BUSY IS NOT REALLY WHAT LIFE IS ALL ABOUT

The day is almost over. So what was today like? Overcast skies, dreary news on TV, and people everywhere I look just plain darn busy. Oh but busy is okay. Yeah, we need to be busy to put bread on the table, to send our children to school, to put clothes on our bodies, to buy things and stuff, to feel secure, to be important, to be respected, to achieve something, to reach for the stars.

The only problem I can see is -- they seem such a huge burden, like life is nothing but...

getting busy, doing busy, thinking busy, talking busy, dreaming busy, playing busy, praying busy.

Really. Is that all there is to life and living?? No joy?? You tell me.

A WORLD-ON-YOUR-SHOULDERS KIND OF DAY

Today is world-on-your-shoulders day. There’s problem to my left, and another to my right. Looking down a problem waits there for me too… and looking up a huge rock just waits to fall down on me hanging on a thread. So am stuck in the middle, can’t go anywhere.

Have you had that kind of day?

I guess every normal air breathing person goes through such a time. The feeling is like drowning with the waters up to your neck and rising. Or something like so dumbstruck and numb with anxiety and your feet feels glued to the ground; you’d like to run but your legs won’t cooperate.

Then you want to quit.

What -- Quit the world or living in it? Quit the thrill of facing a challenge? Quit the promise of a blessing at the end of the dark tunnel? Quit the opportunity and possibility for great achievement? Quit the potential to become a better person in winning over the struggle and strife? Quit knowing your GOD better? I can tick off dozens of reasons and things you would be losing by quitting.

Truth is, all that you need to do is…

Have faith. Believe in yourself. Believe on the ONE set of footprints on the sand when two of you are walking on it.

"Square your shoulders to the world… be not the kind to quit. It's not the load that weighs you down but the way you carry it." -Anonymous

PASS QUICKLY THROUGH YOUR TROUBLES

Problems, trials, difficulties, struggles, misfortunes, thorns or whatever else it is called but life surely has a good stack of them to keep us at our wit’s end. Whether they are gigantic or minute these problems can prick us where it can hurt us most -- And how we hurt! The thing is we can’t seem to get us out of there and I wonder why. Is it because being so overwhelmed by it we get dumbstruck and stuck to our shoes where we are? Or… because in our muddled up brains we can’t see anything beyond it? Or…that something got lost inside us and we don’t know how to get it back? Or…might it be that we have hang on doggedly to an idea that someone or something will come soon and pluck us out of our misery? To the latter I’ll say maybe and maybe not.

You do know that ‘life is what you make of it’, as a saying goes. So whether to welter in misery or get on the first plane out of there pronto, so to speak, is all up to you. The longer you stay in a situation where it can hurt you the harder it will hurt you – the harder it will harm you. And soon you will find yourself begin to lose the power to change. You certainly don’t want that, do you? -Because change and only change is your relief and deliverance from your perceived misery.

"Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us." -- Voltaire

DON’T STAND ON A SMALL HILL, GO UP THE MOUNTAIN FOR A BETTER VIEW

‘Do nothing-do something’ or ‘to act-not to act’ --- these are the two things which life will always unfold or present to us - A dilemma which we are made to wrestle with in our lifelong journey. A number of people would say that some concerns do not require earth shaking solutions, sometimes if you leave it alone it just goes away. Oh I don’t know about that, what I see is that when a problem is left alone it tends to fester, seethe, churn, simmer, then evolve or explode into something much bigger that may go out of hand. No matter what the proponents of the do-nothing-resolve would say… that isn’t always the case. It’s rather more of a person’s preference or adherence to his own comfort zones which hold him to take that stand. Still that will not excuse a person from taking a course of action to solve an issue or concern. Problems require solutions, everybody knows that.

Choose to do something, act on the issue – this is far more rewarding and enriching, sometimes life-saving. It does not matter if you can only do so much, nonetheless do it just the same. But if you decide to do nothing because you think there isn’t much you can do, junk that thought right now because it is much better to take those small steps forward ---if that’s gong to take you closer to your goal each time. Try to see it from another perspective, not always yours, and see the problem for what it may or truly could be. There must be something in there you might have missed or didn’t notice. Try to see it with attentive detachment or objectivity. If you are viewing it from a small hill, then go up a mountain to get a better view.

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little." -- Edmund Burke