Life is like that….

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November 15, 2023

Welcome Back

Posted by Dr. Nancy Love under Life is like that...., Social Exchange
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I have been in Alberta for the last 6 weeks catching up with family and friends, clearing the past from my condo and preparing to head back to Nova Scotia for a while. We’ll be back again soon. This routine of having two places to be can be taxing but as I move into and accept being 60-10, I appreciate the fact that I can move about the country and travel. I have lost a lot of friends and relatives over the past few years. I’m guessing that through this difficult stretch for human kind that you may have as well. AND I must admit that I feel like Nate Bargatze when he says … “I am from the 1900s and I am living in the future”.

My grandson visited the other day. I gave him the original handwritten version of a book I wrote for his high school graduation. He was having trouble deciding who to be. I imagined a world for him set in 2025. I love writing speculative fiction. You can let your imagination move the world forward. In his story he had lots of gadgets and screens and access to hockey arena’s or other venues and commercial air travel just by having the the barcode in his phone or on his iwrist. No security or ticket takers. You just walk in and sit in your assigned spot. If its not your spot and alarm warns you to go to your spot.

Most of what I described in the book has moved into our future. It is weird to think that we have actually moved beyond many people’s imaginations into a world they no longer recognize. I feel that way sometimes, but then I remember that before there were Blogs I couldn’t imagine life with blogs and yet here we are. Over the years I have generated more than 300 blogs and I have a few followers which is nice. Over the next little while, as I get back into creating programs in yet another package of Modules to help leaders speak and listen differently, I notice the speed of change in technology, in skills and knowledge and attitudes. I am comforted by the sameness I find in human nature.

Humans can be nothing but human. They slide on a spectrum from heroic to completely dysfunctional and different triggers impact their sense of worth these days but human behaviour remains predictable. The signs for us to understand where someone is coming from remain telling and if we speak and listen with courage and curiousity we can still build rapport and relationship … even in a disconnected world.

 

February 8, 2018

The Human Condition

Posted by Dr. Nancy Love under Life is like that.... | Tags: |
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A friend wrote to me this week with a comment on aloneness that has me thinking. I spend a lot of time alone. I work from home. I live alone. My family and friends are close by and I see them regularly but the majority of my time I spend alone.
As I think about that I realize that, through out my life, that has often been the case. As a student and a writer it is necessary to be alone so that the muses can come and work their magic. As a mother living away from her adult children and her parents, I spent time alone. Traveling for work I was alone in hotels and airports. At the lake house I spent days alone.
So why is it that now I feel like ‘alone’ is becoming ‘on my own’? My doctor was kind enough to remind me to get out everyday where there are people. He showed genuine concern for this sixty something female living alone in a condo. So much so that I felt a little of his concern and I didn’t go straight home from his office but went and spent an hour at Chapters … alone in a crowd.
I was speaking with another friend who was talking about the increasing number of singles living alone in our city and was musing about how the city could best serve those people. He mentioned, too, that there are also a lot of married people experiencing degrees of aloneness  and loneliness even though they were a part of a couple. I guess that is true. For me that might be a higher degree of alone.
I watch my daughters with their busy schedules juggling work and children and hockey and dance and social life and I know that they would enjoy a little alone time now and then just as a break from the hectic pace they keep. Where as a day at home would be a welcome reprieve from the business of the world to them, for me it is a problem to be solved. Keeping active and engaged helps people live longer and I intend to live a long time. So I dance and I curl and I take piano lessons and I still travel for work from time to time.  I visit friends or invite them in.  I get tickets for shows and I still go to Chapters when I can’t think where else to go.
I am on my own. I make my own decisions (although I run the important ones by my daughters and sometimes a friend or two). I have created a life that is comfortable for me with enough freedom and enough opportunities for social interaction. The aloneness I experience shows up as sadness or loneliness from time to time but I believe that my friend is right … it is something that everyone experiences. It is a part of the human condition.
How we deal with it makes all the difference.