What does this picture look like to you? Perhaps a piece of melted shmutz on the ground? To me, it appears to be a lost musical note looking for its staff, its home. It seems to be in search of its family of eighth notes, quarter notes, and those syncopated dotted notes that always change things up a bit. That’s my                perception.

If I hadn’t been looking down, I would never have seen it. I was taking a much needed aerobic walk, with my music cranking through my ear buds. Walking at a good clip, I was huffing and puffing, punching my arms into the air to relieve stress and increase my heart rate, when I looked down and saw this ‘note.’ My walk came to a sudden four beat rest.

As I pondered my “Rorschach perception” of what most likely was once a healthy piece of gum, my itunes shuffled, and Carole King began singing, “So Far Away.” This immediately switched my attention from the note on the ground to the ones playing in my ears.

“So Far Away, doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore…”

Hearing this song immediately took me back to when I was 12 years old. I pictured my younger self, sitting in my pink room, on my pink shag carpet, missing my first love who had left for the summer. This song played over and over on my portable record player as I read his letters and inhaled the envelopes, which he had soaked in his cologne. I missed him terribly.

So many things become easier as we get older, but for many, change is not one of them. The reality is, life changes, whether we want it to or not. Our reality is how we perceive things, and that is within our control. How we see things will determine how we respond, which in turn determines our quality of life.

I recently saw a baby boy conked out in his mother’s arms, mouth open, with his head snuggly fitting in the crook of her neck. My memory of how that felt came flooding back, making me feel sad and wonderful at the same time. The sadness hit me first because soon, for the first time, both of my children will be living away from home. This will be an adjustment, but I have a choice to make it worse by dwelling on the loss of what was, or I can be grateful for that time, and feel proud that they are two independent, caring, loving, young adults making their way in the world.

Experiencing divorce is another kind of loss, which can ruin lives depending on how we handle the situation. Many choose to carry anger and bitterness indefinitely, and perceive the years they were married as a total waste. Why choose to look at it this way when it makes us feel worse?

As we get older, we start to see more illness and death. When our loved ones die, it is an incredible loss. I have lost three of my four grandparents whom I miss very much, but I am also so blessed to still have my Grandma Rose, who is going on 102 years of age. Though she looks amazing, and has fought the battle of aging brilliantly, it will one day win the war.

I recently went to have Friday night dinner with her, just the two of us. I looked around the dining room, and at first I saw nothing but gray hair, hearing aids, care givers, and walkers. I saw that the act of getting a fork to one’s mouth can be a workout. At first, I felt depressed and afraid. Then, remembering my Grandmother’s sage advice that attitude is everything, I chose instead to try and focus on how life, even at that age, can still have a sense of purpose if we choose to see it that way.

We have a choice. We can let good memories make us feel bad, and bad ones make us feel worse; or we can cherish the good from them all, and keep moving forward. How we see things is up to us. Is it a piece of shmutz, or is it a musical note? It is up to you.