Five Rules for Life
1. Keep onnnn moving. (keep on moving, don't stop, no- Soul II Soul, folks. great song)
Despite the despair I sometimes feel, I know that as long as I keep moving physically, mentally, spiritually- I have a chance for something good to come to me... as long as I'm moving to meet it.
If I fall by the side of the road - no matter if it's a few feet or miles from my goal, then I've lost the race. I don't have many great attributes, but I know from experience that I can endure. If I just keep moving, I can win.
2."Keep Watching the Skies!" (Thing From Another World- for sci fi fans)
Keep your head up- literally and figuratively. I have found that every time I walked through life with my head down watching my feet, I have missed something beautiful and meaningful. But when I walked with my head high, even if I was depressed, even if my eyes were filled with tears (sometimes especially) -without fail, something magical would come into my sight, be it a friend, nature or simply something I had seen before and never noticed. This morning I woke up and wasn't really sure I wanted to be here. I walked to work with my head down and just as I reached the gates, I looked up and saw someone waiting for me at the gate with a smile and a hello that I knew was just for me. Sometimes I have simply looked up and seen a drop of dew in a flower, or a butterfly that shouldn't have been out in the cold and knew that I was meant to see it- that no-one else would see that same sight. Life is filled with tiny miracles and the more I see, the more there is to be seen.
3. Keep learning and wondering- the more we know the less we understand- and that's a good thing. It leaves room for Mystery (yes, with a capital M) to come back into our lives. In this day and age when we can get (mis)information in an instant,but usually can't understand all of it or even absorb it because there's so much- it's good to keep learning and to realize how much there still is to learn. Not facts but simply that the world is bigger, stranger and more wonder-full than we know and that we have not come to the edge of our world because there is still so much more beyond. Believe it or not- but Here There (still) Be Dragons.
4. Keep loving- love till it hurts-and be glad that you can feel.
"I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts,
then there is no hurt,
but only more love."
Mother Teresa
Love is a many splendored thing- it can also be a right b****. And it's necessary- in whatever form you find it, or make it. Without it, like water in the desert, we dry up inside. While I've been hurt by love in the past, I have gotten better in time. Better at knowing who and how and what I love. More empathic for those who don't have it and more determined to find my own.
5. Keep laughing- finding joy and creating joy is important in a world where it seems there is less and less. Joy should be a fountain burbling (burbling- I like that word ;>) in all of us. Research says that laughing, smiling, even when we don't feel like it can help us to feel like it. Smiling in a mirror, laughing yoga (look it up- it's really interesting), the instinctive return smile of a baby to a smiling adult- we know that it works to enhance our moods and our lives. Snicker, chuckle, guffaw- what have you- just laugh, cause Lord knows, the world is inherently funny. (Just look at us!)
So there you have it- my Five Rules for Living- not the Ten Commandments or any knowledge handed down from on high- but simply my own observations when it comes to the brief moment in time we call life. Test them out or write your own and remember that
"The golden rule is that there are no golden rules."
George Bernard Shaw
Post a Comment