LIFE AFTER HAIR COLOR

All my life I had heard the expression that “life is simple, people complicate it.”  Life really IS simple.  People DO complicate it.  I don’t know how it is we come to do that.  Young children seem so competent at the very skills we older adults have to consciously recultivate.  I believe that you lose what you take for granted.  I think the first time you walked by a puppy without stopping to play with it, you went downhill.  That’s just my opinion, but I have seen evidence of the truth in that everywhere I have turned looking for an answer to the “why?” question.  We get in such a big hurry to “get there” we miss a lot of the sights along the way.

I took myself way too seriously for way too long. I thought the world judged my insides by my outsides.  They probably did and still do sometimes.  I just don’t care about it as much as I did at one time.  All I know is life lived from the inside out instead of the outside in feels much better to me.  I have been around long enough to know that bad people sometimes look really good and what your heart longs to do is usually exactly what you should be doing.  The longest days are spent doing things that you really don’t want to do.  Longer days are spent doing them with someone you don’t want to be with.

It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy anymore.  Meaningful work in an amount sufficient to pay my bills, healthy loved ones, feeling that I make a difference in someone’s life, being able to paint my toenails without grunting, allowing myself my individuality in spite of what your idea of success is.

Many things happened in my life to change my way of thinking.  The details of the events are not nearly as important as the changes themselves.  I don’t consider myself substantially unique.  In fact, the older I get, the more I see myself in others.  We all have unique traits and abilities that make us who we are, but the common thread that I see that weaves us all together is our shared need to be loved and accepted for exactly who we are.  My favorite people are those who allow me to be myself.  I do my best to extend them the same courtesy.  It’s a challenge to walk what you talk, but it makes you stronger and firmer in your resolve to do things the way they work best for you.

The greatest lessons have come to me from the simplest events.  That’s probably true for most people, I just happen to find it amazing.  I find it so amazing that I feel the need to share what I have learned with almost anyone who will listen or read about it.

Success to me today is very different than the success I spent so much energy chasing after years ago.  Today I point to my nine-year-old SUV with pride and say I will be driving the wheels off it.  There was a time that not all the coupons in the first payment book were used up before it was replaced with another one.  I no longer find it prestigious to work for a company that requires me to spend almost half my salary to dress the way they expect me to, just to be able to say that I work there.

The man of my dreams doesn’t necessarily have an impressive title or huge bank account.  He isn’t required to be a “looker.”  He is more likely to know what I like in my coffee and how important it is that he actually participate in my life, rather than just help direct it.  I hope to be some special Grandpa’s crazy girlfriend one day.  He needs to have the energy to look for shells on the early morning beach, and sit on the dunes smelling the hurricane wind with me.  In return, he will have my undying devotion and my promise of passionate living.

Where there were racks of clothes, some still with tags attached in multiple closets, there is appropriate clothing to live a juicy life.  I refuse to work dawn to dusk for someone else to earn money to pay yet another person to do what I love to do for my family and myself.  This girl has an electric screwdriver and knows how to use it.

I do not think for a second that just because I have silver in my hair that I am now finished learning.  The best is yet to come.  I have learned how to listen to the messages, that means there will be even more messages to hear.  Lessons are everywhere, everyday.  Open your eyes and your heart, the education of a lifetime is all around you.