Category: live

Itty Bitty Treasures

Life isn’t tidy. It’s not organized into categories for us to tick off the boxes as we go along quickly. Done! There are no rules for life to follow. Life is like a thing with mechanical clockwork, moving faster and faster as we age. Occasionally, we get lucky, and the gears chink and even stick for a moment.

You look up and see a kitten in a window.

Kitten in a window
Cats are everywhere
“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.”
― douglas adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

I was on vacation a few years ago. Remember vacations? My son and his wife invited me along on a trip to France. There were three areas of the country we visited. I experienced a fairytale of a vacation in Aix-En-Provence. We ate genuine French cuisine, drank wine until late, sat out in the sun, shopped in the markets, and went to a museum, all before leaving for Nice and Paris, our other two destinations. I won’t bore you with my details regarding the flight or the ordeals I had before I took off to fly across the big pond. I’ll allow you to believe the flow of my life is perfect.

At a museum I toured with my daughter-in-law, I made a new friend.

A French kitty

My life is busy, painful, and rushed. But there are moments. I remember disagreeing with teachers on their beliefs and opinions. No! I do not have to live my life the way they believe. I am not confined to the rules of another. I am a success or a failure because of my standards, not anyone else. Life is active. It rolls, flows, moves, bumps, rises and falls. Sometimes it even stops. Enjoy the breaks. They don’t come often enough. 

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw

In My Travels to Colorado

On the way to Colorado, we made a few stops. I thought I’d share a few shots with you.

Boise City

This is an abandoned farm house alongside the highway somewhere around Boise City, Oklahoma.

Thanks for stopping by!

Our Agency

Maybe it is time to be who we are, to love like we mean it, to smile from deep within, to give not expecting a gift in return. Maybe, just maybe, it is time to stop fucking pretending and get back to who we are.

Deep inside, we know what we want. It’s time we do it. If we can only do it on the weekends or the evening, so be it. I write on the weekends. I hike when I can and travel as I can afford. When my last day comes, I want to say that I have lived as I wished to have lived.

I Have Agency!

When a doctor walks into a medical emergency, he or she isn’t faking their authority. They might have been playing golf or at a dining table minutes before, but at this moment, they’re a physician. Once, I was eating with a doctor and his wife when he had an emergency call. He didn’t stop by his home to don his surgical clothing like a superman cape and become Dr. Perfect. Nope. He went straight to the hospital. He knew who he was.

What is the Concept of Agency?

In social science, agency is defined as the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices. By contrast, structure is those factors of influence (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, ability, customs, etc.) that determine or limit an agent and their decisions.

Take Control of Your Life: The Concept of Agency and Its Four Helpers

Agency is the sense of control that you feel in your life, your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior, and have faith in your ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations. Your sense of agency helps you to be psychologically stable, yet flexible in the face of conflict or change.Jan 31, 2015

In one place in your life this week, create order. Be in charge. You are the person who makes it happen. It may be your hair or your laundry, but you’re the bad-ass here.

Flower-Hearted People

The flip side of survival and the fear of failure is thriving. Thriving shouldn’t be difficult. How is it so difficult to win? To succeed? Well, the difficulty is when you have achieved, what’s next? You’ve met your goal. Do you coast or do you keep pedaling?

Keep pedaling. This is why slow growth is better than the lottery winning. If you’ve slowly grown a business you got there and grew into your success. Lucky breaks give you false hope.

We are good at striving. Making changes, adjusting, sacrificing, but actual thriving seems so dull sometimes. Oh, yeah we all have the fantasy of buying an island and not having to work for a living, but how long would it be before we would want more? A month? Six months? A year maybe? Somewhere in that time, you start feeling the itchy feet. The need to contribute is too great. Building something even if it’s only a garden is a rewarding experience.

“I will not give up the flowers in my heart for stones just because the world is a hard place. The world is only hard because it needs more flower-hearted people.”

Nikita Gill, Dragonhearts

This is a repost from Thrive from 09/2018.

Check out What If I Thrive? and Blue Fish Red Seas

Live. Live Everyday

You start dying slowly, but it doesn’t need to be this way. Choices. Those are the power buttons. We can wear the bright color, do the fun vacation, eat the ice cream, go dancing, see an art exhibit. Be alive. Everyday.

Read more: Are We The Choices We Make?

Or Power of Choice

Chasing Cars

Are we chasing cars like a tiny, dog?

I am driving with a friend the other day in this small town. It was one of those places where kids ride their bikes on the streets, so when you drive it’s like playing a video game only it’s real. Cars are parked randomly along the way. We watch for kids, but we aren’t ready for the sudden yap, yap, yap of a dog leaping toward us, chasing the darn car for way too long. All I am thinking is, what parasite has infested this dog?

I know people who continually date. They hop from one relationship to another, not pausing long enough to evaluate why the last one ended. Sometimes there are painful endings but other instances, nope. It’s a thing we do in life. Pursue our goals. Chart the course to Nirvana. Are you chasing cars? Do you have the parasite?

I wonder if I’m unhappy because my job is wrong or if I don’t understand happiness. There’s the song, Chasing Waterfalls, which talks about people who push through life too fast. Don’t go chasing waterfalls. Stick to the rivers you know. Is it possible to have the perfect job or the ideal relationship? Would I know it? There’s no test I can take to tell me YOU ARE HERE, so I am the little creature chasing–something.

“Chasing waterfalls” song

The little dog when he’s chasing cars, is he scaring them away or trying to catch one? Slow down fido! Take a roll in the grass. And go find that chew toy you lost.

Ithaka poem

As you set out for Ithaka, hope your road is a long one. full of adventure, full of discovery…

(for absolutely no reason at all)

Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

(so many delights you forget why you came on your journey)

….And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

(boys and men and relationships will not for chasing. Life will be a pleasure.)

BY C. P. CAVAFY. (parenthesis added for my delight)

Belonging

Socks that match, folded and placed in a drawer or cheese and crackers with a glass of wine, these things belong together.

My tribe, my peeps.

Some times I get morose, lonely, and angry because I wasn’t born into a family in which I fit neatly. I feel like a baseball bat at a football game in my family some days. We relate but it’s not a warm snuggle-in feeling with my parents.

I learned like many people, the belonging I need comes from outside of our blood family. It can be a spouse or friends. Building ties in groups we enjoy or online forums can be what we need to feed our mental and emotional hungers.

I have a small space and a few good friends. I pad my nest well. Pillows, blankets, books, and plenty of chocolate. And a lot of love for those around me.

I Will Pray For You

Prayer. It’s awkward. There was a time when it was easy to pray. Today I pause. It’s not the words. I can craft a good Our Heavenly Father, as well as any preacher man does on a Sunday morning. Nope, I hesitate because I want to be honest with you. And I’m not sure of who I’m praying to. So I hesitate.

Maybe you understand my problem. I’m sincere, and I wish for people to be well. I want their families to be safe from harm and sickness to leave their bodies. Well, I’ve found a prayer that works for me, and it’s simple. First is a short version and easy to memorize. The longer one is second. I hope this helps you.

One more thing, to anyone who has been in my life, but I have offended or thinks I am angry with them, please know I do ‘pray’ for you. I hold no grudges. It’s important to keep the prayer channels clear. And by prayer, I mean something closer to a positive affirmation.

If you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or of any other religion, I am not saying you should switch to my ways. This is my way of handling an uncomfortable situation.

Here is my abbreviated version Metta Loving Kindness Prayer.

May all be happy

May all be at peace

May I be happy

May I be at peace

Loving Ourselves

We begin practicing this love meditation on ourselves
May I be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit.
May I be safe and free from injury.
May I be free from anger, afflictions, fear, and anxiety.
After that, we can practice on others (he/she)
May he/she be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit.
May he/she be safe and free from injury.
May he/she be free from anger, afflictions, fear, and anxiety.
After that, we can practice including our selves with others (we),
May we be peaceful, happy and light in body and spirit.
May we be safe and free from injury.
May we be free from anger, afflictions, fear, and anxiety. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Dancing To the Rhythm

 

Not Again.

It was one of those moments, and I was doing it again. I was in a trance. This time I wasn’t perusing Amazon’s many book suggestions like I talked about in Mindless Searching, I was in my own negative thoughts. Lost.

I caught myself.

Mucking around in my old stories wasn’t helpful. It was the old “somebody done me wrong song.” I don’t live there anymore. Why does this happen? It’s familiar, yes. And it was an old pattern.

But I’ve created a new life and a different story. I’m at a beautiful place. I don’t need that story to prop up my self-esteem.

It went like this.

I had been KNOCKED DOWN. Taken advantage of. POOR ME. But I’m STRONG, and I climbed out of the grime. Look at me now. See how MIGHTY I am. Yeah, can any of you recognize this story? It’s not that it’s a bad one. It’s familiar. Very Western. American. We glory in the knocked down, climb your way out and up to the top hero story. It just isn’t working for me anymore.

Shackles off.

I want a new story. Forget hardships and pain. I want to dance and live and thrive. Why not enjoy this life. So the next time I find myself singing that old tune, I’ll replace it with a new one.

 

I want to dance!!

Check these posts out –>The Flip Side-To Thrive,  Mindless Searching,  and  Vacation Poster Promises

Tiny Things

Patience is not one of my main traits. Honesty, determination, strength, and intuition are things I’m usually known for, but I’m not delicate. My mind gets locked onto a tracked event line that it believes should happen in a certain time frame.

Or How to Get Out of a Rut

Patience is not one of my main traits. Honesty, determination, strength, and intuition are things I’m usually known for, but I’m not delicate. My mind gets locked onto a tracked event line that it believes should happen in a certain time frame. Expectations vs Reality.

Itty Bitty

There are particles so small that they cannot be seen by our eyes. That’s not unusual. These nature tiniest particles can pass through walls and our body and we never notice they exist.

The process is called quantum tunneling, and occurs when a particle passes through a barrier that it seemingly shouldn’t be able to. In this case, scientists measured electrons escaping from atoms without having the necessary energy to do so. In the normal world around us, this would be like a child jumping into the air, and somehow clearing a whole house. [Graphic: Nature’s Tiniest Particles Explained]–livescience

skk7xoeuu3_1407320986211Curiouser and Curiouser

What made the scientists look for the particles? How do you search for something you can’t see? And if scientists can get out of their ordinary thinking, possibly their method could help me. DiscoverMagazine.com

Here are some suggestions I came up with:

  • Be curious.
  • Hypothesize then work towards proving your thoughts.
  • Ask questions of yourself and others
  • Watch your environment like it’s an experiment. How do the other monkeys handle situations?
  • What if you are right? What if you are wrong?
  • Start over and question everything again. Don’t get stuck on any one thought being absolute. Science questions everything.

Here’s an alternate plan in case mine isn’t your flavor of choice, When You Don’t Know What You Want Anymore – Tiny Buddha

“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass