choices | Tracks In The Dust

Archive for the tag “choices”

04 Feb 2014

Songs About “Home”

There is somethings about the word “HOME” that conjures up a lot of feelings.

A destination perhaps, the place you live for sure- but a lot more than that.

A place of comfort – safety. A familiar place. A place for happiness or defeat. Some may see it as a place to run away from. Many may see it is a place they want to return to, while others may see it as something they want to re-create in their lives based on their emotional past.

Home can be where the heart is, or can be what brings you back to the grounding you needed after you have drifted or traveled so far away from it. Like a homecoming. It can contain all of your things that allow you to regain your confidence in who you are, or contain all of the people who are there to reinforce what you were. It can be the place you want to forget on your journey to a new life, or the place you never want to leave because protects you from the unknown.

Home for the holidays, home is anywhere you hang your hat, home sweet home, home is where the heart is, home coming, leaving home, home is where you were born, home is where you ended up, home is where your parents live, a house is not a home, home alone, home together, home at last, running from home, headed home, home by the sea, home on the hill, … the songs and references are endless.

Before you hit your “home” button.

What does HOME mean to you?
What are your favorite song(s) about “home”?

Here are just a few favorite songs of mine 🙂

Homeward Bound – Simon and Garfunkel ( Classic)

Head Home- Midlake ( Great Texas band)

Home Again- Carol King ( Another Classic)

Home Again- Elton John ( All new song from Sir Elton)

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged choices, Faith, Family, Finding Home, Finding Your Way Back, Happiness, Home, Homeward Bound, Love, Memories, moments, searching for happiness

29 Jan 2014

Facing Your Fear Through Faith

Faith.

It’s easy to give-in to the pressure of the people and things that are happening around you. We have a tendency to reach for our own personal courage and convictions to help defend ourselves from those things that seem to attack our sensibilities.

Defending the purpose of our day and the reason for our existence ends up being something that takes a lot of effort and seems to be an unending lifelong job.

It’s a wonder we don’t just give-in to those things that create personal fears and doubts. But we have something that is much stronger than our personal resolve, something that is the shield that helps to make each day what God intended it to be. We can stand firm in our faith and not let personal fear and doubts chip away what God has asked of us.

There will be numerous attacks on our faith. There will be numerous reasons put into our path to convince us to step aside from the strength God provides. Often we can forget what makes us strong, and try to overcome things ourselves.

We tend to believe our strength is ours alone, and then when things aren’t going the way we plan- we give into the fear that waits inside us and we ignore the place of real strength. As a personal cancer warrior I battle that every day of my life.

So there is one answer. Put it all in your faith in Him. Make sure you are consciously aware of the strength it provides;be sure to use your faith and confidence your faith to make yourself stronger each day of your life.

Count on that faith to make the decisions you need to make. Count on the courage that it provides when things aren’t going the way you think it should – because trusting in Him will make the difference. Looking at your life through God will allow you to “be on your guard”.

I had posted this on another blog of mine, but it seems to ring true every day of my life. How about your life?

It’s something to work on daily. It is practice in our faith that will make us strong. Standing firm on what that will provide the courage we need to face our fears and doubts.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Cancer, choices, Compassion, facing fears, Faith, Joy, life is precious, mental-health, personal courage, personal fears, Philosophy, relationships, Religion and Spirituality, Sprituality

27 Jan 2014

Passing On Stories Worth Remembering

Since I can remember I have always been interested in “stories”. I think it is fundamentally something that must be in our DNA from our ancestors. Years before there was a way to communicate in written form, wise men from tribes would pass down to the younger members the most important stories about their history, about lessons learned.

We all have personal stories we want to pass on to others. It is the life blood of social networks and certainly of this wonderful WordPress blogging forum. So much to tell. We all want stories in our lives that are meaningful. Sometimes they are and other times they may be less than profound. It may be that they are meaningful only because of the very perspective you have at the time, the personal eye in which events happened.

Other times they are lessons learned that we need to pass on, if only to provide others the opportunity to know about the past, or to find their own way, or to make sure they miss some of the perils that lie ahead for their own lives. So that was my intention; to tell my kids everything I can about the things that could be important to them. To make them realize that they don’t have to make the “exact” same mistakes I did (even though they will ironically do it anyway).

So years from now, when I have succumbed to the end that faces us all, I hope and wish that my children will have stories for their children and the people around them. They will marvel that many of them were stories that had roots from their father, or that in retrospect were those things they had so passively listened to and filed away and finally they could apply.

Hopefully some of those stories stick, like one of those richly good novels that are fondly recalled. Perhaps like the story that made time stand still for even a seconds pause to be embraced by the generation ahead.

What are your stories? What are the things that you want to pass on that are worth remembering?

A song about “remembering” 🙂

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life, Life's Sound Track (Music) and tagged Acceptance, being remembered, choices, Faith, Grace, Harry Nilsson, Postive Thinking, Remembering the past, Self-Awareness, Sprituality, Telling Stories, tracks in the dust

23 Jan 2014

Why Don’t We Ask More Questions

Advice I give my kids isn’t always followed, but I keep trying. Hoping they keep listening. One advice I have gave them is to “ask questions”.

Today it feels like we are always living with ‘sound bytes’. Short little sentences that say lots but really don’t mean much. Maybe that’s what really motivates a lot of people today when you get in conversations with them. When you ask for information about something, short answers. Sometimes ( maybe often) incomplete. The answer is the answer for your question, it isn’t a lie… but it is missing things. Things they know and you don’t.

Now you can accept the answer, you can decide it is all you are going to get- or it is all you need to know. Many times that’s just fine. I mean if you call an ice cream store and ask them if they have vanilla ice cream, they can answer yes or no (or maybe perhaps). If you are good with that- now you can go to get vanilla.

What they might not tell you is that there is French vanilla, or vanilla with vanilla beans, or vanilla with chocolate sprinkles. Do you care? Perhaps not.

But when there are important decisions to make in your life, things that could improve it, or help avoid otherwise painful situations, or take you on a new direction you may otherwise have not experienced. Then you should be prepared to ask more questions, be more clear about the opportunity or the path ahead.

But ironically, in those situations many times I find myself and those around me asking just the simple questions, getting the sound bite answers, and moving on. Often things that could be meaningful are left unsaid. It’s not that the other people are withholding information, they just aren’t thinking you need to know- or want to know.

So that’s what I have learned in my old age: Follow up questions and answers with more questions. And it pays to LISTEN to the answer. It will provide you the fodder for the next question. Without you may be missing the opportunity, you may be missing a chance to better understand the choices, or better understand your fellow-man.

Simple as that. Yet with short 145 character sensibilities these days, with text message approaches to conversational English and people with so much input that short answers seem desirable- it feels like there is a lot things missing.

Not getting the whole answer feels like it happens a lot more often these days. It isn’t intentional. It is just “fill in the blank approach” to things. So that’s my advice to my family. Ask the questions you need and follow-up with more questions. Be sure you know the course. A lot of times once you do you realize there are people who want to provide more, and make your life better in the cause of it .

I like vanilla ice cream. I like to know all the flavors of vanilla, do they have toppings, can they put it in a cone, can they make it into a shake? Not sure. But always good to know the options. Of course there are more important things than that to know on our journey. Right?

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, asking questions, being ignorant, Change, choices, Definitions, Doubt, knowing more, Looking for answers, mental-health, Postive Thinking, Reality Check

15 Jan 2014

Common Ground

For many people today (not all) there seems to be a great need to stand out in the crowd. Yet we desire common ground for true meaning.

Some will claim that they don’t want to be part of the “crowd”. It seems that the social networking today is centered on being part of a group of people. “Friends”, “Work groups” “Fans” and “Political,Religious or sexual preferences”- we all seem to be looking for our group. It is a good feeling to know that you meld with a group of people who have something in common, yet the desire to “stand out” in a crowd seems to be contradictory but also important to most everyone. Even reinforced by the media, online and other public places by making those “stand outs” be the focus of articles, videos and headlines. The rest of us all gather round and share those things to see what makes others and themselves unique.

So there is the conflict it would seem: We desire to be part of a common group. We want to be identified that way. But it seems that we also have a desire to be treated as unique, to be different. Perhaps to feed our egos. Perhaps to satisfy the need to know that we are personally meaningful in the scheme of time (before our time is up on this planet).

So looking at the web and media it would appear that we all thrive on polarity. We keep being asked to identify which ‘side’ of the argument are you on? In fact the media and online sites want to drive this because it probably sells more media and clicks on a site. In turn, we feed that need because we want to be part of the group. We want to be identified and want to understand why the other side is so “not” in our group.

Of course we all have our own opinions ( want to stand out in the crowd? want to be heard?) But here is where it seems we miss out: we don’t seem to be focused on the similarities regardless of our own unique opinions. Standing out in the crowd is important. But surely no matter what side we land, no matter what opinion we have to make us unique and be “different”… what makes us united is that we are all commonly human beings ( the ultimate group/crowd).

There are reasons for us to be in unity, it is ultimately the reason for our existence.