I got up as usual at 7 am on Saturday when Bikram starts at 8:30am. On the way home, I stopped at Costco for salad and another case of almond milk. When I arrived, I did my oil rinse and continued working on the pan Shivani burnt frying the steak. I consider a cleaning project like this fun. I got a good deal of the burnt marks off just by scrubbing. But then I pulled out the big guns. I made a paste out of baking soda and vinegar and applied it to the burnt spots.
It worked like a charm. I have a bright and shining frying pan again. I learned the trick with the paste on the Internet for cleaning stovetops. I couldn't believe how well it worked! I can get my stovetop looking like new. After I do what I have to with the paste, I wash down with Dawn and then spray rubbing alcohol and polish it. Now, it stays pristine, no Mike to make a mess by using it. And I certainly don't.
I did nothing but slept most of the day. Shivani and I talked about losing our husbands to death. She was in her late thirties when her husband died. They had been together for seven years and got married so they could buy a house together. The boxes weren't all unpacked before Dave was diagnosed with glia cell carcinoma. I'm thinking her loss is harder to deal with than mine. There are models in our culture for 78 widows galore. Thank God, it isn't like it was when I was young in the 1950s. A woman my age without a husband lost her whole social circle. She was a fifth-wheel, a danger to the stability of the group. The world is open to me. I don't have to don widow weeds and settle to await my own death. There are no role models in the culture for a 38-year-old widow. Not to say there aren't other 38-year-old widows, just no archetypes available.
While there was more to come in our lives, more to look forward to, for Shivani and Dave, it was a vast canvas before them that they had every right to think they would someday fill. While I think of changes I will make in myself that would have made me even more available to Mike, I also know that we were both works in progress, and we had already made a lot of changes for each other. However, there was so much more to imagine for Shivani and Dave. Theirs seems the more difficult transition to me.
Shivani said that she attended a grief group. There were people of all ages there. She said each story of grief was different, and yet they were also all the same. There was a 90-year-old holocaust survivor who lost both her children in their 40s and finally her husband.
I did manage to complete one blog and send it out. Elsa and I did our walk. Dinner was my usual large salad and limeade, a leftover piece of steak, and the noodles with broccoli alfredo light that Shivani had made. I cataloged more books.
I walked Elsa before going to bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. Good night, Elsa, Goodnight, Mike.
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Thoughts: A new category. I used share my thoughts with Mike, whether he wanted to hear them or not. He was good at not paying attention when it was too much. Seemed like a good compromise to me.
When I read some of Mike's book the other day, he was talking about emptying our egos to allow Christ into our lives. Ego and emptying it. Boy, what does that mean? Sounds scary. Totally empty my ego. What is ego to start out with? It has a bad name. When the word ego is used to describe someone, it usually involves a critical comment.
Okay, let's start with what an ego is. I checked my favorite source of information, wiki. Oh, well. It's a start and a good one. It offers an overview. There are varying definitions/concepts of the ego. Naturally. Wiki gives me one sentence definitions of each of these. I'm in the habit of writing about things based on my own observations and own conclusions. This is how my father trained me to think. This drove Mike nuts. When I met him, he was an academic; he felt that no one should talk about something unless they were an expert. That included his 13-year-old son. I felt and feel that the novice has some interesting points of view that the expert never considers. They can see something from a fresh angle. Can you see why we would have a problem? I don't see anything wrong about free-thinking, in the sense of following a line of thought freely to explore an idea without first having gotten a Ph.D. in the subject. (Mike had 2 (two) ). He had to push me into getting my Masters. Degrees don't have a lot of meaning for me. They do not equal knowledge, no less wisdom.
But I am doing some light research before I shoot off my mouth. This is good because I'm learning things I didn't know, like discovering some people somewhat agree with me, even if they are a small splinter group.
Ego: (Freudian), one of the three constructs in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche.
"Egoism: an ethical theory that treats self-interest as the foundation of morality.
Egotism: the drive to maintain and enhance favorable views of oneself.
Egocentrism: the ability to differentiate between self and others.
Self-concept: a collection of beliefs about oneself that embodies the answer to "Who am I?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego (My nod to research.)
Now the closest to my theory is Egoism as a self-concept. When I followed up and checked the full entry and looked at the expanded definitions and those philosophers who share this point of view, YIKES! Their thinking also does not conform to my theory. Yes, self-interest, but recognizing that the welfare of others is essential to one's well-being. That doesn't seem to be included. The relationship between self-interest and the well-being of others is touched on by evolutionary Egoism, but not really. It appears that the possibility of being concerned about self and others at the same time isn't seriously considered. Now, let us remember, my research is about shallow as it is possible to be short of doing no research.
My theory involves that everyone's well-being is dependent on everyone else's well-being. That means I must be as concerned about myself as I am about others. My welfare is dependent on their well-being, and their welfare is dependent on mine. Real well-being is limited to the extent that we care for both ourselves and each other. My concern for others is anchored in my concern for myself, and my concern for myself is rooted in my concern for others. There is no one without the other. Focusing solely on one or the other places severe limitations on what is possible for all, for others, and for oneself.
