It is the difference between the helium in your birthday balloon and the air in the hot air balloon. The helium is short lived, it dissipates, it isn’t renewed. The next day it isn’t hugging the ceiling anymore and by day two it is lying on the floor.

The hot air balloon by contrast could take you around the world. It is renewed and it elevates you to a height that allows you to see where you want to go. If you need to go lower you can, you can guide it (subject to the wind of course) in the direction and heights that you want.

It means that on Sunday night you aren’t wondering if you are coming down with the flu and should have a sick day at work. You can’t wait for Monday because it means that you are going to be spending the day living the life you love – just like you did all weekend. So if you are having “Manic Mondays”, “Terrible Tuesdays” and “Weeping Wednesdays” maybe it is time to find that idea that elevates you into space. See you there!

I firmly believe that it is all about how we look at things that happen in our life. Does life happen to you (it is beyond my control) or do you happen to life ( I am in control)? I believe (at least at this moment) that it is a combination of both.

When drama has entered “through stage door left”, sometimes it knocks me on my butt. I sit there experiencing the emotions that the drama triggered. Heartbreak, fear, anger, angst…, etc. At some point that emotion washes through and I start back up the emotional ladder into more positive vibrations. I don’t sit there wallowing in it. I pick myself back up and look for what I can use to get back on track. I review what happened. Was it something that I caused, or was I just in the way of someone else’s causation? What can I do to bring the whole experience out of the refuse and into something that can be used?

That is the way that my mind works. Is this a good story? Is there a hero here or is this just a comedy of errors? What is so fantastic is the tapestry that life weaves in our background when we aren’t paying attention. Look at a medieval tapestry and there is so much happening. All of these different scenes/dramas are in the background each telling a different story to each one who views it. What story is life telling you? Look again and I know that you can find whatever kind of story you are looking for. That is the beauty of “how we look at life” – it is all in the interpretation.

One of my sons had a change in behavior when he was young. I noticed and began asking questions. As my sons could tell you, once I started asking questions, I didn’t stop. I would stay in their room for hours if that was what it took, until they finally started talking. When he finally opened up about what happened, we took the steps needed to help him. He became a happy boy again .

Listening to my friends story I thought about the many times I would go into one of my boys rooms and sit on the bed and ask what is wrong. I think about how if I had just accepted the answer, nothing – would they have had buried anger and shame? Would they have turned to drugs or alcohol to run away from their feelings?

When those we love are hiding in pain, do we help them shine the light of awareness on their situation? Or do we just look on wanting to help, but accepting their answer that nothing is wrong?

Do we shine the light of awareness on ourselves? Sometimes it is necessary to lance the wound so that it can drain out the poison and heal. It never helps to run from what we don’t want to face. Expose those unwanted feelings to the light of healing and drain out the poisons that we have been hiding from – whether they are our own pain or that of someone we love.

Chose life and awareness like my friend. You have great things to do in this world.

I heard a story once of a woman that was going to write a book of recipes that she used in her restaurant to share with the world and she died with her book unwritten and many mourned that no one knew any of those recipes. Don’t die with your story untold.

What book is in you that hasn’t been written? What are you being called to do – that you haven’t answered the call to?

I love the first line – every moment and every event plants something in our soul.

I thought about the rest of the analogy of seeds being planted. In the gospels Jesus had the parable of the seeds, which landed on different types of soil and how some just shriveled and died, others sprang too life, but where withered by the sun, and finally some grew and prospered.

This matches up well with the thought that a person has to be in the right space or place for the knowledge and wisdom to be accepted. I think that many of us carry these seeds of wisdom in us, which are waiting for the right time to sprout.

I like to think that we carry all of these seeds of wisdom around with us waiting for the perfect time to bring them to life. I know that I have bought books, brought them home and put them on a shelf, because they drew my attention for some reason, but I wasn’t ready to read it. Then at some point in the future it was the perfect book that I needed with what I was dealing with at that time.

Our brains are full of everything that we have seen, read, or heard about in our life. All of these bits of information are seeds, which have come to rest in our minds. But I firmly believe that none of them are wasted, they are just waiting for the perfect mooment to spring forth with the wisdom that they contain.

I think that this is what the wisdom teachers mean when they say that we have all of the answers within. We have all of these seeds just waiting for us to be ready to grow. It is why it is so important to continue learning something everyday. You never know when you will come upon the one thing that will activate one of those seeds that has just been waiting to germinate and bring about tremendous positive change into our lives.

This is where the “overnight” success comes from. From the sprouting of those seeds. So get a little water and fertilizer and start sprouting some new ideas – who knows where they will lead you?

Then comes the 2nd issue of belief. We find it so much easier to believe and support someone else with their goals, than we find in ourselves the same belief and support that we too can achieve our goals. Believe in yourself and that you can accomplish great things!

Then comes #3, the education and with that the action that needs to be taken once we understand how to start making progress with those same goals. Inside ourselves we have deep wells of talent and ability that are just waiting to be drawn up to the surface. When you draw up a bucket full of talent and ability, there only remains the reasons “why” you can get what you want.
Lastly comes the “passing it on”. Once we own that knowledge and “walk the talk” putting it into action, then comes the sharing of that knowledge with others. Just as the answers were inside of us, just waiting for the action to bring them to the surface, so it is with everyone. They just need to be shown how to access it.

Now, with Sarah and the kids living here, I get to laugh even more as I watch Sarah deal with teenagers and hormones and meltdowns. It is so much easier to stand back outside the drama and smile!

But laughter aside it is good to remember how hard those years were to live myself, and then how hard it was when my kids were teenagers. I find that I can spot early warning signs of behavior that a good conversation about now, will hopefully prevent the meltdowns of tomorrow (both for the grandkids and Sarah!).

It is part of the blessing that we have with a multi-generational household. While it has its trying moments, I love my grandkids being here and being such an intimate part of the their lives. I wish the others were closer too!

But we have a habit of thinking that I will do it tomorrow and we keep procrastinating and pretty soon it is not as easy to do – whether it is communicating in a relationship, or maintaining our vehicles, or doing a small repair. An oil change put off too long can become a major replacement of the engine. Not having an open flow of communication with our children when they are younger can turn into out of control teenagers. That small thing that we forgot to say we are sorry for can turn into a wall of hurt feelings that may take us years to tear down.

It all begins with a simple step, which to me is remembering to do what we know needs to be done. Make a list, set an alarm to remind you, send yourself a voice mail or text to alert you – just get some sort of system in place so that those small snowballs don’t turn into an avalanche that mow you down. It is a lot easier to move the mile carton away from the edge than it is to clean up the proverbial spilt milk!

It is the same with our dreams. When we are changing our dreams, we are improving upon them. As we start building our dream, we implement changes to it to improve upon it, not start a completely different dream, but finding a better way to express it.

The acorn seed grows an oak, however the oak can be changed by the soil it is grown in, by the terrain itself, by how many other oaks are close to it. It can be shaped by its environment, but it is still an oak.

Our dreams will be shaped by our environment, our knowledge, our skills, our abilities – but they are still our dreams of our own individualized possibilities. The seed is planted, all you have to do is tend to it and it will come true for you!

I love this last line “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for”. I think that most of us wouldn’t think that we have something that the world is waiting for. We wouldn’t think that the wisdom that we have acquired through our life experience is something that would qualify us as a wisdom teacher.

Yet each of us has unique lessons/experiences that we bring to the table. And while you can read a biography or watch from a distance as someone celebrates their life or implodes it, there are things within that experience that we don’t see. So the more of us that look around us and see who else is in the river with us, the more that the wisdom of each one of us can be shared individually. That is truly something to celebrate.

We all hold some part of our life experience back, like the secret ingredient in your secret recipe. Sometimes because it is embarrasing, or maybe because then everyone would do it that way and we want to be special. But what we forget is that the details of the experience, what we were thinking, what judgments we held, what we ourselves missed when we made that decision – any one or combination of those things could be the most important part of the lesson that we have to pass on.

So look around you in this river of life that we all live in, push off from the shore (the shore is a false sense of security) and see who is next to you. Share of yourself and celebrate your lives together and remember “We are the ones that we’ve been waiting for!”