Two Things Needed to Solve a Problem

Have you ever been in a situation where two minds clash? Often there is something not visible that determines our will and thoughts. Something is triggered within that makes us stand-up to attention and balk.

Our attitudes about what we are capable of, can lead to conflict and confusion unless we can see the picture in the same light. For instance: Standing in the Smithsonian museum looking at a beautiful Modigliani.

Are we on the same page?

Do we want the same results?

Are we willing to have open minds and be willing to be flexible to work with others?

Are we willing to be on the right path, do the right thing, and move forward?

Stuck On It?

Is it the way you speak, or the way you share?

Is it the way you carry yourself and share with others?

Is it the intensity you put on life’s issues?

Everything we do requires an energy that comes from within. Why is it so difficult for people to fully understand us and the meaning we’re trying to get across? Can you figure it out?

Wholeness

When you look from within out, what do you see? How do you feel? And what do you sense? Is it an accepting, loving energy which nurtures you and makes you feel full and complete inside, like the warm rays of the sun soothing and healing your wounds?

Or is it an intense, powerful, kinetic motion within, which prevents your sores from ever truly healing? Do you struggle on all levels to prevent that process from beginning?

How do you effectively reach for that calm?

It takes a bold, brave person to look oneself in the mirror and exam themselves. It takes an even more courageous heart to take careful and deliberate account of one’s life to bring peace and harmony to one’s body, mind, and soul. So be gentle. Do it easy, and wrap your arms around yourself; finding that healthy, sound, state of being; which is the beginning of the healing process.

Incremental Changes

Incremental Change

How many of my readers have tip toed through the hot sand, until you reach the shore line. Once there, the child within comes alive. You play tag with the ebb and flow, and gallop in pure gaiety and delight. All your troubles and worries seem to slip away with the warmth of the summer sun glowing down upon your solar plexus, while the capri water washes them away.

Or did they? It’s effortless to think this may be so. But in all actuality you have temporarily suppressed the thing you ought to have faced the most. It’s easy to wish, and hope your most burdensome problem away. If for only a moment or a day-

Unfortunately this is unlikely to happen until something within tips the scale. You reach that point, and suddenly everything is clear. You know instinctively what to do. You know how to stop doing or acting on what didn’t work. You know what your next step and action will be. It is significant. You then know within yourself how to move forward, get the help you need, and what action you ought to take.

In retrospect, have you given any thought to where you would be today if you hadn’t fallen, picked yourself up and tried, tried again? Where would you be emotionally or spiritually if you never failed in your prior attempts? How has your character changed, and what have you learned in the process? It almost always is a reoccurring, repetitive, rhythmic, cycle of a person’s growth process to finally succeed.

Are you grateful for what you have gone through? And acquired the knowledge you experienced? It is a difficult process for all, even me! Where would we be if we hadn’t endured or tried?

How Does the Disability Community Fit In?

For the last few day’s I have been thinking, mulling over, and contemplating ideas about what I should write next for the issue of this magazine. Then I talked with one of my disabled colleagues and discussed the kind of active activity programs going on in our community. We deliberated, and truly came up with nothing.

Sad to say, but when I did an on-line search, in Torrance, California, nothing came up at all. All the daily activity programs and schedules, I found in the greater Los Angeles area, and South Bay, are designed specifically for people without disabilities. This idea is distressing because a large number of our population gets unnoticed and forgotten. It’s as if we did not get recognized at all.

Hence, then, let me ask you; what kind of visible, direct, public notifications do you receive about group programs, daily activity plans, or special events going on in your community that are geared especially for the disabled? Do you get a written notice of sort informing and notifying you of new or on-going activities online or through your local newspapers? Could you tell me at the drop of a hat? Could you go online, find some kind of activity you wanted to do with a friend, and do it?

Sorrowfully, that often is not possible. Because we are not recognized and acknowledge the way the politicians and law makers say that we are. Activities are usually designed for sub-groups within the community, mainly and primarily for the mentally challenged, but nothing for the Cerebral Palsy person. We are a people, nation, all unto ourselves.

That is why it is so vitally important to speak up and out in the community you live in, so that your voice, wishes, and issues should be heard. Otherwise, they go hidden, ignored, and unnoticed. It also provides a forum for the development of our individual talents.

I ask you in all honesty, because twelve years ago I went to my local community center wanting to teach adaptive aerobics. I had not only the experience and qualifications, but talents in developing recreation programs and dance and could bring creative programs to the city. However, my offer was passed-over, and patronized by not truthfully being considered. I was denied in the subtlest of ways.

The lack of these programs, or the awareness of these such programs; bring little solace, relief, or comfort from the community to help build and create, and tell us about quality programs that would benefit us all.

What a waste this is for both us, and the larger community. Having such visible programs would help build stronger lives. Having these visible programs would give us more to do. And, having such visibility would give us a greater stake in our community and being productive citizens.

Time Hasn’t Changed a Thing

What is balance? In the Oxford dictionary, balance as early as 5000 BC., is defined as an exquisitely precise measuring of making things equal. Is it innate or is it what others say it will be? Have people tried to extinguish your candle and bribe you in threatening ways because what you were saying was right from the get go.

In the course of looking at this word many ideas have crossed my mind. What do you feel it is? The very purpose of balance is to strike a balance. But what if we know what our balance is, and others, like in the 1989 movie; “The Heart of Dixie” is threatened by our balance. We look for balance out side of ourselves because we have trouble believing our own inner core. So we seek others and their advice. When it doesn’t match up to ours, we look to others still again, put emphasis on social media and turn to people who will damper, divulge, and seek an edge above us. How do we stay at peace and calm when we don’t have a support system and network holding us up? What do we do then? Do we stay on the merry-go-round or do we get off?

What is the irony for you? Are you secure with your thoughts? Are you selfish like the dean in the college in the movie? Or, are you selfless, care about justice, other people, and the human heart, like Maggie DeLoach did with the African American student? The times change, the issues change as well, but the principal always remains the same.

How much are we each willing to contribute to uphold balance for all?

Conscious Mindfulness

In the mist of your daily routine, what are your thoughts? What are your intentions? How do you treat others and come across? Do you treat others with the same carefulness or attentiveness as you would a wounded bird whose wing is broken? Do you mindfully treat them with kindness? Or do you treat them like an alligator waiting to snap at the first gazelle that you see? Do you speak with a biting tongue? And growl at people because of your wounded dreams, thoughts, and ideas? Do you make other people plead for their existence because you are inflexible, unyielding, and uncompassionate?

Let’s mindfully think about our true nature for a minute. No one is judging, but us. We can either use it as a tool to make us more gentle and good-hearted, understanding and compassionate, or we can beat ourselves up and bring out all our worst characteristics. We can beat others up for our inability to like and accept ourselves, we can waste our own precious energy and time by being cruel, or, we can belittle, insult, minimize those because we can’t look and change ourselves.

Which do you choose today?

How Do You Show Care and Concern

John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” writes about a family in the great depression who loses everything and heads west to California. On their journey, they meet many people like themselves. It was hard times for everyone; just like it is for many today. The difference being, that those generations helped one other. They helped each other emotionally. They helped each other mentally, and they helped each other to have food in their stomachs. People who had a little extra would go out of their way to help.

The definition of caring in Webster’s Dictionary means: kind, showing care and concern, looking out for and being fond of.

What makes you want to give of yourself? What moves you to be concerned? What compels you to do something nice for another human being? What makes you look out for a person who sincerely needs help? What makes you dig deep down inside to sweeten another person’s life palette from hardship?

It’s so easy not to care now a day, conversely, it is also easy to impose an arbitrary idea on someone else. The essence is figuring out how to truly care from within, out, and to not only assist others in a way that an individual wants and needs, but to genuinely and sincerely mean it.

Humor and Warmth

To quote Maya Angelou:”we must have humor in our lives, and warmth and giving.” How do you see warmth and giving in your life? Is it visually pretty? Do vibrant colors come to your mind eye? Does a warm feeling take over your breath and body like the ebb and flow of a beautiful ocean wave? Do healing thoughts come to your being?

Miss Maya, as I affectingly call her to myself, is one of my most favorite poets and authors. I find myself in contemplation from her words; thinking and meditation, digesting and absorbing what these words actually mean. One by one I swallow and suck up the out-reach hand these words have to offer.

Do you reach out in the same way as I? Grabbing hold of the good these words have to give us. Do you spread light and joy from these words? Or, do you react in the opposite? Do you tense up? Do you get anxious when these words are spoken? Why, then, do these words turn into a hot flame of anger? Why do they upset you?

I have thought about the meaning of words and how they affect me and others. Why they take on the shape they do, and why words that are positive to one person can be so negative, daunting and upsetting to another. What is it for you? Have you found the warmth, humor, and giving within your life, today?

What is Your Voice Saying

What does your voice sound like? Is it calm and inviting like Pavarotti the opera singer? Does it engage people? Does it work in your favor by having a positive energy force? Do you bring this positive nature forward to carry out the work you wish to do? Do you work well with others? Are you a team leader, have innovative ideas and do well under pressure? Is your attitude uplifting, cooperative, and willing to compromise?

Or does it irritate, offend, and insult like a hawk and its warlike aggressive behavior? Would you say you come across whining, blaming others, and always having to be right? Additionally, do you come across in a doom or gloomful kind of manner? Can you handle corrective citizen by just listening- Can you take what others have to say? Are you willing to take the necessary steps and action to grow from your lessons just learnt? What is your energy level like? Are you tired before you even get started in the morning? Did you stay up all night listening to your voice in your head? Did it keep going on and on complaining about what this person said and didn’t say?

Does your voice work for you? Is it a useful tool to help you get ahead? Or, does it extinguish your light and what you stand for? Do you fight to forge forward in your life’s’ endeavors? Or are you wasting your precious time and others’? Does it affect your productivity and the way you move forward in the universe? Is it an effective tool or one that hinders? Better yet, does it drain peoples’ energy?

If your voice does any of the above, you are not alone. You have a chance every day to work on yourself to become a better person. To gain the qualities you truly posses-

No one said it was going to be easy. But if you work on it a day at a time, and take the necessary steps one must to change, you will be so happy. You will feel so content within. You will have mastered the yin and yang of your true self.