Love centers every interaction with calmness. When you love everyone, it changes how you think of them.
Say yes to Abundance.
The world is full of abundance and anything you
can wish for is available. Believing in
abundance gives you abundance.
Commit to challenging and changing beliefs that
limit you.
Say yes to Honesty.
Lies are obvious, you have to be in denial to
believe them. It is hectic and stressful
to sustain lies, even if you are the receiving party. Honesty is easier and healthier.
Say yes to Responsibility.
Responsibility will bring you security. When you decide on responsibility, you give
yourself a home and something to build upon.
Say yes to Action.
Procrastination stops you from accomplishment, why
indulge in procrastination?
Say yes to Boundaries.
When you work, work.
When you play, play.
Circumscribe your activities with purpose.
Consciously choose what you absorb.
Focus on the moment, in the moment.
Say yes to Relaxation
with a purpose.
Find your relaxation response, explore meditation,
or yoga, or massage and acupuncture.
Whatever your relaxation response is, find it and use it.
Say yes to getting rid of your mad.
One event deserves only one mad: spend it
wisely. Don’t regurgitate your mad over
and over and over again. Once you have
completed your mad, find a way to solve your feelings and be committed to your
resolution.
Where your attention goes, energy flows.
Say yes to Self
Love.
Be loving to yourself in thoughts, words and
deeds.
Do whatever it takes to remind yourself, that you
matter and deserve love just for being you.
Don’t deny your true worth.
Do what you know is best for you.
Say yes to Respect for yourself and others.
All interactions become positive with the addition of respect.
Say yes to Oneness.
Allow yourself to see that your spirit is a part of the whole, when you see this, your place in the universe becomes infinite.
Say yes to Non-Violence.
Violence can be verbal, physical, mental or emotional. Leave violence behind to live longer and to keep your loved ones close. Violence separates humans from each other.
Say yes to Imperfection.
Perfection will cost you your peace of mind. Allowing yourself to embrace the ups and downs of life will give you freedom.
Accept that you are perfectly imperfect.
Say yes to Integrity.
The definition of integrity is the state of being whole and undivided. How wonderful it is to be clear and purposeful about your decisions in life?
I studied inherent
value as an undergrad, so it is a concept that has been around for eons, I’m
sure.
It is this idea
that living things have value unto themselves. There is no need for
performance, no need for earning money, no need for work, just a belief that
there is value because you are alive.
It’s a difficult
concept for me to wrap my arms around for myself. Since I can remember,
my parents drilled into my head that hard work is rewarding and
self-sustaining. Those who do not work are “lazy” and
“irresponsible”. I lived in a time and place that did not have
the luxury of financially supporting anyone. All had to work.
Finance became the measure of value, those who made $5.00 an hour were less
important than those who made $10.00 an hour.
Those who are
educated are more valuable still and society rewards them for their
education. The more education, the better a person could be. The
other option for people included, beauty and wealth. The beautiful could find usefulness
by attaching to wealth, either through matrimony or work.
Adult-film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, puts her shoe back on after passing through a security screening, as she arrives at federal court in the Manhattan borough of New York City, April 16.
REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
On the non-financial side is parenting. There is very little that is more gratifying than a young one who needs you desperately. Small children look to their parents for everything. Mothers and fathers often measure themselves by the satisfaction of their children. They feel their worth increases with happy children.
When faced with the
concept of inherent value, as an undergrad, I failed. It was hard for me
to understand and to believe that the value is in being alive. I kept
wanting to assign value based on work and performance. I was chided by my
professor, but he realized the concept was obscure for most. The exam
question was about the intelligence of dolphins and the ethical obligations of
humans to protect them from extinction. I kept coming back to the
dolphins’ value to humans. “No”, my professor iterated, they are valuable
unto themselves without humans.
A belief that I am sorry for…Each person has their own possibilities, not to be judged by others.
And so, it goes
that such beliefs touch every single part of any life. Believing in work
as the redemptive human quality means that those who do not work have little
value as humans. It creates exactly the kind of staircase of values that
I am stringently opposed to. I vehemently believe that all are equal.
So how do I maintain two opposing beliefs? I probably do it the way that
most people do, and that is to ignore one of the beliefs when the other belief
is dominantly active in my life. In other words, we all change our values
and beliefs in our lifetimes depending on circumstance.
Now, I am not
working. I was forced to take a retirement based on my illness. I
don’t have the money to retire so I depend on my husband for my
livelihood. This is exactly the kind of life that I sneered at when I was
in the throes of a successful career based on my own hard work. I
believed everyone was capable and should be working and working h.a.r.d.
Full circle.
All people are equal and have a right to life and living. Our way of
living is our own private decision and not to be interpreted by the beliefs of
others. As a human, I have the right to be. I may not perform, I
may not work, I may not earn money, these facts do not change my fundamental
right to live.
Men sometimes do not understand the
consequences of the economic inequities of power. They sometimes believe that
being dominating is just part of their own personality and therefore cannot
realize the effect on others. While women, not only recognize the power of
economic inequity, they become hyper-vigilant because the chance of surviving
the inherent difficulties of economic deprivation are better with vigilance.
Here is my story that illustrates
the blindness that can occur on both sides. This story takes place in the
1970s, I had no phone, but I worked long hours and people often called me at
work.
I lived in southern California with
my brother and my sons. I was a waitress in an American restaurant, the kind
that served breakfast 24 hours per day. I was 19 years old. My brother and I
moved to California because, at the time, junior college was free of charge for
California residents. My brother played football and attended college, and
though I wanted more than anything to go to college, I had not found a way to
do it while working and taking care of my sons. For a long time I worked two
jobs just to get by.
If you’ve never been to California,
you’ve missed some of the most beautiful scenery there is in America. I would
often drive into the mountains on the odd day off just to look at the streams
that bubbled throughout the rugged rock formations of the hills and mountains.
The water was perfectly clear and clean, cold and crisp. When you looked into
the streams you could see the rocks and pebbles at the bottom of the flowing
surge as the water rushed over them in a hurry to the floor of the valley.
Photo
Credit to NOAA
On one such trip I planned on
staying over night with friends who lived north of Los Angeles. My brother was
keeping my boys over night and so I took off after work for those beautiful
mountains. As I traveled the Pacific Coast Highway, I hummed and sang to the
radio, elated to have a moment of free time that was just for me. It is a
thrilling journey, the mountains soared to my right and in places, the beach
dropped down off of the mountain as if placed there by a giant hand. The
beaches lay flat against the soaring vistas of the mountain. It was amazing to
see both the beach and the forested mountain at the same time. I am Gulf coast
born and bred and had never seen land that reached higher than an ant hill, in
Florida.
And then…my tire blew out. I was an
intrepid explorer, think “seventies” when people were still hitchhiking to get
from one place to another. I felt safe, secure and happy. A young man pulled
over to help me with changing my tire. We found that I had no spare, my brother
had already used it to replace a rear tire that had gone flat. (Had donut tires
been invented yet?)
The young man was very generous and
offered to help me. I only had enough money for dinner, I had no money for a
flat tire. He paid for my tire, and by the time we were able to get it
arranged, it was late and I was forced to spend the night where we were. With
the tire being incomplete until morning, I welcomed the young man’s offer of
shelter for the night. He was an attractive man and we had sex that night. I got
my tire repaired the next day and drove home.
No one could have been more
surprised than me, when a week later, the young man called me at work.
Apparently, I had told him where I worked. I answered the phone somewhat
confused. He said that he wanted to see me. I didn’t know why? He heard some of
my surprise and said “I thought we shared something special.” In my mind, he
was a man who had taken advantage of a situation that I had no control over. He
wanted to help me, but for a price. He was not altruistic, kind or even
generous (as mentioned earlier) he was just someone who would take advantage of
a lone woman in a bad situation on the side of the road. I had zero interest in
seeing him again, why would I? He saw himself as a rescuer and someone who had
done something well and good. He saw himself as someone who liked this girl who
was economically disadvantaged.
No, I don’t think so. He wasn’t
happy when we hung up.
Wow, what a misunderstanding…my
picture of him was of someone who had taken advantage of me in a bad situation.
His picture of himself was someone who was generous and good and had met this
nice woman on the side of the road.
I’ve seen this kind of
misunderstanding one million and one times since then. I saw it within my
leadership group when we were given instructions to sell a product to a
stranger, and told NOT to engage in selling to waiters, waitresses or anyone in
a serving position. Several men in that leadership group ignored those
instructions and directed their efforts at selling, only towards those that had
no choice but to listen to them: waitresses. When they were called out by the
leadership group, those men got angry that the group didn’t understand their
efforts.
Are you kidding me?
Lecturing someone who is forced to
listen to you is not the same as selling something to a stranger, how do you not
know that?
Economic inequity creates power
inequity. Strength of body creates power inequity. Women know this, why don’t
men?
Please be aware that you are standing at the threshold of
being viciously attacked. No one likes a
beautiful woman who is smart and powerful.
It’s just not done.
You may think that our society has progressed past the point of keeping women in powerless positions, not so. While our society boasts of breakthroughs inequality, you must understand that they are Madison Avenue constructs and contrived,but not real. This country is expert at marketing. We look good, but we are incredibly shallow. We haven’t done the,real job of creating equality, so instead, we are at Door #3: let’s make a reality that LOOKS like equality.
Millennials are clearly aware of this. They know that equality is an elusive concept that has not been actualized in America. Alexandria you are a millennial, and so you know how shallow America’s promise of equality has been.
by Kurt Meske Thank you
What I am concerned about, is the amount of hatred and vitriol
you will be faced with as you speak your truth in the hallowed halls of the
United States Capitol.
I wish you the best and so do millions of other
Americans. We love you and we see hope
and brightness in your presence. Remember
this when others are attempting to hurt you and when the oligarchy attempts to
damage you in a way that will have you questioning humanity.
Alexandria, you are the chosen one, you are the speaker for those
who do not or can not speak for themselves.
You are right! They need your
voice. This country needs life, not the
death that the war machine
manufactures. I love your rationale for
your program ideas: “why doesn’t anyone question the cost of war, but only
questions the cost of healthcare-for-all?”. America does actually have plenty of money to
take care of people. We don’t use it in
the right places. We must begin to question
the status quo in order to take care of the people of America. Alexandria, you state that beautifully.
Your statements are so simple and so elegant and YOU make Americans
think about how humans should treat each other.
Thank you.
Don’t forget, you are aligned against the powerful and you
stand on behalf of the downtrodden. It
will appear that the oligarchy is winning many times over, you may despair, you
will be angry. Please, don’t give up and
don’t give in. You have the right of it
and there will be few who see the truth and can help you. Those who see the truth, can’t or won’t help
you and support you. Be careful!
You are in the biggest game with the biggest players. They are serious and deadly. You’ll need every bit of smarts that you have. Continue what you have been doing and keep staff
that are smart and loyal. Be aware that
loyalty can’t be valued enough! You will
need it so much in the coming months and years.
Please don’t forget, we love you. You inspire us and we really, really want you
to help change America. We want equality and you are part of that
future. You are part of the movement
that will move this country forward.
Finally.
You can get discouraged, angry and sad. Don’t ever, ever give up. You are doing the work of the weak and, and
disenfranchised, you are doing the work of equality, the work of Americans.
bitter indignation at
having been treated unfairly.
“his resentment
at being demoted”
synonyms:
bitterness, indignation, irritation, pique, dissatisfaction, disgruntlement, discontentment, discontent, resentfulness, bad
feelings, hard feelings, ill will, acrimony, rancor, animosity, jaundice
In the matter of two people having a discussion and a third
person observes, judgment arises – of course – by all three.
In the matter of two people who are working through differences,
if the third person judges person A negatively – in other words, giving advice
about improving one’s speech or character, you know immediately that such person
sides with person B in the discussion.
Observer finds fault with the one that they do not agree with.
Life follows this path of finding fault with those we do not
agree with and even to a further extent, we find fault with those we do not
like. In this sense, if I do not like
you, there is nothing that you can do to be correct. You are wrong, you are a wrong person and
that is all there is to it.
On the other hand, if I like you, then you are right (and
never to be corrected) and that is all there is to it.
This kind of thinking only serves us in the case of new true
love. Otherwise, this thinking is
dangerous for everyone. It makes us
blind to the truth of each other’s behavior and thus escalates bad behavior.
Bad behavior lives in the dark and thrives when not
confronted. Any kind of acceptance of
bad behavior helps that behavior to grow.
Winter
Back to the beginning of this article, be aware what your
comments and your judgments reveal about you and your opinion. Be aware when you are allowing bad behavior
and encouraging the behavior to continue.
Rose colored glasses are not for an enduring and real relationship.
As agonizing
as the fear was on election day (yesterday) I am feeling energized today. I’ve spent more than my usual time online
recently. When I saw who was winning
elections all over the country, I became hopeful. Yes, yes, I am a Democrat, and Gosh forbid, I
am also a “liberal”. I don’t know where
those labels come from, but I do believe in equality for everyone. I ardently believe in economic equality. I believe in truth, honesty and respect. I believe everyone in the world has a right
to health care. So, there you are, “liberal”.
I believe that legislators should have the decency to be objective about the fairness of laws, rather than making laws based on payments from whomever can afford them. I believe it should be illegal for corporations to use their massive economic power to change laws and bend them to fit their own profitability goals. An example of this is our embarrassingly low minimum wage here in the USA. This low minimum wage is a direct result of legislators bending to the will of mega corporations such as MacDonald’s and Walmart. These mega-corporations often finance campaigns and use other such bribery weapons in order to gain a legalized economic advantage.
With rain comes growth
Ah,
but! Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez won, she won! How
fantastic is that? From what I am seeing
and who I am meeting, I am very impressed with millennials. I am impressed with all of the younger
generations, no matter the label. Young
people seem smart and even better, caring.
The young people I meet and spend time with, the ones I read about, seem
to care very much about our world. They
seem to care very much for others. That seems to be the key to human salvation:
do we care about each other? If we care
about each other, we will find a way to ensure that all Americans are cared
for. The best place to start this is
through our system of government.
I am
hopeful. The women who won these races
are diverse and will bring a new conversation to the legislative table. This new conversation cannot be ignored
because it has become too loud. Thank
God for these brave women. Thank God for
democracy.
And lest we think the job
is done, here are the words of Barack Obama:
“Our work goes on. The change we need won’t come from one
election alone – but it is a start. Last night, voters across the country
started it. And I’m hopeful that going forward, we’ll begin a return to the
values we expect in our public life – honesty, decency, compromise, and standing
up for one another as Americans, not separated by our differences, but bound
together by one common creed.”
We have allowed marketing companies and dress designers to define the beauty of women. Every time we wear high heels we are buying into this magical definition of what a woman should look like and what she should be. Unfortunately, many women who are leaders, buy into this definition, however, they can afford to do so. If you have the money to sculpt your face and your body, if you have the money to hire original designs by the best designers, you are doing so at the cost of everywoman. You look fabulous with your balloon breasts and contoured waist, but you make everywoman who cannot afford perky breasts and a cool-sculpted stomach, feel bad.
Why do you do this? As a famous woman, why do you allow the perpetuation of this mythical creature called the “perfect woman”? Why do you buy into the definition of fashion houses (and, of course, men) that will tell you what is beautiful ~ and they really have no idea, except their own idea.
Out there in front, redefining beauty are women like Ashley Graham who gives credibility to plus sizes and Alicia Keyes who refuses to wear make-up. Both women strongly state that women need to be who they are.
What is beauty?
My husband always says that proof that men are running the world is on the feet of women who still wear high heels. What would cause a woman to wear high heels? Fashion dictatorship; that is what causes women to wear high heels. Anthropologists will tell you that wearing high heels (which thrusts breasts forward) is a mating ritual of old societies. However, in these old societies, women rid themselves of the high heels once a mate is identified. No woman willingly wears such painful footwear because she wants to, she wears this footwear to compete and to gain male acceptance.
What is wrong with extra weight? What is wrong with crepe paper skin? What is wrong with a wrinkly neck? These are all natural evolutions of the human body. It is only the marketing industry and Madison Avenue that wants us to believe that an aging body is unnatural and embarrassing. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The model form is unnatural. Human beings that are “in the natural” do not look like the normal model looks. Humans are a diverse group that come in all shapes, sizes and colors, all of which are normal and most of which are attractive. We are all attractive when we are compared to ourselves. It is when we compare ourselves to the television and fashion runways and magazine pictures that we become unattractive.
This is not to say that beauty does not exist objectively, it is to say that we have become harsh taskmasters of the beauty of women. Marketing America has carved out one look as THE LOOK and we take no discussion. Any woman who does not have this look is a woman that must be manufactured into this woman. For this manufacturing process, millions of dollars in beauty products are mass produced and sold. Plastic surgery is a multi-billion dollar business that is thriving. How and why? So that all women can fit into this one size, a size that is deemed correct and attractive by others that are not we.
Why is the perfect-looking woman sexy? Why isn’t the perfect woman a librarian or a scholar? Why does the perfect woman need so many accoutrements? Why does she need long eyelashes, hundreds of dollars in cosmetics and an endless supply of clothing that is form fitting and constantly revealing?
Women, we must take back our power and define our own beauty. It is quite fine if we do NOT spend $26.00 on a pair of underwear. We do not need cosmetics or Forever 21 to keep us looking beautiful. It is quite fine to be 45 years old and 65 years old and 85 years old. We are still beautiful and certainly, smart and exceptionally wise at these ages.
We have the technology. We can manage destruction through our technology, we can win battles and wars by pushing buttons and aiming war weapons. So why is anyone still being killed? Why is anyone still being maimed? Why is anyone still engaged in actual violence, when we can control our environment and our relationships with technology?
We have enough nuclear weapons to turn the Earth into a lifeless lump of rock several times over. Why? We only have one Earth.
We keep on investing in one hundred million dollar aircraft that have no where to go and no one to fight.
We stockpile our weapons or we sell them to police stations all over the country, why? Would we turn the tanks toward civilians? Would we torpedo a yacht?
We have so much, that we are forgetting the concepts behind the purchase of the weapons. We don’t need that much, we do not really need the majority of the weapons we are currently manufacturing.
Again, we have the technology. We can shoot and/or bomb any enemy in a small space with a drone. For larger threats such as Isis training camps, we have larger bombs and weapons. Weapons that cannot be seen by our enemies. We have weapons that bring no danger to those who steer them and shoot them.
“A simple child, That lightly draws its breath…What should it know of death?” William Wordsworth, We are Seven, as published by Time on 12/30/1991
The current world is not interested in waging war through military weaponry. The current world is using software to win wars. The stock market and its many versions and fluctuations give power to the countries that manage them. But, much more power is wielded by those with wealth. It is not the might of military weaponry that controls the world anymore (if it ever was).
And yet SIPRI* reports: “In late 2017 the US Senate approved a new military budget for 2018 of $700 billion, a substantial increase over the 2017 budget.” The second largest spender is China and with the majority of the world’s population living in China, their budget is less than half of America’s budget. SIPRI states: “China, the world’s second largest spender, allocated an estimated $228 billion to its military in 2017, an increase of 5.6 per cent compared with 2016.” Even with an increase China is not getting within a fifty percent range of the U.S.
Who wants a larger military budget? No one, except arms manufacturers. They are the ones who benefit from this continued madness. We know it, they know it and every single politician knows it. There is great profit in the military madness and we Americans allow it to continue. The arms manufacturers make billions in profits and have a lobbyist standing on every corner in Washington D.C. They are h.u.g.e. contributors to politicians and the attendant political parties.
No matter who you are, know this: there is no reason for a young person to die or to be maimed in battle any more. When it happens, know this: it is happening so that the military war machine can profit. Our freedom is not threatened and has not been threatened since World War II.
It’s clear to all that the new battlefields are money and information. Our software systems make everything in the world work. Cybersecurity should be the next international defense investment that America makes. Machine guns are archaic and outdated tools of a battle that we no longer need to fight. We need talented and smart people to work for the people of America giving peace it’s proper place in human history.
We need to start a new conversation about power. The latest dramatic scandal in Washington D.C. is a warning to everyone in America. We must have a new conversation about money, power and success in America. Not any of those things is worth one single human life.
*Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): the independent resource on global security.
We want to apologize for not showing up at Shannon’s. Without parking places, John felt like giving it up, so that’s that.
I am very appreciative of the one evening, we were to see almost all the young ones. I was also grateful to everyone being so kind and loving to me.
Hearing the young ones saying, I love you sounds so sweet and open, like an ordinary, glad to see you.
I guess I could have learned from them. If I had practiced saying instead of that noble old saying “to love is to serve. It might have helped a wee bit.
Then again, the older generation didn’t blurt out “I love you.” It just seems like we were too shy and backwards. This is all bologna. I do feel a bit dumb. They are all lovely and I wish we had seen more of them.
Every good thing should come to you.
Love to every one
Ma
My mother, always in the midst of an emotional tornado.
From Me to My Mom
To ease her pain because I was 3000 miles away:
Tears for you because you will always fight too and because you must watch us – stumble through journeys you have already made and you know you cannot help us and yet you are bound by some invisible magic and mystery that once made you our lifelines.
How else can I say it? Not in a male way, but in a female way. We must tap into our own way of being and bring our power to bear to win this fight. In order to do this, we must put away our all-forgiving nature and call a crime, a crime. We must stop giving in and allowing our own discomfort to be put aside.
We don’t need weapons to win this war, we are smarter than that. We don’t need male configurations for an argument, we are smarter than that also. Women have powerful tools at their disposal, tools that only need to be used to be effective.
Number one, women, we need each other. Going in to testify against a boss in a sexual harassment case, or a stranger in a rape case, is hard work. We need each other to gain the support to get this kind of work done.
Let’s face it! Our cultural training is a lie! No one is going to help us with this. Men are not going to allow the loss of their own advantage without a fight. This is where we women will have to be mean. I don’t say women need to be strong or tough, and I’ll tell you why: Women are the strongest and toughest humans I’ve met, they don’t need more of that. Women need to stop forgiving and stop changing perceptions to fit the white male power structure.
We can do this. We can do this by refusing to sign off on the lies that men in power try to perpetrate. Think about the Catholic church, is it over? Is it all okay now because the priests say so? Of course not! There is still hell to pay, and I mean that literally. The church must pay for the sins of their leaders, and they must pay well! At least as well as they themselves take for their own use.
Think about the half million rape kits that were never processed here in America. While a male TV producer reassures all of America’s women that rapists are caught by the SVU (Special Victims Unit). The facts don’t bear any of that TV story out. Not only are rapists not caught, in a half million cases, rapists are not even pursued. How did this happen? Women, are we asleep at the wheel, are we buying this rapist culture and (pardon the pun) lying down and taking it?
What is keeping us from stopping this pervasive abuse that lives in the American culture? We have not done enough to stop this from going on.
We can stop this power hungry, elitist, white male, rapist culture by seeing ourselves clearly and consciously. We must do this. We must stop this culture that disempowers us and tries to keep us down.
The first thing that we must do is to ban together. Any woman who is being attacked or hurt by men or by male institutions deserves the support of other women. We must do everything in our power to put women into power. We must count on each other to make predominately male institutions better and kinder for both men and women. We should be supporting each other in the here and now. We all (each and every one of us) knows what it is like to be pushed around by male power. So let’s defend each other, right here and right now.
We aren’t out to “get men”. That is not what this is about. We are out to take our own power back. We don’t have to punish our own family members to demonstrate our own power, we just have to tell the truth about what is happening at any point in time.
The last thing on the list is this: think long and hard about your decisions as it relates to your own power and to the power of other women. Don’t try to hurt other women who are smarter, prettier, luckier, kinder than you. Stand back and let them have their power. Think about your own power, do you give it away? Do you hand your power over on a silver platter? If you aren’t wired to be powerful, there is nothing wrong with that, just don’t take from others to justify yourself.
We have the power. Let’s do what needs to be done and turn this world into a kinder, gentler place. Let’s make sure that this new world is not threatened by destruction from our male counterparts. We can do this, we do have the power.
From my Dad’s Mom to my Mom
:
