griefovercoming grief"I don't know why ... I'll never know why ... I don't have to know why ... I don't like it ... I don't have to like it ... What I do have to do is make a choice about my living. -- What I do want to do is to accept it and go on living. The choice is mine. -- I can go on living, valuing every moment in a way I never did before, -- or I can be destroyed by it and, in turn, destroy others. -- I thought I was immortal, that my children and family were also, -- That tragedy happened to others ... -- But I know now that life is tenuous and valuable. And I choose to go on living, making the most of the time I have, -- Valuing my family and friends in a way I never experienced before." --Iris M. Bolton
Life, Love, and Learing (Volume 2.1)
~"Although the world is full of sorrow,
it is full also of the overcoming of it." --Helen Keller
The world is full of sorrow, everybody should realize that. Everybody should aslo realize that in order to live their life to the fullest, they have to be able to overcome that sorrow. People live and they go, and when they go, you have to be able to let them go. Hold on for a time and have your grief, but do not grieve for too long, because after a point, you go from sorrow to self-pity. "Sorrow says 'it hurts', self-pity says 'poor me'" (Ellen Sue Stern). If you have sorrow in your life, there is nothing that would make you feel worse about what ever you are sorrowful about except if you couple that sorrow with self-pity.
Life does not wait for anybody...
Time does not stop just because you say so. Life goes on, you keep on living and learning. If something bad happens, gieve for a few days, but do not turn your entire life upside-down wallowing in self-pity. You may not like it, but you can't fix it, so keep moving. Learn from what has happened and move on. Do not dwell on the past in hopes that you can go back and make everything right again because unless you can do time travel, you can't change the past...
Would you even want to change to past? Some things are better off the way they are. I know this is a little on the short side, but I've already covered everything i feel needed to be covered...
Much love,
~Afriqueen
Sorry I haven't gotten to Volume 2 yet... This month has been pretty busy so far. To start, I have school Monday through Friday, Last weekend we had some pretty crazy weather, and to top it all off, I only have control over the computer on even numbered days so I can't get on and post if the date is not an even number... I'm working on 2.1 now and hopefully I will have it ready to post within a few days, so keep checking back...
Much Love,
~Afriqueen
learningLife, Love, and Learning (Volume 1.3)
~"I am always ready to learn...
...although I do not always like being taught." --Winston Churchill
ALWAYS ready to learn... That is the most important thing. Always be ready to learn something new. NEVER be so caught up in you being right or you not wishing to be taught, that, should the opportunity arise, you not be ready to learn.
Every second of every day from the instant you are born, you are learning, and sometimes, part of that new learning, is being able to unlearn something old. From early on, you were taught MVEMJSUNP... My Very Elegant Mother Just Served Us Nine Pies... Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto... But now, Pluto is no longer a planet. Did you decide not to learn that because you still believe that Pluto is a planet? Sorry, babe, but it don't work that way. If the scientists say Pluto is not an official planet, then it isn't a planet. You have to be able to unlearn the 9 planets and learn that there are only 8.
There are essentially 3 types of learning:
1) listening learning
2) seeing learning
3) experience learning
1) Those who learn by listening heard their mother say "do not touch the hot stove," believed her with no questions asked, and did not touch the stove.
Just because you do not like to sit in a classroom setting and take lecture notes does not mean that you should not learn. Part of being taught, is being able to listen. When your mother is speaking, listen. When you are listening to the radio on the highway, listen. If you are strolling through the park with your dog, listen. Always listen. Listen to everything. Don't just hear you mother say she loves you. Don't just hear the guy on the radio say what the next song will be. Don't just hear the birds sing and your dog bark at the squirrel under the tree. Listen, really listen, and process everything you hear from the sound of laughter from the kids skating by, to the sound of the wisest man saying the oldest proverb. And you can't just listen, you have to train your ears and mind to really hear everything around you and to process what you are listening to and transform it into something you can use.
2) Those who learn by seeing saw their sibling touch the hot stove, saw that they should not touch the stove, and did not touch the stove.
You always have to be aware of your surroundings. See everything when it happens the way it happens. Never doubt what you see. If your best friend sees the sky is blue, but you see the sky is green, guess what? The sky is green... but only for you. The sky is also blue, but only for your friend. The sky is also red, but only for the strange woman across the street. The sky is also black, but only for the blind man down the walk. Never doubt what you see, everybody is going to have a different perspective on the world and every single one of them will be right. It simply depends on who you are and how you view the world. You see the dog run across the street. Watch the dog for a few more seconds and learn what it was chasing after. You may just discover that dogs do, in fact, enjoy chasing pigs, or whatever that dog in particular was chasing after.
One thing you must never do, however, is spend too much time watching the dog. If you chase the dog for an hour because you want to know what he is chasing after, you have just wasted a perfectly good hour of other learning. What if in that hour, not only did the dog run across the road, but there was a traffic jam two blocks over, the guy who stole the woman's purse ran past you with her in his wake, and 10 year old Anna-Marie at the park got snatched by a stranger? Those are all dangerous situations, but they are also learning situations. And because you were wrapped so tightly around seeing what the dog was chasing, you did not see the other incidents. Always see, and always be aware of what is happening.
3) Those who learn by experience touched the hot stove once, and did not touch the stove again.
Everybody learns from experience. If you just open your eyes and reach out your hand, you are learning. You are learning when you write notes, when you cook a meal, when you drive home from work, when you drink a soda. You are always learning. Every time you do something, you are experiencing something and every time you experience something, you learn from that experience. Whether consciously or subconsciously, you do learn.
So, there you have it.
When you know something, never be willing to just give it up, but always be willing to learn it a new way. And always be willing to teach what you know. I live my life by the words "I've already convinced myself, who else do I need to convince?" But I do not always go by that. I realize that I might be wrong and I am always willing to listen to someone else until I have concrete proof that I am, in fact, right.
So there you have it... Live, love, and learn. All three so very important in its own way. Do each equally. Do not always live and forget to learn. Do not always love and forget to live. Do not always learn and forget to love. You must be able to balance the three.
Much love
~Afriqueen
