Digging Out

Today I can actually see a section of my study. I can also sit down in my big over stuffed easy chair. I am counting this as a major accomplishment today!  Up until now my study has been buried. From papers to pictures and everything in between, you couldn't even find a path to my chair at my desk until today.

I am digging my way out! Sorting through the clutter, trashing the unimportant! Isn't that life!

This morning I woke up and I wished it was Fun Faye Friday. Then a thought struck me dead center. "It's ok, today can be Terrific Tuesday! Caring for my mom for nearly six years has taught me something profound. It's taught me life is going to pass by regardless of my attitudes, every day is going to come and go regardless of how I choose to think about it.  And the power to positively command any day lies in the choosing of my thoughts. In my wishing this morning, I nearly wished away a perfectly good day! It was in that moment that I remembered I have the power to think differently at any given moment.

While it's true when it comes to life we are often told, we must endure to the end, and surely enduring is a good word for what it feels like when life throws at us one curve ball after another. I however believe that we focus to much on the enduring part and fail to give emphasis on the real truth, Life is to be lived with joy (while we are enduring to the end.)

Joy is not something that manifests itself in the day like an elephant placed in our way. On the contrary. Joy hides behind every little nuisance. If you want joy in your day, you have to vigorously hunt it down and seize it! At first it seems difficult, but when we learn to harness our thinking power, joy surrenders like a small child. I know finding joy in the journey of every day living means finding joy in the the middle of the mundane! It means learning to see joy in the contention and chaos. If we pass through this life giving all of our attention to the side of life that is filled with the common drudgeries of living, the stress, the plain and simple pains that present themselves each and everyday, we have missed the most important part of life.

I must not be fooled into thinking life is hard and that joy isn't present when it is. Because life is hard, that is a given. It's suppose to be hard. In dwelling however on how hard life is, only makes it harder. It is my thinking that life is hard that really makes life hard. And it is that mentality that drives out joy! Joy often hides in the hardest parts of life and I know joy is always present. It is. It is only our dysfunctional thinking that robs us of finding the joy in everything!

Therefore, today and everyday I'm going to choose the "Cup Half Full" mentality. Everyday I'm going to be actively seeking out joy. I will find it in the epiphanies of the day! I'm going to teach myself everyday how to look upon life with a positiveness that commands each and every moment, setting joy free. Like Henry David Thoreau said, "To affect the quality of the day is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

Today I am digging my way out. Perhaps that is true of my thinking as well.

As I was cleaning today, I realized I like to write myself notes. Today I found papers with notes scribbled everywhere. I want to remember them. Here are a few I found.

"Be cheerful in all that you do. Live joyfully. Live happily. Knowing that God does not dwell in gloom, but in light and love." Gordon B. Hinckley

"I hate four letter words. Like Cook, Bake, Dust, and Wash."

"Sometimes loosing balance for love is part of living balance in life."

"The physics of a quest, a force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity. The rules of a quest physics goes something like this ---If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar, comforting, which can be anything from your house to literal resentments and set out on a truth seeking journey. Either externally or internally and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared most of all to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself ---Then the truth will not be withheld from you. I can't help but believe it given my experience."

Aqua versiamo = lets cross over