Better Living Through Accessorizing

That’s been a motto of mine for a long time and always gets a good laugh from friends and the women in audiences. So what does that really mean? Another way of reframing the elder years, perhaps, and yet something I have long espoused…

We were at Tractor Supply a week ago. I thought I was just doing my husband a favor by hanging out in a favorite spot of his and I ended up with a rather large bag of things I couldn’t live without including a pair of shiny red flowered shoes, sort of the shoe part of those rubber boots with polka dots and other lovely patterns that a Florida girl cannot justify purchasing. But a shoe version, and on sale for $9, who could resist? So now when we are in the rain I can still have fun with dry feat and a fashion flair.

Lighten up!

I visited a friend this week, my first Sage-ing® co-facilitator. We completed the training together, did our internship together and early on as we were steeped in the content with a large dose of seriousness, we quipped that we needed to develop our “shallow selves.”  And we do tend to take ourselves too seriously sometimes. Do you know what I mean?

She has 15 years more life experience than I do and offers me a perspective on coping with chronic illness by weaving a tapestry of strategies from contemplative readings to the ritual of frothing the milk for her coffee in the morning. She leans toward conservative clothing and I have teased her into adding big earrings to her wardrobe. I shop at the beach for shell earrings and keep her stocked.  We both wear red lipstick as an essential pop for life.

Concerns about meaning-making and living in the moment and making special are at my very core and as a Myers-Briggs ENTP, have always been. Yet when I shake myself out of the Do-I-do-enough blues, I come back to center and reframe my life with humor and the desire to dress like myself no matter how old I am. OK, shoes need to be more comfortable these days so I buy ones I dub “so ugly they are cute.” Let’s see if I can get these two shoe pictures inserted here as I remember the magnet on my balance scale in the bathroom that reads, “If you can’t lose it, decorate it.”  OK…sometimes you do just need to chuckle at life’s challenges.

More:

Another motto: “If I can laugh at it, I can cope with it.”

Sara Davidson wrote a recent book from interviews of Reb Zalman's coping in his 80’s, the December years described in Sage-ing. I read it and sent one to my friend. It is The December project: An extraordinary rabbi and a skeptical seeker confront life’s greatest mystery.