Highs and Lows

Life is full of things that will drive you down. Things that will hold you under until you feel as though you cannot breathe.

Life is also full of things that lift you high. Things that will take you to beyond joys you have known in the past and exceed them to the extreme.

Both are necessary.

If all we have is joy in our life it ceases to have meaning. How would you know you are happy if you do not know sorrow? Happiness becomes mundane if it is constant. Like the best tasting dish at the table, to eat is to savor, but if it is all that is consumed it loses its unique flavor. It becomes ordinary and as it does so we become unsatisfied with it. Being unsatisfied with the happiness we have will lead us to strive for more, perhaps to strive for the unattainable. A dangerous game to be sure. We must realize the pleasures we already have as our own.

The pains and sorrows we feel keep us in check with our happiness. It shows us how things may be worse, how things can go wrong for us. If we are lucky these pains are slight and do not pin us down for long. As bad as these times can be we need them. We need to know the darkest hours so we may embrace the light.

"Success is counted sweetest by those who ne'er succeed." Emily Dickinson

Luck

I believe in luck, I do. It comes and goes like most things in our lives. Sometimes we are lucky, good things happen to us for no apparent reason, they just do. Other times our good luck turns and we end up on the other end. It can happen to anyone, doesn't matter who you are. Now for as much as I rely on logic in my life believing in luck may seems strange, it may seem more so with the fact that I believe in lucky charms... not the cereal OK...

Everyone has items that make them feel good. For some reason the item gives them the idea that they are lucky, that good things will come their way. There is nothing wrong with that, and to some extent I think it works.

I do not think that the item on its own has any value of luck, instead I think it is the way that the person feels makes it lucky. Let me explain...

When you have an item that you believe to be lucky it can give you a positive attitude. You will feel a little more confident in your actions and therefore when you act it is with a better attitude.

With a better attitude comes better action. You may take try a little harder or look at things in a different way, and that can affect the outcome. Giving a little more effort and working towards things just a little bit more can make all the difference. If a "lucky" stone, ring, shirt, hat, etc. gives you that confidence to try, they work. The difference between success and failure can be as simple as how hard you try and the opportunities you seize. Being open to chance can be good luck in itself.

"When it comes to luck we make our own" Bruce Springsteen - Lucky Town

Walking an Edge

When walking a razors edge of emotion it is good to know you have friends who are there for you. Whether or not you need there help does not matter, what does is the fact that they are available and willing to help. Knowing that you can say what you need to, and show your rawest emotions is help enough. It relieves the pressure of having to hide emotions or thoughts. Only someone who truly cares is able to allow such comfort.

I have a host of true friends and am very thankful for them.

"Think where man's glory most begins and ends,
And say my glory was I had such friends." - William Butler Yeats

Strength

Strength is endurance. Now, I know there is the whole physical strength thing and that is fine, but, to me, emotional and mental strength is much greater.

Physically we have things thrust upon us each day, having to carry things, walk places, lift heavy items etc. but for most of us our true limitations of physical strength are never reached. We are rarely put into a situation where we have to lift 400lbs by ourselves, so the ability to do so is rather moot.

Emotions and mental challenges come and go like the wind. Through our days we have to deal with people, problems, stress, and all the other tasks we need to accomplish to get us through our day. These things keep piling up and piling up on us. We can pick away at them and if we are lucky they never amount to anything we can not handle. The problem is that at any given moment something may happen to bring our emotional or mental strength to its limits. Everything from the car not starting when you have that all important job interview to someone you love being hurt can tear a person down. Our mental strength is all that we have to get us through such times. It can beat us down to the point of tears but we can keep plugging through, we have to.

There are things that can be too much for anyone to handle. It is at these moments when our world is crashing down that only the strongest make it through with minimal scars. The strongest bear it all because they understand one very important thing... pride and ego are a luxury that not all of us can afford. They are able to lay pride down and ask for help. It is not easy to do, I am very guilty of avoiding such things and it has gotten me into trouble in the past. To be able to ask for help from someone, whether it be a loved one or a total stranger is important. True strength is shown in the ability to endure the hardship of admitting you cannot do it alone.

"Through endurance we conquer." - Ernest Shackleton's family motto.

Be Present

Just another something that passed through my mind at work today.

There is no past. There is no future. There is only the present.

The past is gone, sure we can remember it, hopefully learn from it, but we can not relive it or change it. There is nothing we can do about it.

The future is not guranteed. Sure we can plan, and it is not always a bad thing to do, but there is no set future, too many things can interfere. Making reservations when going out of town is a good idea, but if something happens and you end up going nowhere the reservations were pointless. We can plan all we want but can not know for certain those plans will come about.

So what does that leave us? It leaves us the present. A friend of mine, Kathleen (thank you), has quoted to me several times from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now... "There is never a moment that is not right now." I am learning to agree with this.

I have had two experiences in my life of absolute presence. I was completely in the moment, thinking of nothing else than my surroundings and the current situation I found myself. I will not go into details on these, it is something I am saving for myself.

I will say this about one of the moments... it surprised me, and did so because it was at a time when I should have been questioning everything. I should have been scared, nervous, embarrassed, and a number of other things, instead I was completely calm and present. I was not worried about things, everything was just as it was with no thoughts of anything else. It was tranquility defined.

To find that moment is not always easy, but when it comes it is something to be held onto. Try it sometime.

Anger

Anger is a true emotion. It is a healthy emotion, as most are. It is in the expression of that anger that problems begin. To say or do things out of anger can lead us to places we do not wish to go, we may lower ourselves to a point where we trade our anger at others for disappointment in ourselves. Sometimes it is best to ignore those who have done something to anger us. Those that have done us wrong have hurt us, but by letting it go we show that we are the stronger of the two.



Letting things go is something I am working on, and will probably have to continue to work on in the future. I am getting better at it but it is an ongoing process.



To put more negativity into the world will do no one any good. Creating an atmosphere of tension or anger keeps it on you, you have to live in the world you create, it can be positive or negative based on your reactions. It is good to express anger, but it must be done in a way that is healthy to you. The person who stimulates the anger is the focus, but any reaction is yours to live with. To be angry with someone for a time and to express it can help, but only in its ability for us to be done with the problem. We express our anger in a good way and we can move on, express it in a bad way and the atmosphere will be permeated with tension. As Marcus Aurelius says in The Meditations "What injures the hive injures the bee."


We have a choice in our reactions. We do not HAVE to respond in any certain way. The strongest of us choose a path of integrity.

Friends

A true friend sees flaws and is willing to look past them, not accepting them as excuses but rather as challenges to be overcome. A true friend spends time and energy making someone better. A true friend is unconditional. A true friend is for life with connections that can not be broken because they offers forgiveness and acceptance in all things.