Doing Things That Will Change Your Life | Tracks In The Dust

Archive for the category “Doing Things That Will Change Your Life”

05 Jun 2012

Life Beyond Normal

“Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, “Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?” …Then a voice comes to me out of the dark and says, “We hate to tell you this but life is a thousand word essay.”
― Charles M. Schulz

Somehow it always amazes me how often we get put to life’s tests. We are asked to do things that may be out of our comfort zone, things that aren’t natural to us. We can choose to ignore them, or make them a personal challenge.

For me there seems to be little reason to avoid the challenges most of the time. After all, you have only your own minds-eye to reason a lot of it out. Not those dangerous or harmful challenges, those can be much easier to decide on the course. But for example, being challenged to step out and make a difference in someone elses life may seem like a chore. Showing someone gratitude for something they have done for you can be easy, but going those steps further than just saying “thank you” can be a bit harder.

So here I stand, trying to reason out the “multiple choice” or “true/false” answer to things when it is truly an “essay” as Charles M. Schulz said. And that can be difficult; shades of right and wrong and multiple directions that would all work,yet that aren’t entirely obvious at first thought.

So the next time someone says “How are you?” – you probably already know the answer. But in reality the answer is so much more complex. The concern is so much deeper. So let’s all persevere and make the more of what God has given to us. Going beyond the easy answers are progress at it best, the changes, the challenges, addressing those things that just aren’t the normal things that make up our everyday life.

Like one of my favorite musicians in my life time had said:

“Without deviations from the norm, progress is not possible.”
― Frank Zappa

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Change, Charles M. Schulz, choices, Deviation from the norm, Frank Zappa, Postive Thinking, Reality Check, Tests

01 Jun 2012

Applying Labels

I suppose there is a basic human need for people to want to identify things with a label.

Some people use those little label making machines and label everything in their office or home so there is a sense of organization, others at the grocery store examine labels for contents to be sure they understand what they are eating, while others desperately work to label the identity of the people around them.

Labeling people seems to be a very challenging exercise, sometimes using only one label when another may be just as applicable. Just trying to find a single label that can apply is very dangerous, with it comes all the assumptions of what that label can mean because of personal prejudice or society’s definition.

Labels may be a political one, or about your religion or choice of partners. But there are labels everywhere. It’s not like labeling the container in your kitchen “sugar” when there is sugar in it. Pretty easy, because you can be pretty sure that is what it is when you see it and taste it. Labeling people is so much more difficult to do. With those labels also come some preconceived notions of what that means about the person.

There is a great sense of order by grouping things that seem to be alike under one label. For many of us it is a need. Coming out of that, there is a sense of leaving less to the unknown by having labels assigned. Labels seem to provide peace-of-mind that we know about our world around us. It confirms that we are in control.

Without labels we can lack the idea of being aware of our world, often it may threaten our perceptions of things. How can something be good and bad at the same time? Where are the lines that define the shades of grey? Who decides? It can be defined by opinion or a vote… but who’s opinion and what vote?

So today I am struck by the casual and frequent comments I hear all around me about people and their labels for someone else, and how often that leads to misunderstanding, hatred, prejudice and the lack of willingness to know any more once the label is “assigned”. It can cause a lot of conflict that makes relationships disintegrate, make friends move on, and choices for the future be skewed.

Of course we all have our own personal labels, those that identify us. We create those as we live our lives and make our choices. We often may be proud of that definition. We should. We may not share that with everyone else, because that alone could lead to a label that others may choose not to understand.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Definitions, Fear, Grace, Label, Life, Opinion, People, personal prejudice, preconceived notions, society, Who Are You

28 May 2012

2 Comments

The Secret of Life

i have told my children, I have told my friends. There is nothing difficult about the secret of life. It is simply enjoying the passage of time. It isn’t difficult. Don’t spend so many hours,days, weeks, months or years searching for it. It may pass you by. You may miss it, you may spend your entire life looking for it. But you only have so much time, and it is time that is what you should cherish. You are able to make it work if you try. It isn’t even hard, although we may always be working so hard to look for it.

It can consume you, as you search. It can mean that you can toss away a day so easily and wonder where it went. It can mean that you have nothing to show for it as you search, and then if you ever do find it – you will ask “what took you so long?” So sit back and look at what has made your life be what it is today, and you may realise that you have it right in front of you. You make it what it is every single day. Thank God for it and enjoy it because the secret of life is simply enjoying the passage of time.

The Secret of Life by James Taylor

The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time
Any fool can do it
There ain’t nothing to it
Nobody knows how we got to
The top of the hill
But since we’re on our way down
We might as well enjoy the ride

The secret of love is in opening up your heart
It’s okay to feel afraid
But don’t let that stand in your way
’cause anyone knows that love is the only road
And since we’re only here for a while
Might as well show some style
Give us a smile

Isn’t it a lovely ride
Sliding down
Gliding down
Try not to try too hard
It’s just a lovely ride

Now the thing about time is that time
Isn’t really real
It’s just your point of view
How does it feel for you
Einstein said he could never understand it all
Planets spinning through space
The smile upon your face
Welcome to the human race

Some kind of lovely ride
I’ll be sliding down
I’ll be gliding down
Try not to try too hard
It’s just a lovely ride

Isn’t it a lovely ride
Sliding down
Gliding down
Try not to try too hard
It’s just a lovely ride

Now the secret of life is enjoying the passage of time

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged cherish, Definitions, James Taylor, Joy, life is precious, Love, passage of time, Philosophy, Secret of Life, Self-Awareness, spirituality, Sprituality, tracks in the dust, welcome to the human race

27 May 2012

De-coding Happiness

It is amazing that being happy seems so hard. It means so much to so many people who are seeking it daily, perhaps even hourly. They are looking all over for it. At work, at home, at play. No matter where they look they are always trying to get more. Sometimes when they are happy they don’t even recognise it – too busy thinking about the next thing to do on the course to happiness.

Contentment perhaps, is more like it often times. It doesn’t feel bad, it is somewhere on the same side of happy. Just that feeling that you are in the right place at the right time. That things have lined up well in your life and you are “good” with the place you are in.

So it seems like there is a need to de-code what happiness looks like. I have casual friends who have jobs that allow them to have virtually all the possessions they want. They have collected them to surround themselves with potential happiness genrators that will perhaps make each day a better day. But surrounded by all of those possessions and property, they seem even less happy than someone with a tenth as much. So okay, “money can’t buy you happiness”. Got it. But then why keep trying? Because it makes them happy to try I think.

So sadly happiness is a state of mind, driven through the spirtuality of recognizing that there are more important things that the earthly posessions. The energy spent collecting up happiness could be so much better used. As humankind it seems like we have so much more potential, more to seek JOY. Now there’s a word. Almost always coming from an interaction with a living thing. A child or a parent, a family pet or something from nature, something of beauty. Joy is from God.

Joy has a component of happiness; in itself the most precious of contentment. Thank you for those times in happiness. Enjoying the mission of life; taking on the idea that we all have a purpose for being here while we are alive. To bring more to the light and peace that is true happiness. Are you there with me?

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged God, Happiness, Joy, life's meaning, Love, peace of mind, Self-Awareness, spirituality

25 May 2012

6 Comments

The Touch of Grace In Living

Just the other day someone who I hadn’t seen or talked to in ages happened to communicate with me online. I thought again how much the Internet has changed everyone’s lives in the “Information Age“. As part of our communication it was apparent that somewhere along our past journey I had said something that “stuck” with him and became part of his philosophy in life from that point on.

I didn’t recall saying anything to him that would be that profound, and frankly what I said must have been part of a conversation that I don’t recall now. What it was isn’t even that important to this posting. It did make me think again how much we are all interconnected by everything we do and say every day. Sometimes it may be with a stranger at the checkout line, or someone you meet on your walk with the dog. Other times it could be with those friendships and relationships you have with friends and relatives that pass through your timeline of life (I shudder when I look at my life as a “timeline”- thanks Facebook). It is more than the impact of reading a book, or watching a film, or listening to a song… it is human interaction.

But no matter how we intersect and no matter whether it is brief or an extended amount of time, there is always this chance that you or the other person may be changed by it. If even just in the smallest of ways; or sometimes in the most profoundly huge ways. It is part of God’s wish that we treat everyone that way and it is not always going to work because we often find ourselves centered on our selves. But even then, it can happen. That brush with action or words that can change everything after it.

There is a fictional TV show on US television these days called “Touch” that addresses the idea that much of our world and its actions are interconnected mathematically. There is even going to be a web-based online series based on it called “Daybreak2012”. I think people are guinely curious about their effect on others. Heck, that is likely at the core of many of the blog-sites we are all visiting online today.

Perhaps that is the hidden equation, perhaps it is more on a spiritual level – something that we all possess but often do not acknowledge or recognize we have.

At the end of our lives we may have touched so many people we didn’t ever realize we had. We may had said something or done something that made such a difference but we will never know because that person’s path will never cross ours again.

“There by the grace of God go I” to make my way into the world and leave something behind that is not just “tracks in the dust” that eventually fade away. Instead it is a chain reaction of things that I will not know during my lifetime. But I am excited to know in the next world.

Do you share in the excitement? Can you share in the grace of life?