Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Good morning. Welcome to Poetry Day on the blog. Last night was excruciating for me. I woke up with a ferocious toothache that was insistent that I stay awake and miserable for the entirety of the night. The toothache made it perfectly clear that it had no plans to allow me to get any real sleep. I’ve been ignoring the flashing, yellow caution light that’s been quietly, yet pointedly announcing itself, all this week, on the left hand side of my mouth, with my pie-in-the-sky hopes that maybe it would “just go away.” Ha! The chicken has come home to roost, and she is one mad hen.
When you are experiencing a lot of pain, you try to look for the bright sides, such as the fact that at least Advil and Orajel exist. You think back to what it would have looked like to have had one of these horrific toothaches in the middle ages. You remind yourself about just how much worse it could be, even as the dull, yet sharp ache bangs and bangs and bangs, making the entire side of your face feel like its getting heartily beaten up, by a determined amateur boxer, in the inside of your mouth.
I think that this poet describes a toothache perfectly. Who knew that you could turn a toothache into poetry? It goes to show, everything can be poetry.
Yesterday I sent flowers to a loved one who has been through hell these last couple of months. I called a florist whom I do not know, in a state where I do not live, and I explained the nightmare our loved one has gone through with her health. I asked the florist to create something cheerful, bright and really special. He said to me confidently, “Don’t worry. I got you.”
And that fabulous florist delivered handsomely. Yes, those are even bananas in the arrangement!! Bananas! Our loved one is thrilled with the flowers, and I am thrilled with this florist. I absolutely adore people who are intimately involved and prideful and passionate about their work. It always shows. When people do what they love, the results are amazing. The love shines through.
On the topic of flowers, my friend told me about an organization in our town that delivers recycled flowers (or unsold flowers donated by our local grocery chain) to people in hospitals and care homes all over the country. Another friend of mine, who is downsizing, just donated a plethora of vases to this wonderful organization. As I did an online search, it turns out there are quite a few of these wonderful entities that do this lovely service for their communities. Below are three of them. They all need volunteers to make the arrangements, and to deliver the arrangements and they also happily accept donations such as the vases my friend just gave to them.
There is a garden of good in this world. And it is flowering with people who make a difference in the lives of others. The love shines through.
Happy Friday to my wonderful friends and readers!! Welcome to the best day of the week. Fridays are frivolous and fun here at the blog. On Fridays, I discuss a product, or a website, or a song – a whatever that has added sparkle to my own life. In short, Fridays are about the things which have helped to make my own life more interesting and intriguing. Please check out previous Friday posts to find out about some more of my favorites. Who knows? Perhaps some of my favorites, could become some of your own favorites, too!
Today’s favorite is a Florida artist whose art I totally adore! And I am not the only one. Paige Gemmell has done partnerships with stationery companies (Caspari), Spartina, Anthropologie, and she even has her artwork printed on lingerie! Go check out prints you can buy, and other products that have her artwork printed on them, at her wonderful Etsy store: PinkLionDog
Make this Friday a grand entrance into a fabulous weekend. Make this Friday simmer with excitement, anticipation, expectancy, and sultry suspense. Make this Friday one of the best of your life. You have that power to steer your ship in that direction. Do it.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Today’s the real deal. My daughter having started college with summer classes was just a trial run. I convinced myself that she was just away at summer camp. Plus, my son was home all summer with us, doing a summer internship. Today, my youngest son and my daughter are headed up to their university for the fall semester. Today is the first time in twenty-six years, that our household is truly whittled down to just me and him (and three crazy dogs).
My sister-in-law has been going through and digitizing old family pictures and yesterday, she sent a new set of them. One of the pictures was of two cute, young twenty-somethings, at the back of a limo, headed to their honeymoon. Just me and him.
Little did we know, that from that limo ride, a lifetime of spectacular adventures awaited us, raising a large family with an expanding vision, with a prideful energy and sometimes living on just a wing and a prayer. Just me and him (and our big brood).
It’s kind of like we are back in the back of that limo today. Only this time, it’s our kids ahead of us on the road, waving happily back at us, as they move on forward in their own directions towards the lives of their own dreams. I imagine that we are sitting back there in our cushioned seats of the limo, imagining this next coming stage in our shared lives, with an expanding vision, a prideful energy, fully knowing and better understanding that some of it will have to be lived on a wing and a prayer. We are full of trepidation, yet also excitement and anticipation. Just like the last ride in the back of the limo almost 28 years ago, we are ready as we can be. Just me and him.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Last week, a young woman who was a student at the high school where all of my children graduated from, took her own life. While, of course, suicide has a lot of complicating factors, it was well known by the student population that this popular, talented young woman was being bullied by, and ostracized from her friend group. Something about a boy . . . .
“The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies.” – Unknown
We teach the younger generations not by what we say and lecture about, but more so by what we do in our own lives and how we behave on an every day basis.
“The life you lead is the lesson you teach.” – Marie Humphrey
So many lives have been forever hurt by this awful tragedy. Not only will this young woman’s family and true friends have to live with this horrific loss forever, but the girls who bullied her will have to live with this taint on own their lives forevermore. Where did these girls learn bullying? Where did they learn gossiping and ganging up? Where do “Mean Girls” come from?
We help the world when we heal ourselves. It doesn’t feel good to be a mean girl at any stage in life, and it doesn’t feel good to be a target of mean girls during any stage of our lives. Meanness comes from a feeling of insecurity and lack. Happy, contented people are not mean people. Meanness is wearing your wounds like a tattoo, for the world to see. Kind, secure, confident women raise kind, secure, confident women. May we all aim to be these healthy, highest forms of womankind.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“Thinking is difficult. That’s why most people judge.” – Carl Jung
At dinner last night, we got to talking about whether or not certain ideas/theories should be taught in schools, as part of the curriculum. I have not done enough research to make an informed opinion on these different subjects. However, what I do know, is that I believe what absolutely should be included in every school’s curriculum (especially in these days of information overload, and extreme bias and slants on every subject in the world. What/who doesn’t have a bias these days? “Just the facts, ma’am” is an humorous, rare antiquity in today’s world.) is Critical Thinking. In our lives, we tend to accept a belief about something, and then, that’s it. Once our beliefs are formed, we rarely reconsider them again. We never question our beliefs or consider that there may be other ways of looking at things, or we may have our own irrational prejudices clouding our vision. Its often easier to stay firm in our convictions, even when all of the evidence starts to point in a different direction.
“We rarely find what we do not seek.” – Words of Worth
Why do we stay so firm in our stances? Is it stubbornness? Is it laziness? Critical thinking is hard work and we humans are creatures of habit. Is it embarrassment of the idea of possibly having made a mistake or been erroneous – i.e. “the need to save face”? Is it the fear of being ostracized or letting others down? Is it the need to feel “right” and thus, “superior”? In today’s world, someone admitting that they were wrong or mistaken about something, is such a rare phenomenon that it’s unbelievably heroic. It is my belief that these people who can admit the errors of their ways, are the most interesting, strong, integrity filled (and utterly scarce) people out of all of us.
I am almost 52 years old, and I am amazed at how every single year of my life, a new cloud that was blocking my view, dissipates with each time that I am willing to reconsider what I think, and how I feel about things. Sometimes, my moments of reconsideration, help to further cement my views, but either way, I always feel like a better, more informed, more self-aware person, than when I was just blindly going through the motions of unexplored labels I put on myself (or others placed on me), sometimes from childhood on.
I think if I were to teach Critical Thinking, I would work first on helping to create students so confident, and so sure of themselves and their abilities to consider all facets of a problem or situation, that admitting that they could be wrong about their assumptions would be peanuts. Making mistakes and having erroneous ideas would be just another part of getting to the true heart of a dilemma – nothing personal, just part of the process of chipping away to the truth. Maybe that’s why we have a hard time questioning and critically thinking about our own beliefs and ideologies. We personalize and identify with our “labels” too much. And by doing that, we often limit who we are at the very heart and core of our most creative minds. Labels limit us. When you strip away all of the labels, philosophies and dogmas, we are truly unfathomably limitless. Maybe if enough of us keep focusing on a continuous, unending course of Critical Thinking throughout our lifetimes, we will start to see what this “limitless” version of humanity could look like. My belief (yet I am willing to be challenged on this) is that if this happened, our world would be more awestriking, and at ease, than the likes we have ever seen or yet imagined.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. —Stephen Hawking
I think that this is the big crossroads of aging versus staying youthful. If we grow into our age believing that we know everything and that we have everything all figured out, our mind becomes old and decrepit. There is no elasticity there. Our mind is stuck in its own judgmental closed capsule of fluids that are turning a decaying yellow. When we stay curmudgeonly stuck in the process of aging, we choose only to focus on things that emphasize and validate to us, what we smugly think that we already know.
A youthful mind can’t get enough. A youthful mind is curious, imaginative, creative, and full of wonder and innocence. A youthful mind constantly gets replenished in gargantuan waterfalls of inspiration and refreshed in the pools of hope and possibility.
And below is just for fun because it is Monday – Funday (and its a good reminder to remain youthful) Bugles are so underrated:
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“A poet’s work (is) to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it from going to sleep.” – Salman Rushdie
Welcome to poetry day on the blog. Sundays are devoted to the songs of our souls – poetry. Lately, I have been really moved by other people’s poems, so I haven’t been writing my own. I have two poems to share with you, written by other poets which I think are excellent works of words. I miss writing poems though, too. I think that I will work on some poetry this week. I hope that you will, too. Please share your poems in my Comments section. Have a poetic, idyllic end to the weekend.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“Career OVER. I’ve made my mark. I’m done. We were lining up for lunch. A student gives me a hug. I immediately start joking. Are you looking for an A?! Do you want a candy bar?! She looks up at me and says: You’re the reason I come to school.” (credit: @joypcoffee, Twitter)
Teachers, you are amazing. I am friends with many excellent teachers. And I can still call out the teachers by name who made a big difference in my own life and of course, I can also call out by name the teachers who made a huge difference in the lives of our four children. Teachers, thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
The kids in our area started school this week. It feels surreal. This will be the first time in over two decades that I won’t belong to a PTA, or have to go on a scavenger hunt to find an odd colored folder with a specific amount of pockets that doesn’t exist.
Our youngest child, our daughter, started college this summer. She is home for a couple of weeks before she heads back to her university for the fall session. She was horrified when were in a store the other day and the clerk asked her if she was doing back-to-school shopping. “I’m in college,” she declared, loud and proud, for everyone around to hear. At what age does the shift occur when we no longer want to be noticed for being older and more mature? I can’t even remember. That ship sailed a long, long time ago for me. I did feel slightly delighted (and a little embarrassed) when I was purchasing BOGO iced animal crackers and the clerk asked me if these were for school snacks. “My kids are all grown,” I admitted. “These are mature woman sneaky snacks for when sugar cravings hit.” She nodded in full understanding.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Eruption at Mount Edna (Sicily) gives the illusion of a Phoenix in the sky (credit: @fastworkers6, Twitter)
What an amazing world we live in! In a matter of ten minutes (after studying this amazing picture above which was taken in May of this year), I watched a video of a newborn calf who was born at 3 a.m. last night, a lecture given about marketing by the late Steve Jobs, and a fabulous dancing video of the late Carmen Amaya, who is considered to be the greatest woman flamenco dancer who has ever lived. All of this greatness, arrived at the touch of my finger before 7:15 a.m. Why is this ability to see and to experience, and to learn about so much, so easily, so taken for granted? I remember the days of having to painstakingly research everything that I was curious about, utilizing card catalogs and microfiche. Don’t get caught in ruts, friends. Don’t watch the same news channels, droning on the same negativity every single day. Broaden your horizons. This world is incredible. Put your focus on what puts you into the state of awe.
Happy Friday!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!! What’s my favorite thing for today? I live in Florida. Hair and humidity do not mix. I finally found a hair product that helps to keep my hair in relative form. It’s not perfect, but it is better than any other product I have tried thus far. Paul Mitchell Fast Drying Sculpting Spray is effective, relatively inexpensive, and available in travel size at your local CVS, in order to try it before you purchase the large size. (that’s how I originally discovered this gem of a product)
Please check out my previous Friday posts for more favorites, and do something this weekend that will put it on the list of one of your favorite weekends of all time!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
