Inside My World...HFireman

A very eclectic and far-ranging blog. A glimpse into my mindset... things I find interesting, provocative and worth thinking about... things visual, things fictional, observations and commentary,... and questions that we need to be asking ourselves. Welcome to my world.

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Location: Houston, Texas, United States

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Sam and Emma: A Love Story in Emails - 18

February 6, 2007

My Dearest Emma,

Both of our lives, yours and mine, have taken a very
similar path. Each of us has had our issues, but we
are both being confronted with many of the same
dilemmas and problems.

We both have had to “find ourselves.” You know, I am
really not exactly sure what that means anymore. It is
certainly means figuring out who we are in terms of
the sort of person we want to be. It also has to do
with figuring out what things work for us and what
things don’t. It means figuring out what aspects of
our life are more important than other things and
which things are very low on our list of priorities.
It has to do with our take on relationships and how
well we handle relationships with other people and
with things, like food, money or sex. It is about our
obsessions, good and otherwise. It is about what makes
us happy and what distresses us. I guess this notion
of finding oneself is simply the process one must go
through to clearly define in one’s own mind that
person reflected back from a mirror.

However, as we both have discovered, just because we
might have found ourselves, we still have not resolved
any of our problems or necessarily faced down any of
our demons. If anything, we have simply come to terms
with who we are as a person. We have just established
the baseline from which we can then begin to
productively build a life for ourselves. We have moved
past mourning over the person that we would have liked
to have been but are not. Once and for all, we have
finally accepted the reality of who we are, warts and
all. Now we are ready to get on with our lives… to
move on to the part in which we actually get to live
our life and experience it in a more productive way.

You may want to rethink the way that you view your
evolving relationship with your parents. I do
understand your current dilemma with regard to that
relationship. You feel constrained and feel like you
are being forced to become a child all over again, in
having to live under your parent’s roof. Well, this is
one of those moments at which you have to force a
change. You have to do what it will take to redefine
your relationship with your mom and dad, in that you
must reestablish yourself as an adult who is allowed
to make her own decisions and live here own
independent life. Your parents will only come to see
you as an adult, after a struggle. But that I think is
the first step in the process, and it is really more
important for you to see yourself as an adult, long
before they do. The transition may be a little bumpy
in terms of what you have to do to make them
understand the change. But it is very important for
you to redefine that relationship in your own mind
first, before anything will change for the better.

Also, once you are in your own place, you can begin to
play the role of caregiver for your parents.
Apparently the time has come for you to do this. Both
of us have reached that stage of our lives and now we
must assume that responsibility as our parents get
older and begin to need our help. Rather than see this
new role as a burden, try to see this as just the next
stage of your life. And it is also an opportunity to
be the adult we are supposed to be at our age.

The important thing is that if there were a time when
you needed to have you own personal house in order… by
that, I mean your life, it is now. Sooner than later
you will be taking care of your parents needs.
Becoming a caregiver of your parents is a very normal
development in the cycle of your life. You won’t be
able to effectively take care of them until you have
become a functioning adult. Being grown up is not
particularly a lot of fun. But, my love, it is a 1000%
better than seeing ourselves as still immature or
being seen by others as less than grownup. To me when
that happens, life really sucks. So this is an
opportunity… a compelling reason to finish the
process of growing up and letting your parents and
everyone else clearly know and see that you have.

We are all works in progress. We are always changing
and learning and growing into something more than we
were yesterday. Eventually, I hope you can learn to
live in the moment and to be able to enjoy the moment
in which you find yourself. Make the most of what you
have, my love, instead of too often only seeing what
is missing or lacking in the moment you are living.
Life is so short, Emma. Life was meant to enjoyed… to
be savored. Whether we can do that or not will depend
on how we choose to look at ourselves, our lives… the
world. And also on what we choose to do about our
particular situation. I have always suggested to you
that how your life turns out, to a significant extent,
depends on how you choose to see things and what you
choose to do about the issues/problems in your life.
Make your choices wisely and well, my love. This life
is not a dress rehearsal. It is the real thing and we
get only one shot at happiness and being fulfilled.
Try to make the best of it.

Stay well. Take good care of yourself.

With deep and profound love,

Sam

To be continued...

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Being Busy and Living Virtual Lives... That's Progress?

Have you noticed how increasingly our lives are becoming virtual. Even my own and I am the guy who believes that the most important element in our lives should be the relationships we have with the people who are important to us.

Sadly, this phenomena goes beyond vegging out in front of the boob tube or playing video games. Now, with the accelerating pace of life these days, even our friendships by necessity are morphing into something that is virtual.

My best friend, Roland, has become a very busy fellow. He works full time and he is working on his Masters Degree. He is a dad with two beautiful girls and a husband with a lovely wife. He is knee-deep in redecorating his house. So he doesn't have a lot of time to spare these days.

I am in the same boat, it seems.

Roland and I are doing our best to sustain our friendship. We used to get together regularly on the weekends in the evenings and over a bottle of wine, we would just chill out. And in the process, solve the world's problems in the course of the evening, which could stretch sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. That doesn't happen much anymore. We do really well just to grab a few minutes on the phone or for us to stop over at each other's houses for a few minutes, stolen from our busy lives.

I don't like the word, "hate." I use it very sparingly. So I will only say that I am very distressed at how living such a cluttered life, timewise, has made having friends such a difficult endeavor. My friendship with Roland has unfortunately gone the direction that so many other aspects of my life have gone: it is increasingly virtual in nature.

Something has got to give. I am going to have to take a hard look at my life and figure out what things I really don't need to have or need to be doing. I do not need to be doing anything which is sucking up my time and giving me only a very small return on my investment. Our lives are so short and any distraction that causes me to squander even a second of the precious time I am allotted has got to go.

All of this gives a whole new meaning to the notion of managing our time. No longer is time management just a matter of maximizing our efforts or becoming a more efficient person. More and more, managing our time is going to be about taking back our lives and enabling us to be able to be with our friends and our family... to actually be able to live in the moment, to actually be able to experience and enjoy the moment with the people we love.. the people who are most important to us. Ultimately, how well we manage our time may very well determine whether or not we will be able to escape from having to live unsatisfying virtual lives... whether or not we will be able to enjoy lives rich in loving relationships and memorable moments.

Having a conversation on the phone with a disconnected voice or receiving an email from someone I care about is no longer adequate for me. I want my life to be real and the moments of my life to be real. I want to have moments in my life about which I can have real memories of the faces of the people there, of what we were doing at that moment and of the places I have been. Maybe that means I will not be using some of the playtoys that "progress" has given us as much from now on. However, if that is exactly what I end up choosing to do, I will be making real progress in my own life .

A New Photo for the Hallway


I have been preoccupied with decorating our apartment for the last few days. Our apartment has sort of evolved since we moved in six months ago. Slowly, but surely, it is becoming "home" to me and the place is beginning finally to feel like we have made our imprint on it.

It is not a huge place, but our apartment is adequate. If you walk past the kitchen, on the right, you will come to a short hallway. If you go to the right, our bedroom. To the left, the study/sewing room.

On the walls of the hallway, Marilyn and I hang family photos. We just added a photo someone took of us in our tuxedos at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts. If you didn't know that we volunteer as ushers for the performances for the Broadway road shows presented, you might take us for one of the wealthy theater patrons who take in the shows. I gotta tell you, Marilyn and I, we look really good in that photo. I think that it is going to become one of my favorite photos.

Whether of not we look good in the photo is not the main reason I enjoy stopping in the hallway and taking in the family photos on the wall. The most important reason is that placing these photos where I cannot miss them is that seeing them keeps me real. I am reminded of the people I love and about what is really important in life: the wonderful relationships I have with my wife and my kids and my friends. I am reminded of the good moments I have experienced in my life and the places that are important to me. When life starts to look a little grim, I can look at these photos and know that no matter what happens to me in my life, there are going to be people who love me and who will help me get through even the worst things that might happen to me. Even when my life is being turned upside down by some tumultuous distraction, there is a place I can go to get centered again. So, you can see, this small hallway is a very important and significant place for me. It reminds me who I am, where I have been and who are the truly important people in my life.

The walls of the hallway are not yet filled up with photos. Little by little I will fill those empty spaces with yet more memories and more reminders of what a wonderful life I have been given and of the truly beautiful people whose presence have made my life so wonderfully memorable.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Urban Images - 4


Downtown Houston
Taken Late in the Afternoon
October, 2006

I was very much taken by the way that the sun, setting in the west,
was being reflected back from the face of the building,
and the play of shadows on the sides that angled away
from the exposed side that was reflecting light.
Howard Fireman