What really matters

Little Bit of Harmless Insanity

/ James Browning

DSCN0880Being blessed with a successful career allowed me to live a life filled with comfort and acquiring material things, the quantity of which go far beyond what I now consider ‘normal’. With the ability to “have” I overdid it to where the magnitude of my possessions have become something of a curse. It never occurred to me at the time of buying that one day I would have to do something with it all. So easy it came to convert money into things, but the conversion of things back into money is difficult and time-consuming.

When I was fifteen I met a boy a couple of years older who had more record albums than I had ever seen any place except a record store. I decided “he who has the most records wins” and from that thought I began a collection that is now well over 4000 LPs. Then there are the 45’s, cassettes and CD’s that come along with a healthy addiction to music. Without doubt it is wonderful to be able to listen to just about anything I want when I want to. What is not so great is that a hundred records weights about eighty pounds and my collection LPs weighs about two tons! Over time I have moved them from the Atlantic to the Pacific and lots of other places in between. There’s a little bit of harmless insanity within that somewhere.

My music collection is just the beginning. There’s all the DVD’s and Blueray’s (thankfully most of the VHS tapes are gone!). Don’t even get me started about a book collection that runs about 150 linear feet! And then all the antiques and collectables I have amassed. My home is about 3500 sq feet and while cluttered it is orderly and organized. But then there is the ten by 25 foot storage until full of stuff also. It blows my mind now that I managed to acquire all this “stuff”.

Moving into a different phase of my life now with wishes for more freedom, I have a sizeable task in front of me. Once I stop working at a regular job every day (soon) so I chase more of my dreams, one of my first tasks has to be scaling back on the sheer quantity of my material possessions. I am more than a little embarrassed that I mindlessly spent so many years building this mountain of stuff that is now a burden. Looking ahead I hope to adopt more of the attitude of William Henry Channing:

To live content with small means;
to seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion;
to be worthy, not respectable,
and wealthy, not, rich;
to listen to stars and birds,
babes and sages, with open heart;
to study hard;
to think quietly,
act frankly,
talk gently,
await occasions,
hurry never;
in a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common
…this is my symphony.

To not be too hard on myself, it is important to acknowledge that one can not see the next horizon past the one currently in view. When younger there was much satisfaction in enjoying my hobbies, shopping for antiques and showing off my treasures. Then it would have been impossible to know the wisdom that comes from living past my “acquiring years”. I am grateful for the clarity to see I spent a large part of my life climbing the ‘stuff mountain’. Now I am now on the other side where it is liberation from material things I wish to gain. For me, this is a VERY important nugget of wisdom!

Anything you cannot relinquish
when it has outlived its usefulness
possesses you,
and in this materialistic age
a great many of us
are possessed by our possessions.
Peace Pilgrim

Comfort On Difficult Days

/ James Browning

558629_wrong_turn_okay1The first day of the year yesterday found me filled with hope and anticipation for what will be a grand year of discovery and exploration. Reflecting this morning on my sense of what is to come I began to wonder what is so different now compared to past years. With little thought the answer jumped into my mind quickly: “I am not afraid of failing”.

So what could happen when I fail?

Answer: I could look foolish to others.
Response: I don’t care that much anymore.

Answer: It could cost me a lot of money.
Response: I’ll make more or live more simply.

Answer: I could end up in a worse place than I have ever been.
Response: Not likely. Remember what you went through as a kid. You survived!

Answer: I could lose some of my confidence.
Response: Rebuild it. Failure is only permanent when I stop trying. Try again.

Answer: It may not turn out the way I hoped.
Response: So what! Embrace what comes and embrace unexpected happenings.

Answer: I could alienate friends by going after my dreams.
Response: If they don’t support me in pursuit of my dreams, they are not my friends.

What every man who succeeded at his dreams had in common with others was his failures. Thomas Edison attempted to invent the light bulb 1,000 times before he succeeded. Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor for lack of imagination! Dr. Seuss’ first book was rejected 28 times. The biggest mistake I could make is to think I lack the stuff they had. Failures and mistakes are not supposed to paralyze me; they’re supposed to help me come to know who I am and what makes me the most content and happy.

From a poem by an unknown author here’s what I wish for us all:

Comfort on difficult days,
Smiles when sadness intrudes,
Rainbows to follow the clouds,
Laughter to kiss your lips,
Sunsets to warm your heart,
Hugs when spirits sag,
Beauty for your eyes to see,
Friendships to brighten your being,
Faith so that you can believe,
Confidence for when you doubt,
Courage to know yourself,
Patience to accept the truth,
Love to complete your life.

There’s much to do and my prospects for 2013 are exciting. I am grateful for the unexpected happenings and fresh opportunities that are swirling around me now in a soup of life that seems to be trying to make my dreams come true. And all I have to do is show up, do my part, belief in myself and not be afraid to fail.

Don’t wait.
The time will never be just right.
Napoleon Hill

True Hope Is Made of This

/ James Browning

2570539380102335886S425x425Q85Writing yesterday about a great love of long ago and mentioning losing her was the beginning of my demise into dysfunction has turned out to be an interesting piece of serendipity. The spiral that began back then is illustrated by what I was writing in the early to mid 90s. Purely by chance while looking for an old file, I came across these last night

WHY?

Why do I love those incapable of loving me as much in return?
Why do those who profess love to me hurt me so easily?
Why do those I love have to say “I’m sorry” so much?
Why can’t they just do different instead?

Why do I care if I live,
Since I care the most if I do.
I yearn for someone to make me live,
and want to be,
and give me a future to believe in.
Life without hope,
Without possibility,
Is such nothing.

Then, WHY am I?

IS, WHERE AND ARE?

Is there a woman who can love me as much as I love her?
Is there a woman who can believe in me as I do her?
Is there a woman who can support me as much as I do her?
Is there a woman who can help me as much as I do her.

Where is the woman who could hold me when I need to be held?
Where is the woman who can make my trouble go away?
Where is the woman that can give me strength?
Where is the woman who won’t doubt me?

Where is the woman who can love without demand
and know I would give all if she did?
Where is the woman?
Are you her?

Reading these was a pleasant wake up call to how far I have come, how much more peace is in my soul and how much better I understand love between a man and a woman. I no longer look for value and esteem outside myself as I once did. What a miracle! Gratitude washes over me as I write. I am highly thankful!

Though our hearts are not together,
Sweet fondness dreams of this:
I long to hear her laughter,
I long for just a kiss.
Though her eyes are elsewhere shining,
And warm embraces do I miss,
Yet passion’s song is mellow still,
For true hope is made of this.
“Absence” by Danny Rowden

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

/ James Browning

Originally Posted here one year ago on December 19, 2011

Virginia was the daughter of Dr. Philip O’Hanlon, a coroner’s assistant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  In answer to her question “is there really a Santa Claus” her father suggested she write to a New York City newspaper called The Sun.

Virginia’s letter found its way to one of the paper’s editors named Francis P. Church who wrote the now famous response.   His answer to Virgina remains today as the most reprinted editorial ever to run in any English language newspaper.

Dear Editor—
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon

September 21, 1897
Virginia,
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds,Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah,Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now,Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Many have questioned if Virigina’s original letter actually ever existed thinking it was only fiction created by Francis Church as a basis for his editorial. However, the original letter written by Virginia O’Hanlon was authenticated in 1998 by an appraiser on the Antiques Roadshow and valued at $20,000–$30,000.

I’m grateful for the swell in my chest the little boy inside finds in reading Church’s reply to Virginia over a hundred years ago.  The spirit of Santa Claus will always be with me.

There’s more to the truth than just the facts.  ~Author Unknown

Memory of the Heart

/ James Browning

gratitude 20Two psychologists, Michael McCollough of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, and Robert Emmons of the University of California at Davis, wrote an article about an experiment they conducted on gratitude and its impact on well-being. The study split several hundred people into three different groups and all of the participants were asked to keep daily diaries.

The first group kept a diary of the events that occurred during the day without being told specifically to write about either good or bad things; the second group was told to record their unpleasant experiences; and the last group was instructed to make a daily list of things for which they were grateful.

The results of the study indicated that daily gratitude exercises resulted in higher reported levels of alertness, enthusiasm, determination, optimism, and energy. In addition, those in the gratitude group experienced less depression and stress, were more likely to help others, exercised more regularly, and made greater progress toward achieving personal goals. http://www.thechangeblog.com/gratitude/

Simple things I am grateful for this morning selected randomly from top of mind:
– At night in bed how good the cool side of the pillow feels when I turn it over.
– The taste of coffee from the pot at home I am most accustomed to.
– Getting to skip shaving on the weekend and on vacation.
– Reading that takes me all around the world; to the future and the past.
– How good it feels to see a good friend I have not seen in a long time.
– A favorite food prepared just like I remember it from childhood.
– Cold weather on the first chilly day of the season.
– Clouds when I notice them they are always beautiful.
– My favorite flavors of ice cream
– Getting hugs from people I care about.
– Offers of help without having to ask.
– Music, music, music. I can’t image life without it.
– Poetry that soothes my heart and brightens my imagination.
– Quiet moments at home when I can sit, meditate and hear nothing.
– Rain! It is one of my favorite things about nature.
– Showers. Few things feel so good you can talk about with just anyone.
– Indoor toilets (I was ten years old before we had one growing up).
– Fresh flowers. 98% of the time there’s a vase full in my home.
– My computer that allows me to write this.
– Laughing because it always makes me feel better.
– Air conditioning and central heat.

Begin your day by feeling grateful. Be grateful for the bed you just slept in, the roof over your head, the carpet or floor under your feet, the running water, the soap, your shower, your toothbrush, your clothes, your shoes, the refrigerator that keeps your food cold, the car that you drive, your job, your friends. Be grateful for the stores that make it so easy to buy the things you need, the restaurants, the utilities, services, and electrical appliances that make your life effortless. Be grateful for the magazines and the books that you read. Be grateful for the chair that you sit on, and the pavement that you walk on. Be grateful for the weather, the sun, the sky, the birds, the trees, the grass, the rain, and the flowers. From The Secret Daily Teachings

I am thankful to have learned about the great gift of being grateful. It has changed my life beyond my ability to explain it.

Gratitude is the memory of the heart.
Jean Baptiste Massieu

There’s An App For That

/ James Browning

Expanding my level of gratitude has been a life changer to a degree not easily explained. What is different changed slowly ever so slightly day by day, week by week, month by month.

Like most new things initially the excitement about my new endeavor with this blog pumped me up. That was followed about two months into writing it of having to push myself to keep going every day.

Around six months into writing daily about what I was grateful for, the benefits began to manifest in ways I could easily notice. One of the surprising happenings was I often got the most good from telling the world about some of the worst things I’d ever done. There has been something extraordinarily cleansing about that experience.

Now that eighteen months of creating goodmorninggratitude.com each morning have passed, I can emphatically tell you I wish I had started sooner. Yes, I had read for years about keeping a gratitude journal. Many times I began but could never get the practice planted and growing for me. That’s why I probably have a dozen journals with only a few pages filled. Not sure why I felt each time I attempted anew to keep a gratitude journal I needed a fresh one. That’s just another little peculiarity that shows me to be uniquely myself!

At the top of list of benefits of sharing my thoughts of personal gratefulness each day is I have become an optimistic. Previously I wore the label of “realist”. Now I’m the bane of people who think of them self that way. What I came to know is “realist” is just another name for pessimist. And for those who readily identify them self as pessimistic suffice it to say I make them uncomfortable with the generally good vibe I have for living the majority of the time. I always hope a little of it rubs off.

If you’re not the sort who wants to spend a good bit of your time writing on-line or in a journal, there’s an app for that! I can’t tell you much about it yet, as it is a discovery of just this morning.

Here’s what the Apple store said about the app:

Gratitude and Happiness Tracker is a free iPhone and iPad app that helps you to track happiness levels, and specifically three daily practices: expressing gratitude, staying in touch with friends, and doing acts of kindness.

The app is extremely basic and simple to use. It’s nothing fancy when it comes to looks, but it gets the job done. On the graph page, you will be able to see the graphing of your happiness and practices at a glance.

You select the practice, enter in whether or not you completed it, and if you like jot down a quick note. Hit save and it records your responses.
The app is just a basic way to keep track of your daily happiness level and encourage you to express gratitude, take time for friends, and commit one random act of kindness every day. Who knows? It could be a great app for moving closer to the person you aim to be!

The Gratitude and Happiness app is currently rated at three and a half stars, so I did spend 99 cents to download it on my iPhone. It looks like an hour or so will be needed to figure it out and complete set up. I’ll do that this week and a ways down the road I’ll let you know how the app worked out for me. My gratitude goes to the creators of the app and to the search for something completely unrelated this morning that brought it to me. There are happenings here and there I used to think were coincidence, like this one, that now I know often it’s my Higher Power at work.

The unthankful heart… discovers no mercies;
but let the thankful heart sweeps through the day
and, as the magnet finds the iron,
so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!
Henry Ward Beecher

A Long Dark Shadow

/ James Browning

To all of you who hate yourselves, I promise this: There is a place where you’d hate yourself less. Somewhere out there, it waits. Each of us has one, whether we know it or not, whether we have found it or not, whether we have seen it with our own eyes or not. It is a nation or a city block, a mountain or a room. It is the Mekong Delta or the Prado, shopping malls or Prague.

It is highly specific and one-of-a-kind — a certain park, say, or a certain cinema — or else it is not a place but a type of place: caves, say, or hole-in-the-wall Chinese restaurants. In the latter case, two caves, one in Laos and one in Canada, or two hole-in-the wall Chinese restaurants, one in Rome and one in Shanghai, are equally your place.

Maybe you already know where it is, the place where you hate yourself less. Maybe you know this place and why you love it, crave it, dream of it and picture it while stuck in traffic or awaiting surgery. Maybe you go there every March. Or maybe you know where it is and yet have never been there in the flesh.

Or maybe you have no idea that such a place exists. It does. The formula for finding it is simple:
1. What makes you hate yourself?
2. Where do those things occur least?
3. What makes you feel inspired, serene, amused, excited (in a good way), unself-conscious, passionate, compassionate and more or less at home?
4. Where are those things?
From “There Is a Place Where You’d Hate Yourself Less… by Anneli Rufus http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stuck/201211/there-is-place-where-youd-hate-yourself-less

Yes, I am one of those who hates themself. Oh, don’t worry. It’s not nearly so bad as it once was and now only drifts upon me at random. Usually it is brought on by fatigue which brings on worry which ignites self-loathing. In some ways I don’t think of it as even being self-induced. Anymore it seems like some foreign adversary that attacks jumps on me when I’m down.

When is my place where I hate myself less? There are three; one specific and two general.

Specifically in my home with my things I feel safe and protected from just about everything including self dislike.

The second place of safety is traveling in foreign places. There is nothing like unfamiliar culture and language to make me forget any negative thoughts about myself. On the road experiencing something new and different I am fully in the moment taking in all the sensory information coming my way. My sense of being alive is heightened to an acute level and I am fully present in the ‘now”.

The third place self-hatred disappears is when I am with those I love and who love me. When friends and family who know the good and not so good about me, yet care about me anyway are near I find no reason to fall into self-loathing. Simply I feel safe to be just the unaffected “me” I truly am.

The glow of gratitude is within for the learned ability to throw off hating myself most of the time. And even when I can’t make it go away completely, almost always I can diminish it to a dull, short-lived level.

If you had a person in your life
treating you the way you treat yourself,
you would have gotten rid of them a long time ago…
Cheri Huber

Shifts Slightly in Color and Form

/ James Browning

I  found a webpage with a five question quiz “What is the meaning of your life?”   http://www.blogthings.com/whatisthemeaningofyourlifequiz/ There are five possible conclusions one’s answers can cause. In alphabetical order they are:

1. The Meaning of Your Life is Joy
2. The Meaning of Your Life is Legacy
3. The Meaning of Your Life is Love
4. The Meaning of Your Life is Pleasure
5. The Meaning of Your Life is Understanding

It’s interesting that I picked Love or Joy as my likely score before taking the quiz only to be surprised with a ‘score’ of “The Meaning of Your Life is Pleasure“.  The short narrative accompanying the conclusion of the quiz was: You don’t have to be reminded that life is short. You’re going to live it up and have fun. You are more afraid of regretting what you didn’t do, and you try to do it all.You want to travel the world, experience passion, eat great food, and have amazing adventures. Whenever possible, you indulge. You want to sample all the world’s pleasures, even if your health and finances suffer a little.

Now that’s an eye opener. I truly have morphed and changed with age. Yes, I have become more and more open to newly found knowledge, understanding and freshly gained familiarity. My desire is strong to learn and experience new things. Never had I considered being driven to the point of being a “pleasure seeker”. It had not occurred to me to see my hopes and aspirations from such an angle and considering that perspective broadened my perception.

The “pleasure” answer caused me to push my chair away for a while before I could continue writing. I just did not like the answer I had received and proceeded to tell myself “what real information could five simple questions uncover? That’s not a true answer about me!”

After having breakfast and doing a couple of quick chores, it came to me: What the ‘meaning of my life is’ has no where the significance the ‘quality of my life’ does. Am I happy? More often than not. Do I enjoy being alive? Every day. Do I see good prospects for the future? Without a doubt. Is my health good?  Overall, very much so. Do I have friends and family who love me and I them. Yes, I am richly blessed. Am I able to support myself and reasonably do what I want to do? Affirmative.

Believing in a power beyond me also adds to the quality of my life. With little doubt it has been my discovery I am NOT an atheist as my thinking was in my youth. Atheist Jennifer Fulwiler once said, I acknowledged the truth that life was meaningless… and yet I kept acting as if my own life had meaning, as if all the hope and love and joy I’d experienced was something real, something more than a mirage produced by the chemicals in my brain… if everything that we call heroism and glory, and all the significance of all great human achievements, can be reduced to some neurons firing in the human brain, then it’s all destined to be extinguished at death.

Coming into contact with opinions like that of Fulwiler helped bring me to the solid conclusion I am firmly not an atheist. I can now see that opinion was more a fashion statement of youth than a profession of my real truth. I concluded long ago my life was more than something merely material and temporal.

On my death, when the grand cosmic mystery unfolds, it is my earnest wish that the world be a little better for me having been here. When I die if that’s it, lights out, goodbye and my beliefs were mistaken, my life will still have been better because of my delusion!

What is the meaning of my life? My memories and experiences and those I love and am loved by. That’s really it! There is gratitude for moments of rapture and joy experienced and thankfulness for my greatest teachers; difficulty and heartache. The meaning of my life is redefined ever so slightly each day For the freedom to live that way my gratitude is profound.

The purpose of life is to discover your gift.
The meaning of life is to give your gift away.
David Viscott

Presence in the Present

/ James Browning

So much of what we think about and are encouraged toward revolve around getting ahead. In general there is nothing wrong with that except it has a tendency to keep one constantly focused on the future with little presence in the present.

We wonder where our love, friend and family relationships are going. We wonder how to move our livelihood forward and brood over making more money. We think about all the things we should do, the projects we intend to take on.

We crave growth to feel a sense of purpose and progress, but why? Is it born in us? Or something we’re conditioned to believe. Quite possibly some of both, but the latter is a stronger force in my opinion. All around us we are coerced into putting so much energy into pushing and striving; so much so we frequently miss out on the joy of being where we are.

There are reminders of this for everyone in experiences that cause us to pause and fully absorb it. When one has climbed a mountain for hours and takes a moment to stand proudly on the peak is one of those times. Seeing my son born was such an experience I described in a journal as being one “that helped me to better understand life at an intuitive level I could not put into words”.

See a child become enamored with something they perceive as amazing can do it; a spectacular sunrise can cause one to stop; an outstanding performance or great art can stop one in their tracks; and one of the most powerful is simply kindness shown at a critical moment which moves one down deep emotionally. All are moments when a person can arrive in the “present”, notice it and for a few moments stay there.

From a purely mathematic viewpoint, it’s obvious we have fewer opportunities to enjoy arriving in the moment than we will have to enjoy the journey. Growing intention to notice the richest moments of life brings more of them. And this awareness brings more special moments to the journey of life. For the school of hard knocks that was my mentor in this learning, I am unassumingly grateful.

It’s not the answers you get from others that will heal you,
But the questions you ask of yourself:
What part of my life feels broken?
What do I need to heal, to learn, to accept, to reject,
Or embrace before I can give myself permission
To simply do what feels right?
Anonymous

Gone Fishin’

/ James Browning

If any ask, where have you been
I’ll say gone fishin’ – not a sin
Left my writing on the shelf
Went wandering off to meet myself.

Ask some questions of my heart
Seek some answers, quite apart
I’m not so sought or even known
I cannot steal this time alone.

I’ve gone to check the stock in store
Take stock of my long stored-up lore
Sort out things I have long forgot
Throw out some things begun to rot.

Try to be wise and bring that to bear
On what and when and who and where
Bring order back to things askew
And by such order, see anew

So I open doors a long time locked
Push through hallways long time blocked
Finger ideas, look through thoughts
Shuffle maybes, mights and oughts

Linger long at problem spots
Work at angers tied in knots
Shine a light on cracks and stains
Gaze again at love’s remains

Then slept on memories piled in heaps
Dreamt restless dreams in restless sleeps
Got blackened fingers from the dust
Snorted, sneezed and even cussed

And then I set about the chore
Of making choices and — what’s more
Making wishes and pagan prayers
That I’ll remember — life’s lived in layers

So my fishing trip was all I wished
Because when I sat down and fished
I conjured up the past and more
All of my legends, fables, and lore

But my fishing nets are now set to dry
We reached concord, myself and I
In doubt I left, assured return
Restored in what I found to learn

The present stands now, raw but clean
What was hidden, now been seen
Order again is now manifest
I am at peace, my heart at rest

So I am back to writing out
Things I know a bit about
I put words down to tell my stories
Trailing fishing nets and past glories
Taken from “Gone Fishin” by ‘Wilbur’ http://www.booksie.com

I’ve not really gone fishin’ and am buried in work instead. Just reading the poem freshens my resolve to finish what I’ve started and stay on the path forward. Today that feels like a massive gift I am grateful for.

When you’re unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. And you get to take yourself oh so very seriously. Your truly happy people, which is to say, your people who truly like themselves, they don’t think about themselves very much. Your unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwellin’ on himself and start payin’ attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. Tom Robbins