PEOPLE-WATCHING AT STARBUCKS

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My daughters and I love spending time at our 'adopted' HQ (headquarters at the mall -- Starbucks, but of course! There's a history in it and I think I have written about it before in previous posts. And that history lives on in the hearts of my family.
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Well, the one thing that I love doing .. aside from my green tea frappuccino and corned beef sandwich, playing games on my phone, reading or writing ... is people-watching.
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We know that looking at a landscape of evergreens has its delight and pleasure which only Mother Nature can genuinely give. Now it's a different delight and pleasure when looking at this landscape of people.
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They come in all sizes... shapes... appearances... dress style... hair cuts and dyes... in professional decorum or in the swagger of an "I"- "Me" - "My" - "Mine" person... in all the socio classes of wallets and purses... genders... color... and religion... parents... children... yayas... grandparents... aunts... uncles... professors... students... businessmen... employed... unemployed... priests... nuns or sisters... the loners... groups... the first wives club... the other wives club... singles... married... separated... bereaved... and many others more with all other intentions good or bad coming in and out of any Starbucks door. Well, this Starbucks door, too!
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Almost always snippets of conversation trail down to your table, like it or not. One thing I have observed is that Pinoys can't talk or chat in low voices (even on their cellphones); it always has to be amplified twice regardless of place or time.
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Aside from their vocal narration of life as it befalls them, their eyes visibly validate or corroborate it, and then sometimes it looks the other way. But as someone once said it ------ 'the eyes have it all'.
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In summary, my own understanding of people and of life grows exponentially with every person and life story heard. Wisdom in its barest. Fortunately or unfortunately but much to my advantage this apparently provides authentic seeds for the writing, too.
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That's all for now, folks! My green tea frappe is waiting for me.
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Have a great day!  God bless you!

PRAYER IS A PATH WHERE THERE IS NONE

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Have been reading a book this past few days. A book I have read a dozen times before. Why do I keep coming back to it? Because it IS good. Not only that but also because it is short, only 113 pages composed of 43 chapters... short chapters. I have an array of 'shorties', which I call them, lined up in my mini library. Long stories and thick books have no place in it except for an encyclopedia or a family album. Written in simple English .... (as a rule I shy away from long big complicated words; have always believed that there is always a simpler less complicated way to express yourself verbally or in writing) ..... so simple that if I gave this book to my seven-year-old nephew he would be able to read it in one sitting. Except of course when he needs someone to guide him through the wisdom parts of the book. --
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"JACOB THE BAKER -- General Wisdom For A Complicated World" Author Noah BenShea --- Here in the author's own words is a brief description: -------- "Jacob is a poor but pious baker who lives an anonymous life in a timeless world. While waiting for the ovens to rise to baking temperature in the morning he writes little notes to himself trying to make sense of life. Unknown to Jacob, one of his notes falls into the mixer and is baked into a loaf of bread. It is then sold to a woman, who comes upon the note, reads Jacob’s thought, is dumbstruck and rushes to the bakery to see who wrote it and where it came from.
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Soon word is out that there is a special person in the community who has been ignored, and now everyone near and far comes to see Jacob with their questions about life, prayer, love, family, growing older and…and…Without any sense of hubris, Jacob answers the growing line of visitors with his parables and stories. Even the children come after school and sit on the flour sacks to listen to Jacob."
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Unquote.
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I finished the book in just a few minutes (yes, that short and will pick it up again another time you bet) and went through every piece of wisdom like I was seeing it for the every first time. Wisdom never grows old; we do. And if you are wisdom's good student, it always seems new each time you meet it.
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Like this one on page 36 -- PRAYER IS A PATH WHERE THERE IS NONE
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Is there anyone out there who has not acquainted himself with prayer? No matter your color, race, or creed....... no matter how independent you believe yourself to be....... no matter your titles or string of degrees attached to your name........ whether male, female, young or old, rich or poor........ you have spoken a prayer sometime somewhere there in your life. Probably it was just a sigh, a tear, a whisper, or simply a thought of God when you suddenly find yourself in a place similar to this.....
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"What if neither my heart or mind can help me find a way?"
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And Jacob answered, "Prayer is a path where there is none."
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I end this post with that thought. And I pray that prayer leads you to the path or paths to your dreams... essentially to His Throne. God bless you. Have a pleasant weekend, friends! 

BEST FIND OUT WHAT HE OR SHE IS LOOKING AT

 

 

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I'm sharing with you one of my most treasured quotes.  It's from a book by Hugh Prather....... 'NOTES TO MYSELF'.  It says.....
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"No one is wrong.  At most someone is uninformed.  If I think an individual is wrong, either I am unaware of something,  or the person is.  Unless I want to play a superiority game I had best find out what he or she is looking at."
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Unquote.
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Allow me some thoughts.......
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Long ago in my blossoming self-righteous youth I would brush this aside as silly because I had this thought in my young silly head that people can be wrong and there can be no explanation to that except that... they are wrong.  But when I was wrong I always pointed to my youth as a ready excuse. Foolish, of course. Ah but the shortsighted folly of youth!
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As we grow older life proves us wrong on many things we thought we already knew. One lesson drilled into my mind by mother was this.....  'Always get to the story. Behind every individual is a story... his story.'  So whenever I hear someone say something, right or wrong, I would imagine mother shaking her finger at me.... 'Wait for the story.' 
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Yes, she was right ....because life did show me that there is always a story behind every right and every wrong. Opinions, insights, decisions, perceptions and the like are all shaped by experiences contained in a person's personal history.  So when a person presents an opinion but which you think is wrong,  hold judgement.  Find out why or how. That person's history influences his or her thoughts, words, and deeds.... the same way it does yours.  It's possible, too, maybe that person knows something you don't know... or maybe he knows nothing of what you already know.  But definitely he is speaking right off his own life journey and experiences.  You would, too, in your own.
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Besides nobody has the monopoly of knowledge or wisdom or information. Further we both may not be seeing the same thing in the same way........... you may be seeing trees but I am looking at its fruits. Like a friend had this crush on a good-looking fella, but I found his manner quite abrasive. But when later I found out why, then I finally understood.
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Seek to be informed. Wait to be informed. With information comes better understanding, compassion, empathy, wisdom.
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As Prather said.....  '..best find out what he or she is looking at.'

LEARNING IS BOTH GIVING AND TAKING

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Was in a chat with an old friend of many years. We talked about the old days, some good - some bad, and how time got us through the best and the worst of times. She loved people, a people kind of person so to speak. But I won't forget what she once said.......
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"You live with people who don't do something. Then you start thinking you can't do anything."
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Those lines seemed familiar to me from something I have read long ago. I was both amused and delighted though that she was able to get hold of it too and made it her own. That is what learning is all about. One day you come across a piece of wisdom or some enlightenment or some life changing experience which in such a big way impacts your life .... it's a learning moment. This now becomes yours. And when you quote it or mention it to somebody else you then set it free to move on to another student or learner that his or her life be enriched too as it did yours. And it also becomes his or hers until it is time to pass it on to someone else. It's nobody's monopoly; knowledge and wisdom must travel if the world is to become a better place and for its people to grow.
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Learning is both a giving and a taking.
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You give of your mind and heart to learning something. Knowledge and wisdom is what you receive in return.
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My friend learned an important lesson in life...... that there are two kinds of people in the world:   those who do something..... and those who do nothing. But I will add a third to that:   those who simply sit on the fence and watch.
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Now what we become as persons is defined by the choices we make.
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Wishing you all a lovely and blessedly productive day. In Christ.

 

 

ALWAYS A SURE FIT

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Went through my old files with the sole intent of ridding it of accumulated 'junk'. What are these, you might ask. It's stuff that when you first saw it consider it essential and then as time goes by you finally realize that it is not. So off it goes to the trash bin.

But I found this gold nugget of wisdom......

"If your parents ever measured you as a child, they had you stand against a wall, and made a little pencil mark on the wall to show your growth. They did not measure you against your brother, or the neighbor's kids, or kids on TV.

When you measure your growth, make sure to only measure your today self by your past self. If you compare your relationships, your success, or your anything against anyone else, you are not being fair to you. Everyone has a different path, a different pace, and different challenges to face along the way."   --- Doe Zantamata, author-artist-photographer

Oftentimes I hear of people saying they wished they were somebody else..... that they had somebody else's beauty, money, title, position, or fame. That they feel themselves and their lives so unworthy and miserable as compared to those they admired. At a certain point of my struggling youth and years I thought so, too. Everybody else were simply fantastic in their own respective lives except poor ole' me with the challenges life seemed keen on hurling in my direction. Dodging it was out of the question because it had such perfect aim no matter how I tried to duck it. Darn!

Until I found my own groove.... When I began to use my mind more and understood with my heart better. I finally learned.

I was traveling my own road, just as everybody else was traveling his or hers. Each of the roads a sure-fit to the persons traveling it respectively. Each living his own story. There will be good times and bad times in proportion each would require for his joy and too necessary learning. There will be different talents finding expression in many diverse ways.....  fast or slow....  weak or strong.....  big or small....  humble or grand. There will be different challenges as well as different blessings. All these and more will be on everybody's table in the portion or measure each would require --- always a sure fit. Somebody up there is running the whole show.

I learned with appreciation and gratitude for everything that was...  is... and will be.  Recognized and fully understood that both the good and the bad are there to serve a purpose. Separately or together will continually serve to shape me into the person I was meant to be, by God's design. 

"Everyone has a different path, a different pace, and different challenges to face along the way."

So don't ever wish you were somebody else. Because you are just where you are meant to be.....  to learn and learn some more.... and become better, in God's perfect time. While you are at it, enjoy the journey and remember to count your blessings.

WISDOM CAN BE LEARNED THROUGH THE TEARS

"Let us cry for the spilt milk, by all means, if by doing so we learn how to avoid spilling any more. Let us cry for the spilt milk, and remember how, and where, and why, we spilt it. Much wisdom is learnt through tears, but none by forgetting our lessons."     -- Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton 

I remember being told by an elderly aunt long ago to never cry over spilt milk. Meaning that the mistakes of the past should remain there and that we should never harbor regrets over it. Easier said than done. Because truth of the matter is I cry, in fact bawl, over what has gone by and over mistakes that were made. But did I learn? Not always. You see, when tears come it washes away all resolve you may have valiantly raised to move away from the pain that gnaws at your soul. All you ever focus on is your misery.  So have I learned.

But now, even if I do still cry it's with a difference.  I have learned in the midst of all the tears to determinedly focus on the goal of learning whatever lessons are presented to me through that unpleasant experience or experiences, I can understand that it's all for my further learning and growth. Not always easy, I must say, especially when the wounds of disappointment, frustration, failure, uncertainty, insecurity, or false expectations remain fresh in memory and prick with every thought. Yet in wanting to learn what should be learned I get to analyze... to break it apart and stare at the broken pieces hard... searching for the why --- how --- where or what went wrong. Eventually the answers come out.

Now the sad memory still stings but maybe a tear or two may flow. But just like the sun rises every morning, a smile too rises from the heart which knows that it has learned well and acknowledges that it has been made wiser, so much wiser, by it.

PLENTY STILL TO KNOW

To quote: ... " 'Que Sais- je?' (What do I know?) was the motto of Michel de Montaigne, the sixteenth century French essayist whose amiable good sense still endears him to many readers today. His question was intended to remind him that knowledge was there to be tested and tried. But it was also a reminder that he an educated and quite wealthy man, well-read and with his own library of books, actually knew very little."   -- David Ross, Pearls of Wisdom

To my personal stack of knowledge I see quite a good share gathered through my own life journey through the hits-and-misses, the succeeding-and-failing, the joys-and-tears, the joyful fulfillment-and-disappointing regret, and everything else contained in the whole spectrum of life and living. But monsieur Michel was right ..... 'what do I know?' My answer to that would be ... 'plenty' still to know!

My journey isn't over and God isn't finished with me yet. And that speaks for all of my fellow travelers down life's road. There's more to discover, know, learn. If you think seriously about it, a person will need a thousand lifetimes to get to that point of being 'all knowing' and even more. One lifetime isn't enough.

But we don't need to do that. We just need to take what's there in our day, examine it, explore, pass it through reflective thought, learn what's there to learn, put it to the test, and then make it our own. It's one day at a time of pursuing knowledge, experience, wisdom. You can't just cruise down the avenue of living or sit on the fence and watch people and the world go by. You get involved in it... get your hands dirty, get your heart bruised, shake up your mind. All these for a better you. That's the whole point of everything.

So then 'Que Sais- je?' Plenty still that we don't know.
Blessings on your own life journey.

HOW MUCH YOU CAN PUT INTO YOUR POT DEPENDS ON YOU

Do you know that you, me, and everybody else are nothing but pots? Yeah, pots! Or would you prefer to be called a vase or a vessel. Whatever it is that signifies a container meant to hold something, you are it. We all are. But I would like to use the word.. pot.. for this post.

Now what do we do with that? Let me tell you what I did with mine.


I am a pot...

When I was a baby I put in all that was about being a kid. Innocence, pleasure, delight, awe, fun, birthday cakes, ice cream, warm beds, doggies, and... mommy and daddy. It was great. Everything centered on me and I was everybody's priority. All I had to do was smile my cutest and throw in a tantrum or two to get them to my side pronto. That filled my baby pot.

Then I was ten. I couldn't be a baby anymore although I would have preferred to be as it seemed that mom and dad would always be coming at me to do this and do that. But school was great, had new friends, lots of fun things to do with them, was more aware of my newly found likes and dislikes. I was liking chocolate bars and cakes, coca-cola, nice teachers, field trips to museums, and always loved Sally and Susan -- my cute walking dolls. That filled my pot a notch higher.

Then they called me a teenager. Oh there was much in this new world that I never had before. I discovered that I loved the colors pink and blue, dresses, ladies bags and shoes, still loved cakes and ice cream, adored my first crush next door, enjoyed sketching and designing clothes, hoarded good books and magazines, delighted in poem-writing, and wrote for the high school paper. That filled my cup two notches higher. Plus up another with college that followed.

Then I found myself wearing size 7 high-heeled shoes walking it to a place called an office. I soon discovered that I was good at making tons of reports -- weekly, monthly, annually -- and did some travel, lectures and trainings for newly employees, reveled in office banter and camaraderie, events and more. That brought my pot fuller almost to the brim.

Then life turned more adult. What does that mean? Marriage, children, sickness, death, disappointment, sorrow, fear, anger, betrayal, change, trials, challenge, growing older, and all the stuff which makes an adult even wish in exasperation for the good years past. My pot now went on full and over.

So to be able to make sense out of all that... I thought I needed to do something. And fast. Or else so much would be lost. All of my history, all that made me, all for nothing if I let something like a full pot have its way. A further thought on the side, I can't and shouldn't get stuck with a full pot because there's still so much out there to learn, experience, enjoy, and live for. It's never over until it's over.

I emptied my pot.

... and by so doing have made room for insights, perceptions, retrospection, wisdom which I wouldn't have done being so involved in the living aspects of life. I needed to empty my pot so that new things could come in --- things which made sense of everything that I had gone through. It was there all along simply waiting in the wings for its turn to be inside my pot so that it could do its work.

This is where I believe that everything in our lives, no matter how tiny or insignificant it may be or maybe bigger than what we want it to be, is there for a reason. But reason which cannot reveal itself until or if we don't give it that needed room or space to do so.

Emptying our pot makes that possible. An empty pot invites it in. And this would give us all the treasure we may want or hope to acquire. This takes us higher to a better place of self and of understanding life, people, the world, and God. That's right. Whatever we want our day or our life to be, depends on how much we are willing to empty ourselves... and make room for more blessings.

One unknown writer puts it this way.... "We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want." --Anon.)

Yeah, how much you can put into your pot really depends on you.

God bless you.

OLD SELF - NEW SELF

I am not what I used to be -- my old self which worried over every nitty-gritty detail of a mess-up, mine or somebody else's. I don't fret if the house is a mess, at least not anymore. But cleaning up goes on normally as it should. I save not for a special occasion because I've learned that everyday is a special occasion. So then I would buy ice cream, cakes, pretty clothes, shoes, bags and use them for no special reason. It doesn't have to be my birthday to look pretty or be happy.

Flaws, imperfections, weaknesses, or differences displayed by other people now amuse me because I have understood that we are all different and that being so does not make one person better or less than the other. It just makes us different. People's foibles are now better understood and forgiven, including mine. I draw close to people I like.. and if I don't like someone I simply stay away and forget that person. No point in having someone like that stick around to ruin my parade. I try not to go crazy when plans bomb out or when appointments are missed. Because if and when they do certainly it must be for some reason. Eventually something much better takes its place. But I try to make sure that I don't miss the good idea - thought - benefit or lesson behind it. Better to see it with a positive eye, otherwise it's bound to cause more stress in trying to figure out what happened.

I believe in miracles and blessings which certainly come plenty if one takes pains to find out or see it. I indeed seek for blessings because my mom said I should. Funny isn't it, so many things mothers tell their children and which children often forget. Glad that I remembered this one. You see mom would always tell me that there is always one when you come looking for it... and sometimes even when you aren't looking. Blessings don't always come wrapped up in gorgeous ribbons or other fancy trimmings or make a huge dramatic entrance into your life. Nope. Sometimes it's just there beside you or within you making you feel... peace calm serene joy hope strength inspiration faith... something you thought you'd never experience as the rest of your world comes tumbling down or has already.

I am happy where happiness finds me.... and if sorrow should come I'd probably cry too. Oh yes, probably hurt and ache, grieve, be miserable... but I know better now that these things are fleeting and would easily pass just like all of life. Besides things which I have no control over are no longer mine to worry about. Troubles are plenty it's true and nobody's spared of it, but we can choose how to face them. Thus if I don't have the solutions, then I leave them at the foot of the Cross for God to handle. He's better at it you know. So much better. I've learned that wonderful truth too. ---

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

Do you know why quotes on some lips ring empty while on others seem like gems? Famous lines or words have travelled for ages, in different places, and through diverse people. The lines don’t grow old but in the wrong hands fail to serve its intrinsic worth.

When quoting something somebody said long ago or maybe even in the present, be wary of when or how or why you are doing the quote. You can’t simply fling it to the winds expecting a good harvest from those who may catch it. Sometimes it does, most times it does not.

Famous words originally spoken are from people of different backgrounds, point in time, issues or concerns, nuance of character. Out of these they speak their observation, insight, belief as they watch life and the world parade before their eyes. They too stand not only as spectators but are involved in its drama. They are students in the school of life and have learned well.

So why do ‘quotes’ fall flat on some and on others come out genuine? It’s simple….… they mismatch. Maybe it’s the lack of understanding of the idea presented, or the rush to prove wise, or the feeble attempt at 15 minutes of fame. I’ve seen that on TV interviews just recently (such embarrassing blooper!), unfortunately.

Quotes will come out as gems when spoken with honest conviction and true understanding of its origin and purpose and then is used in the same context and principle into the present circumstance. It can't be any other way because being genuine is 'to thine own self be true'. Truth delivered is wisdom served. That is the essence of a quote.