Before I go posting quotes, I just wanted to rant really quick because lately I've been noticing a horrifying amount of fake people. No, I'm not playing off of Halloween and costumes- I mean people who act a certain way just to get attention, or to make people believe they are something they aren't. As a very down-to-earth person myself, it always annoys me... hence why I've cut so many people out of my life as of late. I've written about this before though, so I won't bore you with it again.
I just don't understand why people feel the need to be fake! If you aren't happy with who you truly are to the point that you feel you need to masquerade; you may as well go ahead and change who you are fully! Make improvements to yourself so that you as a person change- not just what everyone else sees. If you're going to put the effort into being something you aren't (yet), you may as well benefit from it. In the long run it'll help you because people will know you for who you are, and you won't have to pile up lies and identities to fit in. "Fake people have an image to maintain. Real people don't care." "It is not my job to expose the fake. In due time, they expose themselves." "I hate that some people are judged for being real while others are loved for being fake." "Everything you do for attention is the reason you don't have mine." "Confidence is silent; insecurities are loud." "Everybody isn't your friend. Just because they hang around you and laugh with you doesn't mean they're for you. Just because they say they've got your back, doesn't mean they won't stab you in it. People pretend well. Jealousy sometimes doesn't live far. So know your circle. At the end of the day, real situations expose fake people, so pay attention." - Maddie
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I just remembered a movie I haven't watched in an incredibly long time; and that's The Wizard Of Oz! As a small child, I recall being afraid of it for some reason but as I've gotten older I appreciate it a lot more. It's a classic movie that I think everyone should see at least once before they die, simply because it's a good-hearted and adventurous family movie. However, if you're more of a reader... the book is just as; if not more, rewarding. Either way, I'll stop carrying on about things I enjoy and instead give you some good quotes from The Wizard Of Oz to ponder about as you go through your day.
"I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a tree, and live and die unnoticed." "Home is a place we all must find, child. It's not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing. Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we're always home, anywhere." "A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others." "Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking." "It's not where you go. It's who you meet along the way." "Everything you were looking for was right there with you all along." "The true courage is in facing the danger, even when you are afraid." - Maddie Today's post is actually inspired by YouTube! My procrastination actually paid off for once! Yesterday, I took an EXTREMELY long hike with my boyfriend and dog to pay a friend of our's a visit and we were out essentially all day hiking about. I fell asleep at 8:30, woke up at 7:30 and have essentially been in bed since with very sore legs. With nothing much else to do, I replied to a few emails and watched some YouTube. I was watching a playthrough for a game called Fran Bow. It's and Alice In Wonderland-esq game, and I enjoyed it very much.
It was a 2D horror game with a very dark and intellectual plot. Most of the tasks to be accomplished were by puzzle solving and using logic, and by progressing with dialogue. The dialogue was fantastic and some of what was said truly made me think... and I hope that it makes you readers think too. Below are some of the best quotes plucked from the game. "Death is nothing more than the absence of love. Once you can’t feel love, you die… even if your body still walks." "I still don't know many things, but one thing I do know- between guilt and fear, I chose happiness." "You can’t blame those who are ignorant, but you can’t let ignorance decide. Life will teach you, even through pain and tears." "Be curious, and you'll always be amazed." "Don't be afraid. We always fall. And after the pain... we will always rise." These are unfortunately not all of the quotes that I can remember from the gameplay. I remember there being numerous others, but as I can't directly remember and wouldn't want to incorrectly quote this amazing game I'm going to leave this post here. I'd go back through the videos but there was roughly 7 hours worth of gameplay to watch. In any case, I'd recommend checking out the playthrough of this game. I found that alone to be quite interesting and if I had the correct account, I'd probably buy and play the game myself. Very intriguing. - Maddie "That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach." That is a quote by Aldous Huxley. Huxley is best known as the author of "A Brave New World" and "The Doors Of Perception". The Doors Of Perception recalls his experiences when taking a psychedelic drug, and was a book that had great influence on Jim Morrison. In fact, the book had such an impact on him that he named his rock band The Doors. How's that for trivia! Although I am sure that most true Doors fans already knew that. Anyway, Huxley was considered one of the greatest intellectuals of his time and was nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature in seven different years. While I am thinking about it, congratulations to Bob Dylan for winning the 2016 Noble Prize for literature. He won the award for ‘having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition’. The Swedish academy stated: “We’re really giving it to Bob Dylan as a great poet – that’s the reason we awarded him the prize. He’s a great poet in the great English tradition, stretching from Milton and Blake onwards. And he’s a very interesting traditionalist, in a highly original way. Not just the written tradition, but also the oral one; not just high literature, but also low literature.” Though Dylan is considered by many to be a musician, not a writer, Danius said the artistic reach of his lyrics and poetry could not be put in a single box. “I came to realize that we still read Homer and Sappho from ancient Greece, and they were writing 2,500 years ago,” she said. “They were meant to be performed, often together with instruments, but they have survived, and survived incredibly well, on the book page. We enjoy [their] poetry, and I think Bob Dylan deserves to be read as a poet.” I find it fitting to write about Aldous Huxley on the same day that Bob Dylan wins a Noble Prize because both men, in their own ways, called for social change. In fact, way back in 1958 Huxley gave a prescient warning about what he saw coming for the world in the future. Now, 58 years later, some of those predictions look startlingly accurate! Meanwhile, Dylan wrote songs in the sixties that called for social changes that also seem to be slowly gaining traction.
To get back to Huxley, after nearly sixty years, his words too are now history. Let's see what he was saying and if there is anything we should have learned. The quotes below come from an interview he did with Mike Wallace back in 1958. At that time Huxley stated that: 1."Technology, bureaucracy and Television will be used to enslave us." Huxley believed that: "we mustn’t be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology. This has happened again and again in history with technology’s advance and this changes social condition, and suddenly people have found themselves in a situation which they didn’t foresee and doing all sorts of things they really didn’t want to do." Specifically, on television he stated: " it is being used too much to distract everybody all the time. But, I mean, imagine which must be the situation in all communist countries where the television, where it exists, is always saying the same things the whole time; it’s always driving along. It’s not creating a wide front of distraction it’s creating a one-pointed, er…drumming in of a single idea, all the time. It’s obviously an immensely powerful instrument. ' There were a lot of other things that Huxley said too. Isaac Davis recently wrote an article about Huxley. Instead of just quoting from his article, follow this link to read it yourself Huxley It is rare that I ever just send my readers to another blog to read, but the article is well worth reading. In my opinion, Huxley was amazing. Now that you have read the article linked to above, I think you can see how self evident Huxley's quote to him. And remember, Brave New World was written in 1931. About 27 years before he gave that interview! Truly, He was a man ahead of his time. It's no wonder that his name often comes up when people speak of George Orwell, another writer of dystopian novels. He is best known for his book 1984. A Brave New World, 1984, and even Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand are all history now. Why not read them? And see if you can learn the messages these authors were trying to alert us to way back then. "You often meet your fate on the road you take to avoid it." This is an old French proverb that really can't be attributed to any one person. I like it because no one really knows how there life is going to turn out, and the more little decisions you make, the greater the chance that one of them will be life changing. I have told the story of how my wife and I started dating on numerous occasions, so I won't bore you with a deep rendering of it here. In a nutshell, I invited her to a party at a beach house on the Jersey shore and told her to bring whoever she liked. At the time, I thought she was married, so when I said she could bring whoever she liked, I assumed she would bring her husband. When I invited her, I had no intentions of trying to date her since I knew she was married. It was just that a lot of the younger people on the floor were going to the party and I didn't want her to feel unwelcome or left out. I didn't expect her to come really and I was surprised when she called me for directions. It ends up her husband had died recently and she did not mention it to many people at work. When she came to the party she had a guy and another one of the administrative assistants with her. When I said, it was nice to meet your husband she said he wasn't her husband and that he had died recently. Well, I guess you can say that fate met me on the road unexpectedly that night! I was at the party looking for a girlfriend... I just didn't have any intention that it would be Sharon since I had thought she was married. To tell you the truth, The whole situation above reminds me of one of my favorite Robert Frost poems: The Road Not Taken. Frost writes about taking the path less traveled and how it changed his life. His final lines to the poem are: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. By not wanting someone to feel left out, and inviting them to a party with no expectations, I ended up finding a girl friend and eventually my wife. Meanwhile, on other nights, when I was actively trying to find a girl, I would oftentimes end up not meeting any with a real interest in me. Sometimes the path made to attain a goal is also a path where we meet the most resistance.
I find that fate works in fickle ways across all aspects of life. I know people who started a job for summer employment or just as a temporary gig to make some money, who then went on to make that industry their life-long career. I have also seen people change their entire lives after seeing something on TV or reading something in a book. The changes were not overnight, but they were evident over a longer period of time. All said, it seem fate likes to meet up with us on the least likely paths. Keep your eyes open people and enjoy your journey! "We don't understand life any better at forty, than at twenty, but by then we realize it and admit it." That's a quote by Jules Renard. Jules was a French author. He wrote poems, short stories, and plays, for the most part, but also had one famous novel. His most-famous work was Carrot Top, if you can believe it.
Renard died at the ripe old age of forty six, so I guess we'll never know if he would have figured it out by sixty. I am now fifty, and I can tell you that my understanding of life is always in flux. Not in a bad way, mind you, but just constantly changing. In general, my understanding of life seems to change every five to ten years. When I was ten, my baseball card collection and my ability to play sports were VERY important to me. I played all of the sports during their seasons, and tried to be as good as I could at each of them. Sports were my world! As I hit fifteen, I became more interested in partying. A lot of the "cool" kids were into drinking, and I foolishly drank along with them. My friends and I liked to get a buzz, and we all couldn't wait until we could get in the bars. By twenty, not much had changed. I was still partying every chance I got, and getting into bars was old hat. New York's drinking age had been eighteen when I turned eighteen, and I was grandfathered in once the drinking age went to 21. I worked in New York during the summer months, so my friends and I took to hanging around Bleeker Street on Friday or Saturday nights during my early twenties. In my late teens and early twenties I stopped drinking for a bit, going so far as to joining AA for a bit. I remember I was sober on my twenty-first birthday. I was stressed out and depressed though, and went back to drinking a few months later. My drinking was different now, though. I was no longer drinking just for the buzz, I knew it was bad for me and I was drinking more out of boredom, or so I told myself. By thirty I was a functional alcoholic. I held a good job at Merrill Lynch and I was looking for a girl to settle down with. I met my wife when I was thirty three and she was only twenty three. She too, had a problem with alcohol, and she asked me to help her stop drinking. I gave up drinking the moment she told me that (July, 1999) and I have not had a drink since. My understanding of life had gone from let's make lots of cash and get a buzz to: "we can have a beautiful life together if we can both quit drinking." Two years later, my first daughter was born, and my priorities grew to include spending as much time with my wife and daughter as possible. I left corporate life in late 2002, and started my own consulting firm from my basement. My life revolved around my wife, my daughter, and my work. In 2009, my mid-life crisis began... although at the time I didn't know it. Sharon and I had decided to have another baby. Sharon had never been able to stop drinking excepts for about two years while she was pregnant with, and then breast feeding Maddie. We had originally wanted to have three children, but stopped after Maddie because Sharon had had postpartum depression and was afraid to have another bout with it. Sharon then began to believe that if she had another child she would be able to stop drinking during the pregnancy again and hopefully stop for good. Her drinking had gotten progressively worse over the years, and Madison had begun to catch on to what was happening. To make a long story short, Sharon was not able to stop drinking, and we put her into an in-patient facility to keep her from drinking while she was pregnant. She made it through the system and returned back home two weeks before she was due with Ashleigh. She started to drink again that evening and the doctors decided to deliver Ashleigh early to help protect her. I brought Ashleigh home from the hospital when she was four days old, She was two weeks premature, underweight and had alcohol withdrawal symptoms. Maddie was home with us too. At forty four, I was raising a new-born baby and a seven-year-old little girl on my own, while also trying to keep my successful business running and keeping the house in some semblance of shape. Let me tell you, my understanding of life, and what truly was important grew in that time period. I am now fifty. At this point, I think there is no one true understanding of life. All of our experiences are too different. The more we share similar experiences, I think the more our understanding of life will be similar. Not the same, but similar. Honestly, I think that part of the reason that the divorce rate is so high is because couples are not able or willing to spend enough time with each other. Their common experiences become fewer and fewer, and they eventually drift apart. So, do I understand life? Nope. I understand what I am doing in my life at this moment, but I have no clue about what awaits me in the years ahead. Lord knows that if you had asked me where I would be in five years at any point in my life from say the age of twenty five on, I would have likely guessed wrong. In the end, life is for living. Have fun, make memories with the ones you love, and pray that you will be able to see them again in the afterlife. "It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced, and Photoshopped world very dangerous." That is a quote by Brene Brown.
Getting back to today's quote, I think we all know deep down not to believe what we see in the media. Even so, we all, to some extent do! Now I don't think any of you really believe in the zebra ant I have pictured above, but I think that if you saw only the edited versions of the two women above you would believe that that is what they actually looked like. So much so, that if you then met the women in real life, you may feel disappointed with their real looks, even though both of them still look great. I have had a few experiences like that in real life. Each time, I didn't know who I met or saw until after the fact. The earliest example I have of this is when I met Bruce Springsteen in a store one time while I was still in high school.
In other words, he was dressed very similarly to me and my friends, and looked about the same age (we were about 17 or 18 at the time), even though he was actually about 28 or 29 at the time. We all joked around with him for about five minutes, while we waited in line at the music store. After he paid the girl at the register, he said so long, waved, and left. None of us even knew who he was, even though three of us were Bruce fans. The only way we found out was when the girl behind the counter asked us if any of us wanted to buy the VCR slip she had in her hand. When we said, "Why would we want to do that?" She said with an incredulous look on her face: "You mean you didn't know? That was Bruce Springsteen!" In all honesty, I never would have known. He honestly acted like just another dude in high school. I still can't make the two pictures of him match up in my mind! I can say he seemed like a real good guy. He joked around with a bunch of high school kids who he must have realized had no clue to who he was. And he seemed to have enjoyed the banter as much as we did.
The other two people I saw who were a little different were Mary Tyler Moore, and Connie Chung. Both of these women were still very pretty when I saw them. Mary Tyler Moore was in an airport and was talking to the person next to her. She was pretty, but I would not have known it was her if someone hadn't pointed it out to me. I had noticed her as a very pretty woman though! As for Connie, She is extremely pretty in person, she just seemed much shorter than I ever pictured her. She worked in the same building as me in New York during the mid- to late 90's. Sometimes I would be in the same elevator with her and I felt like I towered over her, even though I am not the tallest person myself.
Now that I have made this post longer than I wanted and rambled for a few paragraphs to boot, I'll get back to my main point. everything you see on TV or in print nowadays is likely photo-shopped to some extent. That's true whether it is people or events. Have you been watching the news and reading about the candidate visits to different towns? The media tries to make them look like they are all well attended. The truth of the matter is that most of them aren't. I have seen wide-angled views of some of the crowds where you can see that some of them have less than 75 people in the crowd. I have also seen videos where workers are handing out "home-made" looking signs for the people to hold. Nearly none of it is real folks! I guess to finish I will just say be careful what you believe folks. A lot of what you see on TV is there to sway you, not to inform you. "Everything we see hides another thing; we always want to see what is hidden by what we see." That is a quote by Rene Magritte. Depending how literally you want to take this quote, it is obviously true. To start, I am going to look at it scientifically, and then I will try and get a little more touchy/feely with it too. The easiest way to grasp this quote is scientifically. When we look at anything, we only see what we have the ability to perceive. Our eyes can only see color in certain wave ranges. What we can't see, we won't perceive, unless we have special gauges that allow us to pick up what is there but is not visible to us. A good example of this is found in King Tut's tomb. The tomb was originally opened in the early 1920's, but it was just recently that they discovered that there is a hidden chamber behind one of the walls. They believe it is the queen's burial chamber. It was found by looking at the chamber thermographically. This is a diagnostic technique originally used in the medical fields, where an infrared camera is used to measure temperature variations on the surface of an object. In archaeology, a wall with a cooler area implies that there may be a chamber of some type hidden behind the wall. Without the use of the new equipment, we may never had known about the chamber! It was there the whole time, we just couldn't see it. Other examples include bacteria and viruses. Although they have always been present, we didn't know about them until the invention of the microscope. To take it a step further, animals have different senses than us also. A dog's sense of smell is nearly 400x more sensitive than ours, and they can hear things in ranges a human will never hear. We interact with dogs every day, and yet they perceive the world in an entirely different way than we do. Sometimes, I think the reasons we have not found evidence of extraterrestrial life forms is because the way we perceive things are just too different than the hints that the other types of life are producing. Here is another example of what I am talking about. On the earth today there are animals that can live at depths that man could simply not handle. There are also some types of life that can live in ocean vents that are spewing boiling hot water. Man cannot live in either environment. Yet once we found a way to look at these environments, we found that there is life there. Giant squids and sperm whales often battle in the depths. At the depth that giant squids live, there is no sunlight. and yet the whales are able to find the squids and eat them. Sucker marks have been found on whales that are up to 28 inches across! These likely came from 50-foot squid. Although we can't survive under those pressures, and we cannot see in the darkness at those depths, The whales and the squid both seem to have the ability to do so. If these large creatures can be alive and yet under our line of regular site, how many other things are we missing, simply because we don't have the ability to perceive them? One more scientific example before I move on. Did you know that not only are there things that live in the depths of the sea, but that there are also creatures that can live more than 1000 meters below the sea floor as well? That's right, scientists have found bacteria in drill cores that they took up from below the sea floors. The bacteria lived off of things that died millions of years ago. It is truly amazing if you think about it! Will we find life in space? Who knows! We are still finding life we didn't know about on our own planet. Sometimes, even what we see with our own eyes can hide other truths from us.Oftentimes, my first impression of someone is wrong. People I thought were rude and abrupt were really only having a bad day and I later grew to like them immensely. Meanwhile, other people who I liked right away turned out to be manipulative and scheming. I always like to paraphrase Shakespeare with his "all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players." I usually mix in other quotes about masks, which totally kills Shakespeare's original meaning. Even so, I find that we all do wear many masks in our lives. My daughters see my father mask. My friends, my friend mask. And on and on. At work, I am an analyst and my actions show all that that entails. At karate, I am a sensai, and likely given more credit for knowledge than I truly feel. Still, I do have that knowledge, and I can effectively teach people what I know. My actions have more truth than my feelings about my actions. I think we are all like that, to some extent. We are uncertain about some of our actions and we wear a mask. We hide our nervousness or the fact that we are uncomfortable with a mask of competency or assuredness. Funny, I know that I know what I know. And yet, sometimes I feel uncomfortable trying to exp[lain to someone what I know. The mask slips, and my humanity trickles out. So what do you see when you look at me? I am almost certain that it is not the same thing I see when I look in the mirror. If you have a few minutes, write a couple of sentences in the comments. What do you see?
Before I launch into my opinion of this phrase... I'd like to clear up a lot of the misunderstandings that surround it. The first time I heard this phrase, I believe I was 8 or 9 and my dad was explaining to me that my family would always be there for me and love me, etc. etc.... and how friends can't always be as trusted. It's an unpopular opinion for the generations that came before me, but I don't stand by the belief that family bonds have to be stronger than friendship. That aside... this is where the misunderstanding of the phrase comes in.
Many people take it as an indicator that family bonds are stronger than mere friendship because of blood ties; but the quote that this saying is derived from is actually "the blood of the covenant is stronger than the water of the womb". It actually means that blood shed in battle would bond soldiers closer than simple genetics... and thus; the quote actually means opposite of what most people will take it as. I'll continue my unpopular opinion. I don't believe that family ties are stronger than friendships at all, in most cases. I am pretty sure I've said this before in previous posts; but if I haven't then I'll re-iterate here. I treat everyone with an equal amount of respect that they deserve until they give me a reason to show them more... or to show them less. Treat others as you wish to be treated; but don't forget to also treat others as they have treated you. Since I live by peace over power, I do try to contain myself a bit from "treating others as they treat me". The psychological damage that some have inflicted onto me is far more than I think I could ever do to anyone regardless of what they had done to me... simply because that's not how I am. I'm a lover, not a fighter... despite popular opinion. To get back to the quote, I have family who I haven't spoken to in years. I have family who make no effort to stay in touch with me... or anyone else. I have family who I've never met and I have family who haven't said more than a few words to me out of obligation. I have family who would sooner argue and gossip about me than have my back if I were to fall. On the other side of the coin; I also have family who I have good relationships with! In fact, the portion of you I'm close with are probably reading this blog post; you know who you are... so I thank you for maintaining a relationship with me and for being there for me. Thank you for the love and support with all that has happened over the years. On the friends side of things, I have many friends who I would consider far closer to me than 95% of my family. I have friends who know me inside out and who I would trust with my life; and I cannot say the same for everyone I'm related to. I don't know. Just because we have blood ties doesn't make you any more or less of a person to me. Your character should speak for itself. Regardless of anything else. "I don't care about whose DNA has re-combined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching- they are your family." - Maddie "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." This is a quote by Anais Nin. Nin was an essayist and a polygamist, if you can believe it. She seems to have been a very loose character, even before taking a second husband. In either case, I am not here to write about her forgettable morals. Some people are better off forgotten, and I believe that Nin is one of those best forgotten, so if you are interested in her, look her up yourself. I'll waste no more of my time with her!
Now, as for her quote, I'd have to say its true. What is not true, though, is that phony experiences can be used in place of true courage. So many people nowadays go about accumulating experiences that are, for the most part, safe, yet are marketed as dangerous and exciting. Does a person really show courage by going on a roller coaster, or by bunge jumping? I would argue that the answer is no. People go out to do these experiences to show their courage, yet they are too afraid to tell anyone how they truly feel. Instead of having the courage to be themselves, they safely emulate styles they are told are rebellious. Have you noticed the large number of tattoos and piercings all around you now? Or how everyone now feels comfortable calling others names, just because they don't agree with what they feel is right? Real courage has nothing to do with any of that. Real courage has nothing to do with changing your style of dress or adornment to fit into a group. It has nothing to do with driving a fancy sports car, or causing trouble. Courage has everything to do with being yourself and treating everyone with a modicum of respect. Courage has to do with doing what you believe is right, even if it is an unpopular opinion. True courage will expand your life because you won't let fear hold you back from doing what you believe is right. True courage will allow you to talk to people regardless of what the group you hang around with thinks. And true courage will expand your life by allowing you to experience more of everything since you won't be hiding behind anyone else's ideals. True courage is peace over power and not just doing something because you can. It is doing what you can, without intentionally hurting anyone else around you. While Nin gave a nice quote above, and likely thought she was the embodiment of her quote, her actions hurt others (her first two husbands whom she cheated on) and actually diminished her and her works in my view. In the end, I think Nin was weak and a coward. And I really wish that a more courageous person had uttered those words. In your life, have the courage to lead by example. To say what you believe is true, but still have the tact to say it without hurting someone else just because you can. Courage comes in many forms. The best courage, in my opinion, is when you can be yourself, do what you like and not hurt others in the process. Have the courage to treat others how you would like to be treated. Don't feel that you have to wait to see how they treat you first. Show them how you want them to treat you by how you treat them! Okay, here's the follow-up to the first half of this post! Just to clarify; I'm only quoting the 11 princesses that are in the official Disney collection. If my readers enjoy this; maybe I'll dig out quotes from the other various Disney movies that aren't just princesses- because goodness knows they have some good quotes in them, and were a large part of my childhood as well.
Jasmine "Whatever we may do, you are here for me, and I'll be there for you." "Like so many things; it is not what is outside, but what is inside that counts." Pocahontas "Sometimes, the right path is not the easiest one." "You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you. But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger; you'll learn things you never knew, you never knew." Mulan "The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all." "Believe you can. Then you will." Tiana "The only way you get what you want in this world is through hard work." "My daddy never did get what he wanted. But he had what he needed. He had love. He never lost sight of what was really important; and neither will I." Rapunzel "And love will not break your heart; but dismiss your fears." "You'll never find anything better if you stay in your comfort zone." Merida "You control your destiny- you don't need magic to do it. And there are no magical shortcuts to solving your problems." "Our fate lies within us. You just have to be brave enough to see it." BONUS: "That's the real trouble with the world; too many people grow up." "Why worry? If you've done the very best you can, worrying won't make it any better." "Growing old is mandatory, but growing up is optional." - Walt Disney "In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways." That mouthful was by Edith Wharton. And although it seems to be a long run-on sentence, I love that she got it exactly right, in my opinion!
Edith Wharton was an American writer who wrote "The Age Of Innocence" among other things. She actually became the first woman to win a Pulitzer prize (in 1921) due to this book. In my opinion, Wharton was a woman ahead of her time. Amazingly, she did not publish her first novel until she was 40! By the time she passed away, in 1937 she had written fifteen novels, seven novellas, and eighty-five short stories. She had published poetry, books on design, travel, literary and cultural criticism, as well as a memoir. Getting back to her quote, I like that she defines living by what she does and not by what she has. Illness and sorrow are facts of life in everyone's lives. She does not allow them to define her, however. Instead, she defines her life by her reasons for living! Ms. Wharton was not afraid of change. Her first husband had a mental illness that led to a radical change in how she had wanted to live her life. She tried to make the best of it, but after 28 years, once the doctors said that their was no longer hope to change his condition, she left to start her second life. She was 51 years old at this point! She traveled, wrote, and learned... She became happy in spite of what had happened during the "best" years of her life. I have often quoted Spock (who was likely quoting someone else) that the only constant is change. Edith is so right in saying not to be afraid of change. Not all change is bad... it is just different to what you are used to. Embrace the change, and make it your own. Always be open to learning new things. Nothing is sadder than seeing a person who decides that they know enough, and actively decides to no longer learn new things. We have all heard the saying "life has passed her by." Don't let this happen to you! Technological change has been happening at a rapid pace for over 75 years. If you fail to embrace this change, you are setting yourself up for a pretty rough go of things. Imagine if you still had to get around by horse and buggy... simply because you didn't want to learn how to drive a car! Look for small changes you can make in your life every day, and try them. The things you don't find useful, discard. Those things that show a definite benefit to you should be added to your life. Finally, find happiness in small ways. Don't look for what is wrong with your friends and family members, but what is right with them! Look for those small things that make them unique, and make you happy. It is easy to find fault in others. Constantly pointing it out doesn't make you superior, or happy. It makes you a nag. Be a person that inspires others, not the type that repels them. Remember, people are led by example, not by nagging or coercion. People in glass houses should not throw stones. And finally, remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees when they brought an adulterer to him and asked whether she should be stoned to death. He said: “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” Before you cast guilt on another, think about what Jesus was trying to say in the above verse. Then honestly answer these two questions: "Do I live my faith? Or "Do I use it as a shield to protect me from what I disagree with?" I know I have drifted a bit away from the spirit of the above quote, but this post is meant for two people in my life... not just one. Because there is a second side to the coin, and an additional lesson, which again, can be found in the bible. This answer can be found in Proverbs. The question is how should you react to a person who may have strayed away from living their faith? The Proverbs make it clear: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest you also be like to him..." Take this post for what it's worth. I think there are many lessons here. Both from the original quote, and from the verses I have quoted above. I think the two I am speaking to in the final four paragraphs should be able to recognize themselves from the described behavior. If not, feel free to ask me, and I will tell you whether I was thinking of you or not. Finally, if I was not speaking to you, yet you feel the need to ask me, then what is important is that you thought I was speaking to you, and thus you need to change your behavior. Have a good night, folks. I've been thinking about what I'd like to write about for a good portion of my day now, and because of this; I ended up scrolling back through old posts. About a week or two ago my dad and I had both written posts on quotes from Winnie The Pooh- an influential character in both our childhoods. This got me thinking, what else held a special place in my childhood? The immediate answer was disney movies. I used to watch them all the time when I was little and they served as a wholesome form of entertainment for me when I was 6 and 7. To this day, I can still somewhat enjoy watching them with my sister.
Because of this, I've decided to go on a hunt for some quotes from most of the Disney princesses- I'll try to get one from each. Whether I'll succeed or not is beyond me; because I refuse to throw just anything into the mix to satisfy people. Anyway, here we go! Snow White "You're never too old to be young." "When the raindrops come tumbling, remember that you're the one who can fill the world with sunshine." Cinderella "Even miracles take a little time." "Have courage, and be kind." Sleeping Beauty "Even if love is full of thorns, I'd still embrace it- for I know that in between those thorns; there is a rose worth all the pain." "Love will always find a way." Ariel "What makes someone special? I suppose it all depends. It's what's unique in each of us." "I remember all the wonderful times we've had together. They're not things. They're memories." Belle "It's not until you lose everything that you can truly appreciate everything." "A thing must be loved before it is lovable." This post is beginning to get lengthy... and there are many more princesses to get through. Because of this, I will end this post here and proceed to make a part 2. I hope you enjoyed this post and if you have any quotes I've missed; please tell me! - Maddie "Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.” I like this quote. Again, this quote lends itself to Buddhist thought and the way of Zen. In fact. it's almost a koan in and of itself!
Funny, this quote is by Meister Eckhart, a German theologian and philosopher who was tried for heresy by the Catholic church. In other words, he was very far from being a Buddhist! I am also fairly certain that his meaning for this quote was much different to the meaning I am going to give it. I view the quote as one of the steps toward gaining enlightenment. What is the true thing? It is nothing. And Everything. There is no past. There is no future. There is just the present. Although we all hope that we will live for a long time, there is no guarantee. All we have is the present. The now. In the end, we have our minds, and that's about it. We have what we are doing right now. And nothing else. Although there are alternatives to what I am doing right now, I am not doing them. Thus, they do not really exist anywhere but in my mind. And the potentials that those actions may produce, are only that. Potentials. The body is made up of a number of living cells. And yet we recognize ourselves as only one. If we lose a limb, it is detached from us, and withers and dies. Meanwhile the rest of us lumbers on. A little inconvenienced, but still alive and able to function. In the end, our possessions do not matter. We cannot take them with us. We spend all of our lives collecting this or that and actually saving it, expecting it to give us happiness. And yet, in the end, we all return to the source. Our survivors throw what remains away. And we return to the nothing, as if we were erased from history. I was looking at some Zen koans earlier, and I came across something that wasn't realy a koan, but got me thinking nonetheless. A koan typically is a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment.. The following anecdote, will get you thinking, but it isn't really a koan since it gives you the answer to think about. A true koan would leave it to you to figure out, and thus gain enlightenment. Here is the paragraph in question: Read this slowly: "LIFEISNOWHERE" What did you read? Life is No Where? OR Life is Now Here? My friends, Life is all about how you look at it! That last line is what really kills it as a koan in my opinion. Still, it does make you think, and the author is correct, in my opinion. Life is all about how you look at it!
Have you ever met someone who seems perpetually happy? I have. I think we all have actually. I notice when I am around these people that the world seems to be a little less foreboding and seems to have more opportunity. Their smiles are infectious, and I generally seem to have a better time while I am around them. Other people seem to have the opposite effect. Everything is a chore for them, and if you are not miserable too, then you are just not trying enough! These people have the ability to suck the life out of me, and I try to avoid them as much as I can. I also notice that these people are not the same for all people (although the happy ones are!). Someone who is a time suck and a drain for me, may just be an ordinary person for someone else The final group of people are what most people seem to be... that is neutral. For the most part, these people have little impact on your life most of the time. About 90% of the people you meet are going to be neutral in your life. My advice is to find the perpetually happy, and try to make friends with them. At the same time, make friends with all of the neutrals you can as well, since they are usually nice people, and while they don't have the ability to always be happy around you and help your happiness, at least most times they will be amicable. The final group, I call them the buzz kills, are the ones you really want to steer away from in your life. Life is too short to be miserable, or to be around perpetually miserable people. For me, I also try to avoid drunks and liars as well, since I really don't have the patience for them. Finally, although I initially read the above line of letters as life is no where, it is not how I truly feel. I like to live my life so that I am experiencing the now. Life is way too short to live in the past, and I find I am happiest when I am working towards a better tomorrow. There is a quote I read once that I honestly try to live by. That is: "Be the change you want to see in the world." Now, although I'd like to see many changes in the world, I am realistic. I won't be able to change the entire world, but I should be able to have an impact on my immediate surroundings. Thus, I focus on making things better around me. I like to help out people when I can and I try not to harm anyone around me, if they are not hurting me. Peace over power. In general, I see my world as a happy place, filled with opportunity. That type of attitude makes me happy. I am happy as long as I actually work towards bringing those opportunities about. How do you see the world? Do you take steps to be the type of change you want to see in the world? Because, in the end, life really is how you look at it! Meld it into your vision. "When watching after yourself, you watch after others. When watching after others, you watch after yourself." That, of course, is a quote by Buddha. The interesting thing about Buddha is that everyone quotes him, but he has no actual writings of his own. In fact, the first sayings written as Buddha's were written about four hundred years after his death.
Have you ever played a game of pass the secret? That's the game where one person starts with a message and then whispers it into the ear of the person sitting to their left. Everyone is in a circle by the way... Well, by the time the "secret" gets back to the original person, the secret is nothing near to what was actually said to begin with! Well, now think about doing that for four hundred years. I am guessing that if any of "his" sayings ever got back to Buddha he would have a Yogi Berra moment. .. "I haven't said half the things they say I said!" Anyway, to get back to the quote, I don't care if Buddha actually said it or not, I believe there is some truth to it. It is particularly true when you are watching after others. Here is a personal example: As many of you know, my wife was an alcoholic, and she drank herself to death. What you might not know is that I am also an alcoholic. I have been sober for seventeen years. When I first met my wife, we both drank. While I drank socially, always with other people, my wife was more of a sneak drinker. So much so, that I didn't even know she had a drinking problem until we were already dating for a couple of weeks! It was at that point that Sharon told me she was an alcoholic and asked me to help her to stop drinking. She asked me, because she did not know how heavily I drank (since I did it mainly on the weekends and occasionally after work). At first I just thought she meant that she drank too much socially, and I told her that in the two weeks that I had known her I only saw her have a couple of drinks. It was at that point that she opened her pocket book and showed me her bottle of vodka. She had a one liter bottle in her pocketbook and it was about halfway gone. She was drinking daily, then, including while she was at work... and I never would have known. At that moment, I promised her that I would help her to quit, and it was then that I had my last drink. That was back in July 1999. Sharon never stopped drinking, even with all of my "help". I literally took hundreds of bottles from her over the years, but it did no good. In 2013, she died of esophageal varices, which was caused by the damage she did to her liver while drinking. To bring it back full circle, in trying to save my wife, I ended up saving myself. (When watching after others, you watch after yourself.} In the end, although I tried my hardest, no one can really save anyone who is caught in an addiction...they must save themselves. BUT, in trying to save Sharon, I ended up saving myself. Sharon and I divorced in 2011 to protect the children. I have raised Maddie alone since she was seven and Ashleigh since the day she came home from the hospital. It pains me that I could not help Sharon. Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, in patient, out patient, AA... none of it worked with Sharon. It ended up she had addictive personality disorder, but we didn't find that out until it was way too late. I held Sharon for the last six hours of her life after they removed her from life support. She died in my arms. When we first met, I never thought that our last embrace would be in death. I didn't realize how badly she needed help, and I never guessed that I would not be able to give it to her. I was naive, and I felt that if I just stopped drinking myself, I would be able to provide all of the willpower she needed for her to do the same. The other night, someone on Imgur put up a picture of the token they received from AA for being sober for one year. It really touched me, and made me think of Sharon, and myself. I congratulated them, told them how long I had been sober and said "Take it one day at a time, my friend." For those of you who are not afflicted with alcoholism, I can tell you from experience becoming sober is not an easy thing to do. In fact, some never quite make it. Like my wife. Rest in peace Sharon. For those of you still suffering with alcoholism, seek help. AA is a great place to start, and there are in-patient programs that may be of help as well. Recently, some of the events in my life have been surrounding religion. What's right; what's wrong... etc; etc. I personally believe that religion is so wide-spread that there's no real surefire religion that's correct, and that people should be allowed to believe whatever they want so long as they don't cause harm or discomfort to others. .Personally, I'm agnostic, and I do believe in God. NASA has proved that there's God- whatever created us; whether it's nature or some higher power, is God. And we were created SOME HOW- therefore, there's a God. I just don't believe there's a just God due to all of the horrible things going on in the world.
I could go deeper on my opinions about religion and why I disagree with the one I was brought up in; but that wasn't what I intended this post to be about. In the end; there's no way to be certain about religion anyway and arguing about it is; in my opinion, is pointless. The rest of this post is going to be quotes about coexisting. "There are many paths up the mountain, but the view of the moon from the top is the same." "You don't need religion to have morals. If you can't determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy- not religion." "Freedom of religion means freedom of ALL religions; not just your own." "All major religious traditions carry basically the same message; that is love, compassion, and forgiveness. The important thing is that they should be a part of our daily lives." "In the end; only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you." "Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right." "God has no religion." - maddie "Yelling silences your message. Speak quietly, so that your children can hear your words instead of just your voice." I agree with the above quote whole-heartedly... because I've been in both situations with adults before. Yelling is an unfortunate common occurrence in my house; and while I'm just as guilty as the rest of my family is about it... I often think of ways that the yelling could possibly be tuned down a bit. I mean, it gets ridiculous! It's constant, it's unnecessary, and it happens for no reason. There's yelling going on as I write this post because my sister had the volume 2 notches too high on her iPad... and instead of calmly asking her to turn it down, she got yelled at to do it.
Was there any particular reason for the yell as opposed to the calm question? Honestly, I don't know. When it comes to pointless little things like that; I can't figure out why people choose to yell. I can somewhat understand yelling when arguing or when emotionally disturbed, but yelling for no reason just seems like a waste of time. I think some believe that the louder they are; the more valid their argument- and it's not the case. If anything; yelling takes away from your argument by making you seem foolish. The other day in the car, my dad got around to telling me two pieces of advice that he remembered his dad telling him and taking to heart- and that got me thinking about advice that HE has given me. And one of the most valuable pieces of advice that I think my dad has given me is that it's always better to approach things calmly and logically; and to avoid yelling in arguments for the same reason I stated above (looking foolish and sounding ignorant). So thank you, dad. I do try to follow that bit of advice (and the many other bits of advice that you've given me) as often as I can, when I remember. If the world could follow that advice, I think there would be far less problems. "Arguing with idiots is like playing chess with a pigeon- no matter how good you are, the bird is going to shit on the board and strut around like it won anyway." - Maddie "What makes earth feel like hell is our expectation that it should feel like heaven.” That's a quote by Chuck Palahniuk. So who is Chuck? He is the author of the book "Fight Club". Although I have not read the book, I have seen the movie. (God it felt horrible saying THAT!!!) I guess I will have to put it on my list of things to read, since I did enjoy the movie, and oftentimes I enjoy the books more than the movies. I must admit, I like Chuck's quote. I have always felt that false expectations always works to make things seem worse than they actually are. Sometimes I go to movies with very high expectations and I end up disappointed... even if the movie isn't bad, but just mediocre. Meanwhile, I have also gone to films where I entered with little to no expectations and left the theater happy that I went! Buddha had a number of great quotes about expectations. I'll list a few below, then continue on with my thoughts. "Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance." "The root of suffering is attachment." "Do not dwell on the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." "Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without." "When we do not expect anything, we can be ourselves." That last quote may not be by Buddha. I believe I have heard it somewhere before. But for right now, we'll give it to Buddha since it seems like something he would say! It seems to be a recurring theme with Buddha that all troubles seem to start when we set expectations. Even worse than having expectations about things, we sometimes set expectations for ourselves.
Unfortunately, I like to do this. They are not expectations per se, but goals. I definitely like to set goals for myself and then strive to reach them. It is a way for me to focus my energy and use it towards creating a favorable outcome. While I do not always reach my "goals" right away, I can note progress towards them over time. Sometimes, I will change my goals due to changes in my life.When I do this, I do not feel like I am in hell. It is usually because I realized that there was either a better way of accomplishing my goal, or there was a better goal available. Now with all of that said, I will admit that I had a period in my life that I considered hell. Expectations did lead to some of it. When I was younger, I always expected that my wife would outlive me. She was ten years younger than me and given the mortality table, I was reasonably confident that she would survive me. That wasn't the case, however. She died three years ago. Although her mental illness took her away from our family three years before that. For the past seven years I have been raising my daughters on my own. My Mom lives with us now, and she is a great help, but I raise the girls as I see fit. At any rate, I think you can see where my hell was coming from. My expectations led me to have all of my plans tied to my wife being alive and with us. My business was based out of my home, and I had banked on my wife being there to help raise the children. For three years, there was only me to do that. Me, a single Dad with a newborn baby, a seven-year-old little girl, and a mentally ill wife who still needed my love and understanding... even though she could no longer live with us. To make a long story short, it is amazing that we survived that time as well as we did. I never want to have to relive those circumstances. Long-time readers of this blog, likely know some of our trials. There are some things I will never talk about though. Those are parts of my own personal hell. Once again, I have expectations for myself and my family. Am I setting myself up for further hellish times? I don't think so. I try to listen to Buddha, and keep my expectations low. I do aim high with my goals, though, and work diligently to make those happen. Are those expectations? No, they are goals, and they help to give my life meaning. In the end, keep your expectations low and set your goals high... and diligently work towards them. Hopefully, this strategy will let you walk the thin line between heaven and hell and allow you to survive. While there may not be a heaven on earth, there certainly doesn't have to be a hell either. God bless! Today's been long... incredibly long. Lately I've been dealing with a lot of dishonesty in my life and its been taking its toll on me, I must admit. I'm sick of it. It literally makes me physically ill knowing some people can do such terrible things to people and live with no remorse for it... it really says something about character. I personally have come to the point where it's extremely hard for me to tell big lies. I tell the occasional white lie; but who doesn't..? Whenever I even try to tell a big lie (which is rare to begin with) I always get overcome with guilt and fess up to whatever it is.
Because of this, I decided to look through some quotes on google and post some of the best ones. I'm not much in the mood for writing; but I did figure I'd give a little insight to my choice of topic. "Before us lie two paths- honesty and dishonesty. The shortsighted embark on the dishonest path; the wise on the honest. For the wise know the truth: in helping others, we help ourselves; and in hurting others, we hurt ourselves. Character overshadows money, and trust rises above fame. Honesty is still the best policy." "Lying and dishonesty never work- and it is a great human tragedy that people think dishonesty can work for a good motive." "You lie so often and so well that you actually believe your lies to be the truth. You are a superb pathological liar; and it's terrifying." "When someone lies to you, it's because they don't respect you enough to be honest, and they think you're too stupid to know the difference." "Never try to destroy someone's life with a lie; when yours could be destroyed with the truth." "More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren't so busy denying them." "Should you ever find yourself the victim of other people's bitterness, lies, or insecurities... just remember that it could be worse. You could be them." - maddie |
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