It's Your Life

All You Need Is Love
by Anne Zoutsos

"There comes a time in your life, when you walk away from all the drama and people who create it. You surround yourself with people who make you laugh. Forget the bad, and focus on the good. Love the people who treat you right, pray for the ones who don't. Life is too short to be anything but happy. Falling down is a part of life, getting back up is living." ~ Jose' N. Harris
~ A Story of Faith, Hope and Love

About this author:
José N. Harris was born in Detroit, Michigan on December 25, 1962. He lived there for several years before his family relocated to Juan Aldama, Zacatecas, Mexico and later the border town of Tijuana, Mexico. His mother, a migrant farm worker, would travel back and forth between Ventura County, California and Tijuana for work, sometimes taking José and his siblings with her. 

José eventually ended up in and out of the foster care system. At the age of 17, He enlisted in the US Army where he obtained his GED and became an Army medic. He volunteered for and became a Paratrooper and an Army Ranger. Later he was trained as a Special Forces Medical Sergeant. He served in Central America in the 1980s. He was honorably discharged from the US Army in 1987 and enlisted in the Army Reserves where he continued to serve in the 12th Special Forces Group.

Harris married and had two daughters while pursuing his education at the University of California at Irvine where he received his B.A. in both Psychology (with Honor’s) and Psychobiology. He entered the University of California at Berkeley Psychology M.A. /Ph.D. program. He completed his Ph.D. in Psychology at Hebrew University of Jerusalem/WUJS in Israel. He also completed post doctoral studies in behavioral neurology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem at the Hadassah Medical Center. He remained in Israel, where he had private practices in psychology and neuropsychology. He served as the Chief Neuropsychologist at the Sarah Herzog Memorial Hospital in the division of Neuropsychogeriatrics and in the Neurobehavorial Clinic, where he supervised psychologists, psychiatrists and neurologists. He also taught as an Associate Professor, at both the Institute of Technology, Arts and Science, Holon and at The Technion University in Haifa, Israel.

Upon returning to the United States, Dr. Harris pursued a career in social services as a Family Law Mediator, Adoptions Specialist, and as a Program Director for multiple adoption and foster programs in the San Francisco Bay area. He also served as the chief operations officer at a large medical facility in Northern California.

A few years later, he began work on his book, MI VIDA: a Story of Faith, Hope and Love. He is currently working on his second book- UNDECLARED WARS: Central America in the 1980s. And also a Spanish translation of "MI VIDA."

José currently resides in Fresno, California with his Jackrat, Kilo.

Book Recommendation

"There's no way to know what makes one thing happen and not another.  What leads to what.  What destroys what.  What causes what to flourish or die or take another course."  

From the book by Cheryl Strayed.

In the time of your life...

Aniva Lighthouse @ Sakhalin, Russia

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding place and let it be free and unashamed.

Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are the things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart.

Be the inferior of no man, or of any men be superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret.

In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

― William Saroyan, The Time Of Your Life 1939

William Saroyoan was an American novelist, playwright, and short story writer.

Born on August 31, 1908 and Died on May 18, 1981

Advice for Parents

Puppy Love by June Dudley

Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what.  If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.

~Catherine M. Wallace

On The Issue of Self-Defense

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

Biden on self-defense: Get yourself a shotgun.

Are you looking into buying an assault weapon for protection after a devastating natural disaster (or the coming Zombie Apocalypse) plunges society into deadly anarchy? You’ve got it all wrong, Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday: Get yourself a shotgun.
Biden, doing a Google+ “hangout” to promote President Barack Obama’s proposals for battling gun violence, had been asked whether a new assault weapons ban might infringe on the Second Amendment rights of those who want one “as a last line of defense” to fend off looters after “some terrible natural disaster.”
“Guess what? A shotgun will keep you a lot safer, a double-barreled shotgun, than the assault weapon in somebody’s hands [who] doesn’t know how to use it, even one who does know how to use it,” the outspoken vice president, a shotgun owner himself, replied. “It’s harder to use an assault weapon to hit something than it is a shotgun. You want to keep people away in an earthquake? Buy some shotgun shells.”
With the fate of Obama’s gun violence proposals unclear in the face of stiff opposition from most Republicans and some Democrats, Biden urged supporters of ideas like imposing a new assault weapons ban, limiting ammunition clips to 10 rounds and toughening background checks to pressure their elected representatives. “This town listens when people rise up and speak,” Biden said.
Like Obama before him, the vice president emphasized that he's a firm believer in the Second Amendment—but compared proposed new curbs on assault weapons to keeping fully-equipped F-15 fighter jets off the market.
“You have an individual right to own a weapon both for recreation, for hunting and also for your self-protection,” he said. "But just as you don’t have an individual right to go out and buy an F-15—if you’re a billionaire—with ordnance on it, just like you don’t have the right to buy an M-1 tank, just like you don’t have a right to buy an automatic weapon" you should not be able to get other weapons for which there is "no reasonable societal justification, or constitutional justification."
Biden noted that "it's not about keeping bad guns out of the hands of good people, it's about keeping all guns out of the hands of bad people. There should be rational limits."
One of Biden's questioners asked why, if they're rational, there's the lack of political will to enact them.
Biden paused, then said he would have to watch his words. “Both left and right sometimes take absolutist positions," he said.
The vice president emphasized that the administration was not calling for armed guards in schools, a proposal recently floated by the National Rifle Association. Instead, schools would have the flexibility to hire a uniformed guard, armed or not, if they so desired.
But Biden warned it would be a "terrible mistake" to arm school staff. "The last thing we need to do is be arming schoolteachers and administrators"

Wealth

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants."  

~Esther De Waal

Life is about...

Trust What You Feel

Give yourself permission to immediately walk away from anything that gives you bad vibes.  There is no need to explain or make sense of it.  Just trust what you feel.

Nature

Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature.  

It will never fail you.

- Frank Lloyd Wright

The Mystery of the CatNip Bandit

"It was a dark and stormy night..."

The Caterpillar and the Butterfly

Just when the caterpillar 

thought the world was over,

it became a beautiful butterfly.

~ proverb

10 Principles for Lasting Happiness

A Lifetime Of Lessons & Good Advice

45 LIFE LESSONS, WRITTEN BY A 90 YEAR OLD

1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short not to enjoy it.
4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will.
5. Don’t buy stuff you don’t need.
6. You don’t have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself.
7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone.
8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it.
9. Save for things that matter.
10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present.
12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry.
13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it.
15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye… But don’t worry; God never blinks.
16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful.  Clutter weighs you down in many ways.
18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger.
19. It’s never too late to be happy.  But it’s all up to you and no one else.
20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer.
21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
22. Overprepare, then go with the flow.
23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple.
24. The most important sex organ is the brain.
25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you.
26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words, ‘In five years, will this matter?’
27. Always choose Life.
28. Forgive but don’t forget.
29. What other people think of you is none of your business.
30. Time heals almost everything. Give Time time.
31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
33. Believe in miracles.
34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do.
35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young.
37. Your children get only one childhood.
38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.
39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d
grab ours back.
41. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you think you need.
42. The best is yet to come…
43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
44. Yield.
45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

A Few Life-Enhancing Suggestions

10 Life-Enhancing Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes or Less

By Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D.
http://www.bartongoldsmith.com/


It usually takes us much longer to change our moods than we’d like it to take. Here are ten things you can do in ten minutes or less that will have a positive emotional effect on you and those you love.

1.    Watch "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. See it online at Oprah.com. This is a deeply moving segment that may be the best ten minutes you've ever invested in front of a computer.

(Available, also, on the Side-Bar of this Blog)

2.    Spend a little while watching the sunset with your mate. Nothing extra is necessary. Just sit and take in the natural beauty of the sky and appreciate being able to share it with the one you love.

3.    Sit quietly by yourself. It doesn't really matter where or when. Just let your feelings bubble up and then experience the thoughts flowing out of your mind. Clearing your head and heart will give you extra energy to get through the rest of the day.

4.    Write a thank you note to your mate. When was the last time you thanked your partner for just being who he or she is and being with you? Doing this in writing will give your partner something to cherish for the rest of his or her life.

5.    Take out your oldest family photo album and look through it. The experience will fill you with fond memories and perhaps make you a bit wistful for days gone by.

6.    Play with a child. Most kids have short attention spans; ten minutes of quality time from a loving adult can make their day. It will also help you stay in touch with the child inside of you.

7.    Visualize or imagine a positive outcome for any issue. Medical doctors recommend visualization to patients with chronic and potentially fatal illnesses. If it can help them, it can do the same for you. 

8.    Go to bed with the one you love ten minutes earlier than usual. Then spend that time just holding each other. Let the feeling of warmth from your mate move through you.

9.    Hang out by some water. Studies show that hospital patients who can see a natural body of water from their beds get better at a 30 percent faster rate. If you're not near the coast or a lake, try taking a bath. Doing so is also healing.

10.  Get your body moving. Shake, twist, and jump around. Let yourself feel the joy of moving to your favorite music, or just the sounds in your head. Run, walk, and bike to your hearts content. You will live longer and love it more.

Sadly, many people measure happiness by how long the experience lasts. The truth is that a few minutes of joy here and there can make a big difference in what you get out of life.

Brief Reflection

" When you've seen beyond yourself,

 then you may find,

 peace of mind is waiting there."

George Harrison

"Anatomy of a Murder-Suicide", revisited.

*A version of this op-ed appeared in print on December 23, 2012, on page SR1 of the New York edition.


OPINION
Anatomy of a Murder-Suicide

By ANDREW SOLOMON

SUICIDE is not as newsworthy as homicide. A person’s disaffection with his own life is less threatening than his rage to destroy others. So it makes sense that since the carnage in Newtown, Conn., the press has focused on the victims — the heartbreaking, senseless deaths of children, and the terrible pain that their parents and all the rest of us have to bear. Appropriately, we mourn Adam Lanza’s annihilation of others more than his self-annihilation.

But to understand a murder-suicide, one has to start with the suicide, because that is the engine of such acts. Adam Lanza committed an act of hatred, but it seems that the person he hated the most was himself. If we want to stem violence, we need to begin by stemming despair.

Many adolescents experience self-hatred; some express their insecurity destructively toward others. They are needlessly sharp with their parents; they drink and drive, regardless of the peril they may pose to others; they treat peers with gratuitous disdain. The more profound their self-hatred, the more likely it is to be manifest as externally focused aggression. Adam Lanza’s acts reflect a grotesquely magnified version of normal adolescent rage.

In his classic work on suicide, the psychiatrist Karl Menninger said that it required the coincidence of the wish to kill, the wish to be killed and the wish to die. Adam Lanza clearly had all three of these impulses, and while the gravest crime is that his wish to kill was so much broader than that of most suicidal people, his first tragedy was against himself.

Blame is a great comfort, because a situation for which someone or something can be blamed is a situation that could have been avoided — and so could be prevented next time. Since the shootings at Newtown, we’ve heard blame heaped on Adam Lanza’s parents and their divorce; on Adam’s supposed Asperger’s syndrome and possible undiagnosed schizophrenia; on the school system; on gun control policies; on violence in video games, movies and rock music; on the copycat effect spawned by earlier school shootings; on a possible brain disorder that better imaging will someday allow us to map.

Advocates for the mentally ill argue that those who are treated for various mental disorders are no more violent than the general population; meanwhile an outraged public insists that no sane person would be capable of such actions. This is an essentially semantic argument. A Harvard study gave doctors edited case histories of suicides and asked them for diagnoses; it found that while doctors diagnosed mental illness in only 22 percent of the group if they were not told that the patients had committed suicide, the figure was 90 percent when the suicide was included in the patient profile.

The persistent implication is that, as with 9/11 or the attack in Benghazi, Libya, greater competence from trained professionals could have ensured tranquillity. But retrospective analysis is of limited utility, and the supposition that we can purge our lives of such horror is an optimistic fiction.

In researching my book “Far From the Tree,” I interviewed the parents of Dylan Klebold, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre in Littleton, Colo., in 1999. Over a period of eight years, I spent hundreds of hours with the Klebolds. I began convinced that if I dug deeply enough into their character, I would understand why Columbine happened — that I would recognize damage in their household that spilled over into catastrophe. Instead, I came to view the Klebolds not only as inculpable, but as admirable, moral, intelligent and kind people whom I would gladly have had as parents myself. Knowing Tom and Sue Klebold did not make it easier to understand what had happened. It made Columbine far more bewildering and forced me to acknowledge that people are unknowable.

When people ask me why the Klebolds didn’t search Dylan’s room and find his writings, didn’t track him to where he’d hidden his guns, I remind them that intrusive behavior like this sometimes prompts rather than prevents tragedy and that all parents must sail between what the British psychoanalyst Rozsika Parker called “the Scylla of intrusiveness and the Charybdis of neglect.” Whether one steered this course well is knowable only after the fact. We’d have wished for intrusiveness from the Klebolds and from Nancy Lanza, but we can find other families in which such intrusiveness has been deeply destructive.

THE perpetrators of these horrific killings fall along what one might call the Loughner-Klebold spectrum. Everyone seems to have known that Jared Loughner, who wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others at a meet-and-greet in Tucson in 2011, had something seriously wrong with him.

In an e-mail months before the shootout, a fellow student said: “We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon.” The problem was obvious, and no one did anything about it.

No one saw anything wrong with Dylan Klebold. After he was arrested for theft, Mr. Klebold was assigned to a diversion program that administered standardized psychological tests that his mother said found no indication that he was suicidal, homicidal or depressed. Some people who are obviously troubled receive no treatment, and others keep their inner lives completely secret; most murder-suicides are committed by people who fall someplace in the middle of that spectrum, as Adam Lanza appears to.

So what are we to do? I was in Newtown last week, one of the slew of commentators called in by the broadcast media. Driving into town, I felt as though the air were full of gelatin; you could hardly wade through the pain. As I hung out in the CNN and NBC trailers, eating doughnuts and exchanging sadnesses with other guests as we waited for our five minutes on camera, I was struck by a troubling dichotomy. People who are dealing with a loss of this scale require the dignity of knowing that the world cares. Public attention serves, like Victorian mourning dress, to acknowledge that nothing is normal, and that those who are not lost in grief should defer to those who are. When I stopped in a diner on Newtown’s main drag, I did not sense hostility between the locals and the rest of us but I did sense a palpable gulf between us. We need to but cannot know Adam Lanza; we wish to but cannot know his victims, either.

In a metaphoric blog post called “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” a woman in Boise, Idaho, who clearly loves her son but is afraid of him worries that he will turn murderous. Many American families are in denial about who their children are; others see problems they don’t know how to stanch. Some argue that increasing mental health services for children would further burden an already bloated government budget. But it would cost us far less, in dollars and in anguish, than a system in which such events as Newtown take place.

Robbie Parker, the father of one of the victims, spoke out within 24 hours of the shooting and said to Adam Lanza’s family, “I can’t imagine how hard this experience must be for you, and I want you to know that our family and our love and our support goes out to you as well.” His spirit of building community instead of reciprocating hatred presents humbling evidence of a bright heart. It also serves a pragmatic purpose.

My experiences in Littleton suggest that those who saw the tragedy as embracing everyone, including the families of the killers, were able to move toward healing, while those who fought grief with anger tended to be more haunted by the events in the years that followed. Anger is a natural response, but trying to wreak vengeance by apportioning blame to others, including the killer’s family, is ultimately counterproductive. Those who make comprehension the precondition of acceptance destine themselves to unremitting misery.

Nothing we could have learned from Columbine would have allowed us to prevent Newtown. We have to acknowledge that the human brain is capable of producing horror, and that knowing everything about the perpetrator, his family, his social experience and the world he inhabits does not answer the question “why” in any way that will resolve the problem. At best, these events help generate good policy.

The United States is the only country in the world where the primary means of suicide is guns. In 2010, 19,392 Americans killed themselves with guns. That’s twice the number of people murdered by guns that year. Historically, the states with the weakest gun-control laws have had substantially higher suicide rates than those with the strongest laws. Someone who has to look for a gun often has time to think better of using it, while someone who can grab one in a moment of passion does not.

We need to offer children better mental health screenings and to understand that mental health service works best not on a vaccine model, in which a single dramatic intervention eliminates a problem forever, but on a dental model, in which constant care is required to prevent decay. Only by understanding why Adam Lanza wished to die can we understand why he killed. We would be well advised to look past the evil against others that most horrifies us and focus on the pathos that engendered it.

Andrew Solomon is the author, most recently, of “Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity.”

Cats and Water

Cat Whispering 101
News and information at The Animal Rescue Site
  
The Watering Hole
Jan 2, 2013 8:04:00 AM by Mieshelle Nagelschneider

Do you ever wonder why your cat insists on pawing water out of your glass or lapping up the trickle from the kitchen sink instead of drinking from his own perfectly clean and full bowl? The answer may be in it's location.

Cats are great survivors, and drinking water that is not contaminated with bacteria is an important part of survival. When you place your cat's food (which he will consider to be "dead prey", store bought or not) next to his water bowl, his wildcat instincts tell him that the water could be contaminated with bacteria from the food. He will then search out what he believes to be a cleaner water source.

I recommend creating a designated watering hole for your cat by placing his water bowl in a completely different location than where he is fed (or from where his litter box resides, for that matter). This separate location could be in an entirely different room that is easily accessible to your cat 24/7, or simply on the opposite side of the kitchen where you currently feed him. If you're unsure of the best placement, introduce several locations and watch your cat's behavior. He will show you which area(s) he prefers.

If you haven't yet tried a cat water fountain, you may be in for a treat. Not only can the shimmering and flowing water entertain your cat, but he may be encouraged to drink more water than he did from his stagnant water bowl.

If you have a multi-cat household, creating several watering holes can help ensure that all of your cats are drinking a healthy amount of water, particularly if one cat is intimidated by other cats in the household and is fearful to visit the water bowl as often as he'd like. In fact, having only one watering hole for multiple cats often causes territorial tension, which leads to chasing and fighting.

Remember, a well-hydrated cat is a healthy cat. Urinary tract issues in cats continue to be one of the leading reasons for veterinarian visits each year. Cat fountains and water bowls located away from food sources and litter boxes can encourage cats to drink more water, which in turn will help contribute to a healthy urinary system. A "watering hole" makes sense when we look at the environment through our cat's eyes!

Who is Mieshelle Nagelschneider?  

Meet Mieshelle Nagelschneider, ACCBC, a cat behaviorist and author of the science-based cat behavior book, The Cat Whisperer (Random House Publishing). Her passion and curiosity about cats, along with her study in animal behavior, has enabled her to help thousands of cat owners solve their cats' behavior issues for over two decades.

Jeffrey Masson on Mental Illness

http://jeffreymasson.wordpress.com

Crazy Like a Fox

by jeffreymasson
It is not that I am a great believe in the concept of "mental illness." To be honest, I don't actually believe there is such an animal (whoops!). Schizophrenia, psychosis, borderline, manic-depressive, these are basically labels. Demeaning ones too. Not that people do not experience all kinds of misery. Of the deepest kind. But whatever we call it, humans seem susceptible to many forms of deep unhappiness. Yet when we look at the lives of animals in the wild, we don't find these states. OK, I know that this is very hard to prove. Who has followed wild animals in their natural habitat for years and on intimate terms to be able to say they develop nothing that resembles in any way human misery? Nobody. Yet scientists who observe wolves, and lions, and elephants, and the big cats, etc., do not report cases of what sounds similar to human "mental illness." But when it comes to domesticated animals, dogs, cats, birds, we see what appears to be states very similar to human ones. Same is true for other domesticated animals. And of course animals in zoos, in circuses, and on farms, can go "crazy" as it were, experiencing the same kind of dysphoria that humans experience. Why? Because they have been traumatized in one way or another. Doesn't this suggest that humans, too, may suffer from what people call "mental illness" because of trauma? Because they have been hurt in some deep way? I find the topic fascinating. One more reason to look to animals to understand ourselves.

jeffreymasson | January 15, 2013 at 9:06 am


Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson is an American author. Masson is best known for his conclusions about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis. Wikipedia
Born: March 28, 1941 (age 71), Chicago
Education: Harvard University

I Shall Not Pass This Way Again

The Unfolding Of Self

Good Thoughts

The Woman in Red by Giovanni Boldini

Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
When you lose, don’t lose the lesson.
Follow the three R’s:
-  Respect for self,
-  Respect for others and
-  Responsibility for all your actions.
Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
Don’t let a little dispute injure a great relationship.
When you realize you’ve made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
Spend some time alone every day.
Open your arms to change, but don’t let go of your values.
Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and
think back, you’ll be able to enjoy it a second time.
A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.
In disagreements with loved ones, deal only with the current situation. Don’t bring up the past.
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality.
Be gentle with the earth.
Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.
Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.
Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.
If you want others to be happy, practice compassion.
If you want to be happy, practice compassion.

A Quote by Mother Teresa

Harmony by Charlotte Segal

PEOPLE ARE OFTEN UNREASONABLE,

IRRATIONAL, AND SELF-CENTERED.

FORGIVE THEM ANYWAY.

IF YOU ARE KIND, PEOPLE MAY ACCUSE YOU OF SELFISH, 

ULTERIOR MOTIVES.

BE KIND ANYWAY.

IF YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL, YOU WILL WIN SOME UNFAITHFUL FRIENDS AND SOME GENUINE ENEMIES.

SUCCEED ANYWAY.

IF YOU ARE HONEST AND SINCERE PEOPLE MAY DECEIVE YOU.

BE HONEST AND SINCERE ANYWAY.

WHAT YOU SPEND YEARS CREATING, OTHERS

 COULD DESTROY OVERNIGHT.

CREATE ANYWAY.

IF YOU FIND SERENITY AND HAPPINESS, SOME MAY BE JEALOUS.

BE HAPPY ANYWAY.

THE GOOD YOU DO TODAY, WILL OFTEN BE FORGOTTEN.

DO GOOD ANYWAY.

GIVE THE BEST YOU HAVE, AND IT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH.

GIVE YOUR BEST ANYWAY.

IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS, IT IS BETWEEN YOU AND GOD.

IT WAS NEVER BETWEEN

YOU AND THEM ANYWAY.

It Really Is Your Life!

Don Quixole_Fighting Windmills by Pablo Picasso

The Charles Schulz Philosophy

(Scroll thru slowly and read carefully to receive and enjoy full effect)

The following is the philosophy of Charles Schulz, the creator of the 'Peanuts' comic strip.

You don't have to actually answer the questions. Just ponder on them.

Just read the e-mail straight through, and you'll get the point. 

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world. 

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners. 

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant. 

4 Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize. 

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress. 

6. Name the last decade's worth of World Series winners.


How did you do?

The point is, none of us remember the headliners of yesterday. 

These are no second-rate achievers. 

They are the best in their fields. 

But the applause dies... 

Awards tarnish... 

Achievements are forgotten. 

Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.


Here's another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school. 

2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time. 

3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile. 

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with..

Easier?

The lesson: 

The people who make a difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, the most money...or the most awards. 

They simply are the ones who care the most.

Pass this on to those people who have either made a difference in your life, or whom you keep close in your heart, like I did. 

'Don't worry about the world coming to an end today. It's already tomorrow in Australia !'

''Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Taken!"

Yoga Warriors and Veterans Confronting Challenges

Arianna Huffington wrote a new post Yoga Warriors



Yoga Warriors
Posted: 01/09/2013 6:44 pm


In this week's issue, David Wood writes about a tool increasingly used to help veterans confront the many challenges waiting for them when they return home from war zones: yoga. There's a growing consensus among military doctors, researchers, and veterans themselves, that conventional treatments aren't always enough to help vets navigate the consequences of PTSD -- from unemployment and domestic violence to substance abuse, anxiety, and suicide. As Wood puts it, "Once dismissed as mere acrobatics with incense, yoga has been found to help ease the pain, stiffness, anger, night terrors, memory lapses, anxiety and depression that often afflict wounded warriors."

The embrace of yoga -- especially among onetime skeptics in "hard-core military circles" -- is a step forward in our efforts to give veterans the care they need and deserve. It's also in line with the latest research and thinking about the destructive force of stress in our lives. The adrenaline-fueled hyper-vigilance that's so vital to our soldiers in combat zones becomes, for many, a nightmare of anxiety that makes it difficult to function when they come back home. That was the case for Sgt. Senio Martz, a 27-year-old Marine who was knocked unconscious by a roadside bomb when leading his squad through southern Afghanistan in 2011. Today, yoga relieves him from the need to closely monitor his surroundings during the day -- an obsession that was also keeping him up at night. "Last night after yoga, I had a good sleep," he says. "That's a place I haven't been in a long, long time."

Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs researchers have found that yoga's stretching, breathing techniques and meditation can help calm the part of the brain that the stresses of war kicks into a state of hyper-arousal. And more and more yoga teachers are bringing these practices to the vets who need them. Robin Carnes, who helped develop a program called iRest, found that meditation helps draw patients' attention inward, away from outside stresses. She also founded "Warriors at Ease," which trains and certifies yoga teachers to bring calming yoga practices to even more soldiers in need.

As Wood writes, using yoga to help returning veterans isn't as surprising as it might seem. "After all, yoga -- a Sanskrit word meaning to 'join' or 'unite' -- dates back to 3,000 B.C., and its basic techniques were used in the 12th century when Samurai warriors prepared for battle with Zen meditation." As more and more skeptics are convinced, and as yoga becomes further ingrained in our military hospitals, that means more veterans will be making deep breathing and Downward Dog part of their recovery regimens.

What Kids Can Teach Us

Demand a Plan Against Illegal Guns

ABOUT MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS

Demand a Plan is a campaign of Mayors Against Illegal Guns -- a national, bipartisan coalition of mayors working to make America’s communities safer by keeping illegal guns out of dangerous hands. Co-founded in 2006 by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, the coalition has grown from a committed group of 15 members to more than 800 mayors, including Republicans, Democrats, and Independents, from major cities and small towns around the country. We have almost a million grassroots supporters, making us the largest gun violence prevention advocacy organization in the country.

Protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, drug abusers, the seriously mentally ill and other dangerous people. Mayors Against Illegal Guns advocates for common-sense measures that will close deadly gaps in our gun laws and make sure law enforcement agencies have the tools they need to detect and deter gun trafficking. We have worked with more than 100 survivors and family members of gun violence victims in public campaigns to push for solutions from Washington.

For more information about Mayors Against Illegal Guns, please visit our website at www.MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org.


WHAT WE STAND FOR

Mayors Against Illegal Guns advocates for a common sense agenda that will make it harder for dangerous people to buy guns and easier for police and prosecutors to stop them.  Our coalition of more than 800 mayors and more than 900,000 supporters is calling on Congress to pass legislation that will:

Require every gun buyer to pass a criminal background check
Get military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines off our streets and make gun trafficking a federal crime
Mayors Against Illegal Guns is also asking the Obama Administration to take the following steps that do not require congressional action:

Appoint an ATF director - by recess appointment if necessary
Prosecute prohibited gun purchasers who ignore the law and try to buy guns, ammunition or high-capacity magazines
Require federal agencies to report records to NICS
Repeal the remaining Tiahrt restrictions