Tag Archives: balance

Where is the beef, or I don’t eat that?

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Over the last weeks I have been around a few people with really funny quirks, not that I have any myself. Oddly enough the oddities are all around eating. Because eating is a major part of our existence, it strikes me as kind of funny that well balanced intelligent people have amazing gaps in their thinking.

One of the things about my eating habits is people find it odd I do not eat always eat foods at the proper times. One person told me they could not eat dinner food for any meal other than dinner. They find it odd that I occasionally eat what they consider a dinner food for breakfast, or I eat what most people consider breakfast food at dinner time.

For me, it is a non issue, food is food, and if I have an urge for a roast beef sandwich at breakfast, and a bowl of oatmeal at dinner time, there should be nothing there to raise an eyebrow over. There is the idea of skipping breakfast which was a point of some discussion. In my thinking, for most people skipping breakfast, they are eating too much food the night before. Sleeping very late in the morning also happens from eating too much the night before.

I have found in my experience that if I eat a reasonable amount at night, it is very hard to sleep too late in the morning due to feeling hungry. I am sure there are a few people who just can not eat breakfast, but I do not think they are people who get ready for bed by knocking off three scoops of ice cream preceded by an evening of foraging through the cupboards and refrigerator.

As children we pretty much think whatever our parents and our friends think. We do not have any reason to think any differently. Our world is contained and controlled for the most part. Unless we are exposed to some completely different type of thinking it is doubtful that we have much original thought in us.

As we grow into adults and our world becomes larger, we start to think about ourselves, and our place in the world. We open ourselves up to other possibilities than those that have been given to us by family and friends. We become aware that there is a whole world out there and most of those people out there in the world live much differently than we do, and they seem to get along just fine too.

But then we have these little oddities that somehow we never think about. Back to food again. I can not see myself eating say a beef and kidney pie. I spent three years in England, and never had the urge to try one, even though many people told me they were very tasty and worth trying. Give me a nice slice of roast beef, or a beef steak and I am one happy camper, but no kidney thank you very much. I also eat hot dogs, and occasionally have been observed enjoying a bologna sandwich.

Bad news for me, because beef kidney and beef steak all come from a cow. Hot dogs, and bologna contain most parts of a cow, that I would rather not think about. Waste not want not comes to mind for the making of hot dogs and bologna. Most prepared foods are also proud that their meat is 100% beef, they just do not lay any claim to specific parts of beef, or chicken for that matter.

This is where our thinking goes off on a tangent, not only about food but other parts of life too. All those people in the world we wish would disappear live in the only world there is, just like us. We can pretend we don’t eat soft meats, but we know we probably do. We just don’t see them in their natural state.

So it is with people in our world. Some of us dislike certain groups of people for hundreds of reasons. We may not have any real sound reasoning around out thinking, and we overlook it. We need those people to make our world complete, and they need us for the same reason. It’s all beef when we look a little closer.

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Reincarnation filtered through karma or the golden rule

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I have thought we are reincarnated since I was a kid. There is just too much evidence including the Christian bible to think it is not a fact that we lived before, and we will live again. Unless someone is a practicing atheist and not a Christian hater in drag, it is rare to find too many major religions that do not have some kind of after life programming in their faith.

Along with reincarnation comes karma, they kind of slide across the horizon as a matched pair. Some people may reject the idea of reincarnation, but they hold onto karma. I read an interesting thought on karma a few years back, I wish I had the source so I could cite it.

The person who wrote it, was thinking about Christianity, reincarnation, and karma. They arrived at the idea that karma was visited upon us over the next three incarnations where we would reap what we had previously sown. After I thought about this, it was a pretty sobering thought. What if I was reaping in this life those things I sown in a recent past life? Whoa, serious stuff. I had to think about those possibilities for a number of days.

Of course after slicing, dicing, and deciding it may be a possibility Then there was the small matter of where does it fit into my own belief system? I found a place for it, and I thought I was done with it.  In the middle of one night, I woke up and felt like I had enough sleep. The only problem was there were still over three hours until the alarm went off.

I lay there, and my mind starting churning ideas like they tend to do when we can not sleep. What pops up except the recent thinking I did about reincarnation? One of the scariest or most exciting idea that came out of this late night thinking about this line of thinking about reincarnation is the later reaping of what you sow now portion.

I woke up with the alarm that morning thinking, as I did believing we are reincarnated or at the very least never die, I myself am reaping that which I planted was a pretty sobering thought. My mind was churning thinking about all those things which I have done with my life up until this moment, both good and bad. That brought me to an old Omni Magazine story I remembered where a man lived his life so neutrally that it was taking him hundreds of years to balance the good and the bad of his life.

What do I have to look forward to I wondered? Where was the list of the good verses the not so good I have done through out my lifetime? Of course our minds have a pretty skewed version of remembering things that comprise our life, so it really was a futile task to try. How could I wonder how my life would be weighed, when I saw it though colored glasses of my own making?

I started, over the next few days treating people differently than I had done up to that point. I payed attention to the idea that they were people and their life was no better nor worse than mine, but the were entitled to the same respect and care from me, that I give to myself. Once again that may not be saying much, because of the glasses we wear of our own making…

After some amount of time, the idea became second nature, as I had been living it most of my life, in my adaptation of the golden rule.  This was the golden rule with a twist though. A long reaching twist at that. Whether true or not, it has I suppose made me a more aware person, if not a better person. Once something is introduced as an idea, whether we accept it or reject it, it is always there, floating though our mind waiting to be recalled at the most inopportune time, like the middle of the night. I suppose on balance, a thought in the night is a lot better than the thief in the night.

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My New Years wish for you

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Sitting here looking at a blank sheet of cyber paper is no fun. Writing down at least one sentence makes it much more fun, even if one sentence has nothing to do with what the rest of the page will be filled with. In this case, I am thinking about what I would like for you for the coming year, because I know you want to make positive changes in your life. Because I care about you, I want those changes to be good changes, just like you do. So I am going to start now….

Take a small part of your day on New Years Eve, and think about what you would be doing if you had only one-half a year to live. If you knew without a doubt that you had five good months, and one month of dying, where you could reflect back on the previous five months, what would you do with the rest of your life starting now? It is a serious question. Some people even though they are perfectly fit, and in excellent health won’t be here in six months, six weeks, or even six days. I am sure none of those people will be you or I, but it could be any of us. On my way home today, I may be in an accident that ends my life.

Once you decide those things that you would be doing if you knew you had only a few months to live, and a few weeks to reflect on them, start finding ways to bring those things into your life starting tomorrow. It is these things that will bring you true happiness. Money and fame can not do anything for you if you can not truly enjoy the things you have in your life right now. Having lots of free time can not make life more filling, unless you can fill your time with something that is truly important to you. Personal satisfaction of working on or towards something we consider important and really care about is what makes us truly happy.

Just about everything you are worrying about right now, and what you will worry about in the next year is a waste of your time. If you do not believe me, stop for a minute and make a list of what those things you are worrying about right now. Once your list is made, draw a line on the paper to separate these things from your next list. For your next list, copy from your first list those things you can really and truly do something about. Only those items that you personally have control over. This much smaller list is something you should actively work on because they are the only things you can control. The rest of those items on your first list, you may as well throw away. You can do nothing with those remaining items on your first list, so worrying about them, or letting them waste your time is futile.

Finally, because I care about you, and I want you have a better next year, I have one remaining suggestion? Take time for you. This is probably the most important of my three suggestions, because no matter how well you do the first two things, if you do not take time for you, you are cheating yourself. By taking time for you, I mean making sure your life is in balance. We all need things in our lives to get us through the month. I think my Grandfather said it better than I have ever heard it said. He was talking about work, but it applies to all areas of our lives. My Grandfather asked me a few days after I was married what I was going to do for work. I told him about my main job, and how I was planning to get a second job if need be.

My Grandfather, being a crusty old Irishman, who did not believe in wasting words told me, “If a man can not make ends meet with one job, he sure as hell can’t do it with two jobs.” I thought I understood what he meant all those years ago. I know I did not understand the true meaning. He was telling me that it was the quality of my life that is important, not the things I have in it.

These are my wishes for you for the next year. If you are already doing these things, I am excited and happy for you! If you are not, they sound simple, but may take some thinking and planning to accomplish. One step at a time will get you there. I can hardly wait to see you when you get there! My best for you in the New year!

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