One Tiny Spark

This morning I heard one of the most beautiful songs...lately I have felt so very lost in all the busyness of my life that it has left me feeling void and empty...I literally listened to this song ten times in a row...it's hard to explain a personal experience and the depth of emotion that comes with it, but what an amazing feeling I have this morning. All it takes is one tiny spark to start a fire and I feel that fire burning within my soul once more...I hope you enjoy this song as much as I did.

Old Man and a Fig Tree

An old man in ancient Israel was planting a fig tree, when a Roman general happened to pass by. The general says to the man, "Don't you realize it will take twenty years before that tree will grow enough to give fruit, and you will be long dead by then?" The old man responded, "When I was a small child, I could eat fruit because those who came before me had planted trees. Am I not obliged to do the same for the next generation?"

Pale Blue Dot

Earth as seen from Voyager 1 while on the edge of our solar system (approximately 3,762,136,324 miles from home).

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Embracing the Beauty of Sadness

I read a really cool article about "Embracing the Beauty of Sadness" and wanted to share with you all this very interesting perspective. I know that much of my creativity and inspiration has come from a place of sadness...here is what I read:

Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy. -Aristotle


We live in a society obsessed with happiness.

We’re constantly prodded with questions:
Are you happy?
Why not?
Why don’t you do something to make yourself happy?

Sadness is perceived as unnatural and malignant. We’re encouraged to do whatever it takes to stop feeling sad. Frequently this means using anti-depressant drugs or other substances to physically change our mood.

But what’s the hidden cost of eradicating sadness?

Author Eric G. Wilson provides a discussion of what we might be losing in his book, Against Happiness. Listen to this brief interview on NPR to get the gist.

Wilson argues that sadness isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it goes hand in hand with creative genius. Countless thinkers (Hemingway and Lincoln to name a couple) have been prone to bouts of extreme sadness. Sadness contributes to creative achievement as well as tragic demise. Would the world be better off if Hemingway had popped Prozac and lived to be 100?

I don’t know. And this isn’t meant to be an attack against anti-depressant medication or the people that need it. But what about the marginal people who experience the full spectrum of emotion?

Why are we so down on feeling down?

Next time you’re overcome by a melancholy mood, consider this:

What is the cause of your sadness? Often the answer to this question can be the realization you need to make a change. How does sadness allow you to appreciate the pain of others? Does sadness make the happy times feel happier? Does it not have it’s own beauty?

From Mark Twain's Autobiography (Published in 1924 fourteen years after his death)

"What a wee little part of a person's life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself. All day long, and every day, the mill of his brain is grinding, and his thoughts, not those other things, are his history. His acts and his words are merely the visible, thin crust of his world, with its scattered snow summits and its vacant wastes of water--and they are so trifling a part of his bulk! a mere skin enveloping it. The mass of him is hidden--it and its volcanic fires that toss and boil, and never rest, night nor day. These are his life, and they are not written, and cannot be written. Every day would make a whole book of eighty thousand words--three hundred and sixty-five books a year. Biographies are but the clothes and buttons of the man--the biography of the man himself cannot be written."

Will you let your dreams die?

Let me tell you about the bamboo tree:

1st Year - You plant a bamboo seedling and give it proper sunlight, water, nourishment and in the first year except for a tiny sprout, there is no growth.

2nd Year - During the second year you care for the bamboo in the same way. You give it constant attention, watering, sunlight and maybe you even throw in some praying, but still the bamboo does not grow. You were told it might take a while to grow, so you keep soldiering on.

3rd year - Another year goes by. You give the bamboo the same love and care. You keep giving it the best fertilizer, sunlight, water, but again much to your amazement, nothing happens. You start asking yourself, why isn’t this thing growing? It’s at this time many people just throw their hands up and give up, but no that’s not you. But how discouraging is it that you’ve waited patiently and cared for this bamboo only to have nothing happen?

4th Year - During the 4th year, you care for it, fertilize it, and give it proper sunlight. You take a look around the garden and realize that all the other plants are blooming and teeming with life and vibrancy. But your poor bamboo seed has nothing to show for. For four whole years, you’ve been patient and truly tried to help this seed grow. Except for a tiny sprout, your bamboo is no bigger than it was during the first year.

5th Year - It is not till sometime in the fifth year the bamboo tree will start to grow. And when it decides to grow, what happens in the next 4-6 weeks will astonish you. The tiny bamboo sprout you cared for will grow as much as 3 feet in a single day till it reaches as high as 90 feet. How can this be? While in the first through fourth years, the plant was not growing above ground, it was actually growing below ground. It was developing miles of its intricate root system which would eventually help propel its massive upward growth in year five. The bamboos’ intricate root structure takes four years to prepare itself for the growth it will experience in its 5th year.

So did the bamboo tree grow 90 feet in 6 weeks or in five years? I say it grew in 5 years because at anytime you would have stopped watering or cultivating the soil the bamboo would have died in the ground.

Will you allow yourself to kill your own dreams by wanting it right now? Will you let your circumstance tell you it's impossible? Will you let others tell you that you cannot do it? We must believe and trust and this will give us patience to see our dreams become reality!

Rise of the Phoenix

This has always been one of my favorite stories from Greek Mythology...

Rise of the Phoenix:

The Greek legend is that the Phoenix lived in Arabia, in a cool well. At dawn, each morning, it sang a beautiful song, so beautiful that Phoebus (Sun God) would stop his chariot to listen. The Phoenix is a unique bird, there may only exist one at a time, which makes it a solitary bird.
It does not reproduce, which adds to its loneliness, as only its death will bring on another of its race. When it feels its end approaching (between 500 and 1461 years, depending on the legend), it builds a nest with the finest aromatic woods, sets it on fire, and is consumed by his own flames. From the pile of ashes, a new Phoenix arises, young and powerful. It then embalms the ashes of its predecessor in an egg of myrrh, and flies to the city of the Sun, Heliopolis, where he deposits the egg on the altar of the Sun god.
Phoenix has always been considered the symbol for resurrection, of rising again, of rising from the ashes…

Quantum Mechanics

OK this is going to be really deep and probably boring to most but take a look and see what you think :) "We only see what we think is possible"

There is a story of the early Spanish explorers coming to the shores in their ships...Native American fisherman were out in their canoes and noticed the ripples from these great ships but were unable to see these ships. The shaman of the tribe was told about this and after several days of observing the coast he finally was able to see these ships. Once he told the people of his tribe about these ships they were able to see them as well...this describes what is known as "Perceptual Blindness" Lets test this theory...watch this video: Just because we have no concept of something does not mean it does not exist!