While in Utah, my father showed me an article reviewing Jill Bolte Taylor's new book. In this article, it mentioned she had done a TED talk, so we immediately pulled it up on the web. She'd even brought a few visual aids to illustrate her talk. (See the video below to see what I'm referring to; then head to www.ted.com for more great talks. Or you can click *here* to be taken directly to her talk on TED.com.)




After watching, my father and I discussed the video, creativity, nirvana, the seeming dissolution of boundaries between life and energy, all while he fixed a mango, the knife cutting, slicing and cubing sweet pieces of fruit.

The hands busy, the mind at work.

Does my father also seek that balance that I struggle to find? The see-saw between right brain/left brain, time for creativity, time for reality and how to move between the two parts in order to forge a whole? It sounds so lofty, but this tension sometimes clouds the clearheadedness I try to find. It was strangely comforting to know that it was still part of his life's work, although I think he's more settled than I am, with his studio and painting and the sheer joy of creativity. I seem to slog (by choice, I must admit) through grading, detritus and minutia.


In conjunction with this talk, I read the review of Sex and the City in the Los Angeles Times, and it lauded the movie for celebrating the 50th birthday of the one of the characters, saying that the film had transcended their earlier niche and really moved ahead to capture a "real" woman's life, as if it was the birthday number that was significant rather than the growth of the person who is attached to that number. (I guess, for Hollywood, acknowledging that anyone is over 30 is a big deal.) The reviewer did nail that idea to the wall, saying that in spite of the glamorous clothes and the fabulous real estate they do tackle weightier issues. I wonder though, if those women, even if older, have changed. Or do the same things still satisfy them at fifty that intrigued them in their earlier years: clothes, shoes, revolving relationships?


Another facet of growing older is the letting go. (I know you'd never know this by looking at my garage, but the cleaning out is currently underway.) My brother-in-law and I were discussing Steven Covey's mantra to be proactive. Dan made the comment that it meant you had to have an opinion about everything, make a decision about everything, charge ahead in every area of life, never trusting that it might all work out, after all. I said that being "proactive" was great if you were in your thirties and forties. I do think that the cliches and sayings that I once embraced (that Striving for Excellence business) are now like too-tight shoes: they don't fit.

And unlike the Sex and the City women, or a brain scientist like Ms. Taylor, or a time guru like Covey, who seemingly have all the answers, I'll need to keep at it.

Like these fellows.