Author: James Browning

A Day to Dream

/ James Browning

It’s easy to forget how much I enjoy a day off from work during the week. What for many was a one day holiday on July 4th, I chose to use vacation time and craft a five-day, stay at home weekend. Although not yet contained in MSWord’s spellchecker, it was a surprise to find the word ‘staycation’ has made its way into American dictionaries: a vacation spent at one’s home enjoying all that home and one’s home environs have to offer.

Staycation days are especially good when I don’t fill them up with projects and stuff to do. Being one who is somewhat hooked on activity, it’s healthy to slow down from my usual busy-ness addiction. The only plans I have is to drive with a friend to a nearby city one day to visit a mutual comrade, be true to my intentions to catch up on sleep (eleven hours last night!) and to spent some time outside.

Let us put awhile away
All the cares of work-a-day,
For a golden time forget,
Task and worry, toil and fret,
Let us take a day to dream
In the meadow by the stream.

We may linger as we will
In the sunset valleys still,
Till the gypsy shadows creep
From the starlit land of sleep,
And the mist of evening gray
Girdles round our pilgrim way.

We may bring to work again
Courage from the tasselled glen,
Bring a strength unfailing won
From the paths of cloud and sun,
And the wholesome zest that springs
From all happy, growing things.

From “A Day Off” by Lucy Maud Montgomery,
a Canadian author best known for a series of novels
that began with Anne of Green Gables published in 1908.

Richly decadent is one shade of my feeling within at this moment. Unshaven for two days, I sit here writing at a time I would normally be piloting a desk and driving a computer at work. All in all, I am more grateful than usual simply because I am taking time to relish being alive.

The best cure for an off day is a day off.
Frank Tyge

Independence Day Declaration of Gratitude

/ James Browning

Each year, the United States celebrates its decision to declare independence from Great Britain on July 4, 1776. “Independence Day” established the United States of America as a new country.  Until 1776, the U.S. was a collection of colonies and territories under the rule of several different nations. France, England, Spain and Denmark all held territory throughout the new world. The Northeastern seaboard of the Atlantic Ocean was largely controlled by the British, who divided the land into thirteen separate colonies of the British Empire.

After decades of British rule and being subject to British taxes, citizens of the colonies grew eager for a new government. Unlike the monarchy in Britain, The United States would be ruled by elected officials and devote itself to the rights of the people. Powerful representatives of the colonies joined together in the Second Continental Congress, and drafted a document announcing their independence from Britain. At this point, the American Revolutionary War was well under way, and the resulting Declaration of Independence was really more of a formality as colonial forces were already fighting the British throughout the colonies.

My country is far from perfect, but it is my home that I love.  I am grateful to be a citizen of the United States of America!

You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4,
not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers
who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle,
but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees,
the potato salad gets iffy,and the flies die from happiness.
You may think you have over-eaten, but it is patriotism.
Erma Bombeck

Blog from last year on the 4th of July, 2012:  https://goodmorninggratitude.com/2011/07/04/235th-anniversary-of-our-declaration-of-independence-4th-of-july-2011/

Hope and New Ways of Being

/ James Browning

In my time I have come to life on two separate occasions: the day of my physical birth and the moment I was ‘reborn’ emotionally. The former was when as a baby I came into the world and the latter was when I woke up and became psychologically self-aware about five years ago. At both times I was barely functional, but each was a grand beginning.

My second birth occurred when I got into recovery for codependence and depression as I accepted both were conditions of my being. Over and over, like a baby I have learned to do things through repetition, growing a tiny amount each day. There is yet much to learn and experience in ways I never could have before. Life is filled with possibility, hope and new experiences.

There are many things I don’t know, but quite a few I do.
I know you can’t be lost if you know where you are.
I know that life is full of precious and fragile things,
and not all of them are pretty.
I know that the sun follows the moon
and makes days, one after another.
Time passes. The world turns, and we turn with it,
and though we can never go back to the beginning,
sometimes, we can start again.
Megan Hart

Today when all is considered, I’m probably about fourteen years old emotionally which is a far cry from the “wailing baby” I was for many years. Truly the child within is growing up emotionally now. The pain to get here is something I hope never comes again, but for the result I will be continually grateful for the rest of my days.

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur
when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled.
For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort,
that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching
for different ways or truer answers.
M. Scott Peck

Upright and Out in the World

/ James Browning

It feels as if the new week has come at least a day too early for me this week. However, Monday has arrived whether I am ready for it or not. The clock is ticking away the time so it’s best if I embrace and enjoy it! Here are two thoughts I have picked to head into my day with.

The most beautiful people we have known
are those who have known defeat,
known suffering,
known struggle,
known loss,
and have found their way out of the depths.
These persons have an appreciation,
a sensitivity, and an understanding of life
that fills them with compassion, gentleness,
and a deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

For attractive lips, speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people. 
For a slim figure, share your food with the hungry. 
For beautiful hair, let a child run their fingers through it once a day. 
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone. 
People, more than things, have to be restored,
renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed.
Remember, if you ever need a helping hand,
you will find one at the end of each of your arms. 
As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands,
one for helping yourself and the other for helping others.
Sam Levenson 

My preference is to still be in bed, but that’s a tad of  laziness within talking to me. Life is boring and predictable while sleeping with existence only present in my imagination. Nothing really happens then. Living goes on when I am upright and out in the world. So here I go. I’m grateful for the optimism and inspiration I find in the two thoughts above that motivate me to pick myself up and move on into my day even if at first I don’t want to. It is far from rare to find some of the best of life in something I hesitated to embrace or at first did not want to do.

Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.
Spanish Proverb

I’m Living Proof!

/ James Browning

It’s a shame modern society trains to hold our emotions in and not express them fully, including gratitude. Most of us robotically say “thank you” and “I appreciate it” a good bit of the time, but words alone are not an expression of feeling. We’re frequently taught that emotion plus words equals expressed feeling and its our feelings that make us vulnerable. I suppose that’s true, but hiding our feelings always insulates us from enjoying the full richness and fullness of life. Being happy takes risks!

All relationships to be functional must contain a level of mutual duty and loyalty. Gratitude is a step past being such moral obligations and gratefulness generally falls under the heading of “altruism”. Altruism is a motivation to provide something of value to a party who must be anyone but the self with no expectation of any compensation or benefits, either direct, or indirect. In other words, expressing true gratitude is giving purely for the sake of giving.

A study by James Fowler of the University of California, San Diego, and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard, stated when one person behaves generously, it inspires observers to behave generously later, toward different people. In fact, the researchers found that altruism could spread by three degrees—from person to person to person to person. “As a result,” they write, “each person in a network can influence dozens or even hundreds of people, some of whom he or she does not know and has not met. In other words, the ‘giving’ of gratefulness breeds gratefulness.

Giving (such as expressing gratefulness) has been linked to the release of a hormone released during sex and breast-feeding that induces feelings of warmth, euphoria, and connection to others. In laboratory studies, Paul Zak, the director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, found that a dose of the hormone (oxytocin) will cause people to give more generously and to feel more empathy towards others, with “symptoms” lasting up to two hours. And those people on an “oxytocin high” can potentially jumpstart a “virtuous circle, where one person’s generous behavior triggers another’s”.

That’s boomerang effect of giving gratitude. Plainly and simply, what you give comes back to you. Maybe not in the quantity or frequency you give it, but more gratefulness expressed will cause you to get back more. Further, telling others of your gratitude for them is it’s a gift you give yourself. Expressed regularly, thankfulness can change the world and your perception of it. Author Mary Angela wrote, If you were to stop and feel the thank you each time you gave it, you would be living in gratitude. True gratitude is spiritual and fills the heart with warmth and joy!

Genuine gratitude, given or received, accumulates over time and softens a hard heart and opens a closed one. I am living proof!

Live with intention.
Walk to the edge.
Listen hard.
Practice wellness.
Play with abandon.
Laugh.
Choose with no regret.
Appreciate your friends.
Do what you love.
Live as if this is all there is.
Mary Anne Radmacher

Improved Means to an Unimproved End

/ James Browning

Living in a country where I have been programmed to consume, it’s difficult not to indulge to or even past the point of what I can afford. Things have not always been so in this country. Somewhere in the last hundred years or so American culture went from pursuing our needs to one of chasing our wants. Hence, the concept of a “standard of living” came about which is made possible by all who want to sell stuff at a profit.

It is evident to me I don’t need most of what I have, but have been advertised into a little bit of insanity about raising my “standard of living”; having more stuff, newer stuff, better stuff or more expensive stuff. Like a hamster on a wheel I have gone round and round trying to satisfy an insatiable desire. There is nothing wrong with wanting, but what I do about those desires matters.

As one friend said to me years ago, “having lots of stuff is OK, as long as the stuff does not have you”. Having grown up poor it has been easy for me to grow emotionally connected to my stuff as I have succeeded and progressed professionally. Having “stuff” is part of my “other esteem” issue when things outside me sometimes get substituted for where my self-esteem should be. Just recognizing I do that and accepting it has been a healthy step.

Now days I sometimes finding myself feeling burdened by all the things I have. Moving out of the country for a year a while back I was amazed how much storage space was needed for my stuff. No storage unit was large enough. I had to rent a warehouse!

What I hang on to actually shapes my life to an extent. The stuff determines to a point how I spend my money, where I live, what I do and don’t do and even when I do it. Honestly there have been times when I yearned for the youthful days when everything I owned would fit in my car and the smallest Uhaul trailer I could rent. True or not, I recall feeling freer back then. Certainly youth contributed to that sense, but the lack of things/stuff/possessions/crap/junk, whatever you want to call them, had a lot to do with how I felt.

So what have I done recently? Completed a project of framing items collected for twenty plus years.  My holiday weekend project is to hang them in my home. More stuff to care for and maintain. Alas, my addiction continues, but not without some progress.

I am grateful to recognize my affliction and even understand it a little. Half of facing any issue is coming to realize it exists. There I have arrived and now the difficult work begins over time: making my load of stuff lighter. After all, everything I own will belong to someone else one day. One of the sorting mechanisms I have already discovered for deciding what to keep and not keep is asking myself “I wonder how much this will sell for at an estate/garage sale some day?”

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys,
which distract our attention from serious things.
They are but improved means to an unimproved end.
Henry David Thoreau

What a Difference a Day Makes

/ James Browning

There is good to be found in many things initially not seen in that light. I woke up about 4am Thursday morning with a nasty stomach virus that kept anything from staying down until about 6pm last evening. Between a fever, body aches all over and many trips to the bathroom my life was devoid of peace for over twelve hours.

This morning I feel weak and out of it, but the storm is over. Nothing makes me appreciate good health like having the flu or something of the sort. It’s the feeling bad that makes me appreciate feeling good when the latter returns.  Being temporarily sick is humbling and a reminder that many people suffer from illness and will not recover in a day or two as I will.  I have always been healthy and my adventure yesterday was a pointed reminder to appreciate my good health.

Short and to the point, I am very grateful the worst of the sickness is over and to be feeling better today. Wow! What a difference a day makes.

The greatest wealth is health.
Virgil

If you have health, you probably will be happy,
and if you have health and happiness,
you have all the wealth you need,
even if it is not all you want.
Elbert Hubbard

There is something in sickness
that breaks down the pride of manhood.
Charles Dickens

My Aloneness Disappears

/ James Browning

In the bargain section at the front of the store of a local Barnes and Nobles, I bought a cool book yesterday. “It’s Never Too Late… 172 simple acts to change your life” is by Patrick Lindsay.  Here’s two samples of what appears on its pages:

It’s never too late…
to say sorry.
It takes courage
but it’s worth the effort.
It releases you.
It enriches the other person.
It ennobles you.
It gives you both a new beginning.

“To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage.” Confucius

It’s never too late…
to tell the truth.
Lies are a burden.
They entangle us and weight us down.
Truth always fights to break out.
It usually succeeds anyway.
It’s not worth the struggle.
Telling the truth clears the air.
Lifts the burden.
Liberates.

“When in doubt, tell the truth.” Anonymous

I truly enjoy little books with a concise and clear thought on each page. I can pick one up, thumb to any part and spend only seconds reading to find something that gives me direction. Such little things are often what I find the most gratitude for. It tells me others feel and have felt as I do and my aloneness disappears.

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends;
they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors,
and the most patient of teachers.
Charles W. Eliot

I Wear the Black

/ James Browning

Three quotes from Johnny Cash:

“You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space”.

“There’s unconditional love there. You hear that phrase a lot but it’s real with me and her [June Carter]. She loves me in spite of everything, in spite of myself. She has saved my life more than once. She’s always been there with her love, and it has certainly made me forget the pain for a long time, many times. When it gets dark and everybody’s gone home and the lights are turned off, it’s just me and her.”

“I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times”.

Gratitude is a quality similar to electricity:
it must be produced and discharged
and used up in order to exist at all.
William Faulkner

Casting Thoughts Into the World

/ James Browning

These days there’s not a lot holding me back from doing most anything I want. I’m single and my son is established and will turn thirty soon. My health is good and my spirits are high for the most part. There is nothing holding me back from having the life I desire. The quandary is what do I want? Or is the life I already have what I need?

There are thoughts about moving out of the country again and enjoying the enrichment that kind of experience brings. I love the experience of a new place and even the discomfort learning a new culture puts me in. It makes the days more memorable and me feel more brightly alive. Costa Rica still attracts me, but there’s a town in Ecuador I’d like to check out that I’ve read has become quite an expatriate destination. Parts of eastern Europe pulls at me as well.

I could retire early and live on a smaller income from investments that would provide for me, but I’d need to live more simply that I do now. Two-years is a retirement goal I set a few months ago, but am uncertain if I will make that far or else just keep on working long past that. Talk about indecision!

I could keep on in my profession for another 10 years but I can’t see myself doing that willingly. The work is hard which I don’t mind, but it is not challenging in a good way anymore. I do enjoy the people I work with and would miss seeing them every day.

Assuming I don’t run way anytime soon, before long I will be able to turn my rec-room into usable space (instead of storage). I am bouncing back and forth between two ideas. One is to set up a game room complete with my pool table, gaming table and all the rest of the trappings I still have from another home. The other idea is to strip the floor to concrete and set up my photography studio gear and make the room work space. I have not had dedicated work space in 15 years for my photography! I like playing pool and a game room is a great place to entertain. However, I don’t entertain often and while I “like” playing pool, I love photography! The photography studio idea is winning as I write and has been mentally on top for a while now.

Looking back over what I have written I can see that one short-term choice has really already been made. I just have to acknowledge that it’s a photograph studio I want most and not a game room. It has been very helpful to read my own words as they caused me to see a little more clearly.

None of what I have written about above previously has been more than casual conversation with a few close to me. Casting thoughts into the world through this blog in a great help. It’s one thing to think thoughts and something quite different cast them into the world for anyone to read.

It has been my discovery that temporary indecision is frequently a good thing. Not being able to decide at any given time just means I am considering my options seriously. I am grateful to have the many options I do!

Remember, there are no mistakes,
only lessons.
Love yourself,
trust your choices,
and everything is possible.
Cherie Carter-Scott