Love deeply and richly, while you can.

"An old man got on a bus one February 14th, carrying a dozen roses. He sat beside a young man. The young man looked at the roses and said, 'Somebody's going to get a beautiful Valentine's Day gift.'

'Yes,' said the old man. A few minutes went by and the old man noticed that his young companion was staring at the roses. 'Do you have a girlfriend?' the old man asked.

'I do,' said the young man. 'I'm going to see her right now, and I'm going to give her this Valentine's Day card.'

They rode in silence for another 10 minutes, and then the old man got up to get off the bus. As he stepped out into the aisle, he suddenly placed the roses on the young man's lap and said, 'I think my wife would want you to have these. I'll tell her that I gave them to you.'

He left the bus quickly. As the bus pulled away, the young man turned to see the old man enter the gates of a cemetery."

- Unknown
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"The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to show and tell others how much they love them while they're still alive."

- Olando Battista
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So, the message for today is simple; ... DO IT BIG, DO IT OFTEN, and most important, DO IT NOW!, remembering, as Conrad Hilton once said, that "Love is everything; it is the key to life, and its influences are those that most move the world." Life is so short, and there is so much love in our hearts. Let's not hold onto it in fear, or in assuming we have lots of time to show it. Let's be assertive and extravagant, and spend it all up while we can.

Distinguishing true giving

"How much easier is self-sacrifice than self-realization."

-- Eric Hoffer

"The givers of the world are invaluable in making our lives more pleasant and satisfying. It is only when their gifts are paired up with expectations about our response to their giving, that 'niceness' becomes manipulative."

-- Lloyd Thomas


I had the most amazing conversation about this topic with a friend the other day, and he asked me to write about it and share it with all of you, so here I am. And after yesterday's humbling reminder of my own sometimes fragile ego and associated "expectations," the timing of this message might just be perfect for me. One of my most important and painful life lessons, that I still find myself rudely confronted with on occasion, is the struggle to recognize and stay present to the stark difference between the giving of myself that comes from the realization of my value as a human being and the giving that comes from my fear that my only "worth" in the world is reflected in what I can do to make another person feel OK when I make up they're not. The former is a joyful act, free and clear, no strings attached. The latter is a painful addiction, burdened and burdensome, filled with self-loathing and the resulting judgment of and projecting onto others. In these hurting or unconscious moments, my "ugly habit" is to feel "put upon" to help people who I make up "need" me in their human weakness, where this blatant arrogance only stems from me feeling grossly inadequate in my own life, especially in the areas that matter most to me, among my closest family and friends. By making up that I alone could "save" someone in their grief, I make a misguided, needy attempt to fill a hole in myself where I feel totally worthless, and it's a selfish manipulation It's still hard to look at this aspect of my life with such cold and detached scrutiny, but after all, I just talked about truth-telling earlier this week, so I am choosing to walk my talk on the subject. Given this particular life challenge and my daily choice to be a Life Coach, it makes sense that one of my biggest commitments in life, and a total reflection of my "unencumbered" spirit, is to appreciate and celebrate the wonder of my survival to this place where I fully get how richly blessed I am, and then to abundantly share that blessing, knowing that others don't "need" anything from me. Then, when I get the lesson that this attitude brings, we get to co-mingle, dance, and embrace each other in our self-realization and the ensuing sense of selflessness and service that characterizes our shared journey home.

Interdependence - the web of life

"We do not live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow man; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects."

-- Herman Melville

I can so relate to this, if for no other reason than through feeling and watching the mysterious inner workings of this wonderful e-community. I would suspect that there are at least a thousand lives that I get the privilege to touch through this vehicle, and I get to create and see the threads go out each morning, and then I get to see the effects come back to me and move among and around us in such elaborate fashion. What an honor it is to live my life not only for me, but for the purpose of building and tending this grand web of humanity - which constantly reminds me that:

"It's not enough to have a dream,
Unless you're willing to pursue it.
It's not enough to know what's right,
Unless you're strong enough to do it.
It's not enough to learn the truth,
Unless you also learn to live it.
It's not enough to search for love,
Unless you care enough to give it."

Here's to the beauty of our shared connection. I appreciate and love you all!
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So, I wrote this message on Tuesday with a plan to send it out today, and then my Wednesday stopped me dead in my tracks and I almost pulled it back and deleted it. I have never had this happen to me before in my five years of doing this - 5, yes FIVE, same-day meeting cancellations, or just plain no-shows, IN ONE DAY! And one guy "no-showed" me TWICE in the same day. People either forgot, or had something else come up, or were just plain hurting too badly to talk. But FIVE in one day, now that's a record! Sometimes in this work I will think something or write something that I consider really profound, and then life's circumstances will "play me like a fiddle," and today's example of this is so "in-your-face" hysterical I just couldn't keep it to myself. Talk about "effects" coming back to me. I'll have to take a hard look at what kind of "threads" I sent out there earlier this week. :-) I shared this story with one friend who offered a point of view that makes a lot of sense. She observed that I had been a little stressed over the last week and a half - from having Anne's parents over last weekend with all of the accompanying family fanfare, to learning that my Dad was pretty ill and really feeling how much I miss him, to getting sick myself, to having a trip to Galveston that didn't work out as planned, including a nasty fall that left me embarrassed and very sore, to Anne getting sick over the last few days, and so on and so on. She suggested that God might have heard my call for things to calm down, so he cleared my calendar so that I could take a deep breath and think. OK, why not, that sounds constructive enough. I'll take it!

The perils (and importance) of truth-telling

"The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering by not telling the truth, the more you suffer, because smaller, less significant things pile up and begin to torture you in direct proportion to your fear of being hurt by telling it."

-- Thomas Merton

"If you do not tell the whole truth about yourself you are not entitled to (and will only suffer when you) tell it about other people."

-- Virginia Woolf (1882)

"The truth can be cruel, but it can also be loved, and it makes free those who love it."

-- George Santayana (1863)

Ah, that price of freedom again. Several of you out there have had very recent experiences of lying to yourself, either in response to direct questions put to you or in your quiet avoidance of obvious, unspoken ones, only to bump into the above unavoidable axioms. A few of you even called me to confess (once again, to yourself, and for yourself) thereby freeing yourself of that much-dreaded "death by 1,000 cuts" deal that hangs over our heads and hearts when we try to avoid what we know. Isn't it so much easier to just learn to love the truth and be free of all that? But, sadly for many of us, this is often only learned after suffering many cuts and much bleeding.

Live your life so as to secure your own approval.

"It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself."

-- Betty Friedan, in The Feminine Mystique, 1963

Even though this was written from an early "feminist" point of view, I believe it applies equally to men and women right now. Many of us have a built-in tendency to live our lives totally dependent on others' approval of us when, as Mark Twain said so eloquently, "A man cannot be truly comfortable without securing his own approval first." So, let's live up to our own high expectations - take others off the hook for our happiness and sense of well-being - be our own true selves. For it is only as "complete" human beings that we get to really "experience" the joy of achievement and fulfillment, and to be of real service and value to others.

"Listening" others to greatness

"If human beings are perceived as inspiring potentials rather than annoying problems, as possessing numerous hidden strengths instead of insurmountable weaknesses, as growing and unlimited rather than dull, static, and unresponsive, then they tend to thrive and grow to their full beauty and capabilities."

-- Robert Conklin

How we hear, see, and perceive other people has a lot to do with what they choose to show us in response. It is often a somewhat fluid phenomenon. So, if you want people to show up in your life as bright, shining examples of what's good and right with humanity (something that is inside all of us - eager to show itself in the right, safe circumstances to the right people), then how you "choose to perceive" others going in can often be a powerfully self-fulfilling approach to each human interaction. Try "listening" the people in your life to unlimited greatness; everybody wins!

In those inevitable tests of principle - where do you stand?

"It is easy for a man, so long as he is left in the enjoyment of his possessions, to persuade himself that he believes in and adheres to the principles of Peace, Brotherhood, and Universal Love - that he lives his Faith; but if, when his enjoyments are threatened, or he imagines they are threatened, he begins to clamor loudly for protection or war, he shows that he really believes in and stands upon, not Peace, Brotherhood, and Love, but strife, selfishness, and hatred. He who does not desert his principles when threatened with the loss of every earthly thing, even to the loss of reputation and life, is the man of true power; is the man whose every word and work will endure; is the man who is honored for eternity. For the most stunning example of this, rather than desert that principle of Divine Love on which he rested, a young man endured the utmost extremity of agony and deprivation some 2,000 years ago, and today much of the world prostrates itself at his pierced feet in rapt adoration."

-- James Allen


Nothing like setting a tough standard, huh? I'm not suggesting that any of us are capable of doing what Jesus did, but we each face our own little tests of this nature every day. I'm facing one right now - with someone who I deeply care about, who also happens to make my life a little more comfortable. How far will we compromise our true selves to protect ourselves, our comfort, our possessions? What price must we pay to "own ourselves" (as Kipling said the other day) when our principles are put to the test? That is the fundamental question and issue that many of us struggle with every day. If what we truly want deep in our hearts is to make a difference on this planet and to have our lives really count in the lives of others, then the price is very high indeed. We must be willing to face our own crosses every day, especially when the world cajoles, prods, seduces, and threatens us to abandon what we know about ourselves, and what we know works in relationship with others. God, please give me courage to pass my test and the wisdom to be willing to pay the price without hesitation.