How wrongly we think...

that our parents are disappointed in us...

Parents only want what is good and though one cannot doubt their intentions, their way of going about this may often be wrong.

However, it is when children tie themselves up in knots trying to keep on the path that their parents have charted out, that trouble starts.

Parents and children themselves have to realize and understand that they are all individuals in their own right. As such, though their lives are joined by Life, they are each responsible and answerable to Life for their own lives. Being the older ones in the relationship, we must offer, indeed shower, our children with unconditional love and release them so that they can find themselves and fulfill their own destiny.

This man is different...

Hajji Ghalib, who, at 54, has only a lifetime of bad memories, and who has lost a long list of relatives, including both his wives, his daughters, a sister and a grandchild at the hands of the Taliban, has chosen to reject bitterness and lead the fight against the Taliban and Islamic State across Eastern Afghanistan.

This is the story of a man wrongly branded an enemy combatant and imprisoned in Guantánamo for nearly four years, He now emerges as a steadfast American ally on the battlefield.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/world/asia/once-inguantanamo-afghan-now-leads-war-against-taliban-and-isis.html?emc=edit_th_20151128&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=58824118&_r=0


Why I included this in my blog is because something about this story touched a chord in my heart. We probably lose one-thousandth of what this man has lost, we suffer maybe one-millionth of what this man has suffered, and we are treated badly maybe one-zillionth of how this man has been treated by Life and by people. We give up, we lose heart, we buckle under the pain, we paralyze ourselves allowing our negative, depressing thoughts to drag us down lower and lower into a bottomless pit of despair suffering. Look at this man.....look at his face and find solace and strength in the lines of his face and the sadness in the depths of his eyes...

It just takes a drop of love...

as this nun proves...

Sister Neyda Rojas, a Catholic nun, has been serving God for more than 17 years in Venezuela's General Penitentiary (PGV) in Guarico state. The inmates of this penitentiary call her La Gota Blanca (The White Drop), because of her white habit.

"I have always seen the face of God in their faces", she says.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-34931359

As always, one just needs to reach out....just a little love....some person out there needs to know someone cares...

An absolutely fantastic take on growing old----er.....

From Dr. Oliver Sacks

I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.


Doesn't this open up a whole new way of thinking? Doesn't it give you a warm, complete, delicious sort of feeling? Isn't this the best way forward from old to older to o--l--d--e--r?

Talking about...

Loving ourselves unconditionally...

I had written that while we extend our love and time and energy outwards, it is very difficult when we have to - need to direct it towards ourselves.

While my DD fills my whole life and being, I find I have also been able to give of myself to those who have turned to me for comfort or encouragement or friendship or light-hearted, happy times. However, quite obviously, I have been quite incapable of turning these towards myself. My DD gave me a sound talking to and I realized I had to do something concrete about this. Am working on it....

I am battling with the question of why...

Came across this in connection with Tchaikovsky's life - Even though Tchaikovsky frequently lamented his “wearing, maddening depression,” perhaps most remarkable yet quintessentially human about his disposition was the ability to assure his loved ones of the very things he was unable to internalize himself — for who among us hasn’t found that it is far easier to offer light to our dearest humans in situations that leave our own inner worlds shrouded in impenetrable darkness?

Now I believe I can leave the darkness behind....

Adding to the greatest gift...

we can give ourselves...Freedom...

Being free and living for myself in freedom would also mean taking an inventory of the past and putting it away. As Uncle Jack tells Scout in 'Go Set A Watchman': 'It's always easy to see what we were, yesterday, ten years ago. It is hard to see what we are.' 

Stop seeing today in the light and shade of yesterday...all the yesterdays...

I have to stop beating myself up, or patting myself on the back for all that is past...and ask:

Who am I today?

What am I today?

Because when I see what I am today, I will have to do something about it...Face it, change it, remodel it.....for tomorrow I must ask these questions again....

The greatest gift...

we can give ourself....yes, definitely ourself...especially ourself...

is the gift of freedom.

The freedom to just be...so that there is no pretending out of fear, or out of the need for acceptance, or to make an impression, or for any reason at all....

We need to love ourselves unconditionally if we want to be really free. This seems difficult, because while we can and do extend our love unconditionally outwards, it is very difficult when it has to be directed inwards, towards us...very difficult.

I came across these words by Emery Allen (am only using those that hit me between the eyes): There's a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself. You need to fill yourself up with love. Become a whole being on your own. .......sit in a coffee shop on  your own,.......dress up for yourself, smile a lot. Do all things with love, but don't romanticize life.... Live for yourself. Be happy on your own.

Suddenly at age 64...

I find myself in a situation where I have to learn something very, very new and difficult...

From age 23 I have looked out for my daughter. Today she is standing on her feet and I revel in her independence of spirit. With immense pride I see her soar.

There were also huge problems I had to learn to tackle and they took up my time, energy, spirit and almost my life. But I did manage to free myself from the bondage my soul had got into...well.....almost....am still working at it.

Now I am looking for the meaning of 'live for yourself'...

Got these words from Emery Allen

'There's a lot of wonderful time to be spent discovering yourself...and it doesn't need to be painful or empty. You need to fill yourself up with love. Not anyone else. Become a whole being on your own.'

(Of the things suggested, I'm sure I could do some!!! -  especially...'dress for yourself, give to others, smile a lot.'

I'm an angry, angry school teacher....

3-yr-old girl dies after getting stuck in school elevator

First we take away their childhood and then we don't even look after them.

We send them to school at age 2, and so that they can get admission into these 'portals of learning' we send them for preparatory classes well before age 2. We attend 'practice interview' sessions so that we can boast that our children are in this school or that. Chances are this school for which we have stolen practically every childish attribute is a box with no playground or a tiny one, maybe, where the children are taken in a scheduled period once or maybe twice a week for 'games'. And so, when the child is supposed to play and sleep and freely wander around in the fantastic world he/she can create naturally, we bung them, sometimes 30 to a class, into rows and columns and shove 2 languages, Math, Science and Social Studies down their as yet unformed throats. We have become experts in dulling their sparkling eyes by taking away their world of fantasies. We have stolen their natural ways of sharing by thrusting them into competitive zones which they cannot even begin to comprehend. And, before the child is even conscious of himself/herself, we have stuck labels on them. We scold them, we yell at them, we beat them (never mind that we are not supposed to use corporal punishment) because we do not know how to deal with them, or even talk with them....let alone respect them as individuals in their own right...and all because we have put them in a place they are not even meant to be at age 2 or 3 or 4 or 5. We don't give them time or space because, why, they have to be better than the neighbor's kids and somehow, instead of being a source of strength for them, we link our sense of self-worth to these fragile, beautiful minds. We won't let them flower because we need to be 'up there' in society.

When they get caught in lifts, or are molested, or lose their hearing because some 'teacher' has boxed their ears, or have weals across their faces, we, the adults take out all our frustration in the media...never mind the pain of the child...what pain?...what child?... If they take their lives we quickly blame the system little realizing that we have created this system. Since most of the schools are 'corporate' run, they have the money and wherewithal to either silence the parents or fight them in court. Society goes up in arms briefly but then...well...why get involved....?

After stealing their time with Nature and 'educating' them by stuffing their heads with reams of information and digital data, we wonder that these children - and I will call them children for technically they are still children - have skewered, digitized brains and prefer to hang out in shisha dens, pubs and bars, and internet cafes, and haunt malls.

Do we ever ask children how they are feeling? What they think of this, that or the other? Do we stop to take their opinion on something of importance? Do we recognize that they may have feelings/opinions/thoughts? Do we spare a moment to think of how the child who has been hurt, or who has died, or whose dignity has been violated, or who has been humiliated by some 'all-knowing' adult, must have been feeling? What thoughts go through these as yet unformed, hurt minds? Do we identify with their suffering? Do we consider their questions important enough to answer them? Do we acknowledge that they may have a point in the suggestions they offer? Do we at all take them seriously? Do we even know who they really are?

Each child is so precious.....What are we doing to them?

All they need is unconditional love...

Yesterday I asked...

Will hatred heal the wounds inflicted by hatred?

I got my reply in this article:

'You will not have my hatred', husband of Paris victim tells ISIS

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/You-cant-make-me-hate-husband-of-Paris-victim-tells-ISIS/articleshow/49815198.cms?from=mdr


Antoine Leiris lost his wife in the massacre. He and his wife have a 17-month-old son. The Parisian refuses to give the killers a feeling of victory by hating them.

This wonderful person says:

"We are two, my son and I, but we are stronger than all the armies of the world. If this God for which you kill indiscriminately made us in his own image, every bullet in the body of my wife will have been a wound in his heart."

"....to respond to hatred with anger would be giving in to the same ignorance that made you what you are."

"....and all his life this little boy will dare to be happy and free. Because No, you won't have his hatred either."

This terrible, unbelievable tragedy in France...

It's awful what happened - this should never have happened...man against man....a terrorist against ordinary people.....this man, this terrorist...he too is a human being - no, I should only say being because the humanness has been taken out of him........inflicting this sort of pain on other human beings.....??? what can justify this? what went so wrong in his evolution to turn this being into a monster?

How can killing innocent people solve the terrorists' issues? Are they looking for attention to their problems? These kind of acts will only turn the world against them...or do they do this for larks knowing that nothing is going to come out of it? they have nothing to lose or gain?

How does one return to normalcy? How does one remove the hate from the heart? Will a 'pitiless' retaliation solve the problem? Will hatred heal the wounds inflicted by hatred?

There are many theories doing the rounds.......much advice from the wise......much planning and plotting on how to deal with this, the latest in the series of terrorist attacks that have happened and that are waiting to happen....

For now....my love and energy goes out to all those whose lives were so brutally cut short, who have left behind families....loved ones...

......and are now memories...

While we continue to search for something familiar to hang on to while we deal with our loved ones not being with us...while we deal with the devastating pain of separation...