Saturday Morning

Posted on by Live & Learn

We’re so driven to make ourselves “better” all the time…

We are mercilessly hard on ourselves for our losses, our defeats, our wounds, our failures, the parts of us that don’t measure up.

This is a weekend in non-self-improvement….

~ Francis Weller, in an interview with Tim McKee titled The Geography Of Sorrow. Francis Weller On Navigating Our Losses

Photo: Nap time by Aku*S

63 thoughts on “Saturday Morning”

  3. It IS astounding how difficult it can be to just embrace oneself ‘as is,’ yet wonderfully healing when ya can be clear-eyed about your faults while also celebrating your strengths. Life…a work in progress. 😉

    1. Lori; I’ve found – in that respect at least – a great joy in becoming older: I no longer MUST comply to everybody’s ideas of How I should be, I just am – and it’s HEAVEN to be myself, with no self-improvement! 😉
      Have a great, joyful, lazy, dog-walking weekend. Bisous, Kiki

      1. Do you know anyone who is really happy?…It’s not in our natures. Take the prettiest girl, and she’ll say she’s too short. Or, the best-looking guy and he’ll say he’s too skinny. A genius worries of about physique. A priest questions his faith. A soldier doubts his courage. I think if there is a hell that’s what it would be…an eternity spent facing our own failings.  We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.

        ~ Krista Dumont (Floriana Lima), in The Punisher (S2: E10)

        1. Oh you sweet, lovely guy (and I’m not talking about your quoted Krista Dumont)….. I know, IT IS UTTERLY SILLY but I have decided, at the beginning of this year, just to be happy, as happy as Lily in the book, and although, admittedly, I have many setbacks, many disappointments, health issues, and just like everybody, tons of other problems, I get up (that alone is a reason to happiness) in the morning and tell myself that I am happy…. and it (blxxy) works pretty well.
          Maybe I am, in the eyes of the world in general, and in the eyes of the intellos surrounding me especially, ‘demoted’ to a rose-tinted naïve ‘she-lost-it-all’, who cares?! To speak with Lily: IT!IS!A!GIFT!TO!BE!ALIVE!AND!HAPPY! 🙂 🙂 🙂

          (yeah, great quote – and answer right here, above….)

          1. So true. And coincidentally just started to read this:

            It is proposed that happiness be classified as a psychiatric disorder and be included in future editions of the major diagnostic manuals under the new name: major affective disorder, pleasant type. In a review of the relevant literature it is shown that happiness is statistically abnormal, consists of a discrete cluster of symptoms, is associated with a range of cognitive abnormalities, and probably reflects the abnormal functioning of the central nervous system. One possible objection to this proposal remains—that happiness is not negatively valued. However, this objection is dismissed as scientifically irrelevant.—RICHARD BENTALL, Journal of Medical Ethics, 1992

      1. “One of the gifts of age, though, is the way it gently dispels all our heroic notions.”

        Pam Houston, Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country (W. W. Norton & Company; January 29, 2019)

        2. Dave; you’re a walking poetry dictionary! 🙂

          Giving oneself a bit of a leeway is being greatly helped by stuff like lumbago, sciatica etc. 😉
          (stemming themselves from a lack of fitness, mobility – so double BRAVO Lori!)

      2. Lori, David – re that link to push-ups (eeeekh!!!)

        See my position:
        After all, not everyone is created equal when it comes to doing push-ups. As the late comedian Mitch Hedberg once said, “Dogs are forever in the push up position.” So if you are a dachshund, don’t get too overconfident. You may just be built to do push-ups.

        note to myself: I!AM!A!DACHSHUND!

  4. This, dear Dave, should garner you a RECORD NUMBER of LIKES …. we all should (at least, for a while, a weekend, a decade….) stop that merciless pressure on ourselves to be all the a.m.
    To you and all readers a HAPPY, LAZY, WONDERFUL weekend.

  6. There’s such a dichotomy around the idea of self-improvement. To ‘be happy’ is to accept all of me, all the pieces no matter whether I judge them to be good, bad, ugly, best. yet, to seek self-improvement suggests having to change the ‘bad’ to good. What a fascainting condition this being human is. We have a constant yearning to change the way we are, and struggle to accept we are perfectly human in all our beautifully flawed human imperfections.

  7. After all the recent black and white photos you’ve shared, this one sure pops and grabs one’s attention!
    And rightly so. I don’t know if you planned it, but this is a great Stop! And just be with no expectations and no obligations to be more than you are.
    Hope you enjoy your weekend of non self improvement (other than that push-up thing you and Lori partook in)

  8. Inspired by this post I decided to just go ahead and not wash my hair today. I don’t think I ever did a push-up in my life!

          4. I’m not a Finlander.
            I go to my pool st the Y, do laps for an hour or so, listening to the same song over and over and over, Hotel California. One lap to remember, one lap to forget 😉

          7. Dave, wake up – NOBODY would do swimming NOW outside ….. OF COURSE the lady in question would swim in a pool. What I don‘t get, how can you swim and listen to music at the same time?!

            And just to remind you of my first comment:
            This, dear Dave, should garner you a RECORD NUMBER of LIKES ….
            52 comments and 43 likes so far – I was right! 🙂 😉 🙂 – although I should have written ‚comments‘ and ‚likes‘!!!!

            Sawsan: MY hair is getting washed tomorrow….. no swimming for me, sadly. But still, the idea was kind of appealing! 😉

          16. Oh gosh, I sort of expected a tirade to that effect. Instead of being endlessly grateful for our entertaining and never ending teasing one another….. Love you anyway and look forward to every post, even when I have absolutely nothing to say or add. 🙂

  9. It’s a windy and wet spring day here, so no pickleball, no golf, nothing extracurricular other than to “just be” (as already noted above) and be my beautifully flawed and imperfect self for today and tomorrow … wish me luck!

  10. Well, then, dammit, maybe I WILL just go get those salt’n’vinegar chips and a bag of Easter chocolate. And eat them while staring at my new, unused 5lb dumb-bells that will never get me Linda Hamilton arms anyway. “I’ll go on a diet, Rabbit….right after a good breakfast” – Winnie the Pooh (whom I portrayed, with great insight, I’m told, and to substantial acclaim, in my 6th grade play. HA!)

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