Great-Aunt Sophia Moves to Mexico: Lessons Learned
My great-aunt and uncle
turned 80 a few years ago, and they decided they had had enough snow and
cold, so they decided to emigrate. To Mexico. Just like that.
Faith.
I thought, “what awesome people! I want to study them.”
So off I went to Mexico too, to learn how they do Being So Awesome. Here is what I learned.
Look a little before you leap, but don’t stand around looking for too long. Just do it. Trust in your own ability to land well.
How could they do that?
How to get like that:
To most people who think they can’t, my advice is “of course you can, don’t be a wimp” (I’m also farm-raised). But if you realistically see an obstacle that you can’t get over, that’s fine. Don’t go over it. Find an alternate route, some adventure that has hurdles you can easily leap, and do that. And work your way up.
Just because you think you can’t right now, doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to later.
Want to know the best way to raise kids who will know that they CAN do anything they want in their lives? Get them some real life experience. They need to get out from behind their computer monitors. Get them out in the community doing physical projects with other people, preferably elders. Hook them up with adults who will teach them real skills, and expect them to work.
Expect your kids to be awesome human beings, and they will be. Expect yourself to be an awesome human being, and you will be. Expect that you can, and… then figure out how.
Knowing that you can do some things gives you the confidence to do more things. So actually DO build that treehouse. “Doing” it virtually doesn’t build the same “can”ness. Actually DO volunteer to go and help clean up that old yard. Join that dance class. Pick up a friend who needs a lift. Show up. Dare to try.
It does not matter if it seems like the project or your small adventure doesn’t lead anywhere. It leads to you climbing another rung on the ladder of knowing that you yourself are awesome, capable, worthy.
Who needs photo albums in the basement now there is Facebook and e-mail with your grandkids and children? My great-aunt didn’t focus on the photos and mementos of the past, but she does actively and impressively keep up to date with everybody who matters to her in real time. She talks to family members on the phone almost every day (she has a Magic Jack telephone, which gives her a local phone number back home and lets her telephone anywhere in North America for an astonishingly small cost per month).
I learned the same lesson when I took my kid, my cat, and one carful down to Arizona for a winter (while I left most of my stuff in storage) that life really is great with less stuff. I had been fleeing depression, I admit, and I remember being puzzled at how light and happy life felt for that period. Nothing really had changed, not in terms of the things I thought I wanted to change, anyway, but I felt happy. Just light and cheerful for no good reason. I have to wonder – does owning all that stuff weigh us down so much? I think it sure can.
And I've continued to follow through on that, ridding myself of more stuff every time I move. I remember how happy we were for that six months that we had almost no stuff. So don’t let your possessions possess you. Find joyful movement by cutting the strings to things.
How to do it:
Try it! Instead of letting your possessions possess you, just free yourself.
If you don’t think you have the courage to do it full on to start with, or you don’t believe in the power of this, try living with your stuff in storage for a few months and see how happy you feel. You’ll realize that you could just get rid of most of the stuff in storage and feel lighter, happier, and more able to get things done and live free and happy.
My great-aunt’s joyful action, keeping in touch with family, means so much to us. She is constantly serving others by her caring attitude. If she sat in the same chair and never picked up the telephone, it wouldn’t be as good to the rest of us, would it? She is active and creates joy in others, and that shines back on herself. Be open. Share. Do. Move.
As someone who has often felt that my phone call would be “bothering” people, I know that not everyone can do this from where they are right now. We need to have the confidence that other people actually want to hear from us.
We do not all have people who will be joyful to hear our voices at all times in our lives. But we can work on a plan to surround ourselves with better people. I talk a bit about this in this article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/need-steps-teach-dont-just-talk-christa-bedwin?trk=mp-reader-card
Anyway, back to my aunt. She sends birthday cards. She is very active, mentally and physically, and isn’t that so much more fun than sitting still in the middle of your stuff?
How to do this:
Call someone, every day, just to say hello and compliment them. No agenda. Offer someone a lift. Offer to bring someone food. Clean your own house. Do your chores first thing. Exercise. Go travelling. Move in little ways and big ways every day. Be aware of when you’re stagnating, and do something to move that energy.
She has lovely furniture, collected in similar ways, paintings in her house... anything you might want. About the only thing she can't replace or order from home is the garlic sausage.
She gets her groceries at WalMart or Costco or Soriana's -- really, just about everything you get at home with an added dose of culture and fun.
In retrospect, we can definitely say:
There was no reason not to give everything away.
Remember the writers’ creed, and apply it to life when you’ve nothing else positive to say: the worse the situation, the better the story. One elegant-looking beautiful brown cockroach patrolling the bathroom once a week doesn’t make nearly as exciting a story as two hundred cockroaches of swarming the kitchen of an evening.
(To clarify: The one elegant cockroach wandered into our bathroom at the guest casita at Aunt Sophie’s in Mexico, all of twice during our visit. Very low-key and mildly interesting, waving her elegant antennae. The startling event with hundreds of roaches of many sizes happened years ago at a friend’s nice tidy clean apartment in Brisbane, Australia. But you can bet I’ve told the hundreds-of-cockroaches story many more times than I’ll tell the one-cockroach story. Hm. Actually, that’s a good story. See future post. I will write it soon.)
It’s not a tragedy that it took ages for my great-aunt to find a grapefruit knife like the one she had left behind. She found it eventually, and in the mean time, had a good time looking. For me, it wouldn’t be a tragedy to lose the microwave, either. You can decide on the limits of what you want your adventure to be. Maybe you want to keep your Vitamix and your best knives, but could you stomach replacing your pots? For the much greater joy of a hassle-less grand adventure? I’ll bet you could.
Of course you don’t want to make a life out of many catastrophes. Set some limits for yourself. However, question where those limits are. In North America, I have heard so many people set so many ridiculous limits. Get outside that box. Think through the consequences before you blindly accept limiting statements others make (hint: most can be rejected).
(Totally irrelevant side joke: If the English language made sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.)
So what do you do? Go where your kids are holidaying anyway. Brilliant. And for half the price they sold their little farm for, they bought a two-house property. Lovely, big, roomy house for themselves, and guest house for guests. The sunrise picture on the cover of this article was the view I woke up to every morning.
It’s part of that ethic of maintaining what she has right now, instead of relying on memories of the good old things she had in the past (like those people who have photo albums in the basement, but aren’t all that successful at maintaining current relationships with their families).
I have come to count on those cards. They are a bright spot of every holiday. It makes me feel good to know I’m on her list, so she is always on mine, too. It is something that our generation has lost (probably related to the trend of women working more outside the home, and not having times for these beautiful actions that keep society running nicely).
This is a piece of advice that I hope to follow soon myself. All it takes is a little organization and a determination to do it.
Really, remembering birthdays is a way to care for people. Even if you don’t want to do the birthday thing, is there some ritual you could introduce to show people that you care?
Don’t just know inside yourself that you love people, actually take the actions that let them know that you care. It’s good standard procedure that will keep you healthy long-term. And it will make it far more likely that people will be surrounding you and close to hand when you need them. People who show they care, get cared for in return.
Au contraire. Being joyful is just as important, and probably more so. Even in retirement, many people create schedules and tasks for themselves and whittle away their lives with all the things they feel they “have to do.” You know, the old classic “I can’t go out with you, because I have to wash my hair.”
Leave your hair unwashed and go out, is what I would have said to you. But my great-aunt Sophie does better than that. She gets up a half hour earlier, washes her hair, does all the house chores first thing without procrastinating, and then gets hard-core into the having fun, with no guilt. That’s something we could all afford to emulate.
Work hard, play hard, and move to Mexico if you want to.
Faith.
I thought, “what awesome people! I want to study them.”
So off I went to Mexico too, to learn how they do Being So Awesome. Here is what I learned.
- Fortune favors the bold.
- Trusting in your own competence is key. Know you can.
- Don't worry about the stuff.
- Keep moving.
- If you give all your stuff away, it will come back when you need it anyway.
- Embrace the adventure.
- If you want more of someone, have what they want.
- Remember birthdays.
- Be joyful.
1. Fortune favors the bold.
My great-aunt had never been to Mexico when they up and moved, lock, stock, and barrel. My great-uncle did go on a bit of a reconnaissance mission, but they did not dither. They set a plan, they organized the steps to get there, and they followed through. And now they are in a much lovelier house in a much cheaper place to live, with good neighbours and a lovely environment.Look a little before you leap, but don’t stand around looking for too long. Just do it. Trust in your own ability to land well.
How could they do that?
2. Trusting in your own competence is key. Know you can.
My great-aunt was farm-raised and worked hard all her life, as came naturally. I don’t think the notion that they wouldn’t be able to take care of themselves ever really crossed their minds.How to get like that:
To most people who think they can’t, my advice is “of course you can, don’t be a wimp” (I’m also farm-raised). But if you realistically see an obstacle that you can’t get over, that’s fine. Don’t go over it. Find an alternate route, some adventure that has hurdles you can easily leap, and do that. And work your way up.
Just because you think you can’t right now, doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to later.
Want to know the best way to raise kids who will know that they CAN do anything they want in their lives? Get them some real life experience. They need to get out from behind their computer monitors. Get them out in the community doing physical projects with other people, preferably elders. Hook them up with adults who will teach them real skills, and expect them to work.
Expect your kids to be awesome human beings, and they will be. Expect yourself to be an awesome human being, and you will be. Expect that you can, and… then figure out how.
Knowing that you can do some things gives you the confidence to do more things. So actually DO build that treehouse. “Doing” it virtually doesn’t build the same “can”ness. Actually DO volunteer to go and help clean up that old yard. Join that dance class. Pick up a friend who needs a lift. Show up. Dare to try.
It does not matter if it seems like the project or your small adventure doesn’t lead anywhere. It leads to you climbing another rung on the ladder of knowing that you yourself are awesome, capable, worthy.
3. Don't worry about the stuff.
Aunt Sophia and her husband packed up their car with their two cats and a few things and sold or gave away everything else. So little hassle that way! Who says you can't do that at 80?Who needs photo albums in the basement now there is Facebook and e-mail with your grandkids and children? My great-aunt didn’t focus on the photos and mementos of the past, but she does actively and impressively keep up to date with everybody who matters to her in real time. She talks to family members on the phone almost every day (she has a Magic Jack telephone, which gives her a local phone number back home and lets her telephone anywhere in North America for an astonishingly small cost per month).
I learned the same lesson when I took my kid, my cat, and one carful down to Arizona for a winter (while I left most of my stuff in storage) that life really is great with less stuff. I had been fleeing depression, I admit, and I remember being puzzled at how light and happy life felt for that period. Nothing really had changed, not in terms of the things I thought I wanted to change, anyway, but I felt happy. Just light and cheerful for no good reason. I have to wonder – does owning all that stuff weigh us down so much? I think it sure can.
And I've continued to follow through on that, ridding myself of more stuff every time I move. I remember how happy we were for that six months that we had almost no stuff. So don’t let your possessions possess you. Find joyful movement by cutting the strings to things.
How to do it:
Try it! Instead of letting your possessions possess you, just free yourself.
If you don’t think you have the courage to do it full on to start with, or you don’t believe in the power of this, try living with your stuff in storage for a few months and see how happy you feel. You’ll realize that you could just get rid of most of the stuff in storage and feel lighter, happier, and more able to get things done and live free and happy.
4. Keep moving.
Actually I think they might have been 82 by the time they actually headed their car south, but think of that – while their peers were waking up thinking of what body aches and ailments they might face today, my great-aunt and uncle woke up and thought, “okay, what part of the plan are we going to pursue today? What’s the next step on this journey?” Maybe everyone should make a policy of moving. Transition creates life. They simply didn’t have time to worry about aches and pains, because their enthusiasm was carrying them along and maintaining good health.My great-aunt’s joyful action, keeping in touch with family, means so much to us. She is constantly serving others by her caring attitude. If she sat in the same chair and never picked up the telephone, it wouldn’t be as good to the rest of us, would it? She is active and creates joy in others, and that shines back on herself. Be open. Share. Do. Move.
As someone who has often felt that my phone call would be “bothering” people, I know that not everyone can do this from where they are right now. We need to have the confidence that other people actually want to hear from us.
We do not all have people who will be joyful to hear our voices at all times in our lives. But we can work on a plan to surround ourselves with better people. I talk a bit about this in this article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/need-steps-teach-dont-just-talk-christa-bedwin?trk=mp-reader-card
Anyway, back to my aunt. She sends birthday cards. She is very active, mentally and physically, and isn’t that so much more fun than sitting still in the middle of your stuff?
How to do this:
Call someone, every day, just to say hello and compliment them. No agenda. Offer someone a lift. Offer to bring someone food. Clean your own house. Do your chores first thing. Exercise. Go travelling. Move in little ways and big ways every day. Be aware of when you’re stagnating, and do something to move that energy.
5. If you give all your stuff away, it will come back when you need it anyway.
Aunt Sophie now has absolutely glorious china -- two full sets of it. A new friend she made in her Mexican neighbourhood was moving back to Europe, and my aunt bought a set of beautiful classic English china from her at her garage sale (this lady had also reached a point where she was ready to be free of her possessions). The lady also gave her an entire set of white and gold Royal Albert china for free, because it didn’t sell at the garage sale, but she didn’t need it any more. She gave it freely and joyfully. So now my great-aunt has china as nice as anything she had ever collected herself at home, with the added nice energy on it that it was given to her freely and joyfully by a kind friend who was going better places in her own life.She has lovely furniture, collected in similar ways, paintings in her house... anything you might want. About the only thing she can't replace or order from home is the garlic sausage.
She gets her groceries at WalMart or Costco or Soriana's -- really, just about everything you get at home with an added dose of culture and fun.
In retrospect, we can definitely say:
There was no reason not to give everything away.
6. Embrace the adventure.
Of course, some things are not easy to find, and that makes an adventure. You can choose whether a hard-to-find object is a quest and an adventure, or a frustration that's something to complain about. The lack of proper Ukrainian garlic sausage is something to mourn, sure, but most other things we’ve gotten used to are do-withoutable (great-uncle did bring his Vitamix, and they now have all the other mod cons you'd want, but they set out on the adventure without worrying about it.)Remember the writers’ creed, and apply it to life when you’ve nothing else positive to say: the worse the situation, the better the story. One elegant-looking beautiful brown cockroach patrolling the bathroom once a week doesn’t make nearly as exciting a story as two hundred cockroaches of swarming the kitchen of an evening.
(To clarify: The one elegant cockroach wandered into our bathroom at the guest casita at Aunt Sophie’s in Mexico, all of twice during our visit. Very low-key and mildly interesting, waving her elegant antennae. The startling event with hundreds of roaches of many sizes happened years ago at a friend’s nice tidy clean apartment in Brisbane, Australia. But you can bet I’ve told the hundreds-of-cockroaches story many more times than I’ll tell the one-cockroach story. Hm. Actually, that’s a good story. See future post. I will write it soon.)
It’s not a tragedy that it took ages for my great-aunt to find a grapefruit knife like the one she had left behind. She found it eventually, and in the mean time, had a good time looking. For me, it wouldn’t be a tragedy to lose the microwave, either. You can decide on the limits of what you want your adventure to be. Maybe you want to keep your Vitamix and your best knives, but could you stomach replacing your pots? For the much greater joy of a hassle-less grand adventure? I’ll bet you could.
Of course you don’t want to make a life out of many catastrophes. Set some limits for yourself. However, question where those limits are. In North America, I have heard so many people set so many ridiculous limits. Get outside that box. Think through the consequences before you blindly accept limiting statements others make (hint: most can be rejected).
- “Oh, you can’t change houses while your children are in school." (Really? Take a look at adults who moved while they were in school, even moved a lot – fact is, they’re often better-adapted and happier than people whose parents who believed they Had To Stay in the same school/town/country. Don’t be afraid to shake it up – teens are awesome and actually very open to change when it’s presented attractively.)
- “Oh, you can’t submit your manuscript unless you do x, y, z.” (Really? Well, if you don’t submit it, for sure you won’t get published, we do know that much.)
- “Oh, you can’t start a new life after age x.” (Really? Have them read this article. J If you think you can, you can. If you think you can’t… you know the rest. You stay stagnant.)
(Totally irrelevant side joke: If the English language made sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.)
7. If you want more of someone, have what they want.
My great-aunt and uncle get more family time than they have in decades. You can hardly blame your offspring for spending their holiday time in warm places instead of with you, shivering in your northern farmhouse (okay, they had a very nice farmhouse, with central heating and everything, but you know).So what do you do? Go where your kids are holidaying anyway. Brilliant. And for half the price they sold their little farm for, they bought a two-house property. Lovely, big, roomy house for themselves, and guest house for guests. The sunrise picture on the cover of this article was the view I woke up to every morning.
8. Remember birthdays.
Why? You might cynically say, because it reminds people that you’re there. But I think that for my great-aunt, it’s just part of a good Christian ethic to care for others around herself. She does it because it’s nice for everyone else when she does. She has all the birthdays in a book, and she sits down and takes the time to send electronic cards every week.It’s part of that ethic of maintaining what she has right now, instead of relying on memories of the good old things she had in the past (like those people who have photo albums in the basement, but aren’t all that successful at maintaining current relationships with their families).
I have come to count on those cards. They are a bright spot of every holiday. It makes me feel good to know I’m on her list, so she is always on mine, too. It is something that our generation has lost (probably related to the trend of women working more outside the home, and not having times for these beautiful actions that keep society running nicely).
This is a piece of advice that I hope to follow soon myself. All it takes is a little organization and a determination to do it.
Really, remembering birthdays is a way to care for people. Even if you don’t want to do the birthday thing, is there some ritual you could introduce to show people that you care?
Don’t just know inside yourself that you love people, actually take the actions that let them know that you care. It’s good standard procedure that will keep you healthy long-term. And it will make it far more likely that people will be surrounding you and close to hand when you need them. People who show they care, get cared for in return.
9. Be joyful.
One of the things many of us do wrong is to assume that having fun is not as important as “doing work.”Au contraire. Being joyful is just as important, and probably more so. Even in retirement, many people create schedules and tasks for themselves and whittle away their lives with all the things they feel they “have to do.” You know, the old classic “I can’t go out with you, because I have to wash my hair.”
Leave your hair unwashed and go out, is what I would have said to you. But my great-aunt Sophie does better than that. She gets up a half hour earlier, washes her hair, does all the house chores first thing without procrastinating, and then gets hard-core into the having fun, with no guilt. That’s something we could all afford to emulate.
Work hard, play hard, and move to Mexico if you want to.
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