Yesterday evening I attended a fundraiser at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in New Jersey. Students from the County high schools are selected to play for the annual Jennie Haver  Memorial Scholarship. My daughter’s (she is 18) boy friend was in the jazz band.

The finale was selections from “The Music Man,” as performed by the kids from Central. They were wonderful. “No lie”, as my daughter would say.

The leading man made me think back to Robert Preston, when I first saw the REAL “Music Man.” I have seen several versions since; but, Preston’s will always be the real one for me.

I got to see Ethel Merman in the original Gypsy, Walter Pidgeon in Happiest Millionaire. I saw the original Most Happy Fella, First Impressions with Hermione Gingold, and Bells are Ringing with Judy Holliday. Most of the kids at the Hunterdon concert never heard of any of these people. But these are the greatest memories I have of my Dad, when we went hand in hand, a very big man and a very small girl. He would die suddenly of a stroke three years later.

In those halcyon days, I knew every word of every song in every Broadway show of the 50’s. I still do.

Then came 1957 and fourth grade, I tried out for my school musical. Children were not expected to take, nor could most of us afford music lessons, nor did you get into a play just because you auditioned. You had to try out, you had to be good. In those days, if you weren’t, even the teachers could be unthinkingly cruel.

I confidently walked in front of the three faculty members who headed the PS 244 Elementary school drama club. They sat in judgment of each who dared apply, like today’s American Idol judges, with everyone being Simon Cowell.

 Most of the kids approached the three like a defendant approaching the bench, or the Cowardly Lion approaching the Wizard.  Not me. I knew I was good. Merman was on my shoulder. I sang. I stunk. All the judges laughed at me, and I never sang again. I mean that I REALLY never sang again. I mouthed the words in 1965 at Senior Sing; I bit my lip instead of singing to my kids, so they would not have a lousy voice like me.

I love music indiscriminately, and can’t stop moving and dancing to any music that I hear. Once, on a Rite Aid line, waiting for my thyroid pills the MUSAK was playing. I saw myself on the security camera unconsciously bopping away. Everyone else was standing nicely, like an adult. Maybe it’s like loss of sight, you get to hear better. I have no voice, so I also get to hear more.

Flash forward to last week. I own a marketing company and I can sense that the next frontier in business is Asia. The next step for me is to learn Chinese.

I find myself in the Time Warner building in NYC. I spot the Rosetta Stone booth. I have a minute. I shyly step in. The guy is great. He takes lots of time with me on the tonality of Chinese. The graph says I am not mimicking the sounds correctly. Chinese is a singing language, he explains, based on duplicating four notes. If you can’t sing, you can’t speak Chinese. The computer is just like the fourth grade teachers, except it doesn’t laugh.

So I will never speak Chinese. Or will I? I decide to take the long road to happiness. It may take years. First, I will take singing lessons, and then start Chinese with Rosetta Stone. I have been to China and Malaysia and I will take another trip to Asia, for an emersion course.

This I think is successful aging. I am proud that I am cognitively fit to do this. I know that my CogniFit exercises are part of the mix that gives me the taste for such a challenge.  CogniFit, is the brain fitness exercise program I use to stay sharp. You know their slogan, “Did you CogniFit Today?” I know it sounds self serving as I am a spokesperson for the brand, but I cannot separate my personal goals from my mental relatedness. Can you?

I am learning the words to “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” I have no grandchildren. But when I do, I want them to hear my voice.

Nothing is the New Something

Lately, I have been spending lot of time doing nothing. That, coming from the Queen of Doing, is really something.  I find it almost exhausting to do nothing, but highly constructive. I wish I had been trained in doing nothing long ago.

My penchant for doing nothing started this summer when I observed the contentment that arose in my chest just by staring at the fire flies, from my patio chair. I have owned the chair for four years and hardly ever had time to take a seat, as I was always doing something.

As My Big Number, age 62, draws near I realize that I am eligible for early Social Security and that some people retire at that age. I have planned nothing, have no time to retire, no money to do so in style anyway, and my spouse doesn’t want to retire. Retirement seems remote. But, the closest that I can get to it in the midst of life is to do nothing. So I tried.

One summer day I plopped myself down on that patio chair and began doing nothing with a vengeance.

My musing mind or my “monkey mind” as my meditation teacher likes to call it, roamed around my brain to better understand the essence of doing nothing, and whether it was as worthwhile as it seemed to be, while looking at the flies flickering.

It was easy to muse. The fire flies randomly glowed from a copse of Cedar trees along the ridge on which my home is perched. This is my eleventh home. I moved mostly to have another house to decorate, another set of insurmountable tasks to take on. My homes were always fixer uppers. And since we have no skill in carpentry, electricity or any of the building trades, they were also money pits that forced us to work longer and harder and do something to pay the bills,

This house was paying off -until the mortgage comes due-in vistas, fire flies, golden sunsets and romantic sunrises. This country home was meant for doing nothing, except drinking sarsaparilla and root beer floats (sugar free.).

As my monkey mind flourished and my body languished on the patio chair, I began to evaluate different states of doing nothing. Monday morning meditation is an organized, spiritual and highly recommended way of doing nothing while appearing to do something. So is fishing. So there is this whole category of “GOOD” nothings that give you something noble or fun with which you can fill in the blank when asked “What are you doing sitting there?”

Then there is a category of nothing that makes you think you are actually doing something but aren’t. Deleting e-mails is one of those. I have 3, 985 e-mails that take three days to review, file and delete. When I am through I have little to show for it except an obsessive satisfaction that I have “cleaned out” my e-mails.  Other people are like this with sock draws. My mother had that feeling about the refrigerator.

Cleaning out seems so noble that you are hard pressed to realize that you end up with less than you had in the first place, most notably your time. Yet, cleaning out is lauded as organizing and unburdening, even though we all know that we will be in the same place, with the same number of e-mails and loads of stuff a scant minute later.

Philosophical questions arise when exploring whether nothing is actually something, whether it is worth while, and indeed whether any of us, at any time, can actually do nothing.

Take the movies for example, or any passive entertainment, like TV (which is the only electronic medium that get the bad wrap of making you fat.) Somehow a guy snoozing on his hammock is a peaceful man, enjoying his sensitive side, while the guy watching football on the TV is a couch potato. Is nothing done in nature more noble than nothing done in the den? Is nothing done when your wife can’t see you doing nothing, really doing nothing?

Then there are the bio/physical issues. Is sleeping a form of doing nothing? Daydreaming? Waiting on line for something? Sitting on a bus waiting to be transported somewhere?

In the great film “Walleye,” humans were reduced to doing nothing and only crisis and conflict and hope brought them to action. Is that what we need to doing something? In other words, is doing nothing, except foraging or hunting for food, our natural state? Is that why Friday is better than Monday? WHY MOST HEART ATTACKS HAPPEN BETWEEN 6 AND 9 AM ON MONDAY MORNINGS, just after doing nothing and before the specter of doing something is before our eyes?

Now I must be off to the gym. I would rather sit on my patio chair. I have only limited time to choose between doing something and doing nothing. I will choose the gym, but feel guilty that I am not doing nothing. It seems that doing something is the compulsion. Doing nothing is the reward for all the somethings.

Maybe an eternity of doing nothing is what is meant by “going to your reward.” I hope not, that would drive me crazy.

Killed in the Comfort Zone

Surely, by the time you reach 50 you deserve to live comfortably; to function in your comfort zone.

But consider this, the word ”de serve” means just that. It rarely serves you to live in your comfort zone.  On the contrary, much that is noble in the human spirit goes dormant in the comfort zone. That which inspires and vitalizes flourishes best when you are challenged. There is nothing less valuable to inspiration than mediocrity. Comfort is the epitome of the mediocre.

A Nobel Prize was won for explaining the science of perturbation, to perturb or bother. The theory goes that when a substance is subjected to extreme heat it changes its character forever. It gets stronger; like rocks under fire it becomes a diamonded. Or in the vernacular: if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. To succeed in anything, you cannot stay luke warm. Don't even try.  If the kitchen is a METAPHORE for your wondrous, evolving DREAM, you will have to give it up-- kill it in the comfort zone.

But haven't we been shown retirement on the hammock, the golf course, traveling, starting a consulting business as we deserve? As boomers, we may not accept taking it easy, but still we seek to remain in our comfort zone AFTER RETIREMENT.

Few of us admit that we want to stand pat. I have met so many people at a loss for what to do after retirement. They understand that it is an opportunity of a lifetime to have the time to craft their life, but are shocked that they have lost the courage to unbind themselves from the past. Even when their seemingly new life appears fresh and new, it is only an anemic reflection of their old life. It is created in the comfort zone.

My friend, a psychologist is 60, and wonders if she can go back to medical school and be a physician’s assistant. I reminded her that she will be 70 whether she becomes a PA or not. She might as well become one.

I want to travel 24/7, but have always been a home owner with big and burdensome homes. To live the life of travel for which I long, I must get out of my comfort zone, and own a small place or rent. It feels like a free fall; it scares me that I will have to carefully invest and manage money instead of letting my mortgage company be my bank. I need to plan my trips CAREFULLY. At 62 I can’t see everything in the world, no matter what.

Most of all I have to believe that I deserve a lot more than a comfort zone.

What stops you from getting out of your comfort zone? Let us know.

Here is an article about our new website from Senior News.  Contact me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you want to travel with us to Greece, this year.