Inspiration

Part I

I sometimes wonder why it's so hard for me to remain positive and optimistic. Not long ago on my blog, I committed to being more positive and to focus my efforts to make things better. Then, as I face the daily grind and the disappointments that naturally come with living one's life, I seem to allow myself to slip down. I become depressed, engraged, annoyed, and in generally a foul mood. Not a joy to be, or to be around. It doesn't help that, right now, I'm buried in work with not enough staff...and utterly unwilling to put in extra hours the way I know I should to satisfy my clients. Instead, I refuse...I want OUT of the office and when 5:00 pm comes around, I am antsy to leave. And it's hard to get up early to go in to the office. My weekend habit of popping up at 5:30 or earlier is not evident weekdays.

Well, I'm going to try again. Be happy. I need to understand, and act on the fact, that I need to focus my attention on what I can influence and ignore things I can't.

My sister-in-law suggested that my wife and I plan to visit them in Mexico in July, and I am really interested in going down. I need some more mental health time away from the office. I need time to think and reflect and decide. I don't need to see the sights, so much, as to experience being there. Or someplace.

Tomorrow is my youngest sister's birthday...an important one (but they all are). If you know her, be sure to send her birthday greetings! I will try to call her, between the multiple meetings and commitments I have. I'd take her out to Roy's if she would come to visit...or if I were there, I'd take her to the wonderful place she and my nephew took me to have mussels when I visited them (unless she had another choice).

The copper fountain outside the large windows in the living room looking to the back yard is pretty, with gentle streams of water flowing from the bulb at the top into the small basin just below...and then flowing into the larger basin underneath. Flowing water...and the noise it makes...is comforting. Where is my Buddha? There he is, looking fat and happy and sitting on my desk, as always. Teach me, Buddha, to be calm and meet the world with a strong greeting of my own.

Part II

I am not a Christian. I have nothing against them, but I simply don’t believe what they believe. God is, or isn’t, what you want him/her to be. If you believe god is a supreme being that created earth, etc., go crazy with your belief…but don’t be too upset that I don’t buy into it. If you are “spiritual” in the sense that you feel a person’s mind can go deep into ideas that are not often “public” and that help define an individual’s morality, then you have my “blessings.” But understand that I am not religious. I am, in fact, agnostic at minimum, but more likely atheist. Much more likely. That having been said, I can be inspired and impressed by people who are unabashedly Christian…true believers. That can happen only when their inspirational stories do not depend heavily on Christianity and biblical interpretations of reality. Tonight, I have been watching Wayne Dyer’s program on NPR. In some senses, it pisses me off to see an unabashedly Christian sales job going on…but it has lots of kernels of good, valuable information and really does address tolerance. I wish a charismatic leader of atheists…someone who can inspire interest and respect outside the atheist community…would emerge. It is not me. Would that it were.