7. Dianne: It doesn't have to be that way

Dianne is one of the voices of reason in my life.  The thing about Dianne's reason is, it's never what I expect.  Her advice and take on things usually surprise me - she challenges my status quo.  She thinks differently from me. Like looking through a View Master, I sometimes only see what's directly in front of my face, as though my life has been predetermined and designed to be rendered on my own personal cartoon reel, that has been used over and over again.

A conflict or crossroads will arise.  I will over analyze it.  When I play it out, it will have something like one of three endings.  But all three of those endings will be the result of a formula, a history, the only ways I can envision the outcome in my shortsightedness.  And all of those endings will be a version of the way things always have been.  They may all be unappealing, but they are all I can see. 

It's dramatic and self-indulgent and I do it over and over.

Dianne, who is thankfully not inside my View Master, will say something along the lines of: it doesn't have to be that way.  Just because it's not one of the ways I can envision this, doesn't mean it's not possible.  She challenges my world view, my faith perspective, my perception of people and how I experience them, my understanding of relationships, my vision of some future version of myself ... just about everything.

This friendship has been of inestimable value to me.  Dianne not only listens (repeatedly) to my over-indulgent over-analyses (saint), but shes gets me outside of myself - she removes that reel that's worn from use, and says it's time for a new one.

It's hard to give this lesson any skin without examples, which I won't share here.  But I want to give a nod to Dianne for reminding me frequently that just because it doesn't fit into the formula or the expectation based on the past, doesn't mean it can't be part of the picture.  It quite possibly can be any way I want it to be.

6. Shelby: "You picked the wrong one."

I am a bit stubborn. I know - brand new information. My stubbornness sometimes serves to cloud my judgement. Also, I'm a lousy judge of character on initial meeting - I often get it wrong; there are quite a few examples of this.

A few years ago, I found myself in a new situation, with a bunch of people I didn't know, who were all already well-acquainted with each other. Everyone was cordial, with requisite introductions. But there was one girl there, Karen - I felt like we were going to hit it off. She seemed cool, funny, fun, smart. Shortly after I met her, she was looking for someone to get a bite with one day. She asked everyone around me - no one could make it. I was sitting right there the entire time. She proceeded to loudly complain with witty self-deprecation, to anyone listening, that no one wanted to have lunch with her. I'm right here! I thought. She must not like me. I must not be cool, funny, fun, or smart enough for her to want to be friends with me. The failure is clearly mine.

I tell this story to Shelby. I'm laughing, but also sort of incredulous. I tell her that I had been sure Karen and I were going to be fast friends, so was feeling like the little girl not welcome at the lunch table with the cool kids. Without missing a beat, Shelby advises, "you picked the wrong one."  You have chosen ... poorly.    

Well, but no. She's really cool - I'm telling you, she's great.  Again, "you picked the wrong one." Not wanting to perpetuate this disagreement, I dismissed Shelby's theory. I was sure I was right.

Karen turned out to be one of the worst people I have ever met. Materialistic, duplicitous, and condescending are the highlights; the list goes on. I quickly ceded; Shelby was right. I had indeed picked the wrong one.

These words have stayed with me. The lesson is that just because someone isn't interested in my company doesn't necessarily indicate a failure on my part. Where in the past I may have been quick to assume I wasn't <fill in the blank> enough, I now remember Shelby's words and consider that, in whatever the situation, I just may have picked the wrong one.

5. Amy: "Just go."

When I (ahem) left my job last fall, I knew I didn't want to go back into the same type of work. It was time for a change - long past time for a change.

One chilly night, I biked over to Amy's. After getting lost in Peter Cooper Village (duh), I found her building, and we had an uncharacteristically quiet dinner together. I had been just a few days unemployed, and was in a fog about what was next. Amy, on the other hand, was giddy. I've never seen someone so pleased about another person's joblessness. Her eyes were sparkling. Take a trip! she exclaims. She can hardly contain her excitement. Just go! Anywhere. Just go. If she was in my position - no kids, nothing holding her - Amy would be on the next ride out of town looking for the next adventure.

She recounted her cross country trip with our friend Sue, just after we graduated college. Amy had just invested $1000 with a friend's broker brother when Sue suggested the trip. She immediately called brother broker and got the money back before he could even buy anything with it; they lived off this for six weeks, funding fuel and Taco Bell. They drove their trip into the ground. On their return, they reached the final bridge toll without enough money left to even pay the toll - Amy wrote a check to the New York State highway authority for something like $4.

I have heard this story several times, and always listen with deep envy and marked regret at not having done anything like this myself. Some may be familiar in fact with my unrealized plan to make a cross-country venture this past summer - a vain attempt to recapture something I missed, I guess.

But back to last fall, Amy couldn't stop reveling on my behalf at this time in my life - you may never get the chance again, she emphasized. Over and over: "Just go!" And thus inspired Africa.

I remember getting on the plane at JFK with a deep-seated nausea. What I am doing? I was uncertain and nervous and sick to my stomach. Fast forward, I can't imagine not having gone. The worry seems foreign. I can't wait for the next adventure.

Amy was here tonight, and we revisited that conversation. I said to her, "Africa was all you, you know," to which she raised her hand in a high-five and proudly owned it. Damn right it was.

Amy's love for adventure and disinterest in the practical aspects that might hold her back inspired me to take off for a few months, have a life-changing adventure, and look forward to the next. We live once, so why not really live? Just go, her words in my head remind me. Just go.

4. My Dad: the importance of encouragement and always asking

My dad.  I adore him.  He is the most encouraging person in my life.  He sends me these little notes telling me how proud he is of me when he sees something I've done, reads something I've written, hears about some (small) accomplishment or another.  He's very thoughtful in these comments and clearly has a genuine interest and concern for the details of my life.

When I return from a trip, even if he's gotten regular updates, he still wants me to sit down and tell him everything ... the small details, how it felt, what it was like, my thoughts about it all.  He's interested, thoughtful, and soaks it all in.  

No matter how often I see him or talk to him, he never stops telling me:  "I miss your cute face."  It sets firmly, deeply in my soul.  When I do see him, he often stops me from walking by, takes my shoulders and hugs me, asking me quietly in my ear how my life is, am I happy, if I'm ok.  He worries about me. It's really incredibly sweet and never ceases to really touch my heart.    

I, on the other hand, can be an emotional iceberg, so sometimes shake it off, tell him I'm fine and not to worry.  He doesn't really need to worry - I am fine. But I also don't tell him how much I appreciate his asking and his care. 

My friend Joey, upon my telling her of this recently, said to something to the effect of:  "yeah, good luck finding a guy if that's what he's up against."  It's true.  My dad's gift for this kind concern and genuine interest in my life is not easy to find elsewhere, but it's become so important to me.  

While I don't always tell him, I think often about how much my dad loves me, and appreciate so much that he always asks.  Even when I shirk it off and assure him, with simplicity, that I'm just fine, he reminds me that, no matter the reaction, always encouraging and always asking are foundational components to a relationship that matters.  It would be easy to feel unappreciated and simply stop.  But his persistence teaches me that regardless of the icy reaction, the lesson is to keep encouraging and keep asking those we love, as we never know how our care and concern affects those on the receiving end.

3. Tim: "Come, come! We're hanging!"

I'm kind of a lunatic.  About some things.  When I make a social decision, I weigh travel time against activity in question, I weigh amount of time needed for said activity against other things I need to with the rest of my day, I weigh the next time I'll see that person against the potential gain from our time together.  Like I said, lunatic.

My friend Tim, on the other hand, doesn't ever do any of these things.  "Come, come!  We're hanging!"  He says this frequently.  If he wants to see you, he wants to see you - that's it.  Let's hang.  And it's okay to just hang.  He doesn't care if he saw you yesterday or will see you tomorrow.  He doesn't care if hanging furthers his goals for the day or the week or whatever, if the activity is productive. Hanging means talking and talking means growing and that's what you do with people you love.  The rest of the details are just incidental.

What is wrong with me?  Okay, I've exaggerated my neuroses here just a bit, but the lesson for me is that it doesn't need to be productive or efficient, or fit into a grand plan to be worth my time.  I've gone through some life changes recently and it's taken some adjusting, like being forced to chill the eff out.  And in this transition, I'm grateful to Tim for the reminder that just hanging with people I care about - even the most simple of hangs - is simply good for the soul.

2. Josie: always keep writing

Josie and I have been friends for years, through the course of many life events:  the loss of jobs, the loss of a parent and grandparents, divorce, wedding, interstate moves, career changes, life changes.

Josie and I have never lived in the same state.  So through these trials and triumphs, much of our encouragement to one another has manifested in writing.  Every once in a while, she busts out something that I had written to her, something from the past, something I don't even recognize.  I think, where'd you get that?  The answer is, from me.  Really? That was really good! Ha.  The insight and emotion in these will often surprise me.  I think, shoot, I can't write like that anymore.  Where'd that go??

When you don't use the silver, it tarnishes.  When you stop exercising, you fall out of shape.  When you don't speak or hear a language for years, you lose it.  Reminders that in order to stay in synch with something, one must keep doing it.

Josie's gift of glimpses into things written but long forgotten, and her constant commitment to her own writing, encourage me to write.  The more I write, the more I learn about myself.  That's the key.  Once I start, it just keeps coming.  And in that, I learn about who I am, and discover things I might never have gotten to otherwise.

A blog is so cliche and self-important; how presumptuous to expect that anyone is interested in what I have to say.  Yet, it gives me the opportunity to write, no matter who reads it, even if no one at all.  So thank you to the interwebs for a platform, and thank you to Josie for being in my head, reminding me to always keep writing.

1. Tomer: the importance of doing something new

I'm starting 2014 with another 30-day project.  

This has been inspired by my dear friend Tomer, who is obsessed with Ted Talks.  He may marry Ted.  This past fall, he watched a three and half minute talk about trying something new for 30 days.  I went vegan, he took a photo of a different friend every day, forcing him to make intentional dates with people and deepen his relationships.  Another friend did something she had never done before, every day for 30 days; one of those things was getting married.  

Tomer pretty consistently reminds me to always be exploring ways to do something new, something challenging, something that stretches you a bit. 

He's now onto his next project, one second a day - this one is going to be cool (check it out), and I do believe he'll stick with it.

I'm sticking with the 30-day project for just now.  I'm starting 2014 with 30 Days of Life Lessons (or as many as I have ...), imparted to me from the wisdom and insight of those closest to me.  This is not an exercise of me going through a list of my friends and trying find some soundbite to attach to each. Rather, these are the lessons that affect my everyday life - things that I think about often, that help me make better decisions, that challenge my perspective, that are always with me, and the recognition that these insights and bits of wisdom have come to me through the blessing of those who love me and care about me, and help me see things in a new way.

Today is Tomer, and his irrepressible vigor for new things, new people, new experiences.  It's easy for life to become routine, but Tomer reminds me - often - to do something new, and love life while doing it.