Life’s Curtain call.

Live today like no other.

Give to others like no other,

For then we can teach each other,

To live a life like no other.

 

The curtain goes up, now it comes down.

Swishes one way and now swishes the other…. way.

 

We step out, we bow, we smile, we step right back and the curtain falls.

Our smile disappears.

It opens, it discloses, and now it closes,
We see as spectator’s glimpse of the performers it hides.
Now you see me, now you don’t,
Now I smile now I won’t.

 

Will you ever know me, do you care to know me?
What you see is me, and then not me,

Life’s mask has adorned me.

 

Will you ever know me, do you care to care?
The performer that’s outside me is not the me that’s within.

What you see, is not what is me, the me that is hidden is often forbidden,

To you.

 

Will you ever know me, do you care to care?
Now the curtain reveals its show to you,

The performer within me will smile and beguile.
The people I meet they care or they don’t,
They hurt me as oft as oft as they want.
Some look after my back or they don’t and don’t care,
There are some real friends although often they are not.

 

The friends that are friends are so rare to find,

So, nurture their friendship and ensure you are kind.
People talk straight but many they don’t,
Seems easier to talk badly cause that’s what they want.

The demons within them much stronger than good,

The “fork tongues” within them feed better on bad food.

When they eat the bad seed do they care about you,

Or simply deliver the message that discredits,

seems much easier to do.

 

The sun goes up the sun goes down,

The sun disappears.

 

The warmth that there was now grows cold and so dark.
The friends we make, the friends who remain,

The friends who we can share the sadness and tears.
Which do we have?

 

The sunshine friends or the flitting moonlighters,

The ones that stay through thick and thin.

 

The ones that believe and stay by your side,

or simply discard you like an old broken dustbin.

We are grateful for the friends who remain in our lifetime,

for they create the memories,

we share always and for all times in our life.

The friends we had now some long gone,

though some remain.

The friends they live the friends they die.
Some we remember some forgotten,

in life’s wind swept away in the dusts of time.

The kids we were, they are all long gone,

all grown up into the adults we now are.

 

The adults we are, the mask we now wear,

we now hope is kindly,

not ravished by those who didn’t care.

 

Or tainted by the world that is tough and blunts our hearts.
Let’s hope we still believe in happy endings,

That there is a bright sparkle and a light when it’s all over.

The life we now have is the life we now lead.
The life we lead determined by our heart and our courage.

The courage we have dependent on the desire to change.
The desire to change and overcome the challenges we dare to take…

 

For life so surely throws them all, we cannot dodge.

The courage that unharnesses the comfort zone, so there is none.
For when it’s gone much more is possible,
Let us be unbridled, free of any zone.
For our comfort zone determines our horizons, determines our scope.
The horizons, near or far the distance determined by the fear and the chains within.
For without such constraints all life is changed.
So, let us be free of the box,

For what then we ask ourselves, if there was no box to think outside?

What then would we think?
Would not all thoughts and ideas be free to collide with unrestrained liberty and creative energy.

Life with no zone and no box has the limitless energy of all that is possible.

The possibility that much more can be achieved.

 

A life fulfilled with much more,
A life that delivers our dreams, a life fulfilled.

The curtain opens, it opens wide, it opens fully,

 

Let us walk through heads held high and

step right through and grab the blessings of life.

 

So that when we take our last curtain call,

we have given the very best performance,

with all the gifts we were given.

Let’s still believe in happy endings,

That there is a bright rainbow when it’s all over.

Live today like no other.

Give to others like no other,

For then we can teach each other,

To live a life like no other.

 

Simply the greeter

Living a full life and dying empty

The electricity went out this morning, a wet sleety Saturday in October in Michigan and it was cold.

I put on my earphones and started to listen to Andrea Bocelli and picked up a book.

That book was  “The Accidental Creative” by Todd Henry and as is my way I immediately started to doodle thoughts in the margins.

It is true that I philosophize about life and perhaps reflect too much, for some people anyway.

Too many questions Peter they might say, just relax and live the moment. Never mind about tomorrow, enjoy today.

All that is true, however at least once a week I go on to utube and listen to the commencement speech of Steve Jobs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

That speech was back in 2005 and it is worth reminding us, that life has to have a value.

I agree with Jobs, people can only make the connections looking back! After all is that not what wisdom is and imparting your experience to our young ones?

Reading for me is an aphrodisiac something that refreshes my mind and re-ignites my energy.

Thanks to this book I was reminded of some connections we can all relate to.

The challenge for all of us is: What are you prepared to do? When all is said and done how much will you have left in the “tank”?

The connections:

Stop trying + Stop doing = Mediocrity

Be the same + Do the same: + don’t question = Go with the Flow

Courage + Questioning + Challenge = Ride against the Flow

Structure + Intentional purpose = Effectiveness

Purpose + Intent  + Persistence = Generational ideas

A purposeful life is when you blend all that you do:

Work + Family + Relationships + Friends + Interests into who you are?

Someone who takes the next blank page and turns it into a picture and knowing that it is not what you know that matters but rather what you do.

Brilliant ideas are in everyone Thanks Todd

Ideas + thoughts + inspiration = the accidental Creative by Todd Henry

http://www.accidentalcreative.com/theaccidentalcreative/

 

 

 

Caring does not mean having to take care.

Had a conversation with friends recently.

One of those great times we all have with a group of close friends.

Enjoying ourselves, having fun, telling each other fun stories that meander this way and that and then somehow and inevitably lands on a conversation about someone who we know who is having troubled times, someone who meant something to us in the past, perhaps a loved one, or someone who we had a close friendship with.

Then the reflections start. Moments of reflections all of us face. Our conversation becomes a little subdued.

We have all had them and what happens is we STOP doing what our instincts tell us to do. Another instinct kicks in, one that says protect yourself.

We really do care, there is little doubt, the strain on the faces show how much, we want to do something and yet….

Then we feel guilty!

Our mind plays games, we feel we are bad people and it never leaves us.

What if… and will we live to regret it one day when it is too late. Then we will feel awful.

The haunting is:

“I want to care, and I do care but I always end up taking care and I start resenting it.  It starts to make me a bad person and that’s not fair.

So now I have to protect myself from doing what I really feel.

We are not bad people because we think like this.

Who’s Loyalty is it anyway?

We hear these words every day. Who is loyal to whom and what and why!

The pronunciation of the Chinese symbol for loyalty is “jong cheng”.

It’s a universal value that we all seek and is often the worst and the best of people! It’s been around from the days of Adam and Eve, and it’s not always for ever~ many people know this to their sadness and detriment! It’s something you have to work to earn and then work harder to keep.

So I sat down with a friend and we discussed the different loyalties there are….

1. The Generational differences: Between Gen. Xers, Y’s, Millenniums’ and the Baby Boomers. They all have different loyalties whether to themselves, to the workplace, to family, their gadgets, their future, some want goals and targets some are so laid back they are horizontal, some want to be communicated with others want to be left alone. One thing is for sure they have different loyalties and being aware of those differences to achieve inclusiveness when you hire these folks is crucial for fit in your business to assure engagement.

2. In the workplace: Is employee loyalty to the manager, the co-worker, the CEO, the business strategy the mission or a faith-based philosophy. Best to find out what it is, so that you know what sustains their intrinsic motivation. It’s also important to understand in these difficult times when employee loyalty is being tested with pay reductions, benefit cuts, layoffs. How is employee loyalty rewarded when they have given 30 years of their lives and how is the loyalty factor affected of those that remain?

3. In the High Street: The grocery and retail stores we shop at, the car dealerships, the places where we eat, and the doctors we trust. It all comes down to the fact that we return to places where we feel “treasured”, well maybe I should not go that far, but we do want to feel special for sure. How fickle can we be when in one instance we lose that “feeling of being special”.  Oh Yes! Those retail loyalty cards that “buy” our loyalty is it us the stores want or our money?

4. Loyalty to your Country: The blind loyalty that gets people to do things for patriotic reasons sometimes against their own convictions. Often people die for this kind of loyalty- the supreme sacrifice.

5. Loyalty for a cause: The passion for Fundamental Rights and Freedom, Charities, a Church, a Club, or a Cause so unshakeable they will lose friendships for. History is littered with people who stood up for Freedom, Racial Adversity and Oppression.

6. Loyalty to friends and family: Blood is thicker then water so sometimes we stick by those we love just because… and we do so no matter what because we love them.

So how fickle is loyalty? I leave that for you to think about? Why is it often an uneven balance with one giving more then the other?

One thing is for sure having different loyalties does not mean you are disloyal to something else.

Being loyal to something different represents richness of difference and of inclusiveness of the people we are, and it’s not wrong to think or be different. What is wrong is not embracing those differences.

So is loyalty a one or two way street?  I believe it’s a highway! A highway that asks us to drive together in our different “loyalty vehicles” of choice and our challenge is to ensure we reach the same destination- together without crashing into each other!

Picture by Foxie, guarding the body of her master Charles Gough, in Attachment by Edwin Landseer, 1829