What's Happening Right Now?

Everyone has heard this one....

 

Yesterday is History.

Tomorrow is a Mystery.

Today is a Gift.

That's why it's called the Present.

 

 

This morning, cleaning my free (YEAH!) food dehydrator of all the ickiness the previous owner left on and in it, this thought came to me. Doing the most mundane of tasks actually frees your mind for thoughts and connections to rear their lovely little heads.

 

When that happens, which hasn't been often as I've been so busy lately,  I pay attention.

 

My family is not rich. We aren't able to travel as much as we'd like. We have to pay for repairs on our house, cars, and ourselves. We have some debt but not enough for sleepless nights. We have love in our home. We love our family and friends and they love us. We have an active Faith. We help others, despite our own needs. We take care of each other and others. We have choices of what we eat and when. We are provided for abundantly, in our eyes. Lastly, we take no credit for it.

 

Those who spend their days, struggling for more and more, for bigger, for faster, for better, for riches, for appearances, for the 'ideal', I pity. They are missing out on each day's blessing of just being. Think of all the years given to a job for a promotion instead of with the children, of shopping for cars instead of giving to the poor, of browsing through malls instead of clothing others. It's time spent poorly in the great scheme of things, don't you think?

 

I lack the shopping "gene" so that pleases my husband, but it's a good thing because it allows us to give from our house to someone in need and to many charities. The funds that enter this house take care of us, of course, and of our Brothers and Sisters in the World. Our time is spent enjoying each other but also in helping as many of our Little Ones and Old Ones as possible.

 

This isn't bragging. This isn't just filling up the hours in-between sleep. It's not ambition for it's own sake. It's using our Free Will, daily, to point ambition in a different direction. It's a statement of how Life is. If you think you have what you do, are what you are, or do what you do because of what YOU did, you're fooling yourself.

 

Let's look at it scientifically and logically.

 

If one of the Laws of Physics is true that nothing can be created or destroyed, there must be a Creator from the beginning of all, correct? You can't burn, dissolve, tear, or bury anything without it changing into something else. It never goes away. Field trip to a landfill, Anyone?

 

Buried bodies become ashes and food for other creatures and the earth's plants, water evaporates, becomes gas, condenses, and comes back as rain, every movement uses and produces heat and energy, breathe and you exhale gas that feeds plants using it for growth, rip a piece of paper and you have two pieces, burn that paper and it becomes Carbon ashes, and whatever Man creates (i.e. plastics) came from something else, like petroleum, which comes from the Earth. The simplest life form, or non-living object for that matter, that you can think of has always been in one form or another.

 

Yep. Scrubbing that dehydrator was a good thing.

 

The laundry will have to wait.

 

Reboot Challenge? Perform an act today not requiring your little grey cells. See what happens.

What Does My Zodiac Sign Tell Me?

Nothing.

As Christians, we are warned not to believe in soothsayers, astrologers, magic, mediums and the like, in the Old and New Testaments, because it's a form of idolatry that goes against our Faith. It's a slap in God's face, basically. Now, I may lose or gain a lot of readers because of that and upcoming statements but sit tight. I have some science to back me up, as well. Unlike what many believe, Religion and Science have, can and do work hand-in-hand. Most of it is just common sense.

First, let's get a definition of what the Zodiac is supposed to mean.

In it's earliest known history (talking Babylonia, here!), there was nothing to do at night BUT look up at the stars. Wonderful, informative, and useful astronomical observations were made that way. Where it took a wrong turn into telling you how your day will be or how your personality is, that's a jump I can't wrap my head around. For a more detailed definition, please see the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiac

I would never ridicule anyone who clings to this manner of living their lives, but I need to warn them that it pulls them away from the best place to be, in God's loving embrace as His son or daughter. I can leave the house without checking a Horoscope. But I wouldn't want to leave my BED without God. That's my belief and I'm stickin' to it. We meet our challenges in life head-on with Faith that good or bad, we have God in our corner. It's the one constant we all have as we turn around on this rock.

As Christians, we trust in God. We are not a superstitious people. I just itch whenever I see a Baptized Christian tossing salt over their shoulder or saying don't open an umbrella in the house! Our Faith is our faith. Old wives tales are just that.

No internet update or newspaper Horror-scope will change my day. I know my own personality and have no need for them to tell me about myself or the one the stars say matched me to marry. They don't know me and can't tell me how to live my day. If I believed in that, I wouldn't even be able to leave the house on a day they say not to leave! I'd spend my day looking for the other shoe to drop and in paranoia of an event to come. Where's the control of my own life in that? Where is the Joy of living with that?

That being said, I find no 'thrill' in being a particular sign. I see nothing but coincidence in meeting others of the same, knowing that the odds are I WILL meet another 'sign' with the same characteristics. We ALL have similar characteristics! We are all human. We all have different characteristics due to genetics, environment and experiences, none of which will make us the same as one who happened to be born around the same time as we were. The nearest similarity are study results of people who suffer with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). It is as close as one can get to why a group born during one season, and not another, is affected. The information may help affected people and lead to other research of this type. However, it has nothing to do with Astrology/Horoscopes. I can get on board with this type of study because of the hope that it will help others.

Even the article says, take it with a grain of salt, because there are other factors that may influence the study, like the location of the research far from the Equator.

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/does-season-birth-affect-personality

Faith is not the same as superstition. Historically speaking again, we can back up our Faith. But that's another post. The one and only time I went to a psychic was when I was flailing around in the world and following others in my youth without a voice of my own. I went with friends during a camping trip. We went to town to see this woman. Her husband told us she wasn't home because she was out and had a flat tire. I should have known then to save my ten bucks! How does a psychic not know she's going to have a flat?

Another told my elder brother he'd live to be 81. He was dead before his 30th Birthday.

I'll just keep my Faith in God and live the life He suggests. I'm considering the source, as it's said. It's a source of Love, of Good and, surely, more accurate and trustful than a sponsored ad. He knows His sheep and we know Him.

Done. That's A-to-Z for the month of April, 2015!!! Yeah, me! Met the Challenge!

Hope someone's enjoyed reading this month. Numbers were definitely up! Thank you, All!

God bless you!

Being the Best You

Let's say money, time, consequences, and objections were not an issue for you.

What, then, would you do? Where would you want to go? To live? What job? What home would you have and where? What would you create? Who would you want in your life?

Can you answer those questions without using the words "as big as a Kardashian's", "like Beyoncé", or "where Rihanna goes"?

If you can't, you are not searching deeply enough.

I've written a lot about dreams and dreaming and will never knock it. I don't believe we should have identical dreams or the same as those of others that fell ass backwards into extreme lifestyles.

My time was spent  chasing a dog down the street, from my car, because I knew he would, eventually, end up in the street and injured, if not dead. I'm telling this because, I wasn't the only one out there trying to catch this little dog that fearfully ran from everyone. Cars stopped, people got out, people chased him for blocks, I followed him through one parking lot and into another. I tried enticing him with a bottle of water but he wasn't having it!

For a dog, the World on that street, stopped for a while. Despite trying to get home from work, people were taking time out to protect an innocent creature from harm. We all lost him. He escaped and went on the run to who knows where. He's still on the minds of many, no doubt. You don't have to be an animal-lover to appreciate the feeling of compassion.

The reason I mention this is because the experience was bringing out the best of each person that stopped, slowed, asked about him, went out of their way to track him, and are still thinking of him, today. It brought out that humanity for little creatures in us. We were showing the Good in us even for a few minutes. We were black, white, young, old, male and female, wealthy and not so wealthy, out there with one goal. We were trying to be helpful to an innocent creature in need.

It takes incidents like that to reveal just how good we really are, individually, and how great we can be together.

I came home to calls from Mom, ("CNN's unpaid on-the-spot-from-her-apartment Reporter"), asking if I was watching what's happening in Baltimore, Maryland on television. The news was going to bring on tears if I hadn't remembered that little dog and all those people.

Buildings burned, policemen and citizens were injured, there was rioting, looting, brick-throwing, games cancelled, businesses closing, and anger heating. The odd thing is the reason for the anger is because of the death of a man, a black man, whose family asked everyone not to react in this way. This was after the young man's funeral. Sigh. His funeral. If his own family is hurting worse than anyone but reasonable enough to say this to the public, why was Baltimore burning?

That's known as crowd mentality. It doesn't matter what color you are, all humans have behaved this way for a long time when grouped together. Just read or watch the movies of "Lord of the Flies". It's a great example of "groupthink". We can do damage. Or we can do Good when we gather. I thought of the dog again, and then I saw the images, from the light of day. The next day, "crowds" were in the streets, cleaning, and trying to repair their neighborhoods from the Evil that had set in the night before.

My opinion is the kettle finally boiled over because You, and You, and You, and I have not been the best we are capable of being. Because of what and who we are, we should be advocates of Peace and Love every day we step from our homes. We are called to be the Lights in this World. Freddie Gray's family has constantly stated there would be peaceful marches. Clergymen have made it known that they are even gathering gang members discussing Civil Disobedience in the way Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. encouraged. There is a way to be heard. There is a way to see justice done correctly.

Baltimore's riot was not the way.

The Personal "I" wanted to gather every child and elderly person who was frightened that night by the yelling, screaming, sirens, flames, pepper spray and crashes and reassure them the World doesn't have to be this way. I want to tell them it will pass. I want to assure them that there are people, of all races, who will take advantage of crowds and anonymity under the cover of darkness and cowardly covering their faces and loot, for no related reason, and there will be those that will take advantage to show it on television to make all people look badly upon and induce fear and loathing.

I want to tell each child to be the best You and it's safe to dream all the dreams you want despite what all the 'adults' are doing and saying.
 

Xanax, Anyone?

Once upon a time there was a young girl who thought she'd grow up to marry Bruce Lee and live happily ever after riding dragons through China's country over trees and into caves.
Except that little girl was me and I have no connection to Xanax, whatsoever, we're off to a good start. Now, that's out of the way, let's examine that first sentence.

That was a fantasy, not reality, of a young person. A very young person.

There are adults living day-to-day with the idea that they live in one type of reality and it causes them great anxiety because it's not real. Others are quick to remind them of this but they can do enough damage in what they tell themselves.

We live and work next to people who may be having trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality and it's causing a lot of problems. As a meme I saw recently noted, and I paraphrase, we used to take LSD to have the fantasies, now we take Xanax to have reality.

If I could get away with it, I'd never take another drug. I have many problems with the taking of prescriptions, especially those that can do more harm than good. I don't claim to say it isn't needed and they do work, only that once a prescription becomes a household name, it's efficacy and integrity is in question, in my eyes. Remember Ritalin?

The product name, Xanax, has become a joke. There are crazy, funny, and horrifying stories of those who have taken it and its effect on them from crazy dreams, to passing out, to losing control of their lives.

Sure, we can say, that their medical provider is handing it out like candy on Halloween, wasn't checking on them properly, that they took a dosage that wasn't appropriate, or that they took someone else's prescription, which also happens. However, when you read the literature on the medication, itself and it warns of everything from being forgetful or drowsy to having clay-colored stools, http://www.drugs.com/sfx/xanax-side-effects.html you gotta balance the scales.

In the old days, people medicated themselves through liquor and still do. The "bad boys" used grass, then pills, then heroin, and still do and more. Older than that in many cultures peyote or opium was used...and still are.

The scariest combination is when you have a person with a true mental illness medicating themselves. A common 'take' is that once they begin to feel good, they stop taking prescribed medications, or they don't like how it makes them feel and stop or add liquor and other drugs to the mix. They spend their lives in and out of hospitals trying to find the balance, knowing the cycle will be repeated until one of the parties gives up.

We've been seeking to bring ourselves up or down since the beginning of time. Why? Why are we not happy where we are and with who we are? What is that voice that makes us think that "right now" and "this way" aren't good enough? Must we always seek to be somewhere else or feel other than we do. If you really want that, read a good book!

If we don't feel our real feelings and, instead, try to mask them with pharmaceuticals or otherwise, what type of humans do we become? That is what makes us human, too. The ability to feel the feelings and express them in healthy ways is something we, humans, do. Or should be able to do.

If we can't be honest with our own emotional states, how do we expect to with others? Where is the shame in being 'us'?

The 'kids' call it fronting by putting on that appearance that you have the bigger, better, faster, more, than you really do and are breaking down inside or financially keeping the illusion alive. What's the worst that could happen from being 'you' and admitting you don't have it all together? That right there should eliminate a LARGE number of Xanax users.

Free yourself by being true to yourself, and to others, by being truly 'you'.

Lastly, yes, I'll say it. God loves you. YOU. Now, go forth and feel and deal!