Tomorrow Is Not Promised!

Eye to Eye

Sometimes people come into your life and you know right away that they were meant to be there. They serve some sort of purpose, teach you a lesson, or help you figure out who you are and who you want to be. You never know why these people may be: your neighbor, child, long lost friend, lover, or even a complete stranger. Who, when you lock eyes with you know at that very moment, that they will affect your life in some profound way.

And sometimes things happen to you and at the time they seem painful and unfair, but in reflection you realize that without overcoming those obstacles you would have never realized your potential strength, willpower, or heart.

Everything happens for a reason. Nothing happens by chance or by means of good or bad luck. Illness, injury, love, lost moments of true greatness and sheer stupidity all occur to test the limits of your soul.

Without these small test, whether they be events, illnesses or relationships, life would be like a smoothly paved straight flat road to nowhere, safe and comfortable, but dull and utterly pointless. The people you meet who affect your life and the successes and downfalls you experience create who you are, and even the bad experiences can be learned from, in fact, they are probably the poignant and the important ones. If someone hurts you, betrays you or breaks your heart, forgive them, for they have helped you learn about trust and the importance of being cautious to whom you open your heart too. If someone loves you, love them back unconditionally, not only because they love you, but because they are teaching you to love and opening your heart and eyes to things you would have never seen or felt without them. Make every day count. Appreciate every moment and take from it everything that you possibly can, for you may never be able to experience it again. Talk to people you have never talked to before, and actually listen, let yourself fall in love, break free and set your sights high! Hold your head up, because you have every right too. Tell yourself you are a great individual and believe in yourself, for if you don't believe in yourself, no one else will believe in you either. Create your own life and then go out and live in it! "Live Each Day As If It Were Your Last! Tomorrow Is Never Promised."

~Unknown Author~

Thoughts of the Dalai Lama

Thoughts of the Dalai Lama

1. Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk.

2. When you lose, don't lose the lesson.

3. Follow the three Rs: Respect for self, Respect for others and Responsibility for all your actions.

4. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.

5. Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.

6. Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.

7. When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.

8. Spend some time alone every day.

9. Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.

10. Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

11. Live a good, honorable life. Then when you get older and think back, you'll be able to enjoy it a second time.

12. A loving atmosphere in your home is the foundation for your life.

13. In disagreements with loved ones deal only with the current situation. Don't bring up the past.

14. Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

15. Be gentle with the earth.

16. Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.

17. Remember that the best relationship is one in which your love for each other exceeds your need for each other.

18. Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.

19. Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon. I also know that dreams really do come true and you have my Best Wishes and my best efforts in those.

In the course of our life...

In the course of our life we leave and are left and let go of much that we love. Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth. Making our way from birth to death, we also have to make our way through the pain of giving up some portion of what we cherish.

~ JUDITH VIORST ~

There is an orderly sequence of events...

There is an orderly sequence of events in the shaping of our lives.
As I think, I make choices.
As I make choices, I form habits.
As I form habits, I fix the direction of my life.
So, If I am to live differently, I must form new habits.
If I am to form new habits, I must make new choices.
If I am to make new choices, I must do new thinking.
It is more important to do your best, than to be the best.

* Patrick O'Dooley speaker at American Airlines Stewardess College 1968

Some Interesting Thoughts from Some Interesting Men

"The world is a book, and those who do not
travel read only one page."
Saint Augustine


"Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
Mahatma Gandhi

"The consciousness of selfhood is the very core of our physical being. About it are gathered all the joys and all the miseries of life."
James R. Angell, Psychology, 1908


"The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it."
Seneca (7 B.C.-65 A.D.)

"No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see."
Taoist proverb

"Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame."
Henry David Thoreau

"It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay."
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1954

‘All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.’
~Blaise Pascal

"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely."
Carl Gustav Jung


"Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will."
Jawaharlal Nehru


"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal."
Albert Pike

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
Seneca
(Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD)

"We must go beyond textbooks, go out into the bypaths and untrodden depths of the wilderness and travel and explore and tell the world the glories of our journey."
John Hope Franklin

"Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience."
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Suffering arises from trying to control what is uncontrollable, or from neglecting what is within our power. As part of the universal city that is the universe, human beings have a duty to care for all fellow humans. The person who follows these precepts will achieve happiness and peace of mind.
Epictetus

What is Success
"To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of flase friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or redeemed social condition;
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded."
*Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson

A philosopher by the name of Epictetus once wrote...
"Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them."
Epictetus in the 1st century A.D.

People In The Dark

"The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it."

Seneca (7 B.C.-65 A.D.)

What we know.

"When you compare the present life of men on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through a banquet hall on a winter's day." After a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintery world from which he came. Even so man appears on earth for a little while, but of what went before this life or what will follow, we know nothing."
From the writer and creator of "The Tudors", Michael Hirst.

We Live In A World Of Boundaries

"The simple fact is that we live in a world of conflict and opposites because we live in a world of boundaries. Since every boundary line is also a battle line, here is the human predicament: the firmer one's boundaries, the more entrenched are one's battles. The more I hold onto pleasure, the more I necessarily fear pain. The more I pursue goodness, the more I am obsessed with evil. The more I seek success, the more I must dread failure. The harder I cling to life, the more terrifying death becomes. The more I value anything, the more obsessed I become with its loss. Most of our problems, in other words, are problems of boundaries and the opposites they create."

Excerpted passage from Ken Wilber's book entitled, NO BOUNDARY Eastern and Western Approaches to Personal Growth
ISBN 978-0-394-74881-8 (pbk.)