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This is Our Life

February 20, 2020 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

Right now, where are you as you’re reading this?

Are you on-line, looking for something to share with friends on your social media stream? Are you leaning over a kitchen counter, using the newspaper as a distraction while you hastily throw food into your belly while on a break between chores? Are you in the employee lounge at work scanning the newspaper that a co-worker abandoned on a table, and you came across this piece? Or maybe, sitting with a cup of coffee on the couch on a Sunday morning is part of your regular routine?

Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, stop for a moment and absorb what’s happening around you (don’t worry I’ll be here when you return). Stand or sit up straight, adjust your posture so your shoulders are back, your head is held high, and your chest expands. Then, take a deep, deep, deep breath and then slowly let it out, releasing any tension you might or might not even realize you’re holding.

Cease all the hub-bub, self-flagellation, to-do lists, and mental noise for just a smidge of an instant and give to yourself the gift of simply “being.”

This moment, in this place, at this time, is your life. It is not lamenting dreams you didn’t accomplish or plans for the future. It is not an inventory of promises unfulfilled. It is not how much – or how little – money is in your account. It is a parade of ephemeral, fleeting moments passing into history, an everlasting mental train of thoughts and observations traveling from today to yesterday.

THIS moment — this NOW — is your life.

What prompted me to wax so philosophically (aside from the fact that I’m incredibly philosophical, insightful, introspective man, of course) started unexpectedly enough, when our washing machine exploded.

Don’t picture a Michael Bay movie; my wife and I leaping to safety in a slo-mo scene as flames burst forth from the Maytag behind us. It was a whimper more than a bang. The valve that’s supposed to stop the tub from overflowing called it quits and opted to not shut off when it was supposed to. Resultingly, upon returning from changing into pajamas, I discovered our kitchen, utility room, and my wife’s studio, were flooded. [Read more…]

Powerless

October 30, 2019 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

November, as we know, is the eleventh month of the year.

It doesn’t take a Fulbright Scholar to know that. Its name (derived from Latin “Novem” meaning “nine”) carried over from the Calendar of Romulus (c 750 BC) when it was indeed the ninth of the ten months in that calendar. (As a side note, January and February were added to the calendar about 300 years later, giving us our present twelve-month calendar.)

A few factoids about the now-eleventh month of the year:

World Kindness Day is celebrated annually on the 13^th. On this day, participants attempt to make the world a better place by celebrating and promoting good deeds and pledging acts of kindness, either as individuals or as organizations.
November also is the home to several “awareness campaigns” including Lung Cancer Awareness Month, Transgender Awareness Month, Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month, Military Family Month, National Adoption Month, COP Awareness Month – and many more.
If you’re tired of seriousness, Blasé Day (really) is celebrated annually on the 25th of the month. On this day we have permission to be blasé’ toward just about anything. To celebrate, it is suggested we yawn, feel “meh” and tune out; posting our actions on social media – but only if we feel like it.

Of course, most of us associate this month with Thanksgiving and gratitude — which I’ll admit has been difficult to feel when, for the last few weeks, our power has been cycling on and off like a strobe light at a rave.

If you don’t live in California, and are therefore not aware of this phenomenon, PG&E, the energy supplier for large swaths of the state, has been “de-energizing” vast portions of their electricity delivery-system as an attempt to minimize fire danger caused by the hot, dry weather and strong winds besieging the (not-so) golden state via what are known as “public safety power shutoffs” or “PSPSs”. The logic is if there isn’t electricity flowing through the power lines, should one be toppled by the gale force winds in a tinder-box parched region, it cannot start a fire. However, if one has listened to the news of late, one knows that California is ablaze from one end to the other. That’s not necessarily the fault of PG&E, but obviously, something more needs to be done.

Whose fault is whose is of little consolation to my inner child when he’s sitting in a light-less household sans heat, worried about food going bad in a lifeless refrigerator and anxious about how to make a living when he doesn’t have electricity.

“Someone needs to do something!” I yell with righteous indignation at no one in particular. “This is horribly unfair! How are we supposed to live like this?”

Granted the anger and frustration are legitimate. After all, this is 2019, not 1819.

[Read more…]

This is Not Normal

August 7, 2019 by Scott "Q" Marcus Leave a Comment

My purpose — as I understand the direction of my editors, as well as my own moral compass — is to try and bring to you a glimmer of light in your day.

As boldly evident, there is much darkness; and whether I write about habit change, attitude, communication, or attempt to crack wise; that objective remains my North Star. To stay true to course, I attempt to steer free of politics (although those who know me know that I have very strong opinions).

Today, I cannot be silent; it would be morally wrong.

Moreover, honestly, I am also finding it near impossible to remain hopeful. That is not me.

We are chewed up yet again by horrific, tragic, awful, terrible, unconscionable, outrageous stories of more mass shootings. This time, the names of the cities are El Paso and Dayton. (Gilroy, barely a week past, seems a distant memory.) I list only cities, as posting the victims’ names would heartbreakingly take more column inches than allocated print space.

I — and I imagine, you — feel like I have been rammed head-first through a meat grinder of emotions unwelcomed, undesirable, and uninvited; mercilessly whipped by a cat o’ nine tails in a sinister torture scene from a B-quality horror movie. We are pin balls bouncing through shock, fear, disbelief, powerlessness, grief, anger; desperately attempting to reclaim balance and serenity, only again to be rocketed off against our desires into the emotional sewage. It is a nightmare from which we cannot pinch ourselves awake.

Whereby we attempt to shield our damaged psyche in denial and say — more a prayer than a fact — it cannot happen here; that too is what the people of Orlando, Las Vegas, and Poway most assuredly believed.