Author: larsen4301

A feisty yellow flower bloomed bravely from a crack in a stucco wall. Her roots clinging only to bits of dirt, she drank in the humid air and nodded playfully to the rhythm of the scarce breeze. Courageous? Defiant? Resourceful?

Resolute, I think. Cradled inside a papery seed that the wind dropped into a hostile, intimidating environment, she bloomed where she was planted. That little flower appeared content to accept each moment as if she had chosen it, gracing those who bothered to notice, with fragrance, color and delicate beauty, sowing seeds captured by the wind and carried to new quests.

Our thoughts are like seeds, matchless and new. Each one is packed with possibilities, threads of dreams, kernels of change and glimmers of the future. You decide how your garden grows. Which seed will you cultivate until it sprouts, roots and grows and which will lay in fallow ground to wither and fade?

Do you nurture a garden that is small and carefully pruned to keep out the weeds and marked by a perfectly square Keep Out warning sign? Perhaps it is expansive, roaming over hills, across bridges and around streams, its flora left to nature and chance.

Does it tantalize with beauty in rainbow shades, welcome with exotic scents and speak in rustling leaves and petals? It may be unkempt, clogged with tangled creepers that conceal the path, and gnarly vines with thorny fingers that hinder your progress. Is it your clone or your antithesis?

The best garden is not static. New seeds of thought when they arrive can replace outmoded ones or inspire new ideas. They can stimulate you to whack away at the flourishing forest of dilemmas created by faulty concepts and mindsets and repopulate with positive positions that move you forward.

Some thoughts may give you a purpose that will energize and inspire you to take on new challenges, to reach out to new people and places. They bring out your creativity and spark innovation.

There are some intangible thoughts that tap deep into the conscience anchoring beliefs that shape values and reveal who a person really is. Each thought transformed into a decision is a value honored or a value betrayed. If you make value-based choices your garden is alight with humming birds and butterflies. When your values do not align, you toil in the shadows of the sun.

Our values shape our goals but not always the process. High achievers often exhaust themselves scaling the garden wall and gaze around in awed confusion when the gate swings open and deposits them in the fertilizer. It slowly dawns that they have reached their goal but it was not what they hoped.

Invested only in the goal, an individual may find another wall, repeat the process or set new goals. The disconnect is that many go-getters do not discriminate among the countless projects to find those that are worthwhile and meaningful. They pluck wildflowers and clovers to make a flower arrangement for the table while the orchids wilt.

It is not necessary to change your expectations when you can change your approach. Suppose you focused on the process itself? Rather than chasing a goal like a carrot on a stick, seek meaning in activities and accomplishments that are always there for you to experience and enjoy. Free yourself to live in the present, rebuffing deferred gratification.

The very best moments are, more often than not, the ordinary moments. Spending time with family and friends, reading a good book, playing with your grandchildren, pursuing a hobby or listening to music are some that come to mind. You can stop doing these whenever you want but they will always be waiting to fill in the empty spaces.

When you value most those things you cannot lose you’ll find the courage to risk planting new gardens despite nature’s challenges. Your integrity, compassion, faith, your love for others, your desire to encourage change for the better are the powers to survive whatever difficulties you may face.

If I could I would send you the gifts of Wisdom and Knowledge to plant in your garden with the wish that they would grow like Jack’s beanstalk, lifting you to wondrous places and magical worlds.

Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know all there is to know. ~ Winnie the Pooh

I’m navigationally challenged.

I get lost. A lot. But I am a reliable compass. If I say with all sincerity to take a right at the next stop light, my son tells me he is absolutely sure he should go left. It works every time. Clearly, I have frequently saved him from ending up sunk in the Seventeenth Street Canal.

I theorize that I was born without a navigation gene, often referred to as the Magellan sense. Furthermore, I believe it is a gender linked component. I know this because 90% of woman get lost and 10% of those women are still circling the globe. It is possible that this orientation phenomenon is a result of the female’s exquisite sensitivity to the magnetic poles shifting. Just a thought.

At this moment, I visualize the smirk exchanged among the male gender as they spread their hands in a “that’s news?” gesture.

Women however are empathetically reliving the top 10 times they found themselves trying to back out of a dead end at night fall with eerie animal whispers and snapping twigs distracting their concentration.

Pre-GPS, directions were based on the location of gas stations, the picture show or the local post office. Everyone knew how to find those familiar land-marks. They weren’t relocated or replaced by parking lots overnight. They rarely got repainted.

Today, every journey seems to begin with an USB port, a password to enter the cryptic world of GPS. Here you will find both nervana (a new class of hardware, software, and cloud products built for artificial intelligence) and nirvana (the final beatitude that transcends suffering, karma, and samsara.) This whimsical pairing of retro and technology addiction is symbolized by an assertive but poised, disembodied voice that lures you out of the driveway into heavy traffic, through tunnels, across intersections and around hairpin turns, finally announcing happily that in 4 meters you will arrive at Grandma’s house on the right. Occasionally.

The directions with which I am more familiar are “Make a U turn at the next block.” That can result in a minimum of 3 or more U turns ending in a desperate maneuver onto a busy boulevard that looks like it could lead to an Interstate on-ramp in the same city I began.

At such times, debased by Miss Smarty-Pants’ unrelenting taunts, I pull the plug. Fear fills the quiet as I worry that sooner or later I will take a wrong turn into a wormhole that will deposit me on Europa, one of the 63 moons of Jupiter, during rush-eon traffic. I hope they are nice to immigrants.

My family, encouraged by my Granddaughters, gave me a Garmin GPS for Christmas. I attribute that wise decision to the time they found themselves in the back seat of the car when my daughter-in-law and I drove around a traffic cone straight into freshly poured cement. The sight of 4 workers waving hoes and shovels sprinting toward us shouting indecipherable Spanish words is traumatically etched into their memory. Sorry girls.

There is, however, a lot to be said for losing your way. Sometimes you have just found a new path in more peaceful surroundings traveled by new souls you have yet to meet. You may cross a bridge and stumble onto a road under construction that stirs your imagination, teases your sense of adventure and inspires visions of the destinations and resolve of those who will pass this way. Perhaps you will do like the characters in the tragicomedy by Tom Stoppard, Rosencratz and Guildenstern Are Dead “We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.” I hope not.

It is possible that you will blunder onto a road strewn with rocks and branches that cause you to stumble and fall. Don’t assume you have taken the wrong path and turn back. Something grand may be just around the next pothole. It really isn’t the where of a journey as much as it is the how and the why.

Whatever your journey’s intentions, take it all in and keep moving forward. Your speed doesn’t matter. Experience what life is laying out before you and find in it something to value. Whatever you find, make the most of it.

The measure of a successful journey is that you do not return as the same person. At each journey’s end, a new opportunity to make a new ending surely awaits. Each of us have traveled paths others have yet to walk. I know I didn’t come this far only to have come this far. There are so many miracles yet to marvel.

There is one sure and steady direction I can always count on to guide me safely home that you might try. Follow the Star that stood over Bethlehem.

If you should see me on the highways and byways, say hello and throw out a stream of bread crumbs. Keep going… it will all make sense soon.

A funny for the New Year:
I think Santa has riverfront property in Brazil. All our presents came from Amazon this year.

I am a punk from the ninth ward who escaped from the neighborhood. I am now living up to my potential despite the dire predictions of my teachers in the fifties and sixties.

The accolades, go to my mother who pushed 7 smart, scrappy and sometimes reluctant children into the world armed only with love and tenacity. Our father died when I was 13 and my youngest sister was 2. He left behind a small pension from the Coast Guard, a monthly Social Security check, a mortgage, a car that ran long enough to take a ride to the Lake every few months, 5 daughters and 2 sons who had never really gotten to know him.

Despite her sorrow, my mother, a petite, truly beautiful woman breathed deeply, wiped her eyes and showed the neighborhood what an obstinate, persistent and bitter sweet Irish Catholic lady had to offer. She would have made a great entrepreneur in today’s world.

We on the other hand, proceeded to test her poise, composure and self-control in every manner known to childhood. In return, she tossed values, faith, respect and purpose back at us. Fortunately for us they stuck like sticky balls on Velcro. Education was the most awesome secret she shared. She impressed on us that it was the door to the future and would set us free. It was and it did.

At Christmas time, I remember how she turned hard candy Christmases into enchanting Southern feasts that would challenge even a Hallmark Christmas scene. Oyster soup, turkey legs to fight over, white bread stuffing, green peas, two-layered homemade cake whose top layer slid slowly off the bottom layer, eggnog and Kool-Aid. All of us sat in our special chairs around the table made big enough with the leaf inserted. We always ate as a family.

The highlight was our real, falling-needle pine Christmas tree that commandeered the space between the sofa bed where my sister and I slept and the matching green chair. My Father had invented a tree stand that rotated the tree, displaying all of the shiny, glittery ornaments, sparkling array of lights and tinsel as it turned slowly. The tinsel swayed as the tree moved making shimmering patterns that danced around the room. Since it was impossible to get to sleep on Christmas eve, I would pick a round ornament, usually red, to stare at until I fell asleep. I was amazed at the panorama of my face and my one-room-world reflected back at me. I looked weird, but everything else was expansive, colorful, warm and welcoming. Everything I needed and loved was wrapped up in that Christmas knick-knack.

On Christmas Eve, Santa brought wished-for presents to the littlest ones. My older sister and I got stockings, a staple for prim and proper young ladies to wear to church. Our Uncle Albert, my Mother’s brother who lived around the corner, always laid out gifts wrapped in tissue along the length of the sofa in his living room. It was like a smorgasbord of unexpected wonders to explore.

Today, our family and extended families are scattered over the world. We split Christmas day, dinner at mom’s side of the family and supper at Dad’s. We travel long distances to be together and sometimes we are not able to be with the ones we love the most. It’s just the way it is. Too busy, too expensive, too stressful, too many options and obligations. Certainly, too much missed and never recovered.

Treasure the memories you share and bring them out whenever you are lonely, sad, scared or lost. They are the best Christmas gift you will ever receive.

What stands out amongst your Christmas memories?

Since its Christmas, here are three sophisticated puns for you:

What do snowmen eat for breakfast? Snowflakes.

What do you call a chicken at the North Pole? Lost.

What would you get if you ate the Christmas decorations? Tinselitis.

Have a Blessed Christmas!

I’ve always expected to fail. Not openly, but deep inside my silent places.

Perhaps its kinder to say, I never expected to succeed. This despite many achievements and awards and Atta girls. I never thought I was good enough or that my accomplishments measured up to what others did. The how or why is not important. I am not about assigning blame. The consequences create the story.

According to the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator my rating is INFP, introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceptive. Technically that means I am an introvert, an intuit that receives information from the internal or imaginative world, someone who basis decisions on what they feel they should do and is inclined to improvise and explore alternative options. Simply put, a shy child seeking solitude, cringing when assigned to a group project, hanging out with someone who was a safe harbor and leaving the party early. It lowered the risk of having to engage in clever banter or being invited to the next party. Explicitly, a holy mess.

Yet, I felt a schizophrenic-like pull as if someone smart, playful and funny was waiting her turn to speak up. I confess there were occasions when I dared to let her dance on top of the piano.

Still, I found myself listening for the sound of a shoe as it whistled through the air and dropped with a resounding bang in the middle of my control. Waiting for the other shoe to drop distracted me from living in the moment. I hesitated to join in, protecting myself from a phantom self-doubt and hiding my light because I was ashamed and afraid that I could not live up to its brightness. I worried that there was something about me that, if discovered, would spell out across my forehead warning others to back away. I played poor me – what have I done to deserve so much rejection? It’s not my fault.

The paradox is that failing released me. I felt as if I were standing alone on the stage after messing up the words to the Star-Spangled Banner in front of the Marine Corps band. Ripe tomatoes and lemon meringue pies were hurling toward me as I faced the onslaught thinking, “the secret is out at last. I can stop humming the Great Pretender.”

To my credit, I never quit. Feeling the lion within, I would turn my face upward and roar “Are you ready for another round?” Then I would make amends, devise a new plan and find the place where the path branched. And the cycle would restart.

I can’t pinpoint the point of awakening. I think it came gradually wrapped in trust and acquiescence that God knew what He was doing and His plan was better than mine. I allowed myself to be vulnerable; to be the first to say I love you even when there were no guarantees that my feelings would rebound.

Being a scientist, my process was to predict, control and re-predict. So, when the door opened and Vulnerability, the confounding premise that it is better to just let it happen, was standing before me, I was stupefied. Chaos! My mind cried. But the more I thought about it and befriended Vulnerability, the more I realized that chaos predominates over calm control. Limitations are make-believe. Denying it is as laughable as a 3 year with icing smeared across his face saying he doesn’t like cake. I stopped objecting and started listening.

If I tried to describe vulnerability, it would turn out to be a litany of daily life. You can run, but you can’t hide. The places to hide are too often bottles. Prescription, alcohol, drug, diet, anti-aging or numbing pills. The unfortunate side effects are a numbness in your ability to feel the world around, to connect, relate, talk to each other and work things out. The cycle continues. Politics is the prime example of this in today’s dysfunctional world.

It is courageous to declare imperfection, to be kind to yourself first and then to others. It is an act of bravery to choose living with all your heart and soul in this scruffy world of overwhelming choices. While it often feels uncomfortable, it creates a bond with people because they are connecting with the authentic you rather than who you think you are supposed to be.

When my eyes finally opened, I understood how blessed I was to belong to a loving, caring and supportive family and how much I had to offer in return. This sense of belonging also brought a sense of worthiness. When you feel you are worthy, you are no longer afraid to be vulnerable.

The one thing we should teach the children of this and future generations, it is that they are worthy.

I am enough. So are you.

Let me know if any of this resonates with you.

Pun for the Day: My neighbor just got the part for Scrooge in a local performance. I’d love to go see him, but that play scares the Dickens out of me.

A belief is only a thought you continue to think. A belief is nothing more than a chronic pattern of thought, and you have the ability -if you try even a little bit- to begin a new pattern, to tell a new story, to achieve a different vibration, to change your point of attraction. ~ Abraham-Hicks

Time is the nemesis of age. You keep a steady pace, climbing hills one step at a time and feeling “groovy.” Suddenly, time seems to accelerate to the speed of light. The days shorten and the catalogue of promises to ourselves grows until there comes a time when we recognize that the book of our lives is an inventory of ‘I need to,’ ‘I plan to,’ and ‘Tomorrow, I will.”

After you look in the mirror and gasp with realization that it is you looking back, will you know who you are? Do you see the shortcomings and disappointments you’ve known rather than the most magnificent, treasured dreams you once imagined? Are you someone burdened with yesterday’s glitches or someone bursting with today’s promises?

Do conflicting limitations others have assigned to you stymie you or can your soul work through any obstacle that confronts you? Is your mind engulfed by empty, meaningless pursuits of the materialistic culture instead of enriched from deeply held, lasting values you know to be truth?

Maybe you don’t really know who you are or what you are capable of achieving. Me either.

I do know I am part of a generation that produced some amazing risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors who released new ideas, advances and innovations like a glorious fireworks display. Still, life progresses and in the blink of an eye, everything can change.

Sometimes we journey through turbulent waters and other times the waters are still. These journeys become a part of us and make us who we are. If we are wise, we learn from one another and use our insights to heal relationships and hopefully ourselves. Tough as it may be, most of us learn not only to accept change but to embrace it.

Otherwise we go out of style – still wear panty hose, listen to rock and roll on CDs, carry version 2.0 iPhones and fail miserably playing Battlefield II. We think an emoji is a cure for constipation and LOL stands for Little Old Lady. It can be humbling.

It may surprise you then to know that I still cling to some of my outmoded attitudes. I can’t seem to let go of using my values as a compass to direct me to the right choices. I hold the old-fashioned belief that looking out for your neighbor is more important than besting him. To crazy me, the meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

I do not measure success in stockpiles of capital as do many in the current generation. They are like Smog, the dragon in the Hobbit books that rules a massive configuration of caves to hoard all of his ill begotten treasures. He spends his days chained like a prisoner, exterminating would-be-burglars. If he were willing to share his wealth, he could soar out of the cave into the light and have a free and fiery fling any old time rather than ending up alone and empty as was his fate.

Happily, many people still have an attitude of generosity. This attitude undermines any senseless and vicious act with a multitude of small, discreet acts of love, consideration and compassion. For every person who seeks to wound, many more devote their lives to helping and to healing.

The catch is that you are not your attitude, but the one who creates, controls and upholds that attitude. That means that you can also change your attitude if you decide to exercise control and commitment. That is encouraging because it brings hope that limiting attitudes currently in play can quickly evolve into attitudes of empowerment.

No matter what else is happening around you, focus on what is real and lasting and in tune with your values. Keep a positive, open-minded attitude and your natural abilities will open doors.

Live to make your dreams happen, live to make them real.

May I suggest something? Pick one thing that you want to accomplish for yourself – not for somebody else- but for you. Make it something that will make you feel good about who you are and maybe even symbolize what you can accomplish. Write it down, give yourself a deadline to get it done and just do it. Let me know how it goes.

Today’s pun: Sleeping comes so naturally to me, I could do it with my eyes closed.