… we all want it, each and everyone of us without exception, even the insane man strive for it, (though he seem to have found it), yet it eludes us. We want the happy life, a beautiful life free of stress and trouble, we long and long for that carefree existence and we don’t always seem to know how to create it, at least in a sustainable fashion, not for lack of trying. Like most things in life, it’s got to be about what we have and not what we don’t have, what we can control and not what we can’t control. We can eat today’s food today but what we can’t do is consume all of next week’s food today, or all of next month’s in one setting. We can’t eat it all up in one sitting. We build our bodies into a healthy body, one meal at a time. It is pointless beating up ourselves about not having a healthy body if we are not prepared to do it a meal at a time. We can’t project our bodies into health and just leave it at that, we must put in the work, meal by meal and then reap the reward. Like a farmer we can’t force the growth or the harvest, we can only do the planting, tilling, tending and then reap the consequences. We control the process not the outcome or put differently the outcome is just a result of the process. Cause and effect, period!

We can’t really control life, we can’t grasp the whole of it in our hand and bundle it together like a bunch of flower or broom. What we can do is take it in manageable bits, most if not all of us can handle the seconds, within reason we can reach the seconds, the minutes and we can decide to make the minutes beautiful and happy, and when we string it all together we have a beautiful happy neacklace of life, a tapestry beautifully woven together made up each beautiful thread and love that brought it together. In the end there is no beautiful tapestry, there are just beautiful threads brought together and we give it a name.

Maybe we can stretch the illustration and say there is nothing like a beautiful life, there are just beautiful seconds, beautiful moments that we consiously create and when we string them all together, we have what we term a beautiful and happy life.

It is all within our reach, we have that second, we have that minute, we have more control over it (as humanly as is possible) let us consiously create a beautiful life, irrespective of our circumstances as we lay hold of each second and infuse it with beauty and happiness, we can all do that I believe and with that said, maybe a beautiful and happy life is not as elusive as originally thought. It lies in the power to grasp and tame the seconds, the discipline and consciousness to not allow it to slip away. If we can master the seconds, we can master our lives. If we can create the seconds we can create our lives, if we are mindful of the seconds we will create the lives we want. All of these said with the understanding that the ultimate call belongs to the Master. But within the realm of humanity we have some say.

Let us all make it a beautiful life by seconds!

… grow at home and it is good for your soul, import from ‘God knows where’ and you are inviting all manner of issues. This applies to food, our fruit and vegetables, our meats etc. It is popular knowledge that the closer to home our food are, the better for our body. There is something beneficial about consuming local food, food grown and cultivated in the same area where our body dwells. It is fresher, healthier and taste better according to some. It has not been subjected to the trauma of long travel, or plucked unripen, and forced ripen in dark environment.

People that have had the discpline to cultivate their own small garden, green house or just pots of plants on their patio or window ledges can not stop singing about the health benefits and satisfactions. They know what is going into their mouth and the care and nurture that went into growing the fruit, veg or herbs. Yet, due to our busy lifestyles, laziness, ignorance or sheer indifference we settle for food that we know not what it has been through. Some of our food have been handled by stressed out workers on farms similar to labour camps and we wonder why we are uncomfortable after consuming such food. Some animals have lived a distress life and we eat the meat and little wonder it does not agree with us. Some of our food come from places we will never want to be, not even want to spend a day, not s minute or a second, yet we eat those food. We eat strange food, food that do not agree with our being and we sadly pay the consequences with our health. We are what we eat! How much better, healthier we will be if we put more attention into developing our food.

I couldn’t help, but thinking that love is not much different. Man can not survive for any reasonable length of time without love. It is little wonder that a lot of time and effort is invested in getting love. People look for love in all kind of places, appropriate and inappropriate places. People do all kind of unhealthy thing in the name of finding love. To some extent we’ve all been guilty, seeking for love in undesirable places.

What about if we all start tending our own garden of love? Loving ourselves, having a green house of love or pots of love spread around our dwelling. What about if we just make time to understand what makes us tick and nourishes our soul? What about if we shower our being with homegrown love rather than contiously expecting other harassed soul to do the job for us? The external love can never do the job that internal love will do. It will be hard for anyone to love us more than we love ourselves. We spend the most of time with ourselves, if we do not consider ourselves worthy of our own time and affection, why would or should anyone care about us either? We are not taught or brought up to love, nurture or care for self, if anything we are thought self hatred or to seek love from external sources or people. This kind of love almost always fail. The best thing we can do for ourselves is to cultivate a love relationship, to plant the garden of love for our soul, do things that nourishes and nurture us. Write that book, watch that comedy, bake that pie, do facial, dance to that music, tidy that room, whatever floats your boat, do! Don’t wait for him or her to do it for you. Plant your own garden of love, let your own soul bless you. Stop consuming strange love, it chokes!

Love yourself, grow your garden of love!

… what exactly is it? What will I lose? What is so important to not make the decision? What am I holding on to? Why would I base my being on fallible nothing? What is so difficult to give up on? Why must I keep bathing in disagreeable water? Why? Why does the shifting seem to scary? Why am I holding so tightly with white knucles to nothing? Why will I continue to digest disagreeable food? How bad can the consequences be that I must stick with the status quo? It is just fear, pure stark fear.

I don’t have my beauty, I don’t have my youth, I don’t have my family, I don’t have my God, I don’t have my faith, I don’t have a lot! But what I do have is integrity, honesty, sincerity.

I can’t stack it all up neatly before making the decision, I must just believe that it will all work out all right, that is what I must do and that is all I can do.

Ditch the fear, like a roller coaster ride, know that it will be bumpy but that I will come out ok at the other end. it is not for me to know when the bumps will hit, when the drop will happen, have a buffer for them, have insurance for each and everyone. Yes, I will be rough around the edges, yes I might be a single rider, but I will make it to the other end just the same way that the groupies will and I might find other single riders.

I must buy that ticket, I must get to the theme park, I must get on that ride, I must imbible the shocks, I must feel the G force, I must endure the intensity and I must come out on the other side. I must do it. I can’t be afraid of me, I can’t keep being afraid of being termed mad, I can’t be afraid of being mad, I can’t be afraid of loosing it. I must be me and do the right thing.

… please tell me, what is that thing that is reliable, sustainable, dependable, does not fail, deliver as promised, does exactly what is written on the tin? Please don’t give me cheap answer, I don’t want rhetoric or forced fed beliefs, give me cogent, give me truth, give me facts, give me testable and proven answers. Give me reliability, give me sustainability, give me dependable, give me that which does not fail. Give it to me please!

The thinker is in trouble! The watcher is crushed! Hardly anything is sustainable, reliable or dependable, yes they stand for some time and then dissipate. Wealth does not deliver on its promises, in the short time it does, but in the long run, it fails. It is not always sweet or comforting, it brings its own troubles and the rich also cry. Beauty fads, the young grow old and haggard, the tender becomes tough and sinewy. Love fails, it fails badly, the object of our love fails to trip us after some time, affection wears out, we loose interest, they loose interest, our heart calms down, their heart calms down, in extreme cases, love turns to hate.

This is not about depression or despondency, this is the world as the thinker, the watcher sees it. The dependable friend fails to deliver, she is just human, not invincible by any stretch of the imagination, the friendship looses it’s bond, it’s strength, it’s grip slackens. We find out the parents are not invincible, they are not the rock that never fail, their hands are not forever stretched out, they fail, they drop the ball, they are not always there, they can’t always support us, sometimes they can’t stand us, they die, they leave us alone.

Control is an illusion, who is really in control? Who is holding it together? Please tell me, we think the government is in charge? We think they keep the city, watch over it, what a fallacy! Yes the good leaders try, they give it all a good shot, but the honest ones will admit, they have no clue, they just try their best. The true controller is beyond us all.

Start me not on religion, as it rarely delivers, it promises way more that it can give. Yet we are not allowed to say. It forces us to sit down where there is no seat and why we are suspended in mid air, it beats us into accepting that we are seated securely. Any attempt to clarify is frowned upon. To dispute is the worse treason, punishable by eternal ostricisation. Where is truth? When it can not be tested, it can not be asked to explain itself, defend itself, truth must be able to stand on its own two feet, it must be able to withstand being thrown up in the air and land solidly back on the ground, the truth that floats away into outer space is very doomed. The truth that does not return to claim its position is questionable. What does faith mean? When I have to hold on forever and there are no promised deliverables. It works sometimes, there is no doubt, but what happens, those times it fails to deliver, it is me that didn’t work the machine well! Nah! It can’t be, it can’t always be me always at fault, that makes no sense. It does not add up.

I lost my connection! Yesterday I felt connected, today it’s gone! What happened? How beautiful it is when we feel connected to another person, we float on thin air, but how unsustainable is this stupid connection? How vulnerable and fragile it is? Tilt the head ever so slightly and it is totally lost. Unalign your mouth and you are unheard. What connection? It only works if you are non-human, honestly you can’t move! What shaky network! Some last longer, but I don’t know of any that last forever and we are forever chasing the shadow of what was once, that was only meant to be fleeting.

Isn’t health an illusion? Drive us in for a health MOT and the stark truth hit us like a ton of brick. Ain’t we all dying from the day we were born? We are on borrowed time, doing life the best we know, living under the illusion that all is functioning perfectly. In some cases, it is clear that it is not!

Life is an illusion!

… in one of the episodes of Shark Tank a couple came to pitch a business idea involving a conflict resolution tool consisting of a cute little elephant stuffed into a box. I must admit I can’t remember the business angle but I was taken by the elephant, basically a small soft toy that will fit in one hand housed in a beautifully designed casing. The idea was that if a person has something bothering them, rather than giving the cold shoulder, stone walling, they will alert their sometimes oblivious partner by removing the lid covering the elephant case, display the elephant in a prominent place. The partner comes in, sees the elephant, knows there is an issue, they both sit down, talk through, issue resolved and everyone lives happily ever after!

Really? No please, this minature thing works for tinny winny issues. In my experience and observations , the ‘elephant’ is neither cute nor small. You enter a situation and the energy in the space can literally suffocate, you are trying hard to breath for dear life, everyone knows there is an elephant in the room and it is not pretty, it is a massive scary looking elephant that will not fit into no box, at least not without a serious fight. it is as ugly and devious as hell. The elephant is not alone, the ancestors are present, the issues runs deep and far, it has branches, tranches, it has children and grand children, even great grandchildren, etc and they are all in the room, little wonder you can’t breath! This issues are not resolved in one sitting with a cute cup of tea and scones, the issues are not gentlemanly and it is about to get ugly, the elephant is way bigger! There are inferences, insinuations, strongholds, false accusations and beliefs etc. The dimensions are endless, the permutations complex.

So you are in the room with the humongous elephant, what do you do? Where do you start? Someone ask, how do you eat an elephant? Bit by bit. I am not sure in this case, it is the right thing to do. It might be smarter, to live to fight another day and quickly leave the room. Some elephants are too big to get out of the room, we are the ones that must leave, let others consume to finish if they don’t die in the process.

Know your elephant!

… I saw a documentary recently about a poison garden based in Northumberland called (not surprisingly) the ‘Poison Garden’ or Alnwick Garden. The garden is filled with about a 100 poisonous plant that has the ability to kill. It is meant to be a child of the Duchess of Northumberland. What is so fascinating about the garden is that it looks incredibly beautiful and well tended, at least in the documentary I watched. The presenter mentioned that some people have some of these poisonous plants in their gardens and do not even know. Not a single plant was screaming “I am poisonous, do not touch me!” They were all looking beautiful and gaillantly presented.

I couldn’t help wondering, ‘how can we tell a poisonous person?’ They can be the most charming and endearing individual, but deep inside full of poison and transferring it from one person to another until the whole community is saturated with their deadly stuff. How do we know these plants are deadly, so we can stay away? How? Especially if we care about our lives and we don’t want to die? They don’t carry a sign! The sad thing is that most of us will not know until we get a reaction, a rash, an itch, a swell, a convulsions, a burning etc, some survive and know to stay away, others don’t learn, forever taken by the beauty of the plants and continuing to inhale the fumes and digest the poison until they die.

One question that I never seem to get out of my mind is ‘how did these plants become poisonous?’ Was this how their maker made them? Or is this some form of transmutation? I also can’t help extending this to human beings, are some people just created poisonous or is it life situation and circumstances that have made them poisonous?

If per chance they were not made like that, who started the chain, who poisoned them? Who administered the first dosage of the poison? Who started the story that a quiet person is an unkind and uncaring person? That an energetic person is too much for society? That a reserved person is bitter? That a clumsy person is an idiot? That a hurting person is pretending? That a concerned person is arrogant? That an innocent person is guilty? That a God-fearing man is sacrilegious? That a holy person is adulterous? Who painted good as evil? Who started it all? And what was the motivation? Why give place to the devil? The evil thoughts that sometimes fill our minds without any external influence.

I have met people going around dropping poison from one person to another and happy to drop it into every mouth that is opened until a whole family clan or community is infested, the wise keep their mouth closed and refuse the poison, but how many people are strong enough to rebuff and refuse the charm of the poisoned?

False and bad reputation is poison, some people go around and bad mouth another, planting this terrible poison in the heart of everyone that dare listens, before long an otherwise innocent person has the weight of unpleasant false reputation hanging over their head. It is just a matter of time before the weak dies from this poison. Let us all watch ourselves that we do not become a receptor and conduit for unpleasantness, ugliness and poison. The Scriptures tell us that the tongue is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison, the tongue can no man tame! what a troublesome conclusion!

In a multitude of words, sin is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is wise, maybe our words should just be few, that we might not sin. Maybe we should take a step back and purge our hearts, that we store not iniquity in our innermost being. Most of us will say, ‘can’t drug dealers see what they do to innocent people?’ At some level we are not much different when we use our tongues to destroy people’s life.

Purge the poison!

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.. I don’t get it, honestly I don’t, how swamps and swamps of people, intelligent looking people, (I must add) all flock in the same direction to nothing and they all seem excited about ‘God knows what’. You are there, starring at the same thing and you are questioning the sanity of the masses or your own insanity. At this point you are on the verge of concluding that you must be an alien and ‘gotten off before your stop’ or maybe you took the wrong bus altogether. You belong to another planet, another tribe, this people are too herd-ish (my word, by the way) all flocking cluelessly to their doom, drinking Cool Aid along the way.

The longing to belong, to be part of something, is so strong within human that people will most times participate in the most ridiculous things just to fulfil that yearning. and God help that one that is awaken and chooses not to join the madness , he will be ostricsed, roasted life.

Who controls the herd? what force brings people together like that and maintain the togetherness?

… nature calls, you respond, it is as simple as that. Nature has its way, it does its own thing, striking when it needs to and demanding fulfilment. It is not a respecter of person, time, place or situation. The call comes, you do as biddeth and everyone is happy, you are relieved and lighter until the next call. You are truthfully at the mercy of the call and the caller. Ignore the call and you are in for some difficult time, either you have an accident and embarrass yourself or you become unwell when you hold it in, all kind of health issues, ‘constipation’ in particular and the attendant consequences.

A writer like any creative artist must write to get relief. Beautiful writing is not at the discretion of the writer, the urge comes and the response must follow. We are a servant or slave to the call, doing as biddeth. The timing is not always convenient, atimes we want to sleep, we are busy, but the inspiration comes demanding immediate attention, worse than an impatient and impetus child. When the baby is ready to come out, the baby is ready to come out! One man once lamented to his wife, ‘how come you people always go into labour in the middle of the night when one is trying to get some well needed sleep?’ Well, it is just as it is.

Nature, the call, is disrespectful of our well organised and scheduled lifes, the call is the master, we are all pregnant with whatever we are all called to do and we must understand that when it is time to give birth, it is time to give birth! When the midwife sees the baby’s head, she knows it is going down and rushes into action, ready to deliver a baby, it is as simple as that, no explanation, no dialogue, no conversation, no stories.

Nature does not understand, ‘but I am tired’ when it is time, you deliver. Job captured the moment when he declared, ‘I am full of matter, the spirit within me constrainth me’ another translation states ‘because I have so much to say, I can not keep quiet’ another states ‘…. forces me to speak..’, yet another says, ‘… the spirit of my belly destroys me …’ . Most of the time, we never fully grasp the sacrifices that creative people have to make to produce or deliver the stunning work that we enjoy. The creative energy is intense, potent and can destoy if not given an outlet. Job again said, ‘I must speak and get relief’. It is a MUST! The psalmist said, ‘… my tongue is the pen of a ready writer …’ . The pen of the writer must be ever ready. He must be always packed with a note pad and pen.

I have heard of people who schedule times when they write and this is the only time that do write. I dare say, these are not inspired writers, inspiration works to no man’s schedules. That might explain why truly inspired works are few and far between. The structure surrounding the life we live stifles out creativity and inspiration. There is a level of freeness that is required for inspiration to flow.

The writer is a beautiful soul to be protected and encouraged, the call is a demanding call to be answered by only the bravest.

Protect the writer!

…. it journeys for days, months, years, a lifetime, looking for what only it understands. The ‘whys’ and ‘whats’ of the search is known only to the heart. It keeps searching, looking and exploring till it finds the ‘it’. Place whatever and whomever you like in front of him, if it is not the right one, the dance will not commence. The search simply continues, wealth does not trigger the dance, looks will not do it, influence is neither here nor there, believe it or not, kindness, generousity, niceness may not bring it on either. The question has baffled many, the great, the not so great, the young, the old, the wise, the not so wise, the bold and courageous, the timid etc. ‘How do we get the heart to dance?’

Some have even argued that their heart is a non- dancing one. I beg to differ, they have turned the key, wind and wind the lever, pressed every possible button, they slided, tapped, pulled, pushed, tried every possible maneuver to no avail. They have tried to jump start, kick start, applied electric shock, used a defibrillator but not getting the dance. And they have sadly concluded their heart is an exception. Not true, every heart dances!

What an exuberant finder the heart is! Nothing and no one can contain a heart that finds what it is looking for. It does the most beautiful of dance, somersaulting and spinning on it’s head, beaming with the wildest of smiles. twirling and swirling, bowing and blowing bubbles of love all over the place, the heart carries on with reckless abandonment like a drunken man. The heart in love is a child. It is shameless before its object of desire. No man born of woman can tame a heart that finds its object of love, no strait jacket can suppress the leap. The butterflies flutters all over the place. A heart that finds, is large, pumped up, it expands can never be constricted. The dance is extravagant, lacking nothing whatsoever.

What a beauty to behold the dancing heart, The heart that finds! Though like a child with fleeting excitement the heart atimes gets tired of its latest find and the search commences again before the next coronation dance.

What a heart we have?

… show me an initiator and you have he that will rule the world! Whoever came up with ‘good things come to those that wait’ needs to have his head checked. Even babies know better, they come out of the womb yelling their heads off for what they want, be it food, comfort, cuddle or whatever, but they yell, they initiate. The one that waits, still gets something but it is not always ‘good’ sometimes it could be, but usually it is leftovers, deadweights, unwanted stuff, pity induced stuff, what nobody else wants or just nothing, simply nothing! You want something? You take the steps to get it, whatever it maybe. Even God, the same God that said ‘wait’ also said ‘ask’. There is the wait after things have been initiated, after the asking and there is just the wait, the ‘stupid wait’, permit me to say. The mind boggling waiting, the wait that accomplishes nothing!

A lot of our lack stems simply from the fact that we either are unaware that we should initiate or are simply unwilling to initiate. We don’t ask , we’ve been conditioned to just sit there and believe it will come to us. I don’t think it works like that at all. First and foremost, we need to have a clear understanding of who we are and what we need in every areas of our life, be it love, friendship, wealth, health, marriage, spiritual growth, peace, space, fitness, mental agility etc and then we research how to get these things and put a strategy into place. We can’t be coy about life, well I guess we can be, it’s each person’s choice but then there is price to pay for such coyness. Life is for the takers, the ones that say ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me’ . The ones that are not afraid to make the first call and the second and the third and as many calls as are required. And even when afraid, they still call, they still initiate, they still ask the questions, they still yell because that is the way to get what you want, you still have to ask.

In some culture or settings such asking is frowned upon, initiating is scorned, you are expected to stay right in your lane, toe the line, take what you are given and do not ask for more or something else. That is all well and good for any one that wants to live a mediocre life. Greatness initiates, it asks, it demands, sets the tone.

It is interesting in relationship, people atimes end up with lousy partners and they are looking for someone to blame. When in all truthfulness the fault lies entirely at their feet. To start with, they never prospect any one, they sat there and ‘waited’ for whoever came. Limiting their selections to the ones that bothered to show up. How different will the story be if they actually invested themselves in the selection process? Actively sourcing, tastefully of course, but engaging in the process. The worse baloney I have heard goes like ‘… but women are not suppose to…’ you can change ‘women’ to men, children, blacks, whites, or whatever title or label fits your particular situation. Babies haven’t heard the lie, so they yell, our innate default is to yell, to initiate, but life comes along and change our settings and tell us to wait and shut up, we have picked up all kind of ‘life bug’ and like a bug ridden computer we malfunction, we are not at peak performance, we produce incorrect and unexpected result. Maybe it is time we get back to ‘factory settings’, you know, the ‘master reset’ to the original settings where we initiate.

‘Waiter’ get tips and tips are at the discretion of the diners. Some resturants have wisen up and done away with all these discretion business, they add the 10% or 15% to the bill. They want to be taken seriously. In the same vein, to be taken seriously in life, we have to initiate the conversation. We don’t wait for someone else to get it started. Some people argue, ‘why do I have to do all the work? ‘, ‘why do I have to make the first call?, why can’t he call?’ Why can’t he come first? Why do I have to make the first approach?’ Well, if for no other reason, it gives some control, at least you get to decide when, how, what, why etc. What about if we get shoot down? That is inevitable, the initiator will get shoot down from time to time? There will be embracing moments, but by and large they will be few and far between.

The power belongs to the initiator, just do it, ask, yell!