For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Today we take the time out of our busy schedules to gather the moments of our lives and family together to give 'thanks'. To give thanks for our blessings, of which, we have many. Though today, for one day, we stop to 'smell the roses' of our lives and slow down enough to 'see' how blessed we really are and how much we take we for granted. I looked up the definition of gratitude and gratitude was defined as a 'feeling' of thankfulness and appreciation. Although I agree with the definition, and maybe if I pulled the definition from another source, I may find a different interpretation, but when I saw the word being defined as a feeling, it opened up, what I think, is an answer to another door of understanding in this journey we call life. If being thankful or grateful is just a feeling, then maybe herein lies the root to many of our problems associated with the dilemmas of our lives. Today we will pause to stop and think on all the good things and blessings in our lives. From being grateful for a warm house and a roof over our heads to each and every family member we embrace, all of us will take a moment to reflect on the good. We will temporarily let go of the 'bad' and only focus on the many things we are thankful for. How many times have we taken a day like today and looked back at all the 'little' things in life and then realized those 'little' things were actually big things? The crazy thing about all of this thankfulness is the fact that all of these things we are thankful for don't just seem to materialize on this day, but they are in our lives every day of the year. From the faithfulness of the rising sun to all the precious relationships we overlook on a daily basis, they are not there on just one day a year, but they have and will always be there. Because of the 'rat race' this life seems to spin by us so fast that the turmoil of each day sometimes leaves us wandering and wondering. So I understand the necessity of a day like today. A day to stop and 'smell the roses' and take one day, out of three hundred sixty-five days, and focus on the blessings of our lives. And herein is the key, today we will spend some time focusing on what we are either not able or refuse to focus on during the other three hundred sixty-four days out of the year. Every year, we take this day and dwell for the moment on our blessings and we are able to make an adjustment on our lives. We refresh ourselves with the positive and in reality, we make an 'attitude' adjustment that reevaluates our perspective. We take a deep breath and say to ourselves, we really isn't as bad as I thought it was and we become thankful. When we actually stop and take this time to focus on the blessings in our lives, it changes our perspective. The question then is why don't we do it more often? If being thankful changes our perspective and brings a refreshing in our lives, then why do we wait so long to be thankful? Why do we not start our day counting our blessings rather than being continually consumed by our doubts and fears? Overwhelmed by getting what we want and not having what we may or may not need? In Philippians 4:8 the scripture says, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." There are also countless other scriptures that admonish us to be thankful and in everything to give thanks, and yet we seem to stay there for too long. Is it possible this and other scriptures tells us to think on these things because we are so prone to think on the opposite and it is in our nature to dwell more on the negative aspects of our lives than on the positives? God gave us a gift of 86,400 seconds today, and not just today, but every day we have opportunity to 'stop and smell the roses'. The flowers of gratfulness and thanksgiving are always in our midst as we walk through the garden of our lives but its up to us to stop and smell them. If every day brings us 86,400 seconds can we not stop and take one second to be thankful? If thankfulness changes our perspective and brings about a more quality of life, is it not worth a second or two to do so? What if you and I woke every morning and before we planted our feet on the carpet of a new day, we took a deep breath and thanked God for the breath we just took. I believe it to be true that gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. Gratitude is a key that unlocks a door of living life to its fullest. It turns what we have into enough, and more. Gratitude is the energy of faith. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. Being grateful for the tiny details of your lives will help make room for unexpected and beautiful blessings because as there is no doubt if you are not thankful for what you have, it isn't likely you will be thankful for you are going to get.
Today, I am in agreement with with William Arthur Ward who said, "Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it." Gratitude is MORE than a feeling, but gratitude is an action. If you are thankful and it is not expressed in your life, then you have missed the power of it's hidden blessing and the blessing of gratitude can only be enjoyed when it is expressed in an action! So Happy Thanksgiving to all who have taken the time to read this today. May today be more than just another day, but let today be the beginning of a new day of expressing gratitude and not just on this one day but let it be on a continual basis of giving thanks for all you have and all the gifts you have to give your fellow man. And always remember, if you want to turn your life around, that on any day of the year, try thankfulness, because it is the one thought you can put in action that will change your life in a mighty way!
Friday, December 6, 2013
The Paradox of Our Past
“Life has two rules: #1 Never quit #2 Always remember rule # 1.” - Unknown
I am pretty sure anyone who is reading this article right now can honestly say there have been times when you have looked back at life and wished you could get a 'do over'! Maybe not a complete do over but there are probably a few moments in time, if given the opportunity to change a decision or two, all of us would take advantage of the chance to do it over. Though we may look back with wishful thinking and a grimace, we know right well to go back and get a 'do over' is not possible. We must forge ahead in full assurance that the past has become what it was meant to become here in our future. The past, in all it's glory, has and always will have its relevance only in the here and now, that is, if we let it. We are but a summation of every past decision we have ever made, both good and bad, right and wrong, and everything inbetween. So life, as we know it today, hangs in this precarious balance of living in the past or living in the present.
Many people say, 'Forget the past' (as though this is possible), but I say do not forget the past but cherish the past and grow from it.Truly we cannot get rid of the past and neither may we forget it. No matter how much we may try to run from the past or ignore it, our past is always with us. The most difficult thing concerning the past is most people live IN the past so much they are no longer able to enjoy the moments of every new day. Consumed by its hurts and grudges, the past constricts every new day's outcome to its tunneled vision and leaves no room for a fresh outlook. It's no wonder the Good Book says to not let the 'sun go down upon our wrath' or that anger rests in the bosom of a fool, because we are emotional beings and whatever emotion we give ourselves to will become who we are. If we hold on to every past event of hurt and pain, then our future will be ladden with its burden of vengeance or forever trying to right how we feel we have been wronged. Life then, instead of being lived in the liberty of God's breath of grace, is consumed by the hopelessness of yesterday's sorrows. And herein is the point, what can we really do about yesterday? Can we go back and change yesterday? The obvious answer is no we can't go literally back but today I propose we use yesterday's history to be a better person today!
Confucius said, “Study the past if you would define the future.” The only thing we can truly do with the past is to learn from it and seek its hidden and unhidden revelations of how to live and enjoy the moments of today. Like the steam shooting out of a boiling kettle our lives are like a vapor, for life appears for a little while, then vanishes away right before our eyes. Living in the past eats up the valuable steam of today and dulls the power of our future. But if we live and learn from our past, if we study our past and take all the good we can out of it, then we can truly enjoy the power of today and all the richness that comes with every living moment. If we can 'see' that every mistake we have made has a silver lining in it, then we can use the energy every mistake to propel the wheels of our future forward. When you place your hand in a fire, not only do you learn it can burn, which in turn causes pain, but it also teaches you not to touch the fire again, but that does not mean you never go near fire again or use it for it's good. No, you take what you have learned and harness the strengths of the fire and use it for your good. This is a picture of what we need to do with our past. Just like getting burned the first time by fire, you never look at fire the same way again, so should our view of our past mistakes in life. Sure, our mistakes may have 'burned' us, but that doesn't mean we cannot use the heat of our hurts to see life in a different manner and use the energy gained from those mistakes to frame and remake our future.
The paradox of our past is that our lives truly can only be viewed by looking backward and yet our lives can only and must be lived going forward. No matter how much we try to avoid the past, the past is never dead and its not even past. Since the past is here now, then one way or another, we are always dealing with it. We are either living in it's fatal grip by trying to 'change' the past by continually bringing the past into the here and now or we are seeing the beauty of the past for it's ability to teach us and guide us into a better today.
Many times when I 'look back' and see all my flaws, inadequacies, and mistakes, I say within myself, if I could have changed that one decision or get a 'redo' at this one specific point in my life, how things would be so different; but inevitably, when I am able to step back like this and see the 'mistakes' within the span of a half century of living, then and only then, can I see my past in its proper place. For every mistake has made me who I am today and if I find that if I could go back, I wouldn't because in some weird way it all makes sense and has made me who I am today. So here I stand today, emboldened with the knowledge of my past and renewed in it's energy of understanding, I am moving forward into a better today. From this moment on, I refuse to let my past eclipse the dawning of each new day, but will bask in the illuminating light of it's revelation and enjoy the brightness of my future.
I am pretty sure anyone who is reading this article right now can honestly say there have been times when you have looked back at life and wished you could get a 'do over'! Maybe not a complete do over but there are probably a few moments in time, if given the opportunity to change a decision or two, all of us would take advantage of the chance to do it over. Though we may look back with wishful thinking and a grimace, we know right well to go back and get a 'do over' is not possible. We must forge ahead in full assurance that the past has become what it was meant to become here in our future. The past, in all it's glory, has and always will have its relevance only in the here and now, that is, if we let it. We are but a summation of every past decision we have ever made, both good and bad, right and wrong, and everything inbetween. So life, as we know it today, hangs in this precarious balance of living in the past or living in the present.
Many people say, 'Forget the past' (as though this is possible), but I say do not forget the past but cherish the past and grow from it.Truly we cannot get rid of the past and neither may we forget it. No matter how much we may try to run from the past or ignore it, our past is always with us. The most difficult thing concerning the past is most people live IN the past so much they are no longer able to enjoy the moments of every new day. Consumed by its hurts and grudges, the past constricts every new day's outcome to its tunneled vision and leaves no room for a fresh outlook. It's no wonder the Good Book says to not let the 'sun go down upon our wrath' or that anger rests in the bosom of a fool, because we are emotional beings and whatever emotion we give ourselves to will become who we are. If we hold on to every past event of hurt and pain, then our future will be ladden with its burden of vengeance or forever trying to right how we feel we have been wronged. Life then, instead of being lived in the liberty of God's breath of grace, is consumed by the hopelessness of yesterday's sorrows. And herein is the point, what can we really do about yesterday? Can we go back and change yesterday? The obvious answer is no we can't go literally back but today I propose we use yesterday's history to be a better person today!
Confucius said, “Study the past if you would define the future.” The only thing we can truly do with the past is to learn from it and seek its hidden and unhidden revelations of how to live and enjoy the moments of today. Like the steam shooting out of a boiling kettle our lives are like a vapor, for life appears for a little while, then vanishes away right before our eyes. Living in the past eats up the valuable steam of today and dulls the power of our future. But if we live and learn from our past, if we study our past and take all the good we can out of it, then we can truly enjoy the power of today and all the richness that comes with every living moment. If we can 'see' that every mistake we have made has a silver lining in it, then we can use the energy every mistake to propel the wheels of our future forward. When you place your hand in a fire, not only do you learn it can burn, which in turn causes pain, but it also teaches you not to touch the fire again, but that does not mean you never go near fire again or use it for it's good. No, you take what you have learned and harness the strengths of the fire and use it for your good. This is a picture of what we need to do with our past. Just like getting burned the first time by fire, you never look at fire the same way again, so should our view of our past mistakes in life. Sure, our mistakes may have 'burned' us, but that doesn't mean we cannot use the heat of our hurts to see life in a different manner and use the energy gained from those mistakes to frame and remake our future.
The paradox of our past is that our lives truly can only be viewed by looking backward and yet our lives can only and must be lived going forward. No matter how much we try to avoid the past, the past is never dead and its not even past. Since the past is here now, then one way or another, we are always dealing with it. We are either living in it's fatal grip by trying to 'change' the past by continually bringing the past into the here and now or we are seeing the beauty of the past for it's ability to teach us and guide us into a better today.
Many times when I 'look back' and see all my flaws, inadequacies, and mistakes, I say within myself, if I could have changed that one decision or get a 'redo' at this one specific point in my life, how things would be so different; but inevitably, when I am able to step back like this and see the 'mistakes' within the span of a half century of living, then and only then, can I see my past in its proper place. For every mistake has made me who I am today and if I find that if I could go back, I wouldn't because in some weird way it all makes sense and has made me who I am today. So here I stand today, emboldened with the knowledge of my past and renewed in it's energy of understanding, I am moving forward into a better today. From this moment on, I refuse to let my past eclipse the dawning of each new day, but will bask in the illuminating light of it's revelation and enjoy the brightness of my future.
Ahhhhh...To Write Again!
Habits are at first cobwebs, then cables.
Spanish Proverb
Habits. All of us have them. Some habits are good and well, I would venture to say, many if not most of our habits we have are not so good. Habits of procrastinating our lives away to the fatal mistake of thinking we always have tomorrow to fulfill our dreams, many of the habits we have are not necessarily based on physical inaction but on the way we think. We cannot think ‘we can’t’ and then end up doing what we initially think we can’t do in the first place. How can we move forward based on the foundation of thought that believes ‘we can’t’? Our thoughts become who we are and then those same thoughts end up stealing away our life force and then in turn, our force of life. Many times, I have pondered my own inadequacies of inaction. Those forces of doubt and unbelief that seem to so easily cripple me from doing what I love to do. So many times I wonder why I don’t do them. In those moments of contemplation I seem to connect the dots to my childhood and not just my childhood alone because all the dots are connected to the here and now. It’s just the now is restrained by the rope of my past that has lassoed the very elements of the moment’s excitement of stepping out of the cocoon of my fears. So many times I wonder 'why do I not do the things I know to do or those that I love to do?' For instance, I love to write and for awhile I was writing every day. At one point I had set up as a goal to write no less than a thousand words a day, which in turn led me to begin 'three' books, two of which are fairly full of matter and thoughts. So, why did I stop writing every day? If I love writing, why don't I write? I think, hidden in the veil of excuses as to the reason why I don't write would be the real reason, and the answer can only be found in answering the question...why write?Why should I write in the first place? Is it to inspire you? Is it to inspire others? Do I desire to write for all the wrong reasons and is this why in the end I lose my desire to write? These may seem like silly questions but to me these are the questions or it is THEE question that must be answered before I can break the chain of my habit of inaction. As in most things in life, I must find purpose to what I am doing...the why? I have been around long enough to know, if I do anything, whether it be writing or exercising or whatever I find myself doing, if I am doing it for anyone else but myself, it will ultimately end in failure. It will, in the long run, fizzle out. But if I find the purpose in it, then I will have the right foundation to build upon and it grow and grow until it becomes what my life has meant it to become.
In this crazy world of overwhelming and sometimes sensory crippling information overload, we have come to learn all the right sayings and motivational ploys. We can repeat different quotes and the most positive cliches sit right on the tips of our tongues but to say them and to do them are two completely different animals. I can easily say...'life is short, live it!', but to really live in the moment's of this short life can be a daunting task. I can blurt out the words, 'Anger is bad, dump it!', but when my anger boils over from within, I seem to dump it in all the wrong ways. I can tell you, 'Fear is awful, face it!', but say those words to you while cowering behind my own walls of inner turmoil and dismay. It's easy to say, 'Memories are sweet, cherish them!', but how many times do I really cherish those moments in time and in the proverbial sense of life, 'stop and smell the roses'? Obviously, to fulfill a dream only to fulfill my own lusts or doing something deemed detrimental to society is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about finding your purpose and then pursuing it to the utmost gusto and vigor of life. When I look at all the reasons why I don't do what I deeply want to do, there are no right reasons to justify the inaction.
Jack Canfield said, “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” And so today, this is what I am going to do. I am going to begin writing again. I am not going to write for YOU or to become 'famous' or for any other reason than this...I am going to write because I enjoy writing. I am going to write every morning and I will break the chains of inaction until writing becomes a part of who I am. You are more then welcome to join me. You can join me by reading when I post what I write. You can join me by breaking down your own walls of inaction and bad habits. You can join me by criticizing what I write because that will only make me stronger. Today, I write for me and more importantly, I write for the Lord who has given me the breath of life and has called me out of darkness and into his marvelous light! And now, as I write this last sentence of my initial flight from inaction...it feels so good to write again!
Spanish Proverb
Habits. All of us have them. Some habits are good and well, I would venture to say, many if not most of our habits we have are not so good. Habits of procrastinating our lives away to the fatal mistake of thinking we always have tomorrow to fulfill our dreams, many of the habits we have are not necessarily based on physical inaction but on the way we think. We cannot think ‘we can’t’ and then end up doing what we initially think we can’t do in the first place. How can we move forward based on the foundation of thought that believes ‘we can’t’? Our thoughts become who we are and then those same thoughts end up stealing away our life force and then in turn, our force of life. Many times, I have pondered my own inadequacies of inaction. Those forces of doubt and unbelief that seem to so easily cripple me from doing what I love to do. So many times I wonder why I don’t do them. In those moments of contemplation I seem to connect the dots to my childhood and not just my childhood alone because all the dots are connected to the here and now. It’s just the now is restrained by the rope of my past that has lassoed the very elements of the moment’s excitement of stepping out of the cocoon of my fears. So many times I wonder 'why do I not do the things I know to do or those that I love to do?' For instance, I love to write and for awhile I was writing every day. At one point I had set up as a goal to write no less than a thousand words a day, which in turn led me to begin 'three' books, two of which are fairly full of matter and thoughts. So, why did I stop writing every day? If I love writing, why don't I write? I think, hidden in the veil of excuses as to the reason why I don't write would be the real reason, and the answer can only be found in answering the question...why write?Why should I write in the first place? Is it to inspire you? Is it to inspire others? Do I desire to write for all the wrong reasons and is this why in the end I lose my desire to write? These may seem like silly questions but to me these are the questions or it is THEE question that must be answered before I can break the chain of my habit of inaction. As in most things in life, I must find purpose to what I am doing...the why? I have been around long enough to know, if I do anything, whether it be writing or exercising or whatever I find myself doing, if I am doing it for anyone else but myself, it will ultimately end in failure. It will, in the long run, fizzle out. But if I find the purpose in it, then I will have the right foundation to build upon and it grow and grow until it becomes what my life has meant it to become.
In this crazy world of overwhelming and sometimes sensory crippling information overload, we have come to learn all the right sayings and motivational ploys. We can repeat different quotes and the most positive cliches sit right on the tips of our tongues but to say them and to do them are two completely different animals. I can easily say...'life is short, live it!', but to really live in the moment's of this short life can be a daunting task. I can blurt out the words, 'Anger is bad, dump it!', but when my anger boils over from within, I seem to dump it in all the wrong ways. I can tell you, 'Fear is awful, face it!', but say those words to you while cowering behind my own walls of inner turmoil and dismay. It's easy to say, 'Memories are sweet, cherish them!', but how many times do I really cherish those moments in time and in the proverbial sense of life, 'stop and smell the roses'? Obviously, to fulfill a dream only to fulfill my own lusts or doing something deemed detrimental to society is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about finding your purpose and then pursuing it to the utmost gusto and vigor of life. When I look at all the reasons why I don't do what I deeply want to do, there are no right reasons to justify the inaction.
Jack Canfield said, “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.” And so today, this is what I am going to do. I am going to begin writing again. I am not going to write for YOU or to become 'famous' or for any other reason than this...I am going to write because I enjoy writing. I am going to write every morning and I will break the chains of inaction until writing becomes a part of who I am. You are more then welcome to join me. You can join me by reading when I post what I write. You can join me by breaking down your own walls of inaction and bad habits. You can join me by criticizing what I write because that will only make me stronger. Today, I write for me and more importantly, I write for the Lord who has given me the breath of life and has called me out of darkness and into his marvelous light! And now, as I write this last sentence of my initial flight from inaction...it feels so good to write again!
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