Has anyone else noticed that prices don’t make sense anymore? I mean, I remember taking a quarter to the store and being able to buy candy. And a dime would make a phone call.<\/p>\n
YES, I am going to get all old-timer right now. It’s the holidays and I can get crankily nostalgic if I want to.<\/p>\n
A dime for a phone call. That is nearly nonsensical now. Even rest stops on the highway don’t have payphones anymore. I took a photo of the empty phone booths on the 15 highway on the way to San Diego once.<\/p>\n
I took the photo with my phone.<\/p>\n
What is going on? And look at this! Macaroni and cheese costs a buck fifty. How is that possible? When did a dozen eggs cost 3 dollars?<\/p>\n
I go to the store and feel like I’m in a foreign country with an unfavorable exchange rate. I remember having this same feeling in Denmark. Holy Crap! That’s what a loaf of bread costs? Well, I have to pay it because it’s even worse to get food any other way. Cheese sandwiches in the hotel are the cheapest it’s going to get.<\/p>\n
However, I am in the twilight of my 40th year. It occurs to me that adulthood is a foreign country I haven’t gotten the hang of.<\/p>\n
All these expectations. “You didn’t know? You haven’t tried? You haven’t read? You haven’t been?”<\/p>\n
Have I? Would I know if I had? What does that look like? If I was there, would I have recognized it? I think I was supposed to be further along by now. I think I didn’t do the homework.<\/p>\n
On the whole, I like being an adult. I look at my 4 year old daughter, and I see her chafing against all the ways she doesn’t have control over her life.<\/p>\n
I have more control. I think. And then I look at all the ways my peers don’t have control over their lives. Do they have more control than I see?<\/p>\n
What is the story we are telling ourselves? Am I here because I am afraid of all the other imagined alternatives? Am I here because this is my choice, my preferred life?<\/p>\n
Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, says that it is far happier to be happy and know you are happy.<\/p>\n
So too, with choices. It is far better to know I make the choice to get up at 5 AM every morning because I choose to go to work and have this kind of life. I choose it.<\/p>\n
My daughter does not choose her bath every night, resists that bath EVERY NIGHT. It is an unnecessary struggle, and a very predictable one. That alarm clock can be a predictable struggle too.<\/p>\n
Awareness, also called mindfulness, makes these unfamiliar and seemingly unmovable life constraints my own. There are a lot of choices that I would choose and re-choose every day. Personal grooming, yes.<\/p>\n
Then there are those others, which, once I become aware that they are choices, I might do different.<\/p>\n
And that makes all the difference.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Has anyone else noticed that prices don’t make sense anymore? I mean, I remember taking a quarter to the store and being able to buy candy. And a dime would make a phone call. YES, I am going to get … Continue reading