What really matters

Two Years Today

/ James Browning

country sunrise copyThank-You-Card GMG EDIT

True happiness is to enjoy the present,
without anxious dependence upon the future,
not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears
but to rest satisfied with what we have,
which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing.
The greatest blessings of mankind
are within us and within our reach.
A wise man is content with his lot,
whatever it may be,without wishing for what he has not.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

I would be grateful if you’d forward an installment of G.M.G.
you find meaningful to a few friends and help set a record
for readership for GoodMorningGratitude.com’s second anniversary
TODAY, April 25, 2013.
Thank you.

Window With A Different View

/ James Browning
6312097041_b093d9c916_bI would be grateful if you’d forward to a few friends
an installment of G.M.G. you found meaningful and help set a record
for readership for GoodMorningGratitude.com’s second birthday on April 25, 2013.
Thank you.

Life without thankfulness is devoid of love and passion. Hope without thankfulness is lacking in fine perception. Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude. Every virtue divorced from thankfulness is maimed and limps along the spiritual road. John Henry Jovett

What a fast two years it has been. The benefits of sharing a little of myself with the world each day yields multiplied blessings the longer I do it. My view of the world is through a window with a different view from any I have known before. From where ever and what ever the inspiration came, I am humbly and deeply grateful.

The value we place
on what we’ve been given
correlates to our depth
of gratitude for it.
Todd Stocker

Sweetner for Living

/ James Browning

aweIn six days GoodMorningGratitude.com will be two years old. Every day I have left something here with the exception of one. When inspiration arrived from a source outside of me twenty-four months ago to do this, it was not in my wildest imagination to believe I could be this committed.

Researching and writing has been a profound teacher. Lessons about commitment and belief are near the top of the list. However, it’s gratitude itself that my education has been most about. Without a shred of a doubt it’s my certain knowing that what I pay attention to and think about is what I get more of. By expanding my level of thankfulness, I have become far more grateful and with more gratefulness every smidgen of my existence has been made better.

Be thankful that you don’t already have everything you desire,
If you did, what would there be to look forward to?

Be thankful when you don’t know something
For it gives you the opportunity to learn.

Be thankful for the difficult times.
During those times you grow.

Be thankful for your limitations
Because they give you opportunities for improvement.

Be thankful for each new challenge
Because it will build your strength and character.

Be thankful for your mistakes
They will teach you valuable lessons.

Be thankful when you’re tired and weary
Because it means you’ve made a difference.
Author Unknown

Earlier than two years ago I was grateful person, but focused my thanks on the “good stuff”. Today even more so I am grateful for the pain, difficulty and heartache that has tutored me in the art of living well. For this morning and the following five days until the third year of GoodMorningGratitude.com begins, expressed here will be my gratefulness for learning how to practice the sweeter for living: G R A T I T U D E.

One of the main reasons that we lose
our enthusiasm in life is because
we become ungrateful…
we let what was once a miracle
become common to us.
Joel Osteen

I would be grateful if you’d forward to a few friends
an installment of G.M.G. you found meaningful and help set a record
for readership for GoodMorningGratitude.com’s birthday.Thank you. James

Stored, But Not Being Used

/ James Browning

wisdom

There was just not enough time early this morning to write this blog and still make an important meeting at work. So here I sit eating at my desk and writing during my lunch break.

Before leaving for work, I went into my archive and copied some sayings and quotes onto a flash drive thinking they’d be good inspiration later for GMG. When I brought up the saved list during lunch I was struck by how meaningful the first six felt while reading them. I decided those half-dozen jewels of experience and insight would be good for the blog today and good for me as well. Here we go:

Be wise enough not to be reckless, but brave enough to take great risks. Frank Warren

 Note to self: Take more calculated risks

You and your purpose in life are the same thing. Your purpose is to be you. George Alexiou

 Note to self: Be true to myself.

Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-and-death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems. J. Jackson Brown Jr.

 Note to self: Lighten up!

When you are unsure about the future, keep doing what is in front of you with all your heart and with love, and what is meant for you will find you. Guru Mayi Chidvilasananda

 Note to self: One step at a time.

You can’t change the wind but you can set your sails. Billie Joe Armstrong

 Note to self: Adapt and keep going.

 I am struck by how much more the nuggets above mean when I slow down and absorb their meaning. This morning I was in a rush and  little, if any, of the wisdom rubbed off on me. Now is a different story.  So much knowledge I put away mentally is like that: stored but not being used.   I am reminded that life is grandly waiting for my arrival. It is happening at this moment and no other time. I am grateful for how much better I feel for being yanked back to the “now”.

Your mind can be either your prison or your palace.
What you make it is yours to decide.
Bernard Kelvin Clive

Note to self: Choose thoughts with intention.

Understanding, Knowledge, and Insight

/ James Browning

234849801_6cebb4feabDo not believe in…
anything simply because you have heard it.

Do not believe in…
anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.

Do not believe in…
anything simply because it is found written in your religious books.

Do not believe in…
anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

Do not believe in…
traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it. Buddha

Less than a hundred words makes a positive starting point for my day, far more than a thousand words could have.  Truth is usually not complicated. Authentic wisdom is typically easy to comprehend. Certainty presents itself readily to one interested in what really is.  Understanding, knowledge, and insight are never more than a thought away if I am open to it. Gratitude brings a lightness to me as the sun comes up. It will be another good day.

There is no knowledge
so hard to acquire
as the knowledge
of how to live this life
well and naturally.
Michel de Montaigne

The Bad Seems So Much Smaller Now

/ James Browning

poverty-is-1 filteredWhile the resolution of the image above is weak, the message it carries is strong. Many children not having enough to eat is a common reality. And it’s not only in some foreign country. Statistics say around 1 in 5 kids in the United States don’t get enough to eat each day. I hate to see adults suffer, but little children doing without food tears at all my emotions from sadness to anger. Have we accepted children going hungry as a fact of life? I can’t and I won’t!

Every day, children in every county in the United States wake up hungry. They go to school hungry. They turn out the lights at night hungry. In high school, Katherine Foronda trained herself not to feel hungry until after the school day had ended. She wasn’t watching her weight or worrying about boys seeing her eat. She just didn’t have any food to eat or any money to buy it. “I thought, if I wasn’t hungry during class I’d be able to actually focus on what we were learning,” said Foronda, now 19.

Early on in high school, with her hunger distracting her from her studies, she failed an English class. Rather than repeating the class, she was given the option of taking an afterschool life skills course, which offered meals to attendees each day and sent them home with food supplies each weekend. She also gained new insight into the possibilities for her own future, learning from a mentor that college was within her reach, despite her family’s economic circumstances.

With food to eat and not just a little bit of hope, she started performing better in classes, and founded a program that offered food support to the student body in her high school. She won a scholarship to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she is now a sophomore. http://abcnews.go.com/US/hunger_at_home/hunger-home-american-children-malnourished/story?id=14367230

That’s one of the unfortunate beginnings that now appears to be headed toward a good life story. For many that is not the tale their life will write.

Growing up was not an easy time for my brother and me. Yet comparing our experience to what some go through, we were lucky. The poverty and mental, physical and emotional abuse we grew up in left its scars on us. However, we never lacked for clean clothes to wear, even if unfashionable and ill-fitting; a dry and safe place to sleep, no matter how humble it was; and enough food to eat, even if just basic and cheap sustenance. We were encouraged, even threatened sometimes, to do well in school. All in all the childhood my brother and I experienced made us far ‘richer’ than what many children are going through today.

This will sound a little strange to some, but I am grateful for my childhood. I am mature enough now to see the negative parts and not let them over-shadow the benefits I had. My start may have been rough by some standards, but the essentials for life were there that enabled me to grow into a functional adult who contributes positively to society. The bad seems so much smaller now and the good so much larger.

Hunger of choice is a painful luxury;
hunger of necessity is terrifying torture.
Mike Mullin

Modesty In Spirit

/ James Browning

RITZ 32772e4e0d0e13d02ac85fca964d0864Plain and simple, I admire humility. A little thing that happened years ago while checking into a hotel jumps to mind. The lodging was one of those five-star types (Ritz Carlton) where my company meeting was being held and not the type I’d personally pay the price for. Being second in line I was just behind a couple in their late 70s or early 80s. Both were dressed nicely: her with well done hair wearing a simple, but lovely, well fitted dress; him in khaki pants, golf shirt and a navy blue blazer. Their luggage looked well used and was a common brand like American Tourister on Samsonite; not pricey designer bags.

As the old couple checked in I admired how sweet and kind they were to each other. Eye contact seemed to result each time into smiles. They were cordial to the counter staff and understanding when told their accommodations were not ready. They said they’d have drinks in the bar while they waited and asked if someone could let them know when their room was ready.

Two things added up in a flash: it was seeing the man reach to sign with his left hand revealing a watch I know cost tens of thousands soon after the desk clerk had said it was the “Presidential Suite” that was not ready. Then noticing the diamonds around the lady’s neck I easily concluded these were wealthy people, but not just any sort of the very well off. They were the rare “humble and happy” kind of rich folks who still loved life and most everyone in it.

It was the humbleness of the couple I admired then and still do today. When their ‘suite’ was not ready I didn’t hear “do you know who I am?” or “let me see the manager” or something of the sort. I am certain they could have “thrown their weight” and gotten plenty of attention had they desired to. Instead the older man and woman were understanding and like “nice normal folks” might be.

Humility has nothing to do with depreciating ourselves and our gifts in ways we know to be untrue. Even “humble” attitudes can be masks of pride. Humility is that freedom from our self which enables us to be in positions in which we have neither recognition nor importance, neither power nor visibility, and even experience deprivation, and yet have joy and delight. It is the freedom of knowing that we are not in the center of the universe, not even in the center of our own private universe. David F. Wells

The couple I encountered at the hotel check-in desk long ago defined the word “humble” just as I found its meaning in the dictionary: modesty in spirit, behavior and attitude; not arrogant or prideful; unpretentious. To me humility is one of the most endearing qualities a person can have. I am grateful for the example of the “humble rich couple” that today still lives vividly in my memory.

A great man is always willing to be little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

This Is All There Is

/ James Browning

P1090385 copyEach person is unique; a completely original work crafted by intention, deeds, heredity, family, choices, fate and forces beyond understanding. And the path we each choose is one of a kind. There are commonalities, but no exact matches. That is as life as always been.

Another’s way of being is perceived through the unique filters my emotional, physical and spiritual experience has given me. While I may assume my perception of someone else is correct, in actuality my views are simply “my vantage point”. No one else seeing another will assess them exactly as I will.

The issue is compounded with the realization no one will ever accurately see me as I inwardly believe myself to be. Without meaning to my actions are seen as a combination of reality and fabrication; truth and untruth; as I am and as I am not.

I may forget an important date, but not its importance.
I may be with one person, wishing I was with another.
I may be one place, wishing I was somewhere else.
I may tell the truth when another is not ready for it.
I may say I don’t care about what matters greatly.
I may let go when all I want to do is hold on tight.
I may tell you one thing while meaning otherwise.
I may do wrong things with the best of intentions.
I may do something when I did not want to do it.
I may go one way yet wish I was going another.
I may see things incorrectly but still see them.
I may be proud of another but unable to say it.
I may say I don’t care, when it matters to me.
I may hurt another although it hurts me more.
I may speak angrily and not be angry at you.
I may not tell you I love you, yet always will.
I may tell a lie to keep from hurting another.
I may hear incorrectly without being wrong.
I may be afraid and not admit it to anyone.
I may do stupid things and not be stupid.
I may wonder and yet have little doubt.
I may act happy when I am really sad.
I may lose my way and not be lost…
Day appearing like night;
Black looking white,
Up appearing down,
“Yes” appearing “No”…
Such are the conflicting opposites of the human experience.
James Browning

I will not meddle when I ask a person “how are you” and they respond “fine” even though I know they are far from being okay. Instead I will cast a one or two sentence silent prayer of hope that spiritual and emotion symmetry comes to that person. No matter how rude, unkind, angry, annoyed, bad-mannered, mad, irate, offensive or vulgar I will do my best to send sincere wishes the offender finds peace and understanding.

I am far from virtuous enough to always send good wishes to a person provoking me based purely on the benefit to another. When I can see no other way I cast my positive thoughts for someone for selfish reasons knowing that whatever I put into the world comes back to me multiplied. If I am understanding, I will be understood. If I am compassionate, others will be for me and so on. I am grateful for my thoughts this morning that will, at least for a time, make my deeds a little closer match for my intentions.

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

Stuck In the Labyrinth

/ James Browning

pfYou realize that our mistrust of the future makes it hard to give up the past…
From “Survivor” by Chuck Palahniuk

Who am I now?

Who have I been?

Who will I become?

Those “who” questions rattle around my psyche on a regular basis although life experience has taught me it is the first one that matters most. “Who I have been” is a far distant second and the future (“Who will I become?”) is way, way, way back in third place. If I do the “now” part well the past relatively quickly begins to be something I am mostly satisfied with and my future unfolds primarily in a manner I can be content with. While who I am “now” rests on a foundation of my past, the present is all I have any control over.

Life has a way of going in circles. Ideally, it would be a straight path forward––we’d always know where we were going, we’d always be able to move on and leave everything else behind. There would be nothing but the present and the future. Instead, we always find ourselves where we started. When we try to move ahead, we end up taking a step back. We carry everything with us, the weight exhausting us until we want to collapse and give up.

We forget things we try to remember. We remember things we’d rather forget. The most frightening thing about memory is that it leaves no choice. It has mastered an incomprehensible art of forgetting. It erases, it smudges, it fills in blank spaces with details that don’t exist.

But however we remember it––or choose to remember it––the past is the foundation that holds our lives in place. Without its support, we’d have nothing for guidance. We spend so much time focused on what lies ahead, when what has fallen behind is just as important. What defines us isn’t where we’re going, but where we’ve been. Although there are places and people we will never see again, and although we move on and let them go, they remain a part of who we are.

There are things that will never change, things we will carry along with us always. But as we venture into the murky future, we must find our strength by learning to leave things behind. Brigid Gorry-Hines

Being in the “now” is a process of on-going wrestling I have to still do mentally; always will. However, the more I work at it the more successful I become at winning each bout. That sure beats how I once spent most of my life as John Green described it in “Looking For Alaska”; You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking how you’ll escape one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

Most of the time I like living in the present and have been amazed how much better the future turns out when I do. I am grateful to understand my life tomorrow is being built by what I think and do today!

The past is a ghost,
the future a dream
and all we ever have is now.
Bill Cosby

Pay Attention In Class

/ James Browning

3005147-poster-1960-caught-stress-spiral-innovate-your-day-8-minutes-ready-set-pauseYou can’t stop the future
You can’t rewind the past
The only way to learn the secret
…is to press play.
From “Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher

Clearly I recall being in fourth grade dreading the possibility of being in Miss Pittman’s fifth grade class the following year. She was said to be mean, quick tempered and fast to punish students. Knowing she was going to my teacher the next year set me to start playing the anxiety game a half year early.

Actually there were lots of variables that never occurred to a ten year-old boy. The teacher might retire; she might be replaced; she might change jobs; she might start teaching a different grade or maybe she was different that student gossip portrayed. But no other possibility occurred to me except I was going to be in Miss Pittman’s class and she was going to be mean to me. Looking back I can see how my fear seemed to give the future clarity because I thought I knew exactly what was going to happen.

Today I realize taking my fears with a ‘grain of salt’ is always prudent. If the dismal scenarios I frequently think up actually came true it would mean I could predict the future, which of course I can’t (otherwise I would have already won the lottery many times!).

People were always getting ready for tomorrow.
I didn’t believe in that.
Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them.
It didn’t even know they were there.
From “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy

I ended up in Miss Pittman’s class just like I dreaded I would, but my experience was NOT what I thought it would be. She was stern and allowed no cutting up in class, but she was a good teacher. Her tendency was to favor the “good students”, which I was one of. Consequently, I ended up doing well, learned a lot and still have respect her to this day. She encouraged my love of reading and the sciences; both of which are very much alive even today. Having Miss Pittman as a 5th grade teacher is one of my earliest lessons about my proven inability to predict the future.

I still try to play fortune teller at times, but the future so rarely turns out the way I predict you’d think I would have completely learned better by now. What is different these days is usually I catch my “future tripping” early on before it ‘snowballs’. I am grateful for insights learned the hard way that improve my life. All I have to do is “pay attention in class”.

It’s being here now that’s important.
There’s no past and there’s no future.
Time is a very misleading thing.
All there is ever, is the now.
We can gain experience from the past,
but we can’t relive it;
and we can hope for the future,
but we don’t know if there is one.
George Harrison