Archive for March, 2008

>     The best examples are always the ones from real life.
    This past weekend I had an opportunity to experience the importance of friendship and the influence of peer groups. It was an event that involved my daughter but the message provided transcends both age and gender.
    A many of you know from prior entries my daughter, Zoe, is 15 years old and goes to an affluent suburban high school in New Jersey. She’s a typical teenager who struggles with all the routine personal and social challenges of her age group. Fortunately, she is in the theater program at this very large school and so, for the most part, her friendships have been formed around this common interest. This helps for the children are creative by nature and share theater as a main focus of their school, and after-school, lives. It does not, however, guarantee anything about ethics, morals, or behavior.  As a general rule, those areas remain the ones of greatest challenge to parents.
    It’s around these issues of ethics, values and behavior that I witnessed something remarkable this past weekend.
    Zoe’s best friend is a neighbor, Emily, who is a year older than she. They met and became friends when we moved here 7 years ago. Both were in public school for these past years and Emily would have been a Sophomore at the same school as Zoe this year but for her decision to transfer to a religious day school. Emily’s decision was based upon her discomfort with the cliquishness and materialism of the girls at the public high school.  As a result of the transfer, Emily has become much more religious and attends services every Friday night and Saturday.
    This past Friday night, Emily’s family invited Zoe and I to join them for Sabbath dinner. It was a heartwarming evening and it was hard to miss Emily’s apparent ease with voluntarily assisting her Mother whenever she could. The next morning, Zoe went to services with Emily and some of the other girls in the neighborhood who also attend the religious day school. The girls stayed long after services were over to help the Rabbi’s wife serve lunch, clean-up and care the her 6(!) toddlers.
    Now here comes the lesson.
    Zoe, as I said, is a typical teenager. Everything I say is generally either flat-out ignored or just plain wrong because I “don’t get it.” Every chore she’s asked to do goes undone unless it’s under duress. However, after spending Friday night watching Emily help her Mom and Saturday with the girls assisting them in helping out the Rabbi’s wife in any way they could, Zoe was like a different child. On Saturday night she helped with dinner, cleaned up after the cats, helped clean up after dinner and voluntarily performed several other chores without being asked. She was also more affectionate than usual.
    This isn’t a fairy tale it’s real life so, no, Zoe’s changed behavior hasn’t lasted. But what’s important about it is that there’s no doubt that the influence of her peers was readily observable.  In this instance, it was an influence for the highest good. This is not always the case with children based upon their associations.
    It’s true that we don’t always have a say about who our kids hang out with… but it’s also true that we probably have more influence than we think. I can make a concerted effort to cultivate my association with the families of the girls Zoe hung out with and I can further make an effort to attend services more often.  I can, and did, praise her for her helpfulness.
    I have always tried to let Zoe know that I value my friends as priceless gifts from the Universe. I am also hopeful she sees that the values and behavior of the women I chose to befriend are consistent with my own.  In contrast, my soon-to-be-ex-husband has no friends, not a single one. As such, he has never had the benefit of the support system friendships can provide in helping us become the best we can be.
    This past weekend reminded me of the powerful influence that those around us have upon our own actions. While I’m not saying others absolutely define us, I am saying that we are all human and subject to the effects our environments and associations have upon us.
    The lesson is to know with certainty that it pays to be alert and aware of who we spend our time with and what we are both learning…and teaching…in the process.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”
    

>Some people like to call them coincidences. I prefer the word synchronicity. Not only is it more poetic sounding but to me synchronicity implies an intention, or order, that coincidence lacks.  A coincidence is a lucky, random act. In my world there are no random acts. Everything has a purpose. Hence, synchronicity. 
    Now, to what occurrences am I referring? These would be an e-mail I received and a request by my 15-year-old daughter which, yesterday, both occurred within hours of each other.
    The e-mail was a notice that a blog Carnival to which I sometimes submit is having an upcoming “theme” carnival based upon “a revolution of one.”  The request by my daughter was that I write a blog completely about her. And so, this is it.
    This is a blog about how one person changed my life and how, someday, if she sets her mind to it, she will probably change the world.
    I was single until I was 43. We adopted our daughter from China when I was 45. Up until that time, I had been practicing Family Law and thought I knew what having children was all about. Last laugh was on me. There is, of course, no way of knowing what it’s like to raise a child until you actually do it.  But this is not a blog about child rearing.
    It’s a blog about Zoe.
    Zoe is creative and bright and willful and lazy and challenging and she can put me over the edge in a heartbeat. But here’s the thing. Her presence demands of me that I be vigilant around my integrity and diligent in my spiritual growth because they’re the things I ask of her. There’s no room for me to ambiguous or hypocritical because her eyes are the mirror that reflect back to me exactly how my Soul is faring on this path called Life.
    Perhaps many parents feel this way about their child and I’m just making more of it because this one is mine. But there’s another quality Zoe has that I believe sets her apart and it’s that very quality that is the reason she will make that difference in the world I mentioned.
    Zoe feels for the suffering of others.
    Ever since she was a small child, she has wanted to give away her money or things to street people or someone in need. She was no more than 8 or 9 when she drew an elaborate and welcoming residence where she said she would someday “provide free, temporary housing for families who had lost their home or were down on their luck and needed some time and a place to get it together again.” She has always been the first one at school to reach out to the hurt or ostracized child.
    Zoe has a winning combination, I believe. She has empathy and a Will that doesn’t quit. When she combines those two with her innate creativity there can be little that will deter her. I often think of the Barry Manilow song, “One Voice” and how it speaks to the contagious power of One.  I think Zoe has that “inner voice” and the world awaits it’s call.
    So, you’ve just read the result of synchronicity. It’s my entry to the theme blog Carnival of “a revolution of one” and it’s also my gift to Zoe.

REMEMBER to click hereto download my FREE e-book “Too Many Secrets.”
    

>      At one time or another, most people have something they would like to say to someone who is famous…if only they had the opportunity. I had such an experience this morning. If I could speak with Hilary Clinton I’d tell her that when you “misspeak” you say things like “proceed” when you mean to say “precede”… you don’t say you ducked enemy sniper fire when you didn’t. That’s not a misspeak. It’s a lie. So is saying “I didn’t have sexual relations with that woman” and “it depends on what is is.” These are also lies. They are not misspeaks.
    Perhaps in the case of Hilary and Bill it’s like the old joke that goes something like this: An elderly husband and wife are sitting in a restaurant. When the meal arrives, the husband turns to the wife and says, “Which one of us doesn’t like the broccoli?” When couples have been together for a long period of time they often take on the characteristics, and habits, of the other. Sort of like those people you occasionally see who eerily look like their dog.
    It’s not necessarily a bad thing to mirror, or echo, someone with whom you have a history. However, I think the goal should be to reflect the best of who they are and what they are capable of rather than the worst. That’s a basic tenet of Life 101.
    And yet, there is a deeper and more troubling aspect to the Clinton’s propensity to bend (and sometimes mutilate) the truth in order to suit their end. It’s the fact that so many of us do it every day… which is why we have allowed the Clinton’s (and others) to get passes on accountability. Deep down inside, not only do we know they are lying, we know that we are lying as well. To judge them would mean to turn the bright light of truth around upon ourselves. Not a pretty prospect.
    I am, admittedly, a little irrational on this issue. I have a passion for honesty, born out of a childhood where family members routinely played with the truth and I spent more than a few good years trying to do the same. Fortunately, as a result, I learned rather early on that whatever the outcome, lying is never worth paying the price of diminished self-esteem…the natural outgrowth of willfully failing to tell the truth.
    The truth is also easier. Maybe not in the short run, for it can surely sting. But if it does, there must be an open wound somewhere and I’d rather cauterize it with the truth than cover it up with a lie…allowing it to fester into something much more deadly and significantly harder to heal. In that long run, there are no connivances or elaborate scenarios to remember with the truth. It simply “is.”
    Which brings us back to Bill and Hilary. He parsed what “is” meant and she is trying to parse what “misspeak” means. For my part, Noah Webster set it right a long time ago and nothing has changed since. “Is” is the present tense of the verb “to be.”  In a nutshell, therefore, either you are or you aren’t. “Misspeak” is pronouncing or speaking incorrectly. It’s about form, not substance. When the substance is knowingly in error, its a flat-out lie.
    If Hilary doesn’t know and can’t recall that she calmly walked off that plane in Kosovo rather than ” run with her head down to avoid sniper fire”…well, she’s not competent to be (verb intransitive) President of the United States.
    As for the rest of us, let’s just be honest with ourselves…and, oh yes, each other.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book “Too Many Secrets.”
    
    

>     In July 2007 I wrote a piece about J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter Series, concluding that I thought her personal story was perhaps even more important than Harry’s. Now, eight months later, with the recent disclosure that she contemplated suicide prior to writing the series, I’m convinced I was right.
   While truth may not always be stranger than fiction…it’s almost always more inspiring.
   What Rowling’s disclosure does is bring to light, and out of the shadows, the emotional struggle so many people go through when Life seems to “pile on” a seemingly never-ending set of adverse circumstances.  Further, and perhaps more importantly, is the awareness that without an outlet for creativity, blocked energy can fester and create a toxic internal environment.  Rowling didn’t really want to die, but she had a bundle of external adversity coupled with a bundle of blocked creativity. The combination is deadly…a recipe for dis-ease. 
    It’s important to be aware that while we usually think of dis-ease as being of the body, it can most certainly be of the mind as well.  Rowling was so “dis-at-ease” that thoughts of death were perceived by her to be a viable option in ending her dis-comfort.  Of course, hers was a mis-perception.
    Matter, energy, is neither created nor destroyed only redistributed.  Thank you, Albert.  I won’t go too far out on a limb here and get into what would have happened to Rowling’s dis-ease and her as-yet-unexpressed-creativity had she actually followed through with thoughts of suicide. Suffice it to say that once she opened the channel to her creative energy and allowed it to freely flow, not only did she move beyond thoughts of suicide but also created for herself unimaginable wealth that alleviated all of that external adversity she had been experiencing as well.
    A miracle healing, one might say, on many levels!
    What I take away from the real life story of J.K Rowling is this:

    1.  If you give in and give up, success may have been but a day away.
    2.  Creativity is the elixir of Life. Without it you can die of starvation.
    3.  External conditions are the manifestation of internal conditions.
    4.  Satisfaction originates within and moves outward, not the other way around.

     I have read that Rowling carried the character of Harry around in her head for years before she began writing the first book. It was her divorce, desperate financial circumstances and need to care for her daughter that finally came together to bring enough pressure to bear upon her that she needed a release of some sort. Turned out to be the release of Harry. Not the release of death.
    Which goes to prove one more important point.
    Life is always about choice. It’s not what happens to you, after all.
    It really is about how you handle it.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “Too Many Secrets.”

>   It’s not like me to have been “absent” from my blog all week (my last entry was on Monday) but Life kind of got in the way. I think there’s a message or two in the cause of my absence… so here goes.
    I practiced law for 13 years and about 6 years ago my husband, daughter and I moved to New Jersey. I had been licensed in Pennsylvania, where we previously lived, so I couldn’t practice in New Jersey if I had wanted to…and I didn’t.  In fact, for health reasons, I had decided to leave law about a year before we moved.  Since moving to New Jersey, I’ve been on the lookout for a new career.  Problem is that law doesn’t really translate all that well into other professions and it’s been a long, uphill effort. I even entered into two new businesses during that time but they didn’t pan out, either.  My search has never stopped and lately it needed to intensify.
    My husband and I are getting divorced and I must find a way to provide for our daughter and myself going forward.  So, I decided to get a real estate license and go into commercial real estate.  In New Jersey, there is a requisite 75-hour, two week course that ends in an exam. If you pass it, you’re eligible to sit for the State exam that, if passed, gets you your real estate sales license.
    That’s what I’ve been doing for the past two weeks…taking the course. There’s so much to learn in such a short period of time that this week it became overwhelming and I had to bow out of my usual daily blog entry.  I simply had neither time nor energy to write.
    Now, why bore you with this personal saga? Well, because there’s a higher and important message in all of this.
    We think we know the limits of what we can successfully manage and, particularly, what we can emotionally handle.  But Life has a way of intervening at times and giving us the opportunity to stretch our boundaries and surprise even ourselves. Such is my current experience.
    My husband and I are living in the same house during separation and to say “it’s not been easy” is an understatement. So here I am in my 50’s with a history of Fibromyalgia, a stress-related disease, going through a divorce with a less-than-supportive-soon-to-be-ex-husband,  financially challenged, with a teenage daughter, while I attempt to focus on and learn an entirely new field so I can get licensed and build a career.
    What’s my point?
    Well, people who know my situation say they can’t imagine how I am getting through it all. But the point is… I am getting through it all.  Not only am I getting through it, but I’m being given the opportunity to apply the principles I write about such as positive thought, creating your own reality, believing in yourself and your ability to grow beyond externally imposed limitations.
    I can’t say I’m “happy” about what I am going through.  But on some level I actually am joyful to know that Life really doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle. I’m also growing stronger and wiser with each day that I fully embrace the Now of it all and meet these challenges with an eye toward what it is I want to create going forward.
    So the message I would leave you with is that there are no accidents or conspiracies to do us in. There are simply experiences filled with the potential of bringing us ever more present into ourselves and discovering not only Who We Really Are but What We Are Really Capable Of Creating.
    Oh yes. And before I forget…I haven’t been alone. The Source of All That Is has never left my side.
    Now there’s a joy I can hardly describe.

P.S. REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book “Too Many Secrets.”

>     The students in Tibet are rioting due to the repressive Chinese regime that seems to be all out determined to commit cultural and religious genocide upon the Tibetan people and the apparent ineffectiveness of the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile and his pacifist approach.  As a result of the growing chaos, the Dalai Lama is threatening to resign as the head of that government-in-exile, although he has no such option as spiritual head of Buddhism.
    Thank heaven (no pun intended) for that minor technicality. Really!
    Have you ever seen that man smile? He has a priceless joy and innocence that I would pay good currency (and probably a bit more) to be able to live on a daily basis. It’s not naiveté, either. It’s the unfettered, and as yet untainted, innocence of children, before all the rest of us impose the “cant’s” and “dont’s” and “impossibles” of limited belief systems. It’s where we all were at one time…only he’s figured out the way back.    
    The world would do well to study at those feet for awhile.
    Instead, his government-in-exile goes unrecognized by every other government in the world, as does the censoring of Chinese internet access to any stories that shed the light of truth upon Chinese oppression of the Tibetan population. It’s not a surprise, really. The world is usually slow to respond to oppressive regimes where economic issues compound the matter and profit is at stake when standing tall for what is right.
    I think we’ve come far enough that we as citizens of this democracy should demand of our leaders that we do, in fact, recognize the man, the government-in-exile, and the indefensibly inhumane actions of the Chinese government.  And yes, that’s going to have economic consequences and who knows what other consequences as well.
    But here’s the thing.
    History, our history, is replete with examples of how we as a nation turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to efforts by other nations to annihilate a group of people for what they believed in and each of those historical events is a blight upon who we are. Plus, our delay in standing tall, in those instances when we ultimately chose to, simply cost the loss of so many innocent lives and then our fair share of our own. You’d think we’d have figured it out by now that it’s not about the money and it’s not about the oil. It’s always about making choices for the highest good of all concerned.
    So, here’s this amazing, peaceful man with this amazing heart-warming demeanor who makes you feel good and hopeful just to be around him. So turning a blind eye or deaf ear isn’t going to work on this one because he just has to show up and his energy positively changes the room whether you can see him.. or hear him.. or not.
    I suspect this was true of all the great spiritual leaders in history and always will be he case. Perhaps we can get ahead of the curve on this one and not have to stand by while he’s crucified or stoned or incarcerated or tortured. He is, after all, human and such things will hurt him as well as us.
    And although we’d be the worse off if such things happened, I suspect he’d never lose that smile or that childlike innocence.
    After all, he holds authentic power and if there is a secret, he knows it.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “TOO MANY SECRETS”

>    No, it’s not a misspelled word. I meant “Bear” not “bear.” You see, it’s about the news that JP Morgan is acquiring Bear Stearns, the Wall Street Investment firm that seems to be in financial difficulty.  Now this “breaking news” is supposed to feed the fear that the economy is in trouble and we should all worry about our financial security. And that’s certainly one scenario. But allow me to pose another.
    It’s a good time for my caterpillar-butterfly analogy. Every time a butterfly is born, a caterpillar must die.  This fact isn’t inherently good or bad, it’s just a fact.  Well, some might say it’s only bad if you’re the caterpillar…but even in reply to that I would say, not necessarily. Whether it’s you, me or the caterpillar, we are all born with a purpose and our work here doesn’t last forever.  Hopefully, it’s the fulfillment of that purpose that is somehow tied to the completion of our time on earth. If you believe, as I do, that everything that occurs has purpose and is, ultimately, for the highest good of all concerned then whether it’s death or a Wall Street acquisition, things change for the better. While “better” is not necessarily always immediately visible or knowable…a little faith goes a long way in dispelling the fear of change.
     Bear Stearns is a symptom not a fatal diagnosis of the economy and all of Life as we know it.  It’s a symptom that another of the systems and institutional ways of doing “business as usual” isn’t serving us anymore.  So, good.  Let’s get on with it and find out what will serve us better.  We have a choice around this news.  We can feed the fear and panic or we can say to ourselves, “Time for a change. Let me keep a look out for the butterfly. I know it’s coming as certainly as is the sunrise.”
    Sometimes, when I share thoughts such as these I can almost hear some (or several) readers thinking, “What a Pollyanna! Is she living in the real world?”  Well, I’m neither a Pollyanna nor am I delusional.  But I can tell you that they are absolutely correct to ask if I’m living in the real world. The answer is Yes, I am living in it…but not of it.  Meaning that I am learning how to accept the totality of it all while at the same time learning how to Be within it and in relation to it without becoming it.  It’s sort of like being able to discern what you do (as in your work) from who you are (as a uniquely created aspect of God).  I used to be lawyer and I thought that’s who I was. So when I stopped practicing law, I temporarily lost my identity. Fortunately, when I went in search of it, I found that identity inside myself and it had no resemblance to the lawyer I thought I was.
    Similarly, when we can watch the events of the material world unfold around us and not think that the quality of our inner lives will be determined by them, we awaken to the realization that we ARE the butterfly.
    It doesn’t get much more beautiful than that.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book, “TOO MANY SECRETS.”

face=”Times New Roman” size=”3″>     face=”Times New Roman” size=”3″>  Let me disclose from the outset that this is about two separate issues. One is how manipulated we are by the media. The other is about the inevitable effects of hatred. While these seem unrelated at first glance, my thoughts on both are the result of one single news story I listened to this morning.
    A little background music, please.
    I had to leave home very early today. Usually, I check out the headlines on the computer before I do but today there was no time. So my information about the latest news was obtained from my car radio.  Over a three hour period I had listened to three separate radio talk show hosts and the focus of each was whether or not Barack Obama needed to seriously distance himself from his minister, Jeremiah Wright, a very vocal and seemingly racist voice from the Chicago community. Apparently, some breaking news story was focused around Minister Wright’s angry delivery to his congregation on the failings, and prophesied “damned” future, of the United States. And although each of the hosts played excerpts of the Minister angrily delivering his opinion, I looked forward to getting back to my computer to read the story for myself.
    The problem arose when I returned home and logged on. I couldn’t find the story. In fact, I couldn’t find any indication in today’s news why this story was such a hot topic for talk radio. The contrast was a stunning example of how we are manipulated by not only how we get our news, but also which news we actually get. I bet if you had been a mouse at the water cooler in any business where the employees had listened to talk radio on their way into work, Barack Obama and Minister Wright would have been the hot topic. To the contrary, same water cooler… different company with employees who only saw CNN or MSNBC on their computer or Blackberry screens on their way in…well, you get the picture.
    The moral: Think for yourself. Refuse to be manipulated by a select group of people whose political affiliation or agenda spoon feeds you only what they want you to know in order to control you and get from you the reaction they desire.
    The second issue is Minister Wright’s delivery. While the substance of what he had to say may have some merit, the delivery was so filled with anger and blame that the ultimate outcome of his rage can only be more anger and more hatred. I am reminded of an entry I once wrote shortly after the Reverend Jerry Falwell died contrasting his spiritual message with that of Dr. Martin Luther King.  Reverend Falwell had a person or group to blame for every evil…a scapegoat if you will…while Dr. King was about the potential for good in all of us and the need to override lesser instincts for the highest good of all.
    Minister Wright could learn much from that contrast.
    Thousands of years of war have gotten us nothing but more war.  It’s the same with  hate speech. While it may temporarily satisfy a need making someone, or some group, accountable for past injustices…in the long run it just sets up someone else somewhere who, as the object of that hate-filled accountability, eventually feels the need to vent their oppression on some new group down the road.
    And the cycle never ends.
    If Minister Wright wants to be the very public voice of the Black community in America, not to mention the spiritual mentor of possibly the next President of the United States, he would do well to temper the delivery of his grievances with a higher and more effective tone. Such a tone is founded, and grounded, in the knowing that spiritually, only a loving heart heals, and only Love trumps hatred.
    Just as it’s the Light that banishes darkness, not more darkness, so is it that only a loving intent is able to find it’s way into a hardened heart.

REMEMBER to click here to download my FREE e-book “TOO MANY SECRETS.”
   

>As a former practicing lawyer, I have fielded my share of “shark” jokes as well as deeply felt disappointment and disgrace at the sometimes behavior of my professional colleagues.  Such are my feelings yesterday and today regarding now ex-Governor Elliot Spitzer. It isn’t the sexual misconduct. That’s between he and his wife. It isn’t even his violation of the laws against prostitution, although that is the reason he had to resign…and should have.
    What’s most distressing is the message his behavior gives others, particularly the youth, about the need to live in accordance with the law. Whether or not the sociological basis for a law is valid, until such time as society, through either legislation or judicial action, decides to change it… we as citizens are bound to obey it. Nowhere is that obligation more vital than for officers of the Court or public officials whose very careers are predicated upon the upholding and monitoring of that obligation. When such people willfully, and with disregard for the fundamental ethical underpinnings of their positions, violate the law they act as a kind of perverse role model for the least of what we are capable of.
     So much moral and ethical damage occurred during the Clinton Administration when the President of the United States not only abused the influence and power of his position but also knowingly violated the law he was sworn to uphold as he intentionally lied under oath.  There was the highest official of the land sending a message that the law was no more than an inconvenience on the way to satisfaction of personal goals and, what’s more, something to manipulated for personal gain.
     I am saddened by Mr. Spitzer’s choice to violate the law..not so much for him as for the message it sent. However, I am heartened by the public uproar that has led to his resignation. At least the end result (for the time being) is a consequence proportionate to the behavior. This is an important message not to be missed.
     As we live through challenging times where changes are so rapid we hardly have a chance to adapt when the next one arrives…I think the overriding message from all of this is that Elliot Spitzer has now experienced what many others have and many more will.  We are living through a time of heightened transparency when efforts to deceive oneself and others will not stand. There are no more “secrets” whose disclosure would undermine the highest good for all concerned that can, or will, remain concealed. It would behoove each of us in our own lives, not to mention those with a more public persona, to heed this aspect and consequence of conscious evolution.
     Secrets are more easily kept among those who prefer to remain “unconscious” to the limitations, and ramifications, of deceit. While such people still exist, they will go the way of the dinosaur as humankind moves closer and closer to co-creating a world that more authentically mirrors our highest potential. That potential is to live with shadows without living in them.
     Elliot Spitzer got caught in the shadows.
     He has provided us with an important teaching.

P.S. Remember to download my FREE e-book, “TOO MANY SECRETS.”

>     There are times when I think Life is either less than subtle or having a good chuckle at the way in which it “conspires” to teach us vital lessons. Recently, I have come up against one of those times and the lesson seems to be about learning the distinction between compromise and harmony.
    I have come to realize how very different these two concepts are and how often we mistakenly seek compromise when it’s harmony that would provide the highest good for all concerned. The reason I marvel at Life’s occasionally “heavy hand” is because within the past few days I have been given the opportunity to really understand the nuances between these two.
    Going through divorce, I am naturally inclined to try and figure out where my husband and I went off track in trying to successfully build a lasting relationship between two people who undoubtedly love one another. As I was working on this very understanding, our daughter is appearing in the high school play, King and I. For those of you unfamiliar with the play, the overriding message is about two people from two different cultures who clash head on in an effort to reach their respective goals. Both are strong-willed and both disinclined to compromise. In the end, their successes arise out of the places where they are able to meet…the places where each is able to
both get what they want as well as honor what the other wants as well.
    It’s all about allowing and respecting differences. Not tolerating them, but allowing and honoring them.
    The cast at the high school is remarkably talented. This, however, is not their most outstanding attribute. They are a diverse group of children from various ethnic and racial backgrounds as equally diverse in their economic standings. However, they have an astonishing spirit of “oneness” that is the basis for their successful cooperation and harmony. They accept and honor their diversity, rather than seeing it as an obstacle. In fact, they are adept at both “give” and “take” in their personal relationships with one another as well as within the confines of the production of the theater department.
    As the curtain call was taking place, and the diversity of the cast particularly evident, my friend who had accompanied me to the play leaned over to me and said, “Isn’t it amazing how they are so different yet create something so harmonious.”
    So, there it is. It’s my lesson for my marriage but also a lesson for Life, in general.     When we compromise, it usually involves a “giving up” or a “giving in” of something we value. And compromise usually done with anything from mild discomfort to outright resentment…from which we rarely recover. A stable and loving future is unlikely built upon such a weak foundation. However, when we seek out where we and another can meet…where we harmonize…where what we each seek is both recognized and honored by the other, then the foundation is built upon honor and acceptance.
    Such foundations are strong and able to withstand the blustery winds of relationship that inevitably come around.
    Compromise breeds discord. Honoring and acceptance breed harmony.
    I suspect that Life will now move on and get it’s chuckles elsewhere… conspiring to teach me something else.
    I’ve got this one.

>P.S.   Remember to click here to download my FREE e-book “TOO MANY SECRETS”