Thursday through the porch window

Ah Smile Warriors, we are on the other side of that hill and sliding toward the weekend on Thursday, October 3^rd, 2013. Everyone raise both arms and go: Wheeeeeeeeeee. It's all down hill from here.

The cats have gotten used to my routine of writing as soon as I get up. Ningee and Napoleon no longer pester me as they know there will be treats when I get to the end and save. Unfortunately their place has been taken by Ice. He is not as aggressive as they are and tends to lay on my knee and watch the letters appear on the screen. I am not fooled. It is just a matter of time before he decides to kill the cursor as that is the way of cats. They are natural born killers.

As such, most people think I am nuts. Humans are naturally selfish creatures that are totally self centered. We only have to look at our ancestors to see those people are wrong. There are very, very few lone mammals. Even the Lion lives in a pride or community. The cheetah is a loner and there aren't many cheetahs. Civilization is not built by a lone person. By simple definition, it takes more than one. That is the actual point at which all the depressive ideas of Ayn Rand and the rest of them fall apart. We are greater as a whole than as an individual. Ghandi would have been a nice guy but if no one had agreed with him and emmulated him, that is all he would have been. The thing is, great leaders never seek followers. People just congregate around them. 'A great leader is one, whom when the task is finished, the people say, “We did this ourselves.”'

This is what happens when you smile and lift someone's mood. They think they did it themselves but the actual exchange of positive energy is what does it and the person is lifted out of their morass. They then, totally by accident, do it another person and soon everyone is happy.

Remember the line, “If mother's not happy, no one is.”? Even the cats are unhappy and moody if I am. Then there is the party and don't invite that person because they are a real “buzz kill”. It used to be someone else would say to invite them and see if we can't get them cheered up. That was often the reason for the party in the first place. A party was when someone knew how to bake a cake from scratch and a real party was if it was chocolate! Where did this pizza thing come from that takes an entire aisle of freezers in the mega grocery? Now it has a new definition as someone who may force you to take responsibility for acts you don't want to own up to like beating some poor homeless person down on their luck.

Everyone tells you to create your own world of abundance and you'll get the best mate, house, car, watch, whatever.... All that doesn't manifest out of thin air. It has to exist my friends. Someone, somewhere has to have that house, car, mate, whatever you want and be willing to part with it. Ooops, that is not what the people selling that dirty little secret want you to know. What if they don't want to give you any part of what they have? The easiest solution is to create a pie in the sky you can never reach, that your basic logic says, “no way” but your heart says maybe. Hope is the real buzz kill, because it knows it doesn't stand a chance, but it keeps you working and working and striving and most importantly, not looking at what is around you, not enjoying your life.

If you read that carefully, you understand what I am trying to do. I am trying to bring you into the here and now, not some rose colored utopia where some invisible idea you have been fed as the ideal is guiding your actions toward a reward in a future in which you don't exist. You are guiding your actions. You are smiling. You are making the world a better place by your actions.

My Grandma hated two times of the day, dawn and dusk, when the veil between worlds is the thinnest. It is also the time most people die. Dawn was the busiest in a world that had begun for her before the Civil War. It was all work and no enjoying the sunrise. It started before light when the rooster signaled the coming sunrise in a barn and kitchen gathering the morning meal and there was no microwave or electric stove just an old worn out coal burner. Coal stoves burn dirty and it was a nasty affair. Dawn was not fun. Then came Dusk and the dying day. Dusk was when you paid for the bargains of the day. Workers were paid by the day in hard money or trade. There was no waiting. Your reward was immediate. Without reliable lighting, everything began to come to a stop and it was time to clean up the day's mess of living.

In her later years, she came to enjoy dusk as she would always take to her bed. Her bed was at the window joining front porch where a huge swing sat. It may not have been that huge but I was small. Everyone would gather on the front porch as the meal was over and through the window, she would engage us without leaving her bed and routine established over a 8 decades. We could all discuss the past, our heritage and things that happened. It was one great gossip fest all the women participated in. The men had their own on the back porch or in the barn or garage. All ages were welcome and you learned not from a history book but from the people who lived it. You were cheered up, taken down a few pegs and taught the reality of the world. You did this and that happened. Ideas were bounced around, picked apart and put back together again. There was a lot of laughter and a few solemn moments as those no longer there were remembered. As I grew old I was more accepted into the men's group than the women's because I was the new breed, the working woman. There was no fanfare, no glass ceiling just a maybe we ought to ask Janice 'cause she does that now. I joined my cousins, all of which were male. I remember the day my cousin said, “You're really beautiful.” I must have looked at him like he had grown another head. He hastily added, “but you're cool.”

Yes, it was another world but one you can learn a lot from because if we didn't work together, everyone in the community failed. We were still mostly farmers, getting our food from relatives in exchange for other goods they needed. My cousin's husband managed a grocery and got a good discount. We got flour and sugar and the nuts and the most desired item of all time: oranges. They got bacon and fresh veggies and canned veggies.

The first time I saw an orange tree laden with ripe oranges just sitting there for the picking, I knew all the religions were wrong because I had found heaven. Then I found kumquats and bananas and began to worship Mother Earth in all her bounty. Yes, I am now a tropical Druid with little connection to apple tree. I don't even remember them or how they hold fruit. Ask me about papayas instead. I have evolved and you will, too. However one thing will always remain the same: the power of a smile.

Go forth and SMILE!