We're Too Old to Do This Kind of Shopping, Holiday or No Holiday

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by Heidi Fin on Unsplash

The shortest day of the year is here for those of us north of the equator. How are you spending it?

Dear Reader: a kind reminder that I am going to paid subscriptions the beginning of the year. I will still publish some material free for everyone but for some odd reason, free doesn’t pay the bills. I am fully aware of the competition for eyeballs and attention. If my work serves you I hope you’ll consider supporting it. Thank you in advance.

Usually by this time of year I’ve been listening to Mannheim Steamroller for a few weeks. Didn’t feel so holiday-ish this time around. I did put up a tree in my great room and one in the bedroom. That feeds my need for itty bitty twinkly lights in the darkest part of the year.

I worked at Disney World on Opening Day, 1971. I never got over the last walk on Main Street, lined with twinkly trees, heading to the castle. Some magic lasts forever.

My biggest celebration has been around some realizations that will lead me onto a new path at 72, about which I’m terribly excited, but more on that another time.

This is about shopping. Not the kind you and I should be doing.

This is about shopping for grievances.

Photo by LuAnn Hunt on Unsplash

You can I can go shopping for reasons to be grateful. Or,

You and I can go shopping for reasons to be angry.

Social media is chock-full of pet peeves about everything from writers to drivers to men to women, pick your topic. Otherwise thoughtful people (and I have done this, otherwise I’d not be saying anything) spend far too much time looking for opportunities to pour sewage on the unsuspecting.

Is that really how you want to live your life? Is this how we want to be, so angry and bitter that our poison isolates us from people who want to love us?

Is that the mark you and I want to leave on society?

Is this who we have become now, the richest nation on Earth, full of whiners and complainers? What’s so great about all that? I am directing that to all of us, irrespective of yard sign.

Here’s an example for you. Last night I got a comment on an article about moving that I wrote with my whole heart. Some retired old White guy in Colorado wrote this:

I'm glad that you admitted to being part of the problem. I was born in Denver in 1957. You think things have changed since 1971?? Holy excrement! Move on to Oregon and help ruin another place. The sense of superiority and entitlement you exhibit spoiled what should be a compelling analysis. (author bolded)

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

He totally missed the underlying points of the piece and went right to venting his spleen. That had zero to do with me and everything to do with just needing to piss on someone.

“My state/country/city/town/neighborhood was just fine until YOU RUINED IT.”

That is handing over all the power of our quality of life to other people. Classic victim mentality. But hey, we’ve got everyone else to blame but ourselves, right? We’re absolved of all responsibility for our lives.

I heard one analysis of the election results, specifically addressing younger voters who voted for Trump, that they were seeking someone to blame.

Wow. That’s mature.

We forget that when we hurl such shite at others we are first, last and foremost painting ourselves with it.

Jeff Tiedrich

spent a lot of time last year pointing out that the accusation is always an admission. Kindly, this is universal.

Pissed-off Colorado man above identifies as a Liberal.

No party, no person owns the high ground when we keep showing up as assholes. Again, I’ve done it myself, so no high ground claimed by this author.

Is the trail you and I wish to leave in the world going to be toxic? Because this is precisely what that looks like. Mr. Pissed-off-in-Denver is shopping for grievances, someone he can attack because HIS Colorado got overwhelmed by too many folks.

When did he become emperor of Colorado?

As I wrote in my piece, this feeling is universal.

The entire world is under seige and it’s not going to improve. Too many Westerners simply can’t deal with the inconveniences of giving up the kinds of comforts that pollute the world, cause death, destruction and environmental damage.

Better writers than I am pen excellent articles about all that. Still, let’s just make one point: in the Congo right this moment are very young children and families enduring brutal slave labor so that we can have our conveniences for Christmas.

That’s a single snapshot. There are millions more. So please, who is the problem here?

Let’s go back to the article that has brought out so many comments about The Other Guy. Apparently it struck a nerve. Good, because that means the topic needs airing, as do our attitudes.

We don’t want people to move where we live because “they” will ruin it for us.

To billions of people, you and I are “they.” We’re the bad guys (for good reason in many cases). There are centuries of reasons we are hated, and we’re getting worse: greed, consumption, devasation, rank disregard for life and environment.

Telling people you don’t want them to move to your town is a microcosm of all that: I have mine, but I don’t want you to have yours.

Worse, I want mine and frankly don’t care if that’s at the expense of your country, your village, your right to live any kind of decent existence.

Who woke up and made us God, that we dictate to the rest of the world, including our fellow Americans, where they get to live, what they get to do?

You see my point.

This morning another reader wrote:

Please don’t come to CA.

WTF people. The whole point of my article is for us to realize that we don’t own anything. All we own are our thoughts, and watch how long they last, right? As reader

Linda Ann Robinson

wrote, we are all renters- we own nothing, and yet we act as though we do.

We wage war, we murder, we do terrible things to each other because we think we own things. We think we’re entitled.

Things own us, and turn us into gargoyles.

What if the person who wants to move to CA is a doctor who practices a cure for a particular disease that THEIR child suffers?

Are they welcome then? Will you let them in (just long enough to fix your kid) then unceremoniously boot them out because well, you got yours, and you don’t want them to move to CA? What about other parents whose kids are sick?

Are we going to post hall monitors at the city gate so that people are forced to secure a hall pass to show up in your city, town, county, state, neighborhood? Should they get a tattoo so that we know they are THEM and need to be vilified and shunned?

Some years ago, the State of Colorado started issuing “Native” license plates. Not to honor Indigenous folks, hell no. But those who were born there, like Mr. You-Ruined-Colorado, above. Wags started making plates that said “Semi-Native,” natch, it took off, and the trend got noticed nationally.

As though being “native” conveyed superiority. It doesn’t.

We are all native to planet earth. Period full stop. As the entire earth goes, so do we all.

Can we not even see who and what we are becoming in our mindless selfishness? Our compulsion to OWN everything, when it’s all transitory?

Can we not see that it all begins and ends with us?

I finally broke down and put Mannheim Steamroller on. As the soundtrack invites me to thoroughly enjoy their take on seasonal music, I consider the reactions to this article and others I’ve penned taking on similarly challenging topics.

Watching people online, it’s everywhere- my article simply gave some trolls another place to throw turds.

Are you shopping for grievances this year? Are you up at 6 am not to shop at Home Goods but to be angry at folks who abstained from voting so that your candidate didn’t make it? To be angry at (fill in the blank) so that you can feel justified in your vitriol?

I get it. Been there. But what does that get us? It sours the season, sours our souls, sours our relationships. If we want better, if we think we deserve better, it all starts inside us. We can choose how to channel all that energy which is sorely needed in so many places. You are needed. We all are.

Let’s not waste our precious time and energy being aggrieved. I didn’t say don’t be angry- I said don’t be aggrieved. The latter invites us to nurse our hurts and sucks everything out of us.

The days get longer starting tomorrow. A new day starts every day. A new you can begin, too. You and I can watch what rises in us, ask the hard questions about whether or not this is our best self, and choose to do better.

We can shop for grievances or shop for reasons to be grateful. This time last year my house looked like this for Christmas:

This year it looks like this:

I am beyond grateful, over the moon grateful, for as long as I can keep this house. Then I will be grateful somewhere else (if forced to move for financial reason, I get to go “ruin” somewhere else, as it were).

We can choose to complain. We can choose to focus on what we don’t have. We can choose to operate out of fear. We can choose to “other” people and end up an angry, ugly island of a human being (and nation). We choose all day long, every second of every day our entire lives.

Or we can choose to be grateful- for our challenges, our discomforts, the problems we have in front of us. They invite us to find out who we can be. We can choose. Be grateful that you CAN choose.

As long as you are alive you can choose, a message Viktor Frankl taught by example.

Santa will deliver: a bag of coal or a bag of hope. Santa, like all the best things, lives inside us.

I firmly believe that you and I can remake ourselves at any point. I’m doing that right now. Every bit of that begins within. If I am brave enough to face my own shit, I can choose to be better, not bitter.

I’m not owed a damned thing. I have a life. It’s up to me to decide what to do with it.

A better life starts with a better lookout on life, and the belief- which is true- that we can indeed handle what is handed us. You’ve got this. You can do this, whatever “this” is.

There is no better gift.

Let’s play.

Mika wishes you a fine holiday season. Me too.

Thanks for reading. I love challenges, but they begin with my challenging myself above all. I have to live inside this brain and body. They might as well be a welcoming place. I hope this gave you good cause to think about how we show up with each other. Whatever happens, be safe, be well, be a good Santa to yourself.

Andee Scarantino