Do you want more than you currently have? Do you feel that you can be and do more? Do you desire more for your children and those you love?
If the answers are yes, listen up. You can have more, be more and get more if you do something that we often overlook and under-appreciate. That is, we need to ask for what we want. While this is a first step, it is absolutely not the only step.
The Myth ~
We aim for self-sufficiency like a prized trophy. We do so with the help of mythology.
The American Prairie plays a significant role in our contemporary understanding of self-sufficiency. During the 1840s and 50s, when gold-diggers, land speculators and homesteaders headed West, a large number of people and families staked their claim to a piece of America smack-dab in the middle of the country, where there was an expansive sky, plenty of fertile soil, herds of buffalo and sweeping winds. Families dotted the landscape in their sod homes and simple cabins, often with their closest neighbor fifteen miles away. This environment gave rise to the idea that self-sufficiency was honorable, noble and somehow grand because one counted only upon one’s own wits, resourcefulness and skills. Continue Reading
With regularity I drove my step kids to school and to synagogue. We’d start at home, follow the same routes, and end up at our destination like clockwork. During our drives, both of the children were almost always engrossed in whatever it was they were doing: daydreaming, storytelling, singing or playing with action figures. On a couple of occasions, I asked the children if they knew how to get to school, synagogue or home if I didn’t drive them. Their blank stares looked both unknowing and scared, as if Libi (their affectionate term for me) was about to dump them by the side of the road and say, “walk!”
Darkness embraced me with a bear hug on two separate and distinct occasions upon my recent return from my honeymoon. (Of course, as I write this blog, fewer and fewer hours of daylight have been apportioned to this winter season. So darkness, both figuratively and metaphorically, is part of our lives.) The kind of darkness of which I write was nearly total—life and brightness choked off.
The first embrace was fierce and so complete I dropped to my knees—a quivering mess if there ever was one. I shook with sobs. My face contorted and wet. I made it to the shower for a full-on sob that could awaken the dead. The shower sounds muffle the unwieldy tears.
I’m a big advocate of “thank you” notes. In fact, I have a stash of Crane stationery that would be the envy of Her Majesty the Queen, but for the fact that she’s more a fan of Smythson’s on Bond Street. Stationery preferences aside, I think she would agree that a “thank you” well-conveyed is one of the greatest utterances we can ever make. James Allen has said that “No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.”
Sending “thank you” notes was a requirement in our household as a child. No sooner had the last person left from our birthday party and mother had sheets of paper and a fountain pen before us on the kitchen table. If we were the “birthday girl” or “birthday boy” we knew what was expected of us at the table: write the thank you notes right then and there for all the lovely presents we were given…don’t even think about playing with the newly unwrapped Twister game or GI Joe sitting there waiting for us to play! Write first, then play…Those were the rules. “Thank yous” first. “Thank yous” always.
