I have tried during this process of STEPS to be less self-absorbed and less first-person narrative than usual, and have tried to write in a way that was open and “user-friendly” for all who cared to read.  Less me-me-me, I-I-I, and more us & we,  but we are near the end of this series, so this morning I am thinking about myself…STEP 20 is, of all the steps, the one that has most profoundly turned me right-side up.  I had felt for too long like I was drowning, but I realized during this 21 STEP program that it was because I was holding my own head under the water, trying to float with cinder blocks knotted to my ankles, trying to tread water with my hands tied behind my back…when all I had to do was turn my head and I could breathe…STEP 20 has made me change the way I see everything, and I will try to do it for the rest of my life, &  if you are feeling like you are drowning or that you’ve fallen and you can’t get up, or that you just can’t go on one more day with the way things are, here is my advice to you… STEP 20

I had let the one difficult situation of my life take up all the spare thoughts in my head, for months on end.  I had allowed the negative thoughts about the one thing in my life that has not been going so well, to bully the positive thoughts about all the wonderful things that go very well day after day.  I had let the voices in my head who say the mean things, be so much louder than the voices who remind me of the nice things.  I was booing at myself from the stands instead of being a cheerleader.  I was short-tempered about everything and irritable towards everyone.  My fuse was short and my eyes had lost their sparkle.  I KNEW it was happening, I could feel it, I could see it in the mirror, but I just could not, no matter how many books I read, figure out how to stop, HOW to stop doing it to myself.   I have so many girlfriends who I really like and I really enjoy and I was canceling plans and not responding to invitations…I was isolating myself and comforting myself and I had become somebody I didn’t really like, and I discovered that when we let that happen, nobody else really likes us either.

To be clear I had indeed known for some time that I was feeling so negative and so unlike myself, I’d talked to friends who used meditation, I’d talked to friends who used medication, I’d talked to friends who used exercise, I’d talked to so many friends about what they do to “fix” the cracked bits of their lives,  but it took the little blonde haired wonder who lives next door to me to help me glue the broken parts back together… She had one of those cheap plastic $.99 cent cups in her hands, it was pink with Rapunzel on it, and she was sitting at my breakfast bar and she squeezed the Rapunzel cup from the bottom and held it on its side so the open part was facing me, and said to me, “Nana I am tired of seeing this face” and the plastic cup was squeezed into a frown, and she then grinned and pushed the cup down from the top, and said, “I like this face better” and the plastic cup was smiling…it hit me, WAY harder than one would think possible…I went into my bedroom and I cried…not a heaving sobbing just finished watching Terms of Endearment or Steel Magnolias cry, but there were tears and nose blowing.  I cried for two reasons; one that this little granddaughter who I love so much recognized something in me I was failing to address, and two, that I have a really wonderful life and had let the one thing that is a bummer and has absolutely been difficult and been a drag, weigh down all the other parts of my life that are fabulous…she, with those squeezes to the center of a plastic cup, made me see so clearly.

I felt a bit like a switch just turned right off.  It was my own thoughts making me so miserable, it was my own thoughts making me so irritable and negative, it was my own thoughts that were making me smile so much less than I was frowning…WHO would want to be around this kind of person??!!

With two squeezes of a plastic cup, the little blonde wonder next door revived me so completely, so lovingly and so honestly, and I became fully aware & totally awakened that it is ONLY me who can change the way I see myself, my life, and my world.  Nothing of what was “wrong” in my life can be fixed immediately.  Nothing of what was wrong in my life can be fixed today either, and it won’t be repaired or resolved or remedied fully before the end of the summer, but it has been addressed and I am taking deliberate steps to change it.  I do not have the magical skills of Samantha Stephens to wiggle my nose and fix anything; I do however have the skills of a woman who knows to focus on the positive, not dwell on the negative, who knows that with patience and deliberate actions she can change anything that she wants to change, and who acts like the friend she’d want to have…

When my daughter was a teenager, I used to hate, HATE, absolutely loathe when she would respond to my statement, any statement,  with the word  “whatever.”  I hated it most when accompanied by an eye roll, or an exasperated sigh, or a door slam or a stomp down the hallway that ended with a door slam.  To me, back then, s0 many years ago, it was the equivalent of her pretty much saying to me, “f* you, nothing you say matters, at all, and I disregard your view, totally.”  …but,  she was for the most part a very good teenager and I would seldom let the “whatever” lead to any kind of turmoil or tumult.  I often would remind myself that I had raised a girl into a woman who thought for herself and had her own opinions and views, and for me that was a very big deal, and so I let her self-expression be what it was…this does not however imply, at all, that the agitated “whatever” response was something I liked, but I did tolerate it.  During this exploration of STEPS, and thoughts about changing and evolving, I have read many books, that some might surely dismiss as self-help jibber-jabber, but others would describe them as thought-provoking and insightful and stimulating.  One of the books I read was called F**K It.  No, really, that is the title.  It’s called “F**K it.  The Ultimate Spiritual Way” and I bought it and I loved it.  I learned a little, but mostly the author expressed views that I feel like I already knew, felt, or believed, but he put them in an order that was refreshing, and his words helped me see, my daughter had been onto something back then… It was such perfect timing too that when I finished the book I was at this point, STEP 19.  Some of you might enjoy STEP 19 very much if you are tired… Tired of having to edit yourself.  Tired of having to make others comfortable or happy or content.  Tired of feeling like you have to accept truths that are not yours, some other view that feels off.  Tired of having to do what you are “supposed” to do and not want you want to do.  Tired of fitting in.  Tired of making choices that benefit others more than yourself.  Tired of worry about how others feel, and not giving enough time or thought to how YOU feel.  Tired of the status quo.  Tired of the way things are…Tired.

If this seems crass or coarse, sorry, but it’s pretty powerful, this STEP 19.  I think it takes a lot of bravery really to get to this point…to be able to be comfortable with yourself; what you believe, how you live your lifestyle, the choices you makes, the mistakes you stumble over, the achievements you make and the failures, EVERYthing that IS you…to own it and no longer worry or fret or wonder or apologize over what other people think about you, your beliefs, your lifestyle, your choices, your mistakes, your achievements and failures.  We did after all read in The Four Agreements that what other people think about you is none of your business…what a powerful agreement to live by.  I’ve learned that you have to find your own tribe…I read that once, “your vibe finds your tribe” and it’s true.

In Oprah magazine recently, I read an essay where a woman wrote, “No, you don’t want to compare, because comparing is the death of happiness.”  It’s not easy, full acceptance of your errors and your misses can be difficult, though also it means, in the Yin-Yang of life, FULL acceptance of your goodness too, every single one of the things that makes you a good person.  Accepting the bad, that is not an easy pill to swallow, ever, but I am at an age where I now value the importance and significance of it all, and accept that my teenage daughter was onto something.  STEP 19 expresses  TRYING, trying so very hard to NOT compare at all, in a world where comparison is so fully in our faces every day, and just be present, and just to accept what is…it’s a path to being totally comfortable with yourself, which I guess in some ways is the only value of the steps at all…acceptance and moving on…

We ALL have had misses with our hits, we ALL have had bad times among our good, we ALL have made some awesome choices and some really dumb ones, and those who have been just perfect all along, or seem to think they are better than the rest of us who have tripped up, well good for them.  Really, I truly and sincerely mean this, good for you…but for those of us who have had some low times or have a regret or two, well, own it.  Accept it and  get on with your life.  ‘Stop stumbling over what is behind you.’  For me, being a good person, loving fully and truly, being somebody people find honest and dependable, being a good friend and a better Nana, finding something beautiful to notice every day in nature, making somebody smile, feeding people I love, keeping my little piece of the universe tidy the way I like it, is being the best human I can be in a world where there are many humans who are not very good…and this is what matters.  This is what the book “F**K It” meant to me…the ultimate spiritual guide guided me towards thoughts I already had…be a good human and you don’t have to apologize.  The worry over what other people think, what other people have, what other people might have done differently…oh good grief!!!  who really cares??!!  Think the word, “Whatever” and roll your eyes if it feels good, say the word “whatever” and slam a door, whatever you have to do or think or say or believe so that you feel right in your skin, your life, your lifestyle…so that what other people think or say or do does NOT bother you in any way, does NOT strive to mold you into something you aren’t, does NOT aim to conform you to ideas that don’t feel like they fit…whatever

One of my jobs is painting houses. I love it, and I buy a lot of paint brushes.  I had a favorite for many years, it was purple (go figure?!) made by the Purdy company, which makes exceptionally high quality brushes, and a  local lumber company in my area had a manager who would always put some purple brushes aside for me when he unpacked a new order.  He often reminded me that girl painters who liked purple paint brushes were not all that common.  He even once called my cell phone when he got an order of 100-foot extension cords and one of them was purple 😉 but I digress…Now that Purdy no longer makes these purple brushes, I have no particular devotion to one brush or another & so I now shop at Home Depot quite a bit and have found that their own store brand of brushes are categorized as ‘Good, Better, and Best.’  When I first noticed this rating system, I was using a primer  for water stains that, unless you keep denatured alcohol in your truck, you’ll never get it out of the brush and therefore need disposable brushes when you use it, so I bought the cheapest brush they had, which was labeled in the class of “good” and as you might surmise, it was total shite! The bristles came right out of the brush with every stroke.  The handle was oddly shaped and did not feel good in my hand and it was totally disposable, not ‘good’ in any way at all,  and I thought to myself, what use is describing an item as “good” if it really is shit?  Would it not be better to describe an item as “totally disposable” or “crap” so that a person would not be confused or misled by the rating?  To me, good/better/best, is a rating system that should be functional.  Sort of like a voice in your head narrating, “this one is barely tolerable, this one is pretty decent, and this one is actually something you will like and keep.”  …BUT in reality, at Home Depot, with their own brand of brushes, “good” is really not very good at all.  The label says that it is “good,” and somebody rated it as such, but to me, it is FAR from good at all.

You might be wondering how this applies in any way to our 21 STEPS…well, STEP 18 is somewhat a recognition of the rating system at Home Depot of their own brand of paint brushes…good-better-best…and how some think about or “rate” people.  Is the BMW driving executive with the magnificent house and amazingly organized wife and two smart and athletic children who attend private school, better than the chain-smoking plumber who seldom pays his electric bill on time and spends much of his paycheck at the bar before midnight on Fridays?  Is the fancy purse carrying Louboutin pump wearing accountant with the time share in the Keys, better than the black girl with three different colored kids buying Cocoa Pebbles with food stamps in front of you at the grocery store?  Some of you readers might think yes, because you are so swayed by what you think you know about them, and what you appear to be seeing, and what you’ve believed all your life…their jobs, or lack thereof, their words and actions, what they wear, their houses or which unit in a housing project, their kids, their cars, whatever…we live in a world filled with judgments and people who judge, and I have to think, what difference does it make what Home Depot thinks about the quality of their brushes, when I find their rating system to be terribly flawed, and are we not this way when we judge and rate others, terribly flawed?

That one person thinks they can categorize another, just boggles my mind, much like somebody thinks the “good” rating on those crappy brushes is an acceptable description.  STEP 18 is kind of like Home Depot’s rating system.  AND makes me think…if somebody who manufactures these brushes can label the brush as “good” and I think it is terrible, then is it not sort of the same when somebody labels someone as a good, when I think they are a total shit of a person, or I think somebody is fabulous and other people think, not so much?  Sure, his BMW is always clean and his suits are from Savile Row and not the Men’s Warehouse, but he’s been diddling his secretary for the last year and his wife has no clue and people at his office feel pity for her when she talks about “my husband.”  Sure, her handbag is beautiful and only seen in high-gloss three-page ads in Vanity Fair and not K-Mart flyers in the Sunday paper, but she pads her tax return every year with receipts that are really NOT deductions and has not spoken to her daughter in years over a long forgotten argument.

How about nobody rate anybody?  How about the only person we judge, or rate, or categorize, is our very own self?  How about believing that nobody is better than anybody else, no matter what you might think, or have been raised and molded to believe, and the only person we ever think we are better than, is the person we were yesterday, or last month, or four years ago.  How about giving STEP 18 a try, and not worry about the rating system we seem to have here in our country on earth among our fellow humans, it’s terribly flawed anyway…I know, I bought the brushes…

There is no easy way to get to this age. Whatever age you are right now, this minute…it does not matter if you are sixteen or 66…just the fact that we all are simply only a result of the meeting of one sperm out of millions, and one egg, at the precise perfect moment in time, that grows into a human, is hard enough, but here you are, THIS age, alive on this planet.  There were days that were hard, and there were days that flowed easily and without a care in the world, and there were lessons after lessons after lessons.  From the moment we take our first gulp of air, we begin to learn.  “oh, I cry and then I suck and am no longer hungry.”  check. “oh if I make this motion with my mouth she smiles at me and I feel good so I will do this with my mouth.” check.  “oh, if I touch this my hand hurts and burns, don’t do that again.” check.  AND on and on it goes…minute after minute, month after month, year after year, learning by living.  Do this, or do not do that.  Want this? must do that.  Like this feeling? do that again.  That hurt, must not do that ever again.  Interestingly, to me at least, I have grown old enough to know that you/we/I  don’t always understand there WAS a lesson until well past the end of the class or the lecture or the assignment.

There’s a Pearl Jam song that ends with the lyric, “If I had known then what I know now” and it is very much what STEP 17 is about…but ‘if’ is meaningless in this circumstance because, you didn’t.  I didn’t.  You and I behaved in a way that was based on unknowns, or misleading facts, or absent details, or over exaggerated particulars, or ANYTHING.  WE humans, not just me and not just you, US…we’ve all at some time acted in some way that we later wish we had not.  I’ve found out a very important thing in my years on this planet; I can beat myself up and talk mean words to myself, and deeply regret, and wish otherwise, and woe and whine, or I can let it go…like blowing on a dandelion on a warm sunny day…puff…poof…gone…Would you ever treat an infant baby or a toddler or a small child like you treat yourself for NOT knowing something??  Would you EVER look into the eyes of a child you loved, or any child for that matter, and say the kind of spiteful and despicable words you sometimes to say to yourself when you look in the mirror, or when you are at rest and those voices in your head start that non-stop jabber?  I dearly hope not.  No…we show patience and tolerance and understanding and kindness when we know that this human is simply finding her way in the world, in her skin, how things work on this planet.  Learning. WHY then do we torture ourselves? … our tender, kind, patient, loving selves, when we are learning???  Would you ever speak so harshly and hatefully to a child like you speak to yourself in your head?  I hope dear reader that the answer is no.  But we do this.  Not all of us, but I would suggest most of us do, and so I believe that STEP 17 be embraced and loved and cultivated like a newly planted seed…it’s almost spring here in south Jersey…it’s just about that time to tend to the earth and start to grow things.  The only way we evolve is through learning and change, and changing is part of growing, and forgiveness is part of evolving…changing the way we think about a situation or a person, forgiving is good for you, like sun and water is for flowers…if you think STEP 17 might do you some good, and you are feeling in need of something different, how about starting with your own loving soul…grow that.

I know that Joss Whedon is a writer of screenplays because I read about him in Vanity Fair, but I don’t believe I have ever seen anything he wrote.  I did however see this quote on Pinterest some weeks ago and decided I liked him very much, despite my limited knowledge of his work.  I like what he says here, a lot.  STEP 16 is important because it, at least to my mind, differentiates being “busy” from being active.  By this I mean that actively participating in life, DOING something, is not at all the same as being busy, or appearing to be busy, or creating an illusion to both yourself and to others that you are doing something, because don’t we all honestly know at least one person who always seems like they are busy, in a rush, overwhelmed with too many tasks and not enough time, but nothing ever really gets done?  Rush-rush-rush, busy-busy-busy, but the result is a whole lot of nothing completed…a task from start to finish, beginning to end, no matter how long it takes, is a gratifying experience, regardless of what the experience is.

I think STEP 16 just wants to lead us in a direction towards creativity, or maybe domesticity, or perhaps just a reminder that before there were iPads and televisions there were books to read and candles to make and food to jar and rows to hoe and we humans HAD to be actively DOING things to survive.  Now we live in a world where we can sit on the sofa and order food that gets delivered to our door, and our Visa in on file so we don’t even have to stand up to pay the driver, and some of us can earn money by sitting on our bottoms and tapping keys on our computers to draw a paycheck,  and we don’t have to DO  to survive.  Perhaps STEP 16 is an invitation to go backwards, a little bit old-fashioned perhaps, to a time when we HAD to DO things so that we could live, and maybe some of us would be better off if we did more of these things, no matter what they might be.

I find I am stimulated greatly when I am around creative people.  I feed off of their energy, whether they are people who are good cooks, or good musicians, or good artists, or good hostesses, or good talkers, heck, I even inspire myself sometimes when I’m in organizing mode, or cleaning mode; emptying out a closet and refolding everything brings me just as much pleasure as preparing a complex recipe after a trip to the supermarket.  I feel good, better, when I feel like I’ve DONE something.  It’s not “what” gets done, a task brought to fruition, starting something and finishing it, but that something gets done at all.  So…in joyful celebration of STEP 16, MAKE something…make time, make a date, make a snack, make music, make plans, make a craft, make a pie, make love, make a list, make a bed, make a garden, make dinner, make breakfast, make friends, make memories…but just DO something.

I think there is a big difference between being opinionated and being judgmental, however, they seem to have the same result, in that one person feels criticized, and the other person feels  superior.  I am the ridiculously liberal daughter of a ridiculously conservative family, the proverbial black sheep if you will, and I have little, if anything, in common with my family regarding social issues, politics, religion, war and peace, or society in general…yet, I love my family very much and feel deeply loved by them.  I am faithful to NPR, Rachel Maddow, and Jon Stewart, just like they are faithful to Fox news, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O’Reilly.  I like to think of myself as very left of center, perhaps some would call me a wannabe-socialist, and they simply think they are correct and I am wrong.  Part of my personal evolution has been to “get over” feeling judged or criticized, and simply to accept others as they are and hope that they accept me as I am, and to default to the go to “F**k ’em” if they don’t.  It takes a lot of work, I mean, really, we want people to like us right?  However, part of becoming who you are is understanding that YOU have to like you, and what you think and how you think.  That job belongs to nobody but you.  Like we learned in The Four Agreements, what other people think of us or about us is none of our business.

I gave up years ago thinking one was right, me, and one was wrong, them, because I realized all that really matters is what I believe, what I think, and how I try to live on this earth, and try to be the best possible human I can, on this go-round in this physical life.  I have learned that this is the best way to live, for me.  I no longer believe that what I think about anything at all, be it poverty, war, abortion, the environment, or Wall Street, matters to anybody else…all that matters is what I believe, from what I have read, heard, and seen, and I try to live my life accordingly.  I try to be informed, I am well-educated and well read, and I do my best to get information and process it, it’s all we can do.  I can only live in a way that feels right and good for me, and I can only hope that others do the same.  I respect your beliefs and values and hope you respect mine, no matter how divisive they might seem.

I have long believed I am far more ‘Christian’ in my beliefs of what it means to be a human on this planet, what it means to “do unto others,” what it means to be kind and be good, than some I have met in my life who claim to “know” Jesus or believe in God or claim to live a Godly life.  I learned a long time ago that we are what we do, and how we act, not what we say and what we say we believe, and I accept this.  This is the way things are.  I suppose  I was in college when I stopped trying to understand how other people think, or to make sense of why they think like they do, in all subjects or areas that were different from my thoughts.  I figured out that *we ALL think the way we think is THE way to think.*  I figured out that no matter how uninformed, misinformed, or oblivious somebody might seem to me, I understand that this is how I must appear to them…so STEP 15 is not about “changing” really at all.  STEP 15 I think is more of a celebration; embracing what you believe, and owning it, and just understand that it may not be right for me, or your neighbor, and what I believe may not be right for you or my neighbor, but it’s o.k.   You don’t have to judge or criticize that which is different, you don’t have to push what you believe down the gullet of anybody else, in fact, you don’t even have to ever let on to anybody what your framework, philosophy, or beliefs are.  If they work for you, that is all that matters.  “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now”  just as they are, just as you are, just how they think, just how they look, no matter what they believe or you support, not someday.  Yes, right now…

I have heard people use the expression that when one door closes a window opens, or something like that, but I like fresh air a lot, and am so anticipating the arrival of spring, and even though my brother-in-law provided me with a magnificent and highly efficient HVAC system when I built my house, I leave windows and doors open all the time throughout as much of the year as possible.  I am fond of the flow of the air, and the flow of the energy of the world around me, and when your doors and windows are always closed and your house is always locked up tight, no new energy can really get in.   Welcome to STEP 14.

I am sure you know people as I do who seldom or never have people into their home…they don’t entertain and they don’t really welcome anybody through the door, and then there are those who crave company and gatherings and can throw together a cocktail party in ten minutes and think nothing of an impromptu dinner party or play dates for their kids, and they just want that energy surrounding them…I think most of us fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes but what about what we let inside, the REAL INSIDE?  …what we let in our heart, our brain, our soul…what we let get through the walls and barbed wire barricades of our comfort zones…

We don’t KNOW what is going to happen today.  We know it is supposed to snow tonight after 11 o’clock here at the Jersey shore, and we know that on Saturday night before we go to bed we are supposed to turn the clock up an hour, which is supposed to create a longer day…but so what?  …just because we ‘know’ something and have a plan, does not mean that it WILL happen…We might think we know, and we might have something on the calendar that we are supposed to do, and we might have it set as an alarm on our iPhone, and we might have a post-it on our dashboard, but that does not mean that what we think is going to happen today IS GOING TO HAPPEN.  A man I was dear friends with many years ago died in a fire a week ago, and the guest cottage of a dear friend of mine blew up in a gas explosion, and a bill I expected to be $640 this week turned out to be $850…three different events, all totally different from what each of us expected that morning of the event…we can plan and plan and plan and reject everything that does not fall within our plan, and we can claim we know what we are doing and we can do what we think are all the “right” things, and guess what?  OTHER things happen.

I think STEP 14 wants us to just not be closed.  You don’t have to open your door to a man wielding a chainsaw with a hockey mask on his face and fingers made of knives to let him steal all your jewelry and flat screen televisions, but when that image and that fear factor is what you SEE with your closed mind, when you look with your eyes at a black man wearing a hoodie walking in front of your house, in a neighborhood where there is nobody who is black, you immediately have closed  yourself off to the possibility that he might be the best small engine mechanic in your county who just moved to your street and you actually need your lawnmower fixed, but you didn’t wave or say ‘good morning’ as he caught your eye when he walked right in front of you when you got your paper from your driveway…You don’t have to marry the most unattractive woman in the room, but maybe you should talk to her, and not reject her because of your shallowness, closed off to the possibility of even speaking to her because she does not fit your ideal image of who you should be seen beside, because if  all the really pretty skinny ones use words such as “amazeballs” and expressions such as “that’s so sick” and say “like” to connect every three or four words, and they often finish each sentence they utter with “and blah blah blah” and go to the bathroom too many times in an evening to attend to their overly made-up faces, you, the man who loves science, golf, and fishing, missed a chance to have a glorious conversation at the bar with a marine biologist who has a swing like Bubba Watson and the most beautiful green eyes you’ve  seen, if only you had really looked at her and opened your mind and closed your shallowness…

It’s not just who we meet or who we talk to, it can be what we do and what we try…going to the non-fiction section of the library for a change, renting foreign films that you have to read since you are not fluent in Japanese, taking a different road to work, stopping at 7-11 instead of Wawa…these might seem trivial but they might change everything…YOU just don’t know.  You simply CAN’T know anything and have to be open, or at least try sometimes to be open, to whatever wonderfulness might be on the other side of the door…

30 years ago in high school, when we were filling out the paperwork for our year book, we had to write a little blurb about ourselves and include a phrase we were “known” for.  I wrote for mine, “I’m so confused” which is odd, because back then I felt so sure of everything, yet I said this so often, as if it were some sort of mantra that would give me time to kill and ponder until I was definitely certain, about anything.  I liked my hair and I loved my clothes and I had good friends and lots of fun and had a job that I enjoyed and participated in school activities and clubs and also took dance and was certain, as in -not at all confused-  that I was going to get the hell out of south Jersey and go live in a city and be a writer…I dreamed, it seems, of being “Carrie Bradshaw” before Carrie Bradshaw was even invented.

I was certain, as in -not at all confused- that I was going to write countless fabulous words, and write a novel, or maybe work in advertising or do free-lance work for magazines or perhaps for a newspaper, and I was going to eat at a different restaurant every night of the week if I wanted to, and try new things every day of my life if I so desired, and wear great clothes and magnificent shoes no matter where I was going or what the occasion…these things felt as sure to me as any other things in my life, at 17, or so it seemed…and three decades later, full disclosure, I am in fact living in south Jersey, just miles from where I grew up and never made even one cent from one word I ever wrote, never lived in a city in a fabulous apartment and never ended up with a color coordinated closet filled with ridiculously high heels, and there are few interesting dining options in my town.  The “R” in RStar could very well stand for *regret* if I let it…but I don’t.  I choose instead to let it stand for re-invent, re-try, re-start, re-rise, re-imagine, re-examine, re-create…

I realize that the dealer in the game of life throws us so many tricky hands…nobody gets a Royal Flush every time.  Some of the cards we really can work with, and some of them are so F**king shitty that we just shake our heads in disgust and dismay, “what am I going to do with these cards?!” we might think, or “I’m so confused!” but we have to play the cards we are dealt, folding is not an option so just must do our best to make the winningest combination possible, round after round.  While it may not always seem clear, I truly believe we get better with each deal, taking the skills we learned and applying them each and every time and we try again and again.  It’s okay to be confused and it’s okay to wonder what might happen, but it’s not okay to stop, and folding every hand because you are scared is not an option.  May I introduce you to STEP 13…

I don’t try to think less of myself, I try to think of myself, less…and that is also why these steps have been shared and expressed in a way that is not too personal, not I-I-I or me-me-me, but us really…how can we do better for ourselves and for each other?   Nobody is perfect.  I have however met people who live like they believe they are, and what they think is “right,” and how they think is the “only” way TO think, and while people like this often cloak their judgments and criticisms in the disguise as being “helpful” all it really is, is them talking about what they think and why it’s right…STEP 12  seems to me to be about evolving, and I believe that if you never try to do anything new, or do it in a new way, or never try to think outside of the framework you live in, then you don’t evolve.  I also firmly believe that it is far better to try to do something new, or think in a new way and then decide “it’s not for me,” than to continue on the path of same-old-same-old.  But this is my opinion, only, it’s my personal narrative, yours might be on the opposite pole and I think that’s just fine, for you.

I believe that trying and failing is better than not trying at all.  I don’t like to fail and I suspect that nobody does,  BUT…I have lived long enough now to understand that it is okay to fail because every failure is a lesson and every lesson is part of our evolution, and more importantly, we know when we can do better than we are doing, and we get there in our own way on our own time, because the “knowing” is the voice that guides us…it is the ache in our belly, it is the insomnia keeping us up at night, it is the personal narrative of our existance…we know when our ride on this planet is going well and we know when it is clunking and chugging along.  The words in our heads that seemingly never stop stating the obvious, the jibber-jabber blabber that goes on all of our waking hours is nothing but the inner voice stating what we already know and are already experiencing…”it’s cold out” might say the voice in your head, upon walking out your door, but “duh?” you are the one feeling the cold you are the observer and experiencer of your life, that inner voice is just chatter most of the time…BUT when it is talking to you and you are not listening to it, when you feel “off” that’s when that inner voice can change your life.

‘Just Do Your Best’ is one of those statements uttered by teachers, coaches, parents, mentors, or instructors when we are young, and it just becomes meaningless strung-together words, over an entire lifetime, if we don’t actually try to do our best.  STEP 12 made me think of the movie BABE, a movie I have seen countless times.  It is a story about wondering who you are, what is your place, what is your role, and finding out that you can create a role for yourself in this life that is, to most, inconceivable, but you do it anyway.  BABE follows the age old adage, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.’  When I first read this quote that is our STEP 12 I thought of farmer Hoggett, and how he lets BABE try and fail and says “that’ll do”  when BABE gets where he needs and wants to be.

I think we know, deep in our souls, when we can do better, and I also think that most of us get there without being berated for the efforts or attempts to find our way.  If things in our life are not going so well, we don’t need Captain Obvious to tell us so…”um, Hello? I know my life is in the toilet, thanks a lot for the update” is a default statement many of us on the path might need once in a while.  We don’t have to have cheerleaders or overly blaring coaches on our sidelines, or parents who are forever blathering on about how we can do it…WE humans KNOW what we are capable of, and we feel it, when we understand we are capable of more.  We know when we should speak up and we know when we should shut-up.  Our inner voice can guide us in so many ways if we let it.  More importantly that voice can drown out all the critics distracting us, and turn up the volume for those who guide us rightly, who build us up, who see the light in us when maybe we are having a hard time seeing it for ourselves… Maybe we can learn to quiet that inner voice when it is beating us down, and maybe when we do our best, we can train it to simply tell us, That’ll Do.

I know people who worry and dread over so much so often that they seldom, if ever, are just “here and now,” and with every breath they are thinking about some other time, some other event, some other issue, some other possibility, but not THIS time.  I’ve read a lot of books about this and it seems to be an epidemic.   I also know people, although the number is significantly fewer, who never consider fretting over tomorrow because *it’s in the future* and the future is unknown, and therefore pretty much meaningless, because all that matters is now.   *Is-ness.*

…so I woke up this morning to the gentle sound of my Woodstock Percussion chimes and my Soleri Bells, which was lovely after last night’s roaring pounding winds which made me wonder if my roof might blow off, or that I might find my 300 pound cement Buddha sculpture off its 100 pound concrete base by morning…neither of which happened, thankfully.  I got out of bed and my back did not hurt too much, for the first time since Sunday, when I twisted it, moving a bench of all things, AND not even a heavy bench!   I am looking at my new 23 inch computer monitor which makes my poor eyesight seem far more tolerable than it is,  and typing with my ten fingers, one of which is becoming totally bent and sore at the tip, and I am sure I’m  ‘catching’ my mother’s arthritis, and I choose not to think at all about what my fingers might look like in ten or twenty years, since the only image that comes to mind is gnarly tree roots.  To my left is a very hot and very big mug, filled with the dark soothing comfort of strong coffee which I sip and savor throughout the morning before I head off to work.  Both of my feet are cozy in my Ugg flip-flops which are so fuzzy, like slippers, but fabulous because they are in fact flip-flops and make me feel happy and reminded that it won’t be winter forever…Now, this ridiculously run on sentence filled paragraph might seem pointless, but what I am pointing out is STEP 11, and why it matters to give it a go if you are in need of finding some way to ground yourself from the dwelling, or the nerves, or the anxiety that often plagues you…

You see, many of us, myself included, have a lot on our minds about a lot of things…there are worries about health, money, relationships, job stability, weight, friendships, family…pick one, any one…I suspect that most people have at some time or another had worries about any number of things, and sadly for some, all at once, and STEP 11 sort of asks the question, Why?  Be glad for the fact that you have the strength to get out of bed, that you have feet and legs and arms and fingers, and that you are alive, and have a roof over your head, there is food in your house to eat, that there are people who would miss you if you were gone…things that you and I likely take for granted.

What good does it do to think about whether March’s mortgage payment is going to be late, or if on April 15th you’ll have enough money to pay your quarterly income tax estimate as well as what you owe from 2014, or if you will hit your goal weight by Memorial Day, or if you will finally get a romantic weekend away with your husband before school is out in June and you have to worry about childcare, or if your position in your company will still be there in July and will your wife be able to pick up more hours at her job if it isn’t, or if your grandmother’s lease that ends in August will be renewed at the same rate, or if you must have a family meeting about this with your brother and mother again come September you feel already like your head is going to explode…WHAT good does ANY of this do you, right now?  This minute.  ZERO, Nada, zilch, nil, ZIP.

STEP 11 implies that you should just breathe in and just breathe out and then do it again.  You will get where you want to be if you take one step at a time.  Just be here, now, and in an hour you can be there now, and at bedtime you’ll be…well, you get it.  If this seems difficult, then an exercise that I have found works wonders for me is that when I find myself starting to think too far ahead, and I feel my heart rate rise, and I sense that the worrisome thoughts are going to start rushing like a dam that has broken, I literally take the biggest breath I can, and fill my belly and my lungs to capacity and then blow it out hard through my mouth and stop all thoughts except on this one breath, then the next…After a few of these deep meditative calming breaths, I open my eyes and really look, and find something positive to think about what I am seeing.  This might seem silly to some of you but it is an exercise that has worked wonders for me during this experience with the 21 STEPS.   We all want to get where we want to be in whatever way we can, but we also all have to be here, now, this second.  Inhale and exhale, repeat.  That’s it.   If you have a goal or a dream or a plan, terrific.  Enjoy those thoughts…but nothing that is in the future is really anything to worry about, today is today and tomorrow is tomorrow, and whatever is going to happen is pretty much going to happen whether you think about it or fret over it, or get an upset stomach with worry contemplating all the possibilities about it, whatever IT is.