Patrick Jay Sullivan's Blog

At a party this past week we were singing television show theme songs and people were laughing. Hey, try it some time - it brings people together faster than the dinner bell. Any who, I jumped in with "From mountains high to valleys low, they speak the name of Jamie-oh" and there was silence. My friend, Ken, leaned over and said "I believe you and I are the only two people who saw that show and remember it." How can a show run from 1963 to 1965 and feature 26 episodes with young handsome Kurt Russel and no one remembers it. I wasn't old enough to stay up past 8 PM so I only was able to watch from my bedroom door peering into the living room and straining to hear. Every fourth episode or so my mother would feel sorry for me and let me stay up that "one time only" to watch. It was full of action and adventure and I longed to go back in time and be on a wagon train en route to California during the gold rush days. But alas, no one remembers the show except my buddy, Ken. That's the funny thing about television. Some shows are destined to be in reruns for ages and others evaporate from our consciousness.

I have lost friends in life and I have made new ones. This isn’t uncommon. I imagine everyone goes through it. Like a character in a movie such as Stand by Me, we set out on an odyssey and we get caught up in it. OK, so it isn’t a great metaphor. We don’t have a choice in life but to keep going. But the point is, we do get caught up in the journey and we travel with people along the way. I see the whole journey concept a lot more clearly after teaching high school for 31 years. I had a student teacher last year and it was a great experience. When she first came to our school, I was silently and within my self critically of her. She didn’t speak Spanish well enough for my standards; she was too much in theory and not enough in practical real life how do you deal with kids, with teens. But it ended up that I learned as much or more from her as she did from me. It turned out that as I journaled about things and went back to some of the journals I kept my first couple years in the profession, well, I realized that I was in the same place she was at that age. I ended up having the greatest experience with this young teacher. I realized by the end of those ten weeks that teaching (and probably most professions) are part of the journey we call “life.” We meet up with people on the road and they help us. They tell us how to survive conditions they have had experience with. We are all mentors. It is probably the reason why the human race has been so successful- well, that and opposable thumbs.
I think that the biggest lesson for me came when I lost my parents. I just had no idea how tough the journey would be when they crossed to the other side. There is no friend in the world who can measure up to a father or a mother. My mother, especially, was my advisor, my friend and a person who always made time for me. She actually made me feel more important than I actually am in the great scheme of things and for that and several other gifts she gave me along the journey I will love her and respect her eternally. I never had such a good friend and I don’t believe that I ever will. I am pretty sure that is the reason for the scripture: “Honor thy father and thy mother.” While writing in my journal last year, I remembered a conversation that I had with my mom and dad after I had been teaching a few years. It was about when I took off for Spain the first time to study there and how they had given me so much in life. I think it was my mother who said that in life as I go along I should reach out to others and give them a hand once in a while. That is the best way to repay this sort of thing she said. I often wonder if that is why she secretly gave things to people in need, or visited people in the hospital or nursing home all the time. She never got credit for the selfless things she did but I saw many of them and I knew. I never said anything and that is the reason why she didn’t worry about me being around when she did a selfless act. She was a strong woman and with great character so she had a surplus of people who were critical of her. I never heard many people sing her praises. She quietly went about her life raising her kids and doing what she felt was best. She was certainly an outstanding role model.
I guess the only way you can really repay that sort of compassion and genius in your life is to turn around and me a mentor for others who happen along the journey at the same time as you. In a small way, it helps keep the presence that people like your parents had still alive in your life. It gives both ways.

Have you ever been sucked into something and it was something that was a giant waste of time over which you had no control? You know what I am talking about, something about which you felt complete and total indifference. It is hard to get motivated about an event or a process that really means nothing to you. It is a waste of time. Wasting time is the one thing that is really unforgivable. If you stop and think about it, we just have this one life and the amount of time we have on the planet is finite. We can “grow up before our time” and we can “skip a step” and “come out ahead of where we ought to be.” The truth is, we still have the same amount of minutes in our lives. Like the song in Rent about the minutes in the last year of a person’s life, we may not realize just how important a day is until we are down to the last ones we will ever have. That is part of the reason why I don’t get the concept of Daylight Savings. You really do not save any daylight. It is a control measure that allows people to manipulate the clock so that daylight arrives and leaves at varying times. I find myself running around putting the clocks back an hour in the autumn and in the late winter in March putting them forward an hour. Then there is how it affects your sleep and your body the first week or two of the change. It just seems kind of strange to go through that when it means so very little. I still go to work. I still work out in the gym afterwards. Bowling is on Thursdays and I get home too late. Fridays I am tired. Saturday I clean house and go shopping. Life doesn’t really change. I just get put through a few hoops twice a year. I’ll bet there is some son of a bitch somewhere laughing his ass off and trying to think of another plan to wreak havoc on society in general. He must be a politician – probably a congressman.

It’s Wednesday in a week of vacation. A whole week off! Yeahoooooo!!!!! For once I decided not to go anywhere. Despite invitations and prodding I held firm and made up my mind that I was going to clean out the basement and lose twenty pounds. Both of these tasks are pretty formidable. I had a number of well meaning friends tell me that neither was possible and knowing me they did not feel I would accomplish either one. OK, that’s fair. I haven’t been a go-getter in recent years. There are a lot of projects sitting on the back burner to the point that if life were a stove, the whole damn thing would be unusable for lack of space. So I have come to a junction. I have to finish a bunch of things. I have to set some goals and then step by step get things done. This is something that I am good at doing. That is the story of my life. And often I have multiple things going on so that progress looks slow but all of a sudden two or three big things get accomplished after plodding along. It is sort of the story of my life.
I remember when I was preparing for my comprehensive exams in Santiago de la Compostela in 2000 when I read a quote, which I have come to love, off of a motivational tear off daily calendar. It said: “When the time to perform has arrived, the time to prepare is over.” At that time I was worrying about taking the exams and hoping that I could get the MA degree. I only had a year or two before my certificate would expire and without that degree I could not renew my teaching license. The reading list was enormous and there was so much to review and study if I was going to pass those exams spread out over three days. Everyone was intimidated so it wasn't just my personal angst. Well, I did it. I passed the exams, my paper was accepted after I made the final corrections, and I did it. I am now 9 years further down the road of life and I still have some “I did it.” left in me. So I am taking advantage of the February and the April vacation and I am going to achieve some of the goals and clear out some of the uncompleted works in progress. That is why I am going to finish this and then get up and get going and walk three miles. Losing weight is on that stove and that is one item on the back burner that I want moved down to front and center. I don't know how many of the projects I will get done this week. But I do know one thing. I am having a great time working on things and seeing the progress. I am sleeping more and the sleep is deep and recuperative. I am laughing more and listening to music and the things I am doing are fun because I want to do them and I want to see them finished. I can see progress but I am not working all the time on them. I am taking time to do a lot of things. In the end, I think that is the best kind of vacation there is. Sorry Disneyland.

There is something about Christmas that is very inconsistent. It is supposed to be a time when Christians celebrate the birth of their savior. It is a time when people renew friendships and families come together to share meals and spend time with each other. "Peace on earth, goodwill towards men" seems to be a common thread. However, like most major holidays in our country, business has seized it and made it their own. I was watching an episode of Family Guy where they decide to do a reality show of the family and Meg quits. They replace her with an actress. Then the family gets sick of it all and they quit and are replaced by actors for the six-month of the contract for the show. The absurdity of it is humorous but it also reveals just how much control over life the networks and the media has.
Look at it another way. When Barak Obama was elected, they were all gushing about the hope and the prospect he was for the country. Immediately after he began working for the stimulus they began to pound the airwaves with the Republican view of no spending just cut taxes. They even pointed out that tax cuts eventually get passed on to states so that there is no real economic benefit because someone eventually has to pay for the services. Of course, that was swept under the rug when their homie, George Bush was in office. OK, enough politics. The point is that the media sets the expectations for everything. If they don't like your life, they create their own version of it. Actors in essence, replace you. Or at least, you are made to feel as though you life outside the margin of what is normal and actual. The truth is, Christmas can be whatever you make it. I remember my mother telling me the story of how when she was a young mother, my Great Grandmother had her daughters share the hosting of holidays (and she treated my mom as a daughter and loved her like one of her own). Anyway, one of my Great Aunts was a bit jealous of my mother so when it was her turn, she invited all but my mother and our family for Christmas. My mother found out when she called to ask what she should bring and was told "Nothing. But feel free to stop by for desert later on in the early evening." My mother told me she was hurt at first, but then got excited. She figured she could create her own Christmas for just us kids and our father. She could make her own traditions. Of course, that is what happened. My Great Grandmother learned of the situation too late to change it. From that day forward, my mom and dad made their own holidays with just us kids until years later when my grandmother and my great grandmother often came to be with us because it was just plain more fun and with all the kids, you never had to be on guard. The point is, we make our own Christmas. We have to just shut the TV off from November through January and create our own holiday season the way we want it to be. Ignore what others say and have fun with it. That is was it is all about. Celebrate life, family and friends and quit letting business tell us how much to spend, what to do, what to eat and how to think about it all.

Well, it’s official. CBS news reported today that reliable sources such as the AMA have released findings which prove that even being 10 to 15 pounds overweight can boost your probability of heart disease and heart failure as much as 40%. The more overweight you are the more likely you will be to have a heart attack or worse. I suppose I should have seen this coming. My doctor has wanted me to lose the 30 pounds that I packed on after I quit smoking nearly ten years ago. He has been after me for about seven years now. At first he said: “Don’t worry about the weight. The important thing is that you quit smoking. You can lose the weight once you are sure you have kicked the habit for good.” Of course, only a few years later he began to suggest that I lose ten to twenty pounds before the next physical. Then there was the year he got stern and raised his voice. He told me I was borderline obese. Now he says that the danger of me going back to smoking is very slim, if any, and that if I don’t lose that weight I will have a heart attack or more likely, a stroke. He told me all of the things that were on the TV today and more. But the thing is, I still struggle with the second helpings and the night eating and all of those annoying habits that I never had prior to ending my “smoking days.”
The surprising thing here is not that I am overweight given my circumstances. It isn’t that I have been watching too much TV and not getting out and walking like I used to do. It isn’t even that I have taken seven years and still haven’t lost more than ten pounds of the weight I had gained. No, the surprising thing here is that when my doctor told me, it didn’t have the same effect that it had watching a news anchor on the nightly news say those words.
When did I become one of those people who believe everything that is said on the television? When did I become one of those people for whom the TV is the profound source of knowledge? This disturbs me on several levels. In the days before I had cable TV I would read a lot. I read magazines such as Time and Newsweek and kept up on world news as well as local news. I read a lot of fiction and still managed to get out and walk and enjoy exercise. Now that I have cable TV I spend several hours a day parked in front of the tube and I don’t go out walking as much. Granted, here on the east coast there are no sidewalks as there are in the Midwest. They simply won’t spend money on that sort of thing. Nevertheless, I used to frequently opt for off the road into the woods hiking back when I was an avid walker. So that is no excuse.
But there is an even greater problem here. Part of what I see happening in my life is that even when I limit the amount of television that I watch, there are an excessive amount of advertisements for food, scenes in sit coms where people are eating, and lots of suggestions to get a snack and come back to watch more TV featuring food as one of the not so subtle stars in the lineup. I am sure they make a lot of money doing this. This Christmas, while everyone else is busy gaining the 5.6 pounds that the Americans gain during the holidays. I am going to shut off the TV and go out walking until I am so weary that I sink into a deep and restful sleep when I return home. I am going to bring a sketchbook with me and see if I can stop and draw a tree or a cool item I spot out on the walk. I am going to do my weight lifting at the gym and my cardio work on the street or in the woods. I don’t want to be a number among thousands in a statistic on the CBS evening news.

It’s Monday morning after Thanksgiving. You know what I mean. It’s that time when you have to go back to work after a few days off. It’s not really enough time off to go back refreshed but it is definitely longer than a weekend. On Thanksgiving days in recent years I have gone to my neighbors’ house three doors down for the evening and the rest of the weekend I have relaxed in my condo. This year was different. This year I had family from around the US come to visit. It turned the one-day holiday into a five-day holiday.
I don’t know about most people, but for me, family coming to visit does not mean a lot of extra work. I grew up in a large family and people pitch in. As a matter of fact, my sister, who lives ten to fifteen minutes away from me, did most of the work. She and her husband, Bob, hosted the Thanksgiving meal. My sister does not do anything half way. Every detail down to the decorating of her house and the Yankee candle hostess gifts were perfect. There were conversations, laughter, meals shared together and moments of comfortable silence. By the time you hit your fifties you often realize that you can’t make the time you love to spend slow down or stop. You just have to be in the moment and enjoy it for what it is. Like my sister, I will be sad for most of this week. My brothers and sisters from out of town are gone back to their lives. That little piece of family, the family I grew up in is now over. It was a gift. It was a little piece of the past that I hold on to as I watch the news of terrorists attacking and mortgage foreclosures. I will hold on to the memories and look at the photographs and find a way to enjoy the daily routine again.
As people move into middle age and beyond, there is always that possibility that the last time they get together will be the last time. Not everyone feels the same. I have friends and family members who simply don’t like family gatherings or being together. One person I know told his family that he ‘did not wish to have any type of contact with them.” The sign on the door to one of his houses says it best: “If you’re not invited, you’re not welcomed.” I guess that the line between love and hate is very slight. But that is the good thing about life. Here on the Monday after Thanksgiving, I can say a silent prayer of Thanksgiving for the five days with brothers and sisters. I can feel the peace and the contentment for the hours that are left before I hit the ground running at work. I am pretty sure that is what Thanksgiving is all about.

It's not my fault that I am screwed up. No, really I am not entirely to blame for not being the perfect human being so carefully presented in GQ or in the television commercial. Let's face it, genetics can only go so far and the environment has to take some of the blame. I mean, who thinks that Benedict Arnold was born a traitor? Did he wake up one morning and say to himself: "When I grow up I am going to betray my country and be exiled." Yeah, right. No sir! The experiences we have growing up have a profound effect on us.

alter: Remember Mrs. Soandso in the fifth grade?
ego: Which fifth grade? My first or my second one?
alter: Umm, the first I think.
ego Wasn't she a nun?
alter: You're missing the point. The thing is, she made you sit in the closet in the dark
from 8 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. She constantly told you you were
"lazy and stupid." in front of 27 other fifth graders. That's why you're screwed up.

OK, so it's a little over the edge but you get my point. We are always looking to blame someone for the way we are. And the way we are is never good enough for us. And often the memory gets pretty dramatic depending on how many times you have told it and what details have shifted. One of the really good teachers that I had once told our class that we were "works in progress" and that "no one is ever a so called end result." Instead, she insisted, "we are always changing and growing. We are always becoming who we will be." She went on to explain that it is OK to make mistakes and learn from them and grow. She was a nun, a very young and beautiful one who did not fit any of the stereotypes. She was also an extraordinary teacher and human being. The thing is, I learned as much from the really gifted teachers as I did from the bad experiences with the not so skilled ones with whom I spent time. I grew up to be a young man and then a middle age man. I lived my life the way that I lived it and I was fortunate enough to have two parents who gave me some incredible opportunities. In the end, I don't know if it was genetic or environment or something else. I just know that I am responsible for the life I have. We hit a point in our twenties when we are out on our own and earning a living and we make choices. Some of those choices bring happiness and some bring sorrow. If we are able to see our own responsiblity for our life and our choices then we learn how to make better ones. If we just blame our parents, or that bad teacher that I had, or our ex wife or husband etc. we just end up doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

So the next time you are at a party and some half drunk guy is talking about old Mrs. Soandso who was mean to him and expecting you to connect the dots and see that is why he is so messed up in life. Smile and go find a conversation about the new vampire love movie or a soccer mom with lipstick. You'll get a hell of a lot more out of it.

I blog therefore I am. Sound familiar? Well, how about this: "To blog or not to blog, that is the question." Have you ever thought about how much technology has changed the way we speak, act, live and communicate? It’s fairly impressive. Those of us in the fifty plus demographic are sort of like the Neanderthals in the age of the new human species. We are here and are adapting where it is possible and yet our ways are soon to be gone from the planet. I mean, think about it. Do you seriously think that paper books are going to exist outside museums or private antique collections a hundred years from now? What is going to happen to the telephone. I’m guessing that in twenty years the telephone we have in our living rooms will be seen like the huge monster cell phones of the eighties. You know, the ones that smart looking sit com people used to call James Bond or whatever back in 1985. Next to sleek cell phones they look ridiculous now. And the old Apple pc’s are now laughably like the monster strike key typewriters of the 50’s when the electric typewriter was so affordable and popular in the late 70’s.
Let’s face it, it’s not just the hard ware that is now so updated. OMG it’s a BFD. The way we talk and interact via electronic communication is very different. While some old English teachers and high school principals are commenting on the sad decline of the English language a revolution is happening in our world. At some point, ancient texts that are considered important have been transferred to electronic media. At some point, people who want to read the classics will do it on an I phone or a cell phone. At some point, a budding “Shakespeare” will write a new classic in whatever language and it will never be printed on paper. Words and language will change and evolve and it’s OK. Because those of us who feel it to be a sad event or a decline in the high standards of taste that we hold so dear, well, we will be “a moldering in the grave” and long gone. We’ll leave God to figure it all out.

There is something intrinsically ironic about autumn. It is probably the most beautiful of the seasons. After coming off a summer with sun and heat and an abundance of activity, people start back to school, back to work after a vacation and as we all get into a routine again, the weather begins to cool and I, for one, return to a deep and satisfying sleep. Here in New England the leaves begin to change in late September. Slowly we move towards that killing frost and the eventual winter that will bring those nasty colds, heat bills and other nuisances.
This year the entire process is probably a little different because of the election but for those of us who shut off the television and turn off the radio and chose to do other things, autumn is still a radical shift in weather and mood that brings us peace. If I were a religious person, this would be the high point in the year. It is a time of peace and a time for reflection. Those are two things that satisfy the human soul.