I have a very dear friend. She’s around my age. I’m 64. She’s very, very worried about her wrinkles. She’s feeling that as she gets older, she’s losing her beauty. This makes her a little sad. She’s one of the more beautiful women in the world.

I’m out of the mainstream on this one, always have been. My mother was 43 when I was born. Back then it was almost a scandal. The doctor misdiagnosed her pregnancy symptoms, thought it was menopause and recommended a hysterectomy. Fortunately, my mother’s farm-girl wisdom was stronger. She knew.

The point though is, as my mother always told me when she was lecturing me, “No matter how old you get, I will always be 43 years older than you.”  I had the benefit of being born to a beautiful older woman.

I saw both my mother and her sister, my aunt, age into old age. My mother lived to 91. So I saw her over time for almost 50 years.

With my mother and aunt, as with all my relationships, I find love deepens and grows the longer I know someone. By the time it turns into decades, the love I feel has reached the depths of my being and is profound.

And with that love is a profound happiness of being with them.

As I love someone, they become more and more beautiful, or handsome, to me. So to me, my mother and my aunt both became much more beautiful as they went into their 80’s and 90’s. By the time they passed away, they were the two most beautiful women in the world. Their eyes, the most beautiful eyes in the world.

The very last time my mother looked at me, she was in a hospital bed. She gazed at me for two solid hours without speaking. The love radiating from her eyes was the most potent, most pure, most overpowering love I have ever seen radiate from any human being ever in my entire life.

She was beautiful with a beauty I have never seen duplicated before or since.

The last time my aunt looked at me, she too was in a hospital bed, love radiating from her eyes, her face more beautiful than any I had ever seen. Her last words to me were, “Tu esi mano saulyte” which is Lithuanian for, “You are my little sunshine,” words she said holding my hand and holding my gaze with her powerful love more tightly, more strongly than anyone had ever held it before.

To this day, they are the two most beautiful woman in the world to me. Those particularly poignant moments of beauty were preceded by thousands and thousands of other moments of extraordinary beauty.

My sister, Justine, is the third in my “top three” most beautiful women. She’ll kill me if I tell you how old she is, so the only thing I will tell you is that she’s my older sister and I fell in love with her when I was born.  I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world, more than any movie star.  I simply adored her and, once I could walk, I followed her everywhere like a little puppy. I’ve known her my whole life, so you can imagine how much my love has grown for her over the years and how beautiful she is to me. But, I am not alone. Many people think she’s exquisitely beautiful. She still turns heads and outdoes her Zumba instructor and every other student in the class.  Justine has a blazing personality that expresses itself in everything she does, including how she dresses. If you were in a room with 100 people and she was one of them, she would be the one who would draw you like a magnet to talk with her.

Somehow flawless skin and a cover-girl version of fabulous hair never did it for me.  Nor the chiseled handsomeness of the men many women swoon over.  Quite honestly, it often left me cold.

I went to all-women’s college that was loaded with homecoming beauty queens. I found most of them irritating and annoying and stayed away.

Wrinkles have never bothered me. I actually get a kick out of them. I think I have one on my face for every year of my life. I’ve kind of enjoyed watching them come in. There’s one I particularly like. It’s on my left cheek and makes a particularly interesting path, especially when I smile.

I get facials and use fabulously high-quality skin products because I believe in taking care of myself. I like being healthy.  I eat right, I exercise, I get enough sleep, I’m the right weight for my height, and I feel great. Physically, emotionally, spiritually.

I’m filled with a tremendous sense of well-being and joy that grows every year.

My work has gotten better and better and better and I’m more thrilled with the results I’m producing now than I ever have been in my life.  I love thinking about the future.

I think most importantly, my capacity to love has grown and deepens with each passing day.

So, I’m a 64-year-old woman who enjoys the entire process of life.  Life and I both get better each year I’m alive.

Two weeks ago I was at the farmers’ market. I was buying pears from the fig farmer I love (see my August 31 blog if you want to know why). There was a good-looking guy behind me, probably 15 or more years younger than I am. I was joking around with the farmer and the guy behind me joined in, so we all started joking around with each other.  It was a great time we had!

Then last Sunday when I went back, the fig farmer said to me, “You know the guy behind you? He paid you a real compliment. He said he really enjoyed talking with you.  He said he really likes you and he thinks you’re a very attractive woman.”

I couldn’t stop laughing. I don’t even comb my hair to go to the farmers’ market. I’m 99% sure it’s sticking out all over the place. I don’t even look in the mirror. No makeup. I look like a woman who just woke up. The sloppiest, baggiest sweatpants and sweatshirt you can imagine. They’re not even color-coordinated and frankly, I think they clash now that I think about it. Loaded down with bags of kale and vegetables, I think I look a little like a mule.

My first thought was, “What on earth possessed this guy to say that?” My second thought was that he was nuts. My third thought was, “Ha! I get it.  Happiness is beautiful.”  I understood.

I don’t believe he was coming on to me. I think it was just a sincere compliment. and I appreciate it. Because what I was feeling was beautiful. And I think that’s what he saw.

This whole subject makes me laugh.  When you’re young, it’s called “growing up”.  When you’re my age, it’s called, “aging”.

So how do I feel about aging? I like it.

My friends are all getting wrinkles. I like them. I don’t tell them how much I like their wrinkles because I don’t want to put their attention on them and I think most people wouldn’t get it. I think they’re the most beautiful and most handsome people in the world. I love looking at my friends. They are becoming more beautiful and more handsome all the time.

No doubt about it. Happiness IS beautiful. And makes us beautiful.  Beyond time.

May you be filled with it.

Love,

Ingrid

 

I’ve been on a spiritual retreat for the past couple weeks and it’s gotten me into a rather sacred frame of mind.  Got me thinking about the soul.

Soul is such a small word for such an immense concept.

We humankind have been talking about the soul for a very long time. I became curious what people thought about this word through the ages.  I decided to take a trip through its meaning down to its derivation, an odyssey which can take you straight to a word’s conceptual DNA.

I dove into some really good dictionaries, especially the big, fat, older ones.  There are a number of very good ones.   I dug into Daniel Webster’s 1828 Dictionary extensively because the soulful quality of his definitions drew me in the most.

This is what I put together.

I started my journey with the brain, which is talked about a lot these days, to explore its relationship to the soul.

Dictionaries say the brain is the part of the central nervous system enclosed in the cranium of humans and other vertebrates, consisting of a soft, convoluted mass of gray and white matter and serving to control and coordinate the mental and physical actions.

I don’t know about you, but that does not sound attractive to me. Actually, soft convoluted mass of gray and white matter sounds a bit, well, convoluted and rather disgusting to me. Necessary, I agree, but most definitely not attractive.

The word brain comes from Greek brekhmos which means front part of the skull, top of the head.  Pretty straightforward. No mention of any relationship with a soul.

So then I delved into the mind.

Dictionaries say the mind is the intellectual or intelligent power in man; the power that conceives, judges or reasons.  It comes from the Indo European root word men which means to think.

So, it’s a power, but it doesn’t seem to have a physical location. It’s just a power we have, the power to think.

Soul is so much more.

Unlike many other words, they don’t really know where this word comes from.  Dictionaries say, “uncertain origin”.

So I like to think of this word as universal and not really having just one source.

Soul is the spiritual, intelligent and immortal substance in each person; the invisible animating principle or entity which occupies and directs the physical body; understanding, the mind, thought, and the faculty of reason.

That’s a mouthful, so I took it one bit at a time.

The soul is a spiritual substance.

Spirit is the intelligent, immaterial (which means not consisting of matter, not in the physical universe) and immortal (mortal = subject to death, immortal lives on) part of human beings.

Unlike the brain, the soul does not exist in the physical universe, although it has an extremely real existence.  Big difference between the two.

The soul is the spirit which animates existence.

Animate means give life to. It comes from the Latin animare which means give breath to, to give courage to, from anima which means life, breath.

The soul DIRECTS the body and the mind.  It operates senior to the body, the brain and the mind.  Think of the body, brain and mind like parts of a car and the soul as the driver controlling where it goes.

The soul is the emotional part of a person – enables us to feels emotion – happy, sad, falling in love, the many, many emotions we feel.

The soul is the source of creativity and aesthetics.

It’s also, as Daniel Webster writes, that part of man which enables him to think and reason, and which renders him a subject of moral government. In other words, it’s the seat of our conscience, our character.

The soul is what keeps us from being brutes.

All dictionaries were consistent on this point:  the soul is the source of internal power.

It’s the source of our courage, fire and grandeur of mind.

And I think most importantly, the source of our consciousness.  There’s an awareness we have that goes way beyond our bodily eyes.  It comes from the soul.

Each person has or is a soul.

It’s the part of us that experiences inspiration.

Wanting to help others, kindness and compassion come from our soul.

It’s the source of my writing.  I don’t write from my mind, I write from my soul.

I believe it’s the source of our magic.

Compared to the soul, the brain is about as interesting to me as the liver (in other words, not really).  The soul operates the brain and as far as I can see, mine is taking good care of it.  I have no doubt my brain is filled with all those endorphins and other good chemicals associated with happiness.  And I’m certain that keeping my soul full creates that happiness.

I’m always working on developing my body.  I exercise in the morning and also at night.

I’m always interested in developing my mind, my power to think.  I’m always learning.

But I’m most interested in developing as a soul. I don’t just have a soul.  I am a soul. That’s in the dictionary too.

Hence the spiritual retreat. For the past two weeks I have been developing as a soul.

Other people are souls and that’s what makes them beautiful.  The soul they are.

%$44.  My cat, who is a soul too, just walked across the keyboard and wrote that.

And of course, some lucky people are fortunate to have a quality of soul in music, in rhythm, that expresses itself even when they’re just walking down the street.

May your life be filled with all that makes your soul sing!

Love,

Ingrid

 

 

 

The San Francisco Bay Area has been having crazy intense winds.  Some have been over 100 miles an hour, where I live they’ve been around 60.

PG&E, our electric company, turned off power for almost 1,000,000 people for two days, especially in areas where we have tall trees.  These trees are known to fall when the winds are heavy and there’s a risk they’ll hit an electric wire and spark a fire.  It happens.

I and my neighbors are surrounded by 75-foot trees which fortunately hold their ground.   But I wasn’t surprised by PG&E‘s decision and I understand it.

In the dark without electrical power for two days and nights, I discovered a whole new beauty in life.

Every morning I wake up at 5 AM, turn on KCSM (the best radio station in the world with the very best DJs), make myself a cup of delicious and exotically rare white Chinese tea, and do my creative work. This time of morning has great spiritual serenity in it, deeply nourishing for my creativity.  A friend of mine calls it my time away from “thought traffic.”  But the sun doesn’t come up until 7:30 AM, the first glimmer of new light isn’t until 7 AM.

Power out … so, candles. You can see them in the photo above. You can also see how dark it is around the surrounding area, little lights way across the San Francisco Bay where the electricity is still on because they don’t have the big trees.

Candlelit mornings were beyond beautiful.  Aesthetic beyond words.  Extremely romantic.  Not in the “boy meets girl” sense of romantic, but in the “I’m living my life with tremendous romance” sort of way.

I had never lit candles in the morning.  They are a soft, gentle, dreamy way to light up the dark and gently drift into the day.

At night, the sun goes down now at 6:15 PM.  I discovered headlamps.  I got so excited! These are wonderful! You put them on your head, and you can walk around seeing everything completely hands-free! Way better than using a flashlight.

After dinner I’ve been taking refreshing walks at night. With my new headlamp! With power out completely on the street, and beyond into the whole neighborhood, no street lights whatsoever, no lights whatsoever, it’s a level of darkness that is powerful. The headlamp is brilliant!

I discovered a whole lot of neighbors also walking at night!  All with headlamps! So fun!  We look so cool!

In my excessive zeal to get the best headlamp possible, my neighbors all agree I got the brightest one on the street.  But I discovered, after blinding a good number of them, that you’re not supposed to look directly at the person you’re talking to. They rapidly taught me headlamp etiquette, how to have a polite conversation by turning my headlamp off to the side, or even better, to turn the darn thing off completely for the duration of the conversation.

And I must say, it was so much fun reading in the complete dark, in bed with my headlamp, blankets piled on top because the house was freezing with no heat, 3 cats curled up snug around me, mighty winds blowing fiercely outside against the windows and whipping through the trees!  Felt like a total kid in a big adventure.  So much fun!

PG&E restored our power.  My first thought was, “I’m going to miss my candlelit mornings!”  So I’ve decided to continue them.  It’s just too beautiful to let it go.   Drinking tea, listening to KCSM, doing my creative work by candlelight until the sun rises in the sky.  Huge pleasure in just being.  Grinning.

Thank you, PG&E, for creating an experience that created a splendid opportunity to discover beautiful new sources of power.

Wishing you fabulous aesthetic moments of pure joy of being!

Love,

Ingrid