11 Jul 2012

The Everyday Miracles

Do miracles exist?

They are there in your life. There every day when you step from the curb, say hello to the check out clerk, take the hand of your child, smile at your coworker, so many things that we do each day involve the simple greatness of life. Each action and reaction can cause a chain reaction that you may more than likely never know. Like waves in the ocean, or the wind across the field of grass. We are so unconscious in our simple actions, that we are not paying attention to the motions around us. Do you see such miracles as they happen as we live our lives?

Take a deep breath in, take another one out. Enjoy the fact that you are living on the Earth and are fortunate to be here online in the world-wide web…communicating with each other in such a way that we can share ideas, share the amazement of life, reach across oceans and continents to communicate about all the world has to offer. And when we do, there is an opportunity for confirmation of what being a human-being on this Earth means.

It amazes me everyday how similar so many people are across the globe. Feeling the emotions of sadness, elation, anger and relief, love and kindness, compassion and understanding. It truly is the miracle that we have to experience every day.

We are not alone, we have each other. So much more can be done, and every movement can be a miracle. We are so fortunate that we can decide, when so many others in the world cannot. We can influence simple miracles that will make a difference for someone we have never met, or may never meet. Just like we can influence our neighbours, our family, or friends or the person passing us on the street. We can reach out beyond that and follow our mission while we are here on Earth. Putting our tracks in the dust will eventually blow away with time, but the next persons tracks will take over. And the line can go for eternity with just a simple choice.

There are miracles happening everyday. We all can participate in making them happen. Have faith, be aware of what you can do to affect human change, it seems like it is infinitely more than you are aware of.

Posted in Before and After Things Change, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Acceptance, being remembered, Eternity, Faith, God, Grace, life is precious, living on the earth, Miracle, moments, Religion and Spirituality, tracks in the dust

10 Jul 2012

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What Will Other People Think?

Growing up, I remember my adolescent days of wanting to be part of the “in group” – the group that was leading the trends, the people who were at the front of the room in school and popular. I thought if I pleased everyone, I too could be accepted into the popular groups. At that time it seemed like I was always preoccupied with the idea of what other people were thinking.

One of the things I have noticed lately is that even as we all grow up, what others think appears to be many adults preoccupation. So many of the professional people around me seem to want acceptance of others beyond all else. Even in my family there have been struggles over the years on being “people pleasing”. It causes them to twist and turn their lives into places that aren’t really who they genuinely are.

When you constantly worry about what other people think, you can easily get caught in an emotional trap. In reality, you don’t have to please everybody any more than your ability to please everybody allows. It’s that false sense of panic to think that in order to be happy, you must be loved and validated by everyone you meet. Inside you know it’s just not how it works, but you do it anyway.

If you feel controlled or manipulated, its likely that you’re allowing yourself to be controlled or manipulated. It’s good to stand up for what’s right, but no one can pressure you unless you allow them to. Perhaps you don’t see it, or you ignore it, but it can happen easily. Inside your head you want acceptance, and you may be willing to color things to feel like you are not being controlled, but it can happen anyway.

It’s OK to be strong and center yourself on who you really are. How often do we fool ourselves to think it is more spiritual centered to just be quiet and put up with it all. But God doesn’t expect you to be run over by everyone you meet, you are made to be strong and be yourself.

How often are there missed opportunities in our lives that we let pass by? Do we find ourselves burying our talents, our sensibility and throwing them aside in order to please others, to be accepted. Then ironically, we get angry at our circumstances and allow even more control to be sacrificed to others for the sake of being accepted. We wonder how we got where we are.

In the end, it’s good to be ourselves, let the “people pleasing” efforts come out as a result of being ourselves. Don’t let it rule your life. We can allow our spiritual life to guide us to the relationships that are around us, and we will be accepted. Centering yourself on being who you are and not what others want you to be. You will find your goals will change and what you want out of life will be refreshing and personal. You know what other people will think?… won’t you?

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Acceptance, Advice, Faith, Fear, Grace, life is precious, Postive Thinking, Reality Check, Self-Awareness, Sprituality, Who Are You

09 Jul 2012

The Passion of Polarity and Meeting in the Middle

Words like “any or all” seem to be used with a lot of freedom these days. They are used with passionate polarity to help place people in their respective ends of an argument or position on a topic. It is frightening to hear people say that “all” of one religion or race are considered to be good or evil. I cringe when a see a person who believes something in particular is wrong because the only right way of thinking is what they believe- statements that hover around the idea that “any one who has an opposite opinion is clearly wrong”

In the fast paced information age of the Internet we reward passion about subjects, then others who feel the same way help send it out in emails or websites to be soaked up and waved around like a flag. It could be passion about conservative views or liberal views, about organized religion or someone elses misdirected religious beliefs. There are so many topics that contain polarity that seem to tear a great number of people apart.

Polarity often is dangerous and can be the very thing that separates brother from brother, creates wars and crime, it can destroy beauty and delay progress. It becomes the fuel for fear, and the fuel for hate. It can tear apart marriages.

Polarity has its places in making our world a better world. Good vs Evil seems to make sense. One God. Sometimes there is only one choice, other times there are no choices- it is a fact of nature itself (which so often has its own polarity). We are all made up of many particles that need to have a positive and negative. But in the center is the core.

So there is something to consider. Polarity can be used to discover the middle or center, for without 2 ends or opposites there is no middle. When two people are so far away from each other… the path to the middle is the hardest path, but is the action that can bring the compromise is a needed which can be part of life itself.

Perhaps polarity is the starting point to a path to compromise, it allows us to be passionate and it can allow us to come together somewhere in the middle and better embrace the outcome. Sure, we can pull hard in the opposite direction, like a tug-of-war. Then watch all the cheers and jeers by supporters and detractors around us, because people are interested in that diversity. Sort of like watching a train wreck or traffic accident. People don’t want to see it but can’t take their eyes off it. So many wallow in the struggle of polarity, like two teams fighting against each other. Not sure when the game should end. But the reality of it all it may appear, is that compromise, the middle – is not very exciting, not very “defining” and desirable. So we just aren’t interested.

Maybe we all desire this polar opposition, we look for the places to stand on it and don’t see the middle as a place to be. We may selfishly want the attention, or are blind to the opportunity, but we work toward being somewhere in the middle. Be keeping your eye out for middle. It’s not that bad. It can be that good. But then I am guessing you may disagree? Hmmmmmm.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Change, Compassion, Definitions, Grace, Opinion, Politics, Reality Check, religion, Self-Awareness

08 Jul 2012

2 Comments

Tell Me About Yourself Award

I suppose there are a lot of “awards” in the blog-world of WordPress.com and that all of them have the root of being kind and thoughtful to fellow bloggers. It seems like there are a several that are meant to get more visitors, or share more sites or something.

But I am flattered that someone considered by blog worthy of any recognition. Tracksinthedust.com has always meant to be a list of things just put together that I always wanted to tell my kids, but now they are “old enough” that they either have formulated their own opinions of things. Maybe some of these posts are things that I told them before, or meant to tell them, or just never got around to telling them. I get along really well with 3 of the 4 of them, and they are turning out to be pretty good people, despite the fact that their mom and I had no owners manual.

I always wondered about that, you need a licence to drive a car or own a gun- you need to apply for a loan and fill out paperwork to adopt children or even attempt a laboratory version of parenthood (perhaps). But there’s no test for a man and woman having a child. God willing you leave the hospital and its all up to you. So here I am tracks in the dust, that overtime will blow away on our travels on Earth. We make the decision where those tracks take us, we have the opportunity to follow others or make our own tracks.

Tell Me About Yourself Award

1. Thank the person who nominated you: Thank you Miss Audrey (In Wonderland). When I started posting in WordPress, yours was one of the first blogs I began to follow. I am always amazed with your perspective on life, and certainly where you are in your journey in a country I am not very familiar with. You are about the same age as my kids and I find it comforting that even though you are on the entire other side of the world from them- there are a lot of similarities.

2. Tell the world 7 things about yourself that you have not yet shared

1) I love musicals. Hollywood, Broadway, local theater, made for TV. I am a sucker for them. Can’t tell you why, just am.

2) I have a beard that I have only entirely shaved off twice in my life since I was eighteen. Some of my closest friends think I was born with it. I wasn’t.

3) I have always wanted to be an artist. I mean a painter. But I am lousy at it. I have a very famous cousin who has been an artist most of her life I think. Her talent amazes me every time I look at her work.

4) I have written over a 1000 lyrics to songs, spanning over decades of writing. Poems if you want to call them that. Some of them have music with them, others have gotten music written to them by many of my musical friends. Some just are terrible, but that’s inspiration.

5) I was on the radio hosting a public service topical show about JFK’s assassination with a famous authority, when John Lennon was shot and killed. I spent the next 8 hours playing his music and taking calls. It sticks in my memory all these decades later. Imagine.

6) I have always owned practical cars, but just once it would be great to have owned a hot sports car that goes really fast. Priorities are for real.

7) Give me a subject and 48 hours, and I can stand up and speak about it. I wasnt that way when I was younger, but public speaking just became part of what I do.

3. Nominate 7 fellow bloggers and let them know

A great group of beautiful people, beautiful words, amazing pictures and stories… thank you.

http://noblogintended.wordpress.com/

http://istopforsuffering.wordpress.com/

http://findingravity.com/

http://thetruthwarrior.wordpress.com/

http://hopethehappyhugger.wordpress.com/

http://m5son.wordpress.com/

http://starsrainsunmoon.com/

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Blog, Blog award, Definitions, Happiness, Memories, moments, Reality Check, tracks in the dust, Truth

02 Jul 2012

4 Comments

Our Emotional Life

Emotion is such a human thing, isn’t it? We thrive on it and need it to be able to exist. The emotional range of life provides us the very highest of happiness to the depths of sadness, from grief to elation, from the top of achievement and all that goes with it, to the bottom of disappointment in failure.

All of these are part of being human, of living our lives however long they may be. But for some of us we try so hard to put emotions away – bury them so that they cannot get out where others may see them. Yet for others, these emotions trap us in a place where then we can often get caught. It is then we get stuck for what seems endless days, weeks perhaps even years where no escape appears. Perhaps we cannot see the escape, or maybe we just aren’t looking for it. Sure, and there are those who are forever on that “high” as well, blindly flying along with the need to drive to the pinnacle every day. Taking in everything and everyone around them like a vacuum, and not stopping to see what falls along the wayside as the go.

Emotion is human, and it has a lot to do with our progress in life. It drives the very reasons that we persevere, it kindles the very fires that keep us burning for more. It is the center of love, it is the root of hate. It fuels happiness and fear. We fight it, we resist its change, and yet we cherish it and love its diversity. We let it control us and we sometimes let it make us do things we know in our heart are not right, but also let us guide us toward the power of the Spirit by loving everything and everyone around us.

How do you handle it? Are you on the rollercoaster and it goes up and down, or the carousel that goes endlessly around? When you sense it is changing, do you find yourself fighting it? How do you understand when it has clouded your heart? Do you smother your emotions or let them breathe? I guess the first thing to do seems to be to recognise they are there for us because we need them. It may be good to be passionately involved with your emotions. Don’t be angry that they exist, but be sure you have the opportunity to experience them without forever trapping your at the extremes. How would you recognise the difference otherwise.

“To ignore, repress, or dismiss our feelings is to fail to listen to the stirrings of the Spirit within our emotional life.” Brennan Manning