Showing posts with label Why make something of it. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Why make something of it. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Making new neural pathways--DAY ONE


Just read  that it takes 45 days of daily activity to create a new neural pathway in our  brains.  Another good reason not to  stay in a negative  space with negative  thinking for too long lest it become habitual. I  know that this blog has not been habitual  for me.  I  feel as if the  content is not as focused and sometimes I am not  sure if there is any  interest  or coherence in  what I  am writing.
My other  Blog "BACK IN THE BUCKET" contains  thoughts, memories and experiences  connected with my life in Pawtucket--where I was born and lived  until I went to  graduate school in 1966.  In 2009 when  I returned to Pawtucket  to  care for my aunt  who lived there,  I  retired prematurely --or maybe just in the nick of time--from  my  professorship at the University of Cincinnati.  I found so much the same in Pawtucket and so  much  that had changed. And I wanted to  react to it all.

This  Blog "MAKE SOMETHING OF IT' comes from a different inspiration.  I  was suddenly  plunged into the world of retirement, care giving and decreased mobility.  I also  was facing  and seeing for the first time the limits of my own  energy and  possibilities.

I wanted to explore the experience of aging and to see  what the tasks were that occupy  me now and how they are shaping my identity. In other words I wondered what to make of this sudden emptying out of  all or most of the activities that had filled my  life before. Also I wanted to  discover what I could make of this new experience.  I want  to make something of it--but gradually I  have come to see that the experiences were making something of me.  I was changing and I was not in charge of the changes.  Then I began to understand that change is the nature of living and that  I have never been in charge of the changes.  But I had an illusion that I was in charge.  I have lost much of that illusion now.  I want to make sense of what is left and what  use  God and  society can  make of me and the millions like me--people who are now over 70 years old and  feeling their energy and certainties diminishing and their questions  expanding.
So for the next 45 day--starting  with this entry I will  explore the experience and the  reality of racing towards eternity.