Window To Your World

Ever wonder how life would be like if you were someone else? How many times do we daydream that our lives would be so much better  if we had money, fame, power, or even the power to have a choice. I guess it's safe to say we engage in such frivolities ever so often when things aren't going the way we want them to. Well, imagine this- YOU CAN make whatever you want to do or achieve happen and the only limit that prevents you from doing essentially just that is YOU. You can change and achieve anything given enough   desire, mindset, determination, and courage to overcome your fears.

We all remember a time in our lives when we were full of the vibrant energy of youth. The world laid out so much possibilities for us and we aspired to be anything we want to be, dreaming, hoping that one day we will BE that person we dreamed of becoming. Then life took a hold on us and we played our part in the scheme of things; we went to school and got a degree, got a job, married, started a family, sent the kids to school, and the list goes on and on. And yet we find that at some point in time amid all this is that there is SOMETHING LACKING. We can't quite put our finger on what that missing piece in our lives so we continue to do the things we do hoping that someday we will experience enough and understand enough of life so we can decipher what we thought we were "lacking" for so long.

Well, guess what, the years go by and you find yourself much older than you expected to be and you find yourself sitting quietly on your front porch one Sunday afternoon wondering to yourself where the years had been. Maybe you feel complete and contented on how life treated  you. Maybe you still find yourself unfulfilled and wanting for something missing in your life, something you felt you needed to uncover a long time ago but didn't get the chance to. Something  you need to find and discover for yourself in order to be finally happy. What could this key ingredient be?

A lot of times, due to our nature as human beings, we learn to compensate and adapt whenever something is lacking or amiss in our daily life. We fill the void with something else. This displacement of unspent energy occupy us but in the end leaves us with more questions in need of answering. How is it that we see things in lucid polarity, that there has to be a in-between of things, a black or white, a soundness of reasoning in place of scary uncertainty? The only thing that really sounds "real" is that we cannot always exercise control. At times, being fluid has its own advantages. Learning to roll with the punches and dealing with situations are lessons learned out of necessity.

So, this brings us back to our first question- what is lacking in our lives that leaves us empty and searching? The answer to that question is rather simple, if you haven't figured it out already. We merely have to learn to LET GO and ACCEPT what life has to offer and BE CONTENT with what we have and not what we don't have. You see, finding happiness is easy, keeping it and sharing it is the real challenge.In order to achieve this you must learn to harness, nurture, and emit positive energy. Positive energy comes from within and it starts by learning how to love. Learn to love yourself first. Take care of your health, nurture your bodies with rejuvinating foods, and do away with negativity in the way you think and feel. Your world has many windows and you simply cannot stay fixated in staring out of just one. Learn to love life from many angles and you will awaken long dormant joys you never knew existed in you.

Letters from Nowhere

Sitting on the back of a rusty pick-up truck bound for the highway of life, a lone traveler stares into distant skies with tired eyes. Eyes weary of a long hard life of toil and with nothing to show for it but calloused hands. Unheeding of the howling wind blowing by his face or the promise of yet another storm, he sat there, hunched to his thoughts and unaware of his misery. He fumbles around to regain his composure after a sudden jolt brought about by an imperfection on the road, he came upon a crumpled piece of paper amongst the many litters of trash people just dump on the back of any old truck. To save himself from further gloom he began to read.

     “If there ever was a reason to make a life justifiable it would be for all the right reasons and not just for a sole reason, even if such an idea would seem noble, if not too overly. If there was ever a time to search for a meaning to anything such a time would be, for whatever reason earnest would  deem necessary, be wanting and in need of haste. Too many wonders to seek explanations for and too many questions needing any sort of explanation just to make their time worthwhile in posing.

      And yet here we are, wanting for a liberation from a prison we ourselves do not yet know or are afraid to face. Lost in a daze we scramble to define our existence, not with words or actions or even ideals, but with hopes and aspirations; dreams we are waiting to unfold before our eyes, yet we are paralyzed by the mere notion of their fruition or the taxing commitment they inherently require.

      And then there is our notion of time, or lack of it. Everything revolves around many aspects which define how we live our lives but the painful truth is nothing really revolves. Everything evolves. Time passes and we lose it. Everything changes over time, nothing is eternal. Everything is ethereal. In this wisp of a moment we come to the sad realization that as we die slowly each passing day, we have forgotten how it must have felt to live. To live for a moment’s respite, to live for someone you love, to live for an ideal, to draw strength from the vibrance of this thing called life and drench yourself with its longing; its unquenchable thirst; its energy.

      In silence we hope, and if we remember, we pray. We hold on. We hold on to anything with semblance to substance, to security, to permanence. Even if we had to lie to ourselves to believe, at least long enough  for some sense of resounding half-truths , no matter how falsely or unstately that notion may seem, just so we can put meaning to our actions and gratification to unheeded effort. And still, we come to the point in question…the beginning of something we do not yet know or want to know and the end to something we would rather not ponder upon. The truth is we simply have to learn to let go. To let ourselves dream and bask in the silence of unconditional existence; to not take more than we need and go back to simple living.

      When we filter out the noise hard enough and long enough we can finally listen to the one person we haven’t heard from in a long, long time. Ourself. ”

     “Hey, buddy! Your stop’s just ahead. Let’s get a move on, shall we. Looks like another long night of rain.”, cried the driver. With that our lone traveler hops out of the truck that served as his refuge, at least long enough for him to finally understand. Staring at the blackening sky one last time, and after a long sigh, he forges ahead and the night finally swallows him.

     He smiles knowing that somewhere in this world, under a starry  moonlit sky, a child dreams and Hope is renewed. And with Hope comes Chance; a chance to start all over again, to finally be free, to be alive.

     Unbeknownst to our lone traveler a pick-up driver parks by the roadside somewhere, writes another entry to his journal, tears it off for want of something better to write about, to feel about, to feel alive about, and throws a yet another piece of crumpled paper at the back of the pick-up bed, and heads out. A chance indeed.