Quotes Worth Reading

A collection of interesting quotes..

Think about this: when you follow others, you move along at a path not determined by yourself. But when you move along your own path, you don't have the protection of a herd being watched by shepherds.. Instead, you must now watch out for those who prey on others, being very careful not to get infected with a predator's innate inability to trust others. Living only to prey on others is a death sentence to intimacy and true love.
 

This one is self-explanatory. Another great way of saying this is Garbage In, Garbage Out. If you fill your head up with garbage, then that's what you'll extract from your thoughts. Plant the seeds of thought carefully, and make sure you know what exactly it is that you are planting.. :)
















If you are looking for someone else to make you whole, then you are looking in the wrong place. If you feel incomplete, then I have bad news for you: nobody else in this world can love you enough for you. But here's the good news: once you learn to love yourself fully and completely, you will find a love that complements your own, and it will bring you as much happiness and satisfaction as you are willing to put into it. It all boils down to this: if you want to make your love pure, then you have to make pure love your only choice.

I may not have a PhD (yet), but the absence of those three letters is in no way an indication that I lack any sort of depth of understanding. The reality is that the more you know, the more you realize that there is simply far too much for any one person to know. Existence is on a scale that is unfathomable to humans, yet there are some who have lost themselves completely to their ego and falsely believe that they have life figured out. I'm here to tell you that nobody does. We are all winging it, and the best part is that it's not about being right or wrong in the end; it's about having a life worth living and remembering. And you don't need an education to do that..


I've heard that expectations breed resentments. I'd like to elaborate to that statement and say that unspoken expectations breed resentments. How do they breed resentments, you might ask? Easy. Let's say you expect someone who loves you to show it in a way that you can see. So when they don't show it in a way that you can see, you start to get resentful and act in a less than loving way to that person. What manifests from these unspoken expectations? Both people end up feeling crappy, when in reality, no one had to feel that way.

What you see is not always what you get... Sometimes it's a product of your perspective. That's why it's important to step back and get a bird's eye view..

I absolutely love Bruce Lee's philosophy, and have drawn much inspiration from the words he left behind. Such a powerfully positive man who had a profound perspective on life. Only when we gain self-awareness can we break out of the cycle of defeat that judgement creates. Rise above the doubt and judgement of the world; only then can you see forever.

This is true, although I would like to add that if you think about a thing too much, it will never get done. So it's a balance between what you think and what you actually do. There is a fine balance that is different for each of us. It's up to each and every one of us to figure out our balance and walk in it.

Boredom and procrastination are my two biggest enemies!! Wise words to remember.. :)

Reflections on Thanksgiving 2013

**I wrote this on Thanksgiving day last year, and am amazed by how profound that day was for me. With no family close by to celebrate with, and my children spending the holiday with their father, I chose to spend my Thanksgiving with a dear friend of mine that I am very thankful for, whose friendship has been a light to me in the darkest of hours over the course of 20+ years. Enjoy!**

While sitting in a prison waiting room earlier this morning, waiting to visit an old friend from high school who is currently living there, I overheard the woman beside me comment that she needed to hurry up and get out of here so she could eat dinner and be at work by 5 PM this evening. She saw me shaking my head, and added "I hope those crazy people don't get to acting a fool like I know they will!! That's just too much nonsense for me to deal with on a day that's supposed to be a guaranteed day at home with all the good food to eat that I want."

Several of us had arrived early - before the 9 AM start of visitation hours - and although it was now almost 10 AM, none of us had been processed and brought to the visiting area. As we waited for what turned out to be an emergency inmate count after inmate clothes were found abandoned outside of the prison gates earlier that morning, many of us found our eyes wandering towards the lone TV they had in the waiting room, which was far too small for the high place on the wall that they had the tiny thing mounted.

Despite the volume being muted and the words on the screen being nearly indecipherable due to their microscopic size, we clearly understood what the "news story" was about: we saw images of tents lined up outside of several major conglomerate stores across the country. Not just a few tents, but long lines of them at each of the locations they were covering. Some had families in them, some groups of friends, but all were there and willing to sacrifice their holiday in order to cash in on such awe-inspiring Black Friday deals as a free $50 gift card - which, of course, they can only get if they buy some big-ticket item like a 50" plasma HDTV - or some other "IF you purchase x, THEN you get y FREE!!!" type of deal. Disturbingly, some had been there since yesterday, braving cold and idiocy all night in order to be the first or second in line..

There were several 3 to 4 minute segments being shown in a fairly compact rotation - I was only in the waiting room for a little over an hour before processing resumed, but had already seen the lined-up tent segment for each of the cities they were covering at least a few times. Besides an endless flood of commercials, which eerily were almost the same ones every time too, the only thing that had changed from the first rotation to the call of my name was a clip of the upcoming Macy's Day parade. Then it hit me: Macy's Day Parade. This isn't about Thanksgiving!! You and I have it all wrong, my friend!! It's about Macy's Day apparently, and these people are the champions of it, lined up in tents to show their dedication and loyalty to what this day is really about..

While those people are doing what makes them happy, I will be thankful to be doing just the opposite.. I will spend time with a person I value as much as they value "things", then will go home, curl up next to a warm fire with a good book, listen to some old Sage Francis albums with nowhere to go, not a care in the world, and all of the time I need to just be.  Then I'll write my friend a letter and thank him for the company and good conversation at our visit, and let him know that he is loved; gone but never forgotten. That, my friends, is what Thanksgiving is about.

So, as I sit here and reflect on what makes me thankful, such things come to mind as being blessed with enough good sense to stay out of tents in shopping centers, a warm home I share with three amazing young individuals, family and friends on the other end of all the phone calls and texts I've received today, having a dear friend who spent 16 years finding himself in the most unlikely of places and whose courage and strength inspires me to continue to build upon my own, learning and living through the ups and downs of life that have made me who I am today by giving me the opportunity to improve myself and learning to make love, hope and perseverance my choice, as well as all of the other blessings that comprise my life.  To be alive is a gift that most people never fully appreciate. One love!

If you are reading this, then know I am thankful for you too!! I love you guys! Hope everyone has had a great day!

Wake Up World

So tired of the political BS..

Energy Vampires

Below is a link to an awesome article that individuals undergoing some sort of spiritual growth and awakening would likely be able to relate to.

http://www.the-open-mind.com/21-traits-of-an-awakening-soul/
 
One quote in particular caught my attention:

 "If we don’t learn how to set proper boundaries, we can get tired easily from taking on other people’s emotions. Energy Vampires are drawn to us like flies to paper, so we need to be extra vigilant in protecting ourselves at times."

I feel this 100%! I felt I was surrounded by energy vampires wanting attention from me that they would be happy to get from any person willing to give it to them when I frequented the bar scene years ago. The internal discord within these individuals had them throwing themselves all over the place, without regard to who they may be hurting or making uncomfortable with their haphazard scattering of fake sunshine.

Guys would get a bunch of girls' numbers over the course of a night and eventually text/facebook/call them all and tell them basically the same thing (you're so beautiful, I think you're so awesome, blah blah blah, etc), and then the girls would do the exact same thing right back - a genuine reflection of eachother's fakeness!! None of them really meant the kind things they said; but then again, none of them really bothered to take the time to really get to know who this "awesome" and "beautiful" person was. Their whole definition of beauty and goodness was based on shallow, insignificant trivialities.

At the end of the day, both were disgusted with the other, knowing deep in their heart that they were being lied to, and their true bond came in the form of shared self-hate. It's kind of sick when you think about it: no love, just two scared suckers looking to masturbate on eachother.
 
Wake up world and LIVE!!! Put the "v" back in the lie and Value what this life has given, is giving and will give if you let it!!

Reflection on Alcoholism

I need to reflect on where I am as compared to where I was..

I wrote this after seeing a video that made me sad that so many of those who risk their lives for our country and the freedom it is supposed to represent end up in a similar place. We don't care. Some of us do, but most people only care once it directly affects them. You don't have to go overseas to suffer from PTSD or to develop alcoholism, but when you add the horrors of living through a war to all of the other life-altering circumstances that people endure, you end up with some really broken people who are hurting on a level that most people can't comprehend. We, as a people, need to change this.

Humanity is one - if one falls, we all fall. If humanity is metaphorically one being, and the world becomes our image of hell, essentially we’re all walking in the flames of that hell that we have collectively created in our minds and then display through society's collective conscious thought (or lack thereof).

I woke up this morning thinking about a dear friend of mine who has been struggling to cope with his experiences while overseas at war. I thought about calling him, but with a 3 hour time difference, it would've been very inconsiderate of me to reach out to him at 4 AM PST. Instead, I pushed the thoughts to the back of my mind for the moment.

That is, until I stumbled upon this video, which made them flood back with such force that my eyes became temporary waterfalls. It isn't that the video itself is emotionally moving; rather, it is the thought of this man having been able to reach such a low point before a group of complete strangers intervened and restored his dignity for a single moment in time.

Alcoholism damn near destroyed my dignity (and life), and it has been a very difficult battle to restore and repair that damage - a battle that I have faced virtually alone. I thank the lucky stars above that I have the few true friends (and awesome family) that I have, because those people literally saved my life. If it wasn't for their love and faith in me when I had none to give myself, I don't think I'd still be here to type this.

I can see how this man's life probably unfolded now.. As is the story with countless other lives, at some point there were people drinking alongside him - friends, coworkers, maybe even family members. The alcohol numbed the pain, and the smiles reflected through the smoke by mirror images of himself seemed to soothe his soul. It didn't matter that the smiles and good times weren't real; all that mattered was that he didn't have to feel the level of hell he felt when he was alone with his thoughts.

Slowly, these people fell to the wayside, one by one, as he ventured further down a path they were hesitant to follow him down. New faces replaced the old ones - new faces that were willing to look the other way more frequently and encourage the very habits that were destroying him. They understood him, so he thought, and he felt comfort in that. One by one, even these people couldn't deny how out of control he was, and their faces were again replaced by new ones.

Now the faces began going back and forth between rough, weathered and hardened faces and those of authority figures. Between jail and homelessness was an unending desire to escape his inner pain. Each day became a drive to obtain the poison that could kill his pain. As the darkness engulfed him and anesthetized his feelings until they were virtually obliterated, he fell deeper and deeper into a hole within himself and got lost somewhere in the lonely, haunted part of his mind's dark forest. It was at this point that if no one reached out to him or pulled him back towards the light, he would sink to levels that most people couldn't comprehend that a sane, rational person could ever reach: homelessness, dumpster diving, etc. But it can happen to anyone.. That, my friends, is alcoholism.

I was in the dark, haunted part of my mind's forest when four friends (along with family from across the country) rallied around me and got me back to the light. It's not to say that others haven't helped along the way at different intersections in time, but those four were consistently there through the worst of it.

Dan - thank you for saving me. Literally and figuratively. I know we don't speak anymore, but I would've died on those tracks if it hadn't been for you. Alison - thank you for being my voice of reason when mine had left me entirely. Your perseverance and dedication to growing and becoming a better person ignited and inspired the drive in me that keeps moving me towards brighter days. Your friendship, understanding and patience have been monumental to my healing process. D - thank you for all of the great conversations, a warm floor to sleep on when I'm in town visiting, unconditional love and teaching me that attitude determines altitude. You have one of the best attitudes I have ever seen towards life, (despite life) and I hope you continue to rise as you have! You've made such tremendous progress, and I am more proud of you than you could ever imagine!! Finally, B - thank you for being my shadow in the shadows, and for pulling me out of the gutter when I was left there for dead. We were both cast aside like old garbage, but we cleaned ourselves up and became brand new!! Thank you for never judging me, and for teaching me that true love starts within me..

I hope those who are lost, or are having difficulty coping with the hurtful, bad things they have experienced in life, are able to heal, grow stronger and find their way back to solid ground before digging themselves deeper into their own personal hell. My friends, please know that no matter how bad things get, you are not alone and things will get better! These struggles in life are what make us (or break us), and each outcome is the result of a single choice..

=)

An open letter to those burdened by the weight of the world..

Dignity is what sustains us when all else has been lost. Self-respect and a sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cast below mankind.

Men suffering from a lack of dignity experience profound loneliness and find that hope is almost impossible to retain. Without dignity, identity is erased. In its absence, men are defined not by themselves, but by the circumstances in which they are forced to live. The stubborn retention of dignity, even in the face of extreme hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure and asphyxiation, and with greater cruelty. It is as lethal as a well-aimed bullet.

Define yourself, not by the habits which are slowly erasing what dignity you have left or the circumstances which lend to the numbness in your soul, but by the things which return to you a sense of self-worth and self-respect. Step outside of yourself and honestly see who and what you've become. All that numbness and cold in your soul - that is the absence of dignity. You'll never heal until you understand this..

Note: The majority of this blurb was taken indirectly from Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, which is an exceptional book that will inspire and uplift the heaviest of spirits!!