Let's start the week....

....with a bit of literature - "The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?" (A bit of Edgar Allan Poe)

Let the past pass away. If you keep it alive, you prevent a new future from being born.

The most important trip you may take in life is meeting people halfway.   (Henry Boye)

Have you ever....

....spent time wondering why some people are more successful than others? Is it a matter of talent? Not necessarily. Some highly-gifted individuals never have their abilities recognised. Others, with less skill but more self-confidence, receive all the awards. Is it down to contact and connection? Perhaps, but there are failures, even among the famous. And some do genuinely rise from obscurity to reach great heights. 

But the single most important ingredient you require in any recipe for success is faith.

Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.  (Rabindranath Tagore)

Neither money, nor time....

....once spent, can be reclaimed. Money, though, can be acquired again. Time is far more precious. When it's gone, it's gone.... In this topsy-turvy world, we overvalue the less important and overlook the vital. In our emotional lives, it's time that matters most. 

Consider carefully what you do with it, where you invest it, how you use it and why you let so many irrelevant issues eat it up. 

Don't become tense, but do guard against savings that cost you in other ways.

Your present circumstances don't determine where you can go, they simply determine where you start.

You know those times....

.....when you meet someone for the first time.  One of the initial questions is often 'Where do you come from?' isn't it. This safe social gambit raises the opportunity to discuss geography, if nothing else. Inwardly, we may make a judgement about the location that this person names. A good place? A bad place? 

Yet none of us really know where we have come from. Where were we before we came to this planet? You come from some mysterious, magical place. So why shouldn't something truly wonderful prove possible for you.

The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, 

 faith, love, and loyalty.     (Zig Ziglar)

If you love someone....

....you can feel hurt by the things they say or do. If you care about something, then, should it come under threat, you will feel threatened as well. Wherever there is a passion, there's a potential problem. Instinctively, we all know this. That's why we try to limit the extent to which we get involved. 

But a life without empathy and enthusiasm is no life at all. Whatever price we pay by allowing our heart off the leash, it's still a fair exchange.

Try to be a rainbow in someone else's cloud.  (Maya Angelou)

The bible tells us that....

....things began to go wrong with the world when Eve first handed a piece of fruit to Adam. Many have often said it was an apple.  One has to wonder whether we would all be in better shape now, if only she had handed him a Samsung or Toshiba instead!
Flippant, I know, but in the modern world, we are all brand name crazy. We want the best and, if we are not sure what the best really is, we want whatever looks or sounds like it might be the best.

Our decisions need to be made on the basis of true understanding, not a passing impression.

Our attitude towards others determines their attitude towards us.

To be or not to be....

....Ummmm, started it wrongly - To be in the in the right place, for the right reasons, at the right time, getting the right results is all we want.  Why then, do we so often feel as if it is all completely wrong? Because we are trying too hard to get it right? Our moods are much more powerful than we realise. They can affect us so badly as to totally transform our understanding of a situation. 

We invariably imagine some external factor lies behind a sense of unhappiness or frustration.  One small shift of viewpoint, though, can alter everything.

Do not say a little in many words, but a great deal in few!     (Pythagoras)

I have just read this.....

....Under Islam, a stranger is referred to as “Ibn Al-Sabil” (wayfarer) who is paid a lot of attention by Islam. The Qur’an considers that it is an act of righteousness to give money to a wayfarer.

We read the following verse:

Righteousness is not that you turn your faces toward the east or the west, but [true] righteousness is [in] one who believes in Allah , the Last Day, the angels, the Book, and the prophets and gives wealth, in spite of love for it, to relatives, orphans, the needy, the traveller… (Al-Baqarah 2:177)

The Qur’an orders doing good to wayfarers.

We read the following verse:

Worship Allah and associate nothing with Him, and to parents do good, and to relatives, orphans, the needy, the near neighbour, the neighbour farther away, the companion at your side, the traveller… (An-Nisaa’ 4:36)

A wayfarer was entitled to a share in the war booty. In the Qur’an, we read the following verse:

And know that anything you obtain of war booty – then indeed, for Allah is one fifth of it and for the Messenger and for [his] near relatives and the orphans, the needy, and the [stranded] traveller… (Al-Anfal 8:41)

A wayfarer was also entitled to a share in the Zakah expenditures. In the Qur’an, we read the following verse:

Zakah expenditures are only for the poor and for the needy and for those employed to collect [zakah] and for bringing hearts together [for Islam] and for freeing captives [or slaves] and for those in debt and for the cause of Allah and for the [stranded] traveler – an obligation [imposed] by Allah. (At-Tawbah 9:60)

Prophet Muhammad urged Muslims to give money to the wayfarers. Abu Said Al-Khudry reports that the Messenger of Allah said: “This money is green and sweet. It is a good companion of the Muslim who gives from it to the orphan, the needy and the wayfarers.” (Ahmad)

According to Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), the one who denies a wayfarer his surplus water is one of three persons at whom God will not look on the Day of Judgment.

I wish I could tell you that this is the way I've been treated over the last year.  I respect all who I met except for those who deliberately lied and cheated, and the few who act as if I'm not even in the same room.  I have received much hospitality, but not in the way described above. 

They say....

.....love means never having to say you're sorry. I have never understood what this is supposed to mean. People who love each other don't ever need to apologise to each other? Why? They never make mistakes? They consider themselves entitled to full forgiveness, regardless of what they do?

Whoever invented that cute little phrase, is probably responsible for a thousand divorces. If an apology is appropriate somewhere in your world, allow it to be made.

If indeed you must be candid, be candid beautifully.   (Kahlil Gibran)

We all know....

....that there are thousands of reference books on many topics. Huge libraries of wisdom that we can consult. You could, if you wanted to, learn something new every day.  So many of the references and explanations make everything sound reasonable and easy enough to understand, if only you can apply sufficient concentration.

So, what about love? What about emotions? What about inspiration? What about anguish? Can we reduce all these to fact and formula?

If there is a mood that you just can't shake now, maybe it's because you need to feel it, for a while at least till you learn something.

People who underestimate you should be thanked.

Love is....

......Well it's not a Rubik's Cube. You can't think it through. You can't manipulate it into position. You can't outwit it. You can't really hope to understand it. Nor is life a game of chess. It never harms to be rational, logical, lofty and detached. But there are some things that we cannot grasp with our intellect. Like love. Like beauty. Like spirituality.





Yet these are the things that give life the most depth and meaning. They are what we should celebrate most and reach for as much of as we can.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.   (Confucius)

We place a high value....

....on the strangest things for the silliest reasons. Brand names. Designer labels. Products and services that somehow seem to confer an air of status with their purchase.  Imagine if people came in makes and models. Well, actually, some people seem to imagine that they do!

We none of us value ourselves enough, nor do we recognise the true merit and worth of those around us.

There is never a bad time to count your blessings

It is one thing to resign yourself....

 ....to a spell of unavoidable incarceration. It is another to sit staring vacantly into space, counting the days till your release, while the door of your cell is wide open. The guards have all gone home. A new government has been elected and they have pardoned the prisoners. Now, what's keeping you from freedom?

The analogy here is a little rough and ready but the point is surely clear. If you feel you have been a victim of circumstances, what makes you think that you still are?

We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

It's truly hard....

....to put someone else's mind at rest whilst your own is in turmoil. Hard, too, to heal another person's wounds while your own ache and weep. Hard, yes. Impossible, no. Life often takes a great deal out of us, but that doesn't mean we haven't still got a lot to give.

  

So we should give it. Share it.   We should summon the hope and the kindness that resides deep in our hearts, and express it to those around us.

Respect for ourselves guides our morals, respect for others guides our manners.  (Laurence Sterne)

When people have....

....a narrow escape, they talk about how they are 'lucky to be alive'. Yet that's true for all of us, regardless of how safe or precarious our situations may be. We are all of us lucky to be alive. We become even luckier if we recognise the fact. A sense of gratitude doesn't just fill us with warmth, it fosters wisdom.

Wisdom allows us to make smart choices - which improve, still further, our ability to feel lucky to be alive

            

I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.  (Mark Twain)

Each has a purpose....

Those who know me well....

......will tell you that I don't involve myself with the baking of cakes.  My part of the bargain is to eat them.  (An equal sharing of duties and responsibilities, don't you think!)  Be that as it may,  I thought I'd have a crack at a recipe.
This is the recipe for the Cake of Complete Contentment. Your every wish will be granted the moment you place a slice in your mouth. OK. Are you ready for the list of ingredients? Don't be fooled if they seem ordinary. The magic is in the way you combine them. Take butter, add flour, eggs, sugar and mix with...   oops, got to go, there's someone at the door.

Never mind. You'll have to find your own secret. Here's a hint. It involves letting go of a resentment.

This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it. (Thomas Carlyle)

At the end of....

....another week I've just learnt something new.  (I'm all for that.)  Apparently, in some cultural traditions, buildings are deliberately left unfinished. Even if the entire structure is an intricate work of art, one little section is kept incomplete. This is a spiritual gesture, an acknowledgement of the idea that there's always room for improvement!

Nothing is ever as good as it can get. When we claim to have it all or pretend that we have solved all our problems, we are kidding ourselves. To be human is to wrestle with incompatible urges.

Something in your world may well be far from complete; but that doesn't mean that it isn't perfect in its own way.

In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. 

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.   (Kahlil Gibran)

 

Care to debate/argue?.......

Some say that....

....money makes the world go round. Others feel equally sure that it is love. Scientists, though, say that the Earth rotates due to a series of gravitational forces. And that it will continue to do so regardless of how much cash or emotion there is in the world. 

We may never know the truth. But this much at least we do know; without love, the world can turn as much as it wants to - but it will mean very little to any of us.

Doubt is a pain that is too lonely to know that faith is its twin brother.   (Kahlil Gibran)

None of us has led....

....a blameless life. We all have skeletons in our closet we rather regret, and which should prevent us from sitting in judgement on others. If scientists ever do invent a time machine, they would face a stampede of volunteers, keen to test the principle by returning to some moment in their own past that they would desperately love to change. But the inability to rewrite history doesn't automatically equate to a reason to run away.

In taking ownership of the truth, no matter how difficult it might be, we effectively negate whatever power it may otherwise have to hurt us.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, 

but in the end, there it is.    (Winston Churchill)

The only method of treatment....

.

Somebody very famous....

....once said something like - 'An eye for an eye, will make the whole world blind.' We are born blessed with a natural understanding of the need to be fair and just. If someone does us a favour, we feel a powerful, instinctive urge to do a favour for them in return. And should a disservice or an injustice be meted out, we must work hard to repress the impulse to meet like with like.

Yet whilst it is fine to reciprocate generosity, it is never wise to justify revenge. Focus only on payback of a positive, constructive, kind.

Create a life that feels good on the inside, not one that just looks good on the outside.

In our overtly....

....materialistic world, we often equate 'the best' with 'the most expensive'. Yet, though the best things in life are not always free, they are rarely as costly as some of the more outrageously priced alternatives.

And once we stop measuring value in financial terms and look at human qualities like integrity, loyalty, sympathy and intelligence, we soon realise that these are factors which nobody can ever put a price on yet which all of us can afford to prioritise.

Always do what you're afraid to do  (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Even people who are....

.... set in their ways aspire to an ability to find new ways! We cannot help but take an interest in far horizons. We want to know what's out there, waiting to be explored. We may just take an academic interest. We may feel that we have no real desire to go on an adventure but nonetheless, those potential adventures interest us. 

Much the same can be said about the desire to experiment with fresh ideas. You are not obliged to embark on a path that may lead to major change but if you genuinely want to, what's stopping you?

People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing - 

that's why we recommend it daily.   (Zig Ziglar)

The starting position....