Definitions | Tracks In The Dust

Archive for the tag “Definitions”

24 Apr 2014

Defining Your Life Expectancy

We all have one life, with a beginning and an end. We can do what we can to manage our “Life Expectancy”. Take care of our health, be sure we eat correctly, get proper exercise. Make safe decisions in life and don’t put ourselves in the path of danger. We live in a time when people are living longer than ever.

But perhaps life expectancy should be more about what you “expect” out of life.

Why is it that we have so many expectations in our lives? Expectations of others, expectations of the people we love and the people we work with. When those people and things around us don’t meet our expectations, we can often let that change the complexion of our lives. We become angry, disappointed, disenchanted . Sad to say that we are sometimes our own worse enemy.

So when one life expectancy meets our lives expectations we need to be sure we understand. Time is precious, and our expectations need to be precious too. We can try to pin them on anyone and anything in the world around us, but in the end they are ours.

How long in our lives do we have to achieve those things we expect? God knows.

What do you accept and what are the things that will be meaningful to you?(

(Perhaps that is truly your life expectancy)

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Anger, Changes, choices, Death, Definitions, expectations, Happiness, Life, Postive Thinking, Self worth, Self-Awareness, Truth

07 Apr 2014

5 Top Secrets To Happiness

5 Top Secrets To Happiness.

A very wonderful post from the Truth Warrior. Sharing

Posted in Learning Lessons Along the Journey Of Life and tagged Advice, choices, Definitions, Happiness, Joy, Postive Thinking, Self-Awareness, tracks in the dust

27 Mar 2014

Focused Restoration

Recently, some very wise men spoke to me and others on the perspective of “restoration.” It was profoundly interesting that it applies in so much of our lives each day.

We work to restore those things that are broken in our lives by doing some fairly outlandish things. Just like those projects to help restore the broken things around us, we work to restore ourselves and others.

As we try to fix what is broken in our relationships, what is broken in our lives – at work, in our families, with our friends, with our own spirituality… our chances of getting it wrong are very high. We tend to count on our own sensibilities to reason out our restoration.

Or worse yet we may be working on restoring others around us. It may be easy to point at others and see their imperfections. It may even be reassuring that by doing so, we can tuck away our own need for restoration. Do you know those “fixers” that work to fix up others in their lives, but miss working on themselves? The focus is elsewhere.

Personal restoration can be kind of like a facade. A false front that has little content behind it. Maybe just go for the quick fix: If “only I ” do this one thing- everything will be better. Life is moving kind of fast, so we hunt down that magic thing that will solve the problems in our lives, will help to mend the issues that seem to be looming and keep us from the better life, keep us from being a better person.

But ultimately I think, the truth is in how we focus our energy, how we make sure that we are doing those things we can do and putting our trust in the outcome. The expectation may be different from the result. Perhaps we need to invest in ourselves? Some may see that as selfish, but it is the genuine investment in our spirituality. The focus on inspecting our hearts and our souls to know that we are right and true to ourselves.

Posted in Doing Things That Will Change Your Life and tagged Acceptance, Definitions, Faith, Grace, Personal restoration, Philosophy, Postive Thinking, Reality Check, Religion and Spirituality, spiritual focus, Sprituality

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

21 Jan 2014

1 Comment

Songs About “Time”

“Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.” – Henry Van Dyke

Coming up on my the end of my 2nd year of posting to “tracks in the dust” and I think I have shared my thoughts a lot on time and its passages. It is truly thinking through the concept of the idea of our tracks we leave behind us in our lives. Each day,each hour we have during our mission here on earth, time passes and we have less of it until that moment our life ends in this form.

Time is something no one can change once it has passed, and everyone is subject to it in the moment that is “now”.

There are so much said on the blogs here in WordPress, so many books written about it, so many songs ( there I am again in the musical mode). It is

We all are subject to the changes that time deals out. It changes everything – except that when it tries to change us we seem to so often be surprised. Go figure I guess.

We all understand that there is no way to stop the clock and wait for things, as much as we sometimes wish. Like stopping a terminal illness until a cure, it won’t happen. It is 5 years since my cancer surgery and start of radiation treatments and time has been kind. I have been blessed that the ongoing treatments invented to help fight the disease are helping, and that while I am surviving as new things are being discovered to help further fight it. Count on the fact there will always be that race.

My kids will often wish that time would hurry, so they could get to the next thing in their lives. Live for the big event, live for the weekend. Look out toward the horizon. But they stop looking at the “now” and cherishing what that is. I think that comes with age (maybe) or the wisdom that is provided us by the life we live and the perils in it.

Which all leads up to the point I have made again and again. The secret of life is enjoying the passage of time.

Enjoying while you can. It is yours to spend until the end… time waits for no one.

Some of my favorite songs about time:

Ambrosia: Time Waits for No One