“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” - Robert Kennedy
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“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” - Barack Obama
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.” - Henry Ford
Gosh, my inbox is full of great stuff:
“…We must seek happiness in the right state of mind, in labors, duties, and pleasure of life, and then we shall find what we seek. Yet we may find it under very different circumstances from what we expected. We may look for it in one direction but find it in another, and sometimes where we expect the least we my find the most and where we look the most, find the least. A great deal of the miseries of life come from this disposition to have our own way about everything. Circumstances are not half so essential to our happiness as we think…We must seek happiness, not by way of impulse, not seeking selfishly, our own good, but with a forgetfulness of self, doing all the good we can do.”
I met with a good friend/mentor today for a marathon session about what-ails-Ashley. The economy came up as it relates to professional next steps. He asked me what I was afraid of. I said, among other things, “security.” He responded by quoting Helen Keller:
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature…. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
I was downstairs yesterday in the LVAA gallery prepping for a group of girls from Maryhurst who were coming to see the Rob Shetterly Americans Who Tell the Truth exhibit. I was working my way through Shetterly’s paintings, reading each bio so that I could intelligently speak to the girls, when the painting above of Rev Cecil Williams deflated my latest gripe like a popped balloon.
The pace of 08 and overwhelming volume of its rapid fire events has stressed me out a bit, but the quote in this painting put it in perspective,
“Death isn’t the greatest thing to be feared for it homogenizes everyone, makes us all equally dead.
Most folks are afraid of living because abundant life requires risking everything to love, liberate, and accept yourself and others now. People are afraid of life for it creates diversity and requires commitment to action. To live is to struggle.”
Right on! So what if my stress is shaving years off my life like a smoking habit? I’ll die at the end of one hell of an accomplished existence that will leave those who played it safe wondering, “What was I waiting for?”
A friend emailed this to me after I finally got “Mission Happiness” out of my head and live on the web:
For those who ponder and wonder and wrestle with the idea of what it is they really want, I have an answer that each would wholeheartedly agree with: “HAPPINESS.”
And for those who ponder and wonder and wrestle with exactly what will bring them true happiness, I have an answer that each would wholeheartedly disagree with: “Just do something, do anything, as soon as possible, and do it with care.”
And I’d add, “Trust me.”
Tallyho,
The Universe
The universe must be stalking me. Get your own ideas!