Category Archives: perspective

You have a choice…they don’t

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As the police officer broke the window, I could see the situation was dire.  As much as I wished this were fiction, I could audibly hear the cries from the crowd and the lingering image of the tortured face in the back of the car was eerily memorable.   I have fallen victim to another barrage of Facebook videos that have struck a chord which echoes, and continues to resonate deeply, within every fibre of my being and I am currently writing this post from behind swollen eyes and continual sniffles.

Once things like these videos are seen they cannot be unseen and I will most likely have nightmares tonight.  The torture and suffering that occur are so preventable yet these tragic situations continue to unfold before the eyes of those who are stupefied and forced to take action to avert fatalities, only if they get there in time.  It’s a horrible trend that is so easily remedied, but still continues to happen.

Leaving children or pets in hot cars is inexcusable.  There are NO plausible circumstances that make this a forgivable choice.  A child or a pet does not have the capacity to voluntarily surrender their right to basic care.  They unknowingly give us their permission to nurture and protect their essential needs and wants.  It is the responsibility of the adult to put the needs of others before we consider the unencumbered ease of performing mundane tasks alone.  If speed and agility are your goals for your shopping adventure, find someone responsible to care for your children and pets while you shop.  Even if you think you will only be there “for just a second”, remember you are not the only factor in the equation of your shopping experience.

Life happens.  And while some unforeseen aspect of life is happening to you in Aisle Four of your grocery store, life is slowly being taken away from the living, breathing thing you left in your car because you were going to “be right back”.

I err on the side of caution when it comes to my dog.  She may not agree with my choice to leave her at home while I shop but at least I know she will always be there to greet me when I return home.   She does not have the aptitude to formulate the reason she is in a cool house while I shop for our basic necessities and the temperature inside my car reaches lethal levels.  

hot car

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Sure, she is disappointed when I leave.  Sure, I get the cold shoulder on my way by the window.  But I know I have done the right thing by not subjecting her to a life-threatening situation and I know the gratitude I feel seeing her happy face when I return home is enough rationale for me.   She is still conscious and thriving because I chose to “be mean” and leave her at home.

Please, please…..”be mean” to your pets.  Leave them home alone on that hot, sunny day while you pick up those one or two items that will only take you “a couple of minutes”.  Tomorrow they will not remember that you left them at home.  But tomorrow you will feel the horrible regret of leaving them in a car that reached an inner temperature of 140 degrees in 15 minutes and possibly took their life.

Children should never be left alone in a vehicle, period.  Take your child in the store with you.  Face the evil stares from people as your child throws an epic temper tantrum in the middle of the store.  Budget that extra 15 or 30 minutes it will take you to put back every item your child has mysteriously grabbed from the shelves.

Or be the parent who chooses to leave your child with somebody else while you shop.   Feel guilt free if your grocery shopping takes you an extra 15 minutes and enjoy the fact that you don’t have to keep looking outside, wondering what the temperature has risen to inside your vehicle while the life you left inside of it, the child you promised to protect and nurture, endures temperatures that are unbearable and fatal.

For the sake of your child or your pet, make the choice to leave those loved ones at home with someone else to watch them even if you know it will disappoint them.  No item in the grocery store will ever be worth the life that may have been put at risk while you shopped for it.

 

 

 

 

 

Just one drop of kindness equals a recipe for success

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Facebook is an overwhelming aspect of social media.  Timeline’s are inundated with nonsense, Farmville and game requests are sent at alarming rates and too much personal information is given away like candy at Halloween.  But every so often a little gem of humanity seeps through the cracks and makes me appreciate the sharing of information.

The video below is one of those rare gems.  I watched it twice because the message really plucked some emotional strings in the orchestra of my life.  I have always been a firm believer in treating others as you wish to be treated, in paying forward a show of altruism and allowing others to benefit from your tenderness and understanding.

Every action in life creates a ripple effect.  Whether that ripple effect is as visible to the naked eye as a drop of water in a pond, or is so infinitesimal that it is unseen by the human eye, there is always a reaction.  A little bit can go a long way and that ripple may spread further than you could ever imagine.

I hope you will take the three minutes to watch this video created by a Thai insurance company.  Its message is heart-warming, emotional and eerily accurate.  One drop of human kindness could change the tides in so many oceans.

 

The real perception of time

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To the people who work at Shamrock Lodge, the weeks of the summer of 2015 are flying by. It seems like only a few days ago we were saying hello to the first of our summer families but that was weeks ago! We have officially begun week five of our ten week season and it has gone by in a blur.

But time is a funny thing. To us it hurtles through some time-space continuum at warp speed while to others, to children who are anticipating their days at the Shammy, time moves slower than a turtle.

Their restless nights are spent planning their days in the Kid’s Klub. Their exciting visions of their little legs on water skiis, making it around the circuit for the first time, disrupt their sleep. Their predicted screams as they skip across the lake in the tube echo in their minds. Their week of fun and games at the lodge is as tangible as the parents longing for some quiet moments while the kids are busy being entertained from morning to night.

Many lounge chairs are filled with dozing parents while their children are, not only waterskiing and tubing but, playing soccer, going on scavenger hunts, bouncing on the water trampoline, building sandcastles, playing tennis and having canoe races.

Time, from the perspective of the parents and children who have already come to the lodge and returned home, has gone by in a blur of sunshine, laughter and memories. But for those children waiting for their chance at their Shammy vacation, time seems to go by one very slow second at a time.

Thanks WordPress….do you have any tissues?

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My third year anniversary on WordPress is rapidly approaching.  Since my timid foray into blogging, I have truly come into my own and really love this journey I am on.  I have discovered so much about myself and thrown myself into an outlet where I find I can be really honest about my feelings and opinions.

Over the course of my presence here, WordPress has made many changes and upgrades to their program.  The cause for my tears and subsequent request for tissues is the addition of “related posts” at the bottom of our existing posts.  This subtle link at the bottom of my posts has caused me to click on one of my previous posts about my mom and my tears didn’t even have the option of staying or flowing – they started at full force and kept coming.

kleenex

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Once I cleared the blurry vision and was able to control myself, I realized what a great extension to my blog that this little tear-inducing gem had become.  If readers are interested in the blog post that day, they can click on the links to previous posts they may have missed and be able to follow my earlier thought processes that may have some relevance to the entry I had recently posted.

I appreciate that WordPress is bringing my past into my present.  They are connecting the dots of my artistic as well as my emotional journey and allowing others to participate in the history of my blogging adventure as well as the most recent part of my writing experience.

Tissues are available at the door.

 

 

 

Finding little pieces of myself along the way

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I lose time.  I don’t mean I have dissociative fugues and the inability to recall past events.  Time simply rushes by me at such a fast pace that I seem to lose little pieces of myself along the way, pieces caught in the vortex of the life I am living that is whirling by at a great speed.

Those missing bits seem to fragment during my busy work days and I don’t always recognize their absence until I inch closer to my day off.  I feel like a part of me has been eclipsed, hidden in a shadow, waiting to be rediscovered.

Today I had the benefit of finding some of those remnants of myself and putting them back where they belong.  Today I came home from work, knowing that tomorrow is a day free from structure, and allowed myself that moment to finally relax and let those misplaced segments of my life re-establish themselves.  Today I put my feet into the wading pool, bought for my dog, and let the water wash away the lingering moments of my work day.  Today I put together the puzzle that is me with the pieces I had lost during the week.  Today I made myself feel like the garden AND the rose.

It is important to take that quiet moment to collect all of the pieces of ourselves that are essential to us and recreate the whole picture of ourselves.  Segments of us will get lost along the way but the significant substance of who we are will always find its way back.  And in the moments that I was gathering the scraps of me that I had left behind, I came across this picture and it all made sense.

make a life

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My spare time is a “write” off

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Knowing the fall-out I may face, I’ll admit it – I miss the fall and winter nights but only because I miss the time I had to write and to read blogs.  The summer months are unforgiving when it comes to spare time.  I miss the words that used to come so easily and I miss being able to read the words of those I follow.

My imagination used to be ready and waiting as soon as I sat in front of the laptop but recently my muse has been accused of taking vacation and enjoying the summer weather along with the many guests at the resort where I work.  The time I used to have to read the many blogs I follow seems to be non-existent and the pond of creativity I had the benefit of floating on is now a dry well of sand and I am stuck making angels in the dust.

sand angels

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But in those moments of creative drought, I have the good fortune of interacting with many smiling faces so all happiness is not lost.  The forecast for my upcoming day off looks promising for a day on the couch, laptop in position and hopefully a few creative thoughts will drop like the rain that is supposed to fall on Monday.

 

Living in abundance

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I am not wealthy, but I feel rich. I don’t have a large collection of belongings, but I live in abundance because I choose to define my prosperity in the most basic of ways.  I choose to perceive my success in the reflection of the people in my life and I don’t measure that success by any other standards but my own.  My richness cannot be seen, only felt.  The wealth I have is in the things that I hold dear to my heart and, for that reason, I will never be poor.

I have love in my life, so I will never be without emotion.  I have friends in my life, so I will never be without laughter.  I have the gift of creativity in my head, so I will never feel alone.  I am bathed in the glow of the sun, so I will always be warm.   And I live as my most honest self so I will never be afraid.  My abundance is overflowing.

Life-of-Abundance

True success should only be defined at the end of your emotional journey and not in the possessions you collect along the way.  Your greatest wealth lies in the eyes of your partner or your children.  Your greatest strength lies in the arms of your family and friends.  And your only obstacle is the limit you give your imagination.

I live well because I am rich.  My stocks are in my family, my bonds are in my friendships and my gold is in my truth.  My richness collects interest with each day that passes because I have people in my life that support me and challenge me.  I have discovered new friends that inspire me and that feeling of worth pays me dividends that mean far more to me than monetary wealth ever could.  I am living in abundance and I have more than I ever dreamed possible.

 

Branching out from every day life

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“Our life is frittered away by detail.  Simplify, simplify, simplify.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

treehouse

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This picture is my bliss.  If I could press a magic button and be transported to this place, I would be a happy woman.  I have never been lured by the latest fashion or by the possession of “things”.  I am not a person who is concerned by status.  I simply want to feel joy in my day-to-day life and this representation of simple happiness truly defines the life I wish to live.

I want to create my own standards.  I don’t want to be held hostage by the confines of what society deems acceptable.  I refuse to compare my success to the success of anyone other than myself because that would be unfair to me.  I want to live on my terms and live by my own rules.  I want to live the way I want to live….nothing more, nothing less.

Being able to climb up into this tree house at the end of a long day would make all of the effort worthwhile.  Just to know that this little piece of Heaven existed would make all of the daily hardships seem more acceptable and afford me that much-needed escape at the end of a long day.

The perfect tree awaits and I have begun my search.  I don’t need bigger and better, just my own little piece of paradise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Or sometimes more than a thousand words

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When I first saw it, I was captivated by it.  A simple photo of a friend on Facebook grabbed and held my attention but it was no ordinary photograph.  I had hoped there was more of an explanation to it than mere Photoshop and I was thrilled to hear her tell the story behind the picture.

She had agreed to have her portrait done by her friend who is fascinated by the origin of photography.  He posed her and painstakingly went through the process that photographers went through back in the late 1800’s.  His camera was an antique with the accordion-style lens and the black hood that covered the head of the photographer.

He waited until the precise moment that he thought he had captured her true essence and he let his finger plunge the button that would acquire every detail of her spirit.  The result of his effort was remarkable.  He printed her face on tin to truly encapsulate the original process of printing a photograph.

I stared at her photo for a long time.  There was so much more to it than just a picture of her face.  There was a story in her eyes.  His diligent process captured much more than just who she is now.  This snapshot seemed to hold the story of generations, perhaps lifetimes of moments that led up to her being in his studio and posing for this shot.

It wasn’t a selfie or a picture as a second thought.  There weren’t 100 takes in a minute because that is all we have time for nowadays.  He paused, he let the camera do what it was meant to do and he took a thousand stories, captured them in one single photo and printed them on a piece of tin.

erin

Look at the artwork in this photo and hopefully you can now understand why I was so drawn to my friend’s picture.  Without the use of any computer tricks, this photograph projects so much more than just a face on a piece of paper or a computer screen.  This picture has depth, emotion and a lifetime of moments that led to her presence in our present reality.

If I ever have the chance to do this, I will jump at it.  I would love to see what kind of story my face has to tell and what ghosts from my past linger in the background, searching for recognition.