The Looney Tunes of Life

One thing that stands out about my generation is that we grew up along with television.  Like most baby boomers, I remember black and white television and having only 2 or 3 channels to watch on T.V.  With so few choices, boomers have common childhood memories about favorite shows like I Love Lucy, The Beverly Hillbillies, Gilligan’s Island, and Looney Tunes.  We knew all the theme songs then and we still remember them now. 

As with television, the musical scores of many movies of our generation like Star Wars, Love Story, and Jaws, elicit an emotional response for us.  Then and now, movies without a musical score are unusual.  One of the most frightening films that I saw as a child was Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 movie, The Birds, which had no musical score.  One of my favorite films is Cast Away (2000, starring Tom Hanks), which has very little musical score.  The absence of music in this film underscored the isolation that the main character felt while stranded on an island.  Like the television theme songs, the musical scores to movies become a part of our cultural history.

Nearly all suspenseful movies use a soundtrack to build our feelings of anxiety and fear as we watch heroes and heroines enter frightening situations.  We sit back in awe of how they saunter fearlessly into their homes, put away their belongings, and delay hitting the light switch.  As an audience, we are in disbelief that the character does not realize that danger is eminent.  Soundtracks in movies alert us to many things in life:  when people are falling in love, when action is about to take place, when the moment is sad, and when things start to move towards the happy ending.

It’s a shame that life has no musical score.  It would be nice to be able to rely on the theme of Jaws to play when there’s a shark in the ocean.  Some romantic music swelling in the background to signal the development of true love would also be nice.  But, alas, we’re destined to go through life with no warnings or signals; we just have to muddle through and figure it out as we go along. 

On June 25, 2012, my husband and I were at the grocery store, tackling the chore of shopping in our usual divide-and-conquer way:  James in one direction with a cart, I in the other, meeting in the middle at the cash register.  We were almost finished when my phone played out the Looney Tunes ringtone, letting me know that my brother was calling.  He told me that an ambulance had been called to take Mama to the hospital.  I was not too terribly alarmed by his call because this was something that had been happening relatively often over the past couple of years.  I told my brother that I would check out our groceries and head to the hospital to meet the family. 

A few moments later at the cash register, my Looney Tunes ringtone went off again.  This time it was my brother’s wife, telling me that Mama was not breathing.

If I had ever written a soundtrack for my life, I would never have chosen the theme music of Looney Tunes to be the last thing I heard before hearing the news of my mother’s death.

The story of our lives follows no script and has no predetermined soundtrack.  We choose what we say and do, we react to situations, we make decisions (belabored or impulsive), but mostly, life just happens.

Looney Tunes may be more appropriate than I thought.

 

My brother, sister, and I in Disneyland, 1973 

Looney Tunes Theme

Happily Unbalanced

I have fallen twice in just a month which confirms what I have always known:  I have poor physical balance.  Two or three weeks ago, I was putting the dogs up for the night and noticed that they needed water.  As I reached over the baby gate to pick up their water bowl, I fell, knocked over their gate and made a big crash.  Poor Dandy was afraid of the gate for about two weeks after that.  Then just a few days ago, I was cutting the grass in the backyard and fell again.  I was backing up the push mower and tripped over my feet.  I suffered a very bad fall on my elbow and ended up going to Urgent Care for x-rays.  Thankfully, I did not have a broken arm! 

Not having good physical balance has caused me only a few limitations in my life.  Although I’ve tried snow skiing, I have not been successful because I cannot maintain balance getting off the chairlift.  I always fall getting off the lift, and it is extremely difficult to get back up on a flat surface when you are on snow skis.  Riding a bicycle, which most people do quite easily, is very hard for me.  Once I start to get wobbly, you can guarantee that I will end up on the ground.   Ask poor James who watched me not once, not twice, but three times fall on the Creeper Trail when we went riding last year.  Each time I got back up and got on the bike.  However, after that many falls, I was too shook up, banged up, and exhausted to finish the trail. 

Long ago, I accepted the fact that I had poor physical balance.  It never hurt my self-esteem because I was good at other things.  I compensated for lack of balance with physical strength, stamina, and courage.  I took pride in the fact that at least I tried… heck, I more than tried!  I went down the Creeper Trail, wrecked three times, and got back on the bike three times.  It was James that suggested that maybe I might have had enough for one day.  Did I give up on physical balance?  No, I just accepted myself.

There is one type of balance, though, that I have always tried to achieve:  balance in life.  Okay… I admit it… I’m not good at having balance in my life either.  I’ve tried to balance career, family, housekeeping, exercise, cooking, hobbies… I’ve not been able to do it.  Whenever I’ve talk to someone about life’s pressures, they always talk about balance… “we must achieve balance.”

A couple of months ago, I started getting back into painting.  It had been a long time since I had painted and my sister was so happy.  She said to me, “You might not realize this about yourself, but you go through a lot of phases and I like this phase.”  You see, the thing is this:  I want to do it all, I can’t do it all at one time, so I have to have these “phases.”  I would love it if in one day I could keep up with current events, sing, read a good book, paint, write, sew, teach, talk to all my friends and family, have fun with my husband, and still manage to keep a clean house, an immaculate lawn, a perfect body, beautiful skin and hair, and be romantic when I went to bed.  This is, sadly, a partial list.

It can’t be done.  It’s like trying to balance too many plates. 

Not to sound judgmental, but it seems to me that the people I know who feel they have achieved balance in their lives just don’t seem to be doing very much.  They’re balancing only a few plates:  work, home, and a hobby.  I think that is wonderful for them, but not all of us would be satisfied with a life that is so narrowly focused.

A very successful young woman that I know recently wrote to me and said,

“Housekeeping has become a much bigger stress to me in the last year. I started taking on projects after my regular work hours and between work and my hobbies, I could not keep my house clean. One of the worst things for me is for my friends, family, or boyfriend to think that I am a poor housekeeper.”

This particular young woman has a teaching career and, when she leaves work, she usually heads out to work on a community project.  She gives, gives, gives all day and then goes home and stresses about whether or not her home is clean enough.

But is it any wonder?  I tried to research the amount of time that the average woman spends on housework.  I didn’t find the answer to my question, but I did find articles and blogs about how women’s waistlines are increasing because they are doing less housework!  Are you kidding me?  Do we really measure a woman’s success by their waistlines and housekeeping skills?  I really don’t think so, because how many eulogies have you heard where they praised a woman’s waistline and clean house?

Where’s the blame?  Maybe we’re just still stuck in the Superwoman phase.  Perhaps it’s the media, our peers, or even Pinterest that we’ve allowed to make us feel that we just aren’t doing enough well enough.  Let me say this:  the responsibility of being satisfied with our lives belongs to each of us.  The Blame Game does no good.

About 10 or 15 years ago, I had a friend that asked me:

·         As a teacher, did I feel that all of my students had to make a 100% on all of their tests?

·         As a teacher, did I define a child’s worth by how they did in my class?

Well, of course, the answer was NO.  Prodding further, we discovered that I was satisfied with an 80% grade from a child who I knew was putting forth maximum effort.  I also valued all of my students as people, even if they failed every single subject in my class.

That day I realized that I applied a stricter grading scale to myself than I did anyone else.  I was expecting myself to ace everything I did in life… not just pass, but excel!  No one else expected me to be perfect; I did this to myself. 

Balance and perfection both seem to be unattainable goals unless you lower your standards.  I could achieve a closer approximation to perfection if I only worked very hard at one thing that came easily to me.  I could achieve balance if I only tried to balance two things.  But if I want my life to be full and challenging, there is going to be less perfection and balance. 

I am working on being happily unbalanced.  Feel free to join me.