Step Forward

(Watchman tell us of the night.)
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It is hardly possible to build anything if frustration, bitterness and a mood of helpless prevail.

Lech Walesa
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Hello Arlene
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The operative nasty word here is "entitlement" which could be a good word under the right circumstances, but if applied to negative thinking it vibrates with the loud bongs of a funeral march.

The things I try to do don't work out and I can't figure out why they don't. Of course I'm frustrated. Who wouldn't be?

My life is a bucket of tears and pain. I have a divine right to be bitter.

Look at the mess the world is in. There's no hope for any of us, we're all doomed. There's nothing I can do about it. It's a helpless situation.

We buy these negative suggestions because we think we have the right to them, we are empowered by our life's circumstances to be pessimistic. Nihilism reigns supreme in the mind of the negative thinker. "Take off the rose colored glasses and face reality. Life is a bitch and the earth is a junk yard."

Well Walesa didn't think so and hence created Solidarity and changed the history of Poland and, as a result, of the whole Soviet Union.

Another belligerent word in the realm of negativity is "possession." We believe, somehow, that we own those destructive thoughts, they are ours and we have the obligation to take possession of them. That errant mental activity leads nowhere but into darkness.

The first step out of the darkness is to turn around.

The next step is to decide to become a watchman. To begin to sniff out, spy out, and recognize the dooms day, doom saying thoughts and ideas that approach our unsuspecting minds like hungry mosquitoes or sudden thunder storms.

The third step is to deny the validity of such depressing ideas. To see them as egg shells, or banana peels or filters from used up cigarettes, to be scooped up and donated to the trash.

Step number four is to affirm the opposite ideas. "Keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole." as the old saying goes. While Shakespeare wrote "Impossible be strange attempts to those who weight their pains in sense." To affirm is to bring into reality what maybe you can't see or experience yet. But it will not happen unless it exists in thought first, visualized and, not just believed in but, cherished.

Step number five - start building.

DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never give up.
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SUMMER QUESTION

I recently received a peck on the cheek from two members of the female persuasion. Besides those I haven't experienced a real kiss in many, many years. I have no flowers. There is nothing growing outside, no trees, no bushes, no flowers, just a few pathetic weeds here and there. That, thankfully, does a lot to discourage the mosquito population, but it doesn't give me much in the way of flora. So I pose this question for those of you who have more experience in these matters.
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Which is more important, a flower or a kiss? Why?

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.