A Perfect Reflection

Mirror, mirror, on the wall, we're just reflections after all. 

~*~

My stress level was through the roof tonight due to two jobs, several freelance projects, no sleep, and lots weighing on my mind for the weekend, plus I encountered a complete jerk on the road while driving home — like a rotten Ford cherry* sitting on top of a junkyard of frustration.

Yay.

NOT.

I was having such a hard time letting go of all that crappy emotion. I knew I needed to, I really wanted to, I was even desperate enough to flip through my mental rolodex of "tools" I've learned in various seminars, books, CDs, etc. (Aside from pure gratitude, I mostly liken those tools to glow sticks: fun in the moment while you're all playing together, but not terribly useful after twenty-four hours.)

Didn't matter - what I really wanted to do was just destroy something. It's all I could picture. It was insane - like my brain was warring with itself. The emotional side was completely flipped out while the logical side was observing and thinking how ridiculous it was that common sense and reasoning couldn't make me any less emotional.

Fortunately I can never bring myself to actual violence even if it would be let out in a constructive way (my beliefs lean too far toward Animism), but this negativity HAD to dissipate. (And I'm sorry, but punching pillows? That does NOT work. And the pillows will get you back by sticking your face with feather ends all night.)

For whatever reason, I took five minutes to check up on a few Facebook pages of people that always make me smile. Who knew that would be like a flood of Samadhi Advil for Off-the-hook Hormones?

I've met all the people I'm talking about, but some probably wouldn't know me. Just thinking about them though was like an instant hug (and only one is famous, smartypants friends who think they know who I'm talking about). People have no idea how truly far-reaching their calming, peaceful presence is. There's nothing (and everything) extraordinary about them. They just are who they are, but in their Being is this amazing gift to humanity. I am so grateful for their gifts.

As I scrolled pages and clicked on a video or pictures, this came to mind:

When I look at you, I see the part of me that is Love.

Sounded like truth, so I'm writing it down and sharing it.

Who does that for you?† Send some gratitude their way now.

No, really. I'll wait.

I hope maybe sometimes I offer that to others. (Can't say I'm confident about being that these last couple months tho. Working in an office creates a lot of stress for me. Still trying to resolve that.)

Some people's light just shines so bright it can reach through any conjured darkness and once again illuminate what's happy in yourself, bringing things back into balance. Thank goodness.

(Photo by Bill Bell)

* Yes, it was red, and I just now got the irony of the fact that it was a Ford Focus. Well played, Universe.

† In re-reading I realized how you hear that sentence in your head probably says a lot about your emotions. Did you read it "who does that for you?" or "who does that for you?" I meant it in the latter expression.

I Am Grateful For So Many Choices

Jason Mraz posted today to promote help for organizations who are trying to end the underground slave trade that still survives in our society. I was going to just make a short comment on his blog post as I usually do, but I ended up writing so much I figured I'd post it here instead for anyone caring to read all that verbage. I don't like to fill up his comments with really long dissertations of my thoughts.

So the original post he made is HERE.

I put the first two paragraphs below in his comments, with a link back to here in case some wanted to read ALL my thoughts. I guess if you're not a fan of Mraz's blog, it's best to read his post before reading the rest of mine so you're not lost!

My complete reply is:

I agree with you, Jason, that education is so important - through education the slave trade will end itself. I believe it's better to get at the root of the problem to stop the growth, rather than simply alleviate the symptoms.

I am grateful for people who have the resources to do both - support education, AND support those willing to reach into the fire to extract the souls that may truly desire change - those that request help in switching directions on the path they're walking and then follow through. Thank you for being you and for using your voice wisely. :)

I know this will probably not be a popular opinion, but the girls that were "rescued" had a choice in the beginning to walk away from anything the pimps may have offered them. Why didn't they? I don't believe anyone enslaves anyone else. I believe people allow themselves to be enslaved, and then get in so deep they need help to get back out. It's like falling in a hole.

After reading/watching/hearing so much research on why people make "bad" choices, I have formed an opinion that perhaps it's a reaction to fear. Fear of lack, fear of non-survival, fear of non-acceptance from society. Except what our society doesn't really teach us in school is that we are not the ONLY society on this planet - our money-based lifestyle is not the only way to survive, and indeed is not even necessarily the "best" way (if there is one). There are plenty of indigenous cultures that live close to the Earth, without money, and they survive just fine (if we'd quit being such mega-land consumers!), and they are generally happier, more disease-free, and more balanced in their minds than our society is. Imagine that. The only reason our society doesn't see it this way is because they are different from us, and we have become intolerant to those that are labeled "different." So when people in our society turn to things like drugs or prostitution thinking this will fix their lives or their money problems, is it because they fear living closer to the Earth? Do they fear being different? Are they fearful of non-acceptance from the rest of our money-ridden society? Do they think they won't survive at all?

Fear is the disease. Gratitude is the cure. In the meantime, education promotes healing. Just my opinion.

To alleviate fear, I apply education. Book learning and internet research is great, but nothing beats real world experience. If you can't get real world experience, guess what? Imagination works just as well and sometimes even brings new things into existence! :) Experiencing how other societies live, learning what's good (or not) for your body & mind, knowing what practices promote health and which tear it down and then actually having the self-esteem to DO the things that make you happy and say no thanks to the things that lead down a fear-filled path - I wish that with a healthy dose of imagination for EVERYONE on Earth.

When I look at things like slave trade - or people we label as criminals in general - from another perspective, I find I am grateful to those folks because they show me a path I do NOT want to go down. They are the signposts that say "Here, there be dragons." (And seriously? When did dragons get such a bad reputation? Maybe they were just misunderstood! :) I've had some unfortunate experiences with criminals... I'm not saying it's fun, I'm saying if you lose, don't lose the lesson. Often I find the reason people have put on their victim t-shirt and continued spreading a negative story is because they forget to find what they wanted to learn from the experience, therefore they keep drawing negative experiences to themselves. There are no victims on our globe. We all have free will and we all make choices that affect our path. Even as children. Our choice may be as simple as deciding to change perspectives. Once I see any "bad" experience I may have from a learning perspective, it's easier to tuck away the knowledge and move on in my life to something better and happier.

Personally I believe God (or whatever label you choose) only sends us angels. Some of them are dark angels, but they are all angels nonetheless. Criminals are dark angels AND they serve a great purpose to those of us not wanting to walk their path. They help remind us to stay focused instead on happiness. I am so grateful for that.

Everyone has the capacity to think like this. They only need to be shown that there is more than one path to choose from. That's where education comes in. :)

Again - just my two pesos.

I Am Grateful For Imagination

My habit of thought over the past couple decades has been that we have our salary rates all wrong in this society. We pay those in Hollywood or sports millions of dollars to create a couple hours of entertainment for us while our teachers and firemen and emergency response teams are doing their work mostly on good morals and shoestring budgets. It didn't seem fair.

However, today, I received a different perspective out of the blue. I was watching a YouTube video of a conversation between Richard Dawkins and Neil deGrasse Tyson, and although I've realized this before, it was not quite in this way: science has created things that used to only be science fiction from Hollywood. Would they have created these technologies WITHOUT Hollywood first dreaming them up?

Einstein of course has the famous quote, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I've always believed that to be true in my head, and now I realize perhaps it has moved down to my heart.

Is the economic pay scale of the USA not a perfect example of that quote? Who do we pay the most? The ones with imagination (Hollywood at least), or the ones with knowledge (educators and heroes)?

Scientists' minds generally lean toward logic and fact finding - they want to prove things work or exist or figure out why something is true. We consider them "at the forefront of technology" but are they really? Maybe scientists are actually the ones at the end of the line. What if the creative geniuses in Hollywood are the ones blazing the trail of evolution and we don't even realize it?

A logical mind that seeks facts is not normally the same type of mind that envisions things so far out that the majority of people on the planet hadn't even dreamed of it. (There are always exceptions of course - Tyson being one of them I think - and those are truly remarkable people with minds that are balanced in both creativity and logic.)

A specific example is another YouTube video I saw about a guy that created a machine to turn plastic back into petroleum. Most people in first world countries now have also heard of biofuel - breaking down what we consider garbage into usable fuel. Where do these ideas come from (at least some of them)? Most people from the 80s will remember the movie Back to the Future. Christopher Lloyd's crazy scientist character uses garbage to fuel the DeLorean time machine at one point. (I'm sure there are earlier examples, but that's the first one that came to mind.) That is now POSSIBLE in our real world (and actually has been for some time). It's not affordable for most, or prevalent in our society yet, but neither was TV when it was first invented. Or cell phones. Or cars. Or dozens of other technologies that have become commonplace perhaps because a scientist saw a cool, convenient gadget in a movie or a tv show (or in the case of 19th century inventors, perhaps heard an idea from a storyteller of some sort) and said, "I can figure out how to make that real!" And let's not forget the creative minds in companies like Apple who can come up with a product out of seemingly nowhere (iPods!) that we never knew we couldn't live without.

So perhaps our Hollywood staff is not as overpaid as I thought. I mean what value would you put on evolution? On advancing our thoughts and ideas? On education? Does it even really matter if we advance and get smarter and make new things? IS it even "getting smarter" or just becoming different? I guess it depends on the roads we choose, which is based on creativity, not always logic.

"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need... roads."

And in the opposite vein - what of our "heroes?" The firemen and policemen and EMTs that save lives (some would add soldiers to that, but war is a whole other subject I'm not getting into here). I'm always the first to admire and thank emergency response people for their "underpaid service," but is our ability to prolong our lives actually what's mucking up the planet? Should we be thanking the ones that save us? From this new perspective, I'm not sure.

Certainly I was grateful to everyone involved is saving my grandparents' lives when they had a car accident about a year ago, but then again maybe it's a selfish thing for me to want my grandparents to live forever. I don't think even *I* want to live in this particular body forever! How boring would that be? About as boring as only getting to read one book, or only watching one movie... forever. Why would I wish that on them? Forever is a VERY long time. (And if you get into the philosophical question of "why are we here" I can imagine only being able to "live" one story forever might have been the impetus for multiple lives... but that's a whole other blog!)

Perhaps we are playing God or not facing our fears by keeping people alive for so long, and the consequences are the typical collection of physical inconveniences that we now label "old age." Are years of incontinence and dementia something to celebrate? :\ Perhaps we have advanced in our physical technologies, and we pat ourselves on the back for our so-called advances in social sciences, but are we actually still in the dark ages about death and other lifetimes?

Who would we be if we did not fear death?

Perhaps my grandfather could've avoided all the indignities and challenges of emphysema and Alzheimers if he had not been wearing a seatbelt and was therefore removed from the trouble of dealing with all that for another several years. My grandmother was NOT wearing a seatbelt and would have died without the help of the Intensive Care Unit. It's really a miracle she survived. I am extremely grateful to spend a few more years pestering her over the phone (we live on opposite coasts), but was it fair to keep her here only to be trapped in the house with my grandfather who needs someone to babysit him like a child at all times due to the medical problems he has now? What kind of existence is that (especially for a woman that is still very mobile herself)? Obviously a car crash full of anxiety and fear as you transition into another state of being is not an ideal way to go (I am not saying I wish that upon anyone, especially not my grandparents!), but perhaps we've created the ways in which we most commonly leave this existence through our misunderstanding of death and consequential fear of it.

If you knew in your heart all deaths have the possibility of being peaceful and happy, would you be more accepting of it and therefore be okay when your loved ones take that journey? Many people pay lip service to the idea, but underneath their concept of death, and what they believe in their heart about it, is still based in fear. I believe it will take a shift in a majority of society's consciousness to change that.

Native American elders (from a century ago, before the casinos) would simply decide when it was their time to leave, and they would go out in the woods or plains or wherever and have a peaceful, purposeful death. Same with Buddhists. We don't have nearly enough movies about that. Instead the film industry makes the most money from perpetuating our imaginings of a violent death, which in my opinion just creates more violent deaths in our world. It's a vicious circle.

By the way, I still think our teachers are WAY WAY underpaid. They give us a basis for learning to survive in this society. The trouble with teachers is that we have a limited idea of who our teachers are. To me, EVERYONE on this planet is a teacher in some way to everyone they come in contact with. Should we all get paid appropriately for what we teach each other? Well actually, I think we do. We have a beautiful Earth as our school, friends and family to love and support us, and most importantly our imaginations which fill in all the space between. To me, those things are the best payment of all.

Well… now my thought associations appear to have come full circle in the edits, so YAY for that!

I still haven't justified sports - perhaps that's truly only entertainment - but now I can allow for the possibility that maybe we're not as screwed up as we think in what we put value on.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, REFUSE

Dianna Cohen of the Plastic Pollution Coalition gives a 5 minute TED talk about plastics if you play the video above. Most info is already mainstream news, but the thing that stuck out to me was her suggestion of adding the fourth R to "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle"... it is REFUSE. I've refused hundreds of plastic bags (probably more like thousands with the way I shop) - not just at the grocery store, but at retail stores as well. I literally cringe when I see cashiers put one item in a bag, or even worse - double bag something! AGGHH!! I carry a Chicos Bag in my purse for those times when I forget to grab my canvas bags from under the front seat of the Jeep.

Do you think Swedish engineer, Sten Gustaf Thulin, knew what kind of evil he was creating when he came up with the white harbingers of oceanic death? (Seriously, as if Ikea isn't enough of a waste of resources. Isn't Sweden supposed to be known for its environmental consciousness and stuff? WTH?) Mobil, the most evil gas company I've ever read about, is responsible for making plastic bags a viable commodity in 1977 by overturning a patent, then the Dixie Bag Company from Georgia, along with Safeway and Kroger (et tu Vons?!) helped make "Paper or Plastic?" the most widely used phrase in America by the mid-80s. Oh yes, all this polyethylene destruction of our planet has only been since 1982. That's only TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS people. Do the math.

Anyway... I also rarely buy anything in a single use plastic bottle. I've eliminated almost all plastic from my kitchen (I LOVE those Pyrex glass storage containers with the rubber lids!), and often choose grocery items in glass containers over plastic. (Then I save the glass container for something else too!)

Some of my friends think I'm silly for making all these tiny, detail-oriented efforts to reduce my carbon footprint, but what is the price of self-respect? One person recycling may be like a drop in the ocean, but if we spread the word, pretty soon drops turn into a bucket, then a pond, then a lake... you get the idea.

Make a concept "cool" enough and it will become commonplace across the globe. How else has Starbucks built a billion-dollar business selling a ten-cent cup of coffee? Speaking of Starbucks... their current marketing campaign goes, "Take comfort in rituals." I agree! Recycling and thinking about what you're consuming is a ritual. It gives me comfort to know that even if my efforts alone don't make a big difference, I can lead by example. There's no reason I should NOT do it. Same for you.

Lots of people whine about canvas bags at the stores being inconvenient. Nothing is inconvenient if you have the right tools. Buy some reusable shopping bags and keep them in the car. (Check out street fairs and craft shows in your area to get unique cool ones AND support your local artists!) As I said, the Chico Bags are my favorite because they squish down into a very small bag of their own and are easy to carry in very little space. (All the natural foods markets seem to sell them too.) Buy a reusable water bottle (I mean c'mon - they sell them everywhere! I've even seen them at the dollar stores!) and keep it filled in your cup holder. It's better for your body to drink more water anyway! Think about the products you buy at the grocery store - is the same thing available from a company that uses glass or other materials for their packaging?

Be a muse. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, REFUSE.

Letter of Complaint

Dear Universal Customer Service:

I would like to exchange my Immune System for a new one. After 41 years, this one appears to be quite sluggish and is not annihilating bacteria and viruses as fast as it used to. Maybe it needs updating or was there a service pack released that I missed? I can provide the receipt upon request.

Thanks,

Traci

~~**~~

Dear Traci,

Please refer to the Human Body Owner's Manual, Chapter 432, Section 23678, Subsection 41 which states that consumption of a Starbucks chocolate brownie and Haagen Dasz Coffee ice cream in the midst of a chest cold will temporarily render said Immune System worthless and voids the warranty. This applies even if preceded by chicken soup.

We have more eyes than Santa Claus. Please stop wasting our time.

Sincerely,

Universal Customer Service