Don’t Wait While Life Melts Away

I have insomnia tonight! It always seems like so much to do around here and it’s getting colder by the day. This is the weekend I chose to put everything away, redo some areas, move things around, sort, discard and donate stuff. I was listening to Maine Public Radio (MPR) playing their musical album of the week, it was really good too, and while listening I did some meditation then started doing some research and updating online.

Then I stumbled upon this VERY GOOD video – I even watched it twice, or rather listened mainly. “Change Your Closet, Change Your Life”– Gillian Dunn, TedXWhiteRocky.

I think this one really helped me because I am currently really cleaning my closets out and rearranging storage in my home. Doing this has a cathartic affect on me; change things and purge the junk. I want to get all of these little cumulative tasks and repairs finished before the deep cold weather sets in. Being all alone, it takes a ton of energy and planning, yet I really actually get into it and like the accomplishment feeling when I am finished and can stand back and say, “There. That’s better.”

It also reminds me that waiting for things to happen before you do something, like waiting for a special occasion to wear a certain piece of clothing, you got to think to yourself “What if ‘someday when____‘ never happens?” Then you’ve lost the joy for nothing while needlessly depriving yourself the pleasure and happiness you should have had while it was there? No, choose your happiness NOW, live NOW, because in that emergency moment in life the important things become very clear in your mind, you won’t remember what you were waiting for.

Yeah, as stuck as I am at this moment with some things in my life, I do know what is important to me and if I were only rich I could do what I really want to do right now, so I am just trying to be patient with life while doing the best things I can do with what I have and keeping myself. I don’t want to let the candle melt…dammit. Life is happening right now, TODAY. Go get it. Wear the stilettos, the good boots, the dress, the new suit, and treat yourself good. Make yourself happy with what makes you happy. Small actions can lead to big things, it’s up to each of us to make it a life we enjoy for ourselves.

I hope you all enjoy this video. I know it’s a little long, but it’s worth it believe me! Hell, I even saved it in my video folders on my channel, so I can remind myself that we can change our lives to be better for us and for the world around us.

I’m off to sleepyville I hope. Damn, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in I can’t tell you how long. I tend to sleep 2 hour increments and never before 2am lately. It’s actually extra late – or early depending on how you look at it – it’s 3:47am…yeah, time to crash!!

Peace ~ MB

Solemn Memories of September 11, 2001

Today is Monday – September 11, 2017….the 16th anniversary of the bombing of the 9/11 attacks on America…US flags will be flown at half-staff today in remembrance.

I worked a few hours this morning and am home now…and I am remembering exactly where I was 16 years ago today when the first plane hit the Twin Towers in NYC…I was building a barn, and was standing up on the floor of the 2nd story or loft area, readying to put up the roof rafters.  Time seemed to stand endlessly still.  Then the second plane hit.  By this time I was in the house in front of the television watching it live…and I was crying.  All of those innocent people, on the plane, in the buildings…and then we hear that another plane has hit the Pentagon…more death and destruction…then the field in Pennsylvania…carnage.  Then the Twin Towers fell…this was hell.

I will never forget that day.  Or the weeks that followed as we tried to wrap our minds around what had happened, and why it had happened.  It was the our baptism by fire into the world of terrorism.  Pretty much up until 9/11/01 the citizens of the USA lived in a sort of world where we almost thought we were untouchable by outside forces.  We believed that “it would never happen here” in our own backyard.   No one would dare attack the United States directly….then it happened on September 11, 2001.  That very day our whole world changed; flipped completely upside down and would never be the same again.

For days I was glued to the television watching the live news casts for hours on end.  I couldn’t sleep, no one could.  People were missing.  People were severely injured.   And eventually we would learn that almost 3,000 were dead.  We were all devastated, as posters and notes to the missing were being tacked up all over NYC.  Families searched for loved ones, and some found them unharmed, some never heard from them again.  We heard about those trapped in the towers calling loved ones to say good-bye on their cellphones…unbelievably sad.

9/11/01 was a day that changed me.  It changed America.  It changed all of us.  We were not invincible.  We had been attacked; savagely attacked and cut to the core.  Everyone knew someone who was lost in the attacks, or knew of someone who was directly affected.  It’s an amazing thing, the way we are all so intertwined.  It’s the phenomenon that we are all connected within 6 degrees….or the 6 degrees of separation theory.  I’ve found it to be quite true in most instances.

Because of the attacks on 9/11/01 I have far more consciousness of living life in the moment, not passing up chances to learn new things, meet and know new people, and not to take it for granted that there will be a tomorrow.  I, like many, developed a deep rooted sense of prejudice against Muslims; one which I have worked hard to get over and change.  I admit it, at that time I blamed radical Islamic teachings and those who were part of that faith for the attacks.  Now, I know that it is a small percentage of Muslims that hate America and wish to attack us because of this hate.  I have worked to overcome my misguided prejudices, and to understand better.  I now have friends who are Muslim, and even a cousin who married a Muslim man and converted to his faith.  I no longer blame them all, but those 7 terrorists that carried out those senseless attacks on 9/11/01…I hope they are rotting in extreme hell.  And as we know, their leader Osam Bin Laden is DEAD, and hopefully he’s rotting in hell as well.

So, today, 9/11/17, I stop to remember, because we can NEVER FORGET that fated day in 2001, when the world stopped, and we all changed.  We must NEVER FORGET.

Peace.  ~  MB

 

Getting Ahead – “Mad at the world?”

This is the first in a series of blogs I will do about this.  It is something that has been on MY mind very much lately and that I need to get down on paper myself.  So I have decided to share it with you, my readers.  I do not share all of my writings, many are posted privately for a variety of personal reason, some have restricted reader lists, and some are just for my own eyes.  But THIS is something that I think I can share, that I have been faced with, that may make you ponder how you can always be improving your own “circumstance” and making the world – YOUR world – a better, happier, more fulfilling place for you to BE every day from here on out.  Happy reading!  

 

Mad at the World…

I have known (and know) people who are mad at the world.  You hear it in every word that they speak.  They are angry that they “are where they are” in life; dissatisfied with the position they have found themselves seemingly “locked” into by lineage, economics, geography, faith, society, etc.  These people are becoming more and more evident to me as I listen, and I feel for them.  They simply do not know how to unwind themselves from the May pole they have twisted themselves onto.  

I have had to fight and fight very very hard to not be one of those people.  It’s an easy place to wind up; to just stop and let the world dictate to you what you will and will not do, or be able to do, or achieve for yourself.  I did stop for a while, and it just made my insides all thick and made it hard to breathe, to move and to motivate myself at all.  Then I realized I was being sucked into this vast canyon of self-pity and despair and I, too, was becoming one of those who are “mad at the world”, blaming my entire life on something called “circumstance out of my control”.  That does not really exist. Only in our imaginations are “circumstances out of our control”.  It’s an easy way of saying “This is too hard and I cannot do it, thus it must be out of my control to change this ______(insert circumstance) by myself, so I must just suffer with it and live with it, until _______(insert imaginary cure) happens for me”

I have done this too.  Everyone probably has at some point or another.  But you cannot let yourself do this forever, or you will truly be a victim of your own circumstance!  People were born to grow, to change, and they are meant to get up every morning and go out and keep trying to make their own lives and the lives of those around them better in some small way.  And eventually all of those small days, small ways; all of the subtle little things they do as they work to change things for the better, add up…and suddenly they are standing in a place that IS better and they don’t even realize it until they think very deeply about what they have done.  It may not have been moving mountains, but perhaps it was helping a little old lady across a busy street, or helping the guy at the hardware store find that part to fix his wife’s washing machine so she would stop pestering him to do so – his life just got better with the discovery that YOU could help him!  And your life got better because your heart beat a happy beat that you had helped someone, eased their burden, and that in turn will come back to you – in the form of happiness, one tiny ray at a time, until your world is filled with these forward moving, happy moments.  

Do not be “mad at the world”.  Do not wake up and say “ugh, another day in this dump”.  Do not go to a job you hate, just to make a paycheck…go because you are building skills to move your world forward to the next job that will be that much BETTER.

Use your brain to change the way you think about this, change your thoughts and you can change your life.  It’s a proven fact.  Einstein did not think up the theory of relativity in one session…he worked a little bit at a time, in every thing he did, from putting his socks on to calculating on a blackboard, every day he moved a little bit closer until he felt the sunshine of success on his face and he UNDERSTOOD!  THAT was his goal; his success in life. Just simplify and do the little things every day that make your life better, that make you a better person, and that make the world better.  

If your goal is to change the way you live then start right now.  What is the first thing that needs to happen, that you need to MAKE happen to start your journey?  Put you socks on.

Dress yourself for your success.  I know it sounds far too simple, but bear with me and I know you will understand.  Look in the mirror and take a quick personal inventory of what you see.  Are you the best you that you can be today? Do you look the best you can look for your day? (I do not mean wear your church clothes to work either…be real).  If you look good then you will know that you also FEEL better, right?  It’s always nice to catch a glimpse of ourselves in a mirror or department store window and think “wow, I look pretty darned good!”  How you look and feel about how you look each day when you walk out the door of your home is the place to start making the change in your life that you so desire – and will have – if you work at it.  

Sounds too simple?  Trust me, try it. I guarantee you will notice a difference.  If not I will give you all of your words back! 🙂    …more coming soon.  ~MB