The Case of the Rebellious Self-Employee, Act 1

Posted on by
2

Act 1: The Conflict

Employee:

I wish my boss would get off my back.

Sure, she schedules me for only 26 hours of work a week. And when I want to go off on a trip somewhere, all I have to do is give her a couple of weeks’ notice. Oh, yes, she also provides health insurance.

But she’s put this schedule on my desk, telling me which hours to work, when to take lunch, even when to do my housework.

She tells me that if I want to have any personal time in the morning, I must get up at 5:30, be dressed and ready to walk at 7:00, eat breakfast and be at my desk by 8:30.

And those items on the To-Do List she keeps piling on?! What an unreasonable, insensitive nag!

Well, I’ll show her! I’m taking a break and playing a game of FreeCell! Then I’m going to the kitchen for a snack.

Boss:

Go ahead! Play your games. Eat your apple.

But don’t come complaining to me that you’re behind schedule on two of your three blogs, your family reunion commitments, and following up on another possible paying job. Continue reading →

The Power of Worry

Posted on by
8

 If you enjoy worrying, plenty of reasons abound. They don’t have to be personal – yet. You can worry about approaching storms (and how they will affect you or those you love), the local economy (and how it will affect you and those you love), rising taxes (etc.), national healthcare (etc.), international wars and rumors of wars (etc.).

But what does such worry achieve? Nothing.

Worry has no power over circumstances. All it can do is afflict you. In fact, that’s an official definition of worry: “to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts.” Continue reading →

Don’t touch that diet!

Posted on by
8

Diet Is a 4-Letter Word

Maybe it’s the influence of lessons learned when I lost 20 pounds as a “Weight Watcher” several years ago. Maybe it’s my local TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) group and their emphasis on lifetime weight maintenance. Or maybe it’s the implicit groan I hear when people talk about dieting.

Whatever the cause, I avoid the word diet. For one thing – diet used as a noun simply means “daily intake of food.” If we eat, we’re on a diet – whether it’s high-fat, low-fat, Western, Eastern, or Indian.

Second, “to diet” implies a temporary solution to an ongoing problem. When someone says they’re on a diet, they usually mean, “I’m depriving myself for a while because I need to take off some pounds. Once those pounds are off, I’ll start enjoying myself again.” This implies that to eat healthfully is to deprive oneself of the best things of life.

Continue reading →

Nursing Home Cheer

Posted on by
10

Visiting the nursing home yesterday cheered me up.

That’s not the reaction I’ve always had after such a visit. But yesterday, after helping my friend Shirley deliver library books to residents of the independent living/assisted living/nursing home across the street, I felt strangely encouraged.

At the time, I thought it was because we had recovered all but one of the books and videos we had previously delivered. But today, as I look back at the visit, I realize it was the attitudes of the residents. Continue reading →

Refusing to Take the Cure

Posted on by
6

Recently I heard of a casual acquaintance who went to an impoverished African country as part of a mission group. Their aim was to give medical aid to sick children. As is usual when Americans travel to such places, she was astonished by living conditions, particularly the quality of their food sold in open marketplaces with no access to refrigeration.

However, it’s not cholera or dysentery that is killing their people. It’s AIDS and malaria.

An African man asked one of the Americans what our most common diseases are.

“I suppose they’re heart disease and diabetes,” said the American.

“What’s the cause?” asked the African.

“We don’t eat enough fruit and vegetables,” replied the American.

“You mean you can’t get fruit and vegetables in your country?” asked the African.

I don’t know what the American replied, but when I heard the story, I gasped. It makes what we do to ourselves even more tragic. The African man couldn’t fathom anyone having access to prevention and not using it.

Not all heart disease and diabetes can be prevented, but we all know most of it can. It’s an ironic luxury we enjoy – this ability to choose to kill ourselves when we are surrounded by an abundant supply of prevention. It’s like an African country refusing vaccines that would cure their epidemics.

It makes our excuses – too much trouble, too expensive, too many “bad” foods available – seem rather feeble, doesn’t it?

Talk to me. What was your initial reaction to the story? Do you think it’s really that simple, that all we need to do is eat our vegetables?

Pop-Up Proverb 9

Posted on by
4

jackinthebox#9 – On the Value of Money

“Money is the longest route to happiness.”

Evangeline Lilly, cast member of Lost television program
Quoted in Women’s Health magazine, June 2009.

Why I Like This.

I see a road extending so far you can’t see the end. If we think we can’t be happy until we reach a certain level of wealth, we’ll almost certainly never reach the goal. For when we reach the first level of wealth, we’ll see that there’s still more road ahead.

And while we’re on that long road, we pass by the flowers, streams, sunsets and the smiling friends and family that could have provided us that happiness all along.

Whenever I’m feeling financially confined, lacking freedom to come and go and do as I please, I feel better remembering something our mother used to say: Be thankful if your problems can be solved just by having more money.

Because money is inadequate when it comes to solving many of our problems. Only generous amounts of love, forgiveness, patience, time, and acceptance can hold a family together, mend estranged relationships, or heal a broken heart.


60–Old or 60-Young?

Posted on by
2

This is NOT Mrs. Miller.

What do you think when someone speaks of being “90 years young”?

I’ve always heard that expression as a cute substitute for “old.” Since the expression rarely refers to someone younger than 50, it’s at once an admission of age and a determination not to be categorized.

On NPR’s August 9th Weekend Edition, in a story entitled “Remember: The Ball is Your Friend,” essayist and “literary activist” E. Ethelbert Miller tells about his 59-year-old wife’s decision to play basketball for the first time in her life. In passing, he mentions that the “challenge” he and his wife face is “being 60-young instead of 60-old.”

So I’m not the only one! Continue reading →

The Other Side of the Storm

Posted on by
3

If the first hailstorm hasn’t ruined a farmer’s corn crop in southwest Nebraska this summer, the second, third, or fourth one has. At the end of June, an evening of golf-ball sized hail was followed the next day by winds reported to be blowing at more than ninety miles an hour. Needless to say, our little town is sporting a lot of new roofs.

On the 17th of July, at 12:04 p.m., I captured some of the severity of one of those storms with my little digital camera.  A mere 20 minutes later, noticing how distinct the shadows were on the ground, I pointed the camera toward the sky – and saw nothing but blue and cotton white.

July 17, 12:04 p.m. from Cheryl Bryan on Vimeo. Continue reading →

Ten Misunderstandings about the More Mature

Posted on by
5

A couple of months ago I mentioned to a young man – who is in his late teens – that my 87-year-old mother has a Facebook account. His response startled me. It was something like “That’s just sick.”

This is how I interpreted his response: “I can’t believe I would enjoy anything an old person would enjoy. Facebook is for the young, so an old person on Facebook is just not age-appropriate.”

Misconceptions. I extrapolated that reaction into attitudes a lot of us may unwittingly hold, no matter how many years we have lived. As I consider the aging process and observe those who are decades older than me, I am becoming more aware of misconceptions about those we would call elderly. Continue reading →

And now? Surfing Snails!

Posted on by
2

Last Sunday’s Nature program on our PBS station interested me for two reasons:

  1. It was entitled Sharkland and was going to expand my recent inexplicable fascination with basking sharks; and
  2. It was filmed in the oceans around the tip of South Africa, which still occupies a good portion of my heart. (We lived in Cape Town for 18 months, Johannesburg for 10 years).

With 400 species of sharks in the world (who knew?), the basking shark received only honorable mention on the program. My guess is he’s too tame – toothless and a harmless predator, unless you happen to be plankton. Continue reading →