Archives for September 2005

It has been a rough start to the day, things just haven’t gone the way that I want them to and I am finding it difficult to improve my attitude. I am trying to, I really am. I am working hard to tear away the moody mindset and focus on the positive but I am having limited success.

Given the chance I’d love to go workout on my heavy bag for a while and then spend a couple of hours running up and down the court but those are not options right now. I can’t ignore the things that I have to do at the office and yet at the moment I can’t get them done.

A salesman with a bad attitude is unlikely to get any sales and that is not going to help improve his disposition so the goal of this post is to try and spew out as much of this crap as I can and push myself into that happier place I normally occupy.

Last night one of my grandfathers cried his way through a telephone call with me. I have written about my grandparents and concerns about them many times. You can find links here, here, and here.

I even wrote a post about putting it all in perspective here and for the most part I have, but there are moments when it is harder and yesterday set me off a bit. My grandfather cried because he is 91.5 and his ability to cope with stress is being beaten down by age and time.

His greatest fear is losing my grandmother or perhaps it is better to say that he fears dying first and leaving her. She is the same age as my grandfather and she is slowly beginning to lose it. There are little cracks in the dam, memory issues that used to be infrequent appear more often and she is showing some confusion about little things here and there.

I don’t think that she is all that bad, but I agree with my grandfather that she is not as sharp as she used to be and neither is he. Part of the problem is that he knows it, he feels the edges getting duller and he is frustrated because his memory has always been outstanding and now it is getting harder for him to remember some things.

Physical ailments are taking their toll and though you can remind him of his age and how lucky he is those reminders are having less and less of an impact. More and more I find myself in role reversal mode. I prop him up. I promise him that he has no reason to fear being homeless or hungry and I tell him that if he dies I will see that my grandmother is taken care of. I make the promise as his eldest grandchild because I know that using those words will resonate with him.

And then when he tells me that every now and then he feels like giving up I stop in my tracks and consider the best response. I pause so that I can think for a moment about what I can do/say to keep his spirits up and to try and see that my mother has a father to look to for a little bit longer.

On the flip side of the fence I see my dad’s father slowly fading. The final march approaches and I cannot do much other than to try and make it easy on him. It is more than 2 years since my grandmother died and I can see in his eyes that a piece of him is still gone and I feel his sadness.

The arms that held me as a baby and hugged me as a child have all become so frail. I have seen the the three of them argue with each other and I have seen them share the joy of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I have held both of my grandfathers as they cried over the deaths of children, spouses and siblings. I have seen a lot and learned far more than I can share.

But I am not ready to let them go. I will not let them give up and I will use the various tricks I have learned over the years to keep their attention. And I see that my children spend as much time with them as possible.

It makes me very sad to think that my daughter may not have any memories of them, but I know that my son will and we will all take whatever time we get be it months, years or millenia.

All I want for them is a good quality of life and for them to feel happy. If I can help to provide that then I will. It is not so much to ask.

There is one person in my life who is harder on me about everything I do than anyone else. There is one person who is adept at pushing my buttons and making me as crazy as can be.

They drive me to drink and distraction. They are the reason my hair is falling out and my stomach aches. At times they have made me scream in frustration. I can’t count the number of times that I have threatened to just walk out and end my relationship with them, but as much as I want to the reality is that this is simply impossible.

And the reason that I am unable to do this is because my toughest critic is…..me.

That is the truth. I am harder on myself than anyone. I read my blog and time and time again I cringe at what I read because I think that the topic is silly, the words are poorly selected and I wonder why I don’t just scrap the whole thing

In my head I see myself as I was at 20. I have washboard abs, my body is chiseled from hours of working out and I still find time to read. I like that image and then I look at what 16 years of life has done and I see the same intensity in my eyes, broad shoulders, dark hair and a stomach that demonstrates a love for food. It is not horrible, but it is not what it could be.

So I flex and I see those abs reappear and I know that the Michelin Man is occupying my body and that if I took the time and made the effort I could evict him, but I don’t because I apparently don’t care. I care enough to be irritated, but not enough to change.

I look at the projects around my house and I see that I have managed to finish many of them but then I think about how hard my father worked and I feel like his work ethic exceeds my own by light years.

The list goes on and on. There are so many things that I could and can improve and I wonder how many I actually will. So I take a deep breath and consider what I have and where I am at and I have to admit that things are really pretty good, but sometimes I just have trouble accepting it.

And you know that in my reality the hardest person to please is myself. So my goal in the coming year is to try to relearn how to ease off on myself and to maintain some perspective.

I’d write more but it is far too late and I need to sleep now. Lailah tov from LA.

I have received a ton of feedback regarding my story about Daniel and Anne, but I cannot say that I was surprised.

I think that there are a ton of people who are interested in determining what makes people soul mates and how in turn they can find their own because in a world that at times can seem dark and scary we often search for someone to hold our hand and keep us company in the dark.

If you were to ask me what my thoughts are about this I suppose that I could offer quite a bit, but then again I am not known for brevity. But in my limited experience I would offer a few comments to the men.

Women are far more simple then we make them out to be. Love them, love them, love them and you will get back more than you give. And a central part of that is figuring out how to get into her head. Figure out what makes her tick, what drives her and speak with her about it. Listen to her thoughts and share a few of your own and you can begin to build a foundation of trust.

I know that much of this sounds new agey and hokey and I am sure that some of you are rolling your eyes, we are all different and not everyone responds to the same thing, but some things do translate to larger percentages of people.

One is that as a group we men do not communicate as well with women as they would like. To quote my father I’ll lay dollars to donuts (dad, that still makes no sense to me) that if you really make an effort to really speak with women you will find many to be very receptive and you can still do this in way that retains your masculinity.

The goal as I said is to get inside her head and to establish that deeper level of trust.

For women I would say that you have to remember that men are placed in a hard position. We receive so many different messages and one of the primary ones is that we must stuff our emotions down into a little box. If you can help him feel comfortable sharing those inner thoughts you will find that he speaks to you in the way that you are searching for.

Ok, so what have I really said about soul mates and how does this all relate. Well, I am not sure that I have really offered anything but I think that if you are going to find that person we all seek you have to place yourself in a position in which you are receptive to meeting him/her and the only way that I know to make that happen is to open the door to being hurt/rejected so that you can find that one person that makes your skin tingle.

Take it from Daniel and Anne:

“One kiss. One touch. One man and one woman and nothing will ever be the same. You know it and I know it and we live it.”

I have a very strong interest in Ireland. I have never been there but would very much like to go there to visit. Not to mention that I have family there that no one has seen in quite some time.
How many Jews can there be in Ireland, I suspect that there should be some good stories to be had.

I just finished speaking with my friend G. We officially said goodbye in person on Sunday, but I wanted to be certain to wish him well prior to his boarding the plane.

FWIW, I meant o mention in one of the earlier posts that he was working in the Cantor Fitzgerald office at the WTC until September 8. At one point in time I was supposed to have flown out for Manhattan for business so we had plans to eat at Windows on the World, but as it happened I had to cancel my trip.

The morning of 911 I spent a couple of anxious hours trying to locate him to confirm that he had returned to LA.