where there is death, there is drama

“In the end these things matter most: how well did you love?  How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?” Buddha

I’ve always been a straight shooter with zero tolerance for bullshit and I come by that honestly as my father was a straight shooter.   Where there is death there is drama – I hate to sound so cold but it’s true.   I remember my father talking about a man he knew that had died.  He didn’t like the man and according to my father, neither did anyone else.  Yet somehow in death the man became this great man and all loved him.  I can still hear my father’s voice as he said ” the man was an asshole, the only difference about him now is he is a dead asshole.” Don’t get me wrong,  I never speak ill of the dead but if I didn’t like someone in life, I don’t like them any better in death.  My father had a point and a lesson taken from that man’s death was to treat people like you want to be treated.

I believe that no one dies before their time and every life on earth has their own destination time to death.   Life is short and you have to take the time to make sure your loved ones know how much you love them.  In every death there is much to be learned;  how one lived their life, good or bad, is a lesson for the rest of us.   Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect and not one of us is better than the other.   After all we all have the same destination – death.  We can’t escape it and sooner or later it’s coming.  How we treat people and how we love is what tells all about us in life  and in death.

Corinthians 13:4-8

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

A great musician died yesterday and I have no idea how he lived his life. I only knew his music.  He was a talented self-taught musician that defied human logic.  The video below is a look at just the man and his talent.  The world was blessed to witness his talent and the video below cuts through all the celebrity circus and takes you to the core and raw Prince Rogers Nelson.  I hope Prince’s life was filled with the same amount of love as his talent.  Enjoy…

 

THE POWER OF POSITIVE

 

“Each problem has hidden in it an opportunity so powerful that it literally dwarfs the problem.  The greatest success stories were created by people who recognized a problem and turned it into an opportunity.”  Joseph Sugarman

When surrounded in negativity, it can be hard to see anything positive.  The more you fall into negative space the more negative your life becomes.  A vicious circle and it can feel never ending and take you to a place where you don’t see any light.

My childhood was filled with negativity, so many negative dynamics shaped my environment and dictated my daily emotions even though the dynamics were completely out of my control.   As a young child I knew that the dynamics would not change and I had to find a way of facing the dynamics and figure out a way to check out and find my positive space.  I spent a lot of time outside, we lived in the city but I found nature in fields and parks and spent my days either finding spiders and snakes or just hanging out.  It was here I found my light and each night I went to sleep, I knew that the light was waiting for me in the morning. If I couldn’t get out of the house, I found happy spaces in the house – it is how I survived the negativity swirling around me.

I would like to say that I continued to be positive and never checked into that negative space, but as I journeyed on in life and became a teenager, rebellion took over and I found ways to be with negative people in negative spaces.  However, the light was always just a throw stick away and eventually I found my way back there again.

Now raising two teenage boys I find myself with negativity swirling around me that seems to be out of my control.  I really try not to be negative but the very nature of living with two teenage boys going through incredible hormonal changes can be extremely negative.   At times my 16 year old when faced with a problem,  can only see the negative side of the situation and when I try to bring forth the positives that can come from the struggle, I face rebuke and confrontation.   All of this is normal as our family faces continuous growing pains, but I find myself looking for my positive space by venturing out into the fields and the parks again to refresh myself in the light and find joy in watching insects, looking for snakes and feeling at one with nature.

Nature and time to myself replenishes my soul and allows me to breathe giving me the freedom to be who I am meant to be all the while pondering the problems that I’m faced with in relationships, friendships, home and work and with each problem I ask myself “what can I bring to the table to make this situation work?”

Amazingly when I give myself the space, I am less reactive to the negativity in my life and I am able to put myself into the shoes of the people I’m dealing with leaving me with less anger and more love allowing me the opportunity to connect, truly connect with the people I love.

 

FINDING ABUNDANCE THROUGH SIMPLICITY

“To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.”  Buddha

It seems like my whole life I have watched people build a life of material objects to fulfill their happiness.  They will obsess over material things and get what they want only to be bored and move on to something else.  It’s not that I don’t value the material things in my life – I do.  However, the obsession with having the right look, the right car, the perfect furniture and the shallowness of thinking I am superior because of what I have in a material way has never been me.  My husband and I are blessed to be able to afford the house that we live in and I enjoy the fact that I have a roof over my head,  but when I really look around, I see four walls, four walls everywhere.  I don’t think this house represents  who I am as a whole person,  nor am I going to find some bliss of happiness by spending a ton of money to fix up the house to make it appear as if I live in the pages of magazine where surely no one could live happily as magazines display a perfect order an order I don’t believe exists.

The older I get the more I am simplifying my life.  I am simplifying my life in every way.  I eat simple, cook simple, play simple and love simple.  I follow paths of simplicity by simply enjoying nature, enjoying simple laughs with my children and my husband, casual conversations that don’t necessarily lead anywhere other than simple enjoyment of another person.  I want to take the time to get to know people, not what they do for a living, how much money they make or what kind of car they drive.  I really don’t care for any of that and the truth be known I find it incredibly boring.  I want to know what a person likes, what makes them laugh and who inspires them.

Interesting because in this social media frenzied world everyone is talking about how perfect their lives are and living with abundance but their interpretation of abundance is full of material things to make their life rich and abundant.  The truth is we could live with less than half of the material things we have and live an incredibly rich life.  The more we have the more baggage we carry and the more baggage we carry the less our spirit soars.

If you are thinking I have a house with hardly any material things, check yourself because I have way more material things than I need.  I live with my  husband, two children and  a mother-in-law, all who carry emotional baggage that translates into material objects.  I want it all gone and if I had my way I would back up my truck and trash it all, but I have to respect other people’s personal property and honour their wishes.  As time moves on and I have started to live in a more simplistic state, I am finding that slowly but surely the pack is following.  In the last five months my husband has been on a roll to get rid of his clutter and material baggage and my youngest is almost ready to give up the rest of his childhood toys that he no longer uses.  Matt and I have gone through his toys and gotten rid of most things but he is having  a hard time letting go of his lego – several huge boxes of lego.  I keep telling him that another child would be so happy to own this lego and he might as well let it go and make someone else happy.

A natural order as the energy flows from an older child down to a smaller child bringing both to a happier place.  My son doesn’t quite see it like that yet, he sees it as letting go of a period in his life that is gone and he’s holding on to that period with everything he’s got.  Slowly he is coming around as we talk about letting go and moving on, plus he sees that if he gets rid of all that lego, his personal space would open up giving him more room  and freedom for his paints, more room to draw and be creative using a different medium to broaden his artistic ability.

The shift is happening, we are all on the path to abundance through a  more simple life.  I also have to learn patience because the life shift is not happening fast enough for me but I know that shifts in lifestyle and attitude take time and in order for me to truly find abundance in simplicity, I have to respect everyones personal space and property.  A lesson in humility for me as I continue on this journey we call life..