Hello again….Hello!

I have been once again on the road for a few days.  This time, the 3 kids and I travelled to visit my sister who lives about 3 hours away.  This visit was very experimental.  First of all, my older sister and I have had very rough waters in the past.  It’s only been really since we both had kids that we have been on any common ground.  Secondly, my sister (just barely 2 years older than I) has 7 children.  I have 3.  You do the math.  Basically there were 2 adults outnumbered by 10 children, 3 days, 24/7.  CRAZY!  The kids had an absolute blast.  No one was maimed or severely injure, so it was a big success.  Zack and Anson cried when we left their buddies.  So cute and so touching to the mommies.

Tomas stayed at home to play in a tennis tournament all weekend.  Kudos to my sexy tennis star..he swept the mens singles.  🙂  Next stop, Wimbledon Baby!!  Yahoo!  Anyway, due to his absence in this excursion, I had the opportunity to listen to the radio quite a bit (well, when the kiddos were napping and the portable DVD wasn’t belting out a Wonder Pets episode).  And guess what?  The radio spoke to me. 

Have you ever had those moments where you feel like something from above is telling you something?  When things repeatedly come up and you are forced to take notice?  For instance, the radio song selections this weekend.  A higher power was speaking to me through Bette Midler this weekend.  Honest…I swear…I received life lessons from Bette.  The Divine Miss M.  With a name like that, I should have known.  Usually it’s Neil Diamond that speaks to me so I was taken aback by Bette delivering this life lesson.

The song was “From a Distance”.  You should know that this song has history for me.  It is referenced in two copies of my high school yearbook.  I know the whole song, almost word for word.  My best friend and I would belt it out in her car as we cruised the streets.  Can you guess why we didn’t have much action all the time in the boyfriend department?  I had forgotten that Bette’s lyrics had something to teach us.  I was forced to listen again when I tuned into one radio station and heard it.  I didn’t feel like hearing oldies so I depressed the “seek” button.  Next station, “From a distance…..”.  Next station, country (sorry, I always just fly by those stations)  Next station,  “God is watching us… from a distance”  Seriously, it was like Bette single handedly controlled all the stations.  So I listened for a while and I remembered that from a distance everything looks different from what it really is. 

Then I moved on.  Fast forward to the next day.  My sister and I drove to the store.  In her convertible, top down, we turn on the radio.  Guess what???  You guessed it.  “From a distance you look like my friend, even though we are at war.”  By this time I was beginning to think I must be hearing a song in my head and it wasn’t real.  I spoke of my stalking by “From a Distance”.  It was really funny but then I started thinking again.  Watch out…

In the past year, I have read a lot of blog posts about women feeling less than normal, imperfect, and generally abnormal in comparison with this or that.  I myself have had a rollercoaster ride this past year between the unexpected arrival of a new child, struggling and winning another battle over anxiety, family issues, irrepairable friendship debacles, and even death.  Still everyday, I got up.  Put on a happy face for the general public to see and went about my daily routine like any good American Woman.  Nobody wants to appear abnormal or less than perfect.  Nobody. 

Isn’t it strange then that we are all pretending?  Putting on our masks, trying to find a supposed commonality.  Even of those who say we are hanging everything out for the world to see, put on facades when needed.  No one is immune.  We have five basic needs (yes, I am a Glasser fan):  Survival, Love and Belonging, power, freedom and fun.  Depending on the day, the hour and even the minute, we mold ourselves to meet these needs.  Good or bad, it’s just the way we are engineered.  An intrinsic program that our minds and bodies dutifully follow.

Most of us women are at a point where we know how to meet our survival needs.  Many of us in this bloggy world have little to no freedom issues.  It’s obvious from the silly and humerous posts, that the majority can still laugh with the best of ’em.  So we are left struggling to feel complete love and belonging and yes, power.

The layers we put around us provide us with a means to obtain what we think is love.  What we hope is belonging.  What gives us confidence; power.  From a distance we look like something not quite ourselves.  Someone deliberately dresses in designer clothes even though they are in debt up to their eyeballs.  Another touches up foundation and reapplies mascara after another teary battle with chronic depression before going out with friends.  Shallow platitudes are consistently offered among people who appear to be close.  Information is gathered under the cloak of support only to be used as a dagger of hate.

Bette is right in saying (singing?) that from a distance we look like all these things we are not.  I guess you can take two things away from this song and my mindless mindful analysis of it.  And yes, there is more blabbering I could do about this, but I will save it for a more appropriate venue. 

  1. When you realize that we are all struggling to meet the same needs no matter where we are in our paths of life, you realize that automatically we “belong” together.  Our approaches may be different but our inner workings are the same and we can take comfort or understanding in that.
  2. When you look at things from a distance, they are not what they seem.  When you struggle to put on the perfect face and feel like you are alone because everybody else is so put together, remember you are looking in from a distance.  Therefore, avoid judgement of others.  There are things that you can’t comprehend or understand because you can not see them from your point of view.  Then go back and think about #1.

Finally, I found this little video of some moving photos paired with the song.  Take a looky, I like it. 

And FYI…I heard the song twice today on the radio going to work and on my lunch hour.  Sorry, if this is a long post but Bette is just killing me!