Time Machine

Dear Friends,
By refusing technology in my grade one/two class, I have categorized myself as an "underdeveloped" teacher! I'm not touched by the insinuation. I was raised in what westerners used to call, the third world countries.
What earned us the title of "underdeveloped," or later the more politically correct term "developing" country, certainly was not our lack of culture, history or wealth, but lack of modernism!
We favoured glass and cloth over plastic and paper, fresh home-cooked litter-less lunch over microwaved leftovers or cold sandwiches behind the desk. Most of our clothes were hand-washed and air-dried. Our cleaning products were scent, chemical and frill-free. Vinegar, lemon juice, ashes and baking soda were major scrubs as real egg yolk, yogourt, almond and olive oils, had a distinct place amongst beautification goods. Elderly lived with their offsprings and young children either read, drew or used their imagination to keep busy. With three TV channels and only one or two radio stations, adults had no choice but to acknowledge each other's presence. As uncomfortable as life appeared to be, without the modern gadgets of the West, it was stress-free, hormone-less and allergy safe.

Today, half-a-century later, the three R's, Recycle, Reuse, Reduce have become 'thoroughly developed' countries' mantra! However, another epidemic is on the rise! People, as young as my two year-old granddaughter, are running to embrace Technology! Once again, those who are resisting modernism are being labelled.
Since every so often, the Western world questions its choices, I wonder how long it will take the society to recognize the perils of too much technology too soon.
Playing with Pharaoh's (Yul Brynner) words to his historians in the movie, The Ten Commandments, so let it be written, so let it be known, that in year 2013 Lili predicted "Technology" will eventually suffer the same fate as "Plastic."
I would like to think that a minimal fraction of a minuscule segment of tomorrow's adults have developed, thanks to my technology-less teaching environment, more patience, a firmer grip, a longer attention span and much better social and listening skills.
This arriérée has been to the future and back! Accepted and filed! What have you accepted and filed, today?

Oscar Night!

Dear Friends,
Nothing frustrates me more than Oscar Night taking place on Sunday night! Leave it to Hollywood and the A-listers to assume that everyone can sleep in, the morning after! As we say in Farsi, the rider has no news of the walker!
My utmost fantasy had always been to watch the Oscars in person, but over the years, I have toned it down to fantasizing watching the Academy Awards on a wide screen, dressed up to the nines, surrounded by like-minded wannabe's and good looking, aspiring-to-be-actors, waiters, serving Dom Pérignon!
At the moment, I'm sitting on my sofa, alone, in front of my tiny TV, waiting for the arrival of the Rich and the Gorgeous! As I mentioned in my early morning posting, today was going to be all about Returning & Refunding; however it ended up being mostly about Exchanging! Once I found out many of my purchases had been on sale, thus not refundable, they became more endearing. 
As I'm sipping my Henkell Trocken, looking at my off-putting pedicure-less toes, poking out of my new floral 4 inch-high heels, I can't help but think, it's the spirit that counts, not the actuality! Accepted and filed! What have you accepted and filed today?

The Perils of Vitamin D!

Dear Friends,
During the week, I never leave home without taking a drop of Vitamin D. It keeps me cheerful, energetic and optimistic. On the weekend, I let sleep perk me up. However, this Saturday, I was determined to fight the grey, whichever way I could!
It has been said that grocery-shopping on an empty stomach, results in overbuying. In my case, taking vitamin D before window-shopping is perilous! When I'm happy, everything looks good to me and on me! Of course, a few days later, I always question my judgment, wondering where were my body parts. But, at the time, I shop through rose-coloured glasses, oblivious to my age, size, body type and price tags! Perhaps for me, it's the purchasing power that brings forth the adrenaline rush, not the thought of ownership. 
Now, three-quarters of an hour into Sunday, seated amidst bags, boxes, and a mount of crumbled tissue-paper, I feel my euphoria giving way to panic! 
Today, is Return & Refund Day! Accepted and filed! 
What have you accepted and filed today?

OUTRAGE!

Dear Friends,
As hard as I try, sometimes I just can't close my eyes on News headlines! 
Oscar Pistorius was released on bail because his lawyers argued he was too famous to skip bail! 
His fame didn't stop him from murdering his girlfriend, why should it stop him from running away? Against all evidence, the judge was able to see a shadow beyond the doubt! 
An intruder in the bathroom! Unless suffering from soap or toilette paper fetish, what can possibly interest a thief in a bathroom? Perhaps Pistorius thought it was a paparazzo, taking pictures of his monogrammed towels! I wonder to what he owes his freedom? His fans, his amputated legs or his patriarch society? If I were closely related to the victim, Reeva Steenkamp, I would've gone insane right about now! 
What did he not notice in wee hours of the morning? The absence of her warm body in the bed, or her screams from behind the locked doors? Perhaps his judgement was clouded by drugs, alcohol, steroids or all three. Since the jury is still out on accountability of mentally ill, I put my money on Oscar Pistorius getting scot-free, if not by his lawyers, by committing suicide!

Violence against women - not accepted, not filed! Outraged! 
What has outraged you today? 

Family Day!

Dear Friends,
As Family Day in Ontario is winding down and people are starting to think of the 4-day week ahead, I let out a sigh of relief! 
After spending a good portion of the weekend in company of a man who brings out the worst in me, better and faster than anyone I know, I decided to keep a low profile today, unclenching! However, a couple of hours into the afternoon, boredom caught up with me. Against my wish to admit that my ex-husband, the father of the children, could actually get me something that might interest me, I flipped through Cognitive Behavioural Therapy FOR DUMMIES. I'm not sure what offended me the most at first, his belief that my behaviour needed modification or that I needed the dummy version of such discipline. Nonetheless, a dozen of subtitles in bold italics later, I warmed up to Chapter 2: Spotting Errors in Your Thinking.
Here's my new "NOT TO DO" list: 
Catastrophising, All-or-Nothing Thinking, Fortune-Telling and Mind-Reading. 
Although I can see myself "turning mountains back into hills," thinking in grey, refraining from playing Phytia or making presumptions, I can't promise to fully stop "Emotional Reasoning," "Making Demands," or "Personalizing!" 
In conclusion, however, I learned that people's do's and don'ts, say's and say not's, are not really about me, but about their own thoughts and feelings! 
Next time my ex-husband comes to town, I shall be more pleasant! After all, I'm not the centre of this universe! Accepted and filed! What have you accepted and filed, today?  

Timing!

Dear Friends,
Going back to Gladwell's Outliers and the concept of being in the right place at the right time, to profit from whatever the situation has to offer, I must add, sometimes what starts as an opportunity ends up being inopportune!
Timing, from hitting a ball to delivering a punch line, can make or break everything! Our family dog's "timely" death, right before the revolution, was much appreciated by me; less so last week's Agenda with Steve Paikin, revealing ugly facts about aging in Ontario. 
The last straw that keeps breaking this camel's back, is not really about the load, but the ill-timing of others!
From what I gathered (admittedly, sometimes I do misunderstand), according to discussions around the table, the only way one can grow old gracefully in Ontario, is to have a great deal of money or very caring children with a great deal of money!

Almost thirty years ago, upon my arrival in Canada, I was able to take advantage of my lucky chances; graduate from University of Toronto, obtain my Bachelor of Education and then join the teaching profession, building myself a successful, fulfilling career. However now, in desperate economic times and harsh realities of retirement and nursing homes, growing old in Ontario, unlike aging in Denmark, seems to be very unlucky!

In all honesty, although terrified of dying, I accept to forfeit a few years (just like Chaika, our family dog) and be filed away before TLC (Tender Loving Care) turns into LTC (LongTerm Care)! 
What have you accepted and filed today?

Who Can Blame The Pop!

Dear Friends,
If I could, I would pay Rogers Cable an extra fee to spare me the News headlines! I know myself well enough to stay away from the 5:00 O'clock, 6:00 O'clock and the CP 24 News. However, my Yahoo home page seems to have very little consideration for my sensitive disposition.  

All I want to do is check my messages! I don't want to know about the ex. cop who is terrorizing authorities in Los Angeles or North Korea testing nuclear devices, creating an international uproar. I don't care to know that Paparazzi, responsible for Princess Diana's accident in Paris, are now obsessed with taking pictures of the pregnant Duchess of Cambridge, in bikini or monokini! 
And definitely, I do not want to know that the number of Canadians flirting with Al-Qaeda is increasing. Canada becoming a target? Where do I run to, from here? 

Natural disasters, mysterious viruses, famine, economy blues, rape as pastime in India, Mali, never-ending violence in the Middle East and North Africa and self-righteous North America - who can really blame Pop Benedict XVI for resigning? Changing human nature or getting Mother Nature to behave is not an easy task, especially for a frail, old man who had to clean his own house, too. On top of everything else, one of the most popular whiskeys has dropped its alcohol content by seven percent!
I'm glad the Pop decided to "accept and file" not to die on the job!  
Once I read what Sandals, the new Ontario Minister of Education, had to say (not re-opening the forced two-year contract) I thought, I should follow Pop Benedict's lead, sooner than later! As my pessimist old culture says, "Who's dead, who's alive in two years!" Accepted and filed!   
What have you accepted and filed, today?

Goalkeeping

Dear Friends,
Way before the concept of "two stars and a wish" hit our classrooms, my parents were already practising descriptive feedback. I was raised on "It's ok, but ..." "It's good, but..." "It's excellent, but..." My parents' perpetual push towards the next step, resulted in my lifelong dissatisfaction with myself.

It's ironic that on my way to further self-improvement (a permanent goal of mine), I should run into Lisa Ordóñez' theory of 'Goals Gone wild!'
This weekend, reluctantly, I picked up, once again, Oliver Burkeman's, The Antidote, Happiness for People Who Can't Stand Positive Thinking. I say, reluctantly because I would like to think of myself as an ardent pupil of the school of Positive Thinking - another lasting, tireless goal of mine! 

According to Lisa Ordóñez and her team of researchers, setting too many goals is not as productive as managers might think. Pursuing too many objectives leads to poor results or unhealthy stress. 
As Burkeman analyses the dangers of constantly setting goals, he describes Saras Sarasvathy's anti-goal principles as such:

Casually minded people are those who select or are given a specific goal, and then choose from whatever means are available to make a plan for achieving it. Effectually minded people on the other hand, examine what means and materials are at their disposal, then imagine what possible ends, or provisional next directions, those means might make possible.

In closing, Burkeman refers to Chris Kayes notes, concluding that the mountaineers who died climbing Mount Everest in 1996 were victims of their 'goals.' Their obsession with ascending to the summit of Mount Everest (coûte que coûte) blinded them to unfavourable timing and perilous temperatures.  

Interestingly enough, teachers are not unfamiliar with the fact that certain goals have the tendency of looking better in theory, on paper or in psychology labs, than they do in the classroom, aka the real life. 

Basically, pages and pages of my Sunday afternoon reading can be summed up in two popular expressions, Don't spread yourself too thin because it's easier said than done.  
We should make a better use of our sayings, parables and proverbs! 

Just in time for Lent, I shall give up goal-setting, if not in my professional life, at least in my personal life! Although, sometimes, I do question the philosophy behind facilitating others' ascents at the expense of my own wellbeing. Good enough shall be enough! Accepted and filed.
What have you accepted and filed today?

White Blanket

Dear Friends,
Today, as the white fluffy snow tucked Toronto in, I survived, only by stepping onto paths most visited. The footprints were not perfect moulds, some too small, some too large, but they were reassuring. Although a few times, the rebel child in me felt compelled to bury her feet in the fresh pile of snow, to make her own original imprints, she soon realized it was a costly, and unnecessary endeavour. 
Nothing like ploughing your way through deep snow to make you appreciate the road most travelled, literally! Accepted and filed! What have you accepted and filed today?

One Day Too Many!

Dear Friends,
Nothing beats sitting in a pub, with a glass of Merlot, watching people hustle their way home on a stormy afternoon, with or without grocery bags!
I should hang out more often at the local establishments, watching people. If nothing else, they do provide me with writing material.  
As I was making myself comfortable on a tall chair, taking a break from slip sliding home, I saw two youngsters peeking through the windows. At first, I thought they were debating whether they should come in for a bite, although I'd never seen young teenagers dine out alone! But then, I realized they were trying to establish eye contact with the man sitting at the bar, on the other side of the room. Eventually, the man noticed them. He got up and walked to the door. While the girl stayed out texting, the young boy came in to collect his dues. 
"You said ten!" The boy protested.
"I said five." The man insisted. 
Finally, I heard some coins changing hands. Before the door closed behind an awfully happy boy, the man yelled out, "Call your mother, right now, you hear!"
My puzzled eyes followed the man back to his seat at the bar, where nothing worth watching was showing. I didn't have the guts to go over and ask him for his story, but well into my second glass of Merlot, I was still wondering where did his kids go in a snow storm, with a few coins in their pockets, and no parents? 

And then, I was on the other side of the windows, shlepping my way home, a bit tipsy, I might add. I was no longer the subject, but the object - the object of someone else's observation. The universe had regained its balance. An incredible feeling of release washed over me, wanting me to believe it was already Friday night. But I knew better! As soon as I got home, I rushed to reset the alarm clock for 6:00 am!
The week has one day too many! Accepted and filed! 
What have you accepted and filed today?

Just A Glimpse

Dear Friends,
Almost twenty years ago, I came across John Bradshaw's fascinating book, Homecoming.
It managed to convince me that three people resided in my soul at all times; Little Lili (a very disruptive child), Adult-Lili (slightly deformed) and Parent-Lili! Needless to say that Adult-Lili has been constantly struggling with Little Lili and Parent-Lili (who, by the way, is my mother's voice).

With everything that has been going on in my life, including Bill 115, let's just say that Little Lili was feeling a bit deprived, neglected. At first, I wasn't sure what was happening to me, but then today, I finally realized that Little Lili needed some tender loving care. Thus, I decided, on the eve of our school's "District Review," to take her out to dinner! The last thing I need is for her to misbehave tomorrow, in front of a group of evaluators from the board!

The little, giddy Lili and I went to this place near where I live. We know the waiters, the musicians and the manager. They all make us feel safe and welcomed. But, tonight, destiny took us there for more than a mere diversion.
Surprisingly, on a Wednesday night, there were two birthday parties, one amongst family, the other amongst friends. As a big white cake with lots of burning candles went to one table, a long flower box with a big red bow went to the other. Then, fifteen minutes later, a young man showed up with his own band! Gently pushing aside the house musicians, he proposed to his girlfriend in a song, for everyone to hear!

Although I needed to get home early, I ordered another glass of sparkling wine. It felt like being in a movie! I just had to stay and let the child have some fun, even if, on a school night.

I'm very grateful that, as I was about to accept and file that recent events have sucked the life out of me, I saw there was still so much love, hope and joy out there! Sometimes, all it takes is a glimpse!
Accepted and filed! What have you accepted and filed today?

Fantasy

Dear Friends,

"You look, tired, old! Just because you are a grandma, it doesn't mean you have to look it!" Such was my mother's reaction to a picture of me with my granddaughters! Obviously, she has very little knowledge of my life. 

My ex-husband, the grandfather, who took the picture, sent both me and my mother a copy. I personally like the picture. It's natural, serene. The three of us, with me in the middle, are cuddled up under the blanket, intensely watching Angelina Ballerina! 

"Check your thyroid, if you are always tired." My mother continued, concerned. "And your hair is too grey!" She concluded, before wishing me a nice weekend!  

After I put the phone down, I went to reexamine the picture. Mother does know best! I look old, tired and even sad! And my hair is too grey, as if grey does really have fifty shades! 

It was a rude awakening! 

I was always under the false impression that fame and fortune will replace my youth and looks. You can only imagine my devastation now, that I realize the departure of one doesn’t necessarily spell the arrival of the other. No abundance, no social acknowledgement, no professional recognition! 

As I push my anonymous little old self out the door, day after day, to earn a living, I question the source of my preposterous assumption, in vain.

Sometimes I have to wonder about this “road less travelled” that I keep taking, over and over again! I couldn't have stayed a housewife like all other women in my family! 

Along with my youth and looks, there they go sailing on the back of Bill 115, my professional integrity, present standard of living, and decent pension. Accepted and filed!

What have you accepted and filed today?