MUSINGS OF THE DAY - April 28, 2015

"I think I was a shy kid. I grew up without television. I had a dog, and we lived up in the White Mountains in the summer, and I had no friends up there. And I would just go play hide-and-seek with my dog and probably had some imaginary friends."

- Dan Brown - 

I know I had some imaginary friends when I was a kid, and, in someways, still do. But lets not take me too seriously. I don't need the loony-bin snatchers to pay me a visit anytime soon. 

I didn't run with a dog. I was always more a cat person - Prissy was her name. And I didn't have any mountains that I ran through, at least, not without adult supervision, but I did have my special hideaways.

There was a cave on the other side of the hill our house was built on, before they built more homes. I used to ride my bicycle there and create all kinds of stories and characters, enough so I sometimes truly believed what I imagined.

The swing sets at the school a block or so from my house were a great place to go. I would swing as high as I could and talk to myself, tell myself stories and create a world I wanted to live in. I still love the feeling of swinging and getting high in the air; I feel free from the constraints of reality.

Another place was my room. I grew up as an only child, and my room was my sanctuary. I would build a bed in my closet with all my blankets and close the doors and read with a flashlight. I would write in my journal. I'd even leave quotes and passages on my closet walls. 

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Dan Brown was born in Exeter, New Hampshire on June 22, 1964 and hasn't left this world yet. His writing genre is thriller fiction, and he's best known for his novel The Da Vinci Code (2003). 

Brown pursued a music career (singer-songwriter and pianist) for a time, starting his own record company (Dalliance). After not making much headway in the music business, he became an English teacher. He started writing in 1993, after being inspired by Sidney Sheldon's novel The Doomsday Conspiracy. The Da Vinci Code was his fourth novel.

MUSINGS OF THE DAY - April 27, 2015

"We all have our own life to pursue, our own kind of dream to be weaving, and we all have the power to make wishes come true, as long as we keep believing."

- Louisa May Alcott - 

I didn't know this was true for years. I floundered in what I believed others wanted for me, how they wanted me to be, what ways I needed to live my life for them to be proud of me. The idea of having my own dreams and pursuing them seemed novel at best, a dream I kept to myself in the late night when no one was awake to tell me not to dream that way. 

I remember when I realized my own truth, or the extent of my truth in that particular moment, because my truth has evolved. It was as if I sat outside myself and saw the world in a new way, a way that allowed me to be me and have reason and purpose in the world as I was not as someone wanted me to be. 

My life changed. I started to make different choices, and, as I grew in the undeniable truth of me, I began to learn more about myself and found I had quite a few things I wished to do. I began to live my own life, the one that fit me, the one that honored who I was as I was.

Writing is one of the ways I honor my truth. The caveat being that I remember to believe my truth, because I'm not immune to letting another's perception or idea of who I need to be filter in and alter me, and not necessarily in the best of ways.

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Louisa May Alcott was born in Germantown (currently part of Philadelphia), Pennsylvania on November 29 1832 and left this world on March 6, 1888. She was a novelist best known for her book Little Women, which was published in 1868. 

She was a nurse during the American Civil War.  She contract typhoid but recovered. She wrote for the Atlantic Monthly in 1860. She also wrote under another name, A. M. Barnard, and produced "passionate, fiery novels and sensational stories." 

MUSINGS OF THE DAY - April 23, 2015

"There ain't nothing from the outside that can lick any of us."

- Margaret Mitchell - 

So true. Enough said. 

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Margaret Mitchell, an author and a journalist, was born in Atlanta, Georgia on November 8, 1900 and left this world on August 16, 1949. She was best known for her book Gone with the Wind. She won the National Book Award for Most Distinguished Novel (1936) and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1937) for Gone with the Wind.

Mitchell was a reporter for The Atlanta Journal in a time when women were not encouraged or supported by family or peers to attempt such a vocation. 

Mitchell was an avid collector of erotica and books about sexology. 

MUSINGS OF THE DAY - April 23, 2015

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe - 

The times when I'm willing to keep on keeping on are usually the moments when it's time for me to let go, and the other times when I'm all too willing to give up because it's too hard are the moments when I need to instill every ounce of fortitude I have and keep on.

I have a better sense of the difference between those times and am better able to stay grounded in what needs to be done than bulldozing through what needs to be let go of. 

When I practice yoga, I am constantly bombarded with the "give up" feeling. I know this of myself, and I remind myself to be willing to forge ahead. When those moments come of wanting to give up and give in, I hold on for another moment longer and then I release. Then I know I attempted progress instead of stalling out. Then I know I will hold the asana longer the next day, because I wasn't so quick to give up today.

When I sit to write, I am once again surrounded with the voices of my mind that tell me not to write. These voices are persistent, telling me of all the other things I need to be doing or that I'm not in the mood to write or I don't have time; they come up with all kinds of excuses on why I shouldn't fulfill what my soul craves. I sit anyway. I write anyway. Each day I write I gain experience and confidence in honoring what my heart needs.

Then there are those times where the hardest thing for me to do is to let go, to step away, and it usually deals with other people and what they're doing. I want to interject my opinion or my way or my experience. I want to lessen another's load by telling them how to live their life. When I need those voices in my head to convince me to stop, they're not there, which seems funny to me.

These moments are when I have to reassess why I'm charged to keep on with what needs to be let go of. What do I get out of trying to run someone else's life? Well, for me, it comes back to the distraction of it, from my own life. If I'm trying to live yours, I don't have to take responsibility for my own. I don't just do this with individual persons. I can do it with the government, the grocery store, the way people drive, the weather--pretty much anything.

Of course, this doesn't mean I can't be passionate about things and have opinions, because I can. And I do. The clarification that is important for me is whether or not those passions, to the extreme I'm feeling them, are a detriment to my life. For example, if I'm so consumed with other drivers that I'm stressed and cussing and in road rage, maybe it's a passion not worth having.  

As a dear friend of mine says, "A person who is truly confident in themselves doesn't need to judge others."

Mind my own business and have some business to mind. Eventually, the "tide will turn" and I will be where I need to be, in my own life, cultivating my own self-worth and self-confidence. 

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Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote over thirty books. The one she's best known for is Uncle Tom's Cabin, about anti-slavery. I remember reading Uncle Tom's Cabin when I was young. There were moments I cried, wishing I could change the past so that slavery had never been in our country. 

Stowe was born in Litchfield, CT on June 14, 1811 and left this world on July 1, 1896.

MUSINGS OF THE DAY - April 20, 2015

"Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it."

- Albert Camus -

Camus is one of my favorites and reminds me of a time when I was desperately searching for courage to do what I did not want to do, because I was afraid, but I knew I couldn't keep living my life the way I was living it.

Now, I'm living my life, participating, cultivating happiness and peace, but I can still have moments of falling into this, lacking the courage to change and justifying it, so I can stay mired in the muck that keeps me stuck.

Denial is part of my justification. If I deny something, the truth of a situation, I can stay clueless to the truth and what needs to change. Also, by denying the truth I deny myself the opportunity of freedom: freedom from what stops me, from what limits me, and from what ultimately gives me joy.

Today, I open my hands to what is and keep moving forward, because "courage is fear that has said its prayers . . . " (Note: This last quote is not Albert Camus's but Joyce Meyers.)

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Who's Albert Camus?

Most people may know of Albert Camus, maybe not. Here's a list of his novels: The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall, A Happy Death, and The First Man. He also wrote short stories, non-fiction books, plays, and essays. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus)

Now, if any of you out there listen to The Cure, you may know their song Killing an Arab.  Killing an Arab was Robert Smith's poetic rendition of a scene in Albert Camus's The Stranger. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_an_Arab)

Quick Facts:

Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria on November 7, 1913 and passed on January 4, 1960. In 1957, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was a philosopher, playwright, author, and journalist. He was described as an existentialist, but he never labeled himself as such. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Camus)

Camus played soccer, loved it really, but tuberculosis ended this endeavor when he was seventeen. He published his first book (a collection of essays), The Wrong Side and the Right Side, when he was twenty-four. During World War II in 1941, Camus "joined the Resistance and wrote for the underground newspaper Combat." (Source: http://www.legacy.com/news/legends-and-legacies/albert-camus-51-facts/426/)