“The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now”
― Zig Ziglar
The quick fix. We all know it. I can’t meditate my show is on. I can’t put money into my savings account the new iPhone5 came out. I want it all and I want it now. Discipline is for those other people. I’ve fallen into that trap so many times. It seems that it is part of our nature to go for the pleasure that something of the moment brings rather than the joy that comes from staying the path and building our dream. In the long view of course joy beats pleasure hands down and perhaps there can be found a balance between the two.
Blessings, G
“I would rather be an artist than a leader. Ironically, a leader has to follow the rules.”
― Criss Jami
Long ago I learned that the more rules there are in a system, the more loopholes there are around them. But then I’ve always had a love hate relationship with rules and structure. I tend to like to bend them into new lines and shapes and see what they can become. Can I now claim that’s due to artistic license. Hmm that could be even better than poetic license which just gives you the freedom to play around with language. Now that’s a turn of phrase gives us freedom. How can something give us that which is inherently ours?
This little mini-essay may be a bit more dis-jointed as usual as I have a bit of a cold so feeling oddly stuffed up in here. Hmmm, if a priest is defrocked and a lawyer is disbarred is a former pothead dis-jointed? I’ve been told that when a foreign embassy is torn down it becomes disconsolate.
Tricked into learning
We start chasing our true tales
revealing ourselves
Ganesh, the deity shown in one of my pictures tonight is the remover of obstacles. Sometimes of course the easiest way of removing an obstacle resembles Alexander the Great’s solution to the Gordian knot…… (cutting the string).
Last night I got a message from WordPress saying that I had now reached 500 subscriptions on my blog. Wow!!! I feel grateful and appreciative for each one of you and appreciate the likes and amazingly thoughtful comments and well wishes… I’ll keep on attempting to create the art, write the essays and poetry and find the quotes that you all seem to be enjoying so much..
“There’s no freedom quite like the freedom of being constantly underestimated.”
― Scott Lynch
Wow, i find it difficult at times to live up to people’s expectations. It seems the more I show, the more that’s expected of me. It reminds me of why I spent so many years if not failing at things, not working hard to excel. It did give me an amazing amount of freedom. My parents and family were happy when I did show up rather than disappointed when I didn’t. I could do the work that I wanted and the studying that interested me rather than strive for a degree. Basically, when expected to fail, I was able to accomplish more than I ever dreamed possible.
Conversely when I exceeded people’s expectations they started expecting more and more. When friends had problems I listened and gave them advice. This resulted in them asking me for advice whenever they had a problem and becoming angry with me if I had something of my own going on. When I made it to every family event and made it a point to spend time with my family, the expectations for how often this would happen climbed…
The more you do the more you’re expected to do.
Not all of this pressure happens externally, we start to expect more from ourselves as well…in this day and age the expectation is that we will drive ourselves to the fullest amount of commitment we can handle.
More and more I am starting to believe that we really just need to relax a bit, do what our spirit moves us to do. If we disappoint others, if we disappoint that inner voice that keeps insisting on what we ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ do then that’s ok. In the long run we are answerable to our own hearts and that of the universe. I am not advocating abandoning all responsibility, if anything I am talking about being totally responsible to our own inner being and to the universe. Exhaustion and feeling like a failure does not equal responsibility at all.
Blessings, G
“There may be a great fire in our soul, yet no one ever comes to warm himself at it, and the passers-by see only a wisp of smoke.”
― Vincent van Gogh
Who inspires you? At who’s spiritual fire do you warm yourself knowing that with them you will never freeze? Do you inspire yourself? Do you hope to inspire others? We ALL have fire in our soul. At times it may feel like an extinguishing candle but at other times, sometimes very singular times but at least sometimes, we know ourselves to hold a blowtorch, just waiting for a chance to inspire others and definitely at the very least we all have the ability to self inspire ourselves to never before dreamed of heights.
Blessings, G
“You have to take risks, he said. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun–and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived that moment, that it doesn’t exist–that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists–a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.”
― Paulo Coelho
What was the magic moment of your day? How can you nurture that moment, sustain it and cause it to grow into a magical time… I think that the method that Paulo Coelho suggests to discover the moment in the first place. Paying attention. Tere are times when our attention, our focus is the most legitimate coin that we have, perhaps most of the time.
Blessings, G
