Saturday, January 31, 2009

Taking away a real encounter.

Insist on being the giver and you reduce the other person one step away from being a beggar. If you want to diminish them farther you can simply promise and not deliver, thereby keeping them always waiting, always thinking, always not quite sure. Or you can get others to dance and sing songs for you, promising to reward them for a job well done, and then not ever be quite satisfied with them.

While you might get gratitude for a while, or guilt and tears, you won't get what they had to offer if you'd let them give you what was really in their heart.

Friday, January 30, 2009

It's fear that has captured you

Life takes a lot of courage, often more than we think we've got, and almost always more than we think we should have to find. There are so many battles one has to face with others and with yourself, and sometimes you find you are braver than you think, and sometimes you find you aren't. One never really knows when fear and doubt will hit. I was asked once, "Why do you fear the wind and the rain? Wind moves the clouds and dries the rain." It was at that moment I realized that I had nothing to fear but the habit of being afraid, and at that moment I began to enjoy life again.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

A sea of infinite possibilities

No one knows much about fulfillment except that it's hard to find, and maybe doesn't exist, and a lot of people who believe in it when they are twenty stop believing in it later on.

Fulfillment is always something the other guy's got, something just over the hill. It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and catching the brass ring. It's true love, becoming rich, and staying thin. But whatever it is, it always eludes you and keeps you on the run like the carrot on the stick, and even when it bites your line a million times you rarely reel it in.

All of us feel there must be more, but wonder what the more really is, and often the more we yearned for last year isn't enough today. So we wait for something else, something just a little better than what we've got, and often we trade in the thing we have for something we think we should want. We wait for the perfect thing to commit to, the perfect job, the perfect love, and we feel miserable all the while we wait, somehow failing to understand that loneliness lies in the suspended state.

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Trust in life

There is a difference between an independence which comes from strength and one which is a retreat from life. While I know we are all afraid of being hurt and take two steps back for every forward one we take, the truth is the moment when we are most ourselves is when we reach out and answer the call from someone else. It is very difficult to accept the fact that there are no guarantees in life, no guarantees that life will progress as it should or that the people you care about will love you back, or even that they will treat you right. But trust in life does not mean trusting that life will always be good or that it will be free of grief and pain. It means trusting that somewhere inside yourself you can find the strength to go forth and meet what comes and, even if you meet betrayal and disappointment along the way, go forth again the very next day.