Words are Powerful

In the past three days I have directly and indirectly experienced how the words people speak to others can adversely affect a person's mood; their state of mind and how they interact with the people around them. While this is not the first time I have seen the power of words on people, myself included, this week it was more acute, I was more aware - I suppose mainly because I have over the last few weeks making a more concerted effort to be more mindful of how fragile life is, and not waste precious time on the innocuous. 

One of the situations reminded me of a conversation with my sensei; it's interesting how hurtful words not spoken directly to us, or at us, still affects us - it's interesting what and who we give power over us. We may repeat the affirmation that the only person we can control is us, and therefore the only person we have power over is ourselves - but it doesn't always play out like that. I am trying to find myself in a better and different mental space, where I not only say that I appreciate life and how fleeting it is but I actually act on it, and make the best of the good moments, spend more quality time with the people who matter, the people who will miss me when I'm gone. Having years of living in the moment, holding on to anger and many other negative feelings makes this journey a bit more challenging, but I think I am up to the task, after all in my 38 years on this earth I have redefined myself many times - and I will do it again.

Choose Positive

I woke this morning with the word consternation gnawing at my mind, I could not recall the meaning of the word, but somewhere in my subconscious mind I began to pen a poem rooted in this word. Letting my feet hit the floor, I reaches for my phone to search out the meaning of this word which greeted my mind on this beautiful Monday morning.

Consternation, a feeling of anxiety or dismay, that can not be what greetings me first thing in the AM, it can't be what I will write about, no, I refuse. There has been nothing but dismay for the last month, filled with sadness and ill feelings, no. I dictate the energy I put out into the universe and what energy returns to me, and I have no deliberate intention on putting that negative energy out there, no, not me, not today, hopefully not ever moving forward. I choose to send out positive, to hop over the ugly and deal with the unpleasantries of life from a positive space.

So, today I will take consternation flip in around and bring pure good vibes to my mental and emotional space, and I will share that positive energy with all I encounter today. Bless. Live Laugh Love. Cheers to Life.

Melodramatic

At this point I should not be amazed at the volatility of human beings, yet I remain dumbfound by our ability to turn on a dime, to move quickly through highs and lows, the cusp of emotional hilltops to the dunk depths of the murky valleys.

I suppose part of this can be attributable to our inherent disingenuous nature, our ability to harbour ill feelings about persons, sometimes those closest to us under the guise of less unsavory feelings.

In my last post I spoke of the brevity of life and the need to focus on the positive and move with haste past the innocuous and energy draining experiences. I have come to accept that many do appreciate the brevity of life, but as with anything else how they move forward with that appreciation, is based purely on their on perception of things - perception has no grey area, it's either from a place of positivity or negativity.

Needless to say, I still hold to my moment of clarity, life is way to short to dwell on the negative and have the thoughts, emotions and words of a few feel like an anchor around your neck. Live Laugh Love. Ever thankful. Cheers to Life

The Reaper

Death is the only fair part of life, it holds no favor for ones station in life, it cares not for your wealth, your power, beauty, youth, health - it cares for nothing. It comes at any given hour to welcome you with its cold embrace, taking you away from everything and everyone you have ever known - to some it is welcomed; a reprieve from pain, suffering, unhappiness; while to others it is rebuked with futility. Irrespective of how it is regarded it will knock on your door or kick down your door; it is unbiased and undeterred in its objective - one life equals one death; the universe demands balance.

100% Thankful

Interesting morning thus far, I've had a few deja vu moments for the morning, it has been a while I have not had one of those. Over the years I have learned to use these are my markers, my message from the universe telling me that hey, everything is going to be alright. These moments seem to come at times when I feel like things aren't going my way, or I am lost in my head, buried by my thoughts. It's interesting how we allow people and situation to dictate our emotional and mental states - when really and truly we're the only ones who control how we react to any given situation and any person whom we choose to enter our lives. I was really thankful for those deja vu moments this morning, because despite everything going on around me it placed a joy in my heart and a smile on my face. It will all be alright.  

Final Destination

Death has a way of bringing the brevity of life into sharp focus for those left behind in the wake of the passing of a loved one, family, friend and yes even acquaintance. It causes you a moments pause, to contemplate what really matters and the significance we place on the innocuous.

But just like life, these moments of profound introspection are fleeting, short lived; the lifespan inextricably tied to the life of the wave of emotions by which we're awashed having received the news of death. We ponder on the brevity of life, not so much the permanence of death, yet they are not mutually exclusive. Our moments of clarity fades quickly, dies a natural death, and rest in perfect peace, until it is resurrected by the next death.

We consume life in palatable pieces; death being that bitter entree, which taste we hasten to expel from our palate. But it remains a necessary evil, like work on a Monday, you don't wanna go through it but you must in order to get to the better days which lay ahead.

For us to truly become better human beings we need to treat our moments of clarity and introspection with the same permanence of death, rather than the fleeting brevity of life.

Meandering

There is no mold for the human condition, of the billions of people on earth you will be hard pressed to find two persons who are similar in every respect. Yet as part of the human condition we accept certain inalienable truths, certain behavioral parameters – and we accept standards for ourselves and others. One of our failings as is just that, the notion that we should all think, feel and act the same way in every given situation, like there is an unwritten rule that “this is what a good human should do, should feel, should say…” But nothing is further from the truth.

Invariably our difficulty with other humans is that they are not just like us; while we say we accept people’s differences that is not truly the case – acceptance is void of judgment; we merely tolerate opposing views. We struggle with empathy, and that is understandable as it is difficult to empathize something which is obscure to you. Human emotion is fluid, the fluidity of which is rooted in personal experience – sometimes emotions are bartered for human logic and rational; emotion and logic are incongruent at worst, strange bedfellows at best.

What does all this meandering mean? To be honest I am not quite certain, suffice to say that I have accepted, or perhaps not – perhaps I am tolerating the fact that the human condition is wonderful complex; and its complexity contributes to the lovely tapestry of human beings.