TODAY - A Different Perspective

"Learn from yesterday, live for TODAY, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning." - Albert Einstein
Okay, Mr. Einstein, in keeping with your quote, my question is...why haven't we learned anything from you? Many of us cannot let go of yesterday. We cannot be or stay in the present (TODAY) for very long and yes, we have hope for tomorrow, but we sure could use some help getting there a little quicker! Please, how about sending us a new theory of...let's say...Love thy neighbor! Yeah, that's it, the new "Theory of Love Thy Neighbor." We could certainly use one of those incredibly insightful theories a whole lot more than the Atomic Bomb. See if you can hurry up with this one just in case some idiot unfamiliar with your advocacy of peace decides to use your last invention again and we wind up on "Planet Poof!"

"TODAY, more than ever before, life must be characterized by a sense of Universal responsibility, not only nation to nation and human to human, but also human to other forms of life." - Dalai Lama

TODAY's life is a life of anxiety and stress because we have forgotten how to treat one another and we so often put our own interests before the interest of the collective whole. Many corporations today, for example, feed on their employee's necessity for a job, a desire for increased productivity and decreasing costs in order to stay in business. Our environment is decaying and we are filling landfills like there is no tomorrow and we're doing it, in part, by selling foreign goods made with foreign materials and labor, effectively moving a country like China, for example, to the US one gift, one toy, one box at a time.

Well, me and the Mrs. have developed a partnership with eastern thought to create a new theme employment/fun/recreation park intended to relieve the upcoming stress crisis. It's a place where the whole family can come and totally de-stress. You can meditate, hibernate and recreate all in the same place. We have proposed this park to be located in one of the country's most notoriously deprived regions to help with its economy. That region would be Appalachia, ripe with its traditional music and fabulously pristine mountain ranges. The name of the new venture is awaiting approval and blessings from it's honorary leader. The new theme park with be named - Dalai-Lama-wood! Yes that's right folks, we'll take a sense of universal responsibility, one planet, one human and yes, all life forms, one visitor at a time. How's that for TODAY type thinking?

"Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!" - Dr. Seuss

The real question TODAY is: Who Are You? Or more precisely we could ask Who Am I?

With so many options and twice as many distractions to become something or someone, I find in my questioning of myself and others that with all of the tools at hand, we often still don't know who we are. Often for example, men (also increasingly happens to women) work all their lives thinking they are one person doing all the things a man is supposed to do...Good husband, father, coach, brother, you name the role, only to find out they are not at all fulfilled. Somehow they were deceived by their own ego into playing one role that actually was diametrically opposed to who they really are inside. This mid-life crisis befalls so many people you have to wonder how often we failed to look into the mirror of life within?

As in the photo above, sometime appearances can be deceiving! (LOL) Getting to the you you really are as Dr. Seuss would say, isn't always as easy as it seems. So, maybe TODAY would be the best time to get real with yourself and begin the journey that takes you to the tomorrow you really desire!

• One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today. - Dale Carnegie
• Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have. - Ronald Reagan
• You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today. - Abraham Lincoln
• A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to insist upon or regard that quality in its chosen leaders today - and in fact we have forgotten. - John F. Kennedy
• I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people. - Mahatma Gandhi
• Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay. _ Simone de Beauvoir

One final thought from yours truly. It doesn't really matter what day TODAY is. What matters is, it is a gift and it is the only day you really have! If there were another you on another day, don't you think you would know of it? TODAY is a gift, and in reality the only acceptable response is gratefulness. I have said on many other occasions how valuable an attitude of gratitude is to helping you bring happiness, joy and Great Fullness into your life. Why wait to experience this wonderful emotion? Isn't TODAY the day to begin?

Each and every one of us has the capacity inside to explore all of the miraculous creations of our world. It does take a certain perspective to find joy in the midst of calamity. Tragedy, disaster and death are all around us and always will be. So the choice we have is; how will I handle it TODAY? Will I succumb to the tyranny of fear or will I TODAY rise above the inevitable to experience the joy of the inconceivable? TODAY, the choice is mine!

Peace be with you my brothers and sisters, no matter who or where you are TODAY!