Tag: Helen Keller

Favorite Color Friday

Credit: EmilyMichaelDesigns, Etsy

Happy Friday!! Happy Favorite Things Friday!! Happy “Chasing the Sunshine Springtime!!” On Fridays, I don’t discuss anything particularly insightful. On Fridays, I look to the material things which makes life interesting and delightful. On Fridays, I give myself a break from Myself. (does that even make sense?)

The best compliment that I can give to my three sons is that they make me wish that I had a brother, in a big way. Our three sons are really good brothers to our only daughter and I appreciate this so much. Her brothers and her father, have made my daughter love and respect men, and yet also expect a lot from the men in her life. (Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.) I bring this up today, on Favorite Things Friday because today’s favorite comes from a birthday present that one of my sons got for his sister for her upcoming birthday. Apparently this stuff is all of the rage, mostly because it smells so good! (and I love me a good scent for sure! The sense of smell might be my favorite of all of our senses.) Sol de Janeiro products supposedly smell like heaven. I, of course, decided that I needed to order some fragrance mists for myself from this line, to match the birthday girl. My daughter recommended number 62 and number 68 for starters. There is nothing like a smell that reminds you of your favorite beach vacation.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!!

“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousands of miles and all the years you have lived.” – Helen Keller.

“Perfume is a story in odor, sometimes poetry in memory.” – Jean-Claude Ellena

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1150. How can you live with more intention?

I See You

Yesterday afternoon I did something for myself that I have been pondering doing for a long, long time. But it always got put on the back burner. Part of it was probably fear (why rock the boat?), and part of it was prudent ideas about money (Putting four kids through college is the priority.) But since I told myself that I was going to start out my PART III empty nest stage of my life “in fine feather” this seemed like a wise and bold choice to show myself that I mean business.

So yesterday, I got Lasik surgery, and today this computer screen looks clearer than it has looked in quite some time. Without glasses or contact lenses, I am looking out my window and I can make out the edges of tree leaves from across the lake. I started wearing eye glasses when I was in the third grade, and for vanity’ sake, I quickly moved on to contact lenses. I don’t think that some of my friends even realized that I wore contact lenses until I carelessly scratched my cornea with old, outdated travel-sized contact lens solution, and I ended up in the ER during a girls’ trip in Nashville. (And let me say that cornea scratches are far more painful than Lasik surgery even comes close to being. When I scratched my cornea, I was sure that I was going blind, or if the pain continued, I was considering possibly blinding myself.)

Anyway, today I am celebrating the gift of sight, and I am also celebrating doing something meaningful and maybe even slightly extravagant for myself. After years of taking my body for granted, I am showing it that I am grateful to it – for its health and its vitality and for the ability to birth and to keep up with four children for decades. Today I am celebrating what my senses bring to my life’s experience. Today I am celebrating the sensuality of life in all of its crisp, crystal clearness.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Prayers for Peace

My prayers are for the Ukrainian people, particularly the children. May their fears be snuffed out by the peace of a strong faith and the perseverance of endless hope. My prayers are for our world leaders. May these leaders only hear and react to the quiet wisdom and guidance that is imparted to all of us by the Divine, for the highest good of us all. May peace reign.

Gandhi quote "The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace"

“You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.” – Malcom X

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” – Black Elk

“I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.” – Helen Keller

“Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations… entangling alliances with none.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Mankind must remember that peace is not God’s gift to his creatures, it is our gift to each other.” – Elie Wiesel

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

God Bless You, Friday

My son was telling me a story about one of his science professors. She is a strict, brilliant German woman. She is currently teaching him Organic Chemistry 2. He said that the most interesting trait about her is that no matter what is going on in the class, no matter if she is in mid-discussion of a highly complicated subject or demonstrating a lab experiment, if someone sneezes in the class, she stops and says, “God bless you.” My son said that this has become such an obvious trait of hers, that he sometimes thinks that students fake sneeze on purpose, in order to get her blessing. I love that story! It clearly demonstrates the truth of the saying that what people will remember about you won’t be as much about what you said, your brilliance, your looks or your possessions, but more so, how you made them feel.

On that happy note, “God bless you, readers!!” It’s Friday, the easiest day of the week to feel blessed!!! Here at Adulting Second Half we call Friday – “Favorite Things Friday”! I typically list at least three favorite things, songs, websites, videos, books, etc. that have added positive vibes to my life and I encourage you all to do the same in the Comments section. (please feel free to Comment on anything, any time. I see the stats, I know that you are out there – I would LOVE to hear from you!) Please check out previous Friday posts for other favorites.

Today’s favorites are all quotes. I took these from a list of 77 of supposedly the world’s most popular quotes. I narrowed that list down to my favorites (at least for this Friday)! Here goes:

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”
– Dr. Seuss

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
– Oscar Wilde

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
– Aristotle

“Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: “What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”
– C.S. Lewis

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
– Marilyn Monroe

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
– Albert Einstein

“If you don’t stand for something you will fall for anything.”
– Malcolm X

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
– Helen Keller

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
– J.K. Rowling

“People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
– Abraham Lincoln

And to end with where we started:

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
– Maya Angelou

Happy Friday, friends!! God Bless You!! Thank you for blessing my life and making me feel heard, interesting, and worth your time!!