growth

Embrace Your Inner Honey Badger & Make Some Mud Balls

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Escape your present reality and think like a honey badger.  Every time I watch this BBC documentary clip of the honey badger, I am so inspired by this animal’s persistence.  The honey badger’s focus on escaping the enclosure is nothing short of amazing.  It uses any and every resource it has to get to where it wants to go.  This animal truly is a marvel.  And what a lesson to all of us who doubt or fear or give up or don’t believe that something is possible.  The message straight from the honey badger itself: It is possible.  Just watch the video (4:12) and you will see what I am saying.  It is a hoot!

When I watch this video, I think about my life and about where I want to go.  Where I know I want to be. What I want to accomplish.  I am reminded of that quote by Lewis Carroll, “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.”  Well, the thing is: I do know . . . and I am expending personal resource: time, energy, creativity, etc.

But still . . . am I using every resource that is available to me?

This honey badger’s tenacity shows me that the answer to my question is Absolutely not.  The thing is: I know that I am capable of so much more.  Perhaps this is what drives the pistons of life’s dissatisfaction or confusion or self-defeat within my inner world.  I know that I have so much more inside of me to create, to offer, to be.  In the video, the honey badger even makes mud balls (!) to stage its escape.  Mud balls . . . an escape prop out of dirt and water.  Maybe I am easily moved, entertained, and inspired, but I find this very inspiring.  This honey badger never ceases to execute the next escape plan with what diminishing resources are available.  It uses ingenuity to make its goal happen, no matter what “tools” are available.

The word escape has so many different connotations.  It can mean that I am escaping from something that isn’t pleasant or that is demoralizing.  Or it can mean that I am experiencing a moment of escape, like the feeling of reveling in the sunshine on that Maui beach . . . but still with life’s root-of-reality reminding me of that which I will be returning to once vacation is over . . . something that isn’t bad but that isn’t all that great either.

Watch the video below (4:12), be inspired, and then click on the aqua-blue link to a fun and inspiring journaling prompt below.  Have fun with the prompt.  It could very well have the power to create a ripple effect into how you choose to live your life.  I wish you the very best of energy with your respective dreams and goals.

pencil stubClick on the aqua-blue link below for today’s journaling prompt: Your Great Escape Plan

Your Great Escape Plan

[Print this prompt out, 3-hole punch it, and add it to your journaling binder.   Take the writing journey and listen . . . you can’t get lost when you are following your own heart.  After all, you are the only one who can hear what it has to say.  The only one.  Relax, read, think, feel, listen, write.  Repeat.  And enjoy the journey.  It is a fine one, and one that is perfectly-made just for you, I promise.  Life is meant to be grown.]

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Leap & Land with a Bang

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

Check out this BBC video of mobula rays and their artistic, acrobatic, and aerobatic show.  They are spectacular.  Who knew that rays could leap — and land — so amazingly?   Their landing sends a huge boom through the water.  The higher they leap, the bigger the bang upon landing.  It is believed that the rays that make the biggest impact, give themselves the best odds of standing apart from the herd and of leaving with a mate.

Watch these fabulous flying rays (3:12):

http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150512-watch-these-giant-rays-fly

Mating rituals aside . . . when in a group, how do you stand out from the crowd?  How do you get noticed?  How do you draw attention to yourself?   This is not about ego-grabbing narcissism that demands every speck of attention in a social setting.  This is about expressing yourself in your immediate world such that you get noticed, feel understood, and build the best opportunities to connect with others.   Connection . . . it truly is what makes the world go around and is what gives significant meaning to what we do when we aren’t in the midst of connecting.  We, as humans, need connection . . . why not do it with a figurative bang?

So, taking a cue from the mobula rays . . . the higher the leap, the bigger the bang upon landing and the better chance to stand out from the crowd.  What is one thing you can do today or tomorrow or the next day to get noticed?  To make a difference?  To be you?  To exercise your unique you-ness?  Give yourself some credit for being important in the grand scheme of things.  Leap spectacularly and land with a big bang.

Being able to think of something that you will actually do might be a stretch for us introverts.  It might feel unnecessary or unbecoming or way out of one’s wheelhouse.  But why not try one little thing, make a change-up in your wardrobe.  Skip down the sidewalk to retrieve your mail.  Engage with the barista as you wait for your Americano.  Leaping is different for everyone; it is something only you can define for yourself.

Think One New Thing.  Leap and land and leap all over again.  It looks like these mobula rays are expending a tremendous amount of energy to go flying out of the water.  This is something that I think we sometimes want to avoid: The water feels so comfy.  I don’t think I can leap very high.  I’m not very athletic, after all.  Landing might cause me pain.  Someone might laugh at me or think I am weird.  Simply put? Expend the energy.  Your life will become different because of it.  I promise.

And the thing about leaping is that there is gravity on this planet.  You will land.  With a bang. Why not make it a Big Bang and stand out from the crowd?  Take a stand for you.  For a friend or a colleague or a student or a child or a stranger.  And for the world that surrounds you.  The Universe will thank you for it.

pencil stubClick on the sky blue link below for today’s journal prompt.  Have fun discovering (and making!) your leap!

Leap high and land with a bang. journaling prompt

[Print this prompt out, 3-hole punch it, and start your journaling binder.   Take the writing journey and listen . . . you can’t get lost when you are following your own heart.  After all, you are the only one who can hear what it has to say.  The only one.  Relax, read, think, feel, listen, write.  Repeat.  And enjoy the journey.  It is a fine one, and one that is perfectly-made just for you, I promise.  Life is meant to be grown.]

Creativity: Is it overrated?

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

IMG_3218I was flipping through the pages of my 5-year journal . . . and of the 1,825 answers that it could contain, I have filled in 53 answers.  As I was reading and reflecting on what I had written, I came across this question:

What’s the most creative thing you’ve done recently?

My answer struck me as honest, amusing-to-me, and a little comforting:

This is scary.  I can’t think of something!  Help!  Hmmm . . . I glued pictures of some birds in my journal.  I made a beautiful, foamy latte.  I made veggie-lentil marinara.

Reading this, I am struck by a note of  (1) desperation — fearing that the Creativity Police was going to swing by and give me an F+ in Creativity if I didn’t think of something Artsy and (2) a deeply-forgiving spirit — realizing that I didn’t feel like I had to report anything stellar like painting a gallery-worthy canvas or mastering the tricky 16th-note measures of my old friend “Allegro” on the violin.  I now know that on May 19, 2013, veggie-lentil marinara felt like a creative endeavor.  This is why I love journaling so much.  It reminds us of who we are.

Gluing pictures of birds in my journal is not how I externally define creativity.  I expect from myself a more legacy-laden result when I say the word creativity.   Still, there is much to be said for celebrating the day to day.  We can’t all be fabulously creative every single moment . . . or can we?

So . . . What would be my answer to this question today?  Hmm . . . let’s see . . .

IMG_3317Two weeks ago, when my two best girl friends came to visit, we got out a stack of small canvases and we painted.  We didn’t watch a movie.  We didn’t go out for dinner.  Rather we snacked on a jumbo bag of chips and salsa, sipped wine, and painted for hours.  It was fun, rewarding, stimulating, and enlightening.  I made an enormous mess and, being the kind of friends that they are, they helped me to clean up my spatters that had followed an unanticipated trajectory across the room.

There was also an element of repeat 2013 Creativity in this day, proving to me that some things are still a priority and indicative of my preferences: I made us beautiful, foamy lattes, we went bird watching (Have you ever seen a Stellar’s jay “ant”?) and, for dinner, we ate some crazy concoction made from leftovers from the fridge that involved lentils.  Lentils, oh lentils . . . how you are a constant in my life! lol!

IMG_3318Creativity.  It isn’t what you make that makes you a Creative.  It’s the feeling you create while you are creating.  Be it something as simple as cutting and pasting images of birds or something as rewarding as nailing those last few measures of “Allegro” — it is all a symbol of how I choose to feel while I experience and savor time.  So simple really when I remove all self-imposed external expectations.

It is so easy to look at others and remark on their gifts and talents.  We think because we aren’t mastering Sample A, our own Sample B somehow doesn’t quite measure up.  But measure up to what?  If we aren’t running marathons, our 2-mile walk doesn’t seem very significant.  If we aren’t hanging our work on a public wall, it doesn’t seem like it is very good.  If we aren’t performing at Benaroya Hall, then our music doesn’t measure up (pun intended).  I don’t know.  Maybe it’s all about perception, self-perception and otherwise. Forgiveness, self-forgiveness and otherwise.  And dissatisfaction, self-dissatisfaction and otherwise — knowing deep inside that we aren’t listening to our Higher Self’s prompting to become who we really are.

Click on the aqua-blue hyperlink below for today’s journal prompt.  It is a fun question that may inspire some surprising and reassuring answers for you in how you view your creative self.

Click on the aqua-blue link below:

Creativity. Is It Overrated. journaling prompt

Life is a lively event.  Live it like you mean it.  What’s stopping you?

[Print this prompt out, 3-hole punch it, and start your journaling binder.   Take the writing journey and listen . . . you can’t get lost when you are following your own heart.  After all, you are the only one who can hear what it has to say.  The only one.  Relax, read, think, feel, listen, write.  Repeat.  And enjoy the journey.  It is a fine one, and one that is perfectly-made just for you, I promise.]

Timshel & Epigenetics

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Earlier in the week, I posted about your personality (Nature versus Nurture) and the Glory of the Choice (timshel).  These thoughts stayed with me throughout the week. . . and then I came across this TED talk today about epigenetics: “How the Choices You Make Can Affect Your Genes” by Carlos Guerrero-Bosagna.  Here is a summary of this TED talk: “Here’s a conundrum: Identical twins originate from the same DNA … so how can they turn out so different — even in traits that have a significant genetic component? Carlos Guerrero-Bosagna explains that while nature versus nurture has a lot to do with it, a deeper, related answer can be found within something called epigenetics.”

If you have 5:02 today, view this TED talk.  The information is very compelling, satisfying, and inspiring.  The way that it is explained in the talk is to “think of DNA as a recipe book.”  The narrator goes on to explain how “genes in DNA are expressed when they’re read and transcribed into RNA . . . which is translated into proteins into structures called ribosomes.”

And so the story unravels into the most intricate, yet simple, explanation as to how the choices you make in life very possibly affect your genes.  I have spoken with people who have done Genetic Re-writing work, and it now makes more plausible sense to me.  This is interesting research and, after thinking on the wisdom of Steinbeck’s timshel, it all ties together in a very pretty spiritual-genetic bow: thou mayest  + genetics play a synchronous role in how we experience Life.

Sometimes when things come together like this, Life feels both larger and smaller than I could have ever imagined.   Taking in the micro-vast world of genetics coupled with the infinite non-perimeters of the universe does a pretty good job of answering all of my questions for this week.  Sometimes I just have to sit back and say, “This is all quite amazing . . . and I don’t even need to understand the detailed intricacies to be a Believer.  I believe.

If you have a moment, please, do view this TED talk.  If you have ever wondered about Life on Levels of Infinite Curiosity, it will not disappoint.

How the choices you make can affect your genes – Carlos Guerrero-Bosagna

pencil stubYour journal prompt today (click below) is as simple and as a complex as is this topic of re-writing your genetics.  Keep your writing clean and simple and don’t go down any rabbit holes or garden paths.  Keep it easy and uncomplicated.  Listen to your Higher Self and record what it has to say.

Epigenetics and Choice. journaling prompt

[Print this prompt out, 3-hole punch it, and start your journaling binder.   Take the writing journey and listen . . . you can’t get lost when you are following your own heart.  After all, you are the only one who can hear what it has to say.  The only one.  Relax, read, think, feel, listen, write.  Repeat.  And enjoy the journey.  It is a fine one, and one that is perfectly-made just for you.]

 

 

 

 

Your Personality . . . & the Glory of the Choice

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

Vision Board 058Your personality . . . what is it exactly?  Aside from the usual adjectives of fun or moody or sunny or temperamental or intense or Type A or laid back or . . . what exactly? What does it really mean to be assigned a personality type?

We’ve all pondered the big debate of Nature vs. Nurture . . . how the spark of life is blessed/cursed/or combination-therein by congenital behavior . . . or wait!  Is it actually shaped by environmental and emotional factors?  And then these is all of the vice-versa stuff that leads one to accept and embrace both and then not think much about it.

Fascinating research points to many interesting findings that help us to understand Who We Really Are, our emotional and social intelligence, and our perception of positive and negative influences.  Nature or Nurture?  It is an enormous question that no one can really answer with total authority.  Take the story of the two children — identical twins, actually — standing on the ocean shore.  They are enjoying themselves while the salt water is gently lapping at their toes.  Suddenly, a rogue wave washes over the top of them.  The same wave, the same temperature of water, the same element of surprise.  One of the twins starts to cry and scream and run from the water. The other twin splashes back at the wave while laughing.   While this story would neither withstand nor support the rigors of a research study focused on Nature vs. Nurture, I like it nonetheless.  It gives me pause: Why not laugh?  It’s a heck of a lot more fun than crying and screaming.

And in the midst of all of this wondering and debating and agreeing, I do believe that there is much to be said for the concept of timshel — the Hebrew word for thou mayest.

When I think on topics of this sort, my mind wanders back to a Time of Great Impressionability in my life, and I was reading John Steinbeck’s East of Eden.  What a book!  Well, “the story bit deeply into me,” and Lee’s treatise on timshel has stayed with me all of these curious years later — a testimony to the notion that life is one great impressionable moment after another.

It is my hope that sharing this gem of Steinbeck’s brilliance and wisdom will not act as any sort of spoiler.  The book is brilliant and one worth reading.  Like life, Steinbeck’s writing is intense and provocative and profound.  He writes the sort of story that stays with you throughout the years.  I thank Mr. Steinbeck for opening my eyes, my mind, my heart, my soul, and my sense of wonder to the notion of thou mayest: “the glory of the choice.”

Last week, I came across this quite lovely Personality Test online.  I normally don’t click on these tests, expecting some sort of hook to be set before you receive your “results,” but something prompted me to go ahead and try this one.  Before reading any further, go ahead and click on the link and visualize your responses to the prompts.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliapugachevsky/this-cube-personality-test-will-absolutely-blow-your-mind?utm_term=.onK9zJNbz&sub=4259074_8744597

All done?

What do you think?  How much of the explanation of your visuals did you feel was accurate?  At the very least, I felt that I was given a sideways glimpse into me — parts of me that are actually true that I generally don’t consciously associate with my “personality.”  I think about Steinbeck’s artistic weaving of timshel into East of Eden . . . and I am reminded that thou mayest carries with it a personal(-ity) responsibility of creative and paradigm-shifting mindfulness that requires daily cultivation, acknowledgement, and celebration on my part.

Personality assessment aside . . . overall, we need not be so hard on ourselves.  I think we sometimes embrace the opinions of  people — people who truly don’t know us — with far too much zeal, and we assign too much authority to the editorializing that is done by others.  We have a proclivity toward jumping into the sinkhole: a morass of self-blame, regret, and guilt that we assign to nature- and nurture-defining personality quirks . . . epic actions that play with our hearts and attempt to define how we choose to forge present moments into future goals and dreams.  Or . . . is this just my personality?

I used to have a quote taped up in every room of my house: Always believe that something wonderful is about to happen.  In the midst of one particularly Challenging Time, I was re-reading the quote, and I realized that I needed to make an edit.  I crossed out about to happen and scribbled in happening right now:

Always believe that something wonderful is happening right now.  

The current paradigm of Overwhelm in that moment screeched to a halt, and life felt like it took a gentler curve toward heart-healing and happiness.  When I realized that I had a choice to become someone new on the inside, my whole life shifted.  This epiphany didn’t segue into some neat and tidy story-book ending, but it did nudge me into a new place, such that I could get back into a timshel state of mind: “the glory of the choice.”

toaster ovenI leave you today with the prayer, the wish, the hope, and the thought that today is a good day for you.  A truly good day.  One of gratitude and filled with micro moments that tell you that Now is Now and life is evolving, constantly evolving, as something that is wonderful.  If this moment isn’t all that great, just wait for the next one.  It will be here before you know it — full of promise and full of timshel.  With some refining, life really can be borne from “the glory of the choice:  . . . keeping “the way open.”

Click on the highlighted link below to download today’s free journaling exercise.  Have fun journaling and putting a new spin on perceptions and keeping your way open!

The Glory of the Choice. A Different Spin. journaling prompt

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A reminder that gifts of beauty await when we keep our hearts open.  So lovely.

 

[P.S. Here is the real Spoiler Alert: To read a longer excerpt that discusses timshel in greater detail from East of Eden, click here.  If you are planning to read the book . . . do not click here.]

Follow Your Own Heart

/ Kennedy Farr / 3 Comments

Almanac Directions . . .

“From my own experience, I want to say that you should follow your heart, and the mind will follow you. Believe in yourself, and you will create miracles. Kailash Satyarthi

Journal prompt for today: It’s time to create some miracles.

Click on the link below:

You can’t get lost if you follow your own heart. Journal prompt

Print this prompt out, 3-hole punch it, and start your True Directions binder . . . or simply write your three things down in your journal.   Take the journey and listen . . . you can’t get lost when you are following your own heart.  After all, you are the only one who can hear what it has to say.  The only one.

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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.

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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

 

Be Somebody. Be the Difference.

/ Kennedy Farr / 2 Comments

1527135_571874089554544_978490371_nThis is such a great quote.  It serves as a healthy reminder to just “do something about that.”  Simply do it.  Be the somebody who realizes that I am somebody.  Who comprehends that my life matters.  Who understands that I can make a difference.

That I can be the difference.  That I am Somebody.

We all have such a unique influence on the planet.  I think about this sometimes, and it is staggering to imagine the ripples that we all are creating with our thoughts, our actions, our spirits.  We are this huge swirl of humanity that is pulsing and being and feeling.  The influence that our thoughts and emotions has on the planet is so immense.

maxfield parrishWhen I respect this truth, I feel both empowered and deeply humbled.  We all can be the somebody that does something that alters the course of history.  We all have the freedom to choose the direction of this course.  Freedom.  We are powerful beyond measure.

And some days . . . it takes so very little to make a positive difference.  A touch, a smile, a kind word, a phone call or email, a shared joke, a declaration of love.  Wow.  Our influence.  It is all so very huge and enormous, isn’t it?

I want to be Somebody that fosters growth.  Who provides encouragement and support.  Who loves freely.  Who laughs at silly jokes with my best friend.  Who loves unconditionally.  Who opens my heart and lets someone know that I deeply love him.  toaster oven

For when I open myself to life and creativity and laughter and love, I can’t help but be Somebody because I am confirming to another that he is Somebody. That she is making a positive difference. That he is loved beyond measure.  That she is selfless.  That he is just so crazy amazing.honey-bee

Tragedy takes place on a daily basis.  A seemingly insurmountable challenge presents itself in gargantuan disguise.  Bills stack up.  Love gets misplaced.  Work is unrewarding.  There is too much to do in too short a time.  Overwhelm-ment grows into discouragement.  Complications mutate in exponential proportions.

Still, so much of life is so simple: be Somebody.  Be the person whom you have been created to be.  Be . . . with a purpose that reflects who lives in your heart.

Today I will pay attention.  I will create.  I will love with wild abandon.   I will “do something about that.”  Today it is time to make a difference.  Time to be the difference.  Time to be Somebody.

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I see you. I am here.

/ Kennedy Farr / Leave a comment

I heard someone say the other day that she is a lifelong learner.  I like this sentiment.  We are all lifelong learners.  I seek growth and feel fully present when I am in the process of learning and evolving.  My life experiences have been shaped by years of primitive living, sharing with my family, teaching, studying, researching, gardening, dancing, playing music, reading, painting, creating, seeking ways to express love . . . time draws together in a harmonious confluence – constantly moving and flowing in directions that connect me as a part of the greater whole.

I believe that we all want to be part of a bigger whole.  We seek empathetic connections that acknowledge each other, define our lives in powerful ways, and allow for us to be examples and inspirations of growth, kindness, and healing — to truly see each other.

Among the tribes of northern Natal in South Africa, the most common greeting, equivalent to “hello” in English, is the expression: sawu bona. It literally means, “I see you.” If you are a member of the tribe, you might reply by saying sikhona, “I am here.” The order of the exchange is important: until you see me, I do not exist.

What this acknowledgement means is simply empathy. It means that you acknowledge the other as one like yourself. It means that the ‘I’ and the ‘You’ are the same – parts of a bigger whole.”  [I dearly wish I could remember the source from which I read this translation.  My apologies to the author.]

i-am-here_webI believe that every little bit works together into one whole, one flow.  And it is sometimes simpler to banish the roots of uncertainty and doubt in others than it is in our own selves.   It requires courage for us to explore new pathways.  In life’s journey, I want to experience and communicate both sawu bona (I see you) and sikhona (I am here).

I came across a passage in my reading recently that resonated with me: our blessings and gifts earn value when used . . . our abundance is an expression of how we use our gifts and how we can feel truly prosperous.  When we share, our riches grow in value because we have given them with compassionate awareness.  Wow.  This is just so beautiful.

I so believe this to be true.  We can create abundance in our lives and the lives of others by giving freely of what we have and who we are.  It is a humbling thing to think on and to write of.  It is an enormous privilege to become part of another’s journey and to think that I stand to be instrumental in another’s growth or happiness.  Wow.  Sawu bona.  Sikhona.  toaster oven