Changing Directions

Why do some people who have always worked at a secure and steady job suddenly pack up the family and move to a ranch in Montana? Why does the farmer’s son leave his patrimony and move to the city for a factory job? Why does someone start a new business on his or her own with all the risks involved? Why these changes of direction?

I know women who have always worked but decided to “drop out” for awhile, and others who have been community volunteers all their lives apply for a paying job. Devoted wives and mothers become career women, while career women quit to spend more time with their families.

Changing directions gives one an opportunity to live a new life. It is as if we have a second chance to become someone else. Divorce and singleness or re-marriage can give us that opportunity. We can renew ourselves in different relationships or different environments. On the one hand, we always remain the same core person, but on the other hand, we also adapt to our circumstances. So if we have a hostile spouse or boss, we become cautious or defensive; but if we have supportive people around us, we can allow ourselves to be trusting and grow—expanding our horizons.

We should not need the proverbial mid-life crisis in order to take a sharp departure. When daily life is beginning to lose its luster, when we wake up in the morning and sigh with discouragement at the day ahead—and this happens week after week, month after month—then it’s time to take a look at what’s missing and what does sound appealing. The grass may indeed only look greener on the other side of the fence, but it’s important to check on that color, maybe it is more to your liking.

Which of your friends or acquaintances do you envy? Whose life do you wish you had? What steps do you need to take to live that life? Are there new work- or relationship-related skills to acquire or spruce up? Are there risks to be taken, friends or professionals to consult?

I have changed directions several times in my life and have always felt that it gave me opportunities to live several lives: as wife and mother, as middle-aged student, as clinical social worker, as university professor, as author, to live in Europe with one husband and in the United States with another.

These life changes allowed me to not only move in totally different environments but to respond to these environments as a new person—learning and testing new skills and behaving in ways unfamiliar to me. In other words, one’s repertoire gets enlarged and one becomes richer in life experiences. Travel can do this too, but it’s more limited in time and scope, unless of course, one lives for a period of time in a different culture.

Surprisingly, knowledge and skills are translated from one type of work to another. Who we are, what we know, and how we think are useful no matter what we do; and the more we know and experience—the more we bring to the table next time around. Now this sounds like I’m advocating change for change’s sake. I’m not. What I’m advocating is fearlessness. If one’s situation is not satisfying, whether at home or work, and everything has been tried to ameliorate this situation—it is an option to look for something better.

Yes, there is risk involved. You may leave a lousy mate or job but not find anything better. And yes, staying in a bad situation does afford you the comfort (and discomfort) of the experience of a familiar situation and familiar pain. Obviously embarking on a new adventure has no guarantees. But even so, meeting the unknown head on is a challenge that may help uncover new resources within yourself.

Most people regret what they have not done, what they have missed, the road not taken, the risk avoided. Very few people are sorry that they tried something new, even if they didn’t succeed the way they expected to.

As a people, we seem to strive for competence in whatever we do. And once a high level of competence is achieved, we look for new opportunities to grow and learn. It’s OK to stay put if satisfied, and OK to move on if not.

So try your wings and fly away to unknown destinations, meeting new challenges that will need new skill and solutions, but more importantly, can bring new delights.

Copyright © 2012. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.

Our Stories

Once upon a time, long, long ago, in a faraway land, in a castle on top of a hill, lived a beautiful princess…. Well, we all know that there must be, somewhere, an equally handsome prince. But we also anticipate a witch, an ogre, or a dragon—preferably one breathing fire.

Fairytales are stories for children. Some are for pleasure only, many are morality tales: If you have long hair, the prince may climb it up to the tower and save you. If you are a true princess, you will feel the pea under the stack of mattresses, get awakened by a princely kiss, or fit into a glass slipper. If you go beyond appearances and kiss a frog or love a kind-hearted beast, you will be rewarded with the love of a prince. If you are a child, you can get lost in a wood and almost eaten by a witch or a wolf, climb a giant beanstalk, or be as small as a thumb or as large as a giant.

As adults we still love our stories. Throughout history, stories have been passed on, as oral tradition or as the written word. Our morality tales are in the Bible, the Koran, or the Ramayana. We tell stories around campfires. Our movies and plays tell stories, and our operas sing them.

“Mommy, tell me that story again” is a frequent request. We like to hear the same story over and over because it is comforting to know how it will end. Even new stories tell the same tales: the proverbial boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl; or boy fights off enemies to become a hero and win the girl; or if he doesn’t win the girl, he stars in a musical, gets a medal from the president, invents a lifesaving device, saves a child from a burning house, or overcomes some incredible adversity and his team wins the state championship.

We like stories, they enhance our lives, give us heroes to emulate, teach us ways to cope with our issues. We watch sitcoms to hear stories of other people’s lives, we see horror films to scare us in order to make us feel good about not having to be scared in our daily lives—it is happening there, not here. We watch comedies that make us laugh because it also helps us laugh at our own foibles; and we see romantic films to make us dream and hope for some wondrous outcome for ourselves or just to make us happy that love exists and flourishes somewhere. We read scary stories and uplifting ones, biographies and histories, comic books and bodice rippers, and we listen to books on tape while we drive. We have kindles and iPads in order to travel with more books without the burden of having to carry them.

We learn from stories, we live vicariously through stories, we are storytellers and rapt story listeners. Our newspapers are really only stories—how that game was won, what the president said, what the movie is about, how the conference went, what that medical discovery will do, how someone got hurt or escaped or went to jail. We have pictures to tell stories of celebrations and defeats. We have photos of the latest fashions and natural disasters, of hungry children and famous people. Every day, in print or on the screen, someone is married or divorces, wins the lottery, fights a war, or hopes for peace. Every day, someone is born, someone is ill, recovers, or dies. Every day, we are admonished, harangued, given advice and recipes for our kitchens and our lives. We are told to buy or to save, to meditate or to travel, to eat low-carb or high-protein diets, to keep up with news or to turn off the TV.

Our newspapers, books, magazines, and TV screens are like large classrooms, from which we keep learning whether it is the latest news or the latest gossip, our brains feed on continuous information. It is a way of staying in touch and now more than ever we do so through Facebook and tweets.

We are a people who live and learn by stories. We have our own morality plays, and so I would like to end with my own morality tale, which I like to tell myself when I feel I don’t do enough to save the world—or if not the world, someone who may need a little help.

One day, after a storm, a little boy is standing at a beach littered with hundreds of dying starfish tossed up by the waves. As he starts throwing them back in, an old man is watching him and says: “Little boy, what you are doing won’t matter, you will never be able to save them all.”

To this the little boy replied: “But to each one that I throw back, it matters.”

And so it is—please tell me another story, it can be one I heard before, like the one about the little boy and the starfish.

Copyright © 2012. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.

Consumed by Our Consumer Society

THINGS! More things to clutter our desks, our shelves, our homes!

Years ago, on our way to Borrego Springs, just past Dudley’s bakery, we saw a man carving a bear with a chain saw. There were several bears in various stages of completion, some standing, some sitting. One was holding a salmon in his front paws. He was about four feet tall and was almost finished. We stopped and asked if he was for sale. Yes he was, and not too expensive. We gave a deposit and said we would pick him up on our way back home.

The bear is now standing by the front door to my apartment at the White Sands of La Jolla, and I smile at him as I pass by. He gives me pleasure, but did I “need” him? This was, of course, totally “impulse buying.”

Planned purchases require a four-step process. First, there must be an awareness of need or want. Second, there is the search for the object, either by going to a store, looking through a mail-order catalog, or going online. Third, there is the actual act of acquiring the object, which may include bargaining. And fourth, there is the ownership of the object by either using it, wearing it, eating it, looking at it, or listening to it.

Impulse buying has none of these elements—you see it, it sings to you, you want to possess it, you might deliberate for a few seconds about the fact that you don’t really need or maybe you cannot really afford it, and then you buy it anyway because practical factors don’t really play a part in the decision. Acquiring something you want triggers the pleasure centers of your brain.

Some people, mostly collectors, enjoy the hunt, the challenge of finding something rare. They will own the object for a while, then sell it and look for another. Other people are packrats: they like owning a lot of stuff and live in cluttered houses, often to the dismay of their spouses.

I know for myself, when I pass a frozen yogurt place, I stop and indulge even when I’m not hungry. It’s good, so why not? I have read that one should never grocery shop when hungry because one buys on impulse. When my husband and I traveled, we bought souvenirs that ended up gathering dust in unseen corners of the house. Our kids begged us not to bring them anything anymore from exotic places. Tour buses and cruise ships have shopping tours, shopping stopovers, and almost everyone helps the economy of the countries visited, returning home saying, “where shall we put it” or “who can we give this to?”

I remember, as a child in Europe, our families took dominical walks together. We strolled on Sundays enjoying the various parks near Paris. Later, when I had children and lived in Switzerland, families went walking in the surrounding countryside. That was the weekend activity. Today, families go to the mall. When my granddaughter was a teenager, she went to the mall with her friends with nothing special in mind, and they returned with “must have” items such as blue nail polish or another T-shirt. Shopping is now equated with other legitimate leisure activities.

The lines are too often blurred between “need” and “want.” Do I need the sweater in the store window? Probably not. Can I use it? Probably yes. Do I want it? Definitely. So do I buy it? Mail order catalogs, beautifully displayed store windows enticing customers to come in and browse, and ads in newspapers, all beckon us to spend money—to own more. Now we own too much because we are prodded by our environment and our culture to keep buying—to respond to our fleeting desires for this or that not-really-needed object.

We used to go to the local library to borrow books, now we buy them. I remember shortening dresses and skirts when fashions changed and adding hems and borders to lengthen them when the new look was longer. We re-heeled our shoes, darned our socks, and even took our stockings with runs to the woman who specialized in re-weaving them. We made do, it was good enough; perfect was not in our vocabularies. Our aspirations were more limited. We were not bombarded by so many promising ads.

Were we less stressed because of fewer choices, less need to make constant decisions? I do not know, nostalgia creates memory gaps, but I do know that we should all do less shopping, own less, get rid of clutter, and have a life free of too much stuff. Discarding something often feels like a loss and that can trigger stress hormones, which is why it is so hard to get rid of things. So far I am a failed minimalist.

Copyright © 2012. Natasha Josefowitz. All rights reserved.