I'm just full of pearls of wisdom!!!

Another little nugget sent to me today....


Freedom from the past, or anything else for that matter, always comes in the very instant you stop thinking about it. 

hummmm....

At some point, you have to realize that some people can stay in your heart but not in your life.....words to live by...

Thought for Today....

"You will have to make the effort to break old habits and establish new ones. You will have to admit to yourself that your 'gut feeling' about things is askew, and unless you learn a better way, you will continue to suffer." Susan Wright

Reading this quote this morning, I was stunned by it. As Oprah would say, I had an Ahh-hahhh moment. Suddenly this answer had appeared to the eternal question of why we want to change something about our lives so badly yet often nothing happens. It's not just enough to want to change. Believing in the possibility of change will only get us so far. For change to happen, we must recognize that our thoughts, our feelings and our emotions are working against us, in the beginning at least. Our own bodies are actually pushing us back into the very rut was are desperately hoping to leave. I always assumed it was safe to think my heart and mind was in full alignment with my new desires, but now I realize that may not always be the case. This quote is like a football stadium light bulb going off in my brain. For the first time EVER, it is perfectly clear why we want something so badly yet often seem to sabotage our new goals, dreams and desires. Now that I know who and what I am fighting (myself), I have a much better idea of how to win the battle.

This is life....

Incredibly hard to watch but necessary...this is life...real life for one heroin addict and his poor family. Filmed in England, the accent can be a bit thick as times, but it doesn't matter. You don't need to understand every word to understand the meaning. Rest in peace Ben.


http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/ben-diary-heroin-addict/

I knew this day was coming but.....

It's Saturday, the day I run errands with my sons. We invariably end up at Target where we'll eat popcorn while perusing the aisles. Today would be no different except for one little thing.


We've been to Target so many times my car practically knows the way on its own. I had the car pointed in the direction of the big red bullseye and was sort of in a trance...probably not good to admit since I was behind the wheel! My sons were strapped in their booster seats, engaged in a deep conversation about something but I have no idea what. I wasn't really paying much attention when off in the distance I noticed my oldest son was saying the same thing over and over again. That's really not uncommon for him. He's like a dog with a bone...just won't let go of anything but the words caught my attention. Over and over he kept telling his brother that he was "different" and his brother was agreeing with him. I'm not going to lie...a little red flag came up in the back of my mind but I tried to ignore it. Don't panic..don't head straight for red alert. There must be a logical explanation for this. In my most nonchalant voice I asked why he was different to which my oldest son replied, "because his skin is brown."  There it was..a reason to panic...man the battle stations boys, full steam ahead!


I tried to remain calm on the outside even though my gut was twisted into a knot. "Who told you that?", I asked. This was the first time they had ever mentioned skin color so I was shocked. Granted the Montessori school they previously attended was probably 50% minorities and this school looks like a bowl of rice pudding with about 4 little raisins thrown in, but even so, I was surprised by my son's comments. If they had been asking questions about skin color, that would be one thing, but this was completely out of the blue.


But I digress. So when I asked who told them this, he said their teacher did. Not gonna lie...my first thought was to swing by a pawn shop to find out if there's a waiting period to buy a handgun. On my way there, I could run by Hobby Lobby for some camouflage fabric. Monday morning, I'm going in with guns blazing!


Okay, so I tried even harder to calm the dialogue in my head long enough to get the full story. Friday was show-n-tell day and they were suppose to bring something brown. For some reason, only my two boys took anything so I guess in an attempt to add a little more interest to the whole event, the teacher said anyone wearing a brown shirt could stand up but I don't think there was any so then she suggested that my youngest son stand up because his skin is brown and that makes him different. I think my ears were ringing at this point as I made a mental note to get plenty of bullets to go with my soon-to-be purchased handgun.


In all fairness to the teacher, I'm not sure if she actually said his brown skin made him "different" or if having the teacher point out the fact that he was the only kid in class with brown skin made my boys suddenly aware of his beautiful carmel colored skin. Either way, my skin was a lovely shade of magenta mixed with fire engine red at this point, at least from the neck up.


I talked to the boys and tried to explain to them that we are all the same, all humans created by God...God's children so to speak and that we should never tell someone they are different because it hurts their feelings. They seemed completely fine with my explanation and didn't really seem upset with the idea that one of them is considered different. Of course at the tender age of five, I'm not sure they really know what different is but the lesson is coming at them fast.


I talked to several friends and family members and even cornered two unsuspecting Target employees who both had beautiful brown skin for their opinions. All, including the girls working at Target, were shocked and hostile about the whole exchange. My dad's convinced her comments were illegal and I think he might be loading a gun even as I write this! 


After speaking with all these people and getting no feedback less than righteous indignation, I knew I wasn't wrong for considering the whole "going postal" option. I decided it would be best to prepare the teacher for what's heading her way on Monday morning so I sent her an email and copied the principal. I'll keep you posted on the outcome of this mess.....I'd certainly like to think this whole thing was just an innocent misunderstanding but it doesn't seem to be the case. I guess I'll find out soon enough.


I love the fact that my little guys are oblivious to the insult they've just encountered. Maybe they'll always be the type of people who just lets someone else's closed-minded opinion roll right off their backs. As a protective mom, I certainly hope so but this issue is bigger than my two kids. America seems to be getting more close-minded by the minute and most people just watch it happen with little or no concern because it doesn't affect them. Well guess what white America, it's about to start affecting your world. The rednecks in Alabama thought it was a great idea to pass laws making it nearly impossible for illegal immigrants to stay in this country and continuing working. Most white people in this country don't really see how this will dent their pocketbooks so let me make it perfectly clear. The Alabama economy is taking a HUGE hit right now because immigrants aren't sending their kids to school and aren't showing up for work. Losing such a large percentage of kids in school reduces their funding so they're in big finance trouble. Not showing up for work means produce rots in the fields, yards go un-mowed and un-manicured, and restaurants can't keep dishes clean and food cooked without a kitchen staff. So how does this affect you? Well the obvious cost is disappearing food in the grocery store. No fresh produce and many canned goods won't be filling the shelves. What is available will cost double or triple. The only way to keep the farms and factories running is to replace the immigrant worker with a white worker but whites won't work the long hours for such low wages. So let's say the owners increased wages to attract the white worker. Does anybody really believe the corporation is going to absorb the increased cost of production? No, the American consumer will foot the bill at the grocery store, restaurants, retail and wholesale stores. An economy which is already hurting will become completely unstable. But hey, at least the illegal immigrants aren't here. Because everyone in this country is willing to stand on principle even if it drains their own personal bank account, right? Hell no. This country is built on people who stand proudly on principle but only if it doesn't cost them a penny.  Bigotry, prejudice, racism can't be tolerated just because it was presented without malice in a 30 second sound bite commercial. It's a battle we should all be fighting, no matter what our skin color happens to be.

How do you stop a runaway train?

I often wonder if my sister’s teenage years had occurred in the 1940s or 50s, would her life have been different?  Would the absence of easily available drugs have slowed her descent, offering her enough time to recognize the value in her life and emerge from her self-induced despair?  Was bad timing to blame for her ultimate demise?

My sister’s march toward death claimed nearly forty years of her life but unlike someone whose physical existence is maintained by life support after being left in a vegetative state for many years, her condition didn’t stabilize or become predictable.  Her body functions weren’t maintained by feeding tubes or ventilators and the choice to live or die was clearly in her hands, not family members.  No machine was unplugged nor DNR order upheld.  It was a journey of choices and their consequences.

Her first step in the wrong direction began as an impulsive decision made by teenager who was just trying to fit in with her peers.  At least that’s what I tell myself.  I don’t really know what triggered her decision to experiment with drugs or why she never experienced enough regret to change her course.  Looking back now, I realize she never seemed to stumble down the wrong path, instead always running headlong into the darkness while refusing to accept the consequences of her actions.  Maybe like a person who finds solace in cutting, it was the one piece of her psyche she felt in complete control of, until the drugs began controlling her.  Even though I’ll never know what triggered her fateful decision, I do recognize the moment she crossed the point of no return.  From that day forward it was a downhill descent with only one possible destination.  Getting off the train was no longer an option.

It all began in the mid-60s and early 70s when the whole world was changing around us.  Make-Love-Not-War was the favored chant of America’s youth and psychedelic drugs were sweeping the nation.  The hippie-look came up from the streets in rebellion against mainstream designers.  Teenagers everywhere wore suede fringed jackets and hip-hugging, bell-bottomed jeans.  T-shirts were tie-dyed in kitchen sinks and peace signs adorned necklaces, cars and books.    Even rural America couldn’t protect itself from the waves of change crashing onto its shores.  The caste system was breaking down.  Being born on the “wrong side of the tracks” no longer meant you were destined to a life of poverty or blue-collared jobs.  Skin color and sexual preference were considered limitations only by your parent’s generation.  The world was changing fast.  Teenagers and young adults had more outside influence thrown at them than probably any generation before and they were grabbing it up by the handfuls, begging for more.  The people’s revolution was in motion and there was no stopping it. 

Much of the violence of those tumultuous years brought positive change to our world.  Equal rights for women.  Roe vs. Wade.  Desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement.  Unfortunately not all change was positive.  As with any new adventure, these kids didn’t realize the long-term repercussions of their actions in the beginning.  It’s often decades before a choice can truly be measured and deemed either good or bad, so only now is it clear which ones deserve the credit and where to place the blame.   Out of all the changes that swept our lives, most would agree the worst was the devastation caused by the grip of drug use on our nation. 

I doubt anyone trying drugs for the first time considered them anything more than a social recreation.  No one recognized the addictive nature of a generation hungry for a life bigger than their parents or the ingenuity of America’s youth in their quest for a bigger-and-better high.  The dark side of illegal drugs had yet to expose itself.  The train was building up steam and no one tried to stop it.

Many of America’s children experimented with drugs during their teens and twenties but for most, it simply became a chapter in their lives.  Something they would move on from, eventually becoming typical middle-aged spouses &/or parents with mortgages and minivans.  Yet for others like my sister, the chapter never ended.  Why?  Why were some able to walk away unscathed while others dove head first into the world of drug abuse purposely snowballing their lives into addiction?  Why was it so innocent for some yet so dangerous for others?  Many people argue that marijuana should be legalized; it’s no worse than alcohol.  For some it isn’t, but for others, it’s a death sentence.  So is it a gateway drug wreaking havoc on society or simply a temporary escape from reality meant to be enjoyed recreationally?

Unfortunately we aren’t born with labels.  There’s no little tag hanging behind our ear with detailed instructions about what each of us can or cannot do.  There’s no warning labels, no red circles with a diagonal line cutting across a picture of a crack pipe or a bottle of pills.  We don’t come with guarantees and we only listen half-heartedly to the threats of “don’t try this at home.”  There’s no predicting the outcome when a child is born and you can forget nature vs. nurture when drugs are added to the mix.  My sister’s group of friends came from all walks-of-life with varied skin colors and ethnic backgrounds.  Their family income ranged from poverty level to upper-middle.  The only common denominator was their willingness to experiment with the unknown.  Most made it out alive but many didn’t.  At the time of my sister’s death, the number of lost souls could be counted into the twenties.  Some were probably considered weak-links or social outcasts, but not all of them.  Most were typical teenagers, never thinking beyond the present moment; never realizing this choice carried deadly consequences.

In hindsight, I want to believe the timing of my sister’s teenaged years deserves a portion of the blame for her death.  Had she not been exposed to drugs at such a young age, would there still have been a chip on her shoulder?  Would she still feel like society was against her, like the world owed her a favor?  Those questions will remain unanswered but the world did her no favors by offering such an easy way out; a solution that seemed to make all her teenaged angst disappear in a cloud of smoke.  Without that, maybe she would have fallen but gotten back up.  Maybe she would have taken life’s hard knocks and grown from them.  Avoidance must have seemed like the easier road and probably relieved her pain in the short-run but brought with it a lifetime of pain, robbing her of life’s lessons availed to us all.  It stunted her emotional growth and skewed her parenting skills thus passing her pain on to the next generation and inflicting damage that will take them a lifetime to recover from, if ever.  She gave up her life by choosing to avoid living it.  A price too high to pay.  In reality, society is still paying the price for treating drug use so casually but is it too late to stop the train?

Society’s landscape no longer resembles our childhoods of yesteryear.  Our world requires an offensive stance.  Children aren’t allowed to walk to the grocery store alone or play in the front yard without adult supervision.  Their computer use is monitored for online predators and cyber-bullies.  Responsible parents belong to neighborhood watch groups and subscribe to sex offender websites to alert the subdivision if a felon moves into the area.  We teach our children that the world is a dangerous place and they believe us, at least until becoming teenagers.  Then our sage advice about sex, drugs or underaged drinking-and-driving gets tossed aside with a roll of the eye and a shrug of their shoulder.  Yet still we preach about the consequences of teenage mistakes, knowing in such a rush to grow up they often ignore parental advice, especially when all their friends are doing it.  It’s a rite of passage.  We expect them to have fun and enjoy life before entering adulthood with all its responsibilities.  It’s part of growing up. 

 I don’t know if it’s possible to become addicted to alcohol the first time the elixir crosses your lips but some of our children are becoming addicted to drugs with their first hit.  How do we make them understand that experimenting with drugs could alter their lives like a tsunami coming ashore? How do we prevent them from making such a devastating choice?  And if we can’t prevent it, then how do we protect them?

We watched the train leave the station and build up steam, never once throwing the brake as it roared toward its final destination.  So how do we stop it now?

You've got to find what you love....

Following is a speech given by Steve Jobs. It is a wonderful speech filled with insight and knowledge and very little regret. It's a long read but it's worth it. However, if you don't have time to read it all, just begin with his 3rd story about death...it's worth your time.

rest in peace Steve Jobs...you certainly were a game changer.

You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

This is a prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.