The Clouds Are Always Whiter

i don’t remember finding out out there was no santa.  i do remember realizing that i would never have a twin sister.  i do remember having to come to terms with the reality that i would never be mary from the secret garden.  i do remember flying as a child and the wistful dream of living in the clouds.  

some realities must be accepted.  it is a biological impossibility that i will ever have a twin sister.  but the interesting thing about wanting to live among the clouds is that, well, we often do.  fog is around plenty often and we don’t think anything of it.  

sometimes when we get too close to things the grass is not so green, the clouds are not so white.  only when we’re far enough away does it look like what we want.  then we get it and we either don’t notice or think there’s been some mistake, and go chasing off after something else that looks more correct.  

we have to be clear about what things we want look like from the inside, not the outside.  once we’re in there we won’t be looking from the outside anymore, and if we’re not careful we won’t recognize it at all.  (it can get a little foggy in there sometimes ;)  

The Little Things Add Up

i went to check my carefully packed bag at the airport recently and was baffled to learn that it weighed 56 pounds (which is six pounds too many, by the way....an expensive six pounds!)  i still can’t fathom what the hell could have been so heavy in there.  

it was all small stuff.  but it adds up.  and it adds up so slowly that we don’t realize it, and makes it hard to backtrack once we do.  i didn’t have time to extract six pounds worth of it from my bag that morning at the check in line.  instead i had to hold back tears while we payed an additional $75 to get my bag onboard.  ugh.  

little things add up: money, practice, good deeds, laughter, one more checkmark on that to-do list.....a little at a time can get you there, often faster than you would ever believe!  

Good Thoughts, Bad Thoughts

it’s interesting that we’re so afraid of our our bad thoughts.  “step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back”....yikes!  and there are people who won’t do it, no matter what.  either they’re convinced it will happen, or it’s just not worth the risk.  

these words were written on an airplane, and who hasn’t had the inner dialogue of the devious devil daring the plane to go down an the exhausted angel desperately putting out the fire?  

we’re afraid of the bad thoughts, because we fear they might come true.  why don’t we think the good ones will come true as well?  no one worries that if they hold a positive thought for long enough it will come to fruition.  instead we think the positive thoughts don’t really matter, and won’t let ourselves get duped into believing them, just to be disappointed time and time again.   

you would be impossibly hard pressed to get me to stand in a dark room and say “candyman” three times in the mirror, but there are times when it’s just as difficult to look in the mirror and say good things as well.  sometimes it feels like lying, sometimes it feels like we don’t deserve it, sometimes it feels like we’re being tricked into some sort of woo woo fortune teller stuff.  

i’m just saying, if we think some of our thoughts are powerful but not others, i think that deserves some re-examination....  

don’t you?

Live Forever or Die Trying

live forever or die trying: not sure what this was advertising, but i saw it on a poster in the denver terminal along with a couple of glamourous and dramatically somber models.  

a lot of us do just that.  i mean, not live forever--never once has that been accomplished--but a whole lot of every generation seems to keep thinking they'll be the first to do it, because they'll do it right.  so much time and energy drained into preparing for future life at the cost of the present.  

we think we can store it up.  we think we can deny life now and then have a huge surplus later that will satisfy our every desire and then some (because if it's all scrunched into a smaller time period then it will be super concentrated super life, right??)  we’re working for more than just retirement; we’re working for the very life we're letting slip by.  

unfortunately there are some things you can’t cash out on.  some things are only there for a split second and then they are gone.  be careful.  

take a deep breath and be grateful.  if you aren’t grateful now, you won’t be then.  if you aren't living now, you won't be then.