Tracks In The Dust

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

26 May 2012

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Summer Begins

In the US this weekend is special, it is Memorial Day weekend. On Monday we are to observe a holiday that is dedicated to pausing to recall our veterans of the military who have fought for our freedom. It is one of the most important holidays we have as as a federal holiday, as there are so many fallen men and women who have blazed the trail for our country. They should not be forgotten.

It is also the unofficial beginning of summer. Even though summer solstice isn’t until June – this holiday weekend seems to be the launch of summer, and for all things that it means. My memories of this Memorial Day weekend have always been steeped in tradition and anticipation. Over the years it came to signify the end of the school season and the beginning of some serious length of days off. Of course once you are out of school it’s different. But the ghost of that feeling is still there.

Other summer memories of smells, sound and sun kick in as well. Barbeque on the grill meant that smell of lighter fluid and briquets that had a pungent petroleum smell that always ended up in good eats! The sun-tan lotion that smelled like coconut. The cold brew taste of beer and the music that was pure-pop, originally on some little tinny radio on AM but later blasting thru the latest size of boombox. The Beach Boys begat the psychedelic pop of the late sixties, that brought on the dancing music of the seventies and the punk of the eighties and grunge rock of the nineties, but there was always something that would wrap the sounds of the summer in a package.

So for me the summer begins, not so idyllic as it once was, but summer none the less. Some promise of some “summer vacation” where there could be some “summer fun” (cue the Grease song). Some days when it will be too hot to go out but we will anyway to take in the summer. Nites on the patio with a cold sweating drink, time around the pools or at the beach. Perhaps some time onboard a boat on the cool water of the ocean or lake of your choice. What ever it is, summer is here.

The bookend to that will be that weekend at the end of summer. The unofficial end on Labor Day weekend in the US when we all begin our journey to the fall season. Bring out the warmer clothes in anticipation of those crisp autumn days where we can enjoy trees changing colors and fire pits with a warm glow. But until then, it is time to soak up the sun. May it be a wonderful summer.

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life, Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged Joy, life is precious, Memorial Day, Memories, Music, Slow Down, Summer

25 May 2012

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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?

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged being remembered, choices, Grace, Information Age, moments, People, Philosophy, Reality Check, religion, Self-Awareness, Sprituality, tracks in the dust

23 May 2012

Kindness

Another one of my life’s songs along with my previous post “Compassion” is this one from my favorite artist Todd Rundgren. It is called “Kindness”. It is an attitude and characteristic that seems so lost these days in some circles. There are people who show you kindness, and you have to remember what that feels like and share it back.

So much more anger and frustration these days leads to violence and uncaring attitudes. We all need to take the lessons of kindness and pass them on.

I don’t mean to keep posting music (let alone my fave artist) – but it hit me again how fortunate it is to give and receive kindness in our lives, and how often it may be missing on our mission here on Earth.

Kindness by Todd Rundgren

The one that showed me kindness
Was the one that taught me kindness
Though I did not recognize it
Still I might have died without it
And when I awakened
It was too late to thank her
If I live someday I’ll make repayment
And show someone the kindness she showed me

When my voice grows strident
When I feel important
I’m reminded of that kindness
And where I’d be without it
I’m learning my lessons
It may take me a lifetime
Give me strength to justify my being
And show someone the kindness shown to me

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life, Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged Acceptance, Compassion, Definitions, Grace, Kindness, Music, Self-Awareness, Sprituality, Todd Rundgren

16 May 2012

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The Parallel Lines of A Relationship

Some times life and the relationship with my life partner run parallel, other times they constantly seem to intersect.

Like two lines we are running along the path together, sometimes we are running next to each other on separate paths – close or distant but along the same direction. Other times we intersect – often make connections on many levels, physically, mentally, reflecting on life’s observations, agreeing on the trials and frustrations of the world around us.

Sometimes those lines are exactly on top of each other. Other times they are spiraling around like diving birds on the summer wind. But parallel or intersections, we continue to move on together.

Once in a while one of us needs to catch up, other times one of us will get far ahead. But ever heading forward, like 2 lines on a piece of paper drawing lines that move ahead in time. Sometimes opposites, but then they say that “opposites attract”. There it will be again: an intersection.

Parallel lines may mean some days we just aren’t seeing eye-to-eye on things. We may be so far away from each other that we ask “where have you been”? Other days we are intersecting with a rhythm of love, sex, and emotion. We love the sharing, we love the intersection. Yet there are days thankfully that we are running apart, those busy times when we are both trying to grasp our own place on the line. Hold on to the path and forward the course of our time on this Earth.

Thank goodness that we are not always on the same line, I think we would struggle to not be ourselves. But just as thankful are those valuable times when the intersection is glorious, beautiful, what memories are built on… before the line continues again off on the plane of life. It is all good. Spirals up and spirals down, straight ahead and weaving back and forward with each other.

Relationships run like parallel lines that still may often intersect, and sometimes run together or farther apart. Live the line, follow the tracks. Don’t give up when the lines seem to never intersect, work harder to find the ways to make sure they do. Just don’t expect them to constantly be connected.