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Hope is a word that makes you want to listen. We listen to others who are sounding hopeless and give them our attention and some hopeful words. Their expressions change and you can read that change in their eyes. You chat, the two of you, each to go on your appointed ways when then you realize that not only the stranger gained from your hopeful chat, but you gained as well. Your steps are lighter, smiles stayed on your lips, longer, and you are left to wonder who you can chat with next.

Joy comes packaged inside the brain called the neo cortex, wrapped lightly in disappearing bands, holding the various lobes. This is a boiled down version, but you know how to activate joy by speaking lovely soliloquies to other person who will hear and take it to his or her neo cortex. We get it, yet practice makes it natural.x

You are hoping to work out a little experiment. The next encounter you make will seize and give confidence. The little petite lady who dyes her hair black emerges from the pharmacy scowling. She is definitely not happy. You go up to her and do a little old time jig. She lifts her eyes and dances with you. Certainly this was not expected. You both continue the laughing and end in laughter as well. She thanks you for the enjoyment of the moment and you thank her for yours. Off you both go to share a smile and the laughter elsewhere.

Peace has many and varied connotations. The one I refer to here may be the one you get from smelling the roses. Peace is freedom to enjoy and a lack of fear. Prayers for peace between nations are on record. Peace and peaceful negotiations between people and places on the earth are needed to be able to share our planet with all of its inhabitants. Love strong and share peaceful moments, as your love is the ingredient that glues all of the elements together

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“Too bad I wasn’t the Me, I am now, 50 years ago.” Elaine said.

I believed her, and then I looked into her beautiful face and thought if she were any better people would drop to their knees in the streets where she walks. I have considered, contemplated and pondered   her statement for months and have decided, she only half remembers 50 years ago.

Let’s look at this statement closer. If I attached this saying to my life 50 years ago, I would say I had the stay on power of a racehorse. Fifty years later, I have the same staying power, but that of an 18-year-old cat.

I could run circles around myself and accomplish the work of many women. Just me. Yes, true as it was, now I can go in circles not knowing which way I intended to go and when I got there would not remember why I came.

Fifty years ago, I wrote to the wind and thought my letters to friends and family, were the best. Oh these days of maturity and the adding of 50 years bring a new status to what one can and cannot write. Another words, I am now censored by age, and the freedom blowing in the wind is just not in sight as it was some 50 years ago.

Forty-seven years ago, I was pregnant and had 5 children in 4 1/2 years. The twins were the 4th and 5th babies. I just do not fancy being pregnant again, ever! But 50 years ago it was such a grand idea.

Old in calendar years, but in her prime is what the beautiful lady meant. I surely do get that, don’t you?

The “Me” fifty years ago had hopes and dreams etched in my brain. They did come true so they are gone from my thoughts replaced by hopes of other things such as will I get up to see another day? Did we think of death and illness half a century ago? We thought of the health and well being of our babies and here and there for our family members.

I was asked at a conversations party: Can you picture your death? What the… huh? Most answered with a resounding No. The sad part of this question for me is the answer is a resounding yes. I see the same dying scene over and over, so most times I choose not to look.

Fifty years ago I was not afraid of an approaching death, now I am terrified of all that I still have to do, and to endure to get there.

The me 50 years ago didn’t drink coffee. I felt motherly. I felt educated and 50 years later the world has run away with dreams and revelations I never imagined. 50 years ago I had mounds of hair, and now I am lucky to comb it so that the creaks and cracks cover my scalp.

My father wanted to make it to one hundred. He fell short, but he got a lot of good years in saying he was one hundred. He was not lying, my father never lied; he was just announcing hopefulness.

So in hindsight, and in looking ahead, we are the 50 year olds we were then, just 50 years older. In pondering this subject, I realize I am much the same, just physically becoming a bit ravaged and mentally certainly much more anxious than 50 years ago. When you analyze there has to have been much mental processing and physical endurance to get through fifty years. I know in the present scheme of things I do not have another 50 years even if I double them at the end. My hat is off to you if you have had the extra 50 years to deliberate and deliver. Let us grab onto the next fifty and not worry about the statistics. Let us continue on and beyond what was heretofore not promised to any of us.

Thank you for thinking out loud beautiful Elaine!