"Turn your face toward the sun, and the shadows will fall behind you." This is a Maori proverb about staying optimistic. I think Rihanna may have used it in one of her songs as well, but I think it was a proverb long before she sang about it.
Evil is said to lurk in the shadows, and many people seem to have a superstitious dread of them. As the proverb says, if you are facing the sun, you will never see the shadows. They are still there, you just won't see them. I don't think optimists are not aware of the problems around them. Instead, I think they just choose to focus on the positives that surround them. Oftentimes, by focusing on the positives in any situation, you can sometimes find the solution for the negatives. I guess the easiest way to explain it is thatt if you are constantly looking at why something won't work, you are less likely to see how it can work. For me, I like to look at both. Any time I see something that isn't working for me, I try to look for the solution, instead of complaining about the problem. If the solution I choose doesn't work, I then try to find out if it needs modifying or if I need to scrap it altogether. All said, I think looking towards the sun is a great way to say stay optimistic. Life can be beautiful. If you are always focused on the sad or the bad, it makes it very hard to see the good. Step out into the light and let the shadows fall behind you.
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"Nothing can be done without hope and confidence." That is a quote by Helen Keller. For those of you who have been living under a rock, Helen was a deaf and blind women born in 1880, who became the first deaf and blind person to earn a college degree. Her life story is truly amazing and should be read by everyone, in my opinion.
If anyone has the right to talk about hope, it was Helen. She was born in rural Alabama and at the age of 19 months contracted an illness that left her deaf, mute, and blind. At the age of seven, her parents brought her to the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where she met Anne Sullivan, a visually impaired student who became Helen's teacher. After many months, she had a breakthrough with Helen that helped to change her life forever. If you are interested in the story, you can watch the film "The Miracle Worker" which tells Anne's story about working with Helen. Over time, Helen learned to sign, read braille, and even speak. In her later years, she became a prolific author and an activist for many causes. After learning to speak, she became a prolific lecturer as well. Imagine, through all of that adversity, she kept a sense of hope and optimism. Not only that, she put her education to good use trying to help people with similar disabilities, as well as for political causes she believed in. Note that Helen was a pacifist and opposed Woodrow Wilson's policies in domestically, in Europe and in Latin America.. About Woodrow Wilson she stated: ""Could it be that we don't want to think badly of Woodrow Wilson... We don't want complicated icons. "People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions, and conclusions are not always pleasant."" It is hard for me to imagine being blind and deaf and still being able to learn how to speak and write, let alone doing so as eloquently as Helen did. On top of that, she had the empathy to stand up for and fight for people with similar disabilities. On this day of thanks giving, I find I am thankful for people like Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan who use what God has given them to the best of their abilities. They prove that hope and optimism can go a long way towards helping people. In the end, Helen lived her beliefs and fought for them nonviolently, Isn't that something we can all aspire to? . "Let your hopes, not your hurts, shape your future." That's a quote by Robert Schuller. Schuller is best known as the creator of the Hour of Power, a TV Evangelical show that ran for over forty years. Schuller "hoped: to have a positive impact on as many people as possible. And his Hour of Power certainly did that. I think it's very easy to see who is walking around led by their hopes, and who are being led by their hurts. In fact, almost anyone who is depressed is likely hurting from something. Whether it is real or imagined is often up for debate. What brings on a more fatalistic attitude? I see people who many would think have a good life, walking around as if all hope is lost. At the same time, I see people who you would think have a lot to be sad about, who walk around as if they are on the top of the world. One of the most optimistic people I think I have ever known is my old college roommate, Kevin. Kevin was caught in an apartment fire back in college and nearly died. He was burned badly across most of his body. He went through countless hours of operations to help repair his badly burned skin. When I first met him, he had already been through the first round of skin grafts. Even so, he was happy and full of life. In fact, I never heard him complain about his burns. He just took life as it came and was happy. Nearly thirty years later and he is still going strong. He is happily married to a beautiful woman, and he has just become a grandfather. It is amazing the struggle this man went through, and to think that he remained positive throughout his ordeal. Not only that, but he is outspoken for the burn units that helped him and does charity work for them. If ever there was an ordinary man who should be a hero, it would be Kevin. I never spoke with Kevin about the great respect I have for him. In fact, when I was younger, it never crossed my mind. We were friends, we had some great times together, that was it. Nowadays, I often think of Kevin while I am looking through quotes to write about for this blog. After he popped into my mind for about the third time in as many weeks, I thought I ought to write this post.
Hope. Some say its is a good breakfast, but a poor supper (Francis Bacon). I don't look at it as either. Hope is there to inspire you that there is a better way. Without action, though, hope is meaningless. Hope doesn't mean there is no work. Hope is there to say that if you do the work, then your reward is waiting. That is how I look at it anyway. Hope shows you the road... but YOU still have to walk it. Meanwhile hurt is a place. It does not show you a map on how to leave it. You need to do that on your own. And hope can help you to do that. Thus, hurt is a place that can be left behind with the help of hope and action. "Infuse your life with action. Don't wait for it to happen. Make it happen. Make your own future. Make your own hope. Make your own love." Bradley Whitford came up with that little gem. It was a little longer than that when I read it, but I shortened it so that I too, wouldn't be a windbag! So who is Bradley Whitford? He seems to be an actor from the show West Wing and some other TV shows. Nice quote Bradley! This is the best quote I have seen on hope in a long while. Usually people go on and on about how hope sustains them... or how they have abandoned hope... or how its a good breakfast but a poor dinner... blah, blah, blah! What they fail to notice is that hope without action is a waste. If you don't take the steps necessary to chase your hope, you will likely never achieve it. Think about it! If my hope was to win the lottery (it's not), I would never be able to win it, no matter how hard I hoped, if I never actually played the lottery.! That little bit of action was necessary! How can I win it if I do not even have a ticket! That is a very simple example. Let's try one a little more complex. I hope to find a home-based business to start in my spare time and eventually do full time as my way of making a living. Now, that hope would be ridiculous if I never take the time to research home-based businesses or try out different ideas to see what will work. You see, without taking any sort of action, all of our hopes are likely to be dashed, unless they just happen to come about by chance. Are you looking for world peace? Well then start in your own back yard! Be at peace and be peaceful with all of the people you meet. I for one did not join the military when I was younger, nor do I teach my children that they should be coerced into joining either. I hope that my daughters will be happy in life. To that end, I try to spend as much of my time with them as I can. I have taken responsibility for teaching them what I believe is important, and I try to help them to make logical decisions about their choices in life. I try to remember that "what I believe is right for them, may not be what they believe is right for themselves. Career choices are up to them. I do try to encourage them to follow their dreams though... and to take action towards them. In the end, I believe all of their hopes can be achieved, if they are willing to take the actions required for their hopes or dreams. An important factor there is that they actually know the costs necessary to achieve their goal. It is very tough to become a black belt if you don't practice. By practice I mean both going to class and working out at home as well. If you do that consistently, then I believe you can achieve a black belt (I told Maddie and now Ashleigh). I tell them this about other of their hopes and dreams as well. I try to point out what they will need to do to reach those goals. Then I leave it to them to decide if the goal is worth the effort. Take actions people. Examine your hopes. Think about what would be necessary to make them a reality, and then take action! The idea for this post came from a quote by Paulo Coelho. It's a long one, so I will break it out below. “Ester asked why people are sad. "That’s simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.” To be honest, I thought about this one for a little while before I decided to write about it. I think what the old man says has a lot of wisdom in it. To start, I do think that we all really do try to follow a plan for our lives. Whether it is a plan we created, or whether it was suggested by others doesn't really matter. We all have something we are trying to accomplish. I have a friend who buys new cars constantly. Why? I don't know. I think he may be trying to buy happiness... or self respect. I think he equates his standing in his social group with what car he drives. He is young yet, so I am curious to see how this little drama works out. What I find more interesting, is how did this "plan" for his spare cash come about? What drives him to buy different cars constantly? Is he a prisoner of his own personal history? For me, memories keep me prisoner. As I get along with my day, I will see or hear something that brings back a memory. When they are happy memories, I usually just smile or laugh. Sometimes, I will share them with my daughter if she is nearby because she is very perceptive and can always pick out when I am amused by something, even if I don't think I am showing it on my face. Lately, I have been happy that I have been insanely busy. The last week in July and the first week in August are typically a tough time for me. Sharon was in a coma for the last two weeks of July and then died on August 1, 2013. It will be the third anniversary of her death on Monday. Today was her birthday. She had just turned 38 when she died. For most of the people on the planet, these days are meaningless. I too, try to make them meaningless since my wife is now dead. I try not to think about these days, as anything special, and I try not to "feel" anything on these days. I fail miserably on those points, however. I seem to be a prisoner of my own personal memories. Each year, I try to chip away at the chains those days have on my soul, but I am barely successful.
Although I wonder if others have trouble coping with their pasts (whether at certain times of the year, or always), I know deep down that many do. I also wonder what dreams were put to the wayside because these people were/are prisoners of their pasts. I also wonder if I can answer honestly what dreams of my own have I put on a shelf due to my own mental wardens holding me prisoner in a prison that I created for myself. We all have dreams we have put to the side over the years. Personally, I wonder how many I have put to the side, not because they were not good ideas or were not worthy, but because of a wall I put up around my own beliefs... or because of my own past mistakes. Today, I was a prisoner to my dead wife's birthday. I stayed busy all day, trying to dig myself out of my prison. I almost made it. My tunnel seems to have collapsed, though, so here I am writing this post. For me, there is always tomorrow to start digging myself out again. Don't be a prisoner to your past folks. Follow your dreams, and if you don't currently have any... then make some! In the end, people regret what they don't do or try to do. Make some dreams... or even a bucket list. And then chase them "The tragedy of life is not death, but what we let die inside of us while we live." That's a quote by Norman Cousins.Cousins was a famous journalist and newspaper editor for more than three decades. You may know one of his more famous quotes: "Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
To tell you the truth, I could have easily written about either of these quotes. I'll stick with the first one, though. It is easy to understand. Death itself is not a tragedy. It is a part of life. In fact, death really isn't anything for the people it is happening to.. they are dead. The tragedy is usually for the people left living. My wife, for example, was a tragedy for me and my daughters. For her, it was just the end of her life. A tragic end of her life for us, but just a lack of existence for her. I can't say this for my daughters, but I know it holds true for me. A part of me died on the night that Sharon passed away. I held her for six hours while her life slowly ebbed away. Many thoughts went through my head that night. Thoughts I knew I would no longer be able to share with her. Her smile, her laugh, other things she did that I just took for granted. They would be there tomorrow. Until they weren't. I thought about those things... and others while I listened to the death rattle in her breathing. I thought of my daughters and how they would never learn things from her that were usually a right of passage for girls to learn from their mothers. How they wouldn't have an understanding female ear there to listen to their hopes and dreams as they grew, or to give them other types of womanly advice. I thought of plans Sharon and I had that were now never going to come to fruition. So yes, these things died within me on that night. But at the same time other things were born within me to take the place of those dying dreams. I redoubled my effort to make sure my girls always had someone to talk to... even though I was a man. I changed the path of my life to make sure I could remain at home to home school them and make sure they got the type of education that I wished I had gotten when I was younger. Like a Phoenix, new dreams sprang forth from the ashes of the old to replace the ones that die. So I guess in looking at the quote, he is right that some things will die inside us. But I think the real tragedy would be in not replacing those things that died with new dreams. Everyone dies. And we all at one point or another have some of our dreams shattered. The real tragedy would be in not replacing those dreams with something else you can live with. I love the relevancy of this quote. It's extremely true and honestly; I've seen far too many examples of those living in the past throughout my life. So many people condemn themselves to a life of bitterness, sadness and depression by leaving themselves wedged in the past and honestly, it hurts to see. It hurts because no one can really help- except for the person themselves.
I personally have come to complete and unabridged terms with my past and everything that has happened in it. I have come to accept the fact the past can't be changed and have taken the sorrows from it as a valuable lesson... even something I can pass on to others to help them. Don't get me wrong, being able to look my own past in the face took me awhile too... but one day, something just clicked in me. It was the strangest feeling- just this clarity and forgiveness and acceptance. I went over everything at lightning speed in my mind and decided that day that I'd take my past and everything I'd learned and use it to help people- turning its once-looming negativity into the silver lining on a dark cloud. Since then, I've been very open with people about my own past, and I try to share my experiences both to give warning (and some relatability) to those around me. Nothing shapes your own future but you and your actions- and not being about to move forward from the future would certainly trap you. There's not much else I can say now; besides I hope that if you are living in the past... you find the clarity needed to break through. - Maddie Well, it had to happen. I finally found a Marcus Aurelius quote that I disagree with. The quote in question is: “Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.”
I disagree with this quote wholeheartedly! The quote seems to be saying that things are predestined to happen and that you have no control over anything in your life. Not only do I find this quote incorrect, but I also find it at odds with nearly everything I have read by Marcus Aurelius. Usually, Aurelius writes about doing your best and changing your thoughts and actions to change your world. This quote says nearly the exact opposite. If everything was predestined, then why do anything? Why bother to worry about whether what you are doing is right or wrong, since in the end it doesn't really matter. What a crock of bull! I believe everything we do matters. That is why I find it important to do my best, no matter what I am doing. If everyone acted as if what they did didn't matter, then nothing would be done properly... it's destined to be a certain way, so if I do a poor job, then I guess it was just destined that I do a poor job. What rubbish! The only things that are destined to happen are the negative consequences that will occur if you don't do things properly. "For every time there is a season." Think about what you want to happen, and then create it. The only destiny that you have is the one you create yourself. Sure accidents can happen that will change the path that you are on. But these are truly far and few between. Everyone's days have there ups and downs. Most times, you can smooth over the little bumps in the road and still attain what you are striving for. Don't give up... and don't give in to poor thinking. You can achieve what you want to achieve! Nothing is predestined. Do your best, and make your own destiny! The way is not in the sky, it is in our heart. Above is one of the best pictures I have ever took. I was at the top of Pack Monadnock, looking out over the valley, and feeling very peaceful. I liked the way the clouds were casting shadows on the ground and decided to snap the picture. Usually, I am a horrible photographer, but this time, I think I really caught the peacefulness of the view. I like to look at that pic when I am feeling sad. I used to have it up on my computer as the wallpaper, but somehow it is no longer serving that function. I actually had to go look for it. Sometimes I feel down, and I don't know why. Like tonight, for instance. I had a very productive day and got a lot of work done. I was feeling pretty good most of the day, and shut down my computer with no intentions of working a bit later. It's rare that I do that. Usually, I jump on again after 9:30 and get a little extra work done... either because I wanted to get a little bit done ahead of what I was going to do tomorrow or, to be honest, just because I like to take my time while I work and work my own hours. Tonight I had no plans to do that though. I figured I would just relax. We have a lot of artwork up on our walls around my house. My wife and I used to go to auctions and antique shops on the weekend and to little artsy fartsy towns in rural New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Oftentimes, we would see artists drawing pictures of people in charcoal. On occasion, we would contact the artists and commission them to do charcoals for us. We would even hire artists from their websites to draw pictures for us. They now hang all over our house. Unfortunately, all of them hold memories for me. Sometimes, they are memories that usually don't necessarily attach directly to the picture. That's what happened tonight. I walked past one of the drawings, had a memory about what my wife and I were doing around that time, and boom, suddenly I was in the dumps. The above quote only loosely ties in to my post tonight. The sadness is in my heart, and yet the quiet, peaceful moment I am seeking is epitomized by the picture of the sky. The picture, is peaceful, but where I need peace is in my soul. The way to peace is through my heart, and yet, when I look at that picture, I remember the peacefulness of that moment. Memories are like a double-edged sword. They can cut both ways. At one moment, they can bring amusement or joy. At others, they can remind you of things that can never be again. Life is meant for the living, and yet so many times I look back to the dead. I think I like that picture of the sky so much because it is like looking at the future. Not the future that will be...but the future that can be. Hope rides in the air currents. |
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