dress up and sparkle

The business suit was relegated to the end of the closet in the spring when much of work life shifted online behind the screen and from home.  My husband used to be known for his bowties.  Those too have been lingering in the closet.  Even though much of my work has been home office based for many years, networking, public talks, and various other events provided opportunities to dress up in professional attire.  All that is gone.  While I will never wear sweatpants to go to work upstairs (actually I don’t own any), my attempt at dressing professionally has been slipping for sure.  We used to dress up on Friday nights to go dancing.  Not happening now.  Fashion remains in the closet and I miss it.

But dressing up, making an effort to look pulled together, makes us feel good about ourselves, and for others too it’s a pleasure to see us looking good.  I miss it.  What about you?

So, here’s the opportunity to sparkle - the upcoming holidays.  Even though most of us will be celebrating with just our closest family nucleus, there is no reason we can’t have a bit of fun and dress up, with sparkle, accessories, and the bowtie.  Holidays are important because they break up the routine of everyday life. So it is with dressing up.  We sure can use a break from the endless pajama, sweatpants, Zoom shirt, and casual clothes routine we have descended into since this pandemic began.

Let’s have some fun!  Let’s pull out all the stops.  Let’s sparkle!  Let’s dress up! Let’s look terrific and feel good!

always a way out!

Recently, my husband visited a jobsite in an unsavory Brooklyn neighborhood and parked his car in the street. When he returned, he absentmindedly opened the trunk, put his bag in, put his cellphone in, put his key in, and shut the trunk.  

Oh no! Now cellphone and key were in the trunk and the car door was locked.  No cellphone, no way to call for help.  A building maintenance person nearby had one of those wire door break-in contraptions and offered to help.  Hope!  

Oh no! That didn’t’ work. What now? The maintenance guy let my husband use his cellphone to make a call, and a while later a guy from Pop-a-Lock showed up.  Hope!  Pop-a-Lock unlocked the car door and also popped the hood, but since the electronics had been bypassed, they self-disabled automatically, and with it the electronic trunk pop device was also disabled.  

Oh no, for the third time!  Pop-a-Lock had no further solution, suggested to get the car towed, and left.  I was too far away to drive down to bring the other car key, and towing the car home would be big hoopla.   My husband had to find another solution.  Knowing about electronics, he asked the building maintenance guy for a wrench to disconnect the car battery.  Hope!  Lo and behold, disconnecting the battery also disabled the electronics, and he was able to open the trunk manually.  Success!

All this to say that the only limitation to a solution is the mind.  When the mind shifts, so does the problem, and possibilities open up. Hopelessness is in the mind, there is always a way out.  

collecting the pieces

Many years ago, my husband and I traveled through Europe for six months.  After a while the experiences became a blur, we could no longer remember what we did three and four weeks ago because it became too much to take in. It was time to return home to integrate and process the travel impressions.  

During very busy times it seems similarly that I become fragmented, losing bits of myself here and there along the way.  When the busyness subsides, I need to collect and ground myself to bring all those scattered fragments back under one roof.  

The English meaning of collecting oneself  has to do more with composure, while the German expression sich sammeln, which translates identically, has more to do with reintegration after this kind of fragmentation.  Reintegration for me consists of quiet time by myself, puttering around without agenda or an appointment looming, reading a book, cooking something, or drinking tea and reading the newspaper.  A good night’s sleep can do wonders but may not be enough.  Regular meditation is a good way to ground yourself but is not for everyone. Walking in nature, going on a vacation, coloring or working on a crafts project, taking a bath, making music, are all ways to bring yourself back home because these activities inactivate the rational-analytical left side of the brain and make room for the subconscious to do its work.  The effect can be compared to tidying up a messy closet so you see again what you actually have and can find everything easily.  

You can’t go a mile a minute all the time without disintegrating, starting to coast and going on auto-pilot. Depression is actually an advanced form of loss of connection to self. Being aware of this need to push the stop button periodically and reintegrating is helpful and you can do it any which way that fits your personality and lifestyle.   

valuing our resources

Trash and waste, whether in the form of pollution or garbage, are leftovers in an open linear system, a system which is unsustainable in the long run and no longer viable.

When we honor and respect our resources and acknowledge that all raw materials ultimately come from the earth and are finite one way or the other, we become more vested in how we use them.  Shifting to sustainable and circular systems leaves less waste, preferably little or none at all (here an earlier post on zero waste).  This is where recycling with its Reduce-Reuse-Recycle tenet comes in, and the various ways in which we can apply those principles.

One of our most essential resources is water because the total water amount on earth is finite, while our population and water needs have grown exponentially.  In a linear system wastewater is considered waste.  But in a circular system it is reused after having been cleaned and purified.  Israel, a desert country, has put regulatory government mechanisms in place over the past 70 years that have made it water independent with surplus (!), and an agricultural force to contend with.  Israel’s agriculture shifted to water conserving drip irrigation, the country desalinates sea water for drinking, cleanse its wastewater for reuse in agriculture, puts a price tag on water by charging for its consumption, and swiftly detects and repairs over 90% of its water leaks to prevent waste, as described in Seth’s Siegel’s Let There Be Water.   Israel is a shining example and pioneer on how to value and manage resources responsibly, something all other countries must learn to do swiftly. 

On a related note, we are just starting to come around to managing better the trash from the stuff of our material culture (here an earlier related post).  This is how the Repair Café and Fixit Revolution, thoroughly researched and entertainingly narrated in Repair Revolution: How Fixers are Transforming Our Throwaway Culture, arose in the past two decades, a counter movement to the post war effort of ramping up production and consumption via built-in obsolescence.  Buying it cheap and throwing it away when it no longer works, and products such as single-use plastic bags and containers, have left us with enough trash to drown in.  Besides reducing, reusing, and recycling, we now need to add repairing to our Rs in becoming more conscientious and responsible consumers.  Repair that lamp, replace that zipper, bring the shoes to the cobbler.  Just fix it!

In our shift to a more sustainable culture with more sustainable consumption patterns let’s keep our beautiful planet earth in mind that provides us with everything we need to exist as long as we care for it.  Our earth is all we have.  We must nurture, not trash it, so it can be beautiful and healthy for us, so we can be beautiful and healthy.