inspiration

The Perceiver’s Vantage Point

/ James Browning

tumblr_m3wbh9fPRD1qzjwnko1_500Being solitary is being alone well:
being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice,
aware of the fullness of your own presence
rather than of the absence of others.
Because solitude is an achievement.
Alice Koller

For a long time the beliefs I carried made Alice Koller’s statement impossible for me to grasp and appreciate. Knowing people who were alone used to bring thoughts tinted with pity, suspicion and sympathy. I was compassionate, but looked at such people as not being whole. Surely there must be something wrong with them. In other words, something would be wrong with me if I was alone.

The glass that life is viewed though is only the perceiver’s vantage point. It can feel true and be far from it. I did not realize my fear of being along drove me from one relationship to another. I honestly thought I was normal and feeling incomplete without a woman in my life was typical for every man. Without any rational examples in childhood of what love between a man and woman was supposed to look like, I ended up believing it meant ‘to be with someone’.

So many people are terrified of their own company. The thought of being at home, by themselves, with nobody to talk to, is debilitating for them. So they do everything possible to avoid just that; they create an overactive social life so that they are always with friends, or they become workaholics so they can drown themselves in their jobs, or sadly many even become alcoholics; but all with the same goal: to avoid the pain and darkness that they feel by being alone.  http://jeanniepage.com/2011/04/09/the-art-of-being-alone/

My phobia of being alone is not unique to me. Many carry the burden with a fear greater than heights, snakes or even death. My irrational fear was based on the belief that being “alone” was like an illness or some other unfortunate condition that happened and had to be cured. It was a great sense of failing; a sort of emptiness when a romantic partner (or several) was not in my day-to-day life.

The shape of my thinking today about being alone is quite different. Not only do I not fear aloneness as I once did, I actually enjoy it a good bit of the time. And that amount seems to be growing as who I wish to be and who I am become more parallel.

The pain in loneliness comes from all that surrounds it, not the act itself. And when you spend enough quality time alone, you realize that it is indeed nothing to fear. You realize that you, by yourself, are happy and are confirmed in life and worth by everything around you. Chelsea Fagen http://thoughtcatalog.com/2013/the-best-part-of-being-alone/

I don’t love being alone all of the time but find the peace in it more and more. Aloneness is not for the faint of heart for it will twist and wring a person at any point in their psyche where one feels ‘less-than’. Being solitary forced me to wrestle  a long list of inadequacies. The attacks of loneliness I felt were actually those things assaulting me when I was not distracted by a relationship. Being alone was damned hard and the first two years by my-self felt like they were going to kill me sometimes. But I survived and am so much better for it. Will I always be alone? I don’t know and hope not. However, today I am grateful to know alone or not is a choice I can make and not a perceived lack I have to fill.

I don’t want to be alone,
I want to be left alone.
Audrey Hepburn

That Shadow Was Me

/ James Browning

www.sortedpixels.comI have spent most of my adult life looking for it. Over time I tried this way and that way; this woman and that woman; that friend and others. Time and time again I found it temporarily only to discover it was only a self-created mirage that faded away once in the midst of it. Love was baffling and elusive.

The lack of feeling loved kept me searching to fill the emptiness. Success did not work. Money didn’t help much either. Beautiful and loving partners didn’t fill the hole for long. Hobbies and interests pursued and accomplished were temporary fixes at best. Moving from a town where I did not find love to another where I thought it could be did not sate the yearning either.

The mystery I could not solve for so long was the riddle of myself.

The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.

What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it’s your responsibility to be that person you want to be with.

I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who’s not full of hate, who’s able to smile and be carefree. So that’s who I have to be. C.JoybellC.

There’s an old country song titled “Searching for Love In All The Wrong Places” which describes well my long search for love. Barbara De Angelis wrote, If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.

And there you have it. What I was missing was loving myself. Only in recent years when I have begun to love the human being I have become has my heart become gratefully capable of loving others. Always before there was an obstruction throwing a shadow over anyone I loved. That shadow was me.

If you don’t receive love
from the ones who are meant to love you,
you will never stop looking for it.
Robert Goolrick

A Gratitude List

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

6349891801_055b29fb06_bA list of what quickly comes to mind that I am grateful for this morning:

A body that works well in spite of accumulated aches and pains; A home I love living in surrounded by a wealth of possessions; A few close friends I love dearly and who love me; An inquiring mind that wants to learn and know; A more than ample supply of food; A large library of music and something to listen to it on…

Two older cars that run well and are paid for; Being modestly financially secure; Good health that makes everything else more enjoyable; The hard times and heart aches that taught me so well; A working computer and internet access; My library of books large enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life…

A son I am proud of and am glad to have a close relationship with; Love given to me even when I did not always value it as I should have at the time; My professional success and those I worked with who made it possible; My kind heart, gentle ways and caring soul; Intelligence to look deeper, to seek, to ask questions…

The natural powers beyond me that make my world what it is; Spiritual belief that enhances everything; People I loved and lost, but still carry love for in my heart; The inspiration caused me to write this blog and continue it; The knowing the best of my life is still is in front of me; The works of nature all around that still astound me…

I dare you to jot down a gratitude list right now. There is absolutely NOTHING like making one to awaken a deeper level of happiness and contentment. For all on the list I could think of on the fly and the thousands of blessings that did not swiftly come to mind, I am thankful. The joy in my soul, the happiness in my heart, the mental contentment and every ounce of love and caring I have ever received are gifts sometimes I don’t feel fully deserving of, but embrace with gratefulness that overflows.

The very quality of your life,
whether you love it or hate it,
is based upon how thankful you are…
It is one’s attitude that determines
whether life unfolds into a place
of blessedness or wretchedness.
Francis Frangipane

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

Marked With Lines of Life

/ James Browning

Happy_Old_ManAs I grow older and can see my golden years begin to appear on the distance horizon I pay more attention to “old people” (which I define as late 70’s or older). The reason is simple: to get a better idea what might be in store for me one day.

While it’s is a gross over generalization, there seems to be two distinct varieties of senior citizens. Group one leans toward being short-tempered, impatient, generally in a bad mood and visibly unhappy about life. Mostly it’s regret I see in their faces. Group two appears to be more or less opposite: patient, even-tempered, generally in a good mood and happy about being alive. It’s gladness I notice about them.

After watching closely for a couple of years I can find nothing discerning between the groups except their outlook. Health does not seem a major factor. Just about as many in failing health seem to be happy as those who appear miserable. Financial status appears to not be a dividing line either. Those appearing poor or rich come in both varieties in about the same number.

Attitude seems to be the difference. The “glasses” life is being viewed through is the key.

When stereotypes are negative — when seniors are convinced becoming old means becoming useless, helpless or devalued — they are less likely to seek preventive medical care and die earlier, and more likely to suffer memory loss and poor physical functioning, a growing body of research shows.

When stereotypes are positive — when older adults view age as a time of wisdom, self-realization and satisfaction — results point in the other direction, toward a higher level of functioning. The latest report, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggests that seniors with this positive bias are 44 percent more likely to fully recover from a bout of disability. http://newoldage.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/19/older-people-are-what-they-think-study-shows/

Happiness in old age may have more to do with attitude than actual health, a new study suggests. Researchers examined 500 Americans age 60 to 98 who live independently and had dealt with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, mental health conditions or a range of other problems. The participants rated their own degree of successful aging on scale of 1-10, with 10 being best. Despite their ills, the average rating was 8.4. http://www.livescience.com/3974-happiness-age-depends-attitude.html

How glad I am to have begun this blog nearly two years ago! More than any single thing in memory, writing each day has given me a much better attitude about life: one with good quantities of gratitude and contentment. Outwardly my life has changed some, though not that much. What is different is ME from the inside, out. Growing gratitude within is my single best ingredient for aging gratefully and enjoying growing older. Old age has unique perks that being young never allows!

Your face is marked with lines of life,
put there by love and laughter,
suffering and tears. It’s beautiful.”
Lynsay Sands

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

Scrubbed Clean

/ James Browning

ancient_forest_by_robinhalioua-d5qhc26The sort of morning that appeared last Thursday was one where the air had been scrubbed clean by the rain of the day before. The sky was more blue; the light of the sun more crystal-like. The distant horizon seemed father away than usual because of the clarity everything appeared with. It was a morning where Nature demanded Her beauty be noticed and I willingly acquiesced to Her desire. I felt gratitude for the gift of the morning and an uncommon humility created by noticing what I saw.

Morning is an important time of day, because how you spend your morning can often tell you what kind of day you are going to have.” I swear its true. My sense of things the first fifteen minutes after I rise is a relatively accurate predictor of how I will feel through my day. Beginning with a sense of gratitude has multiplied my joy of living at least ten-fold. From “The Blank Book” by Lemony Snicket

It was my mantra that “I was not a morning person” for most of my life. My preference was to be a creature of the night staying up as late as I could and yet still function decently well the following day. Now it’s easy to see I spent most of my days sleep deprived and the effect of it was not a positive thing. And more so, it’s clear now I was never a “night person” and rather only a creature of habit.

Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day. Vera Nazarian

There are fewer people paying attention to a day’s beginning than any other part of the time the sun is up. The number of folks who notice and even celebrate sunsets are numerous. Those paying attention to sunrise are far less in numbers. In that line of thought I realize early morning is more personally mine that any other part of daylight.

Since reading “Walden” as a kid I have held Henry David Thoreau close in heart and mind as a personal hero. First, because he chose to dance to the beat of his own drummer and follow his heart, no matter what others thought. Second, because he became close friends with some of the deepest underpinnings of life. He saw things most of us hardly notice although at this point in my life I am awakening, even if just a little, to the small machinery of life all around me that Thoreau came to know so well.

Morning brings back the heroic ages. There was something cosmical about it; a standing advertisement, till forbidden, of the everlasting vigor and fertility of the world. The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night. Henry David Thoreau

As something of a “grownup” I have lived long enough to notice, many only at mid-morning, some 17,000 new days. Fate willing, I should have at least another 7,000 left to enjoy. With great gratitude and thankfulness, I assure you that each one will mean a little more than the day before.

When you arise in the morning,
think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive;
to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
Marcus Aurelius

Life: One, Two, Three, Four

/ James Browning

puzzled dollarOne for the money:

Making money isn’t hard in itself… What’s hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one’s life to. Carlos Ruiz Zafon

 ~2 Sad-MasksTwo for the show:

Please do not break your heart over the withering of a dream you once held, that never became yours! After all, the shattered dream could have very well been a nightmare and not a dream at all, you wouldn’t really know because you didn’t have it yet! Let the sparks fade, let the flame dim and die, you’ll never know it wasn’t poison. C. Joybell C.

~3 artworks-000010979347-wx4usy-originalThree to make ready:

I eventually came to understand that in harboring the anger, the bitterness and resentment towards those that had hurt me, I was giving the reins of control over to them. Forgiving was not about accepting their words and deeds. Forgiving was about letting go and moving on with my life. In doing so, I had finally set myself free. Isabel Lopez

~4 Join+Lets+go EDITAnd four to go:

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

Accumulated wisdom is plentiful and easy to find. I am grateful for the reminder to not assume I know how to use it from simply reading the words. Only when I take the time to soak up what is said can wisdom offered by others become a help to me. Thank you to all who are and have come before who share their thoughts which help me live better each day. I am grateful for your gifts.

A State of Beingness

/ James Browning

infinity-signAcceptance of how much influence I actually have over the quality of my life is frightening. Grasping that I, more than any other factor, am what shapes the quality of my existence takes a bit of courage. When I used to blame and point fingers at people and circumstances for my lack of contentment and happiness, I felt confidently miserable. There is no courageousness in that, nor anything else that lends itself toward a good life.

That’s the thing about unhappiness. I realize in my past feeling certain why I was unhappy became the little island in the big scary ocean I hung on to. I felt dejected, but certain of why and that was my answer for things. Life sucked because it sucked. That’s pretty silly when I actually type the words.

Time and effort brought the lesson that in total, I usually cannot put a finger on exactly why I am feeling good; why happiness has invaded the space gloom used to occupy. Of course I can identify some of the causes, but far from all of it. What matters is that I live fully in my contented times and not try to mentally research the source. I need to “just be” as the phrase goes.

The same is true of my down times. Trying to sort out all the reasons “why” is impossible and makes the murkiness last longer. It is far better to simply bear well the gloomy moments and let them pass. Analyzing such times ALWAYS makes them last longer.

Do not waste the precious moments of this, your present reality, seeking to unveil all of life’s secrets. Those secrets are a secret for a reason. Use your NOW moment for the Highest Purpose- the creation and the expression of WHO YOU REALLY ARE. Decide who you are- who you want to be-and then do everything in your power to be that.

It is not nearly so important how well a message is received as how well it is sent. You cannot take responsibility for how well another accepts your truth; you can only ensure how well it is communicated. And by how well, I don’t mean merely how clearly; I mean how lovingly, how compassionately, how sensitively, how courageously, and how completely.

If you think your life is about DOINGNESS, you do not understand what you are about. Your soul doesn’t care what you do for a living-and when your life is over, neither will you. Your soul cares only about what you’re BEING while you’re doing whatever you’re doing.  Neal Donald Walsh

And so I enter into my day, self-reminded of how I to use well the gift of the next fourteen hours or so of consciousness. I will do my best to not waste too much applying logic and analysis to life. Instead, with gratefulness I will endeavor to embrace the time being as truly “myself” as I possibly can.

The reason people find it so hard to be happy
is that they always see the past better than it was,
the present worse than it is,
and the future less resolved than it will be.
Marcel Pagnol