Coping

The Great Adventure

/ James Browning

through the forestHelen Keller once wrote: “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.”

The trial and suffering of growing older has changed my perspective, especially about myself. It was an old habit to try to put a happy face on most everything. When I was down the feelings were hidden from others. Emotional anguish was rarely shown except when those feelings got lose to be a tidal wave aimed at someone. My opinions expressed were most often those which generally went along with the group I was with. Rarely did I express dissenting thoughts and worst yet, often I was unsure what my opinion really was.

I always used to try to be as perfect as I could because I felt so deeply imperfect. It was like a part of me was missing that I never seemed to be able to find. A sense of incompleteness dogged me into all I did.

That was then and this is now. Here are a few lessons my best tutor called “life” has taught me in the “school of hard knocks”.

1. Others don’t cause me to feel inferior. Almost all the time making me feel less than is an habitual inside job.
2. All of us falls apart once in a while. It’s part of gaining a fresh perspective on things.
3. Everyone wonders if they look good enough to others. Lesson learned is most others are barely paying attention to me
4. No one has all the answers all the time. Some answers never come and that is normal.
5. Life is not a puzzle where all the pieces fit. Living is an irregular experience. Otherwise each life lived could not be unique.
6. Crying once in a while is normal. If it’s been months since I last shed a tear, something is wrong.
7. No one has life fully under control and knows all the answers. Allowing me to think others do is a lie told to myself.
8. Trying to look quite young when you’re older makes a mature person look immature. Looking good for my age is more important than appearing twenty years younger.
9. Life passes quickly, more so with age. It’s important not to put off my life’s “can’t not do’s” for too long.
10. Taking a “personal day” for mental health is not screwing off. One in a while getting “emotional flu” is normal as is self-care to get through it.

Aging is not a steady neurological dive… We assume that because memory speed and efficiency decline, all of cognition declines, but, for example, studies have shown that seniors actually have better retention of what they read and are less emotionally reactive when viewing negative images. Older individuals tend to have greater wisdom, the capacity for deep, intimate relationships, and an incredible potential for artistic creativity. (Case in point: Dancer Martha Graham choreographed 10 new ballets from age 75 until her death at 96.) Also, they simply have a more positive outlook on life… There’s a sense of Happiness and contentment when you’re older that you just don’t have when you’re younger. http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201110/lifes-new-timeline

Slowly I have arrived at a hypothesis that the last third of life can be the absolute best. The first step is to accept the age I am and stop wishing to be otherwise. Occasionally I think about being in my 20’s again and quickly think “no thanks, too much change and chaos”. How about the 30’s and my response is “nope, that’s the decade of being too self focused through work and other interests. How about being 40 something again which is “a little tempting, but was a decade of denial that brought life crashing down on me later”. Being in my 50’s I am certain I don’t want to do this decade again because “it has been filled with painful growth and a revolution of my core thinking”.

So where does that leave me at fifty-nine years old? Looking forward to my 60’s 70’s, 80’s and beyond with hopes good health stays with me. I am deeply grateful for the great adventure my life has been so far. From the dark emotional jungles to the scorching heat in the deserts of the unknown, I am grateful for it all.

Life is about trusting your feelings
and taking chances,
losing and finding happiness,
appreciating the memories,
learning from the past,
and realizing people change.
Anonymous

Best Way To Start Off the Morning

/ James Browning

Finding myself a little groggy this morning before the second cup of coffee kicks in, I have chosen to use another stimulant I know works even better: gratitude! All it takes is a minute or two of sitting back and counting blessings to bring myself to a more alert state of mind. Such thoughts bring a fullness of being and warmth for life I can find no other way.

Simple thanks for: The radio playing, the hands that can type and the healthy body they are attached to, the computer I am using and all that makes it work, the coffee in the cup on my desk, a good mind to think of things to be grateful for, the books and CD’s in the shelves in my office, the view out my office window, the home that my office is within, the job that allows me to pay for my home and all the rest, the friends I wrote emails to this morning, the cleaning ladies who came and spiffed up my home yesterday, my filled fridge where I will find breakfast soon, living in a free country where I can speak my mind, those I love who help give meaning to my life, my old Volvo in the driveway that saved my life once upon a time, the cooler temperatures of fall, my memories, the good times I have known, the challenges that have taught me well…

I’m not “old” but I am not “young” either. If life is a scale from one to ten then my time now is somewhere around a “7.5” and old enough to appreciate Edgar A. Guest’s poem “Life’s Finest Gifts”.

When you get “on” and you’ve lived a lot
And the blood in your veins isn’t quite so hot,
Though your eyes are dimmer than what they were
And the page of the book is a misty blur,
Strange as the case may seem to be,
Then is the time you will clearly see.

You’ll see yourself as you really are,
When you’ve lived a lot and you’ve traveled far,
When your strength give out and your muscles tire
You’ll see the folly of mad desire:
You’ll see what now to your sight is hid,
The numberless trivial things you did.

Often the blindest are youthful eyes,
For age must come ere a man grows wise,
And youth makes much of its mountain peaks,
And the strife for fame and the goal it seeks,
But age sits down with the setting sun
And smiles at the boastful deeds it’s done.

You’ll sigh for the friends that were turned aside
By as hasty word or a show of pride,
You’ll laugh at medals that now you prize,
For you’ll look at them through clearer eyes
And see how little they really meant
For which so much of your strength was spent.

You’ll see, as always, an old man sees,
That the saves die down with the fading breeze,
That the pomps of life never last for long,
And the great sink back to the common throng,
And you’ll understand when the struggle ends
That the finest gifts of this life are friends.

The cure for a melancholy day; the pick me up when I’m draggin’; the filled part of the half empty glass; the method that puts life in true perspective: gratitude. I am thankful it is my friend.

Best way to start off the morning
is with a smile and appreciate you’re alive
cause somewhere else someone is fighting for their life.
Unknown

Only the Dead Don’t Feel It

/ James Browning

My supposition is that life would be boring if things were always good. Fact or delusion, that’s a mantra that rings in my head to help me keep going. Life just gets damned difficult sometimes.

There’s a well-worn phrase that goes “its, not what happens, but how you react to it that matters”. My conclusion is there is wisdom in that statement to keep one from making something dreadful far worse than need be. However, what is awful will still be terrible. All practicing the “how you react” train of thought can do is impact how deep and engulfing the pain, grief or misery becomes. To think I can stop myself from feeling unpleasant things entirely is pure foolishness. What I put off ends up hurting worse later anyway.

Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that’s why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that’s why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living. Alysha Speer

Ready for my rant? Here goes. So much of a quandary my life is these days: single and not wanting to be; lonely, but afraid to let someone get really close; so tired of my work but addicted to the money; unable to see more than a vapor of what my future might be; too regretful of my past and unable to fully put some of it behind me; not completely comfortable with my age but trying to not let it show; working hard to get in shape with frustrating slow progress; far more loving than I know how to comfortably show; misunderstood by just about everyone I have ever known; good progress in recovery from codependence while aggravated some of the dysfunction will always exist; wanting to travel the world for months at a time yet fearful of taking the leap…. oh, woe is me; gripe, gripe, gripe and it’s exhausting!

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. Louise Erdrich

It should come as no surprise that I am working my way through a few days of my cycling depression that comes around every few weeks for a few days. These are times the half missing in the glass is painfully obvious and I’m too stymied to see much of the half full part. This will pass. It always does. But for the time I wrestle depression it feels like trying to swim in quicksand; moving with great effort and getting no where fast.

My gratitude is for knowing what is going on. For years I had no explanation for these days that sucked badly. So I will use the weapon I’ve learned that helps me walk through these dark days: “fake it until I make it”. I’ll put on a smile and show the world sunshine instead of my darkness. Just because I feel bad doesn’t mean I should make others feel it with me. Hello world, here I come.

Everyone is down on pain,
because they forget
something important about it:
Pain is for the living.
Only the dead don’t feel it.
Jim Butcher

Daryl’s House

/ James Browning

One of my best friends I share a deep love of quality music with wrote today and made me aware of a program I did not know existed called “Live from Daryl’s House”. The name sake is Daryl Hall of Hall and Oats who started the free monthly web show in late 2007, after having the idea of “playing with my friends and putting it up on the Internet,”. The show has since garnered acclaim from Rolling Stone, SPIN, Daily Variety, CNN, BBC, and Yahoo! Music. “Live From Daryl’s House” has been called a perfect example of a veteran artist reinventing himself in the digital age by collaborating with both established colleagues and newer performers.

The quality of Hall’s program blew me away; not just the music, but the unaffected conversation that is included. My first exposure was Gnarls Barkley/Cee Lo Green doing “Crazy” in Daryl’s home studio. It’s a favorite song with a positive message that most of what we fret and think about really does not matter. Good stuff you can check out here: http://www.livefromdarylshouse.com/currentep.html?ep_id=67

Lyrics taken from “Crazy”
I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space.

And when you’re out there without care
Yeah, I was out of touch
But it wasn’t because I didn’t know enough
I just knew too much.

Does that make me crazy?
And I hope that you are
Having the time of your life
But think twice
That’s my only advice.

Come on now, who do you think you are?
You really think you’re in control?

Well, I think you’re crazy
I think you’re crazy
I think you’re crazy
Just like me

My heroes had the heart
To lose their lives out on a limb
And all I remember
Is thinking, I want to be like them.

My day is off to a great start and hearing a new rendition of a song that always puts a good spark within accentuates my state of mind. It freshens my state of being to remember presence in the moment and appreciating its contents is ultimately all the best of life is. Thanks Cy (my friend) for putting light and melody into my day!

Music washes away from the soul
the dust of everyday life.
Berthold Auerbach

Masters of Our Own Lives

/ James Browning

Last evening when I came across Edgar Guest’s Poem below I started to wonder, “when is a man old?” Many say “you’re only as old as you think you are” or “as old as you act”. My vantage point has been one gets old when he or she ceases to ask questions, stops seeking the truth and does not embrace being alive to the best of their ability.

While more engaged with life than most fifty-nine year olds, the years do count up and my body shows wear. Aches are regular where none used to be. The constant ringing in my ears I don’t notice until I think about it (like now) and I don’t have the energy I once did. This 1953 model is in good shape but has a lot of miles on it.

On the flip side of perspective, I am smarter and more even-tempered than ever before. The vein of kindness in me is wider and stronger than ever. Good memories harmonize better all the time within as the bad ones grow fainter. Life all around me is not only adornment for my existence. I actually see and marvel at living now fully realizing one day this reality will not be mine. Though acceptance of the impermanence of things, of myself, comes a much deeper appreciation for all that currently “is”.

“When An Old Man Gets To Thinking” by Edgar A. Guest

When an old man gets to thinking of the years he’s traveled through,
He hears again the laughter of the little ones he knew.
He isn’t counting money, and he isn’t planning schemes;
He’s at home with friendly people in the shadow of his dreams.

When he’s lived through all life’s trials and his sun is in the west,
When he’s tasted all life’s pleasures and he knows which ones were best,
Then his mind is stored with riches, not of silver and of gold,
But of happy smiling faces and the joys he couldn’t hold.

Could we see what he is seeing as he’s dreaming in his chair,
We should find no scene of struggle in the distance over there.
As he counts his memory treasures, we should see some shady lane
Where’s he walking with his sweetheart, young, and arm in arm again.

We should meet with friendly people, simple, tender folk and kind,
That had once been glad to love him. In his dreaming we should find
All the many little beauties that enrich the lives of men
That the eyes of youth scarce notice and the poets seldom pen.

Age will tell you that the memory is the treasure-house of man.
Gold and fleeting fame may vanish, but life’s riches never can;
For the little home of laughter and the voice of every friend
And the joys of real contentment linger with us to the end.

I hope my destiny includes one day being an “old man” like Guest wrote about. I would be grateful to live to a more straight forward time; one of old age when calmly sitting and sweetly remembering takes up most of my time.

The things we think about, brood on, dwell on…
influence our life in a thousand ways.
When we can actually choose the direction
of our thoughts instead of just letting them
run along the grooves of conditioned thinking,
we become the masters of our own lives.
Eknath Easwaran

Swallowing the Bitter Pill

/ James Browning

I am not bad person. Never have I intentionally hurt others. Yet, unintentionally, through selfishness, dysfunction and compulsion I have deeply hurt some of the ones I have cared about most.

Graphically illustrated, that’s in line with the difference between murder and man slaughter. Maybe the latter crime is considered to be less, but a killer is still a killer whether deliberate or not. No matter what contributing factors there may have been, I am responsible for what I do.  Nothing can diminish that. Part of taking responsibility for my past actions is swallowing the bitter pill of knowing I’m guilty of the pain I caused, regardless of whether I did nor did not mean to cause the hurt.

Acceptance of the past is a big step in moving beyond it. The realization was critical in getting unstuck from the past.  Today I can look back and see the results of my actions while not beating myself up too badly about it. My self-disgust of my past used to be brutal. Today it is mostly scar tissue from healed wounds. That’s huge and a healthy move of self-forgiveness. I have learned it’s near impossible to forgive others when I can’t forgive myself.

I have learned that the person I have to ask for forgiveness from the most is: myself. You must love yourself. You have to forgive yourself, everyday, whenever you remember a shortcoming, a flaw; you have to tell yourself “That’s just fine”. You have to forgive yourself so much, until you don’t even see those things anymore. Because that’s what love is like. C. Joybell C.

Forgiveness is not about forgetting. It is about letting go of another person’s throat… Forgiveness does not create a relationship. Unless people speak the truth about what they have done and change their mind and behavior, a relationship of trust is not possible. When you forgive someone you certainly release them from judgment, but without true change, no real relationship can be established… Forgiveness in no way requires that you trust the one you forgive. But should they finally confess and repent, you will discover a miracle in your own heart that allows you to reach out and begin to build between you a bridge of reconciliation… Forgiveness does not excuse anything… You may have to declare your forgiveness a hundred times the first day and the second day, but the third day will be less and each day after, until one day you will realize that you have forgiven completely. W. Paul Young

Self-forgiveness is a long process of intentional erosion of guilt for a wrong I hold me responsible for. Much like receiving a reduced sentence in a court of law, to personally lighten my self-imposed retribution for a past transgression is when I begin to heal. I am grateful at this point in my life I have the ability to let go of most of the past and be largely alive in the present.

Forgiveness is the fragrance
that the violet sheds
on the heel that has crushed it.
Mark Twain

60 Things to Be Grateful For

/ James Browning

Some days we all run a little short of gratitude and need to be reminded of the gifts in our lives.  Here’s a list to tuck away somewhere and pull out on “one of those days” that was posted by Celestine Chua on tinybuddha.com.

Here are 60 things to be grateful for in our lives:

1. Your parents – For giving birth to you. Because if there is no them, there will not be you.
2. Your family – For being your closest kin in the world
3. Your friends – For being your companions in life
4. Sense of sight – For letting you see the colors of life
5. Sense of hearing – For letting you hear trickle of rain, the voices of your loved ones, and the harmonious chords of music
6. Sense of touch – For letting you feel the texture of your clothes, the breeze of the wind, the hands of your loved ones
7. Sense of smell – For letting you smell scented candles, perfumes, and beautiful flowers in your garden
8. Sense of taste – For letting you savor the sweetness of fruits, the saltiness of seawater, the sourness of pickles, the bitterness of bitter gourd, and the spiciness of chilli
9. Your speech – For giving you the outlet to express yourself
10. Your heart – For pumping blood to all the parts of your body every second since you were born; for giving you the ability to feel
11. Your lungs – For letting you breathe so you can live
12. Your immune system – For fighting viruses that enter your body. For keeping you in the pink of your health so you can do the things you love.
13. Your hands – So you can type on your computer, flip the pages of books, and hold the hands of your loved ones
14. Your legs – For letting you walk, run, swim, play the sports you love, and curl up in the comfort of your seat
15. Your mind – For the ability to think, to store memories, and to create new solutions
16. Your good health – For enabling you to do what you want to do and for what you’re about to do in the future
17. Your school – For providing an environment conducive to learning and growing
18. Your teachers – For their dedication and for passing down knowledge to you
19. Tears – For helping you express your deepest emotions
20. Disappointment – So you know the things that matter to you most
21. Fears – So you know your opportunities for growth
22. Pain – For you to become a stronger person
23. Sadness – For you to appreciate the spectrum of human emotions
24. Happiness – For you to soak in the beauty of life
25. The Sun – For bringing in light and beauty to this world
26. Sunset – For a beautiful sight to end the day
27. Moon and Stars – For brightening up our night sky
28. Sunrise – For a beautiful sight to start the morning
29. Rain – For cooling you when it gets too warm and for making it comfy to sleep in on weekends
30. Snow – For making winter even more beautiful
31. Rainbows – For a beautiful sight to look forward to after rain
32. Oxygen – For making life possible
33. The Earth – For creating the environment for life to begin
34. Mother nature – For covering our world in beauty
35. Animals – For adding to the diversity of life
36. Internet – For connecting you and me despite the physical space between us
37. Transport – For making it easier to commute from one place to another
38. Mobile phones – For making it easy to stay in touch with others
39. Computers – For making our lives more effective and efficient
40. Technology – For making impossible things possible
41. Movies – For providing a source of entertainment
42. Books – For adding wisdom into your life
43. Blogs – For connecting you with other like-minded people
44. Shoes – For protecting your feet when you are out
45. Time – For a system to organize yourself and keep track of activities
46. Your job – For giving you a source of living and for being a medium where you can add value to the world
47. Music – For lifting your spirits when you’re down and for filling your life with more love
48. Your bed – For you to sleep comfortably in every night
49. Your home – For a place you can call home
50. Your soul mate – For being the one who understands everything you’re going through
51. Your best friends – For being there for you whenever you need them
52. Your enemies – For helping you uncover your blind spots so you can become a better person
53. Kind strangers – For brightening up your days when you least expect it
54. Your mistakes – For helping you to improve and become better
55. Heartbreaks – For helping you mature and become a better person
56. Laughter – For serenading your life with joy
57. Love – For letting you feel what it means to truly be alive
58. Life’s challenges – For helping you grow and become who you are
59. Life – For giving you the chance to experience all that you’re experiencing, and will be experiencing in time to come
And last but not least… #60:
You.

For being who you are and touching the world with your presence. For being alive and reading this post. For giving me the chance to touch your life and fulfill my purpose to help others. You are the reason I live. Thank you.
http://tinybuddha.com/blog/60-things-to-be-grateful-for-in-life/

We often take for granted
the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
Cynthia Ozick

A New Way to Remember

/ James Browning

My dysfunctions have been with me all of my adult life. However, conditions like depression, compulsion and trauma from childhood were not clearly known to me until the last ten years.  When I began to ask “why” particular behaviors came over me in certain circumstances and situations, a true effort to educate myself started. In trying to understand some of my actions, I read book after book after book.

My studies were primarily two-fold: 1) about human behavior and why we do the things we do 2) about religion and how spirituality affects a person. Over several years I became fairly well-educated in the realm of psychology and generally knowledgeable about the origins of a wide number of religions and the spiritual practices that grew out of them. After all this time I was smarter and quite a bit kinder to others, but inside I was not a whole lot better.

Of particular attraction to me were some of the basic tenants of Buddhism. There I found direction about learning to live a better life contained within the “Eightfold Noble Path”.

 

This on top of the “Ten Commandments” of Christianity became a sort of roadmap for improving the quality my existence. Other teachings of Buddha helped me as well such as I was not my thoughts and how my constantly chattering mind can at times create insane lines of thinking. Having these insights made me more knowledgeable and I did get better, just not enough to overcome my demons.

…The problems of the mind cannot be solved on the level of the mind. Once you have understood the basic dysfunction there isn’t really much else that you need to learn or understand. Studying the complexities of the mind may make you a good psychologist, but doing so won’t take you beyond the mind, just as the study of madness isn’t enough to create sanity… From the second chapter of Eckhart Tolle’s “Power of Now”

What Tolle wrote explains well the dilemma I ended up lost within. Alone, I could not fix myself. I needed help. In some ways I wish I could say that realization came to me easily, but it didn’t. It took the ending of a marriage I did not want to be over and coming to face to face with the reasons why that were my responsibility. What I came to know is all of my romantic relationships had suffered because of childhood issues that had never been dealt with. It was like being hit in the head with a ‘two by four” that brought me to my knees determined to recover.

When the pain to stay the same, exceeded the pain to change, I sought help and truly began to grow and change. There is nothing particularly admirable about it. I simply felt I had no other choice.

Today life is pretty darn good and certainly better than ever before. Am I “fixed”? No, far from it. But I am a lot better and as the months pass, I continue to grow. The past is past, but I recall it differently today as containing my greatest lessons.  With true positive anticipation and hope for the future, I am grateful to be where I am!

Forgiving does not erase the bitter past.
A healed memory is not a deleted memory.
Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget
creates a new way to remember.
We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.
Lewis B. Smedes

Eleven Hints For Life

/ James Browning

1. It hurts to love someone and not be loved in return. But what is more painful is to love someone and never find the courage to let that person know how you feel.

2. A sad thing in life is when you meet someone who means a lot to you, only to find out in the end that it was never meant to be and you just have to let go.

3. The best kind of friend is the kind you can sit on a porch swing with, never say a word, and then walk away feeling like it was the best conversation you’ve ever had.

4. It’s true that we don’t know what we’ve got until we loseit, but it’s also true that we don’t know what we’ve been missing until it arrives.

5. It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone – but it takes a lifetime to forget someone.

6. Don’t go for looks, they can deceive. Don’t go for wealth, even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile because it takes only a smile to make a dark day seem bright.

7. Dream what you want to dream, go where you want to go, be what you want to be. Because you have only one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.

8. Always put yourself in the other’s shoes. If you feel that it hurts you, it probably hurts the person too.

9. A careless word may kindle strife. A cruel word may wreck a life. A timely word may level stress. But a loving word may heal and bless.

10. The happiest of people don’t necessarily have the best of everything they just make the most of everything that comes along their way.

11. Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, ends with a tear. When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die,  the one smiling and everyone around you is crying. 
Unknown

Life has taught me well.  The  joy and good times leave permanent impressions.  The difficult and previous leave their marks.  Each a balance for the other.  I am grateful for the full spectrum of experience my life has and yet will contain.

The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon,
but that we wait so long to begin it.
W. M. Lewis

Cymbal Crashes of Inspiration

/ James Browning

For better or worse, I’m something of a walking encyclopedia of sayings, paraphrased paragraphs, quips and passed-down bits of wisdom. When life has been the toughest I have sought such leave-behinds of others to help me through. When life has been wonderful I reach for someone else’s collected thought to help me express my appreciation. When life is just in between I look for another’s words that better pick me up than my own thoughts do at that moment. Here are three worth sharing with hope they give you the same sort of inspiration and introspection they give me.

Thoughts of just giving up or not trying are as common to me as stars. When that sort of funk hits me, I pull out a handy “weapon of words” that helps me fight my negative thinking.

The worst thing one can do is not to try, to be aware of what one wants and not give in to it, to spend years in silent hurt wondering if something could have materialized – never knowing. Jim Rohn

When asked “how are you?”, my usual response is “all days are good, some are just better than others”. When I am up, it takes me higher. When I’m down saying that to someone picks me up. It doesn’t matter to me if what I say appears a bit ‘Pollyanna’ to others.  I like being happy! 

The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit. Gretchen Rubin

In spite of my spiritual work and keeping my feet on a path of attempting to constantly improve myself as a human being, I get knocked down. I get hurt, frustrated, fearful, worried and a litany of related emotions beat on me just like other people. It’s in those times I am reminded a life well lived is one where much has been risked.

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. C.S. Lewis

I am deeply grateful to all the men and women who took the time to write down their thoughts that through miles and time come to me as cymbal crashes of inspiration, whispered encouragements and moments of peaceful understanding.

If we all did the things we are capable of doing,
we would literally astound ourselves.
Thomas A. Edison