alphonsegaston says:
04 January 2010 at 4:55 pm

That comment was worth the wait. Glad we finally got the password snafu fixed.

But that did not cause me to think that doing nothing is an option. Instead, it gave me a sense of being a participant in an ages-long struggle for peace and justice. Just because we don’t win all the time, we should not become bitter.

I know that your piece relates more to one’s personal choices than communal ones. Grabbing for what looks like a good solution without thinking it through to the end–what do you really want–is an eternal human response. I can easily see how it relates to the new status of women in the economy, of course. And beyond that, to the new status of America on the world stage.

Happy New Year!

Thank you TaosJohn! You too Don Bacon. RD, nice to see you.

Not a bad way to begin the New Year either. Considering I now begin in earnest a dream project, which I will share with all of you when it gets fully off the ground, your comment will act as treasured inspiration, indeed.

“We attract the life we want. We envision it first, and depending on the courage we have to hold it in our mind’s eye ignoring the noise of habit and rules, through our infinite patience, as Wayne Dyer says, we are delivered the life we dream possible.”–Taylor Marsh

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“If you stop moving, quit exploring, settle in and down, it’s only a matter of time before you get eaten up, either from the outside or the inside.”–Taylor Marsh

“How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity! I do not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.”–Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Indeed, TJ.

Happy New Year to you, too.

Not strategizing, not being clever, not winning the intellectual argument, but doing what we really and truly WANT is how we evolve and keep moving.

Very well said.

On the “or not,” my point was to say that if we do not have infinite patience, as people often expect their manifestations to materialize instantly, not realizing that 10 years is nothing because it’s the journey that matters, we often leave our dreams unmet through our own lack of purpose on the arc of life.

You are absolutely right. The only thing I’d change is to edit out the “Or not,” because that sabotages the message, as in “this medicine won’t work if you think of a monkey while you’re taking it.” We most certainly do attract the life we want, or think we want. There are always more layers to the onion. The ONLY way out of the woods is to focus on what you want. There is no other rule. Slowly, slowly I am learning this, and I’m a relatively ancient 64-year-old still being born.

What I have learned in the last 10 years is that there’s never any rest, there’s never any plateau we reach where things are “settled” and “secure.” It may seem like there is, but that’s a temporary illusion, because the only constant is change.

Not strategizing, not being clever, not winning the intellectual argument, but doing what we really and truly WANT is how we evolve and keep moving. For most people, ascertaining just what that is, is the hardest thing they’ll ever do. So many of us are trained to do precisely the opposite, or to believe that we have “made it” and can stop growing.

…and there you have it.