Be Open to Experience

Greetings and Salutations--
    First off I want to take a moment to speak of my debit of gratitude that I feel for everyone that I know (and those I don't, but know me through someone who does) that is praying and or thinking of my mother.. For words and offers of support and volunteering to help look after my mom in the coming weeks and months.. While I have been a nurse for twenty years I have to say that I feel like a new grad being on this end of health care.. In my forty-two years all she has ever had was a flipping colonoscopy.. My mom is the salt of the earth in my life and a rock that I have always been able to lean upon.. I can feel the warmth and love that is being sent out from everyone and it means more that I can ever express.. That being said things feel better when the "show goes on" and I have a blog to put out  :)
     As you can all well imagine I have a million things to blog on about what I am going through at this time in my life.. The one that has filtered it's way to the top is experience and how much of it we need to relate to other people with compassion and understanding.. The experience of love, friendship, disappointment, devastation, sadness, happiness, hope, and endless wonderful possibilities alas require direct participation if you want the most out of life.. It dictates that the only way to understand where another person is coming from is either to have had the same experience or something close enough that you can relate to.. This has taken on sharper meaning as this experience has unfolded, sitting in an ICU waiting room.. That you can't truly begin to know how any particular situation feels until you are standing square in the middle of it..
     Someone can tell you about their plight in life.. Someone can tell you about how their life was forever changed for the best when they altered how they view their world.. It means nothing until you bring it home to your own mind and soul.. Until something you go through changes the core of who you are..  Until you live it yourself, good or bad.. Maybe something as simple as having a conversation with a stranger and realizing how much negativity is out in the world that surrounds us all.. How sorry you feel for that person that they don't have the life skills to feel positive about any given situation.. That (positive) perspective is truly the key to a life lived in a deeply purposeful way..
     People tend to stay within the confines of their world and shy away from what will make them learn.. What doesn't feel good emotionally doesn't feel comfortable.. They travel very little.. They have friends that all feel about love, life and politics as they themselves do.. They don't take the time to learn another way to view a situation.. The very nature of being able to see more than one side of a situation or feeling is to be exposed to various DIFFERENT ways of thinking and believing.. A skill, thought, or feeling can't be mastered until you do it enough for it to move from uncomfortable to comfortable.. That takes repeated exposure to the very thing that made you uncomfortable in the first place.. That requires perseverance.. It takes a lot of hard work to stay in a moment of time (situation) that doesn't feel familiar.. By human nature, when we are uncomfortable, we will go to extraordinary lengths to get back to our comfort zone..
     Here is what I offer for consideration.. I think that we should put ourselves out there as much as possible.. Make travel a priority.. Seek out what makes you uncomfortable and work to appreciate what you don't understand or agree with.. The next time someone offers a contrary point of view make a conscious effort to open you mind and listen.. Open yourself up to the opportunity to learn more than one way to think or feel.. The more connected we are to each other the more we live with compassion for those we share this earth with.. The more connected we are the better we all coexist.. I love that word "coexist" for alot of reasons but mostly because it doesn't imply I have to agree with your point of view or choices.. It just means I have an edge that I can respect the differences in people and not take it personally.. It would be a truly boring place if we all felt and looked at life and all its happenings the same.. Push past your boundaries.. Apply all this to a family member you have ostracized because you disagree with  their choices or who they are from something that happened in the past..
     Love everyone you can for who they are and more importantly for who they are not, for that is where the essence of that person lives.. Not who you think they are or wish them to be, but who they are as the rest of the world sees them.. Allow them to arrive at their destination in life on their own time frame, not yours.. Be OK that you see or feel things differently from them.. Live your life and with all those in it so that if tomorrow it all changed you can look in the mirror and say "I've done right by those that I've loved".. Life isn't about having no regrets for those are inevitable . The life we get up and live everyday for should be such that if someone dear to you were taken tomorrow, you lived a life of fulfillment with them to the best of your ability, not full of regret for what you should have said or done with them when you had them.. We all have room for improvement.. Make sure your room is as small as possible on purpose--Regrets take up more space than you anticipate in the end..

Tootles :)
Heather

Prayers and Thoughts For My Mother Please

Greetings and Salutations--
I would please ask that you pray in what ever form that you do for my mother whom suffered a major stoke and is in the ICU and fighting for her life since the early morning hours of Tuesday...I would humbly ask for any and all thoughts for a miraculous recovery...I'm just not quit ready to part with my mom..we still have many cups of coffee to drink together before work in the mornings and flowers to plant this coming season..I offer my absolute gratitude

Heather

Settle for Compromise

Greetings and Salutations--
     How is everyone tonight? Excellent would be my desire for each and every one of you.. I was talking with my sister the other day and she is faced with the challenge of whether to move now (lease is coming up) or to put it off another year and continue to do a totally crazy (in my book) commute.. As we were talking and plotting out the pros and cons of should she stay or should she go, ( hey...isn't that a song..."should I stay or should I go now"  ;)  with one of her options she kept starting off the sentence with "I could settle for this..." and "If I do this, I'd be settling for..."  I finally pointed out that if she replaces the word settle with compromise it can alter the light in which she sees all of her options.. She doesn't HAVE to move.. What ever pathway she chooses, she can make it about COMPROMISE not settling.. As soon as I used that word it clicked with her and it was something she started to wrap her head around..
     I believe that even when we are faced with things that we have no choice about or in, the first thing I do, after I cool down and find my rational side, is to seek out where I can make any and all compromises.. I see this as a positive action.. Sometimes it may be picking your poisons but lets face it, some poisons you can survive from and some kill your ass dead in a nanosecond.. I believe that the word "compromise" sounds inherently positive.. Where as "settling" sounds like immediately it is the short end of the stick..  The word "settle" conjures up the mental pictures of what people look like when they are suck in a relationship they want out of but, for what ever reason, stay in.. "Settle" gives the notion that you have absolutely no choice in the matter and that you hate it already.. How can good feelings, thoughts, or pleasure come out of something that you already are at odds with?
     I have a book that I am reading "Why We Believe What We Believe" by Andrew Newberg, MD.. This thing is PACKED with neurologically why we do what we do.. Its is amazing! For some time now I have be mystified as to why we can't leave things opened ended.. I have mentioned this often in my blogs.. Why we have to assign an ending or value to an interaction with someone/event if we don't know the results..  That we assign a positive or negative thought to an unknown outcome.. Apparently it is a construct to being Human that basically ( as I am starting to understand it)  in order to make sense of our world that would otherwise be too chaotic to handle (neurologically), we constantly search for meaning and understanding.. We do this from the time we are born.. To leave things "open" goes against what we are "wired" to do.. You can't make sense of something if you don't know the outcome of an event/interaction..
     So when I think of it this way, it is starting to make sense.. We have to, by our nature know the outcome.. So why not set your default to positive outcomes instead of negative ones? That it will all work out and if it doesn't, you will roll with it.. You will take it as it happens, not as what you imagine it (the move at work, the job interview you went on and are waiting to hear back, the argument you had with a friend that isn't resolved, the date you went on, but haven't gotten "the call" yet, etc etc) So you can either assign positive endings while waiting or you can pick the negative and be "prepared" for the worst..I believe that it is always the wining choice to determine that things will work out and everything will be great..
     With a positive energy that emanates from deep within you, things that you never thought possible will start to happen.. You will begin to see and migrate towards great things happening because you expect them.. It is easy to say when you expect bad things to happen they usually do.. Why not accept if you expect great things to happen they will more often that you ever imagined.. After all, if you view most situations framed in the context of settling for the least shitty choice, doesn't that still leave you with a shit choice?


Tootles :)
Heather