It Ain't Over Til It's Okay

"Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end." --Sasha Kemble, quoting her friend Lisa on the Verity Credit Union blog

This quote comes from one of my favorite writers on my credit union blog Verity Voices and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this quote. 

It reminds me of a movie I watched tonight called, "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill." If you haven't seen this documentary about wild parrots in San Francisco, I highly recommend it. There is one storyline, about a parrot named Connor that perfectly illustrates this quote. 

Conner is a blue-headed parrot and, as such, doesn't really fit into the flock of red-headed parrots, but he tolerates them and they more or less tolerate him (although he does not have a mate, which is a bit sad). 

He is a quiet bird and brave, he doesn't cower as easily or get as excited when the hawks are flying around. But towards the end of the film Conner is believed to be scooped up and killed by one of the hawks. It is a sad ending for a bird so quietly brave, but the story doesn't end there (because it's not okay). 

In the special features there is a follow-up interview with a woman who found Connor on her patio that night - intact - and buried him in her garden among the flowers and amidst her other animals. She surmises that one of the ravens that also inhabit the area must of chased the hawk away and that he dropped Connor as he flew away.

So not only do we get to know "the rest of the story" about Connor, but he received a proper burial and is thought about and his grave cared for by the woman who found him. The End. 


[BTW...If you are still with a BIG BANK and want to switch to a credit union during Move Your Money Month in March, you couldn't do better than Verity Credit Union!]

And you just never know which it's going to be.

"...[S]ome days are magic; some are mud." --Donn "Murph" Murphy, proprietor of Playa Sonrisa in Xcalak, Mexico 

This quote is a repeat from February 17, 2010, but this weekend at our house seemed perfectly designed for this quote, so I am using it again. 

Both days (Saturday and Sunday) started out the same way - with a blissful family snuggle in our king-sized bed - but that was where the similarities ended.

Saturday had all the hallmarks of a great day: we were getting our tree and decorating our house, we had two holiday parties to go to and the whole day with nothing scheduled to prepare for both. 

However....

Things just didn't go well. The kids were fighting. I was grumpy. My husband was saying and doing the wrong thing at every turn (did I mention I was grumpy?) Everything we did just seemed to go wrong.

The tree was hard to set up, the soup I made for lunch was too hot and didn't taste good. The lights didn't work, the holiday letter my husband wrote made me cringe.

Things got a little better at holiday party #1, although everyone there seemed a bit subdued and out-of-it themselves. A nice time was had, but it wasn't quite as raucous or as light as in past years.  We missed most of party #2 because we got stuck in traffic going to party #1.  Everywhere we looked, it was nothing but MUD.

Still, at the end of the night we had to admit that it wasn't such a bad day after all and that worse things happen at sea....and every day and all the time. 

Sunday, on the other hand, had all the hallmarks of a nightmare day. We had to get the kids up early (after staying out WAY too late at party #2) for church (never an easy task) then take our younger son to his soccer game, get ready to host a family dinner that night and meet the cousins for Santa photos at 5PM. 

The thing is? It all went smoothly. The grumpiness of Saturday was gone. The kids were cooperative and didn't complain about church. They didn't fight about screen time. The house seemed to clean itself and we even got to take a short nap. There was no line to see Santa and we figured out a way to share the cost so that it didn't break the bank. Dinner was lovely and we all got to bed at a reasonable hour. MAGIC at every turn. 

The thing that gets me is that you just never know. You just never know which it's going to be. You can plan the perfect day and work your ass off to make it happen and get nothing but MUD and you can do nothing special and stumble upon MAGIC. 

The only thing to do is to appreciate the magic when it happens and slog through the mud as best you can, knowing that unexpected magic is just around the corner.

Well, is it?

"Is who you are enough?" --Kimberlee Gorgo

[NB. I am teaching a writing class this month entitled, "WRITE YOUR LIFE!" For more information see my website at: larasimmons.net]

3 To Live By

"When I leave my apartment I always whisper to myself, do no harm. I seek progress rather than perfection. I wouldn’t recognize perfection if it bit me on my ass. I just try to do better than I did yesterday." 

--Frank Ferrante of the movie May I Be Frank 

Frank Ferrante was an overweight drug addict barely living when he walked into a raw food cafe in San Francisco and was asked this question by the server: "What is one thing you want to do before you die?" 

His answer: Fall in love again. 

He knew it would never happen if he didn't make some changes. So, with the help of the server and a couple of his friends, he did. He practiced gratitude. He ate only raw food. He had a weekly colonic. 

And he transformed his life.

I can't wait to see this movie when it is in wide release. Until then, I take Frank's words to heart: Do no harm. Seek progress rather than perfection. Do better than I did yesterday. 

And I am asking myself: What is one thing I want to do before I die? 

My answer is: Achieve enlightenment. Get over myself. Transcend my ego, if only for a moment.


What is your answer?

You just never know...

"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that. And, yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful." 

--Elizabeth Edwards

When I told my husband I was going to use this quote on my blog this week his first response was, "She was mean you know."

"What do you mean she was mean?" I asked.

"Elizabeth was mean to John. She was horrible to everyone on his staff. She was mean-spirited and a first-class [beast]."

I'll admit that it gave me pause. For about thirty seconds. 

And then I thought: Who isn't mean? Or hasn't been at one time or another? 

Is there a person alive about whom it could not be said: She was mean to her spouse. He was horrible to people who worked for him? She was mean-spirited. He was a first-class [jerk]?

What is the "truth" about Elizabeth and John Edwards? Was she mean to him because he was a philanderer or was he a philanderer because she was mean to him? 

The "truth" is, we can never know for sure.

There are two sides - at least - to every story and a multitude of ways to sum up a life. This was how Elizabeth summed up hers and whatever the "truth" behind her life, I find it inspirational. I hope you do too.

Seeking Perfection

"There is no perfect situation. You must make the best of whatever your situation is."

--The Universe during a meditation

I am always seeking perfection: the perfect day, the perfect plan, the perfect organizational system for my desk or sock drawer or closet. The problem with perfection is, it never lasts. Never! 

This is one of my primary beefs about this life of ours. Nothing we do is ever done. Complete. Good enough. Because tomorrow, everything changes. And then we have to. 

I was lying in bed last week trying to meditate, but really working on what to do about my younger son's school situation. He is in first grade at our local elementary school and he is bored. He's been bored since last year and I was hoping things would change this year, but nope, still bored. 

So I have been going over in my head all of our different options: keep him at this school and hope things get better, move him to a more academically challenging public school and hope that helps, move him to a more academically challenging private school and hope that helps, move him to a freer (like Waldorf or similar) school, home school, move to a different school district and take his brother out of school too...

Each of these options has pluses and minuses, but none of them is perfect, and I was lying there getting really agitated during my "meditation" time when this little quote came floating by out of nowhere. 

"There is no perfect situation. You must make the best of whatever your situation is."

And it just made sense to me. It didn't change anything. It didn't give me the answer, but it just let me know that right now I don't know and maybe someday I will. And maybe the decision I make then will be perfect for awhile, but then it won't and once again I'll have to make the best of whatever that is.

Because this is the game we call LIFE. And, baby, it ain't perfect. But maybe, just maybe, that is perfection...

Escaping the World of Illusions

"Look only at possibilities and not at material illusions. You are powerful and can overcome any situation using a positive mindset."

--Doreen Virtue from her book Angel Numbers 101, entry #616

I got "written up" at work last week. Written up! I'm 41 years old and I have never once been written up at work, until now. 

During, I took it stoically, as my mid-Western up-bringing had taught. Then, all emotional hell broke loose.


First I was sad. I went back to my desk and cried quietly - despite my friend Karen's sage advice: NO TEARS AT WORK - tears dripping down my cheeks while I stared at my computer screen hoping no one would notice (and thanking God I don't wear mascara).

Then I got angry: "How dare they! I'm a good employee. Was that really necessary?"

Finally, underneath the sadness and the anger, I discovered the hurt. And that's what I am nursing now, the hurt.

And it's hard. Because I loved my job.  I still love my job, I think. But maybe not as much as I did before....

I work part-time as a teller at a local credit union to earn a bit of extra cash, get my health benefits paid for, and still have the physical and emotional resources left over at the end of the day to be there for my kids. 

It's not a glamorous job or anything I trained for, but it was - is? - perfect for the phase of life I am in right now: the post-baby, pre-teenager, the kids still need me, but not quite as much and oh, by the way, the industry my husband is in may just have the bottom fall out of it any day now, phase. 


So I'd like to keep my job, but I don't know if I can. I feel like I've lost that lovin' feelin' and my mojo all at the same time. 

I used to be completely confident that I would balance at the end of the day and I counted my till knowing it would be right on. And then.....there was the day a month ago when I was off one dollar. A measly dollar, but still, it stung. I was no longer batting a thousand. I wasn't perfect. I was human. 

But it was only a dollar and I was able to move on. 

And then there was the day - almost exactly a month later - when I was off by one hundred dollars. Not a measly amount. Enough to raise the eyebrows of my supervisors. Enough to get written up. 

Written up! Me! It just doesn't happen. But it did. 

And now I have to figure out how to deal with it. 

And, yes, there is a part of me that realizes spending even two minutes worrying about this is absolutely ridiculous. 

In the scope of a credit union teller's till one hundred dollars is a lot of money. In the scope of pretty much any other economic measure, it ain't much (As my loving husband said when I told him about it, "Don't even talk to me about a hundred bucks, we had to write off ten thousand last year.").

And this is before you even consider that as a believer in the New Age view of life, on some level I consider this whole thing an illusion created by my soul for my learning. This is nothing more than a morality play in which I am both actor and audience.


But old habits die hard and I wasn't raised to get written up at work. Or to take that well or lightly.

So what's the moral of the story? 

I guess it would be this quote. This is the "angel message" that I received when I left work that day, at 6:16 pm, "Look only at possibilities and not at material illusions. You are powerful and can overcome any situation using a positive mindset."

There are few - if any - material illusions in our culture stronger than work and money. And no doubt that what is called for here is a positive mindset. Or as my friend Jefferson said when I told him about it, "Let it go. Just....Let it go."

I'm trying Jefferson, I'm trying.....

"So it turns out that the 'blemish' is actually essential to the beauty. The 'deviation' is at the core of the strength. The 'wrong turn' was crucial to getting you back on the path with heart."

Rob Brezsny from Free Will Astrology