appreciation

The Way Things Stack Up

/ Kennedy Farr / 3 Comments

Stones pyramid on sand symbolizing zen, harmony, balance. OceanThe way that things stack up don’t always make sense.  You look at a rock cairn and you see dissimilar shapes and textures and sizes.  What doesn’t naturally fit together neatly and perfectly into one whole structure has the potential to allow for balance to offset the dissimilarities in size and shape.

Cairns represent a balance that requires delicacy and a measure of hope. They offer natural beauty presented in a random-deliberate-natural sort of way.  A lot like life.  They do not ask for some added adhesive that will make the balancing act a little easier.  The rocks defy gravity by leaning on each other. Cairns have the potential to  stand for a very long time.  They represent the possibilities that I might have overlooked otherwise.

I am thinking that cairns in the right setting appeal to me.  I do like to see them on the beach below high tide such that the tide will roll in and eradicate the evidence of man — restoring a different natural order.  The ocean is persistent that way.

I have an old scale that I bought at an estate sale.  This scale has seen better-balanced days.  In order for the pointer to balance the beam, I had to add several tiny antique French coins in one of the weights pan.  The coins bring everything up to true.  Balance.  What is it exactly?  We seek it.  We desire it.  We believe that we would appreciate how it feels . . . if we could only be certain that we are actually experiencing it.  There are books and poems and songs written about balance.  Still, I do not know exactly what it means or how it feels in my life.

Vision Board 058We weigh decisions.  And justice.  And mercy.  And priorities.  And options.  We weigh fairness and love and life.  We somehow intuit when something isn’t feeling quite right, so we start to mess with the scale.  We add more coins.  Or we pick up a different rock to add to the cairn.  We deliberate.  Or we sometimes say the-hell-with-it and just give it a go.

Life’s events tumble together, and my carefully-constructed towers of well-thought-out plans are strewn all willy-nilly.  Sometimes I am left with the oddest of pieces to balance back together again.  I see the beauty in the pile of rocks that are before me, and I seek guidance and allow my intuition to lead me.

I recently read a great Irish proverb: “A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything.”   I so agree.  A good laugh is like medicine and a long sleep restores the body and the soul.  Along the vein of cairns, I was thinking about which life blessings provide me with balance: laughter, sleep, forgiveness, appreciation, humility, kindness, patience, travel, adventure, discovery, learning, courage . . .

The way that things stack up at times doesn’t always make sense, but I continue to attempt to counterbalance with those things that point me to true.

 

 

 

 

Tis the Season to Appreciate

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

 

It is post-Christmas week.  One of my favorite weeks of the year.  Thanksgiving feels to be so long ago.  Christmas Day is in the near past.  For many, the practice of giving is now moving into a new dimension.    We tend to shift our sense of openness, generosity, awareness of others and their needs after the holidays.  There are so many ways to give.

I have witnessed many selfless acts during this past holiday season.  It has been a blessing to see how openly and sweetly and richly others have shared their love, goodwill, traditions, and time.  I am thinking of the fabulous feasts that were so generously prepared by family during this recent holiday season.  The measure of time and love and sense of tradition that went into these meals was truly amazing.  I felt the love when I saw all of the cookbooks opened on the kitchen counter, the living room coffee table, and the couch.  I could feel the meals from holidays past lilting from the open and stained and dog-eared pages.  There were homemade cookies to be enjoyed.  Chips and vegies to be dipped.  Crackers to be cheesed.  The variety of dishes served was astonishing, actually.

When my daughters were young, it was our tradition that they would create the holiday menu.  It was fun and always a culinary adventure.  The menu was generally quite limited to a few favorite foods that were general considered to be taboo by any nutritional standards.  And the added bonus was that their menus demanded a blessedly brief amount of time and a decided lack of culinary talent on my part.

I think of the year that I served red Jell-O in the shape of teddy bears with freshly-whipped cream.  Or the year that we ate nothing but potato chips and onion dip for the entreé and pumpkin pie for dessert.  These were not incidents of pure laziness or nutritional abuse on my part.  These meals built a foundation of culinary autonomy . . . it was a day of Anything Goes.  Why not?  We were not serving others who held expectations of basted turkey, cornmeal stuffing, and giblet gravy.  We were Gastronomic Outlaws – bucking the current societal holiday conventions that demanded hours of shopping, food preparation, and marathon clean-up.

There was one year that I did cook a turkey.  It was a rare year, as we had family visiting us and it would not do to forego the traditional meal.  Whining from one of my more outspoken house guests would ensue, and we could not have that.  Placating with a cooked bird was preferable to listening to his traditional ranting.

Alas, we don’t remember enjoying the golden-brown-basted turkey from that year because we lost our power and our running water for five days, starting on Christmas Day morning – about 1.5 hours into bird-cooking time.  I remember looking at the turkey that was half-cooked in the electric-powered oven . . . wondering how I could possibly continue to cook an entire bird while balancing it on the top of the old barrel wood stove in the living room.

The solution?  I went out to the woodshed and got a shovel and buried the turkey in the field.  We had no refrigeration and no promise as to when the power would return to us.  I didn’t want to invite any unwelcome poultry illness . . . or any opportunistic animals to come marauding in the night, had I tossed the uncooked bird onto the compost pile.  As insane as this sounds, it felt like a righteous act to bury poor Tom Turkey, as my heart was not entirely in agreement with cooking an unfortunately-fated bird that year.  A silent blessing was bestowed.  R.I.P.

While we still had daylight, we went sledding instead on Hamburger Hill – the name of the sledding run behind the school . . . one that had been dangerously groomed by the school children during the previous weeks before Christmas break.  It was a fun and memorable and active way to spend the day.  We came home and made hot chocolate by balancing a tea kettle on the round arc of the barrel stove. We made peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches by candle light and finished the meal off with Christmas cookies.  Not even my best of turnaround traditional attempts was to come to fruition. Only minimal whining about the peanut butter was uttered by the Traditional Outspoken Relative.  We had somehow managed to maintain our time-honored tradition of eating minimalistic nutrition for yet another holiday.

That is why the meals from this current year were exemplary.  All of the stops were pulled.  It was one wing-ding of a holiday meal.  I do not recall ever seeing so much love poured into a meal that was to be served to loved ones.  My daughters?  They served up seconds and thirds on dishes that they had never tasted before.  Green bean casserole, sweet potato casserole, soft white-flour rolls . . . What had they been missing all of these years?

But who said that you always have to serve the perfect holiday meal that fulfills all of the nutritional requirements of the food pyramid?  We have survived the sugar highs, the salt-induced edema, the Year of the Sauerkraut, the subsequent tummy aches, and, yes, the year of the peanut-butter sandwiches.  And we have built a lot of memories along the way.

It is strange how even non-traditions present as gifts of love.  It is a way to measure . . . a way of setting fence posts through time.  There are so many ways to give.  We give through sharing, through accepting, through laughing through the crazier moments that define where we are today.  What we choose for today.

We have an amazing opportunity to give.  To breathe life into a holiday in ways that are unexpected.  Memories are forged and we laugh in spite of the years that felt to be a bit tougher.  Life is good.  There is much to be appreciated.  And we anticipate the next holiday season with wonder and awe – never knowing what it may bring to us in the way of unexpected gifts. toaster oven

 

Confidence . . . an Appreciation of Self

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

kindness confidenceConfidence.  What is it?  Confidence is defined as “a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities” (Google: define).  We read and hear a lot about appreciation.  Appreciation for our blessings, our possessions, our jobs, our health, our friends, our family, our senses, our brains, our abilities.   Technology, nature, transportation, travel, beauty.  We appreciate others for what they do and for the joy they bring into our lives.  We appreciate how they love us through those thick-and-thin moments.  We reciprocate and make them coffee in the morning.  We send a nice email to someone at work.  We let a stranger go ahead of us in traffic.  We leave a love note on the mirror in the bathroom.  We kiss each other good bye each morning. toaster oven

We pick up the slack on a project with a deadline.  We choose to be gracious when we don’t feel like it.  We laugh at someone’s bad joke.  We sky-lift a worm on the sidewalk after a rain to safety.  Little things.

When was the last time you paused to appreciate an ability or a quality you have?  Really appreciate it.  A quirk or a talent?  A spot of brilliance or a burst of intuition?  A kind gesture you have made that was based more on intuition than anything else?  Do we even notice when we are expressing a kindness?  Or do we continue to be hard on ourselves – when we might not have been exactly perfect in that instantaneous snapshot of time that we call Right Now?

We tell others what we enjoy about them or about what they do to contribute or what it is that makes them unique and lovable.  It seems that this is absent on a self-level – on a level that escapes the traps and chains of egoism or conceit or narcissism.  Just plain and simple appreciation.

What do you appreciate about yourself?  What one little thing have you done or thought today that you appreciate?  Maybe you turned a mad-attitude into an accepting-attitude.  Maybe you realized that you have been offering resistance in a situation over which you have zero control.  Zero.  Maybe you made some pumpkin pie and delivered it to your significant other.  Or maybe you gave someone a hug – someone who really needed a hug in that moment. Or maybe you told someone you love him when it just felt right in that second to say it aloud.

When we experience a moment of confidence, maybe it is as simple as acknowledging the little things that we do each and every day.  Moments that assure ourselves that we are on this planet for a reason.  For a good and mighty and blessed reason.  I believe that there are many moments throughout the day when one has an opportunity to give a high five or an elbow bump to your little ol’ self.

Would the world be a more self-actualized place if we were kinder to our own selves?  I think so.

self confidence

What experiences do you consider spiritual?

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

My journaling today led me to thinking and writing about Experiences That I Consider to be Spiritual:

  • laughter
  • happiness
  • charity
  • generosity
  • physical health
  • mental health
  • spiritual health
  • generosity of spirit
  • acts of kindness
  • mindfulness
  • cultivation of mindfulness
  • appreciation
  • love
  • being in love
  • true sharing of the good things in life

I seek peace in my heart’s chambers.  I seek the cultivation of that miraculous moment — the pause — that allows me to seek my Higher Self and to focus on my heart’s horizons.  To believe that “every little thing’s gonna be all right.”

As I wrote, a visualization floated into my mind:

floating leaf 1At first, a little curled-edge leaf boat.  The leaf looked like a small alder leaf with serrated edges.

Then . . . a piece of pale blue beach glass in the shape of a heart: faceted on the edges and surf-scratched to a state of opaqueness . . . I placed the little heart on the curled-edge leaf boat and let it float on a dark puddle that grew and flowed into a current of water with higher energy.blue beach glass

I don’t know where the little leaf will light . . . but where it does, it will be received with kindness and appreciation for my willingness to trust and to allow healing on its journey of hope.

I finished writing in my journal and I thought, Wow! All of this mysterious and unrelated stuff simply from taking 20 minutes to just stop and to listen.  The power of writing and listening to the thoughts in my mind.

Life takes on such a busy and rapidly-moving pace.  It bustles and hustles and sometimes grinds to a halt from a frighteningly-high speed.  When it slams to a stop, we stress and we worry.  We wonder.  We forget to be positive.  And we lose our way.  We are in the forest and the trees no longer feel friendly.  We aren’t having fun anymore.

These moments are part of life.  I remember a conversation I had with two of my good friends.  We were talking about some particular life challenges.  Difficulties.  Stress.  This sort of thing.  One friend felt it best to set everything aside and choose lightness.  Move above and beyond the challenge.  Let it go.  Do not grant it any attention.  It will slip away.  Turn your focus away.   It will disappear ultimately.

My other friend believed that there was healing and growth in seeking a way through.  He saw the obstacle as an opportunity to grow.  And to become strengthened by powering through.  By feeling the discomfort, it would dissipate.  Ultimately.  It would no longer sting because he had invited it into his life.  He was welcoming it.  There was no fear involved.

Wow.  This was good stuff.  I found myself transfixed by the conversation and by their guided philosophies.  Essentially both felt that there was a measure of enlightenment, growth, and transcendence in each of their approaches.  We all could see how both were good strategies for addressing a challenge.

Then they looked at me.  What do you do?  What do you do when life feels challenging?  What is your approach?  Sitting in the midst of such great thinking and spiritualizing, I didn’t know how to answer.  I wanted to say, Well, first I panic a little bit.  Then I might panic a lot. I might start pacing, and I might drink some water to rehydrate my cells.  I might take the dog out for a walk.  Or call my best friend.  Or feel sick in my stomach.  Or go to the gym.  Or tune my fiddle and read challenging sheet music.  Or eat foods that aren’t in my nutritionally-best interest.  I don’t know.

And I didn’t know how to answer them with words or metaphors or images.  The two of them, being my good friends, know me.  They know how I analyze and bob and innovate my way through a problem.  By all accounts, it ultimately feels as if my methodology could best be entitled Distraction Theory to Ascendancy  . . . distracting myself to a place where I can govern the problem into manageable bits by administering tiny tweaks along the way.  Thinking and feeling and loving and hoping and laughing my way through.

Back to my list of Experiences I Consider to Be Spiritual.  It may be a Grab Bag of pick-and-choose, but I default to my sense of spiritual.

Sound complicated?  A little bit like nailing my shoe to the floor and going around in circles?  It is.  My friends’ descriptions of their paths to transcendence were quite inspiring.  And a lot convicting.  I don’t know if I have a fallback philosophy of any consistency, but I do attempt to pursue a state of positivity through my distractions.  While I am walking the dog or sweating on the elliptical trainer, I repeat to myself: Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  I jump into the pool of many options and grab hold of what makes the most sense at the time.

always believeAnd the good news about always believing that something wonderful is about to happen?  It does.  Something wonderful always happens.  Eventually.  Maybe not in the very nano-second, but there have been times when it has happened that quickly.  In the midst of my Sea of Distracted State, I am launched into an orbit of transcendence that rids my heart and mind of worry or fear or gloom or overwhelm-ment.

Always believe.  Believe.  Keep hope alive by choosing the positive option.  I want to be that little piece of blue beach glass floating serenely on that curly-edge alder leaf.  Flowing into a current of water of Higher Energy.

My two very lovely friends have both moved to different parts of the world.  And I miss them so much.  I wish that I could tell them about my Lovely Leaf Boat Theory in person over a glass of wine at our favorite place to meet. I would now have a better-defined answer to their question of Your turn. What do you do?  

But they know me.  They know that I will Think Light and stay afloat in the current before I allow my vessel to sink.  I might not be floating above and away from things or powering my way through with amazing discipline and will . . . but I will stay afloat.

I am lucky to have met such friends.  It is funny how friends have no idea how important — how essential –they are in the life of another.  Isn’t this amazing when you think about it?  That they are the hands that are beneath the leaf.  Trimming it in the rough waves and spinning it out of the eddies that tangle me into a swirl of confusion.

Friends.  I forgot to add “Friends” to my list of Experiences That I Consider to Be Spiritual.  And I find it remarkable that everything Spiritual on this list is embodied within my Friends.  For this, I feel abundantly blessed.  To all of my friends, I thank you thank you thank you.  You are amazing beyond wonder. toaster oven

 

Looking Deep Into Nature

/ Kennedy Farr / 8 Comments

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

~Albert Einstein

domke lakeToday we are nearing record high temperatures.  And I am here at my desk, daydreaming of living on the lake and its winter snowfall and pearlescent lake ice.  Albert Einstein wrote: “Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world.” Dr. Einstein is correct.  I feel cooler as memories of winters past and its deep cold settle over my current external-world reality.

Living on the lake taught me to pay attention to the simplest of things: the remaining daylight in the late afternoon for chores, the amount of water still in the bucket on the stand as night approached, the arrival of the bell mare coming in from open pasture on the mountain, and the weather that rolled in from the south over the ridge. Weather determined the plan of each day: sunny days were reserved for wood cutting or laundry or boat maintenance; rainy days for cooking or personal study or paperwork.

ice on lakeCome November, the lake would freeze, the float plane traffic would stop until springtime, the quiet would descend more fully.  All sound would be absorbed by the low clouds, the ice on the lake, and the snow-covered ground.  The silence was deafening in the winter months.  I used to keep an old funky radio — all wrapped around with copper wire — tuned to the only clear AM station in order to combat the ringing in my ears from the deafening quiet.  The lack of sound waves and movement took on a new life, a new way of being and of paying attention.  It was a unique experience that has shaped my current notion of stillness.  It is in this place where I learned how to live with the elements and how to be quiet within my own self.

kerosene-lampIt was a rewarding and demanding lifestyle which did not allow for a great deal of convenience.  I did not have electricity, running water, telephone, or the usual appliances found in the average American household.  I cooked on a wood cookstove and heated my home with a 55-gallon barrel turned on its side.  Artificial light came from kerosene and, in the wintertime, additional natural light was provided by the sun’s reflection off the newly-fallen snow.

I loved waking up to that first snowfall.  The cabin would be bathed in a brilliance that had been quite-noticeably absent during the darker months of autumn.  It felt as if a Supreme and Altruistic Benefactor had turned on a light switch of ambient brilliance, and I was the receiver of such luminosity.

But I am human, and this first-awakening glow would predictably wane.  And it would no longer be deeply revered and appreciated.  The first snow did indeed translate such that less kerosene would be burned in the early morning hours.  Another bonus was that in just a few more snowfalls the open crawl space beneath the cabin would soon be insulated from winter’s colder temperatures.  I would be burning less firewood.  The floorboards would be warmer longer.

All of these amazing advantages.  I would lie in bed that first morning and simply love the gift of snowfall.

That first snow also signified the beginning of an intense arm-and-back workout that would present its demands on a daily basis for the next 5 or 6 months.  Snowfall would become the dratted monster that would creak and groan and eventually slither off the metal roof all night during a heavy fall and engulf the entire house in its shroud of white.   That bonus brilliance would soon be muted by a massive amount of wet concrete that would need to be moved away from the single pane windows — lest the added pressure cause them to collapse.

It was a delicate balance of attitude adjustment.  The properties of snow are exactly what they are.  Nothing had changed regarding the crystalline structure of the snowflakes.  My interpretation of these properties was what had shifted. Appreciation?  Or just plain hard work?

waterHauling water in 2.5-gallon buckets up the hill from the lake demanded that water be afforded an immense amount of respect.  In the coldest of winter, vigilance was required to preserve my water source.  The diameter of the hole would quickly shrink as the cold settled into Deep Winter.  Chipping through the new lens of ice each day released the smell of fresh lake water and the promise of springtime.  I can recall that smell today.  I can remember the feeling of standing on the ice and drawing water with the stainless-steel bucket.  Life was alive and moving beneath the stillness imposed by the ice.

I very much like this quote of Albert Einstein’s.  What a genius he was in so many ways.  When I look deep into nature, I do understand everything better.  I understand that there is a dichotomy to things.  That there is a yin and a yang. That It-Is-I who can tip my inner scale of harmony toward appreciation over overwhelm-ment.  I appreciate the lessons that I gained from living in a primitive environment that reminded — demanded — me to look up and all around.

To look up.  I wonder at this now.  It sometimes seems that I so rarely look up.  I am reminded to turn this around and start looking up and around.  I sit here at my desk and I look out the window at the trees on this gorgeous summer day . . . and I find myself daydreaming about winter’s snow and ice.  So Much Beauty.  All around and all the time.  And so many gifts of renewal are in my life today.  So many.  I believe that I appreciate them more intensely because I have “looked deep into nature.”  I value my appreciation of today.  Of being alive.  Of being able to return and to grow my appreciation to those whom I love.  What a gift it is to appreciate life and love, to share trust and laughter with another.  toaster oven

For this, I raise a toast . . . a 2.5 gallon bucket . . . a fine glass of cognac . . . to Nature for assisting me to “understand everything” a little better in this moment.  I feel deeply blessed.

Albert-Einstein-on-Nature

Growth from Complete Destruction

/ Kennedy Farr / 4 Comments

seed crack growthThis is a very powerful quote.  I read this and wonder.  And think about my life.  I think about those times in my life that I would not exactly call fun.  Those times when I have felt confused, fearful, upset, angry, hurt, crushed.  None of these adjectives are new to any one concerning life, love, change, and growth. We are constantly metamorphosing within.  We present what might appear to be our “same self” to others, but we alone gauge the amount of growth that is occurring within.  And without.  There is simply so much dichotomy in life.

In botany, dichotomy is defined as “repeated branching into two equal parts.”  This allows me to look at moments of “complete destruction” as the balancing of another part.  The beautiful part that shows of promise and hope.  The Yin and the Yang.  The Passive and the Vigor.  The Interiority and the Exteriority.  The Earth and the Sky.  The Dense and the Rarefied.  The Diffuse and the Focused.  The Peanut Butter and the Jelly.  Matter and Energy.  Life balances this way, and I strive to be aware of the constant changes that are keeping me alive and growing and loving and learning and in love.  The unexpected blessings that remind me to believe in guided spontaneity.  What a gift it is when I listen to those inner voices that lovingly guide me to my bliss. Wow!      toaster oven

SproutsInception.  Origination.  Germination.  All indicate the origin of change, development, and growth.  As this quote states: “To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”  Today, I feel the balance that my experiences have created, especially during those times when I have felt like my “insides are coming out.”  Today, life feels beautiful — rendering yesterday’s testa as the reminder to grow in appreciation.  Appreciation.   Such a great thing to balance the teeter-totter of growth and “destruction.”

Oh, how I so want to be mindful of choosing grace under pressure.  Growth rewards us with gratefulness.  Deep and abiding gratitude for today.  For right now.  We are so lucky that we have the opportunity to grow and to become something new.

“If you cannot plant a garden, sow one seed.

If you cannot feed all the hungry, fill one need.

The seed you sow may someday bloom and spread

And your loaf supply a multitude with bread.”

— source unknown

vintageprintables.blogspot.com

vintageprintables.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

Begin.

/ Kennedy Farr / 4 Comments

“Begin doing what you want to do now.  We are not living in eternity.  We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand — and melting like a snowflake.”  — Francis Bacon

How much of life do we spend waiting?  We wait for the bus, the plane, the train.  We wait until we are tall enough to ride the big-kid rides at the fair.  We wait until we are 21 to legally drink alcohol.  To vote.  To stay up late past our bedtime.  To get our driver’s license.  To move away and go on an adventure.  To buy our first car.  We wait for the plane to land and for our first kiss and for graduation from university.  We wait for promotions, raises, benefits, and bonuses.  We wait for love — true love — to enter into our lives.  We wait.  And wait.

And then there are the snowflake moments.  We don’t wait for ice cream to melt.  We don’t wait until the last of the chocolates are gone from the box.  We don’t wait for our vacation on Kauai’ to be over.  And we don’t wait for love to end.  Like that incredible sunset on Kaua’i, we want love to last forever.  And forever — because it is just so much fun and feels so great.  It really does.  We are just so lucky when we discover a Snowflake Moment.  toaster oven

These moments feel rare.  I read once that one inch of rain is the equivalent of approximately ten inches of snow.  That is a lot of snowflakes.   It takes a lot of them to get my attention.  But when they do, I am so happy.

It doesn’t take a social scientist to see a pattern here.  We don’t wait for these Snowflake Moments because we like these moments.  We find pleasure in them.  Savor them.  When they arrive, we feel supremely happy.  Sometimes they are over far too soon.  We share them and we tell our friends about them later.  We take pictures of them and post them to our social media page.  We write about them in our journals and maybe even make a scrapbook to better remember them.  We want them to last.  We are in the moment.  The joys of coincidence and spontaneity can be found in the Snowflake Moments.

I used to live at a high elevation on the snowy side of the mountains.  I shoveled a LOT of snow.  I shoveled the cabin roof, the woodshed roof, and the cellar roof to prevent damage or even collapse.  I shoveled snow away from the windows to prevent the surprise of broken glass and to allow some sunlight to stream into the windows.  I have shoveled my truck out of ditches and paths for hauling water.  I have done my share of what best can be described as Battling the Snow.  When I read this quote from Francis Bacon, I wish that I would have read it before I experienced all of those winters in such mighty snow.  I do believe that I would have gained a better perspective on digging out after a 3-day storm.

I would have told myself: Life is short.  True, there is a lot of shoveling to be done, but just Begin.  Focus on the moment.  Not on the blessed Chinook that will eventually start to blow come March and that will take care of the ice on the lake and the snow on the trail.  A reprieve is in sight: no more shoveling for another 5 months.  Whew.  I made it with all muscles intact.

Life feels so different now.  I am mindful of cultivating some sense of Focus . . . on Now and Try Something New and Begin.   I am learning that the fleeting fragility of snowflakes is truly very beautiful.  Stacks upon stacks of them . . . maybe not so much!  But they are gone so quickly.

I love what Francis Bacon has written: “We have only this moment.”  So beautiful.

 

“Life. It’s given to you. It’s a gift.”

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

gratitude-rainbowspiral1” . . . life is rich, beauty is everywhere, every personal connection has meaning and . . . laughter is life’s sweetest creation.”                       — source unknown —

Gratitude.  What is it?  So many things and feelings and experiences.  It is simply enormous.  It is a whisper of a breeze.  It is beauty.  It is real.  It is vapor.  It is life.  We all have our own unique way of experiencing gratitude and of returning it to others.  Gratitude makes the world go around.  It is a gift that creates a good day.

always believeI have this quote hanging in my office on the wall near my computer: Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  I l-o-v-e this quote.  It is another way of saying that cultivating gratitude matters.  It is important to believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  It feels so great to just give in to the belief and go with the flow.

This video by Louie Schwartzberg is so very very beautiful.   I watch it when life feels absolutely fantastic and again when life feels as if it needs a reminder to look out, look up, look within.  Believe.  Celebrate.  Embrace the incredible gift of today.  Give to others.  And give some more.  Be happy. Cultivate mindfulness of the beauty that is all around.  Smile.  Laugh at the funny and at the absurd.  And at myself.  Live a life of gratitude and appreciation.

“Life.  It’s given to you.”

May “everyone you meet on this day . . . be blessed by your presence.”  Thank you for joining me today and for reading this post and blessing me by your presence.  It makes me supremely happy to know that we are sharing this moment of significance.  Thank you!

toaster oven

 

It’s Monday. Do you want to be happy?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Happy-Monday-Are-you-happyIt’s Monday.  Yippee!  Are you happy?  No?  Do you want to be happy?  No?  Keep doing whatever you’re doing.  Pretty simple, right?  But if you aren’t happy and you want to be happy, change something.  Try something new.  Anything.

That change can be tiny and infinitesimal.  It can be a baby step in relation to the Universe.  But Change Something.  You will not regret it.

Why?  Because the influence of Change, like the weather, is akin to the microscopic disturbance of a butterfly wing. A simple flutter has the potential to determine if it is going to rain on your outdoor wedding day six weeks hence.  You never know.  Weather and life and Change all have a beautifully fickle nature about them.  Surprises abound.

While climate may depend on the broad and long and predictable haul, the weather is changeable.  Its fluctuations are hard to predict.  The weather can produce a different result in the immediate.

Your plans might change as a result of the weather.  You may decide that a picnic is not in your best interest if there is a 90% chance of rain.  But you never know.  There goes a rabble of butterflies winging by, and you are out the door with your picnic basket, trying to decide which beach to lunch at.

Thank goodness for the seemingly impetuous nature of butterflies.  While some may consider their flight to be a contribution to chaos, others may embrace the short term atmospheric changes as beautiful.  Predictable climate patterns may merge and alter the atmosphere’s balance, but the short term, day-to-day atmospheric changes are what we live in.   Climate is shaped by unseen global forces that create patterns — all of which are great to analyze, but chaotic disturbances affected by a butterfly migration are what add interest to another Monday.  Nature is a miracle, and I am going to roll with the butterfly-generated chaos every time. I’ll choose a miracle any time.

Are you happy?  I am.  I love Mondays.  Is there a pattern to the calendar and our work week?  Yes.  Do I want to abandon my post and join a kaleidoscope of gypsy butterflies that are winging by?  Most definitely.  Still, I am a bit of a homing pigeon, and I know where I want to light at journey’s end.  With my sweetheart and my loved ones while listening to the stories of their Mondays that are always so magnificent and interesting, even when they do not believe that they are.

I love Mondays.  Mondays: they re-define another shot at another week of happiness and bliss and appreciation.  How could we not love them?

Life.  Metamorphosis.  Change.  Growth.  Struggle.  Movement.  Hope.  Rebirth.  Flight.  Freedom.  Happy Monday.

 

 

Appreciation . . . so elemental

/ Kennedy Farr / 4 Comments

i think you are wonderfulAppreciation:  I think you are w-o-n-de-r-f-u-l.  When I tell you that I appreciate you, I am telling you that I value you.  Value you.  It is something that is so simple and elemental and primitive.  And easy.  And fun!  Oh, my — how much fun appreciation is.  It says: I love this about you!

Appreciation says thank you on the deepest of levels.  Thank you for being YOU.  It creates mega dimensions to life and to love and to laughter and bliss and to universal Truth.  How great is this?  It is absolutely amazing.

Google’s “define: appreciation” reveals: “the recognition and enjoyment of the good qualities of someone or something.”  So beautiful.  Recognizing and enjoying the good qualities of someone or something.

Appreciation: I see you.  I think you are amazing.

Appreciating you is a privilege.  When I appreciate you, you — without even knowing it — encourage me to be aware of how great life is.

Is there someone you appreciate?  Please, tell him or her today.  It will rock your world.  Isn’t that the way of following your heart?

Appreciation: I love sharing with you.  I love who you are.

I appreciate you.