Tag: life

Six Percent

I did a search on my blog just now (I have been writing this blog almost daily for five years now) for “the holidays.” It turns out I have written eight pages of stuff about holidays. That’s a lot of writing about a relatively limited part of our lives. There are eleven official federal holidays in the United States. These holidays don’t include religious holidays such as Easter and Passover, and secular holidays such as Halloween and Valentine’s Day. So, for argument’s sake let’s bring the number up to around twenty holidays a year that we celebrate (with the idea of including our personal and family birthdays and anniversaries). Out of 365 days of the year, about twenty or so days are dedicated to holidays in our country. Less than a month, out of the twelve months in any given year are dedicated to holidays. About 6 percent of the year is dedicated to holiday celebrations. Ninety-four percent of any given year is filled with ordinary days.

Why am I turning the holidays into a banal, robotic, emotionless mathematical word problem? I am writing this because it helps with perspective. If you “live” for the holidays and celebrations, and the rest of your life feels like drudgery, or a countdown to your next celebration, you are putting all of your greatest living experiences into about six percent of your life. If you dread the holidays, and you live in angsty anticipation for weeks before any of the particular holidays arrive, you are living in fear of events which only take up about six percent of your life. The other 94% is all yours to do whatever you want to do with it, without the peripheral hoopla.

Perspective is important. Figuring low, at least 90% of our lives are spent in our everyday routines. If you wake up most days in eager anticipation of what the day may bring, whether it be a holiday or not, you will lead a fulfilling life. Don’t worry about the holidays. Don’t load them up with too many expectations. Put the same kind of effort, and thought, and hope into your every single day that you do for the holidays, and you will surprise yourself with a greater percentage of wonderful days. Don’t wait for the holidays to tell your friends and family that you love them and that you are grateful for them. Don’t wait for your birthdays to celebrate yourself. Live every single day of your life as a celebration of the gift of experiencing living a life. Our lives have been gifted to us, for no other reason than because Love and Creativity wanted to feel itself living a life through us and our individual perspectives. Perspective is everything. Keep this 6% perspective in mind this holiday season, and into the new year. If you make loving and cherishing your every single day in the new, upcoming year your major goal, next year’s six percent of holidays will just end up being the cherry on top, of your delicious, multi-faceted, fabulous sundae of a life.

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

Soul Sunday

Good morning. Welcome to poetry day on the blog. I like to think of poetry as the secret code of our souls. In order to write poetry, you have to put your most sensible, guarded, orderly part of yourself aside and let the poetry write itself. It is the one form of communication that you come to as blankly and open, as someone else who is just reading it for the first time. How many times have you written a poem and thought, “Oh wow, I wrote that?? That’s what is stirring deep inside of me??” Get to know yourself better and write yourself a poem today. I wrote this poem about a lovely bridal shower which I attended yesterday:

“The Elders Table”

We watched the beautiful young bride excitedly unpack each gift,

Clean, shiny, unmarked, powerful tools to create the sustenance of a fairy tale.

We reminisced of the days when we sat in her seat and her spotlight.

So full of hope, and promise, and energy, and expectant excitement.

We marvel at the versions of ourselves who long ago, once sat in her seat,

Radiant and innocent and ambitious and determined and clear.

We still have many of the tools showered upon us, on those days, long ago when we were the brides.

The tools are well-used, scarred with marks, some almost broken, but determined to continue their purpose.

We, who are intently watching the bride, are now the continuance of the women who bestowed these gifts upon us.

And it is only now, that we deeply understand why it was so imperative for our elders to impart these gifts upon us.

The gifts weren’t just pots and pans and knives and nightgowns and a little wad of money for extras.

They were the tools that helped sustain the hope, and the excitement, and the energy and the promise,

When life’s storms were determined to make their marks, sometimes gashes, all to test our tenacity and plans.

Would the inner gentle flower of our young bride’s heart wilt under the load of life?

Or would the dried, sustained, circle wreath arrangement of our elders, be our borrowed strength,

When we decided to fondly pick up a remembered tool, from a lovely little bridal celebration, and to calmly use the implement, so to carry on with life . . . . .

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

Kia Ora

I love reading articles by Karen Nimmo. She’s a writer and a sports psychologist from New Zealand. She’s practical, sensible, no-nonsense, yet kind and humorous, as well. She says that when people come to her for issues in their lives, she’s noticed six universal cravings that almost all of us human beings seem to have, in order to create satisfactory lives. Karen Nimmo says that these are the six things that people crave the most:

  1. To Be Happy
  2. A Quiet, Calm Mind
  3. More Excitement
  4. More “me time”
  5. To Contribute to the Greater Good
  6. To be Loved

Do these resonate with you? Do you know what makes you happy? Do you know what calms you? What excites you? What would you do with more “me time” if you had it? What is your gift(s) that you bring to your communities and our world? Do you know just how deeply you are loved by many people?

These are good notions to ponder over the weekend. A new moon was just a couple of days ago. New moons are great times for fresh starts. What could you do to give yourself more of anything from the list above?

I will end with this:

Kia ora kou tou!! (this is a greeting that Karen Nimmo uses a lot. It is spoken by the Maori tribe in New Zealand and it is roughly translated as “Have Life! Be Healthy!”) Today Alan Cohen asked the question in his daily inspiration, “Are you letting life love you?” If you want to feel grateful, think of all of the times that life loved you, and took care of you, and made things alright, even at those times that you didn’t feel particularly lovable or worthy of love. Have Life! Be Healthy! Let life love you.

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

How to Say I Love You

Yesterday afternoon, I lounged on my porch and I read, in between lazily throwing balls into the pool for Trip and Ralphie to continuously retrieve. (Ralphie and Trip are our true-to-their nature sporting dogs, and all the while, Josie, our true-to-her-nature herding dog, was tirelessly nipping at their heels and earnestly making sure that they got out of the pool, again and again. This morning, we have three exhausted dogs, which makes for a nice, peaceful, uninterrupted morning for this writer gal. All by design . . . ) As I was reading and pondering, something in my reading and meditating and contemplating, sparked me to write this exact text to myself:

“What do you want from this day? From this experience? From your relationships? How do you want to feel? What kinds of outcomes are you looking for? Don’t be a reactor, be a visionary.”

We so often forget that we are the creators of our living experience. The job, the relationships, where we live, how we spend our time, what we eat and drink, what we think about, what we ruminate on, our hobbies, etc. are all of our own choices. If you don’t like some of your choices, you have the ability to change them. You are the one who brought them into your life in the form which they are in, so you have the ability to choose differently. Don’t pick “the victim stance”. It limits you so much.

All of the inspirational reading and listening I have done throughout my entire life – the books, the articles, the cutesy signs, the memes, the meditations, the quotes, really all circle around to the same overall ideas: Be intentional. Be grateful. Be HERE in the present now. Make conscious choices.

And here’s a big one that I want to finish out my year reminding myself and making it a forever practice (and this is a tough one, as a mother of four adult kids who are spread all over the east coast, and as one who has aging relatives and friends, and as one who when she loves, she loves hard and full and deep with her big ol’ entire heart) Worry does not equal love. I am not loving you in the best way that I can when I am worried about you. I put fear energy all around you when I worry about you. It makes you seem small, weak, and victim-like. I am loving you best when I believe in you – when I believe in your strength, and your vision, and your abilities, and when I have faith that Something/Someone so much bigger than all of us, is in your corner, keeping you safe, helping you to carry out your living purpose, which is for the better sake of all of us on this Earth, combined.

I have noticed that when I tell people whom I care about, “I don’t worry about you” and I say it with a tone that implies, ‘I know that you are going to be fine, more than fine. You’ve got the right attitude, heart, and guides to see you through’, this firm statement makes them sit up straighter and feel more empowered and confident than almost anything else I could say to them. “I don’t worry about you,” might be one of the most beautiful variations of “I love you” that we have in our spoken/written communication. Fear is the opposite of love. Worry equals fear, not love.

Readers, continue this beautiful year of your life, living fully and intentionally. Be grateful for all that you have created and will continue to create in your one and only unique life. Finish strong. I know that you will. I love you, readers. I don’t worry about you.

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

Soul Sunday

Good morning, friends. I’ve experienced a lovely weekend. I hope that you have, too. Today, I decided to stop slacking, and I finally wrote my own poem for today. (Write a poem today. If I can do it, you can do it. Trust me. I consider poems to be messages in a bottle sent from the deepest recesses of your heart, up to your head to be translated, with understanding and resonation.) Baudelaire once wrote, “Always be a poet, even in prose.” Here is my poem for today:

Light breezes, finding the perfect seashell,

puppies, babies, foreign lands, spicy food,

the joys and angsts of raising children,

flowers, books, singing robustly when driving my car,

laughing, playing, loving with intimate vigor,

sunny, clear days, and calm, fire-lit starry nights,

As I ponder of what trinket of beauty to write a poem about,

I ask myself,

If I were to be thrown into a small, dark, dank prison with iron chains,

Or I found myself tied to a lonely hospital bed for the rest of my days,

would have I let myself experience enough life and unbridled emotion,

from my vital, gifted, assumed days of freedom and health,

to fill those lonely, lost days with poems of lush and vivid memories?

Am I living the poetry in my heart that is begging to flourish right now?

There is nothing sadder than a heart without poems.

Living life is what beats a heart.

Poetry flows from the beat.

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

Wednesday’s Whimsies

+ “Did you learn how to think or how to believe?” I read this question from a story on Rob Brezsny’s website. A father would often ask his daughter this question when she came home from school. It’s such an excellent question to constantly ask yourself, throughout life. Whether reading, or watching a show, or attending a speech or a service, ask yourself this question. With so much information overload these days (and now a ton of it being produced by artificial intelligence), this question has never been more important. Be discerning. Consider the source. Watch people’s actions, not their words. Think for yourself. Believe in yourself. Trust what resonates from the deepest part of yourself. You have more of the answers than you ever give yourself credit for, as most of the answers lie deep within yourself.

+ “Why can’t people be normal when they ascend into positions of power? Like what is it?” – martha, Twitter

“No one who wants to be in a position of power is normal to start off with. Like cult leaders, they’re all narcissistic to some degree. No normal person seeks power. Egomaniacs do.” – Zoraya Black, Twitter

I read this interaction on Twitter this morning. It is my belief that history’s most effective leaders have been hesitant leaders. They have stepped up to the plate when no one else was willing, or able to lead. They lead for virtue’s sake, for future generations’ sake, and how they ended up becoming leaders had nothing to do with their own personal power plays, but more so from an organic following of people who admired their ideas and their actions. Mahatma Gandhi and George Washington are known to have been extremely reluctant leaders.

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” – William Shakespeare

Where are these rare birds these days? These true leaders tend to be the strong, silent types. It’s hard to find them in all of the clamoring for attention, and individuals’ need for their own fifteen minutes of fame. I do pray that these naturally sound and honorable people, like cream, rise to the top and become visible, and able, and available to us again. Never has our country needed them more.

+ I didn’t win a billion dollars in the Mega Millions last night. No one did. But even if I did, I believe that I would still be writing this blog. I love it that much. There are a lot of things in my life that would change if I had won, but there are certain things that I would do everything in my power to be sure that these situations stayed the same, because these people, places, things, and relationships are sacred and essential to me – you and this blog being one of those things. This is an excellent thought train to get real clear on what is most vital and meaningful to you, in your own life, right at this very moment. If you won a billion dollars, what would you definitely want to remain the same as it is, in your life right now? Feel grateful for these people, places, and things, and share your gratitude with them. You didn’t need a billion dollars to experience their preciousness in your life. Savor all that you have been blessed with in your life. Realize that you wouldn’t trade these things for a billion dollars.

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

Ten Years

I finished up one of my two-year journals yesterday. I set it on top of the other four finished journals. So for ten years now, from the summer in which I was 42 until this summer when I am 52, I have written a daily journal entry. I wish that I had journals from the age of 12, but before I was 42, keeping a journal was a spotty, sporadic, unintentional thing. There is something about middle age, that brings an urgency to realizing the brevity of your own life, and the compelling need to understanding how you are living your own life, into vivid focus.

I use the Building the Best You journals. They are currently out of print, but you can still get them from used book sellers. (just make sure that the ones you purchase are in “like new” condition – i.e. not written in) I just ordered two more of them yesterday, even though I already have a small pile of empty ones in one of my cupboards. I like doing that, as an act of confidence in myself. It shows commitment to continuing to do a journal entry every day, and the best part, of course, is that each book magically adds two more years to my life. Ha!

These journals aren’t particularly special. They ask the same six questions every day, so that you can compare your answers, year over year. The best part about them is that there is hardly any room to write. You have to answer the questions more in “phrases”. The answers which you write are more of a “gist” or a “theme” of your day. Every six weeks or so, is a page of longer questions and there is a little more space to answer those questions, but again, it doesn’t require a lot of time or energy to fill the small spaces. The format of this journal, makes it easy to commit to doing it for the long term.

What do I get from journaling? It’s a small time commitment that gives me so much in the way of self-knowledge. It’s a place to spill my messy feelings and sort them out. I have a daily record, which turns into a weekly record, then a monthly record, and finally, a yearly record of what I did, and what I am currently doing with the precious days of my life. I read this quote this morning:

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.”   – Charles Richards

I think this is sort of a dark quote. I don’t necessarily agree with it. What I have found out from daily journaling is sometimes those moping days, those restless days, those sick days, those recalibration days in which you don’t do a whole lot, are often the days that you end up using to pivot, and to fuel yourself into a new direction. And honestly, daily journals are mostly truly life affirming – when you read over a few months, or a year, or even ten years, it’s amazing to see how many experiences which are packed into one human life. With daily journaling, I also get to notice my patterns, and my habits, and areas where I may be just going through the motions. I get “wake-up calls” about what aspects of my life I might want to consciously change and do better, and about other areas in my life that I can feel really proud about myself and want to continue. I have gained so much overall perspective from my journals. I can see that most things that I was so upset about at one time, mean almost nothing to me now. In fact, sometimes the things that I jotted down that were deeply upsetting me, I can now barely remember what happened. I also see that the truly awful stuff in life is really much more rare than all of the goodness, beauty, wonder, gentleness and evenness that our everyday lives are filled with on a reliable basis. When I remind myself and others that the storm clouds always, always pass, it’s not just fluffy talk. I have written proof. This is so comforting.

It’s never too late to start journaling. I wish that I had started the daily practice of journaling sooner than I did, but I certainly don’t regret starting it (and now I already have ten years in). So if you don’t keep a daily journal, start now. At the very least, on each calendar page, jot a couple of happenings and draw an emoji for how you feel. A journal helps you to create intimacy with yourself. It helps you to feel understood by yourself. There is no relationship in this world, more important than the one which you have with yourself. Give yourself this gift of journaling. You won’t regret it. You will get to know an interesting, brave, genuine, vulnerable, honest, hopeful, resilient human being living an ordinary life (that will sometimes show some real extraordinary glimpses of life), like you never have before.

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

Monday – Funday

Credit: @woofknight, Twitter

I’m baaaaack! After spending the weekend at a college friends’ reunion (after three years of not seeing each other), when my one friend got home, she texted that she feels so “rejuvenated”. That really stuck with me. I feel rejuvenated, too, and I didn’t even realize how badly I needed to be rejuvenated. Sometimes you don’t realize how stale you have gotten in certain areas of your life until you get reminded by fresh perspectives – new places, interesting recommendations by trusted friends, and even reminders of facets of your own self, which you had forgotten about until you see them reflected back to you in a good friend’s eyes. Rejuvenation is revitalizing.

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

This is the Beginning

“– what would you be doing differently in your life if we were approaching the end of the year, rather than the middle of it? Well for one, you’d probably be celebrating! Two, you’d also be doing all those things making sure all the loose ends of the year are tied up and setting intentions for the next year.” – Cassandra Tyndall

Happy Summer Solstice! It’s that halfway point in the year. It’s a great time to hit pause and use the light from the longest day of sunlight, to shine the light on where you’ve “been” in 2023 already, and to reflect on how you would like to close 2023 out. My husband loves to listen to the Gerry Cinnamon song below, when we are relaxing by our pool during warm summer evenings. Sometimes I think that he overplays it, but I will say these last few days I have woken up to the start of the song, playing on repeat in my mind. And it stirs me. Deeply. I hope that it stirs you, too. “This is the beginning of the rest of your life.”

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

SB

I inadvertently read a really good blog post the other day, from a website that sells jewelry. The writer was talking about the fact that her mother always repeated the same old saying, with drama and sadness, “You are only as happy as your least happy child.” The writer came from a huge family who went on to have huge families, so invariably her mother would have at least one child, or grandchild, who was going through a hard time, and so her mother was always a bit down. Until she wasn’t . . . .

The writer (Jill Donovan) said that her mother came to a peace one day, realizing that ultimately her children and her grandchildren were not hers first. They came from Source/God/Spirit/Universe, and this same Source that had always gotten her through her rough spots, would get them through theirs, too. And so while the matriarch of this huge family felt empathy for her loved ones, and helped to support them, she came to a greater peace of holding on to the faith that these trials would just bring them all closer to the deeper meanings and purposes of their own individual lives.

This is a truth that we all “know”, but it is sometimes hard to live, isn’t it? We have these fantasy-filled visions of our children living problem-less, seamless lives, with no difficulties to deal with, yet in our own lives, if we are honest with ourselves, it was during the harder times that our most authentic selves rose from the ashes. It was when we successfully navigated through our tough times, that we realized how steely, strong, determined and capable we really were to handle anything. And we didn’t do it alone. The Source within us helped us rise to the challenge. And the people who loved us, were kind and validated our feelings, but because they also believed that we would overcome our adversities, that belief in us, and that belief in our ultimate triumph, was more helpful than pity and tears.

I’m in my fifties now and it’s been really fun witnessing the growth of my friends and peers. Most of us have grown children now, and so I am now seeing my friends taking the time to unabashedly explore all different interests, and parts, and relatively unexplored avenues of themselves. Many of my longtime friends are showing up with talents and interests which I never knew that they had before. (honestly, I don’t think some of my friends even knew about these aspects about themselves either.) It’s really inspiring. By the time you get to our deep middle age, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t experienced any rough spots in their lives. But it is true, time and experience, flowing through the craggy rocks of our lives, usually polishes sharp, rough stones into beautiful gems. It is so gratifying to witness women who have had to go through deaths of loved ones, and divorces, and heartaches with their children, and financial breakdowns, and struggles to succeed and grow in their careers, to triumph over all their adversity, and now delight in exploring parts of themselves that they had long ago buried, under the self-imposed burden of believing that it was their job to keep everyone else happy.

Whatever your beliefs are, just know that Something Bigger (SB) from where we all came has got us. SB has you. SB has me. SB has our kids, and our loved ones, and our friends, and our pets, and our world. So be as happy and as curious and as exploratory as you want to be, in any given moment. That happiness inspires us, and lifts us, and frees us to deeply explore our own selves, and our world with less fear and trepidation, and more openness and hope for all.

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