finally be able to say that.

But of course it needs to be explained

My take

By Hilarie

On November 23, 2009

In Life

OK, so now I have a blog. I worked really hard to design a header that I liked. I have two entries on the page. My son put it up on the Internet. I keep going to it – to look at it – to see if I still like it. That’s what I tell myself each time I take a look at it. But I have a secret. I also keep going to the page to see what new words are up there, to see if something new has appeared, like I do with Facebook. But you know what? Each time I go there, it’s the same words that I see. It’s not like Facebook. It’s all on my shoulders now. It’s up to me to put the words there. I’ve been very hesitant about Blogging, because to me, blogs seem a bit like a modern day version of the Vanity Press. If I’m going to publish myself, what kind of words do I want to publish?

I feel like I should write down a “declaration of principles” a bit like Charles Foster Kane does in Citizen Kane just before he publishes his first edition of his new newspaper. What do I want this blog to be? What do I want it not to be?

The Nature of Time

By Hilarie

On November 19, 2009

In Life

The nature of time has changed and I blame it all on the internet. Once upon a time, time used to only move forward. What happened in the past stayed in the past. But now, because of the Internet, events, objects, people, memories, all that happened in the past and once belonged only in the past have now re-emerged and are becoming part of the present. Time is no longer linear, going in just one direction and I don’t know how I feel about that.

The first phase in my life was spent in Jersey City and I lived there till I was 4. Except for images in a few black and white photos, I remember almost nothing of the place. After Jersey City, my parents moved me to the wilds of north Jersey, a place called Budd Lake. There was a real lake in Budd Lake and it had the dubious distinction of being New Jersey’s largest natural lake. I spent 1st to 8th grades at Budd Lake School in Budd Lake. To this day, when I look at a picture of my eighth grade class, I can still recall the names of almost everyone in that picture. My high school years were spent at West Morris Regional High School. (Through the help of the Internet, I’ve now found out that its now called West Morris Central and is no longer regional.) But in my timeline, in my past reality, it will always be West Morris Regional. It was a big school combining kids from 5 different school districts. As I entered High School, I took with me some friends from grade school and made some new ones.