Terrie’s Tip – Keep your tires inflated and in good repair but don’t neglect care of the inside of your vehicle (your body).

So I’m sure those of you who saw my deflated tire yesterday expected a post on flat tires…and since I would hate to disappoint, here ya go!

Let’s look at the tire, ok? Well, maybe not…first we should look at the vehicle. There are plenty of uses for tires off of vehicles but their primary use is to help make a vehicle move smoothly. The wheel shape and the material used to make it all are part of it. But would we need tires without a vehicle? Probably not, Then it would just be called a wheel. We use vehicles to take us from place to place. Just as we use our bodies to take us from place to place. Do most of us go out every time we’re going to run to the store (or did before the pandemic anyway) and kick the tires and check the air pressure and alignment, etc.? I would venture to say no, most of us don’t. Often times we don’t even think anything of our tires until our vehicle (our bodies) start to act up.

• We shimmy
• We hear noises that didn’t use to be there
• We don’t stop as quickly and safely as we used to

But even then we often ignore the signs until it’s too late. Yet, we will stop and take our car to the car wash to get it to look pretty again. But that’s generally the outside. Maybe we’ll clean the inside when we have time but….

Many of us want to look nice on the outside so we worry about our weight, our muscles or lack thereof, our clothes, our hair (well I need to get up to speed on that one with my covid hair) and anything else that we think others might judge us by. No one ever thinks that they will be judged by how horrible their body may look on the inside.After all – who’s going to judge us? We tend not to think of the importance of the operation of these internal organs – the engine.

When our tires deflate we have to (or should) stop. This is our body telling us to stop and take a look at what’s going on in our lives (bodies). It’s a fitting metaphor that the air goes out of the tire and it deflates. Our ability to move around and go at the speed we want is suddenly deflated. We need to be getting the message here.

If we’re going at a very fast speed, that deflation may cause further damage and we really get the message. That is telling us we are moving through life way too fast and not paying attention to anything other the external factors.

If we’re not going so fast, we may have time to get to the side of the road and stop to repair your tire.

I’ll stop here even though i could go on and on with this but I think you get the point.

Check your tires.

Terrie’s Tip – Don’t be so concerned with how you look when compared to others. Be cognizant of how you can help others in any way possible before you start “cleaning up your own lawn”

Yesterday on my walk I was hit withthe realization that a “relaxing” weekend for many people was not relaxing at all.

I was met with a cacauphony of sounds – weed wackers, lawn mowers, leaf blowers. I gazed in awe at this Broadway play involving mechanical characters that were ruling their masters without the masters even knowing it. I was saddened especially when I saw people watering their lawns but that’s another whole subject.

Leaf blowers are kind of like the noise of the tires on the road for me. There would be no need to put me in isolation were I in jail. Just play an audio with those sounds and I would surely become insane much more rapidly than isolation would produce.

I see no purpose to the leaf blowers other than to make your yard look good while cluttering up others or the street or anywhere you can shoo the leaves away. I understand that some people use the blowers to get the leaves in one pile (better than raking) so they can discard them. I imagine this happens but in all this time I’ve been walking nearly every day I have not found that to be the case. People are hired to tend someone’s lawn and to make it look nice they turn on this obnoxiously loud machine, move it all around like a pistol (or other object I can’t say here) and make sure the lawn they are responsible for is clean and looks nice. The street or the neighbor’s yards? Oh, well, sorry.

It made me wonder how often we insensitive humans behave like leaf blowers. You read and hear about “how to get ahead” and “how to be number one” and on and on and it’s all about “how can I either be better or if i can’t be better, how can I look better?” We, especially in America seem to forget that we are a social animal. I mean even our “social” media can be consumed and participated in alone. Figure that one out for me.

We need to either let the leaves be on our lawn because they probably fell from our trees or we need to use some more controlled manner to scoop them up and discard them – not all over the street and other people’s yards. If you make sure you look clean and like you’re the best and you’re number one, just wait til the next storm and see a) how many more leaves fall back down so you have to restart the process or even funnier b) how many leaves you blew into the neighbor’s yards came back to yours.

During the pandemic I think we did a better job of trying to take care of others and not just ourselves and I think we need to continue that behavior. Not only remembering the Golden Rule but also helping others FIRST – clean their yard before you get to yours. They may need more help than you know.

Sorry to ramble but I think we just want our lives to look perfect without really caring what others experience. We need to keep up the good work we started in this past year and make it a habit. Looking out for others is always better and ultimately more fruitful than looking out for yourself.

Sorry for the rant