Together

 

I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. 

If we’re in each other’s dreams, 

we can be together all the time.

- A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Calm

Be like a duck.
Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath.

- Michael Caine

Worry

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow,
it only saps today of its joy.

- Leo Buscaglia

World Humanitarian Day

Every year on August 19th we mark World Humanitarian Day in honour of aid workers, who have lost their lives in the line of duty. We commemorate their sacrifice and reaffirm our commitment to the lifesaving work that humanitarians carry out around the world every day, often in difficult and dangerous circumstances, where others cannot or do not want to go. This year our World Humanitarian Day campaign is calling on people to answer a QUESTION: ‘What do you think the world needs more of?’”

- Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon

MY ANSWER: On World Humanitarian Day... what the world needs now -- and more of -- is 

L O V E.

Pure and simple.

Peace of Mind

Let your soul expand,
let your heart reach out to others in
loving and generous warmth, and
great and lasting will be your joy,
and all prosperity will come to you.

– James Allen

Calm

Be guided absolutely and entirely by the vision of calmness,
and not by the shadows of anxiety.
The hour of calmness is the hour
of illumination and
correct judgment.

– James Allen

Thank you

If the only prayer 

you said in your whole life was, 

 "thank you," 

 that would suffice.

 - Meister Eckhart

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction
is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please,
or worse, to avoid trouble.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Enjoy!

When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor. It's to enjoy each step along the way.

- Wayne Dyer

Action

Knowing is not enough;
we must apply.

Willing is not enough;
we must do.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Success

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

- Winston Churchill

Family Life

They... threw themselves into the interests of the rest, but each plowed his or her own furrow.
Their thoughts, their little passions and hopes and desires, all ran along separate lines.
Family life is like this - animated, but collateral.

 ~Rose Macaulay

New Beginnings

Every day is a new beginning. Treat it that way.
Stay away from what might have been,
and look at what can be.

- Marsha Petrie Sue

Time

Don’t say you don’t have enough time.

You have exactly the same number of hours per day
that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo,
Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci,
Thomas Jefferson, and
Albert Einstein.

– Jackson Brown, Life’s Little Instruction Book

Service

Heaven is eternal - the earth endures.
Why do heaven and earth last forever?
They do not live for themselves only.
This is the secret of their durability.

For this reason the wise sage puts himself last
and so ends up ahead.
He stays a witness to life,
so he endures.

Serve the needs of others,
and all your own needs will be fulfilled.
Through selfless action, fulfillment is attained.

7TH VERSE - TAO TE CHING

Writing

We write to taste life twice,
in the moment and in retrospect.
- Anaïs Nin

Challenge

Always do what you are afraid to do.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Optimism

Optimism and pessimism are mere matters of optics,
of how you look at things,
and that can change from day to day, or
with a new prescription for your glasses --
or with a new set of ideological filters.

- George Weigel

Life

Life is either a daring adventure,
or nothing.

- Helen Keller

Love

"Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
- Martin Luther King Jr.

Use, Exercise, and Express

Remember:
Courage, unused, diminishes.
Commitment, unexercised, wanes.
Love, unshared, dissipates.

— Anthony Robbins

Purpose

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to live with purpose.

― Michael de Montaigne

Upcoming Year

May your COMING YEAR
be filled with magic and dreams 
and good madness.
I hope you read some FINE books
and kiss someone who thinks
you're WonderFUL, and don't forget to
MAKE some art --
Write or draw or BUILD or sing 
or live as only you can.
And I HOPE, somewhere
in the next year,
you surprise yourself.

 ― Neil Gaiman

Begin

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over again, and you will grow stronger until you have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.

-Anne Sullivan

Born Again

Every man should be born again on the first day of January. Start with a fresh page.

-Henry Ward Beecher

Health

The secret of health for both mind and body
is not to mourn for the past,
not to worry about the future, or
not to anticipate troubles,
but to live the present moment
wisely and earnestly.

- Siddartha Guatama Buddha

Experience

Experience is not what happens to a man.
It is what a man does
with what happens to him.

- Aldous Huxley

Don't Die...

Don’t die with your music still inside you.

Listen to your intuitive inner voice and find what passion stirs your soul.

Listen to that inner voice, and don’t get to the end of your life and say,
 "What if my whole life has been wrong?".

 - Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Abuse

Those who abuse use blaming to confuse and control you. They use blaming to keep you in line and conform to what they want to do. They use it to punish you because  their reality they believe in is not a "kind person's" reality.

If you ever experienced the abuse in any way, realize that what you felt about yourself was a projection from another person's reality, and you bought into it at that time.

You can stop it at any time if you're willing to.

- Neville Goddard

Power

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

 - Marcus Aurelius

Circle of Life

The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.

-  Ivy Baker Priest

Courage

Courage is not the absence of fear,
but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.

- James Neil Hollingworth

Make a Difference

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

- Robert F Kennedy

Generosity and Pride

Generosity is giving more than you can,
and pride is taking less than you need.

-Kahlil Gibran

Self Actualization

You become what you think about all day long
and those days eventually become
your lifetime.

- Wayne Dyer

Gift

A gift consists not in what is done or given,
but in the intention of the giver or doer.

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Greatness

Keep away from people
who try to belittle your ambitions.
Really great [people] make you feel
that you, too,
can become great.

- Mark Twain

Too Soon Old

I've been spending a fair amount of time in senior residences/nursing homes lately, and I can't help but feel for the elders sitting patiently - or not so patiently - as people bustle by them, as though they are invisible. I love this poem -- it reminds us that inside every aged, wrinkled body is a youthful soul who has lived, loved -- and still does.

What do you see nurses? .. . . .. . What do you see?
What are you thinking . . . . . When you're looking at me?
A crabby old man . . . .. . Not very wise,
Uncertain of habit . . . . . With faraway eyes?

Who dribbles his food . .. . . . And makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . . . . . 'I do wish you'd try!'
Who seems not to notice . . . . .. The things that you do.
And forever is losing . . . . . A sock or a shoe?

Who, resisting or not . . ... . . Lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding . . . .. . The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking? . . . . . Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse . . . .. . You're not looking at me.

I'll tell you who I am. . . . . . As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, . . . .. . As I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of Ten . . . .. . With a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters . . . . .. Who love one another.

A young boy of Sixteen . .. . . With wings on his feet.
Dreaming that soon now . . . . . A lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty . . . . . My heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows . .. .. . .. That I promised to keep.

At Twenty-Five, now . . . . . I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide . .. . . . And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . . . . . My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other . . . . . With ties that should last.

At Forty, my young sons . . . . . Have grown and are gone,
But my woman's beside me . . . . . To see I don't mourn.
At Fifty, once more, babies play 'round my knee,
Again, we know children . . . . . My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me . . . . . My wife is now dead.
I look at the future . .... . . . Shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing . .. . . . Young of their own.
And I think of the years . . . . . And the love that I've known.

I'm now an old man . . . . ... And nature is cruel.
Tis jest to make old age . . . .. . Look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles . .. . . . Grace and vigor depart.
There is now a stone . .. . . Where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass . . . . . A young guy still dwells,
And now and again . . . . .. My battered heart swells.
I remember the joys . . . . . I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living . . . . . Life over again.

I think of the years, all too few . . . .. .. Gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact . .. . . That nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people . . . . . Open and see.
Not a crabby old man . . . Look closer . . . See ME!!


- Dave Griffith

Life Lesson

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.

-  Henry Miller

Lessons

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers. 

- Khalil Gibran

Life

In three words I can sum up everything
I've learned about life:
it goes on.

- Robert Frost

Gratitude

Two kinds of gratitude:
The sudden kind we feel for what we take;
the larger kind we feel for what we give.

-  Edwin Arlington Robinson

Dr Seuss Wisdom

Credit:  http://www.mamiverse.com/dr-seuss-quotes-19331/

1.     Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.

2.     Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

3.     Why fit in when you were born to stand out?

4.     Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

5.     You’ll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut.

6.     Think and wonder, wonder and think.

7.     Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So… get on your way.

8.     Unless!

9.     THINK! You can think any THINK that you wish…

10.   If you never did, you should. These things are fun and fun is good.

11.   You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.

12.   You are you. Now, isn’t that pleasant?

13.   Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

14.   It is better to know how to learn than to know.

15.   Everything stinks till it’s finished.

16.   The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

17.   A person’s a person, no matter how small.

18.   I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

19.   Only you can control your future.

20.   Be awesome! Be a book nut. 

21.   Be who you are and say what you mean. Because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

22.   Oh, the things you can find if you don’t stay behind!

23.   It’s opener, out there, in the wide, open air.

24.   Teeth are always in style.

25.   Today I shall behave, as if this is the day I will be remembered.

26.   Will you succeed? Yes you will indeed! Ninety-eight and three-quarters percent guaranteed.

27.   From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.

28.   Step with care and great tact. And remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.

29.   Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

30.   You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…

Hope

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

 ― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Dream Big

Seasons

Live in each season as it passes;
breathe the air,
drink the drink,
taste the fruit,
and resign yourself to the influences of each.

- Henry David Thoreau

Relationships

The light shed by any good relationship illuminates all relationships.

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh 

Anger

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

- Buddha

To be Yourself

To be nobody but

yourself in a world
which is doing its best day and night to make you like
everybody else means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.

E.E. Cummings

Simple Life

To find the universal elements enough;
to find the air and the water exhilarating;
to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter...
to be thrilled by the stars at night;
to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring -
these are some of the rewards of the simple life.

- John Burroughs

Risks

A ship is safe in harbor; but that's not what ships are for.

- John Shedd

What I Learned from my Mother

I learned from my mother how to love the living... to look in their eyes and offer sympathy. I learned that whatever we say means nothing, whatever anyone will remember is that we came.  I learned to create from another's suffering my own usefulness, and once you now how to do this, you can never refuse.
To every house you enter you must offer healing, a chocolate cake you baked yourself, the blessing of your voice, your chaste touch.

In honour of all mothers, today, and every day.

Excerpts from  the poem, What I learned from my mother by Julia Kasdorf

Living Through Difficulty

Right in the difficult we must have our joys,
our happiness, our dreams:
there against the depth of this background,
they stand out,
there for the first time we see
how beautiful they are.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Gardeners

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy;
they are the charming gardeners
who make our souls blossom.

- Marcel Proust

No Mistakes

There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves, no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn; whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go.


- Richard Bach

Wisdom

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past,
but by the responsibility for our future.

- George Bernard Shaw

Fearless

Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to
try new things.
The saddest summary of a life
contains three descriptions:
could have,
might have, and
should have.

- Louis E. Boone

Wisdom

The greatest wisdom is in simplicity.

Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness.

It's not complex or elaborate.

The real knowledge is free.

It's encoded in your DNA.

All you need is within you.

Great teachers have said that from the beginning.

Find your heart, and you will find your way.

- Carlos Barrios, Mayan elder

It's International Women's Day

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deep fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves,
"Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?"
Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world!
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that
other people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It is not just in some of us
It is in everyone!

As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fears, our presence automatically liberates others.

- Marianne Williamson (for Nelson Mandela's inaugural speech)

Women

Women should be tough, tender, laugh as much as possible, and live long lives.

The struggle for equality continues unabated,

and the woman warrior who is armed with

wit and courage

will be among the first to

celebrate victory.

- Maya Angelou

How to Live

This is what you shall do;
Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

 ― Walt Whitman

Tranquility

What is first seen as a loss is now seen as a gain. For he finds solitude, not in far off, quiet places; he creates it out of himself, spreads it around him, wherever he may be, because he loves it and slowly he ripens in this tranquility. For the inner process is beginning to unfold, stillness is extraordinarily important.

- Janwillem van de Wetering

Small vs Big

I am done with great things and big things, great institutions and big success, and I am for those tiny, invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of man's pride.

- William James

Courage

With courage you will dare to take risks, have the strength to be compassionate, and the wisdom to be humble. Courage is the foundation of integrity. - Keshavan Nair

Attitude

Whenever you're in conflict with someone,
there is one factor that can make the difference
between damaging your relationship
and deepening it.
That factor is attitude.

- William James

Anger

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

-  Ambrose Bierce

Woman Power

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

- Anaïs Nin

Yours to Seize

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

Live with Honour

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

- Socrates

Love

Love one another,
but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea
between the shores of your souls.

 ~ Kahlil Gibran

Helping

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Growing Old

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

- Samuel Ullman

Be the Change

Yesterday I was clever,
so I wanted to change the world.

Today I am wise,
so I am changing ....
myself.

 - Rumi

Never Give Up

Photo courtesy TMBrown

When you get into a tight place 

and everything goes against you, 

till it seems as though you could not 

hang on a minute longer,

never give up then, 

for that is just the place and time 

that the tide will turn.

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Simple Philosophy

I have a simple philosophy.
Fill what's empty.
Empty what's full.
Scratch where it itches.

 - Alice Roosevelt Longworth

Parenting

There is one thing you and I as parents cannot do,
nor do we want to do if we really think about it,
and that's control our children's will - that spirit that
lets them be themselves
apart from you and me.
They are not ours to possess, control, manipulate,
or even to make mind.

 - Barbara Coloroso

Love

Love is not a product of reasonings and statistics.
It just comes--none knows whence--and cannot explain itself.

- Mark Twain (Eve's Diary)

Seasons

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.

 - Andrew Wyeth

Strength

Many people think that patience is a sign of weakness.
I think this is a mistake.
It is anger that is a sign of weakness,
whereas patience is a sign of strength.

- Dalai Lama

Faith

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Busy Life

He, who every morning plans the
transactions of the day, and follows that
plan carries a thread that will guide him
through a labyrinth of the most busy life.

- Victor Hugo

Eternal Life

Life is an endless cycle of souls, swirling along the path of the universe, being reborn, but never truly dying before being reborn again. As long as this cycle continues, we will never really die.

- Ameila Wolfe

Change and Growth

Change and growth take place
when a person has risked himself and
dares to become involved with
experimenting with his own life.

- Herbert Otto

Perseverance

Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.

- Charles F. Kettering

My Creed

My Creed

To live as gently as I can;
To be, no matter where, a man;
To take what comes of good or ill
And cling to faith and honor still;
To do my best, and let that stand
The record of my brain and hand;
And then, should failure come to me,
Still work and hope for victory.

To have no secret place wherein
I stoop unseen to shame or sin;
To be the same when I’m alone
As when my every deed is known
To live undaunted, unafraid
Of any step that I have made;
To be without pretense or sham
Exactly what men think I am.

To leave some simple mark behind
To keep my having lived in mind,
If enmity to aught I show,
To be an honest, generous foe,
To play my little part, nor whine
That greater honors are not mine.
This, I believe, is all I need
For my philosophy and creed.

By Edgar A. Guest

Give

Give what you have.
To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Peace

Peace is not something you wish for;
It's something you make,
Something you do,
Something you are,
And something you give away.

- Robert Fulghum