The VERY Best Exotic Ellie B

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel opens tomorrow “in theaters nationwide.”  Which got me thinking about when I first watched – and rewatched – its predecessor when it hit theaters four years ago.  (A huge Judi Dench & Maggie Smith fan!)

 

Am still intrigued by how my experience of the film mirrored my experience of life.  Started out connecting in one way, ended up transformed in ways & by people I could never have imagined.

Evelyn (Judi Dench) & Douglas (Bill Nighy) were the characters who originally grabbed my attention.  Loved his dissolute aging rocker in Love Actually, she first caught my eye in Room With A View (also opposite Maggie Smith!) & I'm certain  Ian Fleming would be delighted with her M.  

        

Never occurred to me that the characters who’d stay with me to this very day would be Maggie Smith’s ill-tempered tetchy testy Muriel, the elderly Brit who was only there to get a cheap hip replacement, then it was home to England for her – and not fast enough – and the aptly nicknamed Sonny, Dev Patel’s character, who was always upbeat, always looking for & expecting the best.

I enjoyed the film immensely, until almost the very end.  Then I was riveted.  

 

Through most of the film, Sonny was the character I responded to the least, expected to only remember for introducing a new generation to the great John Lennon quote, Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end.   

He finally grabbed my attention when he shared with his leery mother, “I have a dream, MummyJi, a most brilliant one. To outsource old age! And it is not just for the British, there are many other countries where they don't like old people too! “    

 

But Sonny is on the verge of losing his dream – which really is a unique, potentially highly marketable view of what his hotel offers & a singular personal style that would make it a great success IF he had organizational & business skills to match his enthusiasm & vision.  

Alas, the young visionary is hapless when it comes to having the practical mechanics to make it actually happen.  His gift is seeing what a crumbling hotel could be, seeing it in his heart, in the very fiber of his being.  His dream is doomed because he lacks the balancing skills to make it so.

Crabby, constantly complaining Muriel can’t wait to shake the dust of India off her feet & return to England, even knowing there’s no one waiting there for her, nothing other than a tiny apartment & even tinier government old age pension. She loathes everything about India, as evidenced in her scathing, “And you know who'll be there, don't you? Indians! Loads of them, with brown faces and black hearts, reeking of curry! I mean you never see just one, do you? They travel in packs, makes it easier to rob you blind!”   

But although Muriel’s view of India seems darker than the brown faces & black hearts she sees all around her, it turns out that she has the life-redeeming quality of being able to see things differently.  Her attendant, a young Indian woman who becomes fed up with her charge’s constantly insults to her & everything about her culture & country, introduces Muriel to her family.  That cracks the crusty protective covering around the elderly Englishwoman’s heart, although she continues to be her cynical sharp sarcastic self with her fellow hotel residents.

There was no way that even the ever upbeat Sonny could have foreseen that Muriel would be his knight on shining armor, rescuing his dreams with the touch of exceptional organizational skills she honed working for a family that ditched her once the children had grown.  Nor could she have imagined this eternally optimistic young Indian would be her salvation.

 

At the end of the film, they are an unbeatable pair – Sonny brings the vision, Muriel the skill & experience to translate it into effective action steps; together they create a successful business.  

   

Sonny’s vision of outsourcing old age from around the world to exotic, dirt cheap India could prove a winning idea IF underpinned with an equally visionary, viable business plan.  Muriel has spent a lifetime being a priceless but unvalued go-to person for every sort of household problem – including handling her employer’s home & finances.  It was an unlikely match made in heaven (or nirvana) that completes Sonny & makes Muriel whole. 

Coming out of the cinemaplex, mused on the parallels between myself & Sonny.  Visionaries, but ungrounded in basic business practice.  Sonny needed skills he lacked – unlike his older brothers, one a successful banker in Delhi, the other making his fortune in Canada – and hadn’t the aptitude to just pick up.  His gifts – which were considerable – lay elsewhere. 

Where is my Muriel, the blessed other who will help balance my vision of engaging energizing empowering oldsters & ancients to live! live! live! as expansively as possible, to share with young-olds & old-olds, their families & friends all that I’ve read watched heard observed experienced about eldering, about "s-aging not aging"?  

 

Is she a person or a something else that will help me find the basic practical grounded business skills needed to transform?  Because, like Sonny, they are not suddenly going to miraculously be mine.  My gifts – which are considerable – are elsewhere. 

Like Sonny, I know my vision - of making aging as expansive an experience as possible for all ages, for individuals families institutions – is no pipe dream.  Yet, I’m not going to wake up one morning with a well-honed set of business skills & savvy.  

Where, what is the Muriel destined to make me the VERY Best Exotic Ellie B* possible?    

Yes, I do have an agenda! Here it is...

The #1 problem for creatives is figuring out which of all the ideas zipping around their brain are the ones worth their time & energy & resources.  MOST creatives, I'm sad to say, are sidelined - not by their lack of ingenuity or commitment to pursuing specific ideas, but by not identifying & setting aside the overwhelming majority of ideas, which aren't worth more than a nod of interest.

What's my agenda for 2015, what do I want to pursue this year?  

• Senior Mission Statement project  - take the lead, but work on through the Pastor's Office (who is their Senior Initiatives coordinator?)
• Healing Choirs - I croak more than sing, but can spearhead organizing a resource base for community singers available for people who would appreciate an in-home hymn-along, introduce a monthly songfest at Cairnwood Village.  Make it open to olders & ancients throughout our community, arrange rides to & from.  Through Pay It Forward?
• Write Gran-FAM-boly! - a book of about 20 activities for families & friends to do with aunts & uncles, grandparents & greats, and other grands.
• Write & submit crowdfund request - underwrite professional development, computer expertise & 2015 workshops & conferences, including  Leading to Well-Being (the only one I'm definitely going to) and - hopefully - National Conference for Creative Aging,  BlogHer 2015,  Choosing Conscious Elderhood,  Shamanic Wisdom for Living - and Dying - Well,  Carolyn Myss - Navigating Changes in Your Life 
• Final Wish File - work with the Pastor's Office to develop a way for people of all ages to note preference for ministers, hymns, even location for their funeral.
• Monthly THANK YOU Potlucks - another Pay It Forward project, where groups of families put on a monthly pot luck at Cairnwood Village in appreciation for all the awesome role models & mentors.  Make it open to olders & ancients throughout our community, arrange rides to & from.  
• Movie & Martinellis - expand this to be a community use, not just myself, Anne & John putting it on.  Encourage residents to invite youngers.
• Cyber Access for the Technically Timid - working with all ages, especially oldsters & ancients, to write musings meanderings memories, in a similar fashion to how I was Mom's scribe & muse for writing her 2000-2001 Mindwalker1910 e-mails.  Much to be gained, honoring the past. 
• Encourage BACNC & Cairnwood Village ties - our local college's strong caring character makes this a natural fit! 

  

One last, always & forever! - read watch listen observe experience & share everything I can about eldering, about "s-aging not aging," about living as expansively as possible, however young or old.  Build my knowledge & resource base, then freely offer all I know to help families & support oldersters & ancients stay engaged energized empowered!   

  

Star light, star bright

 

Following a wonderful night's sleep filled with unremembered, glorious dreams, am deliciously giddy, realizing I’m at the right place at the right time with the right background & passions.  

Even more WOW is realizing that my weaknesses put me in an even better place than my strengths.  Well, recognizing & addressing them with verve & joyful expectation does.

At 63, I get to not exactly turn my life around, but to get it firmly on track for being lived better than ever before.  In this, I have a great precedent & fabulous role model in no less than my mother.  Yes, Katharine Reynolds Lockhart, my greatest nemesis AND my greatest ally.  She made astonishing leaps in her late 80s, early 90s.  She will be my shining light of what’s possible.

At the beginning of this year, I would have said my truest calling is to be an elder care solutionist, finding & sharing ways for oldsters & ancients to live as expansively as possible.  Last night, it hit me that another part of my truest calling will be found in the very  processes used pursuing it. 

Let me explain.  I spent way too many decades wishing & hoping for things to be the way they weren’t.  To have the sort of supportive, empowering family friends  support systems I envisioned others having – that I didn’t.  To be sought out as a friend, someone who attracted mentors & was valued as one.  To have the sort of intelligence that engaged & nurtured discussion.  To play at the top of my game, rather than dilly dally around. 

In other words, I pretty much embodied what Don Miquel Ruiz describes in The Four Agreements- “Humans punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believe  they should be.”  I spent 50+ years being equally foolish.

Balderdash!  There is one & only one ME.  No one else has the life path I’ve trod, no one else has the opportunities that beckon.  How many people – of all ages – abdicate living their lives because they look across the way & think that others have it better.  They are them  & you are you! 

 

Which brings me to Mom.  I doubt she had the slightest idea how truly remarkable she was.  She never thought of her life as anything out of the ordinary.  She did what had to be done. 

If that meant making dinner for an elderly friend who lived a mile away, down one hill, up two others, walking there whatever the weather, trusty pick in her hand when there was ice afoot, then she did it – into her seventies! 

If that meant heading down every early spring to Bermuda as a companion to an elderly friend, then she did it. 

If that meant making seven trips to Australia between ages 65 & 85 to help with grandchildren, then she did it. 

If that meant doing the thing she feared most for the sake of a greater good, then she did it. 

The woman drove me nuts at times, almost around the bend, but Mom was Mom, herself.  If I helped in any way to clear away obstacles in her path, then now she has the opportunity to return the favor, serving as angel guide & cheerleader.

Time to take all the things that were, all the things that are, and have a blast doing all that can be done with everything. 

Do I have the slightest clue what that might actually be?  Nope.  But I know that it will be pretty darn magnificent. 

This morning, I find myself thinking time & again of Don Miquel & his four agreements.  Of first reading, many years ago, “If you live in a past dream, you don't enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is. There is no time to miss anyone or anything because you are alive.” 

How it thrilled me, first reading, “One day, he dreamed that he saw his own body sleeping. He came out of the cave on the night of a new moon. The sky was clear, and he could see millions of stars. Then something happened inside of him that transformed his life forever. He looked at his hands, he felt his body, and he heard his own voice say. "I am made of light, I am made of stars.”

We are made of stars.  Act like it! 

It doesn’t matter that it took Mom until she was almost ninety to risk everything to perhaps gain something of value, maybe not – there were no guarantees what she'd end up with, but she took the leap & in doing so revealed the bravest person I’ve ever known, a role model for all time.   

Now, it’s my time & turn.

This might read like a lot of twaddle blither piffing.  But I get it & it was important to me to share it.  Am on a remarkable adventure that will take me to the end of my days,  at least in this life.  Am filled with joy, with the glistening light of countless stars.  Just had to share, to say thanks to Mom, to a generous Universe that leaves me gasping in amazement at everything. 

“You express your own divinity 

by being alive 

and by 

loving yourself and others.”   

Don Miquel Ruiz

Lessons learned - assertiveness (How To Be An Adult)

            

Lessons learned from reading David Richo on assertiveness:

You don't hurt others' feelings by being assertive.  If they seem to be, check to see if you've slipped into aggression & right your course.  Or maybe they aren't comfortable with assertive people or your assertiveness has triggered old fears or sadness.  Don't take it personally.

Stay focused on assertiveness  - yours  & any others - and not be distracted by argumentativeness.  This is so important in inter-family situations, where triggers are so easily set off.  Patience understanding compassion.

Assertiveness is not a strategy for getting what YOU want.  It's ways  & means of manifesting your deepest values & authenticity.  In the end, the outcome is just secondary - being your authentic self is primary.  This was a WOW insight for Mom.

We are challenged to know when assertiveness in not appropriate.  I learned that there are people with whom it feels futile.  I distance myself because they seem to experience me as toxic, which boomerangs back so they are toxic to me.

Be informed by others' behavior rather than affected by it.  Let yourself observe it without reacting to or being controlled by it.  This was a major AH HA! for me.
While you may ask others to hear, acknowledge, understand your feelings, do not need their validation to be who you are. 

When you act assertively with others or they do with you, it shows that you/they value each other.  This is always powerful, but when it is mutual - ZOWIE!

Assertiveness is self-empowering AND other-empowering.

Assertiveness makes clarity possible.  You aren't depending others for how you share information;  you're doing what seems right to you.  When you speak from authenticity & integrity, you've "shot your bow" - done the best you could.  The other might not like it, but it is genuine.

There are times that assertiveness feels scary, risky.  Hey, you're sharing what is real without any guarantees how it will be received.  But a key part of assertiveness is letting go of trying to control circumstances, other's behavior.

It's impossible to be assertive AND hold onto control.  Having a protective net under the high-wire act of life feels safe, but what looks like it protects us actually keeps us fettered.

Assertiveness means that you're clear with what you think & say, but not necessarily with being sure.  While it's essential to say yes when you mean yes & no, when you mean no, there will be times you say maybe or I'm not sure.  The point is not being definitely one way or the other, but honest.  

My mother became more comfortable with being assertive as she edged into ninety.  It took me until my fifties to realize that there are some people who seem to experience assertiveness as aggression, no matter how much you try to sooth their fears - don't take it personally.  

There is no age limit on learning better ways to communicate with each other, but it does require a willing heart & a kind spirit.