Operating Instructions
a few suggestions for navigating life
I’ve often wished that life came with operating instructions (like a dishwasher). But I’ve come to believe that life actually DOES. The problem is that those instructions look like those for assembling IKEA furniture: they are full of weird symbols, really hard to follow, and always leave you (me at least) with extra parts. But I do have a few instructions, based on personal experience…
Here’s a very sweet short video with an instruction that will make anyone’s life sweeter…BE KIND
VIDEO: “MAKE JOY HAPPEN”
Another instruction: BE APPRECIATIVE, BUT AUTHENTIC
Standing ovations at plays and concerts are wonderful things—when warranted. But in recent years the audience pops up like English muffins in a toaster, automatically, hooting and hollering at the end of EVERY event. These reflexive “stand up and cheers” have really diminished the value of them, the point made in this excellent (if a bit curmudgeonly) essay in The New York Times…
How about these operating instructions for world explorers? It’s time for another edition of…
TRAVELS WITH STEVE AND ELISE (DO THIS, NOT THAT)!
DO: Check those passports!
We have a few stories about those vital little booklets…once, when Sheridan and Ya-Jhu were about to leave for Taiwan, Yaj asked Sher if he knew where his passport was. He had hidden it away for safekeeping—only he forgot exactly where. A mad dash around the house ensued, until finally the passport was located—inside a volume of sheet music (naturally).
When Rose was an exchange student in Thailand in 2005-06, she stored her passport in a wooden box in her room. It turned out to be not the best location, as she discovered—termites munched on the passport. She got another one in time to come home, and has this nifty souvenir:
Then there was the time Evan lost his passport in a taxi in Montevideo, Uruguay. The kind and very honest cab driver was able to track him down and return it…
Steve and I leave for England and Scotland next week. If you’ll excuse me for a sec, I need to go make sure my passport hasn’t expired (I just renewed it last year, but who knows? maybe they put the wrong date on it:-)
DON’T: Get lost (unless you want to). Technology to keep you on track…
Many travelers extol the virtues of wandering aimlessly around exotic destinations, discovering hidden cafes on unmarked side streets and the like. Well, I’m here to tell you that getting lost away from home is NO FUN (this may be a conclusion of advancing age. Young people on the road seem to rather enjoy getting lost). I want my cafes readily findable on Google Maps, darn it! To that end, we’ve taken to renting a portable Wifi device when we’re abroad, so those phone navigation apps will reliably work everywhere. We use Glocalme (www.glocalme.com).
Luggage doesn’t like to get lost either! Nowadays, airplanes have more passengers and less overhead bin space, so often our carryons have to be checked anyway. For this upcoming trip, we broke down and bought Air Tags. They’re a bit pricey, but I figure by spending that money we can guarantee our bags will NEVER be lost in the first place (same mentality as carrying umbrellas to guarantee it WON’T rain!)
ANOTHER “OPERATING INSTRUCTION”: EMBRACE LIFE’S MYSTERIES
We can’t understand it all—and that’s OK! There are times when our feelings bring us closer to God than our thoughts. Here’s an essay I wrote for Living Lutheran magazine…
And a helpful bit of advice, courtesy of the sad Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (and singer/songwriter Rose): KEEP FORGING AHEAD, AND DON’T LOOK BACK…
BLOG PREVIEW: BEETLE (BAILEY) MANIA!!
For some strange reason, Aiden and Peter ADORE this venerable comic strip. As someone whose taste in comics skewed much more to Blondie and Dagwood, this penchant for Army antics with Beetle and Sarge is a bit bewildering to me…open the Sunday funnies over at Working Title to find out more deets!
INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE OF THE WEEK (also one last Operating Instruction):
“Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel.”
Leonard Bernstein
You heard the Maestro!! Get enough restful and restorative SLEEP this week, my friends!
Your writing hugs my heart!