Category: live

Respect Starts Here

aestheticism-old-car-wallpaper-high-definition-wallpapers-300x250When I was a young girl, I’d see the guys driving the trucks or the farmers who’d intersect on the road wave to each other. It was a thing that men did. But something caused me to wake up recently and take a look across cultural lines.

In both eastern martial arts and in yoga practices there are standard greetings. Both bow in reverence. Martial arts have variances depending on the disciplines, hands at the sides usually, turning toward the teacher. Respect. In yoga, it’s the prayer hands, a quick bow, and Namaste.

 Tweet this:   Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life.

My trigger? I was reading a quote about loving your life and was surprised to find the wave, the greeting instructed in another culture.

 

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the66-tecumseh day when you go over the great divide.

Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.

When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home. – 

Honor someone today.

Show someone respect,

salute a stranger, smile.

 

Question: So, what does Namaste mean anyway? 

My yoga teacher concludes every practice by saying “Namaste”, and I’ve always wanted to know what it really means. 

Answer: Yoga teacher Aadil Palkhivala Weighs In

The gesture Namaste represents the belief that there is a Divine spark within each of us that is located in the heart chakra. The gesture is an acknowledgment of the soul in one by the soul in another. – yogajournal.com

Hey! Don’t stop reading…

It’s Not About The Colors is interesting or try Wait..Don’t Stop Trying

 

 

Birthdays and Fried Egg Sandwiches

Birthdays and Fried Egg Sandwiches

Some phrases are forever linked in my mind. Some memories flash as bright as neon lights. Every single time someone makes the statement I’m not having a birthday, I think, I want to grab as many birthdays as I can. I just had another birthday and even though it was a big one I’m not depressed about it. I enjoyed the day talking with my family.

Several years back some friends I knew had a sudden tragedy. The week before the husband had seemed in good health. He’d celebrated his birthday with his wife and stepdaughter and even joked about not growing older. No more birthdays, he’d said. Of course it was all said in jest as he cut the cake and blew out the candles. We all say these things. We don’t mean to stop living. The next week after attending Sunday evening church services, this man and his family went home. He was hungry for a fried egg sandwich. While his wife got the pan and put it on the stove, the man stopped still, and he grabbed his chest. He said he didn’t feel so well. Before the ambulance got to the house, he was dead.

I’m not saying that he caused his death. That’s superstition. People say silly things all of the time. I’m saying that the phrase “No more birthdays” is linked in my thoughts forever to fried egg sandwiches. Every time I cook an egg I remember to be grateful to be alive because on that night he didn’t get to enjoy kissing his stepdaughter goodnight. I remember. She looked lost and sad that night as I sat beside her. Birthdays are for the living, and I’ll take as many as I can get!

Recipe: Link Fried Egg Sandwiches Simply Scratch

PS yes we are a bit southern here, and it’s probably not a healthy recipe, but I do eat free-range eggs. 🙂

 

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Slowing Down to a Human Crawl

Slowing Down to a Human Crawl

How much does it cost to feel well? What are you willing to give up to be free of pain? We know that healthcare doesn’t come cheap. Vitamins are expensive. Organic food is a bit extra so we weight the cost. Is it worth it for us? What about the medicine we take? That’s been my dilemma. But not so much about the cost. The medicine I’m taking, Topamax, helps prevent migraines. It’s also been helping in preventing my neck pain. The side effect for me is tiredness, fatigue. With each increase in dosage comes a bit of slowing down. So, my cost/ratio question is, how much pain prevention is it worth for me? How much slowing down can I adapt to?

All glory comes from daring to begin.

John Brown, a poem by Eugene Fitch Ware.

For a while I didn’t know if I was going to make it each time my doctor kept saying, we’re going to try upping your medication. But on the flip side, I didn’t know if I was going to make it with the fire-like pain that was radiating up the nerves in my neck and my skull. I trudged and braced myself, hoping I could make it through another day, then the week. Sometimes there was a reprieve. Until now. I’ve had a full month without headaches. That’s darn good. Freakin’ amazing! It’s been close to 9 months since this process started and now I finally see the progress. The slowing down is worth it.

We live and change

This article though is a little disturbing to me. The trend towards constantly rewarding our happiness button, or shortening our attention span a bit more, is increasing instead of decreasing. I think we’d be happier as a species relaxing our attention and letting go, but that’s just me. Check out the article if you wish here, What would you pay to be happy? The Guardian.

…the poet Guillaume Apollinaire: “Now and then,” he advised, “it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” That’s worth a T-shirt.

William Davies’s The Happiness Industry, from the above article.

 

Yoga challenge – Can you be still? A Sequence To Challenge Distractions.

 

 

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It’s Gonna Be Alright

One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley & The Wa...
One Love: The Very Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Guesthouse

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks

Thanks to my fellow blogger at BeBeautifulandDance for letting me share the above poem. His original post is here, Rumi Moment of the Week — Meet Me At The Door Laughing by kenajos. Stop by and give him a LIKE if you can. 

Cause every little thing is gonna be all right?

There’s construction going on across the street. It sounds a little like the hitting of a heavy bell. It’s just a man hitting metal with a large hammer, but I hear the bell. Bam. Bam. Bam. That type of guest is the easier type to handle. The gentle swishing of traffic that moves like waves against the shore.

Compared to the week before of irritations and unpreventable arguments of everyday life, this is good. But I think Rumi may be talking about accepting and befriending even the irritations and bullies of the everyday, not just the sandy beaches of my barricaded relaxation time. Letting even the bad flow through, as well as the good. Yeah, I lock myself in. I close the door as much as I possibly can, because even the saints must get rid of rodents and bad fruit. Weekends are my cleaning moments. My coming to terms with this crazy world space. It’s me time.

Rumi is good thinking poetry. Let me know what you think in the comments. Here are some of my current interests.

  • #Beinggrateful – just that. Finding one thing to be thankful for. I’m so glad it’s not raining or whatever…you name it. Post it on twitter today. #Beinggrateful
  • Sam Harris – Mindfulness Meditation (no religion involved)
  • Waking Up by Sam Harris book a guide to spirituality without religion
  • Planning a summer vacation. I’m thinking of the beach. Maybe Louisiana. Browsing online is fun.
  • Bob Marley music. I’m listening to his music on Soundcloud.com. A friend at work, a co-conspirator in the beach dreaming, reminded me of his music and I can’t get it out of my head. “One love…”
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Intoxication Is Necessary

Français : Portrait de Charles Baudelaire.
Français : Portrait de Charles Baudelaire. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today I wanted to share a favorite piece of prose from a french author. English translations vary, and this one is from, Words I Wish I Wrote, by Robert Fulghum. I’ve seen many other translations and mostly they all come to the same conclusion, enjoy yourself, because time is short. I wish for you the same, enjoy your holidays everyone. Time is short. Eat, drink, and be merry. I truly think the French are wiser than we give them credit.

You must always be intoxicated.
That sums it all up: it’s the only question.
In order not to feel the horrible burden of Time
which breaks your back and bends you down to earth,
you must be unremittingly intoxicated.
But on what? Wine, poetry, virtue, as you please.
But never be sober.
And if it should chance that sometimes, on the steps of
a palace, on the green grass of a ditch, in the bleak
solitude of your room, you wake up and your intoxication
has already diminished or disappeared, ask the wind,
the wave, the star, the bird, the clock, ask everything
that sings, everything that speaks, ask them what time
it is and the wind, the wave, the star, the bird, the clock
will reply: It’s time to be intoxicated!
If you do not wish to be one of the tortured slaves of
Time, never be sober; never ever be sober! Use wine, poetry
or virtue, as you please.
Charles-Pierre Baudelaire
The Prose Poems and La Fanfarlo

Here is another version, if you are interested: Intoxication

 

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All the Way to the Top, Baby!

All the Way to the Top, Baby!

If the team doesn’t make it to the top, who do we blame? The guy who gave up at the beginning? Not usually. The human link in the chain that just didn’t try? Boys will be boys. Play on player. You certainly can’t fault the one who lasted the longest, claws dug in deep into the dirt of the mountainside. If one person would’ve saved the team, she would have, but that’s just the problem. It takes more than one. It takes everyone to make a marriage. It takes everyone to build a family. It takes more than one to win a game and more than one to strike up a tune. So if you’re going to play with the big girls, if you want to wear the big pants, play your heart out and play for keeps. Because girls that make it to the top of the mountain, break a few nails, but they are strong.

Here is a short follow up to: The Passion of Hate and Love

Gears, cogs, pistons, they each have their job. If one malfunctions, you don’t blame the other for the whole machine’s malfunction. When a marriage crumbles, it’s never one person’s fault. I’ve carried around a feeling of failure for years that I realize is wrong. I’m pretty pissed about it now. I know I didn’t fail. I was the unfortunate owner of the hot potato and my ex was the absent person and the only other player in the game to toss the potato to. I hope you feel the helplessness in that. I felt his absence for years. I felt I was the muted voice yelling at the top of my lungs to a deaf man who seemed not to care or didn’t want to carry any responsibility. And I did the hardest thing I could possibly do. I left. There was no more pretty in my pretty please. I couldn’t try harder. I couldn’t try anymore. I was empty inside. I loved that man with all that I had, and it was gone. Somehow, we didn’t match. All of my young years, I had been told, marry a Christian. Marry the man God sends to you. Marry a man your parents approve of. Check. Check. Check. And I was madly in love. What could go wrong? We did the right things. We waited to get married. We had the church wedding. God was surely smiling on us. Delirium. Delusion. Once Upon A Time, Oh wait, wrong bedtime story. I woke up. And I am alive and well.

Massive-Success-Frank-Sinatra-Best-Revenge-Picture-Quotes

The tiny cost of failure

…is dwarfed by the huge cost of not trying.

This is news, a state of affairs due to the significant value of connection, to the power of ideas that spread and to the low cost of production.

Delighting a few with an idea worth spreading is more valuable than ever before. – Seth Goddin

To truly fail, is to not get up. And if you fall, get up again. Laugh again. Or cry. Turn on some Phil Collins or some other good music and enjoy the day. I’m taking song suggestions by the way. I’d like to have yours. Comment at the top of the blog. I have Phil’s song stuck in my head, “I can feel it coming in the air tonight…” and now so do you.

 

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Your Life is Unfinished

Your Life is Unfinished

Life is only incomplete and unfinished business. Your life is unfinished. My life is unfinished. Everyone’s life is incomplete. I was thinking this because I was mentally checking my list of things I wanted to do. But it will never be finished. I can take this as frustrating or I can think of it as liberating.

Every day we’re assaulted with facts, pseudofacts, news feeds and jibber-jabber, coming from all directions. According to a 2011 study, on a typical day, we take in the equivalent of about 174 newspapers’ worth of information, five times as much as we did in 1986. As the world’s 21,274 television stations produce some 85,000 hours of original programming every day (by 2003 figures), we watch an average of five hours of television per day. For every hour of YouTube video you watch, there are 5,999 hours of new video just posted! – Hit the Reset Button in Your Life

To keep myself from panic, I made a list of things I wanted to keep or add to my life and things I wanted to remove or keep away from my life. After reviewing this list I realized the keepers were already there. I have family, job, love, health, books, and all the other goodies that I’d listed. So for now, this minute, my life is good. But the next time I feel anxiety over my unfinished stuff, I want to remember that all of our lives are under construction. That’s the nature of the game of life. It’s messy and incomplete.

…no answer is a complete or final one. And I think that there’s so many times when we thought we understood something and then we realized we were totally wrong. I think that it’s chutzpah to think that we know all the answers or that we’ve understood something perfectly. – Adele Diamond

 

We live the life of an unfinished novel, still waiting to be written. Depending on how we live, the longer the chapters. Depending on how interesting we are, the more we appeal to others. We’re often judged by our covers. Sometimes, some people decide to just quit reading us. We’re just forgotten until someone finds us. Our characters can develop throughout the novel, but our chapters can never be edited.
– Unknown

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The Process of Doing

Choices

  • First, there’s the discomfort. It’s either boredom or dissatisfaction of where I’m at or how something is working. Inconvenience can trigger the discomfort also, like constantly walking around the same chair in my path.
  • Second, there’s dreaming, of wants, desires or possibilities. Do I like the chair? Should I put in another room? Rearrange the Living room?
  • Third, I bring it down to reality by choosing the most practical ideas. Sketch out my Living room furniture placement. Arrange it on paper.
  • Fourth, I write a plan. Maybe the easiest thing for today is move the chair into the bedroom.
  • Fifth, I take the first steps. Move the chair. I can decide over the next few days if it’s working.

Tailspin

What turns me into a confused ball in the corner of the room is a different solution popping up in front of me. One or two more ways of solving my problem and it starts my process over again. At that point I have to regroup and reassess. How does this change my decision? If I possibly can I like to ponder for a few days until I have my aha! moment. Otherwise I make the simplest choice first, like in my example of the chair. I can move the chair from one room to another easier than I can arrange the furniture again and again. Sometimes you have to do the big thing, but at least you’ve tried the simple ones first.

Sloppy vs Perfected

Life is about choices. Nothing’s inherently right or wrong, it’s only a matter of my preferences. Life is the rough draft and the final presentation is the last breath of life. In those last moments you review all the refining you’ve done. Sometimes the rough draft is alright. Hastily slapped together and just getting it done works better than not doing anything at all when it comes to kisses, food and proposals. I’d rather a quick kiss and an I love you than not ever, ever being told, but there comes a time for refining those choices. If you really love that person, eventually you have to refine your sloppy kisses into steps that have meaning. Whether it’s inviting them to coffee or not forgetting their birthday, you have to take the first step.

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Scripting Happens and It’s Okay

A number of different Mentos flavors

There’s such a disconnect between scripted politeness and genuine service. The one truth I know is that it’s difficult to teach genuine politeness and service. Here’s an incident I had one hurried morning before work.

Scene: Walgreen’s corner store

After gathering up the armful of items I needed, I started looking for some mints or hard candy like Lifesavers. I get to the checkout and there are no mints. I find a box of Mentos rolls behind the iTunes gift cards. The display box has only the bottom row of Mentos left. I tried three times to get them out of the box and each time knocking  the gift cards on the floor. Nevermind.

At the checkout, I place the bag of cat litter, the 2 liter of pop and various odd items I had in my arms up on the counter.

Me: Do you have any Lifesavers or mints

Clerk: Yes we do. They’re on aisle 19.

Me: Oh. None up here by the check out?

Clerk: (stunned look) No. There are some packages over there.

Me: Yeah, I tried to get those, but they are stuck. And the gift cards are in the way.

Clerk: We have gum.

Me: I don’t want gum. I want mints. Nevermind, I’ll just check out.

Clerk: So, has your day been okay so far?

Me: (I want to laugh hysterically) Sure, fine.

Clerk: (hands my coupons and receipt to me) You have a coupon here for $4.00 off of Prilosec.

Me: (nearly speechless) Thanks.

We’ve all encountered it. It happens everywhere. The waitress that really wants to go home as she half smiles at you or the customer service person which you can’t understand as he reads off of his computer screen. He calls himself Bob, but you know that’s not his name. It’s service, but oh so scripted. It happens because we need service. It’s either scripted help or robots. I guess my point is, that anytime you happen upon a truly helpful person, notice it. Appreciate it and tell them how much you appreciate their help. And when you are in the middle of a scripted moment, just remember to be patient. Remember that scripting is necessary because we live in a modern society in need of service. Scripting happens.

While the coffee is great, (I) can testify that it’s not the primary reason regulars come to Starbucks. It’s the element of personal connection. – Carrie Dils, Good Customer Service Skills

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Story Eater

Philadelphia Story

Stories are the way we navigate our world, our chance to make sense of who we are and what we do. -Seth Godin

I like TV shows. I love to get into a good story and the very best ones you can get so lost in them, you forget they aren’t real. I’ve watched so many that it’s hard to remember them all. Some are still going strong, some have ended whether gracefully or not. Doctor Who, 24, Lost, Supernatural, Sons of Anarchy, just to name a few. I’m not sure what captures my attention. It’s not all in the suspense. It’s not all in the realism. It’s really not in the looks or sex appeal of the actors. I’ve watched shows that didn’t cast the best looking, but by a few weeks into them you adored the character and the actor. There’s usually an emotional tug of war. You can feel their struggle, either with their own temptations or their failures. Sometimes they are weak, but yet there’s some part of them you relate to. All I know is they have sucked me into their drama.

I sometimes wonder if this life is like that. If there is an afterlife, maybe we will look back and say, that was a damn good story. It might be like walking out of the movie theater after an intense show. Everything else seems a bit unreal and you just want to run back in and watch the movie again. Yeah I can imagine that.

What do you want your story to say? What emotional flavor is it? Happy? Charming? Cozy? Horror? Eek. That one’s not for me. I have mine pictured in my head. Lots of golden lighting. I update it now and then. I see the person I want to be as I grow older and how I want to live my life. With a name like, Wisdom and Grace. Or Sunlight on Raindrops.

Here is an interesting look at charity as it relates to stories:

What do we get when we give to a good cause?

Why on earth would a rational person give money to charity–particularly a charity that supports strangers? What do they get?

A story.

In fact, every time someone donates to a good cause, they’re buying a story, a story that’s worth more than the amount they donated.

It might be the story of doing the right thing, or fitting in, or pleasing a friend or honoring a memory, but the story has value. It might be the story that you, and you alone are able to make this difference, or perhaps it’s the story of using leverage to change the world. For many, it’s the story of what it means to be part of a community. – Seth Godin

Seth’s  full blog is available if you follow the above link. Thanks for stopping by and being a part of my story..

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