Life

[Rusty Zipper]

jojo, i remember when ann was letting go of all that stuff.

king bubba was going TG! lol

me, i was kinda always like the Shakers,

the less is more thing,

i had a spiritual advantage...

when i cleaned up, got sober, and changed me,

i got the spiritual booster shot!

[citychick]

the less is more thing,

What a great truth that turned out to be!

I first heard it in a movie Pat, and the concept intrigued me. Especially considering the movie was Poltergiest 2. It's only been over the past three years that I've actually managed to live the principle. I hoarded things I didn't really need anymore from a sense of lack I suppose.

When I was newly sober I had the first 'downsize' and got rid of things that had been gathering dust for more years than I care to mention.

Today I have regular downsizes if it hasn't been used in the last six months, out it goes.

[citychick]

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before
the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and
the pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace
before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking,
playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

G. K. Chesterton


Saying grace is simply saying thanks, no matter to what or to whom we direct those thanks. Saying thanks is one of the ways that we keep ourselves aware of all that we have to be thankful for, all that is given to us in our lives, all that we can enjoy and use and create and love. I can write these words, and I can read them--there are two things that I have to be thankful for immediately, for these two gifts bring a great richness to my life. And there are many, many other gifts that make my life even richer.

Can you go for a walk today? Have you eaten anything? Have you heard a favorite song, or talked with a good friend? Did you receive a paycheck or have enough money to make a contribution to a charity? Can you feel interesting textures and see beautiful pictures? We all have so many opportunities to say our own small graces many times each day, and doing so would help to keep us focused on all we have to be thankful for, all of the many, many things that make our lives so rich and glorious.

Our meals are gifts, in a very important way, and that's why we say thanks for them. But there are so many other elements of our lives that feed our hearts and our spirits that we don't say thanks for, and that's somewhat sad, I think. We feed ourselves not through food alone, but through all of the things that make us richer, fuller, more loving human beings.

When do you say grace? How many opportunities do you have each day to say thanks for what you've been given without being asked anything in return? All that we have and all that we do are important parts of who we are, and saying thanks for those things keeps us focused on the richness of this glorious experience called life.

[Rusty Zipper]

and i say,

Good Night Gracie

[citychick]

In a world in which we are exposed to more information,
more options, more philosophies, more perspectives
than ever before, in which we must choose the values
by which we will live (rather than unquestioningly follow
some tradition for no better reason than that our own
parents did), we need to be willing to stand on our own
judgment and trust our own intelligence—to look at the
world through our own eyes—to chart our course and think
through how to achieve the future we want, to commit
ourselves to continuous questioning and learning—to be,
in a word, self-responsible.

Nathaniel Branden

Trusting ourselves--what a concept that is! In a world in which there are hundreds of people every day in our media, in ads, and in our personal lives telling us that we should trust their judgment and do as they say, it's quite a novel concept to trust ourselves and to trust what we learn and what that learning means to us. But you see, we have to live our own lives and make our own ways through this world, so it's up to us--and only us--to determine who we become and how we interact with the world, its people, and its nature.

We all were given intelligence, and we all have our own unique conscience. We were given our own sets of desires and wishes and wants, and we were given our unique gifts that will allow us to make the best of our lives if we use them to their fullest potential. We choose the values we live by, and we choose how we treat others. Far too often, though, the criterion for our choices is simply, "Well, that's how everyone else does it." This criterion, needless to say, doesn't take into account our uniqueness or our own judgment. It's an easy way out of having to make decisions that may be fairly difficult to make.

But those are the decisions that make you who you are, and that help you to become the person you're meant to be. If you don't make them, you're standing in place or treading water, however you wish to look at it. That's not fair to you as a person, and you deserve to be treated fairly, especially by yourself.

[Rusty Zipper]

swim fins on today!

[citychick]

If we face our unpleasant feelings with care, affection, and nonviolence, we can transform them into a kind of energy
that is healthy and has the capacity to nourish us. By the
work of mindful observation, our unpleasant feelings can
illuminate so much for us, offering us insight
and understanding into ourselves and society.

Thich Nhat Hanh

More often than not, we're taught to "banish" unpleasant feelings, because of course, they make us feel bad. So let's get rid of them, get them out of our lives and out of our minds and out of our hearts so that we can live healthy, positive, pleasant lives.

But what if there's something to learn from those unpleasant feelings? What if the fear that we're feeling has a deeper message? What if the discomfort we have when we're in the presence of a particular person has something to teach us about our own prejudices, biases, or instinct? Ignoring the feeling and trying to push it away will do nothing to help us to learn whatever it is that the feeling is trying to teach us.

It would be much like going to a class and disliking the content, and thus never reading the text because we didn't like it. We may avoid more unpleasant feelings of dislike by avoiding the text, but what have we learned? Of course, we've learned nothing, and we've made an obvious choice to learn nothing.

Unpleasant feelings can be a part of who we are. When they're caused by something specific, they can be a part of us for as long as that something is a part of our lives. But what can we learn from them? How can we face those feelings and accept them and actually learn to care for them, no matter how unpleasant they are? Until we find out how we can do so, we may be losing some of the most important lessons of our lives by trying to banish the unpleasant feelings just to feel a bit better in the moment.

[Ann]

Good one, CC. I have learned to pay attention to my feelings, good ones and bad, and address the bad ones as soon as possible.

For me, it's necessary to walk through the bad feelings and do a little soul searching to find out why they appear...often it is fear based and requires a little faith that there is a gift in there somewhere. I've learned not to stuff them because they fester and grow, but I have also learned not to hang out there too long.

Good reminder for me today. A little housekeeping may be in order for this codie.

[citychick]

often it is fear based and requires a little faith that there is a gift in there somewhere.

Hi Ann. I had a day last week that was all fear based. After making the decision to leave my job and start a new one next year I started second guessing the decision and feeling quite insecure. The new job has benefits like a permanent contract and holiday pay, quite a bit more stability than my current job. But insecurity reigned supreme till I decided God knows what's right for me and nothing happens by mistake.

[citychick]

When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

One of the advantages of looking at life from a positive perspective is that it rarely seems as if everything is going against you. Once you realize that life truly is neutral, then you see that when we are down, we usually are bringing ourselves down. Yes, relatives will die and jobs will be lost and terrible things will happen, but for most of us, these things can be dealt with as individual occurrences rather than as some sort of conspiracy that life has concocted.

When things do go bad, we mustn't get caught up in the attitude of being a victim, for that attitude simply helps to perpetuate the negative happenings. If we can take Harriet at her word, then we realize that we go through cycles in life, just as the tides of the oceans do. There are high tides and there are low, but neither one will stick around any longer than it must--each gives way for the other in its time.

I've had times when it has seemed that things couldn't get any worse for me. At those times, a strange sort of optimism came with that idea--I've known that because they couldn't get any worse, they had to be getting better soon. And I'm convinced that part of the reason that things have gotten better is because my attitude has shifted to one of optimism for better things, even if that optimism has been somewhat guarded. My attitude has helped to cause the changes.

The tide does turn--always. Life does change for us--always. When things are going badly, we have the choice of letting our thoughts get caught up in the negative aspects of what's happening to us, or keeping our thoughts focused on the good and the positive. And our thoughts can help us through rough times if we but remember that life is neutral towards us-- it can not and will not try to harm us or bring us down.

[Rusty Zipper]

remind'n me of the Ant Song CC

Woops, there it goes!

that dang Rubber Tree Plant!

[Ann]

I too learned that bad days don't last forever and that with each obstacle life hands me, there is usually a gift in there somewhere.

I still don't like the bad days, but today I can endure them and find my way out the other side. A gift of recovery for which I am grateful.

Thanks CC, good reminder today.

[citychick]

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed in touching them with your hands. But like seafarers on the desert waters, you choose them as your guides, and following them you will reach your destiny.

Carl Schurz

What kinds of ideals do you follow in your life? Have you made a conscious decision to follow those ideals through thick and thin, knowing that they probably won't always lead you through the easiest of journeys? Have you even ever sat down to consider your ideals, to ask yourself truthfully just what you see as very important in life, knowing that your ideals of yesterday may not be the same ideals that you hold today?

When all is said and done, our ideals are the part of ourselves that define us more than anything else, more than our words or actions or thoughts. But most of us couldn't even name five ideals that we hold dear in our lives, except perhaps in a very broad manner with words such as "honesty" or "love" or "commitment." These words, though, mean different things for different people, and it's important that we learn--or define--what they mean for us rather than accepting them unthinkingly as generic terms. As generic terms, quite truthfully, they don't mean much of anything.

If we're going to choose ideals that we can follow as guides to life, then it's important that we know exactly what we mean by the words we use, and how those words and ideas can change through the course of our lives. My ideals of ten years ago definitely are not my ideals of today, even though I would use many of the same words to describe them.

What are your guides in life? If you follow those guides, to which destination will they lead you? Will you end up someplace where you truly want to be, or will you end up in some undefined place that is not completely comfortable for you? That all depends, of course, on whether or not you take the time to define the guides you will use. A mapmaker can cut no corners, and must be precise all the time. Likewise, we must be precise when we set out to learn our ideals, though we must keep in mind that our lives and perspectives change much more often than a landscape or a system of roads.