1. Politics (It’s like fighting about what a dragon looks like).
2. Religion (It’s like fighting about what a dragon looks like).
3. Loch Ness (It’s like fighting about what a dragon looks like).
4. Dragons.
There are people who can walk away from you.
And hear me when I tell you this:
When people can walk away from you… let them walk.
I don’t want you to try to talk another person into staying with you, loving you, calling you, caring about you, coming to see you, staying attached to you somehow.
I mean hang up the phone.
When people can walk away from you let them walk.
Your destiny is never tied to anybody that left.
People leave you because they are not joined to you.
And if they are not joined to you,
you can’t make them stay.
Let them go.
And it doesn’t mean that they are a bad person, it just means that their part in the story is over,
or that they cannot appreciate how amazing you are…and they need to realize that on their OWN
And you’ve got to know when peoples ‘
part in your story is over so that you
don’t keep trying to raise the dead.
You’ve got to know when it’s dead.
You’ve got to know when it’s over.
Let me tell you something.
I’ve got the gift of good-bye.
It’s the tenth spiritual gift,
I believe in good-bye.
It’s not that I’m hateful, it’s that I’m faithful,
and I know whatever God means for me to have
He’ll give it to me.
And if it takes too much sweat I don’t need it.
Stop begging people to stay. Let them go!!
If you are holding on to something
that doesn’t belong to you and
was never intended for your life,
then you need to …LET IT GO!!!
If you are holding on to past hurts and pains …LET IT GO!!!
If someone can’t treat you right, love you back, and see your worth…LET IT GO!!!
If someone has angered you … LET IT GO!!!
If you are holding on to some thoughts of evil and revenge .. LET IT GO!!!
If you are having trouble forgiving someone…LET IT GO!!!
If you are involved in an unhealthy relationship or addiction … LET IT GO!!!
If you are holding on to a job that no longer meets your needs or talents …LET IT GO!!!
If you have a bad attitude…LET IT GO!!!
If you keep judging others to make yourself feel better… LET IT GO!!!
If you’re stuck in the past and Life is trying to take you to a new level… LET IT GO!!!
If you are struggling with the healing of a broken relationship….LET IT GO!!!
If you keep trying to help someone who won’t even try to help themselves… LET IT GO!!!
If you’re feeling depressed and stressed… LET IT GO!!!
If there is a particular situation that you are so used to handling
yourself and God is saying “take your hands off of it,” then you need to… LET IT GO!!!
Let the past be the past.
Forget the former things, don’t allow the past to hold you hostage…
Remember: tomorrow is a lot closer than yesterday…
Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will yet swell, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
~Abraham Lincoln
Don’t Worry
If you have fear of some pain or suffering, you should examine whether there is anything you can do about it. If you can, there is no need to worry about it; if you cannot do anything, then there is also no need to worry.
~Dalai Lama
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(thanks LuLu, um beijo)
Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart:
I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important? I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is, either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise’s wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are. Is this what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.
Next confession: I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees. It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a creche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.
I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.
Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?
I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too. But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.
Another U2 tour has come and gone. Because I now work for the proverbial Man, I was only able to catch 4 shows this tour — Dallas, two in Las Vegas (on my birthday) and just recently the Salt Lake City show (I was able to see them more during: Joshua Tree, Zoo TV, Zoo TV Outside Broadcast, Popmart, and Elevation Tours).
I still have hopes of a Brazil or Argentina show, but I feebly attempt to stop the moving cogs and gears of time….reality is I will most likely have to wait a few years for the next chance.
I am grateful (forgive me, for this is spirtual to me) for the renewed faith and hope in mankind that I sometimes take away from the experience. Every time I hear “Where the Streets Have No Name” I turn to heaven and confess God’s hand in inspiring such an optimistic tune — and the chorus-like reverb coming from Edge’s guitar almost certainly brings an overwhelming sense of “Life is good, I want to give this feeling to everyone”, kind of like that Jane’s Addiction song that talks about a person that “makes you wanna tell your friends, ‘hey man, come and listen to my great idea’”.
——–
Reminds me of a story that I’ve heard several times: A man was walking down a deserted beach at sunset. As he walked along, he began to see another man in the distance. As he grew closer, he noticed that the local native kept leaning down, picking something up, and throwing it out into the water. Time and again he kept hurling things out into the ocean. As our friend approached even closer, he noticed that the man was picking up starfish that had been washed up on the beach and, one at a time, he was throwing them back into the water. Our friend was puzzled. He approached the man and said “Good evening, Friend. I was wondering what you are doing.”
“I’m throwing these starfish back into the ocean. You see, it’s low tide right now and all of these starfish have been washed up onto the shore. If I don’t throw them back into the sea, they’ll die up here from lack of oxygen.”
“I understand,” our friend replied, “but there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. You can’t possibly get to all of them. There are simply too many. And don’t you realize it is probably happening on hundreds of other beaches all up and down the coast. Can’t you see that you can’t possibly make a difference?”
The local native smiled, bent down, and picked up yet another starfish, and as threw it back into the sea, he replied, “Made a difference to that one!”
——
Recently I’ve been trying to figure out where I fit, how I can make a difference, looking at where I’m coming from and where I should be going….am I walking into the LSAT of life and wasting the time playing with the lint in my pocket, or am I really taking and doing well at the test — the whole reason I’m here in the first place?
All of this points me to the thing that most touched me during the Vertigo tour was that the band reverted to their “Boy” album, from when they were mere teenagers with bright eyes and a hope to change the world. Their songs were about discovering the nature of growing up, of becoming responsible, of changing the world in the small corner we occupy. At one of the recent shows, Bono said, “We’ve been so into putting a man on the moon, now we want to bring Man back to Earth.”
I think being back on Earth is a good thing. That’s where humanity needs us.
Llega esta época del año y la mayoría de
las personas nos “acostumbramos” a oir la palabra felicidad.
En los últimos años, me siento más cómodo, al saludar a
mis
amigos, deseándole, para el nuevo año, que
tenga paz, buena salud o simplemente un muy
buen
año. Porque creo que la felicidad se siente en
un instante, un momento de la vida o una etapa si uno
está conforme con lo que hace, cuando le encuentra
sentido a la vida, a los actos que realiza, es allí que
estará feliz.
Quiero compartir con Uds. algunos conceptos sobre
felicidad, que expresa Sergio Sinay.
“La felicidad no es algo que se alcanza ni un lugar
al
que se llega. Creo que antes que buscar
la felicidad, hay una prioridad. Se trata de encontrar un
sentido a nuestra vida personal,
singular, única. Un sentido trascendente. Trascender es ir
más allá de uno mismo, alcanczar a
otro, a otros, a través de lazos de amor, de
empatía,
de colaboración, de fecundidad,
de comprensión, de aceptación. Eso nos hace humanos,
esa
es la gran diferencia entre nosotros y
otras especies. Trascendemos, entendiéndolo de este modo,
en
la relación amorosa nuestros hijos,
con los seres que amamos, con la apertura hacia aquellos
con
quienes nos vinculamos de diversas
maneras, en una obra de arte, en el modo de encarar
nuestro trabajo, en la forma en que nos
integramos en los círculos y en la comunidad que
integramos,
en el alimento que elaboramos y
ofrecemos, en las palabras con que nos acercamos al
semejante. No hay recetas. Cada ser es único
y encontrará un modo único de ir más allá de sí para
trascender en los otros. Cuando entendemos
en qué consiste la trascendencia, todos los actos y
gestos de nuestra vida, aun los más pequeños,
tienen sentido.
La felicidad no será el resultado de una búsqueda, sino
la
consecuencia de un modo de vivir y de
vincularse. La búsqueda obsesiva de la felicidad suele
llevar a penosos malos entendidos.
Así confundimos satisfacción con felicidad. La
satisfacción es epidérmica, no trasciende.
Tampoco el placer entendido como fin es felicidad.
Cuando buscamos la felicidad
como un cazador que persigue una presa, solemos volver
con
las manos vacías. Tampoco se trata
de una meseta en la que nos instalaremos para siempre.
Estas confusiones nos hacen creer que la felicidad anida
en
un auto, un viaje, una silueta perfecta,
una abultada cuenta bancaria, una operación que promete
hacernos más jóvenes, una casa
imponente, el artefacto de última generación o en una
persona.
LA FELICIDAD NO ANIDA EN EL TENER. Es una
sensación, es la consecuencia de una
actitud ante la vida, no se puede capturar como una
mariposa de colección. Es el resultado de
nuestros actos, somos responsables de ella. Sería hermoso
que al desearnos felicidad, en estos
próximos días, nos estemos deseando una vida
trascendente,
una vida ligada al semejante, una
vida con sentido.”
Espero, esto sea un pequeño aporte para reflexionar,
acercar los vínculos y agrandar el círculo de amigos.
La persona, cuanto más se vincula , se
interrelaciona., mayor es su crecimiento y su capacidad de
entender y aceptar al otro tal cual es.
Cuanto más nos cuestionamos más se nos “abre” la
mente y así estamos permitiéndonos cambiar,
dejar los prejuicios y mitos de lado y aprender que
la vida se vive hoy, NO MAÑANA
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” –Marianne Williamson
© 2008
Jeff Foster