Letters to the Editor
valockett
Published Letters: 12 Editor's Choice: 2
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Think about letting go.
[Read the article: I love my house but hate the payments and upkeep!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I've become bored with my job specifically and my work in general. I'm also not optimistic about my long-term job security. I long to do something more fun, more creative and less stressful
The only thing I can think of that would merit selling the house is some kind of major leap, like moving to New Zealand.
You're 41 and single. Why not make a major leap? I'm 53, married with three kids, one of who still lives with us. My husband and I had a nice home (with a home equity loan) and two rental houses. We sold two of the houses and gave one rental house to our adult daughters, quit our jobs, started our own NGO, and moved to Vietnam where we live comfortably on the proceeds from the houses and do volunteer work at our own pace.
In the US, we worried that we would never be able to save enough to retire, never be able to travel without ruining our finances completely. We worried about the corrosive effect that American culture was having on our 14 year-old son and we worried about his future. We also feel that the housing market and the American economy has peaked. When we volunteered in a rehabilitation center in Vietnam for one month in 2005, we were stunned to learn how much good one middle-aged, middle-income American couple can do in a third world country. So, when we came back to the US, we set about tying up the loose ends of our American life and got ready to move to Vietnam permanently. The trick is to let go of your American lifestyle. In Vietnam, we have the financial freedom to live creative and meaningful lives.
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Alternative point of view
[Read the article: How to eulogize the dad no one likes?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]My husband’s father was a rigid, judgmental, self-righteous disciplinarian. I know this from the tales that my husband told me about his childhood. By the time I met him; he was slipping into dementia and had paranoid ideas that, according to his wife, were causing all sorts of difficulties. But what did I see? Someone who was always shyly eager to play with my little daughter, his only grandchild. And when he died and a fellow member of his church eulogized him, what did he describe? He saw what his family experienced as pig-headedness as steadfastness. Where the family saw him as being oblivious to anyone else’s ideas and feelings, the eulogist remarked upon my father-in-law remaining true to his beliefs in the face of opposition. For me, that eulogy was the best illustration of alternative point of view (or spin) that I have ever seen.
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You don't need to write a novel in order to be writing.
[Read the article: I don't feel like writing. Does that mean I'm not a writer?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You don’t need to write a novel in order to be writing. The process of writing is valuable, in and of itself. Your life has changed radically since the time that you wrote your novel. I hope, with the immense changes in your life—getting married, having a child—that your idea of what “life” is all about is evolving. You may not have a book inside you at this time. But what a great time this is to be writing a journal, for your own benefit, to help you process all the changes that you are going through. Set aside some time each day just to help yourself process all these new experiences and to maintain the skill of setting thoughts down on paper. You may, eventually, find the seed of a new novel there. But even if you don’t, you will reap the benefit of living a more conscious life.
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Shared Experience
[Read the article: The end of the affair]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"But still, how often will we turn our televisions on at the same moment (let alone crack the spines of millions of copies of the same book at midnight) for any reason except to watch tragedies of 9/11 proportions unfold? We long for this kind of shared experience, the being a part of something."
Reading this article was one long “Aha!” moment for me. I’ve always felt a little abashed by my appetite for disaster news, a` la` Katrina and 911. And Star Wars and Harry Potter have always drawn me in. I never put that attraction together with that notion of “shared experience”—that I could strike up or follow conversations with friends and strangers and follow stories in the media as part of a group experiencing something in “real time.” Following that same line of thought, I start to understand the attraction of celebrity news and TV sports—it’s a bond; it’s a current narrative that large groups of people can share in an increasingly splintered world. Thank you, Rebecca Traister!
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Traumatic Head Injury as a Literary Device
[Read the article: A good hard bump]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Here's a link to a related article about our sometimes frivolous attitude towards what can be a life changing event:
http://www.steadyfootsteps.org/2007/08/traumatic_head_injury_as_literary_device.html
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The Politics of Hope
[Read the article: Stop your sobbing]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The ethics, and politics, born from joy, mystery, and gratitude of overcoming adversity will be radically different from the ethics born of the sadness of living in a fallen world pervaded by fears of the eco-apocalypse to come.
I’d like to point out that the Bush administration has been very successful in immobilizing effective citizen action through the judicious application of the politics of fear. Fear paralyzes. We live in uncertain times—that’s a fact. It’s important that we acknowledge threats to the well-being and survival of the human community. That said, it is equally important that we have hope—and that we act in the hope that what we do will make a difference.
For me, the hopeful act was to establish my own charitable organization (http://www.steadyfootsteps.org/), sell my vehicles and oil-heated American home and move to Vietnam. My family and I live much more lightly on the planet now, but merely as a by-product of doing productive, humanitarian work.