Ethyl's thoughts: The Great Lie

It is the great lie of our age.  The belief that happiness is dependant on what we are able to gain possession of in our short life spans. Also the thought that a person's worth is determined by what they own.  In fact, a person's personal possessions are often spoken of as their net worth. 

When you think about it, some of the greatest, most significant, people who have ever lived on earth have been worth very little financially.  The best example, of course, is Jesus Christ.  He said foxes have dens and birds of heaven have roost, but the son of man has nowhere to lay down his head.  When he died the only thing he possessed of any value was an outer garment.  The soldiers cast lots to determine which of them would get it.

Another person of great talent and artistic ability was Van Gogh, yet he died penniless.  In fact, in his entire life time he only sold one painting, and yet today his artwork sells for millions of dollars.  Makes you wonder why the value of some people is determined only after they die.

Our age could rightly be termed 'the age of materialism'.   So often today people spend money they don't have to buy things they don't need to impress people they don't like.  And in the end none of it makes them happy.  They end up with a bunch of junk that will either go in the garbage or to the good will store in a few years.  And the great lie continues.  "I will build a house and it will make me happy".  In a short while the new wears off and then the lie goes one step further.  "I will build a bigger house, and that will surely make me happy and fulfilled".   Cycle continues.  In a few years, "I will build still a bigger house, surely that will do the job".   It stands to reason that somewhere along the way they would get smart and determine their pursuit of happiness had somehow taken a detour.  No matter how big a house you build or how fancy a car you drive, it's not going to be long before someone comes along with a bigger, better model.

The first year my husband and I were married we had a little green Corvair sports car and everyday going to work we passed a car lot that had the car of my dreams.  It was a 1968 Chevy Caprice.  And everyday I would remark to my new husband just how much I would like to own  that car.  I didn't realize how bad that made him feel.  It was years later when I finally realized how much he wanted to buy that car for me.  In a couple of years we did trade up to a Chevy Impala, but it was years later before we finally bought a Chevy Caprice.  By then the body style had changed so much it didn't even look like the same car.  Anyway, to make a long story short, we passed a junk yard some time later and there was a car exactly like the one I had pined for in our early years together.  Sitting in a junk yard, rusting and returning to the elements.  And suddenly I realized something that has stayed with me the rest of my life.  Things don't last.  Knowledge can stay with you a lifetime, so take the time and effort to acquire knowledge of worthwhile things.  Relationships can last a lifetime if they are properly cultivated and nurtured, so take the time, energy, and effort to develop as many friendships as you can with people whose friendship is worth having.  There are three kinds of people on earth.  Superior people focus on ideas and principals, they have deep spiritual values, are morally upright and trustworthy, unselfish, and truly interested in the other person.  Ordinary people are more interested in things: things they can buy and sell, things they can accumulate, things that can be owned.  They may or may not have your interest at heart.  That will depend on how the outcome will effect them personally.  And thirdly, there are people who need to be avoided at all cost.  People who are self centered and arrogant, interested only in themselves and what you might be able to do for them.  Avoid such people at all cost.  They will literally suck all the happiness and life out of you, and then after they have totally used you up, throw you away without a second thought.

When I was young the thought that someone might not approve of me or like me was of great concern to me.  As I've grown older I've come to realize no matter how hard I try there will always be people who simply don't like me or approve of me.  And you know what.  It just does not matter in the least.  I guess that is one benefit of growing older.  You come to be at peace with who you are and what you are.  And I also discovered another amazing thing.  The people who decided they did not want me to be a part of their lives did me a great favor by removing themselves, for they were, for the most part, arrogant, selfish, self centered individuals I would not really want to be friends with anyway.

Those that have remained over the years have been people I would put in the first class.  Superior people of moral integrity, honest, loyal, and trust worthy.  Don't grieve over the ones in your past who are no longer a part of your life.  There is a reason they didn't make it to your future.  As you age, you learn what qualities to look for in people and how to identify the ones you want to remain in your life.  And I have been so blessed, for my life has been filled with many such ones.

The old man and the doctor

The old man was at the doctor's office for his routine check-up.  He began by telling the doctor of his urinary problems and of his frequent night time visits to the bathroom. 
"But doctor, I am proud to say God has been very good to me.  When I have to go he turns the light on for me and when I'm finished He turns it off", he announced proudly.
When the old man's wife inquired of the general state of his health the doctor told her of his complaint but then added that the old man believed God had been good to him by turning on and off the light.,
"Oh, my Lord," she exclaimed.  "We have to get home right now.  He's been peeing in the refrigerator again".

Ethyl Remembers: Muscadine Time

It's Autumn.  Well, not quite, but there is a change in the weather that lets you know it's coming. And in my opinion, not nearly soon enough.  The oppressing heat that marked this summer in Memphis for all intents and purposes is past.  It's still in the nineties here today, but believe it or not, it actually feels somewhat cool after the summer we've had.  And there is just a feel in the air.  Can't quite describe it, you just have to know the feel.  Change is on the horizon.

Which brings me to the next memory.  Muscadine time.  I mentioned muscadines to the owners of an inn we were visiting in Nova Scotia and, to my surprise, discovered they had absolutely no idea what I was talking about.  Growing up in Tishomingo County, muscadines were as common as ants at a picnic.  They grew wild in the woods, climbing to the tops of massive trees and producing their sweet, tart, tangy fruit in abundance.  And the Fall was the time for gathering them. We gathered them in large milk buckets and pails, and collected them in our skirt tails, and whatever else we could find to put them in.  We often returned home with the skirts of our dresses permanently stained from where we had bunched them up to our waist and filled them with the deep purple fruit of the muscadine.  After all, just a walk in the Autumn woods was enough to come upon an undiscovered vine, and there was no way we were going to let it's succulent fruit lay on the ground underneath and rot.  It would be gathered and taken home, even at the expense of the few dresses we possessed.

Once home these wild grapes of the woods would be turned into preserves and jelly and even wine.  My mother had a large churn in which she brewed her sweet intoxicating nectar from the fruit of the muscadine vine.  Once properly distilled, we children were allowed to take tiny taste of the sweet spirits.  Never very much, just tiny sips.  It was a taste like no other, totally impossible to describe unless you've experienced it.  Sweet, yet tart,  stronger than cultivated grapes, but resembling them in nature, brisk and uplifting, yet never overpowering. 

The preserves were unique too, in that they were made from the hulls of the muscadine.  Unlike commercial grapes, the wild muscadines had a tough outer peel,  so when the fruit was to be eaten it was placed between your teeth and then the inside popped into your mouth, at which point you spit out the hull and savored the tart, tangy sweetness of the pulp inside.  Jelly could be made two ways.  You could boil the whole fruit and then strain the juice to make dark purple jelly, or you could divide the hull and the center by popping each fruit separately between your fingers,  at which point you could make preserves from the hulls and light colored jelly from the juice of the centers.  When I was growing up, I much perfered the dark jelly.  Not only was it more robust, it also saved us the time and bother of having to pop out all those juicy pulps by hand.

The woods around our house were always a place of delight in the fall.  The smell of leaves just before the decay sets in, pine fragrances lingering in the brisk fall air, heavy, yet refreshing; colors to please even the most discerning taste;  tiny little chill bumps on our arms and legs from the breezes that blew among the trees.

The sheer joy of finding wild muscadines among the fallen debris covering the ground. 

Such a nice memory to call up and reflect on.  Back from the days of long ago.  Days when we gathered the wild bounty of the woods,  took it home, and preserved it for the coming winter.  As I said, such a nice memory.

Ethyl remembers Mama

My mother passed away eleven years ago today.  Once when I was a newly married teenager, an older friend I worked with told me no one would ever love me like my mother.  I was so in love with my young husband at that time to consider the possibility I might ever be that important to anyone else was just beyond me.  Caught up in the wonderful thrill of at last having the young man I was so enamoured with, I had little time to consider such statements.
Two years later when I gave birth to my first child, my friend's words begin to take on more meaning.  I found what it was like to be called on at two o'clock in the morning when I was so sleepy I literally staggered into the baby's room, because his pitiful cries summoned me to produce the fluid he so desperately needed at that moment.  No putting it off and going back to sleep.  No calling on someone else to do it for me.   No one else was available to perform the task.  It fell on me, sleepy or not, sick or not, want to or not.  I had entered the world of motherhood, and at last it dawned on me just how much my own mother had endured, not only to give birth to me, but to also sacrifice her own comfort and well being so that I could have what I needed.
It pains me now to consider just how unappreciative I was of her over the years.  Young and immature, selfish and self centered, just like so many teenagers, the foremost thing in my life was having what I wanted.  Looking back, I don't believe she ever chided me for that, or ever resented it, to my knowledge.  She did what all good mothers do and tried to get it for me.   
When I was happy and things were going my way, she smiled and enjoyed it too.  When I became a teenager and started to correspond with the boys, I would always hand my letters to her and let her read them.  Once I had received a letter from a boy, and when she expressed interest in what it said, I snapped at her.  She didn't always have to read my mail.  She turned away with a hurt look and said nothing.  I felt remorseful and took the letter and handed it to her, telling her to read it, and she just shook her head no.  Remorseful and sad for my actions, I turned and walked out the door to take a little walk and think things over.  In about twenty minutes I returned to find her laying across my bed reading my letter.  She looked up with a shy little grin, just like the bird that caught the canary.  We just smiled at each other without saying a word.  There was no need.  We knew exactly what the other person was thinking.
I also knew she never went totally asleep until all her children were home and accounted for.  That fact seemed to totally escape my brothers.  They never saw the need to account for their whereabouts.  If they knew they were alright, they expected her to know that also.   It never occurred to them she might worry.  Once when my brother and I were talking, I made that statement to him.  He looked at me in total disbelief.  He loved her more than he loved anyone else on earth. He just never considered the fact his actions might be a cause of great concern and worry to her.
Females are different.  I know that fact is not going to surprise the majority of you, but it applies in so many other ways than just the differences in anatomy.  Males and females exist on entirely different planes when it comes to feelings and expressing those feelings, thinking, ways of doing the same thing, and so on and so forth.
The Apostle Paul told first century Christian men to love their wives as their own bodies.  It's interesting he did not say the same thing to the wives.  They were instructed to show honor to their husbands.  Paul knew that a woman by nature would love, whereas a man had to be instructed to do that lest he forget.  I'm not saying that a man can not love and cherish his wife and children, but by nature a woman seems to be equipped for the enormous task of motherhood. 
As the years passed she grew old, and eventually became totally dependent on her children.  It fell to me and my wonderful sister in laws to care for her in very much the same way she had cared for us.  Giving baths and changing diapers, the once cared for became the care givers.  Maybe, just maybe, we were able to return in small portion some of the self sacrificing love she had extended  so unselfishly to her family.

Ethyl Muses: Growing old

It's funny how much your view of life changes as you age.  When you are young you give no consideration to growing old.  You are going to live forever.  Oh, you know someday all humans die, but when you're young that does not apply to you, or else it is so far down the road you never even stop to consider it.  That remains the case until you hit your mid forties, more or less.  Then the mid life crisis sets in.  You must come to terms with your own mortality. You have to deal with the realization that now that particular fact does indeed apply to you. 
When you are in your twenties or even thirties, for that matter, and you see a middle aged man jetting around town in a new bright red convertible sports coop, getting a hair transplant, sucking in his gut, doing everything in his power to look like he's still in his twenties, the tendency is to laugh at the sheer foolishness of the entire process.  The same applies to women.  The gray strands are exchanged for platinum blond, the breasts are surgically enlarged and firmed up, the sagging jaw line and the bags under and around the eyes are removed, the falling derriere is lifted. And sometimes, with either sex, the dead beat drag of a marriage partner is also disposed of  in the process.  They enter into a quest to find themselves.  They both are trying to recapture the youth that has already been spent. 
Life is like money.  You use your time on earth to purchase experiences.  To discover.  To locate that which brings you enjoyment and to dispel that which fails to please you.  And you do have to spend time to collect that knowledge. There is simply no way to get from birth to forty without living it.
Many people fail to understand the difference between knowledge, understanding and wisdom.  Knowledge is the accumulation of information, facts, data, etc.  Understanding is when you begin to see how that information can apply to you, and wisdom is when you begin to apply that understanding to your life in such a way to benefit yourself.  And in order to arrive at the point where wisdom enters in, you have to spend some of your precious life garnering  knowledge and understanding.  It is a sad fact of life, though, that with certain individuals, wisdom does not always come with age.  Sometimes age comes alone.

Ethyl observes: Words

People in general are a queer lot.  I use that word in the same way a sixteenth century Quaker would have used it.  On meeting his friend for a morning stroll one old Quaker said to another, "Everyone be a bit queer excepting me and thee, and sometimes I have serious concerns about thee".  Funny how words have a way of evolving into completely new forms, just the same way a person over the course of a lifetime can evolve into a totally different personality.

The word queer is a prime example.  Three hundred years ago it referred to something that was not quite the everyday, slightly off what was considered to be ordinary and out of sync with everything else around it.  You seldom hear it used that way today.  It almost always refers to people whose sexual orientation differs from the norm.

Another word that comes to mind is apocalypse.  The word originally referred to a foretelling of future events, a revelation, so to speak.  The Biblical Apocalypse was to be source of great joy and happiness, deliverance for the faithful and wonderful future blessings. Thanks to Hollywood and the movie industry, today it has come to mean a global conflagration of the highest order.

The King James Version Bible and the works of Shakespeare are rife with expressions that have changed greatly over the course of a few hundred years.  Case in point is the account in Genesis where Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of stew.  The King James Version Bible says in Genesis chapter 25 and verse 29, 'and Jacob sod pottage', which means in today's English that Jacob was boiling up some stew. 

Another case in point is found in the Bible book of 1 Corinthians 10:25 where the Apostle Paul is advising the Christians that it is alright to eat meat sold in the meat markets although some of it may have been left over from the sacrifices that had been made to idols earlier that day.  The scripture in the King James Version reads, "Whatsoever is sold in the shambles, that eat, asking no question for conscience sake".  I have often wondered if our word today referring to a shabby ill kept resident could have derived from the condition sixteen century butchers kept their shops and meat stands.

Many words today mean just the opposite of what they meant four hundred years ago. Suffer in the sixteenth century meant to allow, let meant to prevent, and raise meant to tear down.

Even Mother Goose suffered as a result of time.  When Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds and whey, today that event would be translated as Little Miss Muffet sat on a footstool eating her cottage cheese.  And pot porridge hot, pot porridge cold, pot porridge in the pot, ten days old, is referring to left over oatmeal that has been continually reheated for ten days.

I can't help but think how similar people are to words in this respect.  They can change so much you wouldn't even know them if you met them forty years after they graduated from high school.  I remember how we wrote in each others yearbooks 'you are my friend forever, I will never forget you.  Today I have trouble remembering  the names of at least half of the students I graduated with.  They ceased to be important to me when I ceased to have daily contact with them.. Just like words and their meanings are forgotten when we stop using them in daily life.

A word my maternal grandmother used to use was carn.  Once when she put out some poison to kill a mouse in her kitchen and it died in her wall the smell was horrible.  I remember her saying it smelled like carn.  I never really knew what she meant until I was helping my son with his Spanish lesson and we came across the words 'carne asada'.  It literally means roasted meat.  I suddenly realized grandma was saying the smell was so bad it smelled like rotting meat.  That was a word I sometimes heard my mother say, but one I have never heard used since.  Just like some people in my life who were no longer there on a regular basis, so this particular word was put back in the recesses of my mind, only to resurface very seldom, if ever.

Sometimes I think how much I have changed over the last forty five years.  Things I desired greatly, such as having every one's approval, no longer matter in the least to me.  I have found that most of the people who did not want me in their lives were for the most part people I would not want in mine.  They did me a great favor when they removed themselves, although when I was young and vulnerable, I certainly did not think so.  I also discovered that when it comes to friendship, quality is far more important than quantity. It is a great blessing indeed  to have a few people in your life who really care, who are loyal and trustworthy, and who would really mourn the loss of you if you were not in the world.  Those people could be compared to the benefit of a few well spoken words at the right time, as contrasted with so much prolific verbosity, spilling forth from certain mouths and cluttering up your world with needless chatter..  The majority of people you know in your life do not really care that much.  They will be friendly and pleasing to be with, but if you died tomorrow, they would come to your funeral, shed a few tears, feel sad maybe for a few days and then in a month's time go back to their lives and after a few years forget you ever existed, for the most part.

Certain people are just like certain words we have pushed to the back of our minds.  One time they were there, we knew them, even enjoyed  them sometimes, but now they are no longer important.  Sometimes the meaning of such people, like certain words, has totally reversed itself.  Instead of longing for their friendship, wishing for them to be a part of our vocabulary, so to speak, we are perfectly contented to carry on without them, even happy to a certain extent we no longer have to deal with them.  After all, there is almost no word that is irreplaceable.  We can almost always find a substitute in the English language for any thought we wish to express.

So don't grieve over people in your past.  There is a reason they didn't make it to your future.

Ethyl Jokes: Famous Quotes

"The happiest marriage I can picture...... would be the union of a deaf man and a blind woman".  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Television allows you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn't have in your home".  David Frost

"Good breeding consist of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of others".  Oscar Wilde