Category: Life’s Lessons

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Made a Difference to That One

You have probably heard the story about the man who was throwing starfish that had washed up on shore following a storm back into the ocean as an observer stated that he could not make a difference when there were tens of thousands of starfish dying on the beach. The man simply threw another one back into the ocean and said, it made a difference to that one!

I had that exact opportunity on my birthday this year at Kitty Hawk Pier in NC. As I was walking down the beach, my friend Mary and I noticed something moving in the sand in front of us. Upon further inspection, we realized that it was a living Sea Horse that had washed up on shore as the tide receded. After quickly taking a picture, I carefully scooped up the Sea Horse along with a hand full of sand and placed it back in the ocean. As I did, we both said, made a difference to that one.

Not only had I never seen a Sea Horse outside of an aquarium, I had never seen one on the beach before.  How cool was that for a birthday experience?

One if life’s lessons is that you can never reach down to help someone up without helping yourself reach up at the same time.

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Goals and Action Plans

I have a couple of thoughts about what I have done over the years to make tomorrow better than today and to know my family will be looked after. I always had plans for my future, however, when I was young, they were carried around in my head, as my great-niece described today, as some kind of sticky note, stuck on the bulletin board of my brain. Incredibly that got me through until I was in my early thirties. I had finished high school, completed my term in the military, extended my education to being certified as a Respiratory Technologist and Cardiopulmonary Pump Technologist, completed an undergraduate degree in Bachelor of Science, married and had a daughter.

I remember being at my brother, Mike’s house and seeing a set of personal development tapes on his bookshelf by Brain Tracy. I asked to borrow them. I listened to them and they changed my entire life forever. What incredible changes can come as a result of small millisecond decisions? The lesson here is that I arrived at a crossroad of existence, and recognized it. The key here is that I recognized it. I am never sure how that works, except to the fact that when the universe offers you a morsel of insight, grab it quickly, and act upon it. The more of these you grasp in your clutches, the more the universe will offer you. If you pass them off as weird, or doesn’t make sense, or “that’s not me”, the universe will not offer as many in the future. You must be open to receiving them, and acting upon them, in which case you will see more, sooner.

I took those tapes home to Elora, ON and listened to them in my basement office. They were called the Psychology of Achievement. One of the tapes talked about goal setting and required that I sit down and write out what I wanted my future to look like and what would be my major definite purpose in life. I was instructed to write out the answers to about six questions, of which here are three.

  1. If I could do anything I wanted, what would I do, if I knew I could not fail?
  2. If I won a million dollars (make that 100 million today), what would I do?
  3. If I only had six months to live, what would I do

Questions are the answers in life, I have learned. It helped my design the following areas of my life that I use as daily areas of focus to help me create the life and lifestyle I have always wanted.

On Goals and Actions

  • Fun
  • Personal Growth
  • Play It Forward
  • Finance
  • Family – Extended
  • Health & Fitness
  • Spiritual

Once I designed the areas of importance to myself, I then attached daily action plans to manifest those into reality. They all start with an idea. However, an idea, not written down, with an action plan is simply a dream, destined to be discarded to the pile of regrets. My rule is: “If it is not written, it is not so.”

Crystallize your Dreams into goals and action plans and you will be amazed at how your reticular activating system will bring those into reality.

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What I Expect in a Woman and Partner

I was asked recently what  I expected in a woman and partner. It sent me on a thought provoking mission to gain clarity, which is always good. This is what I came up with so far. And these are what a woman and partner can expect from me.

A person;

  • Who understands that we are not human beings on a spiritual journey, instead, spiritual beings on a human journey,
  • Who knows that commitment means trust and loyalty to protect another person’s back and feelings,
  • Who does not accept me as I am but encourages me to become everything I can and want to be, because they know me that well.
  • Who has experienced enough personal growth to know that change is the only evidence of life,
  • Who has enough positive self-esteem and confidence to be content in themselves.
  • Who wants sensitivity in a man,
  • Who knows that fear is false expectations appearing real,
  • Who wants to be 18 until they die, try anything twice, stay foolish and look for the positive in everything, because their glass is more than half-full and they are looking to fill it to overflow.
  • Who understands that all we have is now, this moment in time, to enjoy and make a difference in this lifetime.
  • Who wants to leave the woodpile a little higher than the way they found it,
  • Who knows that their job is not to change another person, but to hold up a mirror for another to see themselves,
  • Who wants good communication,
  • Who agrees that partners uplift each other in private and in public
  • Who cherishes their mind and body to keep both as healthy as possible,
  • Who understands that self reflection takes times of solitude and contemplation,
  • Who can spend time with themselves without fears of being alone,
  • Who understands that soul mates are truly souls that connect at a deeper level of unspoken consciousness such that when they have not seen each other in years, they can still finish each other’s sentences and start up where they left off as if no time had passed,
  • Who understands that true love, mature love, comes from the soul and cannot be overridden by circumstances of daily existence,
  • Who loves an eternal romantic,
  • Who cherishes that love is a safe place and all we really have to provide is hope.
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Way to Go!

I keep seeing these kinds of lists that Successful people do that most others do not. I hate FB for sharing, because most people will judge and that is not my purpose. I simply want to live my life to the utmost.

Here is one that portrays my daily affirmations.

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Lunch With Aunt Maude

Life is full of chances. Sometimes we just don’t take enough before it’s too late!

I had the greatest opportunity to have lunch with my Aunt Maude. She is turning 98 on December 29th. When I called my cousin to arrange a visit, I suggested that my sister and I would come to the house to see them. My cousin, Ruth, said oh no, she will want to meet you guys half way at a Cracker Barrel. That meant an hour and a half drive for them and us, each way.

When they arrived, I found out that Maude had fallen some six weeks ago and cracked her pelvis, so she was using a walker. This perfect women had left the hospital and come home for no more than a couple of days before she announced, “That’s enough of that”, and got up to get on with her life. How determined is that? She is such a go-getter and so is her daughter, Ruth. Neither of them can sit still very long.

I noticed that she had a smile on her face and was just happy to be alive and kicking. So many elderly people fall and break something and that is it. They become bedridden and get pneumonia and succumb. My sister says that Maude has always been the happiest person. She has always been my favorite aunt, and I told her so. As we were leaving, she said, I am just so happy you came for a visit. Tears, right?

It reinforces my belief that happiness, genuine happiness that comes from the soul, increases longevity. That is just one of the reasons I look for humor and excitement in everyday events, starting from as soon as I wake up and announce that something really wonderfully exciting is going to happen today. It is then that I expect and find wonderfully exciting things happening all day. It is just a great feeling of accomplishment when I can say about something that turns out to be really exciting, “There, I knew something really wonderfully exciting was going to happen today!

Although I recognize that I come from a long living family stock, most of my relatives have become infirmed and passed away at a much younger age than my Aunt Maude. I want to grow up to be just like her!

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On Tears

Emotions are part of the human experience. They are not bad nor good, they just are. Laughter can lead to a flow of tears. So can joy, sadness, anger, pain and loss. Real men don’t cry, so my eyes just sweat a lot.

I have always been an emotional guy. Some women take that for sensitivity. Some take it for weakness. Me, I take it for experiencing the most that life has to offer at any given moment.

Often over the years, I have been embarrassed to express feelings to the point of tears. Try as hard as I can, I just cannot turn off that overwhelming feeling that bubbles to the surface like lava from a volcano, under great pressure that cannot withstand being held at bay under any circumstances. I’m not talking about the wetness that turns the eyes red. I’m talking about the wetness that runs down the cheeks and requires a sleeve to sop up the excess.

My tears can come from something as simple and un-daring as singing the national anthem. There are songs that I have learned to sing that took me dozens of rehearsals to eliminate the uncontrolled spilling of emotion. And don’t even try to stop the flow of tears when it comes to talking about family. I’m an emotional guy and still feel the need to apologize for it.

My sister Molly says that when two people tear up, it is the divine in each that is touched and connected. I agree. All I have to do is watch an old Johnny Carson show and watch him laugh to the point of tears over something that his guest would say. There is something that happens at a soul level that brings us all to the same level of humanity.

If anecdotes are the snippets of life that have significant meaning, then I say learn to laugh to the point of tears, as well as wetly express that undulating sob from the bottom of your being when wrought with pain. Your soul needs the release for both.

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On Death & Dying

One of the profound discoveries we all make as we get older is that none of us are going to make it out alive. I often tell people that I expect to live to be 120 and shot by a jealous husband. It’s a joke, son.

Somehow, I think we all know deep down that all that there is about our existence, falls into the knowledge that it is always NOW! No matter how much we want to believe differently, we come into this existence by ourselves and go out on our own. Oh sure, if we are lucky, there is someone there to help us enter into this world, and hopefully, there will be someone we love close to us as we leave this plane of the universe and enter into the next. This reality, in my opinion, is that we come in alone, and exit alone. That should not be a fearful event, but a cheerful event as we look forward to the next adventure of our spirit. I do believe that we are spiritual beings in the process of changing and experiencing this journey.

Yesterday I was reminded of that when I was suddenly summoned by the universe to contact my brother Mike. I soon found out that he was in the hospital. I had been unable to reach him or my sister-in-law, Liz due to the fact that all the telephone numbers I had were no longer in service. That alone gave me some angst. I finally sent Liz a message through a social network and shortly thereafter received a phone call. She informed me that Mike needed to be moved from the hospital in Cleveland to a rehab unit the next day, which was really a euphemism for moving him into a long care unit.\r\n\r\nI told her that I would meet her at the hospital to help in any way I could, and to see my brother, for what I was afraid would be the last time. My brother is thirteen years older than I am and was my hero as a youngster. I remember a time when he drove many hours from summer training in the reserves in Kentucky to arrive at home late at night. He was so tired that he fell asleep in the car in the driveway rather than come into the house to sleep. Been there, done that! He had bought me a rubber Indian tomahawk complete with feathers, as a present, He was probably 18-19 which would have made me five or six. I remember being so excited and felt loved

Mike, wearing his wife’s, Pat, wedding veil. He had a great sense of humor in his early years.

Seeing my brother in his condition had a profound effect on me. He was so angry at the world, his wife, Liz, the hospital staff and even me who he had not seen in several years. When I asked him for a hug as I arrived, he flatly stated that I was in cahoots with his wife, who he gave a stare of disgust and hate as we arrived. I soon realized that he was not the person I had previously known in my life. Although I allowed it to initially hurt me, I soon realized that the change that had occurred was a result of dementia, drugs, and strokes that had taken the brother I once knew.  How could I be offended or angry with this new person? I quickly gained my compassion and began to rebuild a relationship with an entity that was not my brother.

Since then I have had several revelations. What grandiose ideas do I harbor that would allow me to think that I could have caused this in any way and that I needed to release my emotional attachment to the past. I was there to make a difference.

My sister Molly had reminded me earlier, that forgiving oneself means to let go of the “hope” that the past could have occurred any differently. It is that hope that we hold onto so tightly that creates the internal pain. The more I remind myself of that understanding, the more content I feel.

I have been able to spend more time with my sister in the last several weeks than in over nearly fifty years. Tonight I had the great opportunity to record her voice explaining how my family came about and some of the best stories. I will be adding that recording to this autobiography soon.

Mom, Mike, Molly, James – 1982

Mike, Pat, Kathy, young Michael

Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil!

That visit caused me to pay attention to how I want my later years to pan out. Sometimes examples come into our lives to show us how we don’t want things to be.

My father passed away at age 83 from a stroke. My mom had sat down and written out her goals for the next ten years, the night she passed away in her sleep. Having worked in hospitals for nearly ten years, I had experienced death on many levels. No matter how intellectually we observe death, the emotional side cannot be swept under the carpet, nor depleted from our experience. The fact that we cannot make it out alive means we need to plan for the future before our memories fail and we become a different person than we knew ourselves to be.\r\n\r\nI can only wish that I go quickly, surrounded by loved ones. In the meantime, reason dictates that plan we must.