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I haven’t written anything here for quite a while and for this blog to be about Wisdom ,Wellness and Wealth with the current debate over the national health care plan I feel I should say a word about wellness. Everything begins in the mind in many ways the mind is master of the body. It is good sometimes for the mind to listen to the body in health matters, ultimately it is the power of the mind that will prevail. I have seen people smile from the hospital bed while others frown on the elevator. Many people with illness and ailments have far better attitudes about life than some others who do not . I feel the health care plan will be a good thing for all once put into place. We never know when we may be in a position as many are to not be able to afford health care. What I want to say here is no matter what health care is provided the ultimate responsibility for well being is with the individual. The doctors can diagnose and the can see how the body is functioning,but the care of the body is the responsibility of the individual person. I believe very strongly in preventive health care which means as much as possible taking care of ones self be proper diet and exercise. Eating right and living right is the key to optimum health. I remember years ago when I was a Cooper Clinic Certified Aerobic trainer I ask myself the question why do all of the walking and running. It seemed at the time it was all just a way to try to control life, which I feel in many ways should be lived naturally and let come what may. After I had ask myself this question with no answer given, I ask several other people I knew who were much more active than myself why they did all the running and walking. Many said they were trying to stay young, others said they wanted to live longer. Out of all the answers I was given the one the made any sense to me was that it added more quality to the life. You see that is what I have found to be the key to wellness. No matter what your physical health you can always opt for the highest quality of life you can afford and surprisingly most the of the quality in life can be found in the choices we make and can cost us nothing. It doesn’t cost anything to take a walk and it cost the same to eat fresh vegetables and sometimes less than it does to order fast food. The difference is in the way you feel which makes all the difference in the world. How do you feel right now is there something you can do about it? I bet if you think about it there is a least one thing you could do to make yourself feel better,there usually always is.
Time can actually take wings and fly. It seems like it was a month ago that I posted do you remember September by Earth Wind and Fire. All we have to benchmark our time is our memory and it can be tricky slipping in and out while exchanging one place or event for the other. Recently I have noticed that places and landmarks I have known for years serve as page marks for memory. When I notice something I have known a loved for years is no longer in it’s place it lets me know that time is marching on.
Two Trees
Tree One
We had heavy rains all day and then that night a deep freeze. The next day was a beautiful sight all of the trees covered with shimmering ice sickles a winter wonderland. There was no snow on the ground just ice on the trees. It was one those post card kind of days, cold and beautiful with a certain type of solitude that only a day like this could bring. I was in my den when I heard SNAP!!!!! POP!!!! and then BOOM!!!!!. I stop for a moment and wondered what it was . The sound was at the front of the house, but I had no idea what it was. So with a coffee cup in hand I headed for the front door. As I passed my front window I could see something was blocking my view, I had no idea what I was seeing. When I opened my front door I saw one of four ciders that had been in my yard for over thirty years laying across half of my yard. As I looked at the tree in the yard I remember thinking about the fact it could not be replaced. I also noticed as I looked at the tree in the yard how much different my yard would look without it. And like so many other things in life and in my memory the tree could never be changed or brought back.
Tree Two
It was a lovely spring morning the sun was shining through the window to my east and it was the beginning of what looked like another beautiful spring day. Later that afternoon as I was sitting in my den (yes I spend a lot of time in my den) I heard thunder the a crackling of lighting and a gust of wind. From all indications the signs pointed toward a tornado. The wind blew so loudly that you could hear it whistling outside the window. After the storm died down I decided to go out and see the damage that it had left behind. As I opened the door I could see that the same side of the yard the cider had fallen on was again occupied by another tree. This time the tree was a oak that was older than than the cider.
When time passes it always seems to leave us memories of things no longer there.We can page mark our lives by things that are no longer there. Just like last September,it has been replaced by this September. Do You remember?
This question came to me as I was re reading Hamlet for about the hundredth time. Yep I do a lot of Shakespeare mostly because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about when I was high school. Being raised in the inner city I really didn’t see the practical side of Shakespeare. I just wanted to know enough about him to pass my senior English class. I did get into Macbeth once I saw the play.
Back to Hamlet and why I re read this play. Hamlet is a tragedy and as such mirrors life. Just observing how Hamlet handles his problems can be a lesson, especially if when reading it you put yourself in Hamlet’s shoes which is very hard to do since most of us don’t see our dead fathers ghost, or have a uncle who murders his brother and becomes our step father. It seems as though all poor Hamlet can do is sit and watch.
The thing that Hamlet makes us aware of is no one lives a life without problems,
and many times the problems we create for others come back to haunt us (no pawn intended).
You may be asking yourself how does this all relate to the subject
If We Can, Why Don’t We?
When we look at Hamlet we see that there are problems in life which we have no control over, and when we try to fix them they just get worse. We have other problems we can fix, and still other problems that given enough time will fix themselves if we just leave them alone. ( if you haven’t done so, see the play or read it)
A interesting thing that I notice when I talk with people is that no one is without at least one problem. Yes some people have larger problems than others, but most of us don’t have a problem as large or as complicated as Hamlet’s problem. I also noticed that people handle there problems in different ways. The smallest problem to some people become there biggest obstacle, while other people with big problems seem to dismiss them with a things will get better attitude. I have seen people who have lost everything in a fire or some other tragedy say with confidence I lost everything ,but I will get it back again (thank God I am still a live). I saw this attitude with many of the Katrina survivors and survivors of natural disasters. When I listen to these people of strength, I hear in there voice a quiet confidence that says I will survive in spite of what has happened.
I wonder if this kind of character is innate or learned through exprience? It is apparent that everyone does not have this quality. Hamlet didn’t have it, he took a bad situation and made it worse. He couldn’t come to grips with, whats done is done. He became obsessed with avenging his fathers death , while all the time questioning if the ghost was lying to him. This brings me to the one line in Hamlet that gives me the great pause and which almost everyone knows;
“To Be Or Not To Be , That Is The Question. When Hamlet ask this question it was at a time when his problems were getting the best of him ( some would say he was contemplating suicide , when you read it I will let you decide.
I would re frame this question and ask If We Can ,Why Don’t We. This is to say Hamlet even in his bad situation had options as I believe we all do. My question is why we don’t choose to make a bad situation better. In Hamlet’s case he could have let life deal with the deeds of his uncle/stepfather and certainly relocation would have helped. I also think I would have had a serious conversation with the ghost of my father about going and resting in peace, or a least going and talking to his brother every night about why he is sleeping with his wife. The ghost had a problem of his own and in most people are responsible for solving the problems they make. I am sure that just like me many of you who are reading this article are facing some problems right now and they don’t seem to be going away. It may be because we have given them a comfortable place to stay. If we can why don’t we change things for the better rather than make things worse.
A smile and hope for a better day can’t hurt and just might help everything.
If You Can, Why Don’t You?
I have recently been preoccupied with the the thought of why some people achieve on a higher level than others. What is intriguing to me about this subject is that it really has little to do with ability in the normal way that we think of ability. When I think about this word ability I think about what we commonly call a disability( a person because of some physical or mental handicap not being able to do something or to function in the way that others are able to). There are many people in the world whose only disability is in there mind.
The mind is a very powerful force , this is a reality. When I look at individuals I am often baffled by what I observe. I see many individuals who have every advantage in life who are unproductive , while others individuals who are at a great disadvantage do much more with there disability than able bodied person even attempts to do.
By now I know many of us have seen individuals who despite there disability are very positive people, while others without any physical or mental disabilities are very unhappy in life. This all addresses what one of my mentors W. Clement Stone would call PMA or Positive Mental Attitude. What I really want to know is why this PMA seems to be totally absent in some people while others seem to possess it naturally. The question is can PMA be developed and if so how.
If you are like me and most people I know your state of mind fluctuates and can be influenced by others. PMA thrives in a positive environment and struggles in a negative one. A key point that I have found in the life’s of the disabled who possess PMA is that in most cases they have had family members and supporters who possess and have passed on to them a strong Positive Mental Attitude. Many will say that there parents and siblings told them that even though they had a disability blindness etc, they were no different and could do whatever they wanted to do in life.
The next thing that I found in the disabled that achieved much more than those who are able bodied and have no mental problems is that they all found some thing they were good at and focused on that skill or talent to the point they became exceptional.
These two things combined made a major difference in these individuals and everyone else in the world who have achieved anything. And these two thing can make a major difference in your life as they have in my life. Recently I have made a decision to change my support group and environment. I have had to do this several times in life. If it ain’t working, it ain’t working. I am sure that I will see a marked difference in my level of achievement and overall satisfaction with life and an increase in productivity as a result. Growth requires both sacrifice and change.
It took me some time to discover these simple facts because we have a tendency to always think that our success and our mental attitude are produced because of something or someone other than ourselves. The truth is it’s what we do about life that makes the difference.
Do you want to be a more powerful person who makes a difference in the world, one who is a positive influence on others. Check your PMA and look around you to see if anything is blocking that smile on your face and the faith in your heart. Those who have overcome much more to achieve there dreams ( the so called disabled) leave us no excuse. Go for your dreams and eliminate anything and anyone that gets in your way.
I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. Not that I haven’t always had these spells of long ,deep thought.
It is just that they are coming more often lately. Maybe it’s because I have more to think about.
I have so many things in life I enjoy doing, but nothing is more enjoyable to me than the act of learning. I love learning new things. I am always fascinated when I am introduced to something I never thought about before.
I love being in a learning environment. Sitting around talking about a new book or critiquing the latest movie or talking about my favorite Jazz artist.
One of the many blessing of getting older is the appreciation of life. Going through life teaches us things that we can only learn from going through them. Life is a great teacher for those who are willing to learn. Unfortunately some people don’t learn from the things they go through and that is why life forces them to go through them again.
I have had some things in life I have had to go through more than once in order to learn what God wanted me to know. And I may be in the middle of a repeat lesson as I write this,but the point is to never stop learning. Life is a teacher for those who want to learn.
I was just sitting around thinking about what I learned today. One of the things I learned today is that problems are a part of life and we will never solve all of them. Actually I learned this a long time ago,
I still try to have my problem free days, and some problem free days do come my way,but that doesn’t mean there is not another problem waiting around the corner.
So what have I learned today? As I watch president Barack Obama go through his first one hundred days with the press, at the end of the press conference he rattled off the list of problems he has had to face in his first one hundred days in office. I started to think to myself that I liked the way he was handling the situation and the problems at hand. From this press conference I learned the following.
Lessons I learned from President Obama’s first one hundred days?
Lesson 1. Change is always challenged
lesson 2. Remain focused ( President Obama always comes back to his agenda)
lesson 3. Be your self ( There is a confidence in President Obama that says he knows who he is)
lesson 4. Have a strong support system ( make good friends, President Obama has a strong smart presidential staff)
Lesson5. And last but not least is always face the problems you have even if you are not always able to solve them. face them anyway.
Never run from a problem. Problems don’t go a way simply because you run from them. You can only change what you face up to.
Sincerely
David C.Randle
If you have been following my blog you already know that I break every blogging rule in the book. I don’t post often and many times I don’t follow the rule of staying with the same theme. Really my blog follows the pattern of my mind which varies from time to time. Which brings me to the subject of this blog:
”first Love”.
When I started thinking about the thought of first love, I thought about the first girl I fell in love with. I know that this should be easy to remember but it’s not.You see when I tried to remember I had to go through my mind and evaluate the different girls I knew growing up. I had to decide if I was going to include girls who I never told I loved them.Or was I going to only deal with girls with whom I had some type of relationship.What would be the criteria for girls I considered my first love. The point I am making here is that even what seems to be an obvious question with an obvious answer is not so obvious when you put it under the microscope. I hear many of you saying in your mind, your heart should have given you the answer in a matter of seconds. The truth is the heart is what made this seemingly simple task hard in the first place.
The first girl I thought about was the first girl I kissed. But because I kissed her didn’t mean she was the first girl I loved. Then I thought about the girl that I thought about the most. But after doing this I realized that many of the girls I thought about a lot had nothing to do with love but was mostly lust.So after a minute or two I narrowed it down to first girl friends and then to the girlfriend who had impacted me the most.
That is how I discovered my first love.I didn’t I know this was my first love until I really thought about it. How did I know she was my first love.I got sick after we broke up ( I really got psychically sick ) when we broke up. I loved this girl so much that I got sick when she broke up with me. Can you believe that?
I probably shouldn’t have told you that story, but I had to do it in order to make a point. We don’t always love things for the right reason. I need to say that again ( we don’t always love things or people for the right reason. You see my first love was all about seeking self approval. I was just happy that someone I approached had accepted my advances. I thought because this girl wanted to spend time with me she felt the same way about me. But to discover something totally different hurt and it was through this pain that learned a valuable lesson.
Be careful who you love and always love yourself more. Some of you may not belieive this statement, but no one loves some one who does not love them self. You see if you don’t love yourself you don’t have any love to give to anyone else.
“This is a important fact if you don’t love yourself when someone like my first love takes there love away you don’t have anything left. But when you love yourself you have enough love to share with everyone you come in contact with.”
This will sound strange at first and will require careful thought (Love Loves Love). What I mean by this is love brings more love. When you love yourself you attract people who love you, but when you don’t love yourself you make it hard for others to love you. My first love thought me valuable lesson that I still live by today, don’t give your love away, keep a little for yourself. People love people who love themselves and have enough love left over to share.
I saw my first love some years later at a concert alone, I was attending solo as well. In passing she stopped dead in her tracks when she saw me. Her eyes fixed on me, no longer that skinny confused kid who’s heart she had broken many years ago. She had a loneliness in her eyes , she asked how I was doing I answered very well. We exchanged numbers and had a little conversation. I actually felt good about seeing her as I walked away, and I have laughed many time since remembering the shocked look on her face when she saw me, almost as if she was embarassed for breaking up with me.
Life for me has become like that first love. I thank life for every lesson good and bad it has thought me. I am thankful for every time life has broke it off with me and walked out on me, it has left me a stronger person and made me love myself a little more. And just like my first love I leave much of it in the past so that I can enjoy today and move on.
I sat in the pew listening to this minister that I had heard many times before, speak on a subject I had heard before. My mind had began to drift away.
Have you ever had that small thought in your mind that says I know where this is going. It is about this time my mind started to tune out and day dream. Just when I had made up my mind to tune out this minister struck a familiar note. He did something that I had been trained to do in preparing a speech, he gave his message a frame of reference, one that I could relate to.
You see the sermon was called “Bounce Back Ability”,the ability to come back after facing a problem. I had heard this sermon before and thought I understood all of it’s principles.
But then the minister started talking about a tree in his backyard. It was a Crepe Myrtle tree. He talked about how a strong rain had come and pounded this little tree he had planted. The rain had not only up rooted it,but almost washed it a way. He thought to himself, that it would not live after such harsh treatment and being so young,but he stuck it back in the ground anyway,thinking it would not live.
He told one of his neighbors about the little Crepe Myrtle tree and that he thought it wouldn’t make it a couple of days later. The neighbor looked at him and laughed and said “it will make it, it’s a Crepe Myrtle”.
He didn’t know why the neighbor was so confident that the tree would make it. But as the tree grew his saw that it required less watering , that it could withstand the strongest winds. He notices how the tree would bend in the strong winds and then go back to it’s regular position, and how even with little or no water it bloomed every year. Not just bloomed,but gave beautiful blooms year after year.
He came to understand the smile on his neighbors face when he said the tree was a crepe Myrtle.
I bought a crepe Myrtle and planted it in my yard after I heard this sermon. It was a scroungy little bush planted in the wrong season almost winter. I have watched it now for over fifteenth years. It has grown tall. I have done very little for this tree other than look at it from time to time and think about the sermon.
We are all facing some hard times ahead, it is time for us to be like the Crepe Myrtle, the word is resilient.it’s time for us to be resilient.
That magic word change sometimes welcomed and sometimes not. It does not matter if we welcome it or not change comes, as the song says” Everything Must Change” ( a beautiful song if you haven’t heard it) I think the first rendition I heard was played by George Benson. So change has brought us yet another welcomed surprise and I would dare say a new day. Yes things are difficult now, they always are just before change. But change is needed for growth. I have been a advocate for change most of my life. Being born an African American Boomer, it seem that things have always been changing all of my life. Yet not enough things changed to make a big difference to me it seemed. I had no real understanding of how change worked.
There are two different kinds of change, one sudden and the other slow. Most of the change that comes suddenly is not good because it is the type of change that forces us to accept it ,and grow as a result of it.
But slow change over time is good , why you ask? Because slow change occurs in such a way that we have to anticipate it and so when it comes it is appreciated for the gift that it is. Sudden change on the other hand is almost always resented, because of the fact that it makes us do things that we in most cases we don’t want to do. Change because of loss can be like that, or change because of circumstance is also like that. But change as reward for long and patient waiting , now that is sweet change. Sam Cook sang a” Change is Going to Come”. And it seems change is here, and it is certainly time for a change.
In the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge;. We read about the Albatross as a bird which brings a curse to a sailor and his ship mates. All of us have challenges and things we need to change. Many times this may be something or person we need to get rid of in order to move on and be happy. One of the reasons it is so hard to acknowledge our Albatrosses is because many times they are often the things we love most. But for some reason they keep you from moving toward your dream.
Until you realize what your albatross is, it will continue to hold you back. Now you don’t have to do anything drastic to overcome an Albatross. Many times it’s just a matter of knowing what or who it is that is preventing you from moving forward. In some cases we are our own Albatrosses, a Albatross can also be a negative thought. Yes there can be this one little thought that just won’t go away, nagging you and holding you back.
Sometimes it is necessary to get rid of the Albatross if it is completely blocking you from your dreams, which can be the case, especially if the Albatross is a person. These types of Albatrosses tend to follow you around. They see your success as there failure, and so they prevent you from succeeding to keep from acknowledging there failure ( this is commonly known as jealousy or envy).
Take a look around are there any Albatrosses in your life. They just may be the thing that’s holding you back.
