It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over (Non-fiction Book)

Many of us have gotten stuck in our lives. We live in a rut and have a hard time believing, in our hearts, that life could be any different. We desperately need something that can help us believe that life can hold new possibilities for us. It Ain’t Over Till It’s Over—Reinventing Your Life Dreams Anytime, at Any Age, edited by Marlo Thomas, could be just the inspiration that many need to again believe in possibilities.

The book contains sixty stories of women who found a new passion after they had already been established in their lives. Many of the stories involve women who launched a new career or who discovered a new avocation. Some involve women who found a new cause. Most of the stories involve a single passion, but a few involve ever-evolving paths. Most of the stories involve women who now are in their forties through sixties. Some of the women discovered their passions out of necessity, others out of a deep sense of dissatisfaction. The stories range from a woman who makes whisky to a woman who encourages people to be organ donors, from a woman who lived out her dream to be a cowgirl to a woman who runs a store that helps plus-sized women feel great in beachwear. Most of the stories involved happy endings, but in a few cases the women had major challenges before the book went to print. As I have thought about the stories in the book, I noticed that most involve a blend of serendipity and dogged determination. As I read the book, I noticed that a part of me whispered, “If these things were possible for these women, perhaps there are new, interesting possibilities for me.”

This is a book to read to be inspired. This is a book to buy to lend to people who feel stuck in their lives. For more inspiration see the "It Ain't Over Till It's Over" page of Marlo Thomas's website.

The Creative Person (Quotes)

I am finding the book Making a Living Without a Job by Barbara J. Winters very inspiring. Below are two quotes about creativity from her book:

The creative person takes the material at hand and begins to see it in a new way, to make connections and observations that others miss. The creative person looks for inspiration rather than waiting for it to magically appear.

Like everyone else, you will have ideas that are marvelous, some that are mediocre, others that are ahead of their time, and still others that are worthless. How do you know which are which? The truth is, you may be the worst judge of your own creativity; therefore, it’s up to you to keep acting on your ideas and see what happens when you do.

The Dispossessed

Prisons. Possessions. Time. Sequence and Simultaneity. Circular and Linear Time. The Individual and Society. The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin won the 1975 Hugo, 1975 Locus Science Fiction, and 1974 Nebula awards. I found it a relatively quiet, gentle novel that left me thinking about societal structures and individuals.

Briefly, the novel tells the story of Shevek, a brilliant physicist, who attempts to embody in his life the philosophy of Odo—the founder of his home-world. Like an Einstein, Shevek is the process of developing a theory that has the potential to revolutionize physics and spur new technologies. He lives on Annarres, a barely inhabitable, mining world—it was never clear to me whether this was a twin planet or a moon—settled by anarchists who rebelled against the government of Urras. Annarres has a relatively Socialist and Libertarian society and is isolated from Urras and other worlds. In contrast, Urras is what the people of Annarres call Propertarian—Capitalist. The people of Annarres find Shevek’s ideas “unuseful”, first discouraging him and then becoming openly hostile towards him and his family. His thinking challenges their set ways of thinking. The government of Urras, on the other hand, embraces Shevek’s ideas as a way to create technology that will give them a competitive advantage over other worlds and create profit. The book weaves the stories of Shevek’s life on Annarres and on Urras.

The Dispossessed is a wonder title for the book. It reminds me of the Taoist principle of trying to live each day open handed, not trying to hold anything or experience. Shevek has no physical possessions and doesn’t even have a society to which he belongs. At some point I would like to reread the book and find all the bits of wisdom attributed to the fictional philosopher Odo. The book infers that both the philosophies of Annarres and Urras have their benefits and their drawbacks. Despite being written over 35 years ago, The Dispossessed is still relevant today. This is a good book for readers who are feeling disillusioned about society.

Gateway

Human Psychology. Risk. Gambling. Half of the chapters in the 1978 Hugo Award and 1977 Nebula Award winning novel Gateway by Frederick Pohl take place in the office of a computerized psychologist named Sigfrid. What happened to Robinette that compels him to continue to return for therapy? At the hub of the question is Gateway.

Briefly, Gateway is an asteroid where an unknown alien culture left hundreds of spacecrafts. The humans know almost nothing about the how the spacecrafts work. They do know that they can board them and go to some destination that had earlier—perhaps centuries ago--been programmed by the aliens.

We’re going into a ship that we don’t know if it’s going to go where it’s supposed to go, and we don’t even know where it’s supposed to go. We go faster than light, nobody knows how. We don’t know how long we’ll be gone, even if we knew where we were going. So we could be traveling the rest of our lives and die before we got there, even if we didn’t run into something that would kill us in two seconds…And not only that. We don’t anything about who built these things.

This causes a type of Russian roulette/gambling situation. The destination may bring the “prospectors” to a place where the aliens have left some wonderful technology or that has some great scientific value. In which case, the prospectors could earn millions of dollars. On the other hand, they could come back empty handed, injured, or not come back at all. In general the novel explores what type of person would sign up for such an assignment. In particular, it explores Robinette, who is caught between his fears and his desire for the big payoff.

This would have been an interesting book to read as part of a book club. At the end, I would have liked to know how other readers felt about Robinette. Could they relate to his fears? Did they find him a good, bad, or an in between type of person? This is the first novel a series, and at some point I would like to read the other books.

Take Chances

If your life is ever going to change for the better, you’ll have to take chances. You’ll have to get out of your rut, meet new people, explore new ideas and move along unfamiliar pathways. In a way the risks of self growth involve going into the unknown, into an unfamiliar land where the language is different and customs are different and you have to learn your way around.

Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, Learning to Love Yourself

Solve the F@#*% Problem, Please

Has the United States become a country of judgers and critics, rather than a nation of problem solvers? When James Cameron offered to help BP control the oil spill in the gulf, many, many, many people left negative comments on the internet. What I didn’t see were comments of curiosity, surprise, or even delight. I would have liked to see a collective light bulb go on across the country. A good director knows how to solve problems, particularly the hard ones. He knows how to find and enlist experts who can contribute to his project. He has experience with not taking no for an answer, but rather challenging people to go beyond their current level of what they think is possible. He knows how to think outside the box and draw from diverse disciplines. He knows that any great project is a collaboration, not the work of one person or one company. This is the type of thinking that is needed to solve the oil spill problem quickly and with as few long term problems as possible. I am not talking about James Cameron the man as much as the way of looking at a problem that he represents. That is what we need.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if twenty years from now a little girl told her teacher, “we are called the ‘United States’ because we are really, really good at solving problems together?” Wouldn’t it be better if it were true, if the US was know for its problem solving expertise the world over?

Rut

Twyla Tharp, The Creative habit:

"When you’re in a rut, you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it."

Beginning the Website

Terror. Complete and utter terror. I woke up this morning in a panic. Both of my parents came from very strict German households where anything short of perfection was not tolerated. My parents were better than there parents, but I still managed to grow up believing that any mistake was one too many. Many of my semesters in college and grad school I earned straight A’s.

Yet, I love to learn. This past week I have been reading a book on how to use Dreamweaver to create a website. I have done almost all of the little exercises. I finally decided, while I had the book out from the library and the concepts were fresh in my mind, it was time for me to build my own site. I was on an emotional high with the ideas, looking at the Css Web garden sites until late into the evening yesterday,

But, then the nagging started. I know next to nothing about graphic design. When I opened up Dreamweaver it looked like a foreign object again. Where did I look in my books to find out how to build a menu? All of a sudden all I saw was my ignorance. I didn’t see anything that I understood, anything that I did right. Screw beginner’s mind!! I hate it.

Yet, I am often the teacher. How can I expect anyone to follow me or listen to me if I don’t allow myself the vulnerability of being a beginner, of trying and failing, and trying again? This is how I learn empathy and compassion.

I also heard myself muttering, “On Roll Over do this…” Even as part of me is freaking out, another part of me is slowly putting together the pieces to make this thing work. How fascinating and complex is this Beginner’s Mind.

Substitutes for Self-confidence

In The Ordeal of Change, Eric Hoffer talks about how to overcome that awkwardness that most of us feel when we begin something new.

Faith, enthusiasm, and passionate intensity in general are substitutes for the self-confidence born of experience and the possession of skills.

I sometimes imagine opening up my arms wide and just flinging myself with mindless abandon.

Fearless Fish

Robin Fisher Roffer’s The Fearless Fish Out of Water balances celebrating uniqueness with giving practical advice on how to deal with being different. This is one of my favorite quotes from the book:

Accept yourself and others will follow. Apologize for who you are and others will see you as someone to pity. Saying you’re sorry for your imperfections puts doubts in people’s minds about your value.

Cookies Without Perfection

When my parents met, they were both accountants. This probably explains my fondness for putting ideas into tidy tables or charts. When I was little, my father used to tell me there was no room in this world for mistakes. I believed him. For the most part I still believe him. I wonder if there are parents out there who teach their children at an early age that the purpose of life is to make mistakes, to keep on trying out things until they create something really marvelous.

I keep on wondering how I can have two bookshelves full of self-help books and my life be in such a mess. To my way of thinking, my life should be as tidy as a well-maintained spread sheet. I read the books. I understood the concepts. I even tried to apply them now and then.

I think the problem is that in each book the procedure worked well for that person and maybe their students, but it is only one way of going about solving a problem or living a life. In fact, many of the books I have contradict one another. Each time I read a new book, I am starting from scratch, assuming that whatever I have read up until that time was wrong. After all, don’t many of the books actually refer to other philosophies and say just that.

Years ago I became fascinated by the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe. It seemed to me that it was the basis for so much excitement. Every few weeks I would add new ingredients or change something in the recipe. I had many happy surprises, and only a few not so happy ones. I thought about that a few days ago when I was hankering for some white chocolate chip cranberry cookies. Would it really be so hard to try to make some without an official recipe? I am a little out of practice making cookies, but the thought is appealing. I wish I could feel that way about making changes in my life. I wish I felt up for a grand experiment rather than needing to have something perfectly spelled out in a book. Why is it so easy to do that with cookies and so terrifying to do that with the other parts of my life?