UPDATED LIFE: STARTING SOMETHING NEW TO FINISH

An updated life, from new paint, new flowers, to new shoes, asks a question:

What was wrong with the old life?

Like there had to be something wrong to change things?

Yes, that’s usually a good reason, but so is getting a different angle.

Update, refresh, begin again. Call it one of those, add a few terms, just skip the fear part.

Who is afraid of change? Glad to hear if there’s someone else.

My parents decided to update their boy early. I started out as a reader who found books and a good chair more interesting than PeeWee Baseball. Ma and Pa updated that idea quick.

I found myself collecting a baseball uniform in the Bangor Elementary School gym one morning. I was a Yankee. The other kids yelled, “Damn Yankees,” and gave us slaps on the way out.

It seemed like punishment for feeding my learning habit. I played baseball every summer after that, until my parents threatened to hold me out as punishment for something else.

First I got updated for baseball, then updated against baseball. The lesson: keep your passions close. I wasn’t bent out of shape when I was forced to play any more than when I was forced out. Why? Because I had a library card and knew how to use it.

I didn’t stop reading for a real updated life.

New People In A New Life

Updating things is confusing, like the time I updated a girlfriend. I’m not sure she knew I was her boyfriend when she went to a movie with someone else in my seat.

Maybe we didn’t go over the boyfriend / girlfriend rules? After all, it’s not like marriage vows that are spoken out loud so everyone understands what’s at stake.

If I had it do over again, would I break up with my girlfriend because she went to a movie with someone else? No, and here’s why: going to a movie with someone else was the signal that she’d already broken up with me.

The job was finished before I even opened my mouth, but I didn’t know it. Maybe she didn’t either.

What I figured out between a movie date gone wrong and a commitment to marriage is that anyone in a relationship who uses breaking up as a threat is bound to follow through.

So try and stay ahead of the curve.

“If you do this, we’ll break up.”

“If you do that, we’ll break up.”

“We’ll break up if this doesn’t change.”

“If that doesn’t change, we’ll break up.”

If you hear this too often, don’t bother breaking up because you were never together. Most likely, you were a place-holder for the other person while they sorted through their feelings about love and caring.

And that’s not a bad thing. Once things get sorted out, you still might be the one and you’ll be starting something new without starting over.

Updated Life Rebound

Young people updating things have a limit due to time. Nothing is old enough to annoy them, or should annoy them. But, in a cruel twist, it’s never too soon to start.

Jaimie Lee Curtis in AARP Magazine:

“There is nothing harder than being a child,” Curtis says with a sigh, “and I am a product of a lot of divorces. Janet married four times, Bob four, and Tony six. It is what it is, but I think, as a result, I have always had a feeling for vulnerable children.” 

I’ll do the math with my ciphering skills to build trust: That’s fourteen divorces, but they were Hollywood divorces, which use dog year math in a 1 to 7 ratio.

In contrast my parents only divorced once to remarry new people. I feel fortunate, or should feel fortunate. With one marriage and zero divorces, the only way I could do better was to never get married. Can’t get divorced if you never get married.

This “great mental migration,” as Curtis calls it, began in her 50s, after she’d overcome drug addiction, raised her two children and started doing a whole lot of reading. A voice in her head kept asking, If not now, when? If not me, who?

Bobby Kennedy had similar thoughts.

One Way To Update

More Jamie:

She has continued the practice of letting go. “I am somebody who sheds every day,” she says. “Let’s get rid of that, I don’t need that. It’s all about old ideas that don’t work anymore.”

More recently, she has gotten rid of what she calls “vampire” friendships and begun setting boundaries with the friends she has decided to keep or reconnect with. 

Vampire friendships? Such drama, but what would you expect from a thespian.

Shedding things every day sounds like an antidote to hoarding. Saying you shed things but hide them in a mini storage unit isn’t the same thing.

A good start to shedding things is shoes. I’ve got hiking boots, cross country ski boots, sandals, and gym shoes overflowing more than two shoe racks.

My garage has become the repository for generations of old and new stuff. I’ve got some of my dad’s stuff, step dad’s stuff, and father in law’s stuff. It all comes under the banner of My Stuff now.

As my kids mature I secretly slip stuff to them at Christmas and birthdays. One has a house where I drop stuff off without telling.

Yes, I’m a giver, and a headache is just the beginning.

Update your attitude to match Jamie Lee, and we’ll leave it at that:

On a wall in Curtis’ kitchen hangs a 4-foot-tall poster that reads “Note to Self: Be Kind, Be Kind; Be Kind.”

Think of it as a foundation for an updated life.