The past is never
where you think you left it.
Katherine Anne Porter
Courage
I’m Stepping Through the Door…
We passed upon the stair,
we spoke of was and when
Although I wasn’t there,
he said I was his friend,
which came as some surprise
I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone
a long long time ago…
The Man Who Sold the World
I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man,
just a mortal with potential of a superman.
I’m living on.
Quicksand
I’m stepping through the door,
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way.
And the stars look very different today.
Space Oddity
I don’t know where I’m going from here,
but I know it won’t be boring.
comment on stage 1998 Madison Sq. Garden
I didn’t know the man, but I knew his art well. I was not a fan of everything he did, but have great respect for the spirit he did it with. Bowie’s work was innovative, creative, unusual and imaginative. He never stopped pushing the envelope. So rare…
Rest in peace David… thank you for all you gave us of yourself.
Today
21 Truths to Living the Life Your Want
1. Understand that sustained happiness rarely comes from outside circumstances. Your wealth, beauty, power, or acquisitions have far less to do with happiness than your appreciation for what you have this very moment and your loving relationships with others.
2. You can live your life by design, but you must acknowledge your power in that, plan for it, and take the necessary actions.
3. You can’t have it all, but you can have enough to be very happy. Prioritize and focus on the top 3 or 4 most important areas of your life.
4. Stop focusing on what you don’t have or don’t like. Focus on what you do have and do like, and create a plan for what you think you can improve and change.
5. Abandon perfectionism. It is a useless pursuit with no end. It creates stress and unhappiness. Learn to find the balance point between good enough and peaceful living.
6. Put your own deepest needs first. If you are living for others before yourself and pushing your own needs aside, eventually you will crumble in some way — through depression, anger, anxiety or destructive behaviors.
7. Your choices may disappoint or offend others. That is sometimes necessary in order to grow and live authentically. Those who love you and want the best for you will accept and support you.
8. Count your blessings. You probably already have many of the things you want for your life. Don’t take them for granted.
9. Address personal issues head-on. Don’t use these as an excuse for not having what you want in life. If you have a wound, a personality or relationship problem, or an anxiety, go work on it. Resolve it. Weak people don’t seek help, but strong forward-moving people do.
10. Pick one small problem or irritation and resolve it. Feel how much personal power and energy that gives you. Imagine how it would feel to resolve one of your bigger problems or concerns.
11. Consider disengaging from people who bring you down or drain your energy. Build relationships with people who are positive, action-oriented, and supportive.
12. Pick the one change that would make the biggest positive difference in your life. Begin visualizing your life with this change implemented. Practice this regularly throughout the day.
13. Take this one step further and begin writing some specific action steps that might help make this change happen.
14. Strengthen your strengths. Make yourself indispensable in your area(s) of interest and expertise.
15. Always leave time for fun. Make fun happen in your life.
16. Don’t neglect your relationships. Don’t take them for granted. Find out what makes your loved ones happy, and do that for them.
17. Learn to let it go. Worry is the most fruitless expenditure of energy on the planet. Very little is worth worrying about. If you must do something, take action instead.
18. Don’t assume that you can’t do something. Prove that you can’t, and if so, try something else.
19. More often than not, your fear is the culprit for inaction. More often than not, your fears are unfounded or at least out of proportion. More often than not, your fear will go away once you take action.
20. Focus on the task at hand. When you feel overwhelmed and pulled in many directions, just pick an important thing and do it without distraction. Then do another one.
21. Life is short. You have a limited number of days on this Earth. There isn’t time to waste your days in worry, anger or frustration. Make the most of this moment and the next and the next and the next . . .
http://thinksimplenow.com/clarity/the-life-you-want/
Happiness is not the absence of problems,
it’s the ability to deal with them.
Steve Maraboli
Ego Gets In The Way
When your mind wants to bolt, but your heart hangs on, it is because you don’t know with absolute certainty what the truth is. When you waste so much time on something that you want to believe is true, you begin to over think things. Eventually, something obvious becomes twisted into something absurd, which keeps us from believing a simpler answer.
Over time, you believe your own lies and fantasies to shield yourself from hurt, when following what is logical would have been the quickest way to healing. It is through your own self-imposed delusions that you lose your perspective. The world then becomes different to you when in fact you are different. Why? Because your own ego gets in the way.
Everyone wants to feel special. Everyone wants to have faith in others. Everyone wants to believe in fairytales, happy endings and have all bad interactions with others explained. It is easier to sit in denial with your delusions and pray God will intervene, not realizing he has. He gave you commonsense and intuition, but you didn’t like how it made you feel. This is what true mental illness really is: Following your gut instinct through hell because you want to prove you are right, either to yourself or others. You sacrifice choosing to do right, in order to avoid pain. However, you don’t realize that you have been in pain for a really long time and believed this was how happiness felt. Shannon L. Alder
You Are Not Lame
Listen my man, you are not lame. Matter of fact you are actually brave It’s completely okay to not turn up during the weekends like everybody else Who waste every penny they make during the week on getting wasted Spending every check on expensive outfits, clubs and bottles to appear cool on Instagram, to impress a bunch of females who are clueless about womanhood and compete with a bunch of other guys in the same boat as you.
You are not lame for being different from these males who are investing their money and themselves into the wrong things. Targeting the easy girls who if you buy them enough shots you make yourself worthy to sleep with them. The girls who blame it on the alcohol when in reality the alcohol isn’t what made her go home with you. She had the intentions of going home with someone anyways. You are not lame for not desiring these types of females and that lifestyle.
You value yourself. Your idea of fun isn’t self-destruction and self-disrespect. You are actually cool, awesome, dope for deviating from the norm who brags about nothing but poison until they are poisoned. Don’t become like them, don’t let boredom pull you into that. You aren’t boring, you are not lame. There are more adventurous things out there. You are a mature man who values more in life. Keep being you, this world needs it. http://instagram.com/gentlemenhood
Chivalry:
It’s the little boy who kisses my hand,
the young man who holds the door open for me,
and the old man who tips his hat to me.
None of it is a reflection of me,
but a reflection of them.
Donna Lynn Hope
Adversity
Out of Monochrome and Into Full Color
The quip goes “time is money” but I have grown to see that “money is time”. Seems like I’m only playing with words by flipping them around. But there’s a deeper meaning with a closer look.
Definitions:
Time = one’s lifetime; a temporal existence, an irreversible succession
Money = a measure of value; a medium of exchange; value that degrades over time
Building sentences with alternate interpretations for “time is money” and “money is time” based on those definitions:
One’s lifetime is a measure of value.
A measure of value is one’s lifetime.
A temporal existence is a medium of exchange.
A medium of exchange is a temporal existence.
An irreversible succession is value that degrades over time.
A value that degrades over time is an irreversible succession.
Round and round we go until boiling it down for myself the meaning in a material world that comes is: 1) Life is of great value 2) Life can be exchanged for what one chooses 3) Life evaporates quickly and what it is traded for materially loses value.
Philosophers say idealism is the opposite of materialism. So often we trade what we believe in for what we believe we have to have or what we think we have to do for others. Then it is usually our dissatisfaction of what we give our life for that so much of our discontent stems from. Simply we get what we went after, but once we get it satisfaction is temporary, at best. Maybe that’s why in the consumer driven economy of the United States mental illness is the fastest growing sickness.
Spending our time/money in trade for cars, houses, clothes, electronics, jewelry, entertainment, filled bank accounts and what others want brings little more but momentary contentment. Anyone who believes differently is delusional and addicted (the majority).
On the other hand spending our time/money for happiness, joy, fulfillment, bliss, gladness, wonder, delight and being true to one’s self are investments that always grow with time. Anyone who agrees has a clarity of what matters and is inspired (the minority).
Nothing has been written here that we all have not heard a thousand, maybe even a million times: it’s time that matters, not money; being true to our self is the best way to be true to others. Maybe that’s the reason most give it little more than lip service. We’ve all heard the thinking so many times, we are mentally and spiritually constipated with all the “have to have’s” and “should do’s”. What good is unpracticed wisdom? NONE!
Without a doubt,
the greatest riches other than love
is time spent being true to one’s self.
It’s not money.
It’s not success.
It’s not fame.
It’s absolutely nothing material.
I readily accept the practical issue that everyone has bills to pay and responsibilities, but beyond what is really necessary most waste our too much of our “time” chasing things that are all so temporary. Time passes quickly. The value of money degrades quickly. Things done for others are soon forgotten by most people.
Written today this piece is really a “memo to self”. Soon to scale down my standard of living, this has been placed here as an easy to refer to signpost that I can come read again and again when I need to. I am grateful for the courage to take steps out of monochrome and into full color; away from money and toward my dreams; away from money and toward love.
What really matters
is what you do
with what you have.
H.G. Wells
Originally Posted here on January 8, 2013
Where the Light Enters
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.
Reinhold Niebuhr
The wound is the place
where the Light enters you.
Rumi
Soldier’s Prayer
My intent it not to honor war or the politics that often fester their eruption. My purpose here is not to talk of what to do about foreign tyrants or those that carry out evil against their countrymen. This is not a monologue of what is right and wrong and what should have or should not have been done. What I put here today, one day after Veteran’s Day is my tribute to the men and women who willingly have gone into the darkness of battle and conflict in the name of country, family and countrymen.
A Soldier’s Prayer By Joanna Fuchs
Lord, wrap your arms around me
In this hostile, brutal place;
Let me draw peace and comfort
From your restful, sweet embrace.
Help me do my duty
To uphold what is right;
Give me strength and courage
Each day and every night.
Lord, hear this soldier’s prayer
To You in heaven above;
Protect me with your power,
And sustain me with your love.
Often I have thought it was good fortune not to have been drafted to serve in the war of my youth: Vietnam. My friends and family who went came back mostly whole, but for so many that was not true. Well aware I am of how the men and women who were called to go there never received the credit, honor or respect due them. I was against that war, but never against those who served. Any time I see a Vet wearing something that indicates he/she served in ‘Nam I always thank them for their service. To a person each and every one has been grateful. Every single one! Far too little appreciation has been given to those people.
Taken from “Welcome Home and I Love You!” by Eileen Breedlove
When you pass by a Vet
that made it home,
or hear of a brother
that is lost in Nam.
Open your hearts
and show them respect.
They gave of themselves
and they did their best.
WELCOME HOME!
Taken from “In Your Honor” by Anonymous
Unselfishly, you left your fathers and your mothers.
You left behind your sisters and your brothers.
Leaving your beloved children and wives,
You put on hold, your dreams, your lives.
On foreign soil, you found yourself planted
To fight for those whose freedom you granted.
Without your sacrifice, their cause would be lost
But you carried onward, no matter the cost.
When it was over, you all came back home
Some were left with memories to face alone.
Those who survived were forever scarred
Emotionally, physically, permanently marred.
With a hand upon my heart, I feel
The pride and respect; my reverence is revealed.
Every day, I give my utmost admiration
To those who fought to defend our nation.
For all U.S. personnel who served in Vietnam or were deployed before or after to fight, protect or advise in places like Nicaragua, El Salvador, Grenada, Iraq, Panama, Kuwait, Somalia, Serbia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and all the other locales known and the ones we likely will never know: THANK YOU. You have my deep respect and gratitude.
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.
José Narosky
First Posted on November 12, 2011
Good Morning Gratitude 