"People who follow their joy discover a depth of talent and creativity that inspires us all." — Dr. Robert Holden
Have you ever met someone who loves to go to work? Who no matter what is going on is always reaching expectations, being a true team player and coming up with ideas all the time?
To some people discovering their passion in life was just part of growing up. The traits that would become part of their career emerged as part of their personality and they would find their calling without trouble.
Then there are those of us, whose purpose was not so clear, not so easy to find. And, if you are like me, you have searched in a million occupations and worked in every job and you cannot get that elation that others seem to have.
But let me tell you, once you find it, it is huge, it is like being able to see after being lost in the darkness. It was loud too, like a bone snapping back into place, once that pop was heard, I realized that I had talent and I was creative.
The words flowed from my mind and it was not work, it was like a game. Not to say that writing is always easy, like sex, I have to be in the mood. If I am not in the mood, I just sit there staring at the screen waiting for something to happen. But when the muses are on my side, I can crank a thousand-word paper in an hour (I am also a transcriptionist, I type fast).
And yet, writing is not my bread and butter; not yet. I write for the pleasure of it, it’s almost like an exhibitionist; there are parts of myself that must be revealed through writing. Nothing else will do.
And while writing doesn’t give me money, yet! It does give me the fuel to meet my day creatively and positively. My work, as an interpreter, flies by when I know that I have a paper to complete as soon as I am done with my shift. Don’t misunderstand; I do love my job, helping people, creating bridges of communication, helping in the assimilation.
But writing is a secret pleasure, like a chocolate bite that restores you in the middle of the day.
Can you imagine how much happier the world would be if everyone followed their calling?
What if you tried, just this once, to do that which makes your heart sing? You don’t have to quit your job, you can do it as a hobby, you can take a class, teach a class, join a cause, share a thought. You may not be the next American Idol, but if singing brings you joy, joining the choir will lift your soul and make your day brighter, which will enlightened your life. Isn’t it worth a try? I dare you….
Find your purpose, once you find your path you will hear the pop, feel the flow of your soul and live in joy….
Monday, January 17, 2011
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Puppy Love
My daughter has a boyfriend; No, not my teenage daughter, my seven-year old.
Gabriela has been Justin’s girlfriend way before my Victoria had a boyfriend. A source of tension between the girls; however, it was Gabriela’s relationship that we focused on and gave attention too, because, seriously what does a seven-year old know about relationships?
Often at the dinner table, we sit down and we ask after her boyfriend’s well-being? Has he been on the wall lately (punishment during recess for breaking the rules), does he eat all of his lunch? You know just regular questions you could ask about a seven-year old.
One day, though, Damian (my eight-year old son, a whole year wiser) asked her:
Why do you love this Justin? He was mocking her, to be sure…
But her answer floored her sister and me: Because he makes me laugh….
It was so simple, so true and so very honest. She said that of all the boys in her class, he was funny and he made her laugh.
A few days later, she was playing with her Barbie’s and one of them was arguing heavily with the other and in the end she screamed, I just love Justin, ok! Apparently the argument had been about Justin. Part of me wanted to leave her to her games, the other part wanted to talk to her about this Justin character, so I went into her room to talk about it, what the heck! I hadn’t played Barbie’s in a while.
As I sat there playing Barbie’s with her and trying to tame the unruly hair into a precise French twist, Victoria (17 year-old) walked in and grabbed the other Barbie and proceeded to join our game.
(In my head, I congratulated myself in being able to deliver the lecture to both girls! Yes, my young grasshoppers, mother will impart her wisdom about love)
So it went something like this:
Gabriela, it’s so sweet that you and Justin are dating!
Yea! He is such a funny boy, I really do love him
(BINGO!! Perfect opening…) Sooooo, you love him huh?
Yep, I sure do…
That’s so cute, but you don’t love him, love him right? (If you say it twice, it means something deeper)
Mom, if you love someone, you just love them right?
Well yes, of course dear, but what I mean, this is just a little boy in your classroom; it’s not real love…
(Victoria snorted; Gabriela looked at her sister and frowned) So what is real love mom?
(Victoria snickered; it’s never good when a teenager snickers)
You see, sweetie, real love is a feeling in the bottom of your belly that has a sense of good and warm and it’s fuzzy around the edges. It is a smile that appears on your face when you think of that special someone; it’s all of those feelings of warmth that spread in your heart for that special someone. It’s the desire to shower that person with good deeds, good thoughts, and good feelings.
Well, I feel that about Justin!
Yes, but its puppy love dearest, not love!
Victoria, not trying to be helpful and trying to get back at me for having the same argument with her earlier asked: What is the difference mom?
CRAP!
You see, Victoria, the difference is that puppy love is young and innocent and notoriously short lived.
(Big words, so Gabriela wouldn’t understand)
But you do admit that it is love, right?
(Thinking furiously about what I was getting myself into, or from which angle she was going to get me) Why yes, of course, it is love!
Then, if its love and its genuine, is it not your duty, our duty to respect it and give it room to grow and flourish?
(Losing my cool) OH COME ON!!! She is seven… She doesn’t know anything about love, I am just trying to teach her that you don’t go telling people that you love them, that you don’t go showing boys your feelings and leaving yourself vulnerable so that they hurt you, you don’t leave yourself open.
Does that mean that because she is seven, seventeen, or seventy the emotion is any different? Mom, you are not teaching her about love, you are teaching her about fear, about holding back, about ego.
(A distant part of me was so happy,she had been listening to all of that metaphysical stuff I had taught her over the years.)
And, I was rocked back! She is right, my idea of love is so twisted and distorted, how in the world are my kids healthy and normal? Well maybe not normal, but functional, you know?
Having grown up in a dysfunctional family, my views on life and love were a bit distorted. I had been aware of that all along. I constantly went in search for a new definition of who I was. I took quizzes and learned astrology, palm reading, studied body language and read tarot cards. I was only thirteen. My desire to define was obsessive.
I finally stopped running around in circles when a book told me that what I was, what I had become and what I would be depended only on me, entirely on me.
YCYOR: You create your own reality.
How? Through your thoughts, your ideas, your actions. They define you; they carve you out of the basic material of the universe. Your thoughts, as they swirl in your head, become embedded in your mind, and then in your soul.
Things that have happened in your life before and inevitably repeat themselves over and over are just an expression of your mind chasing its own tail. Have you ever wondered how those abused women stay with their abusers? Yea, thoughts can take themselves in a vicious cycle.
Where did those thoughts come from? Sometimes they come from what you have learned in your short life. They are from your direct experience. Hot stove, little hand, not a good feeling. Fall down, mom sweeps me in her arms: mom will comfort in times of pain. Fall down, mom scolds or berates me: mom is not a source of comfort. Even at a very young age, children can follow that logic.
Others were given to you, on a silver platter by your parents and the adults around you.
Men are not to be trusted. Women belong in the kitchen. Love is treacherous. Life is full of nasty surprises. Children are to be seen and not heard. Go to college or you will not be worth anything. If you don’t have money, you are nothing. The better the car, the neighborhood, the better you are.
You hear this in their conversations with other adults; sometimes they even sit you down and tell you all about this. Trying to teach you about life, they will impart their wisdom and make sure that you understand the lessons that they have encountered in life. You wont stumble over the same rocks they did, you will learn from their heartache and you will know, beforehand, what life is like.
Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? If I pass my experiences to my child, to the children around me, then they will avoid making the same mistakes. They will be enlightened and better off than what
I was, and surely, if I tell them all about the bad stuff I have encountered, well, they will be wiser, right?
How quickly we forget when we were young! Children won’t learn from your experiences. They won’t appreciate your life in another country, in the road, in the farm, in the other side of the universe. They are a result of their current environment and they cannot absorb what life was like for you. Nor is it realistic of you to expect them to, you are a result of your experiences and if you have made a conscious effort to provide your children with a different experience, how do you expect them to understand where you come from and what you lived throug? It doesn’t work. Handed experiences are not profitable, only the earned ones, the ones that leave scars, in mind, heart and soul.
Children are not a mold of clay, you cannot shape them to your liking, you cannot create in them the qualities that you think they will need to succeed or be as you think they should be. The things they will learn are modeled by your intentions and your actions; you overprotect your child, they will learn that there are things to be feared, because they need to be protected.
Same with love, if you have had negative experiences in love, you will pass those experiences to them. Kind of like saying that puppy love, teenage love is not real love.
And so I sat holding on to the Barbie following the origin of that askew view of love and wondering how much of my life had been shaped by this unconscious notion. And I realized that in my life, love had not been given, it had to be earned. It was something of value that had to be traded for, bartered for, and invested on,be worthy of.
Much, much, much later in life, after motherhood changed my life. I learned that giving it away was powerful. When I loved my children, loved them unconditionally, something in me stirred and moved. When I accepted my husband, my friends, my family, unconditionally, I was taken to another dimension of humanity. When a classroom of children come willingly and give me love and revel in the idea that I love them, each and everyone of them; it’s a high, drugs and alcohol could not compare. The idea of giving, the idea of loving someone enough to see them as exactly the way they are and accepting them exactly the way they are, well truly, that is love.
Because, it was all coming together in my head, when you love someone you see them in your mind as they are, EXACTLY as they are and you accept and you give your love, your energy and your acceptance, without asking for anything in return. You don’t see them as perfect, perfection is elusive and makes for feelings of inadequacy, you see them just as they are, all of that they are.
Can a child do that? Can a child love like that?
Yes, children can love like that. Children can love someone who in the eyes of society is imperfect and love them so much, anything else becomes superfluous.
I knew they could, as my dad struggled with alcoholism, I loved him. As my sister battled her depression, I loved her. As my brother hid under layers of past hurt, I saw his light and I loved him. As my husband pushed away, it kept pulling me in and I loved him.
You have done it too! That inexplicable moment, when something quickened in your heart and the most unlikely thing happened, someone who you never thought would be a part of your life becomes your beloved, your best friend. You see inside, they see inside, no one is judging, no one expects anything, no critique, only acceptance and naturally, love happens.
Ok, my mind was reeling from this; this is powerful stuff, from a seven year old? From a seventeen year old?
And the more I separated from that jaded part of me, the more I realized…love happens.
You don’t build it, create it, sculpt it, make it happen, potion it into existence or pray it into manifesting.
Love happens. Unexpectedly, unpredictably and sometimes, entirely without logic.
Yea, yea, I know, it takes work to make a marriage work, but that’s a marriage, a relationship. A relationship is not the same as love, and love is not needed to have a relationship, sadly.
So my girls were right! Love, in any scenario, in any expression of itself is still love.
And suddenly I found myself surrounded, in love, all expressions of love. Romantic love, physical love, filial love, sibling love, friend love, maternal love, long-distance love and yes even teenage and puppy love.
Gabriela has been Justin’s girlfriend way before my Victoria had a boyfriend. A source of tension between the girls; however, it was Gabriela’s relationship that we focused on and gave attention too, because, seriously what does a seven-year old know about relationships?
Often at the dinner table, we sit down and we ask after her boyfriend’s well-being? Has he been on the wall lately (punishment during recess for breaking the rules), does he eat all of his lunch? You know just regular questions you could ask about a seven-year old.
One day, though, Damian (my eight-year old son, a whole year wiser) asked her:
Why do you love this Justin? He was mocking her, to be sure…
But her answer floored her sister and me: Because he makes me laugh….
It was so simple, so true and so very honest. She said that of all the boys in her class, he was funny and he made her laugh.
A few days later, she was playing with her Barbie’s and one of them was arguing heavily with the other and in the end she screamed, I just love Justin, ok! Apparently the argument had been about Justin. Part of me wanted to leave her to her games, the other part wanted to talk to her about this Justin character, so I went into her room to talk about it, what the heck! I hadn’t played Barbie’s in a while.
As I sat there playing Barbie’s with her and trying to tame the unruly hair into a precise French twist, Victoria (17 year-old) walked in and grabbed the other Barbie and proceeded to join our game.
(In my head, I congratulated myself in being able to deliver the lecture to both girls! Yes, my young grasshoppers, mother will impart her wisdom about love)
So it went something like this:
Gabriela, it’s so sweet that you and Justin are dating!
Yea! He is such a funny boy, I really do love him
(BINGO!! Perfect opening…) Sooooo, you love him huh?
Yep, I sure do…
That’s so cute, but you don’t love him, love him right? (If you say it twice, it means something deeper)
Mom, if you love someone, you just love them right?
Well yes, of course dear, but what I mean, this is just a little boy in your classroom; it’s not real love…
(Victoria snorted; Gabriela looked at her sister and frowned) So what is real love mom?
(Victoria snickered; it’s never good when a teenager snickers)
You see, sweetie, real love is a feeling in the bottom of your belly that has a sense of good and warm and it’s fuzzy around the edges. It is a smile that appears on your face when you think of that special someone; it’s all of those feelings of warmth that spread in your heart for that special someone. It’s the desire to shower that person with good deeds, good thoughts, and good feelings.
Well, I feel that about Justin!
Yes, but its puppy love dearest, not love!
Victoria, not trying to be helpful and trying to get back at me for having the same argument with her earlier asked: What is the difference mom?
CRAP!
You see, Victoria, the difference is that puppy love is young and innocent and notoriously short lived.
(Big words, so Gabriela wouldn’t understand)
But you do admit that it is love, right?
(Thinking furiously about what I was getting myself into, or from which angle she was going to get me) Why yes, of course, it is love!
Then, if its love and its genuine, is it not your duty, our duty to respect it and give it room to grow and flourish?
(Losing my cool) OH COME ON!!! She is seven… She doesn’t know anything about love, I am just trying to teach her that you don’t go telling people that you love them, that you don’t go showing boys your feelings and leaving yourself vulnerable so that they hurt you, you don’t leave yourself open.
Does that mean that because she is seven, seventeen, or seventy the emotion is any different? Mom, you are not teaching her about love, you are teaching her about fear, about holding back, about ego.
(A distant part of me was so happy,she had been listening to all of that metaphysical stuff I had taught her over the years.)
And, I was rocked back! She is right, my idea of love is so twisted and distorted, how in the world are my kids healthy and normal? Well maybe not normal, but functional, you know?
Having grown up in a dysfunctional family, my views on life and love were a bit distorted. I had been aware of that all along. I constantly went in search for a new definition of who I was. I took quizzes and learned astrology, palm reading, studied body language and read tarot cards. I was only thirteen. My desire to define was obsessive.
I finally stopped running around in circles when a book told me that what I was, what I had become and what I would be depended only on me, entirely on me.
YCYOR: You create your own reality.
How? Through your thoughts, your ideas, your actions. They define you; they carve you out of the basic material of the universe. Your thoughts, as they swirl in your head, become embedded in your mind, and then in your soul.
Things that have happened in your life before and inevitably repeat themselves over and over are just an expression of your mind chasing its own tail. Have you ever wondered how those abused women stay with their abusers? Yea, thoughts can take themselves in a vicious cycle.
Where did those thoughts come from? Sometimes they come from what you have learned in your short life. They are from your direct experience. Hot stove, little hand, not a good feeling. Fall down, mom sweeps me in her arms: mom will comfort in times of pain. Fall down, mom scolds or berates me: mom is not a source of comfort. Even at a very young age, children can follow that logic.
Others were given to you, on a silver platter by your parents and the adults around you.
Men are not to be trusted. Women belong in the kitchen. Love is treacherous. Life is full of nasty surprises. Children are to be seen and not heard. Go to college or you will not be worth anything. If you don’t have money, you are nothing. The better the car, the neighborhood, the better you are.
You hear this in their conversations with other adults; sometimes they even sit you down and tell you all about this. Trying to teach you about life, they will impart their wisdom and make sure that you understand the lessons that they have encountered in life. You wont stumble over the same rocks they did, you will learn from their heartache and you will know, beforehand, what life is like.
Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? If I pass my experiences to my child, to the children around me, then they will avoid making the same mistakes. They will be enlightened and better off than what
I was, and surely, if I tell them all about the bad stuff I have encountered, well, they will be wiser, right?
How quickly we forget when we were young! Children won’t learn from your experiences. They won’t appreciate your life in another country, in the road, in the farm, in the other side of the universe. They are a result of their current environment and they cannot absorb what life was like for you. Nor is it realistic of you to expect them to, you are a result of your experiences and if you have made a conscious effort to provide your children with a different experience, how do you expect them to understand where you come from and what you lived throug? It doesn’t work. Handed experiences are not profitable, only the earned ones, the ones that leave scars, in mind, heart and soul.
Children are not a mold of clay, you cannot shape them to your liking, you cannot create in them the qualities that you think they will need to succeed or be as you think they should be. The things they will learn are modeled by your intentions and your actions; you overprotect your child, they will learn that there are things to be feared, because they need to be protected.
Same with love, if you have had negative experiences in love, you will pass those experiences to them. Kind of like saying that puppy love, teenage love is not real love.
And so I sat holding on to the Barbie following the origin of that askew view of love and wondering how much of my life had been shaped by this unconscious notion. And I realized that in my life, love had not been given, it had to be earned. It was something of value that had to be traded for, bartered for, and invested on,be worthy of.
Much, much, much later in life, after motherhood changed my life. I learned that giving it away was powerful. When I loved my children, loved them unconditionally, something in me stirred and moved. When I accepted my husband, my friends, my family, unconditionally, I was taken to another dimension of humanity. When a classroom of children come willingly and give me love and revel in the idea that I love them, each and everyone of them; it’s a high, drugs and alcohol could not compare. The idea of giving, the idea of loving someone enough to see them as exactly the way they are and accepting them exactly the way they are, well truly, that is love.
Because, it was all coming together in my head, when you love someone you see them in your mind as they are, EXACTLY as they are and you accept and you give your love, your energy and your acceptance, without asking for anything in return. You don’t see them as perfect, perfection is elusive and makes for feelings of inadequacy, you see them just as they are, all of that they are.
Can a child do that? Can a child love like that?
Yes, children can love like that. Children can love someone who in the eyes of society is imperfect and love them so much, anything else becomes superfluous.
I knew they could, as my dad struggled with alcoholism, I loved him. As my sister battled her depression, I loved her. As my brother hid under layers of past hurt, I saw his light and I loved him. As my husband pushed away, it kept pulling me in and I loved him.
You have done it too! That inexplicable moment, when something quickened in your heart and the most unlikely thing happened, someone who you never thought would be a part of your life becomes your beloved, your best friend. You see inside, they see inside, no one is judging, no one expects anything, no critique, only acceptance and naturally, love happens.
Ok, my mind was reeling from this; this is powerful stuff, from a seven year old? From a seventeen year old?
And the more I separated from that jaded part of me, the more I realized…love happens.
You don’t build it, create it, sculpt it, make it happen, potion it into existence or pray it into manifesting.
Love happens. Unexpectedly, unpredictably and sometimes, entirely without logic.
Yea, yea, I know, it takes work to make a marriage work, but that’s a marriage, a relationship. A relationship is not the same as love, and love is not needed to have a relationship, sadly.
So my girls were right! Love, in any scenario, in any expression of itself is still love.
And suddenly I found myself surrounded, in love, all expressions of love. Romantic love, physical love, filial love, sibling love, friend love, maternal love, long-distance love and yes even teenage and puppy love.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Spring
And so you have come to take her away…
I had expected your arrival but now that you are here,
I cannot say I welcome this day
But it is inevitable, the bud must bloom and spring will arrive
And with its bellowing sunshine, it will change our paths…
No longer does she come to sit at my side; no longer does she tell me the long stories of her day
I watch her smile and know that I may never know what gave her such rush
But all flowers must bloom, spring must arrive as it does every year, I cannot change its ways
And so she leaves; hands full of plans and heart full of joy
And I watch from the window as she begins to walk down her own path
No more midnight talks, no more why is life thus?
I remember her perfect little body curled up next to me
Her little arms wrapped around mine, her love intoxicating,
Her perfect rosebud lips curled into a most angelic smile
Yet, all flowers have their time to bloom and here comes her time to shine
Her days by my hearth are numbered already the allure of life calls her name
No more hugs in the middle of the night to soothe her troubled dreams
No more kisses to fix life’s little scrapes
She comes filled with sunshine, with dreams and hopes
and as she waltzes down the merry path of the life she has divined,
I look at her move away from me, and recognize the woman she will become.
For a time comes to all mothers when we realize we are the epicenter no more
This child who depended on us has grown her own wings and fly she will, even if she falls
Yet in my heart remains, the bounce of her curls on my chest as we cuddled together for the night, the hundredth kiss goodnight and moment I first looked into her eyes, alas it was love at first sight
And so you have come to take her from me, to lead her to her own time
She will walk from my door, needing me no more and soon will fly to new heights
Be gentle with her; remind her always she is loved
For I too was once seduced by your song, I remember your pull in my heart
But this isn’t my trip, my time of spring has long past,
Her spring is dawning and soon comes the moment when she will be gone from my arms
And so she walks towards you
Lord Life you’ve come with your inevitable song, she now follows your enchanting road
And so her wings open wide and she welcomes the spring of her soul
Go dearest child of my heart, I remember what it’s like to fly….
I had expected your arrival but now that you are here,
I cannot say I welcome this day
But it is inevitable, the bud must bloom and spring will arrive
And with its bellowing sunshine, it will change our paths…
No longer does she come to sit at my side; no longer does she tell me the long stories of her day
I watch her smile and know that I may never know what gave her such rush
But all flowers must bloom, spring must arrive as it does every year, I cannot change its ways
And so she leaves; hands full of plans and heart full of joy
And I watch from the window as she begins to walk down her own path
No more midnight talks, no more why is life thus?
I remember her perfect little body curled up next to me
Her little arms wrapped around mine, her love intoxicating,
Her perfect rosebud lips curled into a most angelic smile
Yet, all flowers have their time to bloom and here comes her time to shine
Her days by my hearth are numbered already the allure of life calls her name
No more hugs in the middle of the night to soothe her troubled dreams
No more kisses to fix life’s little scrapes
She comes filled with sunshine, with dreams and hopes
and as she waltzes down the merry path of the life she has divined,
I look at her move away from me, and recognize the woman she will become.
For a time comes to all mothers when we realize we are the epicenter no more
This child who depended on us has grown her own wings and fly she will, even if she falls
Yet in my heart remains, the bounce of her curls on my chest as we cuddled together for the night, the hundredth kiss goodnight and moment I first looked into her eyes, alas it was love at first sight
And so you have come to take her from me, to lead her to her own time
She will walk from my door, needing me no more and soon will fly to new heights
Be gentle with her; remind her always she is loved
For I too was once seduced by your song, I remember your pull in my heart
But this isn’t my trip, my time of spring has long past,
Her spring is dawning and soon comes the moment when she will be gone from my arms
And so she walks towards you
Lord Life you’ve come with your inevitable song, she now follows your enchanting road
And so her wings open wide and she welcomes the spring of her soul
Go dearest child of my heart, I remember what it’s like to fly….
Making a List
I am not a regular list person. I make a list of things that need to get accomplished for the day and before the first hour has passed, I have lost it. Post it notes are not my thing, a task list in my phone just gets ignored, I am not a scheduled person and the thought that I must restrict myself to a piece of paper is unfathomable. Why? The same is accomplished in the day with or without it. And if it doesn’t, there is always tomorrow.
However, there is one list that I do make. I make it once a year and I hold it in my wallet. I don’t remember about it often but when I do, I take it out and I lovingly go through it, as if I had found a picture of someone beloved. And in a sense, I have.
REWIND TWENTY YEARS (Dear Gods, twenty years? Really? )
On a round table in my small kitchen, in a house that is no longer mine, my best friend and I sat with a book that had a recipe for success. We had found out that the book had made its way into both of our paths and although it had not been explored, it remained nearby, waiting for us to discover it.
During one of our lengthy conversations we found out that we both had the book and we both talked about it. Like two children who had discovered the forbidden, we sat around that table and we huddled together trying to unlock the secrets this book was giving us. Everything you could possibly want, all of your hearts desires are within your reach when you apply this knowledge to your life.
Holy Moly! We struck gold!!!
We gathered at the table again and we were ready. Paper? Check! Pencils? Check!
That’s it.
That’s it? Not an eye of Newt? (whatever a newt is!!), frog’s legs? Three wings of a silvered bat?
We were going to reach our heart’s desire and all of our dreams would come true with paper and pencils? I was beginning to grow skeptical.
However, my skepticism was short lived. The instructions continued to be simple and we simply followed them with wonder and excitement.
Step 2: Make a list of the things you want.
Heck that was easy. I want so-and-so to be my boyfriend, I want nice clothes, I want a cool car. The lottery would be nice too. For about ten minutes or so, our minds soared and we daydreamed and giggled about the things we wanted and how awesome life would be when we had what we wanted. The author of the book, Conny Mendez, encouraged our game. She told us to ask of it what we will because there was no question about receiving it. We did not need to be told twice. Off to fantasy land we went!
Step 3: Rewrite the same list, in present tense and using as much detail as your mind can muster.
For example: if you wanted a hot car, your statement would look like this.
My car is AWESOME! It has leather interior and its candy apple red, it is hot and it is sooooo smooth. Every time I get in it, I can see people looking at it with admiration…. Etc, etc, etc; you get my drift.
Step 4: No, no no… there is no step 4.
WHAT? No step 4? Surely you jest.
Nope, I am not Shirley and this is no joke my friend.
So my best friend and I put this paper away in our wallets and forgot about it for a while. Six months later (we had marked the calendar) we sat back around the table and looked at our lists.
Of the ten things we had listed, five of them were accomplished or no longer of interest.
Let me repeat that…
We made a list of ten things. Of those ten things, five or more of them had either come true, or they no longer mattered.
Six months later, the list had to be redone and new things had to be added to the list. In a full year, most of the things in the list had either come true or they were no longer part of our dreams.
How so? The guy I wanted to date turned out to be a jerk and I was glad nothing came through from that.
I had wanted a candy-apple red car and I didn’t have a candy-apple red car, but I did have my mom’s burgundy car that she let me drive to work. It wasn’t super hot and smooth, but it did get me places and at 15, that is all that matters.
So again, we sat down and repeated steps 1-3. We giggled at the possibilities and we dreamt about how it would be and how we would act when the things we wanted came into our life. Same process repeated, six months later, and another year later.
Now, I don’t know if Conny Mendez’s intention was to establish a pattern of a resolutions list but it did take that shape and although we didn’t continue working on our list together, or only once a year. We continued the pattern of designing the future.
FAST FORWARD TO 2010
We have since learnt so much about this list making process. Many people shun it like magic and call it evil and run away from it, afraid of what its power means. And rightly so, it isn’t only in Spiderman that this is true. With great power comes great responsibility.
Do not despair though; I am still going to share the power of the List!
First thing you must know. Your thoughts are powerful.
Have you ever thought about one person, and five seconds later that person called you? Or walked in your door? Or a picture fell into your lap?
Yes, I know coincidence… moving on.
Have you ever worried, and worried and worried that something horrible was going to happen and then much like you had warned everyone around you, it happened, unerringly like you had predicted?
Back to coincidence or your wisdom, could be either one…. Let’s move on.
Have you ever woken up with the thought that it was going to be a wonderful day and that nothing was going to stand in your path and your day went fabulous? Or vice versa, you wake up from a miserable night, you fall off of your bed and you slip in the shower, burn yourself with hot water and cut yourself so many times you look like a sieve and as you get ready to leave, you KNOW, this will be a horrible day.
And guess what? It was. Of course it was, it had no choice. Coincidence again, right?
No, not really.
First, let’s define something. What are your thoughts?
They are not random images in your head; they are not private deliberations that no one else will see.
Thoughts are things.
Things? Yes, things!
How things? Hmmmm, if I was thinking of winning the lottery, I was using some kind of material to build this dream of mine right?
Yess????
Ok, so what was that material? Cloud mist? Fairy dust?
IT IS ENERGY! Not energy like light bulbs and Al Gore energy.
Think energy like when you walk into the ocean and you feel that raw power that envelopes you. Think of the stillness of the forest that seems to vibrate to its own music. Think of the glow that a pregnant woman has long before she begins to show. Think of how you feel as someone with ill intentions approaches you.
How does the power of the ocean communicate itself to you? The stillness of the forest that seems to lower your own blood pressure (vibration)?
Everything has energy, every little bit of everything is made up of energy. Dreams, thoughts, people, cars, pets, broken hearts, aspirations and even nightmares. All of it made of energy.
In quantum physics, it is explained in particles of photon. Everything is made up in these particles; the denser the material, the slower the particles. (yada, yada, yada, look up quantum physics for further debate).
Ok, so what are we up to? Yes, thoughts are things; light particle things.
These light particle things have a level of vibration, a pulse if you’d prefer and it attracts to itself, things that have the same pulse. Imagine a gathering of people; they will group themselves according to their similarities. So it is with energy.
Negative energy: energy from worrying, from fear, from despair, from anger, from hate, from envy, from avarice. It all seeks vibrations, energy that it’s like itself.
For example, if hate is a 2.
You hate morning traffic =2
Your husband hates Brussels sprouts=2
Your father hates the IRS = 2
The KKK hates minorities = 2
You hate war = 2
It doesn’t make a difference what you hate, hate is hate is hate.
Same thing with love. Love, of course, is at the other end of the spectrum. It is not the opposite, for the opposite of love is fear, but they are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Love is a 100
You love ice cream = 100
Your daughter loves to dance = 100
Your husband loves his garden = 100
Your mother loves her charity work = 100
It doesn’t make a difference what you love. Love is love is love.
So, good thoughts give LOTS of vibration. Negative thoughts give little vibration.
In order for something to come to you, you need LOTS of vibration.
Your vibration is to be focused, is to come from a place of intention, and it is to be accepted, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
This is why prayer works. Prayers, meditations, offerings, spells and manifestations. ALL of them have the same thing in common. They are a focus of vibration and a willingness to sit there, open-hearted to receive it.
See, we haven’t discovered anything new. All we are doing is showing you the wizard behind the curtain.
And you know? The biggest challenge with praying for something isn’t that God doesn’t want you to have it, it isn’t that you didn’t use the right kind of vibration, nor that your spell failed.
The KEY ingredient in making this “process” work is absolute certainty, faith and knowing that it will come to pass. Your doubt is your undoing.
If you have accepted that your thoughts are powerful, you have tuned up your thoughts, you vibrate beautifully and yet, your lottery numbers haven’t come up. Don’t blame the magic! The vibration of the lottery numbers cannot come to you, if you still cannot “BELIEVE” that you are a lottery winner.
Before you can bring it into existence, you have to know the feeling, the emotion behind it and then you have to let it go.
Like they teach you in Sunday school: come to church, become one with God (align your energy with positive vibrations, ground yourself, still your thoughts); ask God to act in your behalf (offer your vibration, cast your spell, achieve your God-head) and LET IT GO!
So, as you can see, my list is not a technique that I discovered. It’s not even new. It is no SECRET. It’s your right, your passage, your key, your list, your power, your very own divinity, your nirvana, your bliss. It matters not what you call it, as long as you use it.
So, to recap:
You will need pen and paper
Make your list; include all of your hearts desire. And don’t ask for something you don’t want (what will you do if you get it…. Awkward!!!)
Focus your thoughts, your energy, your light particles, and your vibration on your desires. Include your images, daydream it, live it, feel it. Attach emotion to it!
And then fold your paper up, stick it in your wallet, in your purse, anywhere that it is close to you and from time to time, open it and enjoy it again.
And then let it go. Let it come to you; don’t seek to guide it, to pursue it, to chase after it.
There are more forces at work on this than you could ever imagine.
(I know what you will say, if this works so well, why am I not rich? Look again, I AM)
However, there is one list that I do make. I make it once a year and I hold it in my wallet. I don’t remember about it often but when I do, I take it out and I lovingly go through it, as if I had found a picture of someone beloved. And in a sense, I have.
REWIND TWENTY YEARS (Dear Gods, twenty years? Really? )
On a round table in my small kitchen, in a house that is no longer mine, my best friend and I sat with a book that had a recipe for success. We had found out that the book had made its way into both of our paths and although it had not been explored, it remained nearby, waiting for us to discover it.
During one of our lengthy conversations we found out that we both had the book and we both talked about it. Like two children who had discovered the forbidden, we sat around that table and we huddled together trying to unlock the secrets this book was giving us. Everything you could possibly want, all of your hearts desires are within your reach when you apply this knowledge to your life.
Holy Moly! We struck gold!!!
We gathered at the table again and we were ready. Paper? Check! Pencils? Check!
That’s it.
That’s it? Not an eye of Newt? (whatever a newt is!!), frog’s legs? Three wings of a silvered bat?
We were going to reach our heart’s desire and all of our dreams would come true with paper and pencils? I was beginning to grow skeptical.
However, my skepticism was short lived. The instructions continued to be simple and we simply followed them with wonder and excitement.
Step 2: Make a list of the things you want.
Heck that was easy. I want so-and-so to be my boyfriend, I want nice clothes, I want a cool car. The lottery would be nice too. For about ten minutes or so, our minds soared and we daydreamed and giggled about the things we wanted and how awesome life would be when we had what we wanted. The author of the book, Conny Mendez, encouraged our game. She told us to ask of it what we will because there was no question about receiving it. We did not need to be told twice. Off to fantasy land we went!
Step 3: Rewrite the same list, in present tense and using as much detail as your mind can muster.
For example: if you wanted a hot car, your statement would look like this.
My car is AWESOME! It has leather interior and its candy apple red, it is hot and it is sooooo smooth. Every time I get in it, I can see people looking at it with admiration…. Etc, etc, etc; you get my drift.
Step 4: No, no no… there is no step 4.
WHAT? No step 4? Surely you jest.
Nope, I am not Shirley and this is no joke my friend.
So my best friend and I put this paper away in our wallets and forgot about it for a while. Six months later (we had marked the calendar) we sat back around the table and looked at our lists.
Of the ten things we had listed, five of them were accomplished or no longer of interest.
Let me repeat that…
We made a list of ten things. Of those ten things, five or more of them had either come true, or they no longer mattered.
Six months later, the list had to be redone and new things had to be added to the list. In a full year, most of the things in the list had either come true or they were no longer part of our dreams.
How so? The guy I wanted to date turned out to be a jerk and I was glad nothing came through from that.
I had wanted a candy-apple red car and I didn’t have a candy-apple red car, but I did have my mom’s burgundy car that she let me drive to work. It wasn’t super hot and smooth, but it did get me places and at 15, that is all that matters.
So again, we sat down and repeated steps 1-3. We giggled at the possibilities and we dreamt about how it would be and how we would act when the things we wanted came into our life. Same process repeated, six months later, and another year later.
Now, I don’t know if Conny Mendez’s intention was to establish a pattern of a resolutions list but it did take that shape and although we didn’t continue working on our list together, or only once a year. We continued the pattern of designing the future.
FAST FORWARD TO 2010
We have since learnt so much about this list making process. Many people shun it like magic and call it evil and run away from it, afraid of what its power means. And rightly so, it isn’t only in Spiderman that this is true. With great power comes great responsibility.
Do not despair though; I am still going to share the power of the List!
First thing you must know. Your thoughts are powerful.
Have you ever thought about one person, and five seconds later that person called you? Or walked in your door? Or a picture fell into your lap?
Yes, I know coincidence… moving on.
Have you ever worried, and worried and worried that something horrible was going to happen and then much like you had warned everyone around you, it happened, unerringly like you had predicted?
Back to coincidence or your wisdom, could be either one…. Let’s move on.
Have you ever woken up with the thought that it was going to be a wonderful day and that nothing was going to stand in your path and your day went fabulous? Or vice versa, you wake up from a miserable night, you fall off of your bed and you slip in the shower, burn yourself with hot water and cut yourself so many times you look like a sieve and as you get ready to leave, you KNOW, this will be a horrible day.
And guess what? It was. Of course it was, it had no choice. Coincidence again, right?
No, not really.
First, let’s define something. What are your thoughts?
They are not random images in your head; they are not private deliberations that no one else will see.
Thoughts are things.
Things? Yes, things!
How things? Hmmmm, if I was thinking of winning the lottery, I was using some kind of material to build this dream of mine right?
Yess????
Ok, so what was that material? Cloud mist? Fairy dust?
IT IS ENERGY! Not energy like light bulbs and Al Gore energy.
Think energy like when you walk into the ocean and you feel that raw power that envelopes you. Think of the stillness of the forest that seems to vibrate to its own music. Think of the glow that a pregnant woman has long before she begins to show. Think of how you feel as someone with ill intentions approaches you.
How does the power of the ocean communicate itself to you? The stillness of the forest that seems to lower your own blood pressure (vibration)?
Everything has energy, every little bit of everything is made up of energy. Dreams, thoughts, people, cars, pets, broken hearts, aspirations and even nightmares. All of it made of energy.
In quantum physics, it is explained in particles of photon. Everything is made up in these particles; the denser the material, the slower the particles. (yada, yada, yada, look up quantum physics for further debate).
Ok, so what are we up to? Yes, thoughts are things; light particle things.
These light particle things have a level of vibration, a pulse if you’d prefer and it attracts to itself, things that have the same pulse. Imagine a gathering of people; they will group themselves according to their similarities. So it is with energy.
Negative energy: energy from worrying, from fear, from despair, from anger, from hate, from envy, from avarice. It all seeks vibrations, energy that it’s like itself.
For example, if hate is a 2.
You hate morning traffic =2
Your husband hates Brussels sprouts=2
Your father hates the IRS = 2
The KKK hates minorities = 2
You hate war = 2
It doesn’t make a difference what you hate, hate is hate is hate.
Same thing with love. Love, of course, is at the other end of the spectrum. It is not the opposite, for the opposite of love is fear, but they are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Love is a 100
You love ice cream = 100
Your daughter loves to dance = 100
Your husband loves his garden = 100
Your mother loves her charity work = 100
It doesn’t make a difference what you love. Love is love is love.
So, good thoughts give LOTS of vibration. Negative thoughts give little vibration.
In order for something to come to you, you need LOTS of vibration.
Your vibration is to be focused, is to come from a place of intention, and it is to be accepted, beyond a shadow of a doubt.
This is why prayer works. Prayers, meditations, offerings, spells and manifestations. ALL of them have the same thing in common. They are a focus of vibration and a willingness to sit there, open-hearted to receive it.
See, we haven’t discovered anything new. All we are doing is showing you the wizard behind the curtain.
And you know? The biggest challenge with praying for something isn’t that God doesn’t want you to have it, it isn’t that you didn’t use the right kind of vibration, nor that your spell failed.
The KEY ingredient in making this “process” work is absolute certainty, faith and knowing that it will come to pass. Your doubt is your undoing.
If you have accepted that your thoughts are powerful, you have tuned up your thoughts, you vibrate beautifully and yet, your lottery numbers haven’t come up. Don’t blame the magic! The vibration of the lottery numbers cannot come to you, if you still cannot “BELIEVE” that you are a lottery winner.
Before you can bring it into existence, you have to know the feeling, the emotion behind it and then you have to let it go.
Like they teach you in Sunday school: come to church, become one with God (align your energy with positive vibrations, ground yourself, still your thoughts); ask God to act in your behalf (offer your vibration, cast your spell, achieve your God-head) and LET IT GO!
So, as you can see, my list is not a technique that I discovered. It’s not even new. It is no SECRET. It’s your right, your passage, your key, your list, your power, your very own divinity, your nirvana, your bliss. It matters not what you call it, as long as you use it.
So, to recap:
You will need pen and paper
Make your list; include all of your hearts desire. And don’t ask for something you don’t want (what will you do if you get it…. Awkward!!!)
Focus your thoughts, your energy, your light particles, and your vibration on your desires. Include your images, daydream it, live it, feel it. Attach emotion to it!
And then fold your paper up, stick it in your wallet, in your purse, anywhere that it is close to you and from time to time, open it and enjoy it again.
And then let it go. Let it come to you; don’t seek to guide it, to pursue it, to chase after it.
There are more forces at work on this than you could ever imagine.
(I know what you will say, if this works so well, why am I not rich? Look again, I AM)
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Letter from a Brother to another...
Hey Bro! Check it out… people are pissseddddd…
Man, people are out for your ass!! You better run somewhere…
Man, it aint what you did or didn’t do.
It’s the approach you said you were gonna have. You were up there saying, we gonna change things, and we thought, well hell, he is a brother, he knows what’s up, he’ll take care of business.
You is a brother, from a single momma, had to work your way up, go to school and now you was coming to the White House, Dang bro, we thought you was the black superman…
But so far nothing… same bullshit!
What is up with all the change line you was giving us???
Take this shit with AZ, how you gonna let them do that to the beans??
Bro, it’s the same shit they did to us… PROFILING, ya know?? Them Ricans aint illegals, but they still look like the Mexicans, how you gonna tell them apart???What are you going to do about the illegals from Zimbabwe, they look just like us? What if there is illegals from France??? They white!! Naahh bro, this is creating a world of trouble…
Check it out, ima school you in what you need to do???
Now, listen up son, my momma used to say you cant be knocking other peoples houses and telling them what to do if your own house is a mess, that aint gonna work….
What are we doing investing money all over the world in military bases, troops and who knows what else you got going over there??? Bring it back bro… Now, once you got everything here with you, army, navy and who knows what other thugs you got watching your back.
What do you do when you don’t want flies in your house??? CLOSE THE DOOR…
CLOSE THE BORDER!!!! Party is over; whoever is here, is here to stay…. Let the ones that don’t want to stay go, have them hit the road, they don’ wanna be here, we don’t need them here!!!
Talk to these people bro. Some of them want to come and be here for good and work and be Americans like us…. Why can’t we let them? Bro, King said it, not Martin Luther King Jr bro, Rodney… why can’t we all get along???
There be some of them too that want to start shit and want to work and cross over every other day, make money here and take it somewhere else to spend. Nahhh, bro, them people aint Americans and aint never gonna be.
If you work here, that money needs to be spent here… none of that sending out to buy shit in other countries. Like in El Salvador, my friend Felipe says he gets 10 pairs of nikes for like ten dollars, but I told that crazy fool, it aint about what you getting bro, its about what you putting back… these beans don’t get it bro, but they will.
Women be drawing food stamps and getting their kids free education throughout the year and then they send them back to Nicaragua so their auntie can take of their kids for free, what’s up with that???? You need to invest on the daycare here, this is your country now…. Don’t sell out…
Like if Diddy gets his shirts made here and Jay-Z gets them done in China, need I tell you whose shirts you need to be buying…
Here it is bro… them beans don’t think this is home, they be here working their asses off, cause they are hard workers, you have to give them that but at the end, they always want to go home. We aint never gonna make it work with them, unless this becomes home. They be here fifty years and they still be crying about home, they need to own up to that and make up their minds, ya know? Not that I blame them, have you seen some of the veterans in the streets? It is disgraceful
Seriously now, we need to take care of us first.
Didn’t you learn from 9/11??? Them people blew up the towers and suddenly Jose, Wong, Fred and Jerome was helping each other, representing and whatnot. So here is the deal, everyone that is here, and wants to be here, they get their shiny, new americanship certificate!
So what are you gonna do? Make everyone legal. Fine everyone that has been illegal, that plus whatever they have to pay for their papers ought to make up for the budget deficit, plus I bet you never thought about the extra money you are gonna make when all of them pay taxes.
You gonna have to hire tons of people to process them as legal. They gonna have to be registered, someone is gonna have to work with them while in that process, then you are gonna need testers, and then you gonna need to have someone take the pictures and give’em their brand new certificate of americanship.
You gonna have to have people around to help them. You need civic centers bro…
You need centers in the community where people can go to find out about jobs, education, raising their kids, health and all of the things that they need to know about to become American citizens. Your momma taught you about being an American, they don’t have a momma to teach them, they are being taught by the other people who came here before them but none of them have the right information. They need help; our help…
When kids go to college, they get a mentor, someone who walks you around til you get familiar with the campus and tells you about the rules and how you gonna get from here to here and who to talk to if you need something, where you can get the good shit, ahem…. now why would we think that coming to a new country would be any different… it is the same and some of these people are lost and get bad advice.
Then you gonna have to open the schools at night and hire more teachers. You need to teach these people to speak English, you need to make it mandatory and make them pay for their classes, as part of their americanship program. Think of the new revenue that would generate. More teachers, more jobs, more consumption…. I can see them dollar signs dancing in front of my eyes… But, wait, you have to make sure these people are FLUENT. My friend Maria took her citizenship test and do you know what they asked her? What color was Washington’s white horse??? What kind of civics and American history test is that? That’s bullshit; it’s harder to get through the airport bro…
That ought to quit the extra expenses in translating documents and printing fifteen hundred different versions of one form.
Also, you are gonna have to get rid of the current welfare failure. Man, we can’t give prenatal care and food stamps to everyone who gets pregnant. That’s like rewarding your kid for doing something they are not supposed to do. I know you don’t want to leave the kids unprotected and it aint the kids fault the momma got pregnant, but if you pay for it, they aint gonna care, they gonna keep having babies, white babies, brown babies, black babies, ALL kinds of baby. We in the middle of a recession and people don’t even know whats gonna happen and they still having all kinds of babies… Crazy!!! Taxes should be commensurate to the expense that the government has for you and your family. I am just saying… you gonna have twenty kids… that’s cool, but you gonna pay more taxes… not the other way around.
The first thing we are gonna have to teach everyone, not only the new people new to the americanship thing is accountability.
You lost your job and you need a hand, that’s cool bro, shit like that happens all the time, we gonna give you and your family a hand for about six months til you get back on your feet. After that, you need to scoot… If you have not found a job by then, then you need to seriously consider going back to school or doing something else. You wouldn’t have your momma support you for your whole life, why should the government?
Insurance is too expensive for you, that’s cool, the government can offer you insurance alternatives, but I tell you what, they need to pay something for it and make it available to everyone. What the hell makes you think that the people that work want to spend all kinds of money on insurance, hell sometimes they gotta do without and people that don’t work, have insurance, which makes no sense bro, no sense…
Here is another idea I had, you know how you go to NY City and that shit stinks and it’s dirty. They gotta have at least half of the damn population in that damn city on welfare and housing. Tell their asses to hit the streets and clean it up bro, someone needs to be getting their hands dirty. They can’t find jobs; we find something for them to do. We need people to provide daycare for mommas to go to work and school, straight! You getting welfare, you gonna work in government provided daycare, no more sitting in your house watching Jerry, we gonna help you help yourself!!!
Didn’t your momma every teach you? Yo, don’t give someone a fish; teach their asses how to fish…
No handouts bro, no handouts, and then you got them people thinking, you owe me, the government owes me… bullshit, no one owes you nothing…
What about them mommas saying they kids sick so they get a check? Bro, why a kid with ADD need a disability check? Check it out, if you told me you was gonna give her like ten hours at a local day care so she can get that little bugger out of her hair for a while cause if not she is gonna go crazy herself, I understand that, but why a check??? The schools be teaching them and shit. That momma don’t need anything extra…
Ohhhhhhhh!!! I almost forgot bro, I almost forgot…. This kid I know hooked me up with a Dell, ya know a laptop so I can be connected and check out what you up to on CNN. It started acting all goofy and I called him and he said he wasn’t no tech to call technical support, have you ever tried to call them tech support people???
I was talking to Yuba, she had an accent, but that’s cool you know? A lot of people do, but I was telling her that it was crazy hot here in the heart of it all and then I asked her if it was hot where she was at, you know what she told me, she couldn’t tell me where she was at…. I looked at that phone like Yuba was crazy, what you mean you can’t tell me??? Where are you at??? Finally she told me she was out of the country.
Are you for real?? You know how many people can work those jobs? Why you letting them send them jobs out of the country?? Man, even them big fat people on the Wal-Mart carts can run their mouths and work customer service, we don’t need to send our jobs out. Same for them companies that go to Mexico and shit to build stuff cheaper, you know that never made no sense to me either.
If the Mexicans are coming here to make money and the factories are working over there, you’d think something would’ve noticed something aint right….
Anyways back to these Benedict Arnolds, tax them! Tax the companies that outsource jobs and the ones that bring in foreign made products to sell here. Tax them outrageously. There are 307,006,550 people in this country. We have enough of a project trying to become self sufficient. If the company wants to stop doing business here, good riddance!!!! We need companies who believe in the American spirit and not in the capitalist-get-your-own-now-and-fuck-everyone-else-spirit but the lets-work-together-to-create-a- nation-that-allows-people-to-be-self-sufficient-independent-self-fulfilled-and-investing-fully-into-each- other-and-our-children’s-future spirit.
The worst part of it all, the craziest part of all of this bro, is that if we all looked to investing our money, our time, our interest in here, in America, the country would flourish….
I know why you stuck, why you can’t do anything. There are those who are so far up in the system, that are profiting so much from the way things are that they cant allow for it to be changed. Truth of the matter is … we can’t change it all, unless we ourselves change. We are responsible for allowing those people to take advantage of us. We are responsible for letting things so out of control.
People stopped caring about who was in office and what they was doing and they became numb.
Now everyone know who Ochocinco is gonna choose for his baby momma but don’t nobody know about the laws and how they be changing and the fact that we are so far in deficit that it’s not even funny.
When the gas prices went crazy, people suddenly woke up and the gas was like a dollar higher. It wasn’t over night, people. Wake up! They be raising prices of everything, everyday, passing laws you don’t even know about cause you too busy on facebook and then you gonna get mad, child please!!
Bro, there is so many things that can be done to change this. You just gotta get your strap on and make the hard decisions. The justice system sucks, its not rehabilitative, its crippling. Welfare is creating a generation of self entitled boobies. The education system is being destroyed, have you noticed that world wide we rank like 200th in education. Damn bro, I know we got some smart kids. Let’s start investing the money where its worth investing at.
Instead of paying Lebron the millions and millions of dollars he gets, I know this one teacher in my school that we drove insane, I swear she used to eat antacids every two minutes, she deserves millions of dollars because she stood with a bunch of lost hope kids and believed in them, that’s a lot harder than shooting hoops. How about them firefighters that jump into your house to save your ass in a fire, they go in there and get you out and they go back to get Fluffly??? The policeman who sticks his neck out there in the ugly parts of town, who have to run into the shootouts. How about you holla at your stay-at-home moms, who make it work on one income so they can be home not only for their kids, for the kids she helps when she volunteers and for the kids she watches at home to make a little extra money. How about the single parents?? They deserve millions and millions. For working and going to school and raising their kids and still wanting to better themselves to make it better.
How that crazy Lebron gets money like that??? I don’t know, there is something stupid about a society that is willing to pay a basketball player money like crazy and give minimum wage to a daycare worker.
I don’t know bro, I am just saying…
This aint about race either. The AZ law is wrong not because they illegal, but because the way to enforce it is to physically profile. Hell yea, you need to stop illegal immigration, but don’t make stupid suggestions, Hard problems require that you play hardball. People take advantage of welfare, all people, white, black and Hispanics. People go to jail and get branded for life, white, black and Hispanics.
Stop making it an issue about race and integration. It can’t be integrated. It will never be. Integration means that we will blend into some freakish creature, and we cant, our strength is our diversity. So stop, no one is going to have pot roast, collard greens and rice and beans for dinner. It’s not happening. Celebrate our diversity. Celebrate our differences and learn to use those differences as resources for our growth and improvement.
Maybe one day, not that far off, we can all sit together for a brand new type of Thanksgiving dinner. Can you picture it? Some rice and beans, get some macaroni and cheese and some fried chicken.
Now, when we can all sit down and enjoy that table just for the sake of the food, then we will have made progress, otherwise, this is just a game and the Arizona law is just the first step in our long course to self destruction.
Now do what you came to do! Lead us bro, lead the change, lead the revolution!!!
Word to your mother! Peace! I am out!
Man, people are out for your ass!! You better run somewhere…
Man, it aint what you did or didn’t do.
It’s the approach you said you were gonna have. You were up there saying, we gonna change things, and we thought, well hell, he is a brother, he knows what’s up, he’ll take care of business.
You is a brother, from a single momma, had to work your way up, go to school and now you was coming to the White House, Dang bro, we thought you was the black superman…
But so far nothing… same bullshit!
What is up with all the change line you was giving us???
Take this shit with AZ, how you gonna let them do that to the beans??
Bro, it’s the same shit they did to us… PROFILING, ya know?? Them Ricans aint illegals, but they still look like the Mexicans, how you gonna tell them apart???What are you going to do about the illegals from Zimbabwe, they look just like us? What if there is illegals from France??? They white!! Naahh bro, this is creating a world of trouble…
Check it out, ima school you in what you need to do???
Now, listen up son, my momma used to say you cant be knocking other peoples houses and telling them what to do if your own house is a mess, that aint gonna work….
What are we doing investing money all over the world in military bases, troops and who knows what else you got going over there??? Bring it back bro… Now, once you got everything here with you, army, navy and who knows what other thugs you got watching your back.
What do you do when you don’t want flies in your house??? CLOSE THE DOOR…
CLOSE THE BORDER!!!! Party is over; whoever is here, is here to stay…. Let the ones that don’t want to stay go, have them hit the road, they don’ wanna be here, we don’t need them here!!!
Talk to these people bro. Some of them want to come and be here for good and work and be Americans like us…. Why can’t we let them? Bro, King said it, not Martin Luther King Jr bro, Rodney… why can’t we all get along???
There be some of them too that want to start shit and want to work and cross over every other day, make money here and take it somewhere else to spend. Nahhh, bro, them people aint Americans and aint never gonna be.
If you work here, that money needs to be spent here… none of that sending out to buy shit in other countries. Like in El Salvador, my friend Felipe says he gets 10 pairs of nikes for like ten dollars, but I told that crazy fool, it aint about what you getting bro, its about what you putting back… these beans don’t get it bro, but they will.
Women be drawing food stamps and getting their kids free education throughout the year and then they send them back to Nicaragua so their auntie can take of their kids for free, what’s up with that???? You need to invest on the daycare here, this is your country now…. Don’t sell out…
Like if Diddy gets his shirts made here and Jay-Z gets them done in China, need I tell you whose shirts you need to be buying…
Here it is bro… them beans don’t think this is home, they be here working their asses off, cause they are hard workers, you have to give them that but at the end, they always want to go home. We aint never gonna make it work with them, unless this becomes home. They be here fifty years and they still be crying about home, they need to own up to that and make up their minds, ya know? Not that I blame them, have you seen some of the veterans in the streets? It is disgraceful
Seriously now, we need to take care of us first.
Didn’t you learn from 9/11??? Them people blew up the towers and suddenly Jose, Wong, Fred and Jerome was helping each other, representing and whatnot. So here is the deal, everyone that is here, and wants to be here, they get their shiny, new americanship certificate!
So what are you gonna do? Make everyone legal. Fine everyone that has been illegal, that plus whatever they have to pay for their papers ought to make up for the budget deficit, plus I bet you never thought about the extra money you are gonna make when all of them pay taxes.
You gonna have to hire tons of people to process them as legal. They gonna have to be registered, someone is gonna have to work with them while in that process, then you are gonna need testers, and then you gonna need to have someone take the pictures and give’em their brand new certificate of americanship.
You gonna have to have people around to help them. You need civic centers bro…
You need centers in the community where people can go to find out about jobs, education, raising their kids, health and all of the things that they need to know about to become American citizens. Your momma taught you about being an American, they don’t have a momma to teach them, they are being taught by the other people who came here before them but none of them have the right information. They need help; our help…
When kids go to college, they get a mentor, someone who walks you around til you get familiar with the campus and tells you about the rules and how you gonna get from here to here and who to talk to if you need something, where you can get the good shit, ahem…. now why would we think that coming to a new country would be any different… it is the same and some of these people are lost and get bad advice.
Then you gonna have to open the schools at night and hire more teachers. You need to teach these people to speak English, you need to make it mandatory and make them pay for their classes, as part of their americanship program. Think of the new revenue that would generate. More teachers, more jobs, more consumption…. I can see them dollar signs dancing in front of my eyes… But, wait, you have to make sure these people are FLUENT. My friend Maria took her citizenship test and do you know what they asked her? What color was Washington’s white horse??? What kind of civics and American history test is that? That’s bullshit; it’s harder to get through the airport bro…
That ought to quit the extra expenses in translating documents and printing fifteen hundred different versions of one form.
Also, you are gonna have to get rid of the current welfare failure. Man, we can’t give prenatal care and food stamps to everyone who gets pregnant. That’s like rewarding your kid for doing something they are not supposed to do. I know you don’t want to leave the kids unprotected and it aint the kids fault the momma got pregnant, but if you pay for it, they aint gonna care, they gonna keep having babies, white babies, brown babies, black babies, ALL kinds of baby. We in the middle of a recession and people don’t even know whats gonna happen and they still having all kinds of babies… Crazy!!! Taxes should be commensurate to the expense that the government has for you and your family. I am just saying… you gonna have twenty kids… that’s cool, but you gonna pay more taxes… not the other way around.
The first thing we are gonna have to teach everyone, not only the new people new to the americanship thing is accountability.
You lost your job and you need a hand, that’s cool bro, shit like that happens all the time, we gonna give you and your family a hand for about six months til you get back on your feet. After that, you need to scoot… If you have not found a job by then, then you need to seriously consider going back to school or doing something else. You wouldn’t have your momma support you for your whole life, why should the government?
Insurance is too expensive for you, that’s cool, the government can offer you insurance alternatives, but I tell you what, they need to pay something for it and make it available to everyone. What the hell makes you think that the people that work want to spend all kinds of money on insurance, hell sometimes they gotta do without and people that don’t work, have insurance, which makes no sense bro, no sense…
Here is another idea I had, you know how you go to NY City and that shit stinks and it’s dirty. They gotta have at least half of the damn population in that damn city on welfare and housing. Tell their asses to hit the streets and clean it up bro, someone needs to be getting their hands dirty. They can’t find jobs; we find something for them to do. We need people to provide daycare for mommas to go to work and school, straight! You getting welfare, you gonna work in government provided daycare, no more sitting in your house watching Jerry, we gonna help you help yourself!!!
Didn’t your momma every teach you? Yo, don’t give someone a fish; teach their asses how to fish…
No handouts bro, no handouts, and then you got them people thinking, you owe me, the government owes me… bullshit, no one owes you nothing…
What about them mommas saying they kids sick so they get a check? Bro, why a kid with ADD need a disability check? Check it out, if you told me you was gonna give her like ten hours at a local day care so she can get that little bugger out of her hair for a while cause if not she is gonna go crazy herself, I understand that, but why a check??? The schools be teaching them and shit. That momma don’t need anything extra…
Ohhhhhhhh!!! I almost forgot bro, I almost forgot…. This kid I know hooked me up with a Dell, ya know a laptop so I can be connected and check out what you up to on CNN. It started acting all goofy and I called him and he said he wasn’t no tech to call technical support, have you ever tried to call them tech support people???
I was talking to Yuba, she had an accent, but that’s cool you know? A lot of people do, but I was telling her that it was crazy hot here in the heart of it all and then I asked her if it was hot where she was at, you know what she told me, she couldn’t tell me where she was at…. I looked at that phone like Yuba was crazy, what you mean you can’t tell me??? Where are you at??? Finally she told me she was out of the country.
Are you for real?? You know how many people can work those jobs? Why you letting them send them jobs out of the country?? Man, even them big fat people on the Wal-Mart carts can run their mouths and work customer service, we don’t need to send our jobs out. Same for them companies that go to Mexico and shit to build stuff cheaper, you know that never made no sense to me either.
If the Mexicans are coming here to make money and the factories are working over there, you’d think something would’ve noticed something aint right….
Anyways back to these Benedict Arnolds, tax them! Tax the companies that outsource jobs and the ones that bring in foreign made products to sell here. Tax them outrageously. There are 307,006,550 people in this country. We have enough of a project trying to become self sufficient. If the company wants to stop doing business here, good riddance!!!! We need companies who believe in the American spirit and not in the capitalist-get-your-own-now-and-fuck-everyone-else-spirit but the lets-work-together-to-create-a- nation-that-allows-people-to-be-self-sufficient-independent-self-fulfilled-and-investing-fully-into-each- other-and-our-children’s-future spirit.
The worst part of it all, the craziest part of all of this bro, is that if we all looked to investing our money, our time, our interest in here, in America, the country would flourish….
I know why you stuck, why you can’t do anything. There are those who are so far up in the system, that are profiting so much from the way things are that they cant allow for it to be changed. Truth of the matter is … we can’t change it all, unless we ourselves change. We are responsible for allowing those people to take advantage of us. We are responsible for letting things so out of control.
People stopped caring about who was in office and what they was doing and they became numb.
Now everyone know who Ochocinco is gonna choose for his baby momma but don’t nobody know about the laws and how they be changing and the fact that we are so far in deficit that it’s not even funny.
When the gas prices went crazy, people suddenly woke up and the gas was like a dollar higher. It wasn’t over night, people. Wake up! They be raising prices of everything, everyday, passing laws you don’t even know about cause you too busy on facebook and then you gonna get mad, child please!!
Bro, there is so many things that can be done to change this. You just gotta get your strap on and make the hard decisions. The justice system sucks, its not rehabilitative, its crippling. Welfare is creating a generation of self entitled boobies. The education system is being destroyed, have you noticed that world wide we rank like 200th in education. Damn bro, I know we got some smart kids. Let’s start investing the money where its worth investing at.
Instead of paying Lebron the millions and millions of dollars he gets, I know this one teacher in my school that we drove insane, I swear she used to eat antacids every two minutes, she deserves millions of dollars because she stood with a bunch of lost hope kids and believed in them, that’s a lot harder than shooting hoops. How about them firefighters that jump into your house to save your ass in a fire, they go in there and get you out and they go back to get Fluffly??? The policeman who sticks his neck out there in the ugly parts of town, who have to run into the shootouts. How about you holla at your stay-at-home moms, who make it work on one income so they can be home not only for their kids, for the kids she helps when she volunteers and for the kids she watches at home to make a little extra money. How about the single parents?? They deserve millions and millions. For working and going to school and raising their kids and still wanting to better themselves to make it better.
How that crazy Lebron gets money like that??? I don’t know, there is something stupid about a society that is willing to pay a basketball player money like crazy and give minimum wage to a daycare worker.
I don’t know bro, I am just saying…
This aint about race either. The AZ law is wrong not because they illegal, but because the way to enforce it is to physically profile. Hell yea, you need to stop illegal immigration, but don’t make stupid suggestions, Hard problems require that you play hardball. People take advantage of welfare, all people, white, black and Hispanics. People go to jail and get branded for life, white, black and Hispanics.
Stop making it an issue about race and integration. It can’t be integrated. It will never be. Integration means that we will blend into some freakish creature, and we cant, our strength is our diversity. So stop, no one is going to have pot roast, collard greens and rice and beans for dinner. It’s not happening. Celebrate our diversity. Celebrate our differences and learn to use those differences as resources for our growth and improvement.
Maybe one day, not that far off, we can all sit together for a brand new type of Thanksgiving dinner. Can you picture it? Some rice and beans, get some macaroni and cheese and some fried chicken.
Now, when we can all sit down and enjoy that table just for the sake of the food, then we will have made progress, otherwise, this is just a game and the Arizona law is just the first step in our long course to self destruction.
Now do what you came to do! Lead us bro, lead the change, lead the revolution!!!
Word to your mother! Peace! I am out!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Love
A mother sitting at a park watching her son, Johnny, play T-ball with his friends. Johnny can’t swing as well as his friends but his mom sees him as precious, he is trying, he is working so hard, he has come such a long way. A love of a mother works that way.
A documentary talks about how some people establish relationships with prison inmates and fall in love and some even marry. Somehow, even the most misunderstood people of the world, have someone who loves them. Why?
Does the crazy person try harder to reach out to one person than to another? Is a mother totally biased because genetically speaking she is predisposed to love her child more? What makes someone be perceived as great by another?
I know it’s not Valentine’s Day yet and I hate to be corny, but it is love. Love changes how you view things.
The scientific method explains the phenomenon of observer effect. That which you are observing is changed by who observes it.
How does the scientific method apply to this you may ask? If you see someone a certain way, they will either rise or sink to meet your expectation.
Before you begin saying nay, let’s start on the same page.
We all communicate in different ways. We all communicate in words, body language, and even energetically. When someone walks into a room, you can interpret their attitude, their voice, tone and even pitch. When we come into a place where there is hostility, you can feel it, your tingly feelings pick up on it and you become aware and alert. Same thing happens when you run into someone you love and care for, before you have made it into their arms, you are already bathed in a loving feeling that suffuses every part of you and the moment is almost transformative.
So, how does this truly work?
Parents are the easiest examples around.
You have a baby and you are so happy that you have had her, you love her, and you have loved her since conception. You have pictured clearly in your head the times you will sit down and play tea with her and the dresses you will make her and the ballerina slippers she will wear as a young ballet debutante. You even had her name framed in the prettiest pink tulle.
The moment has arrived and she is here. You look into her eyes and know that she will be mom’s best friend and daddy’s little girl for the rest of her life. You bring the little princess back home and she cries, constantly and inconsolably, you call your mother, your doctor, the nurse and your best friend, Sandy who has a baby older than yours by just a week. They all tell you, don’t worry all babies are different; your baby is well fed, changed, and loved. It is just her personality.
At that moment, something happens to you. Your view begins to change, all of the things that don’t fit what you think she should be, become her personality. Oh My! She is so headstrong and independent someone mentions during mommy and me classes; you smile proudly, but keep it in the back of your head. Headstrong? Was that a compliment?
The same thing happens when she starts to walk, color, going to the park. She is active, into everything, not a moment’s peace for you. Tea party? HA! She breaks the little cups and runs away using the dress you made her as a rug to sit on the mud.
She goes to school and you get called in by the teacher.
Teacher: You know, sometimes we have a hard time with her.
Mom: I know, she is so headstrong and independent.
Teacher: Well, we need to do something; she is becoming disruptive and a problem.
You go home and you are so upset, this is NOT how you pictured it. Where is your pink loving baby? Why does she act like this? Finally, she comes to you; she wants to show you the dead frog she has outside by the tree. You look at this creature that came from you and say with all the love you are capable of giving and yet almost defeated, and you ask: why are you so difficult honey? Why can’t you be like the other little girls?
Of course you love your daughter, of course you will do anything for her, but she is so different, nothing like what you expected. As she grows, you try to mold her into your pink dreams and clouds and she chafes, she is more and more herself, you see her as alien and different. Your last view of her is as she jumps into a car with her friends at sixteen, after the last argument about how you don’t understand!
You have been told that she is headstrong and independent, and difficult in class and disruptive, you can’t connect with her and the worse part is that after all of your efforts, after all of the sacrifices and countless nights staring at the ceiling wondering what you will do with her, she doesn’t see that, she only sees that you don’t get her. How does she know that you don’t get her? How can she say that you don’t accept her?
Because she FEELS it!!! She can feel in her heart that you don’t accept her as she is, and so she removes herself from you. Because you, the observer, reject or do not understand, and you AFFECT the results.
Take the other end of the spectrum. A nurse grows up in a household with an alcoholic parent. She is aware of the cycles of this illness and understands addiction, she is compassionate because she has lived the process and believes, with all of her heart and all of the faith that she can muster for human kind that people will overcome.
As she walks through the ward, the patients flock to her. She has brought them chocolate chip cookies she baked for them last night. As she passes the cookies out, she talks to one each one of them, she makes eye contact with them and she fills her words with kindness and love. She decides that no matter how they got here or what it is that they do, that they are all wonderful fellow human beings and that they deserve to be believed in and loved and supported on their path. They can sense it, they know how she feels because her body language, her words, everything about her screams, “I accept you, I believe in you.”
Some of them stay away from her because they don’t believe in her love, her feelings. And patiently, she seeks them out. They reject her, they tell her that they are garbage, that they are the worse of society and that she cannot love them because they are unlovable. Unshaken in her believes, she reaches out for their hand, she puts a cookie in their hand and firmly, with a conviction that only “knowing” can give you, she tells them, “That is not true, I know you are more than you can see.”
Again, something happens inside that person. She sees something in me; she sees something that no one else has seen before. Perhaps she is not wrong, perhaps there is goodness inside me, and has always been there, just no one noticed. Perhaps, I can do this, perhaps…. And so begin they begin to hope and dreams of being more and rising to the occasion.
Human beings have basic needs. Maslow would have told you that they are food, shelter and clothing. I think it goes further, they need acceptance and love.
Acceptance and love come from a place within you of total unconditional presence.
What the heck does that mean?
It means that when you stand in front of someone, you come to them with no judgments, expectations, labels or ideas of how they should be or the things they should do. That means that you look at them compassionately and lovingly. It means you give your love and acceptance with empathy and compassion and with no requirement of reciprocity. Because it matters not what they do, there isn’t anything in the world they can do that will change the way you feel about them.
If you have labeled someone, you have not loved them unconditionally. They will stay within the limits of the labels you have placed on them and your relationship will not grow, it cannot. The chains of your judgment and labeling will forever limit them, even if you have done it with the best of intentions.
It is not easy to sit there and love someone that way. It means that you cannot take anything personal. Their growth pattern and decisions are entirely their own and you cannot interfere, you can offer advise and listen when they need you to, guide and parent, but unconditional love says that you must let them work it out because you believe them capable. This extends even to children, especially to children.
So, how does this all tie into the woman who was married to the triple homicide murderer in TX right before his execution? What does this have to do with Johnny and his mom?
Both of these women are able to see their beloved with perfect love and acceptance. They believe in them, they believe in the goodness in them and in the fact that even though these individuals are not perfect, they are wonderful and love-worthy individuals.
Wonderful essay, now what? Ok, ok, ok, I will spell it out.
STOP!!!
Labeling, judging, patronizing, expecting and letting your ego control the relationships you have with those around you.
Don’t label your children, let them be who they are and work with those around them to ensure that he can be his best within the environment he has to be in. Don’t break his spirit!!
Don’t judge your husband, he is a complete separate individual, and what makes you happy doesn’t make you happy. Honor him by trusting him to know what makes him happy and give him space to do the things he feels he has to do. A happy man can make a woman happy, can be a happy parent. An angry, resentful one, cannot.
Stop expecting for your parents to be who you thought they should have been, just realize that they did all they could do with the tools they had in the moment they were in.
This is not an excuse for irresponsible behavior, but an opportunity to stop sweating the small things. It is a chance to really be there for those you love, for those you care for by not putting ideas, your ideas and your judgments, before their feelings. It is an opportunity to listen not only with your ears, but with all of your heart.
How do you do this? Here are a few tips
Be present. When someone is talking to you, listen with all of your senses.
Be loving: Even if the message being delivered is not very nice, just repeat in your head that you do love that person and you choose not to react to this because you don’t know what is going on with them.
Be loyal: To the way you know they can be, to the love-filled person you know they are.
Be patient: Lovingly accept and do not rush, some people are not used to thinking of themselves as wonderful and love-worthy, give them time to adapt.
Why am I telling you this? Because it’s time. It’s time we stop blaming the world, the universe, the 60s and everything else for what is going on. Somehow we have all created the problems in society; it will take all of us to heal it and to move forward. The prison inmate who found his soul mate is just as deserving of love as Johnny, perhaps, he needed it more.
We all deserve love. We all deserve to know what its like to know that someone has your back and that they will stand by you. We deserve that, all of us, even the man that was taken to the death chamber and cried one single solitary tear for his new bride as the lethal injection stopped his heart.
This is not a recipe for world peace. We are confrontational beings; world peace is still a few evolutionary steps away. But love, love was innate, it is primeval, it was in your heart and it is what you brought here. Love is at the basis of creation and it gives you a foundation to build life upon. Love allows you to see people as perfect and whole, wonderful loving beings that make mistakes and learn. You teach yourself to see people as dynamic expressions of love.
Look at them with the eyes of love, because they deserve it. Look at them with the eyes of love, because it is who YOU are. Look at live with the eyes of love and there will be no choice but to be surrounded by love. And so the song goes….
All you need is love…..
A documentary talks about how some people establish relationships with prison inmates and fall in love and some even marry. Somehow, even the most misunderstood people of the world, have someone who loves them. Why?
Does the crazy person try harder to reach out to one person than to another? Is a mother totally biased because genetically speaking she is predisposed to love her child more? What makes someone be perceived as great by another?
I know it’s not Valentine’s Day yet and I hate to be corny, but it is love. Love changes how you view things.
The scientific method explains the phenomenon of observer effect. That which you are observing is changed by who observes it.
How does the scientific method apply to this you may ask? If you see someone a certain way, they will either rise or sink to meet your expectation.
Before you begin saying nay, let’s start on the same page.
We all communicate in different ways. We all communicate in words, body language, and even energetically. When someone walks into a room, you can interpret their attitude, their voice, tone and even pitch. When we come into a place where there is hostility, you can feel it, your tingly feelings pick up on it and you become aware and alert. Same thing happens when you run into someone you love and care for, before you have made it into their arms, you are already bathed in a loving feeling that suffuses every part of you and the moment is almost transformative.
So, how does this truly work?
Parents are the easiest examples around.
You have a baby and you are so happy that you have had her, you love her, and you have loved her since conception. You have pictured clearly in your head the times you will sit down and play tea with her and the dresses you will make her and the ballerina slippers she will wear as a young ballet debutante. You even had her name framed in the prettiest pink tulle.
The moment has arrived and she is here. You look into her eyes and know that she will be mom’s best friend and daddy’s little girl for the rest of her life. You bring the little princess back home and she cries, constantly and inconsolably, you call your mother, your doctor, the nurse and your best friend, Sandy who has a baby older than yours by just a week. They all tell you, don’t worry all babies are different; your baby is well fed, changed, and loved. It is just her personality.
At that moment, something happens to you. Your view begins to change, all of the things that don’t fit what you think she should be, become her personality. Oh My! She is so headstrong and independent someone mentions during mommy and me classes; you smile proudly, but keep it in the back of your head. Headstrong? Was that a compliment?
The same thing happens when she starts to walk, color, going to the park. She is active, into everything, not a moment’s peace for you. Tea party? HA! She breaks the little cups and runs away using the dress you made her as a rug to sit on the mud.
She goes to school and you get called in by the teacher.
Teacher: You know, sometimes we have a hard time with her.
Mom: I know, she is so headstrong and independent.
Teacher: Well, we need to do something; she is becoming disruptive and a problem.
You go home and you are so upset, this is NOT how you pictured it. Where is your pink loving baby? Why does she act like this? Finally, she comes to you; she wants to show you the dead frog she has outside by the tree. You look at this creature that came from you and say with all the love you are capable of giving and yet almost defeated, and you ask: why are you so difficult honey? Why can’t you be like the other little girls?
Of course you love your daughter, of course you will do anything for her, but she is so different, nothing like what you expected. As she grows, you try to mold her into your pink dreams and clouds and she chafes, she is more and more herself, you see her as alien and different. Your last view of her is as she jumps into a car with her friends at sixteen, after the last argument about how you don’t understand!
You have been told that she is headstrong and independent, and difficult in class and disruptive, you can’t connect with her and the worse part is that after all of your efforts, after all of the sacrifices and countless nights staring at the ceiling wondering what you will do with her, she doesn’t see that, she only sees that you don’t get her. How does she know that you don’t get her? How can she say that you don’t accept her?
Because she FEELS it!!! She can feel in her heart that you don’t accept her as she is, and so she removes herself from you. Because you, the observer, reject or do not understand, and you AFFECT the results.
Take the other end of the spectrum. A nurse grows up in a household with an alcoholic parent. She is aware of the cycles of this illness and understands addiction, she is compassionate because she has lived the process and believes, with all of her heart and all of the faith that she can muster for human kind that people will overcome.
As she walks through the ward, the patients flock to her. She has brought them chocolate chip cookies she baked for them last night. As she passes the cookies out, she talks to one each one of them, she makes eye contact with them and she fills her words with kindness and love. She decides that no matter how they got here or what it is that they do, that they are all wonderful fellow human beings and that they deserve to be believed in and loved and supported on their path. They can sense it, they know how she feels because her body language, her words, everything about her screams, “I accept you, I believe in you.”
Some of them stay away from her because they don’t believe in her love, her feelings. And patiently, she seeks them out. They reject her, they tell her that they are garbage, that they are the worse of society and that she cannot love them because they are unlovable. Unshaken in her believes, she reaches out for their hand, she puts a cookie in their hand and firmly, with a conviction that only “knowing” can give you, she tells them, “That is not true, I know you are more than you can see.”
Again, something happens inside that person. She sees something in me; she sees something that no one else has seen before. Perhaps she is not wrong, perhaps there is goodness inside me, and has always been there, just no one noticed. Perhaps, I can do this, perhaps…. And so begin they begin to hope and dreams of being more and rising to the occasion.
Human beings have basic needs. Maslow would have told you that they are food, shelter and clothing. I think it goes further, they need acceptance and love.
Acceptance and love come from a place within you of total unconditional presence.
What the heck does that mean?
It means that when you stand in front of someone, you come to them with no judgments, expectations, labels or ideas of how they should be or the things they should do. That means that you look at them compassionately and lovingly. It means you give your love and acceptance with empathy and compassion and with no requirement of reciprocity. Because it matters not what they do, there isn’t anything in the world they can do that will change the way you feel about them.
If you have labeled someone, you have not loved them unconditionally. They will stay within the limits of the labels you have placed on them and your relationship will not grow, it cannot. The chains of your judgment and labeling will forever limit them, even if you have done it with the best of intentions.
It is not easy to sit there and love someone that way. It means that you cannot take anything personal. Their growth pattern and decisions are entirely their own and you cannot interfere, you can offer advise and listen when they need you to, guide and parent, but unconditional love says that you must let them work it out because you believe them capable. This extends even to children, especially to children.
So, how does this all tie into the woman who was married to the triple homicide murderer in TX right before his execution? What does this have to do with Johnny and his mom?
Both of these women are able to see their beloved with perfect love and acceptance. They believe in them, they believe in the goodness in them and in the fact that even though these individuals are not perfect, they are wonderful and love-worthy individuals.
Wonderful essay, now what? Ok, ok, ok, I will spell it out.
STOP!!!
Labeling, judging, patronizing, expecting and letting your ego control the relationships you have with those around you.
Don’t label your children, let them be who they are and work with those around them to ensure that he can be his best within the environment he has to be in. Don’t break his spirit!!
Don’t judge your husband, he is a complete separate individual, and what makes you happy doesn’t make you happy. Honor him by trusting him to know what makes him happy and give him space to do the things he feels he has to do. A happy man can make a woman happy, can be a happy parent. An angry, resentful one, cannot.
Stop expecting for your parents to be who you thought they should have been, just realize that they did all they could do with the tools they had in the moment they were in.
This is not an excuse for irresponsible behavior, but an opportunity to stop sweating the small things. It is a chance to really be there for those you love, for those you care for by not putting ideas, your ideas and your judgments, before their feelings. It is an opportunity to listen not only with your ears, but with all of your heart.
How do you do this? Here are a few tips
Be present. When someone is talking to you, listen with all of your senses.
Be loving: Even if the message being delivered is not very nice, just repeat in your head that you do love that person and you choose not to react to this because you don’t know what is going on with them.
Be loyal: To the way you know they can be, to the love-filled person you know they are.
Be patient: Lovingly accept and do not rush, some people are not used to thinking of themselves as wonderful and love-worthy, give them time to adapt.
Why am I telling you this? Because it’s time. It’s time we stop blaming the world, the universe, the 60s and everything else for what is going on. Somehow we have all created the problems in society; it will take all of us to heal it and to move forward. The prison inmate who found his soul mate is just as deserving of love as Johnny, perhaps, he needed it more.
We all deserve love. We all deserve to know what its like to know that someone has your back and that they will stand by you. We deserve that, all of us, even the man that was taken to the death chamber and cried one single solitary tear for his new bride as the lethal injection stopped his heart.
This is not a recipe for world peace. We are confrontational beings; world peace is still a few evolutionary steps away. But love, love was innate, it is primeval, it was in your heart and it is what you brought here. Love is at the basis of creation and it gives you a foundation to build life upon. Love allows you to see people as perfect and whole, wonderful loving beings that make mistakes and learn. You teach yourself to see people as dynamic expressions of love.
Look at them with the eyes of love, because they deserve it. Look at them with the eyes of love, because it is who YOU are. Look at live with the eyes of love and there will be no choice but to be surrounded by love. And so the song goes….
All you need is love…..
Sunday, May 2, 2010
New Statue of Liberty Inscription
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Ahemmmmm!!!! Perhaps we should change that…
It should be more like….
“Take them, take them all back. All of the immigrants that come to this country to suck our resources dry. Take those who are nothing but a constant drain on our government, take all of them, from whatever country they are from. They are of no use; they provide nothing to us… Especially those Hispanic looking ones, I will build fences and declare open season on them and I will target them and chase them out of here with their tails between their legs. “
126 years have passed since the French gave the United States the Statue of liberty and yet so much has changed especially the lady’s attitude about immigrants.
On April 20, 2010 in one of the biggest displays of a change of attitude towards immigrants, the state of Arizona passed a new movement towards the handling of illegal criminals.
The law states that a police officer can stop someone who is already suspected of another crime and can ask him to show proof of his legal status. The officer, based on the sensitivity training he will have received, will look at you and ponder on the possibility of whether or not you are an illegal alien or not and then ask for your papers.
Hmmmm!!!! Let’s see, what will he be looking at???
Let me guess, the kind of car you drive? The clothes you are wearing? Your signature cologne???
WRONG!!!!
He will look at the color of your skin, your features and he will racially profile you. Then he will come to the conclusion that since your race is more than likely from another country, you will probably be here illegally and will ask for you to proof your right to be in this country.
Help me, if you can….. How is this NOT racially profiling???
Because I really doubt that Nura Oyenusi will be asked about her status or that Adelina Berberi would be asked for her documents. My South African friend and the Albanian one will be ok, one is black, and the other one is white.
Now, if you have dark hair and brown skin. Now that is a different story…
Then you certainly jumped the border, smuggled drugs, receive government benefits and are here to rob us of our resources.
Many people are fighting that this law has NOTHING to do with race and all to do with criminals. But there is no way to implement this law unless you judge based on race. If you arrest a group of people and then it comes up that they were illegal and you begin deportation procedures, I would be ok with that.
If you stop someone and you ask to see their papers because according to you there is a great likelihood that this person is illegal, I have a HUGE problem with that.
Racial profiling exists. EVERYWHERE. But it is NOT supposed to be supported by law enforcement.
Don’t kid yourself, Mr. Bush lied, racial profiling is not leaving, you cannot control it, you cannot even impose a law to eradicate it. It is something inside the person, a non-acceptance of someone who looks different, who is culturally different from you. I would like to tell you that it is not so. But there are so many instances in which I have been profiled, it would take far too long to share.
At this point, I don’t care about your racial profiles. I am used to it. I am used to the surprised looks from people who notice that I speak English fluently. I am used to people introducing me as their Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican immigrant friend; I am used to people speaking to me in whatever level of Spanish they took in high school. I am used to people who joke with me about immigration, taco bell, large families, you name it.
It’s not funny, but I’ve become immune to it. It’s hurtful and humiliating, but that’s ok, you think it’s funny!!!
I do care though that these laws will affect my children.
Already here, in the heart of it all, my oldest has to contend with the witty remarks of those who don’t comprehend that she was born and raised in the United States. She is about to get her license and besides from the drunk driving talk, we also had a talk about getting pulled over because of your looks and not letting an officer search your car without a police warrant.
Ahhhh, those little rites of passage.
Why do I teach her that? Because it has happened to me. More times than I care to count. At stores, at movie theaters, when dealing with the government, when applying for a job, when taking my kids to school, when taking a bus, even when I am walking around town.
It never stops amusing me when I hear white people (can I say that??? They call me Mexican…) saying that we are sucking the government dry.
People can’t go and take from the government, the social services that immigrants are given are granted by the people who work for the government, who follow rules established by your lawmakers.
You don’t like it???? Get involved, vote, and change it.
My favorite bumper sticker…
“I WON’T LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE IN MY OWN COUNTRY” or “I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PRESS 1 FOR ENGLISH”
I am an interpreter. The company I work for is hired by the huge corporations in this country; we also work with most government agencies. The service we provide is paid by those who hire us. They are the ones that commission that forms be filled out in more than one language and that make all of these commodities available.
We are not walking into a business and translating the forms for each other.
YOUR LAWMAKERS AND CORPORATE HEADS ARE DECIDING THAT IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO CREATE THESE THINGS.
Illegals don’t qualify for social services. You must be able to proof your residence or citizenship in order to receive Medicaid, medicare, food stamps and welfare. Their kids qualify.
“Yea, that’s why they have so many kids… sucking down the system…”
Did you know that the government will pay for an illegal woman to have a baby, but REFUSES to pay for birth control, or to educate them about family planning????
BRILLIANT!!!!
We educate the children. Make education compulsory regardless of immigration status, provide bilingual education, get interpreters for parent teacher conferences, but if the parents get deported, the child goes back with the parent to the country of origin.
So, we will get rid of the parent and child, send them back to their original country even though the child is an American citizen and knows nothing of the other culture.
GENIUS!!!!!
Even better, the sheriff of a town nearby said that illegals are here stealing the jobs that belong to American citizens.
Of course, there are thousands of fights at the chicken factories, people just fist-fighting each other for the chance to work there for ten dollars a day; not a day goes by when someone is not wishing out loud to be able to work in the farms, next to the insecticides, for cents a day.
Get real, some Americans won’t even work at McDonalds, do you think they would want those jobs that offer a substandard of living?
What will you do when the Department of Labor goes into that factory and that farm and demands that the employees are protected by the same labor laws that are granted to everyone else? Will you be willing to pay $5.00 for a pound of tomatoes? Will you pay $15.00 for a chicken?
What many people don’t realize is that because of the very little that companies pay those illegal immigrants are the prices of the things they buy so low. Remember sweat shops, yeah, the companies are not going to lower their profit margin just to abide to the new law that says you shouldn’t hire illegals. Someone is going to pay for the increases in their production cost… guess who?
No one in this country can solve the immigration situation with one reform. You can’t solve it with two or three. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know that you can solve it at all.
The same illegals you will arrest and take into jail are going to bog down the system; it will cause a deficit in the government agency that enforces it.
What will happen when you pick up and demand proof of status from a Naturalized Hispanic? You know, still brown and dark haired, but legal. They can’t produce any proof; the government has nothing that identifies a person as a citizen. Then what will they do? Arrest him until he can find someone to bring his 8 X 10 certificate of naturalization to the station. What happens then? Will the officers apologize? Will the State apologize? Can you say lawsuit??
(Read in redneck accent) “I am so sorry sonny, I thought you was one of them Mexicans that came over here, speaking Spanish and living like 25 in a house with their taco bells and their loud music.”
Well, not Mexican, but, you just described most Hispanics, legal or not.
When I became an American Citizen, Judge Rose said that the divisiveness was over. That they welcomed us with arms wide open and that they were so happy to have us here. That we had traveled such a long and hard path and that we were finally reached the end of that path and we were granted, like everyone else, the right to freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this new law is racial profiling. There is no other way to call it. It is amazing that this nation that was founded by those who were escaping oppression is willing to use the same techniques to take care of a problem that is continually perpetuated by them.
Have you ever asked your lawmakers why not close the borders? Have you asked why it is that this “problem” has continued for so long and no one has ever done anything about it?
There are million of conspiracy theories that can give you a myriad of complicated reasons as to why. But the simplest one is that it is not profitable. We are not a nation ruled by morals, values, ideologies or even lessons learnt in the past. We are ruled by the Almighty Dollar. Not so mighty anymore, but still the main reason why we do things.
We are not pursuing illegals because of the concept of them coming over and violating the law. We are not pursuing this because they are criminals. We are pursuing this because we have somehow conceived the notion that they are taking money from the government.
We are hatefully doing this based on ignorance.
The line has been drawn on the sand. The people will express their opinion and decide which side they belong to.
Is illegal immigration the cause of all evil?
Or
This is a problem that we can all solve, together.
I don’t know anymore.
As an American citizen, I understand the concerns about the economy, the concerns about the future and how we must find a way for our country to grow. But I will never accept a law that judges people based on their looks, their heritage, and their culture.
So I walk over to the other side, to support those who come here to earn a living, legally or illegally and give their life to a country who considers them a disease. I support the idea that hunting illegals at the border is inhumane and that this law is a total violation of the constitution that I was sworn to uphold.
Many of us have learnt many lessons in our path here; many of us went to school, pursued higher educations and conquered the American dream. We are a knowledgeable and intelligent group who understands laws, rights and liberties. We have assimilated and adapted to your culture. Learnt from your tenets and will hold them, even if you don’t.
Today, at 46.9 million, Hispanics are the largest minority in the United States and we will stay and prevail, in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Ahemmmmm!!!! Perhaps we should change that…
It should be more like….
“Take them, take them all back. All of the immigrants that come to this country to suck our resources dry. Take those who are nothing but a constant drain on our government, take all of them, from whatever country they are from. They are of no use; they provide nothing to us… Especially those Hispanic looking ones, I will build fences and declare open season on them and I will target them and chase them out of here with their tails between their legs. “
126 years have passed since the French gave the United States the Statue of liberty and yet so much has changed especially the lady’s attitude about immigrants.
On April 20, 2010 in one of the biggest displays of a change of attitude towards immigrants, the state of Arizona passed a new movement towards the handling of illegal criminals.
The law states that a police officer can stop someone who is already suspected of another crime and can ask him to show proof of his legal status. The officer, based on the sensitivity training he will have received, will look at you and ponder on the possibility of whether or not you are an illegal alien or not and then ask for your papers.
Hmmmm!!!! Let’s see, what will he be looking at???
Let me guess, the kind of car you drive? The clothes you are wearing? Your signature cologne???
WRONG!!!!
He will look at the color of your skin, your features and he will racially profile you. Then he will come to the conclusion that since your race is more than likely from another country, you will probably be here illegally and will ask for you to proof your right to be in this country.
Help me, if you can….. How is this NOT racially profiling???
Because I really doubt that Nura Oyenusi will be asked about her status or that Adelina Berberi would be asked for her documents. My South African friend and the Albanian one will be ok, one is black, and the other one is white.
Now, if you have dark hair and brown skin. Now that is a different story…
Then you certainly jumped the border, smuggled drugs, receive government benefits and are here to rob us of our resources.
Many people are fighting that this law has NOTHING to do with race and all to do with criminals. But there is no way to implement this law unless you judge based on race. If you arrest a group of people and then it comes up that they were illegal and you begin deportation procedures, I would be ok with that.
If you stop someone and you ask to see their papers because according to you there is a great likelihood that this person is illegal, I have a HUGE problem with that.
Racial profiling exists. EVERYWHERE. But it is NOT supposed to be supported by law enforcement.
Don’t kid yourself, Mr. Bush lied, racial profiling is not leaving, you cannot control it, you cannot even impose a law to eradicate it. It is something inside the person, a non-acceptance of someone who looks different, who is culturally different from you. I would like to tell you that it is not so. But there are so many instances in which I have been profiled, it would take far too long to share.
At this point, I don’t care about your racial profiles. I am used to it. I am used to the surprised looks from people who notice that I speak English fluently. I am used to people introducing me as their Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican immigrant friend; I am used to people speaking to me in whatever level of Spanish they took in high school. I am used to people who joke with me about immigration, taco bell, large families, you name it.
It’s not funny, but I’ve become immune to it. It’s hurtful and humiliating, but that’s ok, you think it’s funny!!!
I do care though that these laws will affect my children.
Already here, in the heart of it all, my oldest has to contend with the witty remarks of those who don’t comprehend that she was born and raised in the United States. She is about to get her license and besides from the drunk driving talk, we also had a talk about getting pulled over because of your looks and not letting an officer search your car without a police warrant.
Ahhhh, those little rites of passage.
Why do I teach her that? Because it has happened to me. More times than I care to count. At stores, at movie theaters, when dealing with the government, when applying for a job, when taking my kids to school, when taking a bus, even when I am walking around town.
It never stops amusing me when I hear white people (can I say that??? They call me Mexican…) saying that we are sucking the government dry.
People can’t go and take from the government, the social services that immigrants are given are granted by the people who work for the government, who follow rules established by your lawmakers.
You don’t like it???? Get involved, vote, and change it.
My favorite bumper sticker…
“I WON’T LEARN ANOTHER LANGUAGE IN MY OWN COUNTRY” or “I SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PRESS 1 FOR ENGLISH”
I am an interpreter. The company I work for is hired by the huge corporations in this country; we also work with most government agencies. The service we provide is paid by those who hire us. They are the ones that commission that forms be filled out in more than one language and that make all of these commodities available.
We are not walking into a business and translating the forms for each other.
YOUR LAWMAKERS AND CORPORATE HEADS ARE DECIDING THAT IT IS A GOOD IDEA TO CREATE THESE THINGS.
Illegals don’t qualify for social services. You must be able to proof your residence or citizenship in order to receive Medicaid, medicare, food stamps and welfare. Their kids qualify.
“Yea, that’s why they have so many kids… sucking down the system…”
Did you know that the government will pay for an illegal woman to have a baby, but REFUSES to pay for birth control, or to educate them about family planning????
BRILLIANT!!!!
We educate the children. Make education compulsory regardless of immigration status, provide bilingual education, get interpreters for parent teacher conferences, but if the parents get deported, the child goes back with the parent to the country of origin.
So, we will get rid of the parent and child, send them back to their original country even though the child is an American citizen and knows nothing of the other culture.
GENIUS!!!!!
Even better, the sheriff of a town nearby said that illegals are here stealing the jobs that belong to American citizens.
Of course, there are thousands of fights at the chicken factories, people just fist-fighting each other for the chance to work there for ten dollars a day; not a day goes by when someone is not wishing out loud to be able to work in the farms, next to the insecticides, for cents a day.
Get real, some Americans won’t even work at McDonalds, do you think they would want those jobs that offer a substandard of living?
What will you do when the Department of Labor goes into that factory and that farm and demands that the employees are protected by the same labor laws that are granted to everyone else? Will you be willing to pay $5.00 for a pound of tomatoes? Will you pay $15.00 for a chicken?
What many people don’t realize is that because of the very little that companies pay those illegal immigrants are the prices of the things they buy so low. Remember sweat shops, yeah, the companies are not going to lower their profit margin just to abide to the new law that says you shouldn’t hire illegals. Someone is going to pay for the increases in their production cost… guess who?
No one in this country can solve the immigration situation with one reform. You can’t solve it with two or three. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know that you can solve it at all.
The same illegals you will arrest and take into jail are going to bog down the system; it will cause a deficit in the government agency that enforces it.
What will happen when you pick up and demand proof of status from a Naturalized Hispanic? You know, still brown and dark haired, but legal. They can’t produce any proof; the government has nothing that identifies a person as a citizen. Then what will they do? Arrest him until he can find someone to bring his 8 X 10 certificate of naturalization to the station. What happens then? Will the officers apologize? Will the State apologize? Can you say lawsuit??
(Read in redneck accent) “I am so sorry sonny, I thought you was one of them Mexicans that came over here, speaking Spanish and living like 25 in a house with their taco bells and their loud music.”
Well, not Mexican, but, you just described most Hispanics, legal or not.
When I became an American Citizen, Judge Rose said that the divisiveness was over. That they welcomed us with arms wide open and that they were so happy to have us here. That we had traveled such a long and hard path and that we were finally reached the end of that path and we were granted, like everyone else, the right to freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this new law is racial profiling. There is no other way to call it. It is amazing that this nation that was founded by those who were escaping oppression is willing to use the same techniques to take care of a problem that is continually perpetuated by them.
Have you ever asked your lawmakers why not close the borders? Have you asked why it is that this “problem” has continued for so long and no one has ever done anything about it?
There are million of conspiracy theories that can give you a myriad of complicated reasons as to why. But the simplest one is that it is not profitable. We are not a nation ruled by morals, values, ideologies or even lessons learnt in the past. We are ruled by the Almighty Dollar. Not so mighty anymore, but still the main reason why we do things.
We are not pursuing illegals because of the concept of them coming over and violating the law. We are not pursuing this because they are criminals. We are pursuing this because we have somehow conceived the notion that they are taking money from the government.
We are hatefully doing this based on ignorance.
The line has been drawn on the sand. The people will express their opinion and decide which side they belong to.
Is illegal immigration the cause of all evil?
Or
This is a problem that we can all solve, together.
I don’t know anymore.
As an American citizen, I understand the concerns about the economy, the concerns about the future and how we must find a way for our country to grow. But I will never accept a law that judges people based on their looks, their heritage, and their culture.
So I walk over to the other side, to support those who come here to earn a living, legally or illegally and give their life to a country who considers them a disease. I support the idea that hunting illegals at the border is inhumane and that this law is a total violation of the constitution that I was sworn to uphold.
Many of us have learnt many lessons in our path here; many of us went to school, pursued higher educations and conquered the American dream. We are a knowledgeable and intelligent group who understands laws, rights and liberties. We have assimilated and adapted to your culture. Learnt from your tenets and will hold them, even if you don’t.
Today, at 46.9 million, Hispanics are the largest minority in the United States and we will stay and prevail, in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
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