Don’t Wait When Time is of the Essence

I once had a customer named Joe who lived in Hawaii.  He was a happy-go-lucky cool kind of guy, who worked in bare feet and stopped our telephone conversations to pick up and examine a lizard that crossed his path.  It was always a joy to talk to him, and he brightened my days.

Well Joe got cancer, and headed in a downward spiral that was faster than many.  He sold his belongings, moved back to the mainland so that his family could take care of him; yet he continued to be positive in his outlook.

I got busy with other things, and Joe wasn’t conducting business with me anymore, so he was not in the forefront of my mind.

One day in autumn last year, Joe called my work number, and I was busy with another customer.  He left a message to call him back, and I put it off until the next day, since I had so many pressing things to complete at work.

When I called back late the next day, the phone was answered by his brother, who said that Joe had voluntarily decided to request administration of large amounts of sedative which would keep him in a coma until he passed away.  He had called me the day before to say goodbye, and I had been too busy to take his call.

He passed a week later.

Today, I learned that my brother, who is suffering from terminal brain cancer, doesn’t have much time.  His wife sent out the message that if we were intending on visiting, then we should do so sooner rather than later, as we were not sure how long he would retain cognitive function.  Although I never got to say goodbye to Joe, my final experience with him was a lesson I learned the hard way.  Time is of the essence, and no matter what it costs, or which activities I need to rearrange to get it done, I will be there to say goodbye to my brother while he is still cognizant of our relationship.  These lessons are hard, but I believe that they weave the web of spiritual growth due to the challenges they provide.

Love to all.

 

 

Filling Your Holes

Everyone has holes.  Holes are my description of areas in your life in which you could use a little filling in.  Whether it be that you’re quick to judge, or that you snap at people when you’re hungry, or that you think people who live in trailers are white trash, everyone has particular holes that  need some attention and possibly repair.   It’s not that you have to completely heal them, as perhaps there is something from your upbringing that created these holes in the first place, and awareness of their existence is enough.  Noticing that they are there, and addressing their presence is healing in itself.

Even if you don’t see your own holes, they are apparent to other people.  They show themselves when you interact with them and one of the subjects of your holes is broached.  You react.  It shows.  It either helps you grow, or it holds you back.  You can ask friends to help you with your holes, by gently reminding you when you have revealed an area that may need some further learning.  Do you need to live with the same judgment that you yourself have dealt?  Can you sympathize with someone whose housing situation is currently not as bountiful as yours?  Can you project yourself into another’s eyes and see from their perspective?

If so, then your holes will fill in naturally, with experience and understanding that you were just missing some of the information.  And you will be all that closer to whole.

My Enlightened Wellbeing Self Assessment

I just visited Deepak Chopra’s site and took an Enlightened Wellbeing Self Assessment. Talk about feeling like a mixed bag of growth. The assessment asks simple questions (“Are you happy with your body?”) and questions about enlightenment (“Do you see your world as divine?”) and some referring to terms I’ve never heard of.

The assessment took about 3 minutes, and returned a result smack in the middle of the spectrum…in other words, MEDIOCRE!
This is not what I wanted to see, but when I really reflect on it, I guess it is actually pretty accurate. After all, I am a pretty worldly person (I like my electronic gadgets and sparkly stones), but I do have a sense of the divine and understand the basics of why we’re here.

This assessment, of course, allows me the room to grow, and to focus my efforts on improving the areas in which I scored pretty low (like tapping into the Akashic field, whatever that is). I got a new Kindle, so what better opportunity to take my learning to the Akashic field by way of modern technology…the best of both worlds!

If you would like to take the Enlightened Wellbeing Self Assessment, you can take it here

 

Namaste

Accepting Where You Are

I am certainly one to want to get ahead.  I have a plethora of ideas for making money, creating financial independence, and helping the world, one product at a time.  Yet I also have a job that pays the bills.

Gurus like Larry Winget and Gary Vaynerchuk inspire us to break free of the corporate mold, and start making changes in order to live the lives that we want.  After reading nearly a hundred of these self-help books, I am left with the nagging feeling that these people believe that there are no employers that can provide you with a satisfying job.  In their eyes, you must work for yourself in order to find happiness in what you do.

Although I believe entrepreneurship provides benefits that many traditional jobs do not, such as freedom to make all of the decisions and self-appointed vacations, it can also increase stress levels, tear apart families and create health problems that affect our level of happiness.  I am an entrepreneur myself, and along with the day job, I see both sides of this issue.

Please excuse my oversimplification of the benefits of entrepreneurship vs employee life.  The arguments for both sides are valid yet lengthy, and I am sure that there are plenty of sources that will assist you in choosing what’s best for you.  My subject here is accepting, no matter which path you choose, where you are right now.

Many of us, including myself in the recent past,  spend a lot of time bitching about where we are.  We hate getting up early and leaving our family at 6am. We miss our childrens’ functions due to late meetings, we are too tired to cook dinner after a long day’s work.  After my pity party was over, I decided to make the best of where I was at any particular time and view my world from the perspective of my being exactly where I was supposed to be.

This means doing what you can do, when.  And not feeling guilty about what you didn’t do, unless what you chose to do instead of what you should have done was stupid.

What’s stupid?  Five straight hours of South Park.  Drinking an entire bottle of wine by yourself, leaving a stream of clothes on the floor and dragging yourself to bed.  Hanging out on Facebook and refreshing until you see a comment made on one of your posts.  Those things are stupid, and those places are not where you should be.

This is time wasted, and as we get older, time is exactly the thing we value the most.  So why waste this time?  Even needing to unwind can be productive, if you just want to doodle on a pad and let your mind wander.  That, to me, while perhaps not overtly productive, gives your mind time to stew, to make sense of your crazy life, and, hopefully, turn it into something that will satisfy your temporary need to be–elsewhere.

Sometimes those doodles on the pad are just stick people, and sometimes they turn into ideas that can be useful whether you work inside the home or out–for yourself or for someone else.  And you can see that where you are is exactly where you are supposed to be.

Neat, Trim, Confident, and Filthy

As I drive down Elliot Road every day, I focus on the scenery that lines the street.  Bus stop attendees, people waiting to cross the intersection, and the constantly changing array of retail establishments–all of them are part of my daily view of the world around me during my drive.

There’s one man, that at 4:50 PM every day, is walking down the sidewalk on the south side of the street.  Sometimes he walks east, and sometimes west.  And the one thing that strikes me about him is that he is always filthy.

Homeless?  Not sure.  Maybe he is a blue collar worker whose job includes drywall, paint or cement.  He wears an array of clothes, all filthy.  His shoulder-length hair is as close to a mullet as it can be without actually being one, and he has a Sonny Bono moustache that seems out of place in this day and age.  He is tall and thin and his shirt is always tucked in, and he walks with a swagger that says, “I know who I am.”

Well I am glad that he does, because he seems an enigma to me.  One doesn’t see too many people with those attributes–neat, trim, confident and filthy–and it makes me want to stop and ask him what his life is all about.  But, of course, I don’t, because it’s not my place to do so.

And every time I see him, it impresses me that he is OK with being dirty.  He is OK with showing his true self in public without concern about what others think of his looks.  He knows who he is and he’s OK with it.

Thanks for the example, mystery man.

Seeing Things that Have Always Been There

Five days a week, 50 weeks a year, for 3 years, I have walked out of the same building, gotten into my car, and driven out of the same parking lot to the street beyond.  I see the same cars parked in the spaces as I go by, the same office buildings, and the same trees and shrubs every day.  I barely glance at them anymore since they are so familiar.

So why, one day last week, did I happen to see something across the street–in a direction that I face n the same route day in and day out–that I think I have never seen before? And why did it change my view of life?

Let me explain why this is so profound.  It wasn’t a gaggle of geese, or a broken down Ford, or a blinking road construction sign.

This was an enormous white structure, ninety feet high, spanning 30 acres; a crosshatching of strong white bars that resembled a skeleton from a Tim Burton movie.  No doubt it was some sort of electric plant, but what it was really doesn’t matter.  It’s the fact that I’d never noticed it before.  Perhaps they had been putting it up slowly, I thought, and the structure finally broke the horizon?  Well, after a closer look, the joints were rusting and there was a good layer of aged brown dirt on the thing, so I ruled that out.

That disturbed me.  How could I have missed such a looming structure that was clearly in plain view to me every day for a significant amount of time?

It boils down to this:  I had never focused on it before. And just like a library book whose spine jumps out at you as you walk past it in the library, this structure stood out for me on that particular day because I decided to focus upon it.

I equate this occurrence to many I’ve experienced in other areas of my life:

Facing a challenge with an attitude different from the one I had last time I was presented with that same challenge.
Noticing the beautiful blue eyes in a coworker that I’ve known for years but never bothered to study before.
The markings on my cat’s back that suddenly form the shape of a heart.
The white flowers on a cactus that probably blooms quite the same way every spring.

So if you see something unusual in a usual situation, take the time to view it differently, and notice how your vision expands.  It might just change your view of the whole world as you used to see it.

Beautiful.