OH LORD! You Getting OLD!

Another year older, another year closer to death!

For some, that is what birthdays are, however birthdays are meant to celebrate life. I was having a conversation with a woman and she was telling me that as she gets older, she feels that there is no point in celebrating her birthday. For her the excitement is no longer there as it was when she was younger ... it was just another day, another year that she did not meet her life goals. When she said this to me I got to thinking: is this true for me as well? I soon realized that it was! In the years past I have only regarded this day as just another ordinary day, but I was not going to let this happen to me again. It is a choice; I can either look at my birthday as a day closer to death or I can CHOOSE to celebrate this day as an accomplishment of surviving another year. Your birthday is the end of another great year on this Earth and the beginning of another. You have the power to choose what to make of your day EVERY SINGLE day and why should your birthday be any different? I am going to choose to celebrate my life and look to the future with excitement. After all, age is just a number!

I recently had a birthday and this birthday was by far THE best birthday I have ever had, and I think that some of that credit went to how I approached THIS new beginning  … with gratitude. I am grateful that I made it to another year, I am grateful for all of the people that are in my life, I am grateful for my health, I am grateful for EVERY SINGLE “Happy Birthday” message (even the singing message .. you know who you are), I am grateful for all my birthday cards, I am grateful for all of the people who celebrated my birthday with me. I am truly blessed! How you choose to look at things determines the power in the result. When you approach life with gratitude everything becomes more fulfilling, and worth every moment. Your birthday is such a moment where you have the opportunity to stop and reflect about the years past. Look forward to the years to come, and do not worry about your age, or the number of grey hairs you have.

Age is just a number that represents how long you have been on this planet. This number does not speak to your maturity level, your personal accomplishments, or your future goals, so why do we let this number determine what is “OLD,” and dictate how we should feel about ourselves? People mature at different rates and we all have different goals, we are not all the same, we need to stop comparing ourselves to one another. The concept of being old and young is not about a number but it is about how you treat your body, mind and soul as you age. Ultimately “old” vs “young” is about how you feel when you wake up in the morning and not the year you were born. Mind over matter, you are not old unless you think you are old. There are things in your life that you can control and things that are out of your hands. Take control of what IS in your hands: your life! One of the things out of your control is death, and it is also the only thing that is guaranteed (I have said it before check it out here if you have not read it yet). If we all know we are going to die one day and there is nothing we can do about THAT, then why don’t we celebrate life with a positive outlook?

Reaching another birthday is a major accomplishment, think about all your ups and downs in that previous year, and despite all of the bad things that have happened you are still here and standing tall! It is not about how long you have been here, but it is about your attitude toward your birthday. Yes, this is a day just like any other, but EVERYDAY is a blessing and everyday should be approached with excitement and gratitude. There are going to be times when you are in a sh*ty mood but you have to choose to look at things in a positive light, you have the power to make your life what you want. Be happy about the blessings in your life and be grateful about the good things that did happen.

So, when you have YOUR birthday, I hope that you will remember this post and not let the moment pass you by, stop and reflect and be grateful. After all, life is only a limited time offer, so take advantage of it!

~ Be grateful for another year.

Gender Neutral

Gender roles today are slowly changing, but not fast enough. For the longest time, women and men have been assigned different roles that set the precedent for society’s expectations of them. And these separations create an unequal, biased spectrum of what is socially acceptable of either sex. our social construction of assigned gender roles can be traced back to the moment we are born and it shapes our mentalities for the rest of our days. The only way to change the mold society has put us in, is to break it and make a new one.

It starts at a young age. Parents’ roles in the home are an important piece in how their children interpret what is socially expected of them based on their gender. For example, in a nuclear family if the father takes on the role as the “bread winner” and the mother takes on the role as the “homemaker,” a son will believe that it is his responsibility to provide for his family when he grows up. The same goes for a daughter in the exact same setting, she will believe that she has to take on her mother’s responsibilities in the future. Now, I know that this is not true for EVERY situation, but parents influence the roles of each sex, and it all starts in the home.

We establish gender roles even before birth, from first determining the sex of the baby, to then planning a baby shower, then preparing the child’s room … the funny thing is ... we have not even met the pre-born yet, so how do we know what they would want in their room? These standards are also reinforced once the child begins to go to school. Instead of shaping their lives for them and coloring their lenses in pink or blue, we should be conscious about how we manipulate the child’s environment. We need to find ways to NOT influence our children's decisions based on gender specific expectations that WE’VE been raised with. By doing so, we can begin to start breaking the mold.

However the the media will always perpetuate these assigned roles by having commercials that show little girls playing with barbies and little boys playing with remote controlled cars. It is our job to not let those images shape what our children think is socially correct when it comes to the toys they play with. I remember when I was very young, during my birthday or Christmas, people who didn’t know me very well would get me gender specific toys that were meant for girls. The toys I got were barbie dolls, makeup kits, a play set that simulated a kitchen, it EVEN came with miniature plastic pots, pans, cooking utensils all the homemaker galore!!!.... yay… Those toys were atrocious, they represent conformity and I was  born a REBEL >:) … hence this blog post. The people who bought  those toys for me were influenced by the images in the media and they assumed that I would like these toys simply because I happen to be a girl. They didn’t even know my personality. DO NOT make the assumption that just because I’m a woman I will be cooking a man’s dinner, cleaning HIS home, raising the children that have HIS last name … well now that my spontaneous rant is over … My point is, we need to move past these pre-assigned gender roles and set a new model that will allow everyone to be themselves without the pressures that society imposes on what we SHOULD play with.

So the main idea I want you all to take from this post is to analyze how you influence specific roles in society. What are you doing that conforms to the rest? What fairytales are you telling your princess? What legends are you telling your knight before bed? Like I mentioned in my previous post, children will absorb whatever you expose their minds to. Use this as an opportunity to break the mold we have been baked into by an EZ Bake Oven. “Children must be taught HOW to think, not WHAT to think”- Margaret Mead