As an English major in college, I find so much peace and love in libraries, antiquarian bookshops, and, above all, Shakespeare & Co. in Paris, which is my “must” when visiting that great city.

Within the creaky floors of that old store are endless possibilities.

Perhaps you feel the same.

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There’s just something about physical books and the stories within them.

Having been in a bookstore recently and stumbling across a collection of Romantic writers, I was transported back to Prof. Gregory Maertz’s class when I was in college.

I don’t remember too much from those days when I sat for hours and hours in the university library or a lecture hall, but I remember him, and his name. Not a small feat for me.

It was my last year of college, and I was carrying a 4.0 in my major. That is, until I walked into Prof. Maertz’s class.

In the first test of three that semester, I failed.

I don’t remember what I had to do in the test, but apparently I didn’t study hard enough.

That said, the gauntlet was thrown.

By this time, I was a mom, worked at Barnes & Noble, and was trying to hold onto this perfect score in my major.

I had a lot going on, but I was going to try because it turns out, I was competitive against myself and what I could do.

I attended every class, listened to every lecture intently, and when class was done, I would spend hours in the very back of the library, where I walked past scores of rows of floor-to-ceiling books, to dive deep into the Romantics.

I became familiar with Lord Byron, who was quite a character. He lived his life intensely, foreshadowing, I suppose, how I would live mine.

He had an incredible thirst for adventure and parties and would spend vast sums of money entertaining friends.

But when life called on him to do something that mattered, he stood up with the Greeks fighting in the Greek War of Independence.

190 years after Byron’s passing, there was little old me learning more about him in a museum in Athens with my Greek husband, who humored me.

I spent hours walking that floor of the museum, internalizing every artifact.

I think we’re all connected in ways large and small with everything and everyone that ever was and ever will be.

But it wasn’t just Lord Byron. I learned of the lives and works of John Keats, Mary Shelley (the creator of Frankenstein), and William Wordsworth.

Of course, I also learned of the young P.B. Shelley who lost his life in an unexpected storm, shooing away a rescue boat so as not to lose more lives to the forces of nature. So devastated were his friends that they cremated him on the beach on a pyre.

That semester in Prof. Maertz’s class, I studied my bum off.

I got an A- (blowing up my 4.0 in my major).

Still, in the process, I developed a love for the Romantic writers and literature as a whole.

The textbook from that class is one of my only prized possessions from my university days. It was a textbook that I had earned and would keep.

And within it are these pearls of wisdom from Lord Byron, “Always laugh when you can...it is a cheap medicine.”

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

I had the chance to see an unspoiled Lake Como before it became a haven for the rich and beautiful.

It’s one of those memories I return to more than most.

It was a time that was much simpler.

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GPS existed by way of a lot of paper maps, and asking for directions meant dashes into hotel lobbies or random people on the street.

I visited way back and experienced one of my favorite memories of all time, and so wish I could go back, or at least peer through a curtain that would allow me to see it in living color one more time.

This experience was with the same guy, who remains a good friend to this day, where I learned about heights, humility, and a cow.

It was the same European road trip, and I remember crossing the Swiss-Italian border. That crossing was so clear because we went from hearing only the hum of the car, our conversation, the radio, and peaceful Swiss quiet to an increasing cacophony.

It didn’t take much to know when we crossed into Italy, and it was beautiful.

You have to love the Italians, so full of life!

We decided to spend some days in Lake Como on the fly, which took some knocking on B&B doors to find a place without a reservation in the middle of summer.

But, hey, it’s Italy, and if there was a will, there was a way, in the pre-app days.

Knocking on doors eventually found us a room perched on a hilltop with a magnificent view of the lake below.

Yes, it was one of those views that make you so happy to be alive, and it also had a fabulous terrace for morning coffee and breakfast. We know how fantastic Italian coffee is, as is the Greek, by the way.

My friend and I did what you do when in Lake Como—go out on the lake.

He couldn’t rent a large boat since he didn’t have the required captain’s license.

So, we ended up on a teeny, tiny little motorboat, which, after taking a look at the other boats, felt like an insult, but we survived being the smallest boat in all of Italy that day.

Later that night, after dinner and gelato, we decided to walk up the hill instead of taking a taxi to the B&B.

So glad we did.

As we walked deep into the night, we heard music—violins and other instruments. It was nearly one in the morning, but we deviated toward the music and what was happening.

It turns out it was a summer village party. There was plenty of food, and although we had had a full meal, you can guess what my friend did.

Yes, a beeline to the food.

I took a seat to watch the people on the makeshift dance floor.

And, this is where one of my favorite memories happened.

There before me were probably 30 pairs on the dance floor in the middle of the night, high on a hill on a summer’s eve under a black sky that allowed for the stars to twinkle pre-mass satellites.

There, before me, all of these people paired together danced Strauss waltzes on the wooden dance floor, as smoothly as swans gliding across the lake.

I remember my feeling of amazement at seeing young boys leading their young female partners.

I wondered where children learned to waltz. It was so alien to me as a New Yorker, but it was sublime and beautiful.

Traditions do matter, I’ve learned, and that was one of my earliest lessons on the topic.

I remember a very old couple, so advanced in years, but they held onto each other and danced as if it were the first time.

The impression of that night stayed with me through the years because I don’t think it’s anything I would ever see in America, certainly not in New York City.

And I recall making a point of not dancing when my friend asked me. On this one, I just wanted to be an observer.

But since then, if there’s a moon, star, (and satellite) lit night to dance under the sky a warm summer’s eve, with my partner, I’m all in.

Observe once.

Participate in the memory…always.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

One night, as I usually did in a city as vibrant as New York, I went out with a few friends. It was just about midnight, and the streets still had life, so I decided to skip a cab, take the bus, and walk the few blocks to my apartment on the Upper East Side.

I still remember that moment in my mind so clearly. I was just about to step onto the pavement of the sidewalk, having gotten off the bus and crossed the street, when I heard a screaming crack.

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Just a few steps behind me, a man got hit by a taxi, and somehow, he came crashing down, falling onto street.

Thankfully, the cabbie stopped his car, thus creating a visual block on the street. I don’t recall what the cabbie did because my focus was on the man on the ground.

Immediately, I went to him and got down on my hands and knees. He held my hand instinctually and would not let go. I remember he was wearing a red or orange top.

I recall the coldness of the road, pulling my phone to call 911, and focusing solely on him.

There was no question I had to stay with him until help arrived.

The irony is that I’m the person you don’t want with you in a medical emergency.

I’m very squeamish and have long been the sensitive one who can’t handle these things well.

If I were called to war or to serve in a hospital, again, I would not be the person you would want treating you.

I remember seeing a small glimmer of blood around his head.

“Don’t move,” I said authoritatively.

That much I knew.

He did not let go of my hand as he lay still on the cold ground.

I also knew I had to keep him talking.

Once I hung up with emergency services, I asked him his name, which I don’t recall. And I simply spoke to him and told him he was going to be fine.

Soon the ambulance and police arrived, and I let go of his hand as they took over the scene. The police took my name and number, but I never received any call because as close as I was to the accident, my back was to it when it happened. I saw nothing.

I was satisfied with myself, as much as it was awful, as I had behaved with courage and integrity. It wasn’t to last long.

A few weeks later, I sat with my mother on a Sunday morning, having a cup of coffee. She had stayed the night, and it was a cool fall morning.

My apartment was one that faced a courtyard, and my enormous terrace (a rare find in Manhattan) opened into the courtyard and lower roof of the adjoining front part of my building.

The sound of a body hitting concrete is brutal. It sounds like a cracking thunderbolt, but there’s a quality in retrospect where you realize there’s a longer echo.

When one bolt strikes concrete, it is one bolt in that moment. But, when a body strikes concrete, there is a crack and crackle of bones breaking. I still hear it in my mind.

The next moment, I heard a man call out into the courtyard, “Oh my god.”

This was not normal.

My mom and I raced to the courtyard windows, and there a man lay. His name was David, I found out later. It was after the 2008 bloodbath on Wall Street, and as I learned later, he lost a lot of money.

Shocking does not begin to describe what I saw a mere 20 feet right outside of my terrace window. He lay there, solid and still. He wore a red sweater, khakis, and beige shoes.

One had fallen off his foot and lay next to him. Save for the fact that it was the lower roof, and a chilly morning, there was nothing that would make you think he was hurt—or that he had just attempted suicide.

My body immediately woke up from its morning haze and came alive. You know the feeling. It’s that moment when you feel the hairs on the back of your neck raise, when your stomach sinks, and your fight or flight response kicks into high overdrive.

When I need to process, I immediately ‘shut down.’ I can’t have a conversation. I can’t have a distraction. I just need to focus and act. And that’s what I did at that moment.

I immediately picked up my cell phone and called 911 as I stared at David’s body so close and yet so far on so many levels.

I didn’t realize it then, but I was in shock. My systems were in overload. I was blinking red, yellow, and green and could not process what was happening.

And then it happened. My courage collapsed.

I will never forget the operator speaking to me on the phone. I explained what I saw in front of me, and she asked me if there was a way to get to him.

“Yes, there was. My apartment has a terrace door that leads to the lower roof.”

“Can you go out and see if he is breathing?”

The question. So simple. But I couldn’t do that.

I lost my courage.

Only a few weeks before I held the hand of the man who got hit by a taxi.

A couple of weeks later, I could not check if another man was breathing after jumping out the 11^th floor window of his apartment attempting suicide.

I was devastated, and I told her, “I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

Perhaps she picked up on my fear or anxiety and didn’t insist.

I found out later that day David died. I hoped he hadn’t, but that was a wish against hope.

I remained to face myself and my cowardice. How could I not have taken the hand of this man and served as a witness and support to him as life left his body?

Where was my humanity? Compassion? Integrity?

Days stretched into weeks, which grew to months, and no one could give me the answer to my mental anguish.

Friends, family, a priest, a psychologist, and group therapy sessions.

I tried it all, and nothing satisfied my inquiries of how I could have failed someone so spectacularly in their final moments.

The question was always the same, how could I have failed another human being in the last moments of his life?

Years later, a therapist gave me the answer to my profile in cowardice.

She said, “You were having a cup of coffee in your home. He literally crashed into your home but for a few feet. You couldn’t act because you were traumatized. You didn’t lack courage, kindness, or compassion. It was trauma.”

I’ve made peace with what some could view as cowardice that day the man jumped. Most days, I believe that.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved

When I was a very young girl, I wanted to learn to play the piano. I still have the dream in my mind, but since I know I can never perfect it in my lifetime, I can perfect my writing, which I do daily. Meanwhile, learning the piano remains a distant dream. Still, perhaps in another universe, I am a pianist.

Perhaps, in another life, I sat down at a piano and learned to play it until I was good enough in a way that mattered.

Maybe I learned to play the keys slowly, with uncertainty, to become a master who could move my fingers so rapidly that listeners applaud.

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In this life, I’ve made peace with the fact that the piano is a dream that would never belong to me, but would be held by the goddess.

Music has been my constant companion, and likely she has been for you too.

She’s been part of the quiet moments and the ones that have exploded with power.

Since the beginning of time, music has been present, even in the sounds of the universe. Perhaps the earliest humans listened to the raindrops and started to realize the patterns and rhythms.

A drop of water is a drop of water until you have several drops of water falling in a pattern, and then, eventually, that pattern repeats, and you have a rhythm, and at some point, our brains interpret it as music.

I think of the earliest humans or kin who first recognized that moment when the repetition of sound became musical. At some point, I imagine it inspired them to tap rhythms and beats, first maybe by tapping on a solid object, then creating the first musical instruments of percussion and wind.

Perhaps many others have wanted to become musicians or learn how to play an instrument, but life had other plans.

Music has been alive forever.

The universe has its sacred sound, Om.

That sound is universal music that never stops.

Every second of every day, the music of the universe does not cease to exist. She is always present, even if we can’t hear her.

And just as when you look up to the stars on a clear summer night and think that for generations, countless people, who have passed into the twilight of the universe, have looked up at the sky as you do today, so too music has been a constant in the continuum.

She’s deep and complex, full of ripples and nuances that flow like tentacled streams through you in moments of inspiration. She grabs your attention, and you close your eyes to feel the infinite number of years of her evolution pulse through you.

At times, she could be angry and loud.

And at others, she could be quiet and gentle.

Strings, percussion, bass—all the instruments of our age.

And yet, she continues to evolve.

She will not remain constrained to any one place, civilization, or people.

As the world races deeper into the digital age, celestial music continues to shapeshift.

No longer do you need a piano, drums, bass guitar, and a tambourine—the instruments of old. Now, you just need a little technology.

If I had learned to play piano, I would have always preferred the real thing as opposed to a digital version.

But music is restless, and she is here to become whatever the musician creates.

She is changing. She continually reincarnates herself into something different depending on her audience and who invokes her name.

Today’s musicians can singularly create the sounds of a symphony all by themselves with the assistance of a computer.

Her evolution is never-ending.

The sounds we hear in our narrow patches of the world flow into the sounds of the universe. The Om. She joins countless other sounds of music and becomes one with them all.

And, once played, music does not cease to exist. Ever.

The music of our childhood and youth is something that humans tend to remember. It brings memories of a past life, and for just a moment before it fades, it places us back where we were 10, 20, or 50 years ago. At that moment, time has not passed. We smell or taste our mother’s cooking. We remember the smell of our father’s cologne. We hear the excited voices of our childhood friends and siblings in that flash of memory.

We recall the hedonism of the dance club and how we felt dancing.

What other medium can do this for us?

Someday, far in the future, or perhaps in another reality where some version of me exists and breathes, the sounds musicians make might seem foreign to me. I might not be able to identify the instruments I hear as easily as I can with the music of my life in this reality and at this time.

Still, I know with full confidence that sounds would fall into patterns and eventual rhythms, and they would enter my consciousness and, again, flow through me.

Music is divinity itself.

She is an illusion you want to capture but can’t.

She is always present but just beyond your reach.

If you allow her to enter your world, she is something that you can’t get enough of and will consume you, but never in a destructive way.

She doesn’t exist to destroy.

She exists to inspire and serve as your muse.

Music is Terpsichore for the Greeks.

She is the Egyptian Hathor.

She is the Celtic Cerridwen.

Music is Benzaiten for the Japanese.

She is lyricism, good fortune, poetry, art, song, and dance all in one singular spirit that we view through a fractured prism that depends on our perspective.

She is everything we have ever lived and nothing we have ever experienced all at once.

Music is feminine with touches of masculinity.

Music is a universal goddess, which, like the stars that hang in the sky, will continue to be present in our lives as long as we exist.

Music and Om are one and the same—never-ending and universal.

Boundless.

I do not play piano in this life, but perhaps in another version, I choose the arrangements I can play for myself and others.

That version of me isn’t better. She’s just different. She found her way to music through her hands. I can only do it through listening, and yet music is very much alive regardless.

In this life, I learned to receive music rather than make it, but with no less devotion.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

We have gotten into the habit of discussing, or my asking a question and her answering it, her perspectives and experiences from her long life in her 90s. Anything to give her some relief from what she calls the “long journey.”

One question turned the tables on me: What belief did you hold with certainty that later proved to be wrong?

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She has known me for 34 years, and she said the question was not one she could answer, she said, because there is a difference between us.

I am passionate and full of emotion, and she is not.

I wasn’t offended, as I know she is correct.

For a beat, I sat with it, as the answer arrived. She was reminding me that I was “too much,” and I remembered her admonitions to never show my emotions on my face or in my words, while I wrestled with the knowledge that I, in fact, was one of the weird ones who were “too much.”

In time, I thought her counsel, and that of others in those early career days, meant that I was someone who had to get fixed.

Ah, yes, one of those with “too much” emotion, empathy, and care for the world.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve used the metaphor of a spinning top from childhood that expends its energy outward. It’s a continuous centrifugal force spinning the way Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman character would spin, and boom…there she was.

No, I’m not Wonder Woman, but I have yet to meet someone who has admitted to regularly experiencing an immense amount of internal energy moving outwards, and feelings, thoughts, and ideas flowing out all at once, sometimes all the time.

What I didn’t realize long ago, but science has now confirmed, is that I wasn’t living in a drama, but the wiring within was different.

This is where the gift of technology and science comes together.

Those of us who have been viewed as “too much,” especially when we were younger—before we learned to regulate our nervous systems—are experiencing containment.

Our amygdalae fire more intensely and take longer to get to baseline.

In other words, our bodies and brains are simply working harder to return to a state of even ground around our feelings and emotions.

I appreciate the discoveries and insights from neuroscience in the realm of health, wellness, and medicine.

If you, like me, have been considered by others as too much, then you, too, sit with me at the intersection of personality, social tolerance (pssst...one should never be “too much”), and neuroscience.

As my friend spoke to me about the first time we were in a car together and the passion I demonstrated for education, I wondered, with more wisdom and knowledge, whether I hadn’t yet learned to master self-regulation in those early days.

One of the toughest experiences I have, which often appears in the Achilles heel of my impatience, is appearing and remaining calm, measured, and even during high stress situations when the top spins at full speed.

In other words, impatience is pounding on the door to release its energy.

That self-regulation, I know, is suppression of emotion and energy, and sometimes the mask slips, which could work well for me, as I’m a pretty good entertainer.

Or it could appear as a lack of patience, which makes conversations challenging when something catches my emotion and attention, because I have to remain quiet as my brain fires on all cylinders, making connections.

Still, with age comes experience, wisdom, and understanding that being weird is okay, as is the feeling of being a spinning top.

It’s what allows me to see connections between disparate things, is my creative fuel, and makes me, proudly, a highly sensitive person.

As a result, sometimes, on occasion, when I’m allowed to spin, I do things that seem impossible.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

When something bad happens to someone who had it coming, does a voice inside say, karma?

We think of it as a form of justice and the universe getting around to balancing the books, but the idea of “karma’s a bitch” is more of a bumper sticker than anything else.

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Because of a childhood friend who always mentioned karma, I picked up a book by the Indian mystic Sadhguru one day, aptly titled Karma A Yogi’s Guide to Crafting Your Destiny.

I’m not as enlightened and insightful as Sadhguru, but what I took away from the book was that karma means forward movement.

It is a cycle that passes from generation to generation and lives within you.

Karma is all of the moments through generations when we’ve stepped back from doing the right thing, not grieved the suffering of others, or extended ourselves to help and support the pain and suffering of others because it makes us uncomfortable, or we didn’t have time.

It’s also all the joys and moments that are eternally precious, like dancing in the living room to a song you both love.

Karma is generational and residual memory that affects our bodies, minds, energies, and emotions, and has been transmitted to us from our parents, grandparents, and beyond.

In other words, a large part of karma has existed longer than we have in this life.

If you think about it, or at least when I consider karma, it’s profound because my karma is everyone in my family who came before me, acted and even had unfinished business in whatever sense, including trauma.

They all left their fingerprints on my life, and if you choose to believe it as I do, your family left its mark on you as well.

As my family’s self-appointed genealogist, I’ve spent years trying to trace it, and have come to realize that it’s included war, famine, abuse, and journeys across oceans to new lives far from places where my ancestors were born.

It even includes the Mayflower and Salem, and no, I’m not kidding.

All of those lives are my inheritance, and their stories run through the threads of my life in ways I will never fully understand in this lifetime or in another.

Karma is a thread that spans generations, and the person we meet on life’s road who is suffering may be doing so due to events, traumas, and experiences they never chose, understood, or knew how to overcome.

Perhaps some of the life events in their lives they never set in motion, but someone way back in their family did, and it’s a legacy the person carries with them to this day.

With a bit of awareness, we can choose to transform the patterns we inherit through karma.

I am by no means a perfect person, but one of the most consequential lessons I learned is that I can choose to interrupt the patterns and behaviors I inherited by acting differently.

In short, I can redirect karma for the future.

Now, before you think I’ve figured it out, let me be straight, I have not.

Still, I often think of the generations I will never meet and how life’s cycles move downstream.

What goes around doesn’t come around.

It actually moves forward into the next generation for better or for worse.

So, the question isn’t ever if a person deserved what happened, it’s what we’re going to do in response.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved

Recently, I had the chance to reconnect with one of the people I would call a “real deal” life coach who’s not filled with empty promises.

I’m fortunate to have Christina in my life because she’s unabashedly herself in a world of noise.

Do you also see the promises given by those in the know that have very little impact?

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I met Christina when she was my dentist. But one day, my FAVORITE dentist, who is also a DJ, burned out on the promises of success in her dental clinic.

So she decided to pivot and support dentists and those who need a helping hand in making sense of the promises the world offers every person.

Fortunately, we’ve stayed in touch.

Aside from Christina being a great human being, she’s bright and thoughtful, and every time I speak with her, I walk away with a new insight.

During our recent call, we touched on the pain of young people with increased anxiety and depression. But it’s not just them.

Every day, we wake up to a stream of depressing news, existential threats, and the lost art of true, meaningful human connectivity—not just the kind promoted by technology.

So much is missing or getting lost in the mix of digital and technological promises.

Relationships. Experiences, which are real and imagined. Meaning. Impact.

In the chat we had, Christina spoke about the friction at a dental practice where she coached the team.

There was tension within the team, and the clinic’s owner wanted to get to the root of it for productive, honest conversations.

No one wanted to say out loud what everyone already knew.

We then spoke about how friction and conflict actually help us develop our social and emotional skills.

In other words, conflict isn’t pleasurable, but it’s a necessary part of healthy growth.

We just have to stop believing the promise (or lie) that life should be easy and frictionless. That’s not life. Life is messy. Epically messy, and worth living despite it.

One of the biggest concerns for many is for young people who are experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression.

So much of their lives is spent focused on a tiny screen.

In our techno-feudalistic world, we’re promised that if we subscribe, we’ll be better and happier. Bye-bye, friction. Only that’s not what happens, nor should it.

From where I sit at this point in my life, we need more constructive “people friction.”

We need more discussions that aren’t about conflict avoidance or spending time on social media, shouting past each other into the endless feed stream.

What I’m talking about is putting the phones down (yes, I know, so old!) and getting out into the communities to have, you know, conversations.

When we spend time talking to people we don’t know or get to know people with whom we may disagree, we’re creating opportunities for friction and growth.

We learn how to have constructive conversations, even when and if they’re uncomfortable.

Success doesn’t come from believing what we’re fed that this app or that tech or social media platform is going to make life AMAZING.

Still, being human and overcoming the challenges that arise from communicating with others and having experiences outside in the world is a step in the right direction, I think.

And perhaps, together, we can leave our place in the world better than we found it, just like Christina does with her music and in her coaching practice.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

We weren’t planning to talk about eternity, but sure enough, one night, my husband and I did as we watched Apple TV’s film, Eternity.

For those of us who have experienced first loves, loss, and the disappointments of life, it’s a film that resonates.

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I loved the idea of returning to my favorite “shell” when I pass. Being tall, slender, and with long curly hair again would be nice.

The thrust of the movie, however, is the opportunity each of us may have when we pass to live our eternal lives in a single place and experience, so it’s important to choose wisely.

In other words, if you love Paris and you choose it, then you will spend your eternity there. But, you must choose well because you don’t really get a “do-over,” so you had better really love Paris.

I’m not going to spoil the film for anyone, but, of course, my partner and I spoke about it and asked each other whether we would wait for the other before choosing our respective eternity.

We also asked each other where that one place would be.

I won’t share with you what we discussed because some things are best left as personal mysteries, but it got us both thinking about what lies beyond the here and now.

The place I chose brought tears to my eyes as I talked about it, and I was surprised but yet at peace with the idea that if I could choose my eternal place, it would not be my beloved New York City.

Life doesn’t usually play out the way we envision it when we’re young. My life story didn’t unfold gently near the sand and waves, but instead developed in big cities.

And depending on how many numbered days you have, the journey has many twists and turns, even if you never leave the town where you were born.

Still, for mysteries that exist beyond our reach, some moments cause you to pause and look back at where life has taken you and to appreciate that this reality isn’t forever.

If we’re lucky, our lives have few regrets (though some we might not want to admit to ourselves).

The chances are that, indeed, the journey turned out utterly different from what we ever imagined when we were young.

That’s the way my life worked out.

Regardless, what the film reinforced in my mind (someone who ponders alternate universes and realities imagined by artists, such as the one in the book The Midnight Library) is that perhaps eternity is a singular place and experience where this restless soul found peace.

And maybe it will be in that place where I will again find the quietness of the most meaningful moments for eternity.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved

I lost my religion while working at an archdiocese as a fundraiser for its schools.

However, faith and belief in something have not left me.

I’ve come to embrace the idea that the act of believing itself is a path away from creeping cynicism that can come with too much knowledge and experience of the world.

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It was during the pedophilia scandal as it engulfed the churches, spreading from Boston and going across the country.

One day, a good friend invited me to lunch. She and I had a monthly ritual of going to a restaurant and a performance.

This invitation was different and during the workday. Still, her tone made me feel that it was necessary, no matter how busy I was at work.

She and I sat down, and within a few beats, a stranger joined us unexpectedly. The waiter came, and we ordered drinks, and then the introductory niceties ended abruptly.

Across from me sat a man in a position of power within the archdiocesan organizational structure.

She looked at him and accused him of child sexual abuse.

Needless to say, lunch finished within a few minutes.

I returned to the office in a state of shock and reported it immediately.

For years, I wondered what happened. My manager asked me to report it to her superior, who was eventually laicized for abuse.

My report became a dark mist. Whenever I asked, I was told it wasn’t my concern and was a matter for the higher-ups and the lawyers.

What followed was a long reckoning with religion, spirituality, faith, and trust.

It took me years to enter a church.

When I finally did, I reframed the visits as historical ones since so many European churches are repositories of history, art, architecture, and human striving.

As the world felt harsher and colder, I realized I was becoming less trusting and giving fewer benefits of the doubt.

When I was young, I made a promise to myself at the tender age of 18. It was that I would live a life that would make me the best version of myself as I got older.

I have carried that promise for years, and then started to realize it was slowly slipping away.

I was not going to become even more impatient. It’s always been my Achilles heel.

I wasn’t going to become less trusting of the people I met.

Most of all, I would not allow myself to become cynical.

So, the journey began to steadily and deliberately keep that promise.

I don’t know much, but I am sure that a life rooted in goodness and away from cynicism helps me keep my promise.

As the year begins, I’m drawn toward communities that reflect the lessons I learned in my childhood.

I remember the lessons of love, kindness, and charity.

I no longer confuse institutions with faith.

Belief, for me, is less about doctrine and more about intention.

It’s about choosing kindness over withdrawal, curiosity over suspicion, and hope over cynicism.

It’s becoming a choice, repeated daily, that feels like faith to me.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

When I met Helen T. Lowe, I was a young single mom with no clear career or life path beyond being a mom.

I fell into fundraising, which is how I met her, and soon I found the person who would transform my life, simply because she believed in me when few, if anyone, did, including me.

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Candidly, I wanted to be a writer from an early age, but I had to pay the bills and couldn’t take the starving-artist path I’d intended. Fortunately, I met Helen precisely when I needed to.

She changed the trajectory of my life in its entirety, not just mine, but others’ as well. One brilliant writer once called her the Patron Saint of the Late Bloomer. I love that reference and it is precisely how I see her.

To so many, including me, she gifted so much, and by her side, I spent over 20 years as a professional fundraiser, earned a Master’s Degree, and learned how to be a better person.

One day, Helen told me she was thinking about the 10 most creative things in the universe that potentially prove the existence of a universal energy or God (whatever your beliefs).

She said that she was asking people for their thoughts, including me, and I gave her mine, which I’m sharing here.

Through the years, I realized that what Helen was really asking wasn’t about proof, but about what makes life feel extraordinary.

However, I look at the following list as something to be thankful for having seen, experienced, or simply for knowing they are there, even if I never experience them.

These things, to me, make life just a little more fascinating and extraordinary, even in challenging social times.

So, here is my answer to Helen’s question of what I consider the 10 most creative things in the universe, and I am sure others have other ideas, which is great.

1. A snowflake. One cannot top the elegant union of science, mathematics, art, and nature.

2. Aurora Borealis. Nature’s most magnificent light show. I hope to see it one day.

3. OM. A sound that exists across cultures to quiet the mind and connect to presence. I don’t pretend to understand it fully, but I know the feeling of calm it creates.

4. Music. A creation of humans, but it is indeed the universal language, and to me, it is like breathing. It can change my mood and allows us to communicate and connect with others who may be of different generations or backgrounds.

5. Memory. Because it allows me to remember the past, and it helps inform my future. And it also provides for those serendipitous moments when a song, a taste, or a scent transports me back to a warm place, in the company of people I may never see again.

6. Taj Mahal. One of the greatest expressions of love ever built.

7. Black holes. They are a mystery we cannot fully grasp or discover. I like to believe that there are other dimensions through there, and that’s where our energy goes when we die. (Oh, you didn’t know I had a Ph.D. in astrophysics?)

8. Curiosity and imagination. In a world shaped by AI and technology, these human qualities have allowed us to move from the Stone Age to where we are today and into what comes next.

9. The fingers and toes of a baby. Like a snowflake, they’re elegant, natural perfection. One day, I hope I can kiss the little toes and fingers of a grandchild. But, if not, I hope I become an adopted nana to a baby. (I just realized I haven’t held a baby in decades. That needs to change.)

10. Love. The deep affection I feel for people, places, and moments that shape my life. It’s what remains long after everything else changes, and the reason I keep going and hoping.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

Rain fell from passing clouds while the sun stayed warm behind them.

I was a little girl running in circles with my arms stretched up, welcoming a sun shower.

I was transfixed under a spell.

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For those of us who knew a calmer world, some childhood memories could soothe an existence in a complicated, difficult landscape.

I remember dancing by myself under the sky as clouds began to shroud the sun’s light and warmth.

I watched the sky intently on that warm summer day.

It was not long after the rain clouds blocked the sun’s rays that drizzle began to fall on me.

I was a little girl at a time when children could be outside as their parents watched from a bit of a distance.

I recall my mom standing by the window in our home, calling my name to come inside as the rain started.

The sun remained hidden behind the traveling rain clouds, sharing its gifts with me as I ran in circles with my arms reaching up to the sky.

I was connected.

Years earlier, a musical group called The Fifth Dimension released a song called “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In.”

My mom would play it all the time, and I remember as a child that day in the only sun shower I have ever danced under in my life, I sang that song loudly to the heavens above.

I will never know how many minutes it took for the rain clouds to pass under the glow of the sun, but soon the sun and its summer warmth returned to keep me company.

It felt like a moment when the veil parted, and I could touch something infinite.

That is what that day was to me, and it is a memory I have never forgotten because of the power of being so connected with everything that is and ever was.

When chaos is the order of the day, sometimes we have to turn inward to find the strength that comes with kindness, compassion, and integrity.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

When you reach a certain age, little genuinely surprises you, and you discover that it becomes essential to consciously choose to see wonder.

You come to realize, at some point on the journey, that you’ve seen or heard a variation of what you see or hear somewhere in the past, and the power of it in your soul and psyche soften.

Until something breaks through that WOWS you again.

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And the world delivers to you something magical, soulful, or extraordinary.

For me, it was seeing a Red Bull skier ski down the knife-edge ranges above the clouds, through the slopes, and down the sheer descents of Mount Everest.

It reminded me of the stratospheric drop by Felix Baumgartner, who once fell to Earth by stepping off the edge of space from a height of 38,969 meters (127,852 feet).

But it also caused me to deeply appreciate a reality that was difficult to admit.

There are things and experiences I will never have in this life, but a part of me would have loved to have tried.

For years, my partner and I spoke of visiting India and seeing the Taj Mahal at dawn. I’ve always been fascinated by the joyous celebration and collective abandon of the Hindu Holi festival.

I doubt I will ever reach India.

Time, energy, and other priorities closer to home have risen to the top of our travel list.

I will never visit the Kingdom of Bhutan. Bhutan chose to preserve its environment, limit tourism, and measure its population by happiness.

I will only ever see it on video.

I love warmth, but I can’t see myself experiencing the silent sands of the Sahara Desert and seeing its immense dunes.

I shall visit in my imagination.

The chances are high that I won’t climb up to Machu Picchu in Peru to take in its views and immense history.

But somehow, although I have never been there and will never visit, I know of it in some sense through the images I’ve seen.

Still, there are places and experiences I hope to have that are closer to home and can be just as sublime.

I hope to see Ludovico Einaudi, who has become one of the most prolific and masterful pianists in the world since we first saw him in a concert hall in Paris.

Not too long ago, a young artist friend told me about Sofiane Pomart, and I have yet to see him perform on the piano live, but when I watch streaming videos, I’m amazed by his prodigious talent.

I think, if I have enough numbered days, that I shall once again walk the streets of Straßburg, Austria, where I remember young violinists playing in town squares.

And I may once again visit Lake Como.

Even though it’s been years since the world discovered it, with the arrival of celebrities, maybe I will once again witness a Strauss waltz under the stars on a warm summer night, where young and old townspeople do nothing more than eat, dance, and converse in a magical place.

Perhaps wonder isn’t found in the places we visit, but in the moments, images and sounds of those faraway and near experiences that we allow to settle into us.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

At the start of the year, there’s so much about becoming a “new” you. Thankfully, we’re all much more cautious about empty promises and performative “look at me” declarations.

That said, I received an email from a kindness coach whom I follow and deeply respect because she tells it like it is.

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In her broadcast email, I felt compelled to respond anyway because, well, you know…woman over 50 and all…

Her email spoke of not becoming a new you but of returning to you.

I understood her intention, and the idea caught my attention as I considered it deeply for a few days.

I eventually replied to her, and much of what I wrote in the email became the basis for this piece.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve thought a lot about the definition of a person, well, really a self-definition.

As I enter into another era of what I call “the 9s,” the final year before a new decade in age, I’ve been thinking about who I want to become now as time comes into sharper relief.

And so, I pondered the email.

In my view, I’ve had many reinventions and reinterpretations of who I am…new versions of me.

I think there are new versions of who we are and become. And as we return to our essence, it’s not a rewind. Nothing is the same as it once was.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve circled back to the values and ideas of who I was when I was young—my true nature.

But I’m not the same person by a mile.

I am, in fact, a new person.

When I was young, I was painfully shy. Now, I can’t shut up and have to do everything in my power to keep quiet! And no, I’m not an extrovert. I’m just making up for the lost time of those early years when I was so alone in a whirl of drama and trauma around me.

Still, for me, although the values are consistent, the view is profoundly different, seasoned with perspective and, hopefully, dashes of wisdom.

Even the physical shell is “new.” I used to be tall, skinny, and long-legged with a shock of long, curly hair.

Ummmm…I’m not that now.

As an English major, I thought a lot about William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. His work reminds me that we don’t go back to who we were but move forward into someone changed.

His works remind us that we don’t go back to who we were and arrive somewhere else.

In my mind, there is a break, a clear demarcation, and a definitive before and after.

When I was 18 years old, I lost a dear friend, and it profoundly changed me.

As I emerged from the grief of her passing, I promised myself that I would become the best version of myself on my life’s journey as I got older.

It didn’t happen immediately.

Instead, I grew tougher over the decades.

As a single mom in the 90s in New York City, it was not easy.

Slowly, that toughness transformed into a shell.

But now, I’m at a very different stage in my life, and the shell has long since cracked. Out stepped a new person who experienced a decades-long metamorphosis.

Life’s experiences transformed and reshaped the young woman who promised herself she would become the best version of herself.

It is now more than 40 years after that promise, and in many ways, it’s coming to fruition.

But it’s not in the version, the “me,” who was the young 18-year-old.

It’s the iteration of a very experienced woman who is wholly another me.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

On my 49^th year, I remember being on a beach early in the morning and having a deep sense that I had achieved the experiences I wanted for my life.

The day was filled with completeness rather than celebration, and I recall thinking that from here on out, it was “bonus.”

The bonus time has been a challenge, like everyone else’s. Life is a series of challenges we must all navigate through as best we can.

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I suppose that’s the reason there are so many performative “experts” who will impart their wisdom and guide us on the path to the illusion of happiness.

Who gets to earn the right to profess their expertise and coach people through life, or to tell people how to fix the challenges of their lives?

I know I’m certainly one of the people who have failed to simply listen and not try to “fix” others’ problems.

I think that’s a very American trait, and especially one of New Yorkers who have an opinion about everything.

But as I’ve grown older and earned wisdom through the school of hard knocks, I pause when I come across the words of inexperienced experts sharing their ideas about how others should live.

I get it.

Every person who has a smartphone has the world’s knowledge right at their fingertips.

And then, of course, we have ChatGPT or Claude mimicking human thought, intelligence, and inspiration about any topic or idea we can imagine.

Wisdom has become a great commodity, packaged and served in a cold dish, rather than what it is: hard-earned life lessons in overcoming and resilience.

The closer I get to the legacy stage of my life and the further away from the beginning, the more I’ve realized how much wisdom is earned, not read from a book, imparted by ChatGPT, or philosophized in a YouTube video.

Typically, true wisdom comes from years of overcoming, paying attention, and meaningfully embracing the lessons.

And it is then that the expertise becomes the sharing of genuine insights that can truly affect another person’s life for the better or help them overcome a life challenge.

So, is it not better to share our experiences rather than perform the rituals of expertise when many of us are touching walls in the dark?

Sharing lived experiences and lessons may resonate with others, and other things won’t, but the message in our sharing could be as simple as this: I see you. I hear you. I’ve overcome. You can too.

The world needs more people with kindness, compassion, and courage, through resilience, in overcoming this messy thing called life without having to come at it as an expert.

But we also need a little less calculated, performative lesson-sharing to influence perceptions and personal brands, and more genuine, simple human authenticity.

In other words, can more of us stop “packaging” wisdom and simply share—not as experts, but as people who experienced, overcame, and truly learned the lessons?

© 2026 Linda N. Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

My partner and I spent the pandemic locked in our Barcelona apartment with our dog, Bijou.

I remember the quiet of the streets, birdsong, and how the sight of a person immediately caught my attention.

A small, heavyset older woman in a gray raincoat and a hat that always shielded her face from my gaze walked past my window every day with a grocery bag.

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She reminded me of my Brooklyn-born aunt, who was also a little ball of determination when she walked her neighborhood with her shopping bag.

It never had groceries. It held her dearest possessions.

For years, I worried she would get robbed.

Thankfully, it never happened.

After seeing the woman in Barcelona amble past my window day after day, I started to suspect the walk was not a trip to the market.

I came to believe it was a misdirection to get out of the house during restrictive stay-at-home orders.

There was something about that bag that made me think it was filled with more than groceries.

What police officer would stop an older woman carrying her bag of groceries during a pandemic?

My bet, and perhaps hers, was that no officer would stop her.

Distraction has been an art since people needed to survive, and its choreography appeared again this year at the Louvre.

One of the big stories was the robbery at the Louvre in Paris.

The audacity of the theft.

The robbers’ deception was simple. They appeared as workmen and, in the process, broke through a window at the Louvre in broad daylight.

The sleight of hand is everywhere, including in art.

The Louvre is home to a masterpiece created with misdirection, The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and Empress Josephine.

It is quite a painting to behold in its size.

Napoleon Bonaparte became emperor at Notre Dame Cathedral on December 2, 1804, and it fell on Jacques-Louis David to commemorate the moment for posterity.

What visitors to the Louvre see is one of the best examples of distraction and modern propaganda.

History tells us that Napoleon crowned himself emperor, which is how the painting was originally presented to Napoleon and Josephine after the ceremony.

Josephine persuaded Napoleon that he direct Jacques-Louis David to change the crowning of himself to that of Napoleon crowning Josephine.

The reasoning was simple. For one, the appearance of Napoleon crowning himself, holding his hand and crown high above his head, wasn’t a good look for the people.

But a second and vital reason for Josephine herself was that having Emperor Napoleon crown her legitimized her power, which was of concern.

Beneath the layers of paint is the original rendering with Napoleon crowning himself.

Another significant change in the events of the day is the image of Pope Pius VII.

He was asked to travel from Rome to Paris for the event and hoped for rapprochement between the two countries.

He is pictured blessing the pair, rather than the original representation, which shows him sitting passively with his hands on his lap.

Survival is choreographed in many grand and minute ways.

People find ways to redirect attention to move more easily through space and time.

Whether it’s a senior woman carrying a grocery bag in defiance of the police or a self-titled emperor crowning himself, we rarely see the whole story of other lives.

All we see is what passes before us briefly.

© 2026 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

Everything gives way to the future. It is the circle of life, and no force can stop it.

Still, the past lingers for those of us who choose to pay attention.

David Eagleman once wrote about the three deaths, “There are three deaths: the first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.”

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Do we not each want to believe that someone, far in the future, will remember us?

Do we not each want to believe that we mattered?

I ask that question repeatedly when I speak philosophically with people.

I appreciate the power and strength that comes from the end of my worrying about what people have to say about my “weirdness.”

I have always been one of those souls who cared deeply about the arch between past, present, and future.

Every time I ask whether people want to be remembered or have their legacy extend beyond their last breath, I consistently get two replies.

The first answer is that no one will care.

The second is that it doesn’t matter.

Only it does to someone, and I suspect to more than we imagine.

Perhaps in a world where we’re all doing the best we can to survive, it is fear or seemingly the height of arrogance to believe that anyone who is not famous in some global context can matter beyond the moment.

But we can.

And we do matter.

Even if we never see it.

One hundred years ago to the day, I was researching my family genealogy, only to see that my great-grandmother had died on that exact day 100 years earlier.

Some would say it was a coincidence.

I don’t believe it for a minute, because since that day, Mary has been one of the spirits who has made an impression on my life.

I never personally met her, and yet, I know her.

And so that day, I said her name.

She was still present.

To at least one person, far in the future, every life matters.

Each of us matters.

So, why do we shrink away from the question of how, or if, our legacy and story matter to someone in the future?

Why do we become smaller?

The fact that we matter, our stories, our histories, is why archeologists dig.

It is why art is preserved.

It is why we pass our stories through generations.

It is why history exists.

When Da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa, she mattered as a living person. And today, she is very much alive because of the exquisite ambiguity that resonates within the untouchable frame.

The Parthenon was built by the Athenians for the goddess, Athena, as a symbol of civic identity.

Yet, although she no longer graces the Acropolis, her presence is still very much there when you walk through the ruins, as are the glorious Caryatids.

I remember being in London with my daughter many years ago, stumbling onto a copy of Shakespeare’s First Folio.

As an English major not too far from my university degree at the time, I teared up as I remembered my final semester in college and the love I discovered for Shakespeare and the enigma of Anne Hathaway.

The Folio was written to preserve the plays rather than pass them down orally.

If you go to museums anywhere in the world, you may fall upon Medieval manuscripts or love letters.

Monks preserved hundreds and hundreds of pages of vital texts in precise, sacred labor intended for the future, and soldiers drafted words of love to their parents and to the love of their lives.

Why do we etch names on gravestones and memorials?

It is to remember.

And as long as those names resist erasure, the souls remain alive with us in memory.

The third death is that moment, sometime in the future, when a name is spoken for the last time.

Countless genealogists quietly labor to document their families’ histories and records.

They understand that a memory requires identity and that every fragment delays the final mention of a name.

© 2025 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

In the summer of 2019, I tumbled through the South of France with my partner, planning only a day or two in advance.

Life was simplified, and art took center stage.

One of the highlights was seeing Van Gogh’s works in a light show set inside a quarry.

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If my life had gone another way, I would have been a writer who spent her life immersed in the arts, because that’s really the only place I’ve found freedom of imagination.

Today, I find myself touching the arts only on the periphery.

Throughout my life, I’ve found myself asking people who the greatest painter of all time is.

Van Gogh’s name comes up more often than not.

Through the years, I would look at his works and see their beauty, but also wonder: Well, why is he the best? There are certainly others…

And then came the visit to the Carrières des Lumières in Les Baux-de-Provence.

It is extraordinary to see an immersive art and light show inside what was once a limestone quarry, with walls nearly 14 meters (46 feet) high.

Everyone knows of Van Gogh’s time in the asylum. However, it was at the quarry that I fully appreciated Van Gogh’s mastery and what he accomplished, deep within a well of human suffering.

For years, I, too, marveled at The Starry Night, which is brilliant and beautiful.

But then I saw it at the quarry and had a front-row seat, if you will, to the brush strokes and the reality that shaped them…a place of suffering and pain.

I was so impressed by it that I researched what his experience was like, specifically, at the asylum. How could he have painted sublime brilliance in a place of despair?

At the time, Van Gogh was considered “crazy,” and even art critics thought his brushwork was sloppy and unworthy of merit.

And yet…today…he is considered a master.

Through a small barred window in the asylum, he could see the sky and the rolling hills, and he was inspired to paint majesty.

The Starry Night was painted by day based on what he committed to memory at night in his room.

As a man of faith, the focal point, the sky, is symbolic of the divine and eternal. The view faces east from the asylum at Saint-Paul-de-Mausole in Provence, just before sunrise.

The brightest star in the painting is Venus, which was visible at the time. The moon is also pictured.

However, the village, Saint-Rémy de-Provence, was not visible from his window.

So, Van Gogh took creative license, and he relied on a sketch he had drawn on a hillside of the village before he went to the asylum.

But, most extraordinary to me was that every day as Van Gogh painted, he found beauty despite being in the company of immense human suffering.

During the year he lived in the asylum, he painted and drew hundreds of pieces, including The Starry Night.

How is it, when in the midst of what must have been sadness and confinement with fellow patients in the midst of delusions and other mental suffering, he was able to bring extraordinary beauty from his fingers, to the brushes, canvases, and paper?

How does that happen in a place like an asylum?

The best answer I could find is that the asylum provided him structure, solace, and the chance to channel his purpose as a painter.

It is a lesson for all of us in a chaotic world. Despite what surrounds us, there can still be beauty that burns from within.

© 2025 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

Recently, I enumerated some of the failures of my life and the lessons I learned. It was published to mixed reviews (smirk), but for me, it is what it is.

But there’s something more to that story.

It was a life lesson in the Swiss Alps with a cow.

How did a cow get to the Alps?

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I’ll never know the answer to that, but that is not the point of this little essay.

When I was about 27, a lifetime ago, I visited Switzerland with my significant other, who still remains a close friend, thankfully.

I’ve always been uneasy with heights and was very much a New Yorker at the time (this will make sense in a moment).

Anyway, as we zoomed across Europe in our excellent adventure, he decided—not me—to head to the top of a mountain peak in Switzerland.

I was quite content seeing the Alps from the comfort of the flat ground at the base of the Alps, but that wasn’t enough for him.

We drove up a winding road, which scared me more and more the higher we went (love the Europeans for their sense of adventure and no guardrails!).

Up, up, up we went, and then we had to park the car.

Admittedly, I was terrified at this point because there was no going back, and I thought we would end up in a tiny cable car hanging from a “rope” going further up the Swiss mountains.

You have no idea my relief when it was a funicular on land, but still up, up, up I went with this man I now thoroughly “hated” (note: the opposite of love is not hate) as my ears popped.

Still, being young and full of emotion and passion, I mentally plotted ways to make his life miserable once we got back to solid and flat ground.

Finally, we made it to the top of an impossibly tall mountain. Somewhere on top of the world, I found myself with my New York ‘tude and mentality.

Upon arriving at the end of the line, I wondered, where are the people? Why a funicular to the middle of nowhere?

I didn’t quite understand that the point was the view and the experience.

As we did a short hike at the top of the world, we fell upon a porch with a tiny shed. Keeping watch over it was a cow. My partner went for a longer hike, and I remained with my new herbivore companion.

I wondered, how in the world is a cow up here in the middle of nowhere? How does a cow get to the top of a high mountain?

Time passed, and eventually, I settled and sat on the porch with my back against the shed, thinking there could be a murderer inside the shed.

After all, who would ever want to build anything up in space except for a bad recluse of a person…with a cow?

Yes, I’ve always had an overactive and overblown imagination.

Eventually, I continued to relax into the experience and tried to stay warm in summer (it was cold up there on top of the world).

And then I started to actually see the world around me. I looked at the enormous mountain top across an impossibly colossal gap for which I could not even sense the bottom.

How high were we?

But, as I eventually quieted and waited alone, with my friend, the cow, I thought of how insignificant I was in the world. I was nothing surrounded by the strength and enormity of the Swiss Alps.

Our world can seem so gigantic and what we deal with so monumental until you put it into perspective.

It felt larger and older than me, and something Churchill might have understood when he said, “It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Everything is everything, and yet, it is also nothing.

© 2025 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

I failed to talk as a little child. I learned to let my dolls speak for me.

I failed to be perfect in a world that continually shifted beneath my feet. I learned to become resilient, recalibrate, and move forward.

I failed to make a friend in elementary school because of my deep shyness. I learned to write and bring my imagination to life.

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I failed to see betrayal coming from people closest to me. I learned self-reliance and, eventually, how to trust again. It was slow and deliberate, but I got there.

I failed at math in school. I learned to master English and tune into my sensitivity.

I failed at the sciences, too. I learned about the constellations and marvelled at the sky before thousands of satellites filled the vastness of the ancients before 2019.

I failed at being a first-year mom. I learned to become a fierce provider and protector of my little girl. Today, she is my best friend.

I failed to believe early in my career, when I was tall, slender, and “exotic,” that people wouldn’t lie. I learned to trust and protect myself first and foremost.

I failed to become a pianist. My mom wanted me to become a ballerina because of my height, but I moved like a frog. I learned to love music so deeply and have pieces for every mood. To this day, I dance badly in my living room, but boy, do I dance!

I failed to become the next Agatha Christie, which was another childhood dream. I ultimately became a writer and honed my love for literature.

I failed to overcome my fear of heights and planes my entire life. I traveled regardless and have even seen the view from a high mountain top in Switzerland.

I failed to stay small in my life. I learned I wasn’t meant to be small. I was meant to be bold with courage despite any fear.

I failed to learn how to cook. I learned to make the “meanest” New York City scrambled eggs and have tasted the finest food from little dives to Michelin restaurants.

I failed to belong in any one place. In the wandering, I learned to reinvent myself time and again, which has brought me a lifetime of experiences.

I failed to create a perfect life. I learned to become an expert in improvisation, and every leap found its own landing, or as I call it, a “lily pad.”

I failed to live by anyone’s rules, no matter how much people wanted something specific for me, to their great disappointment and at high cost to me. I learned to live by the words “it’s my life,” and chose my life by design.

I failed at using my voice early in my life. I learned to use it for myself much later—and to help others claim theirs.

Continue here:

When You Have Nothing Left to Prove →

How Sweeping Sand Became a Spiritual Practice →

Does the Pen Paint? →

© 2025 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.

On April 22, 1992, Whitney Houston walked into Ocean Way Recording in Los Angeles. She was about to record I Will Always Love You with the iconic pause and final crescendo.

David Foster was the producer and described the session’s power as a “boom.” It was raw, controlled emotion, emanating from greatness.

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It’s so rare to experience the parting of the veil when you transcend your very existence, but that day, everyone did in the studio as Whitney recorded the song.

Foster understood Whitney’s range and power, and he decided to remove all rhythm, meaning no drums or percussion, and allow Whitney to sing the last verse with complete artistic and emotional freedom.

After all, freedom is rarely symmetrical.

It was only after she recorded the vocal that he orchestrated the music around her voice.

All these decades later, I came to recently discover that the timing of her release into the downbeat is an immense musical challenge because the drummer never knew exactly when the drum entrance was supposed to happen.

Live, Whitney never sang the final note in the same way. For drummers, there were no bars or tempo to count.

So, the musicians improvised and used visual cues to ensure Whitney was always free to sing the final crescendo after that pause.

They watched for the shift of her shoulders or the lift of her diaphragm. They paid attention to the times she slightly lifted the microphone or if she settled her stance before facing the resolve of the final phrasing.

The silence and suspended breath flowing into the seismic re-entry were freedom and unpredictability in musical verse.

As an observer of life, I have thought a lot about one of music’s most iconic pauses.

Sometimes in life, we find ourselves suspended in that rare moment of empty space, which Whitney exemplified in the downbeat.

It’s like that moment when one proverbially jumps, is released for an instant on the downbeat, and then…boom.

Life isn’t neat.

It’s messy, especially if you’re living it with everything you have to give.

But there are those moments of exquisite unpredictability, freedom, and genius. And perhaps in that extraordinary pause is the entirety of the meaning of our lives, bookended by the breaths before and after.

© 2025 Linda Spencer, My Red Sneakers. All Rights Reserved.