Successful Blog

Wishes, Dreams, and Vision

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I've been thinking . . .

about wishes.

I’ve never been good at wishes. They always seemed so big.

When I was a child, I heard of wishing on birthday candles, and wishing on stars, and three wishes that are in fairy tales. My cousins would on twisting the stem of an apple — a person had to twist it just the right way, just the right amount, and said just the right words.

A thought of a wish opened a universe that stunned me with wonder. . . . IMy mind wouldn’t interrupt. . . . I’d lose myself in infinite possibility and thoughts in color.

I never knew what to wish for. It wasn’t a lack of imagination. It was incomprehension.

When I went to college, no one wished anymore, they had dreams. Dreams seemed to come to me more easily.

Dreams were more grounded, but without strong wishing experience. I was a dreaming novice. I imagined a dream house — it ended up being three. I dreamed a life. When I was done, I had 23 unique and complicated scenarios, each complete with scenery and plot lines.

I’ve never been good at dreams. Well, I’m only good at them in the way that dreamers dream, which is having lots and lots of them — not one big one.

In my career I uncovered a vision. I had one without trying. It was a dream on the horizon of my life. Yeah, right there where I can see it.

I put a dream on the horizon. I see it in perfect vision. Each day I look out at it and think about the steps to how I’ll get there. Everything, everyday gets me closer.

Like a pilot flying from NYC to LA, I am off course most of the way, but I’m adjusting every minute. I get there eventually, and that vision shows me what the next vision is.

I wish I knew that from the beginning.

All of those wishes on stars could have been the start of a vision.

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Bad Weather and Mondays Have a Lot in Common

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Any first grade teacher will tell you. . .

that you can predict the weather by a roomful 6-year-olds. Long before it rains, just when the barometer moves, they’ll start to get agitated and cranky. Long before the first drop ever comes down, they will be bouncing off the walls. They also get difficult.

First grade teachers learn how to recognize that frustrated energy when we see it coming. Terachers also prepare for kids who don’t want to come back to school on Monday mornings. Bad weather and Mondays have a lot in common.

Adults do the same things. Some days it’s in the air. Everyone is 2 1/2 dimensional. Their social affect is off. The energy is down. Folks are a little tense, terse, and temperamental.

A horoscope might say that Mercury is retrograde. But truly, days like those happen more often than Mercury could take credit for causing.

Adults also have trouble getting back into work mode on Mondays. Most of us just don’t want to. Weekends are too short and too busy to get us ready for another week to come.

Bad weather and Mondays, kids and adults, have a lot in common. The impending doom of bad weather and Mondays throws us off our best behavior, or tilts our balance some.

One generous smile can make a magnificent difference on a Monday morning.

Give one away and watch what unfolds. It’s almost magical what can happen. People reframe the week that is starting. Eyes open and brighten. Folks get taller and more engaging. They look up. They smile back. Even the cranky ones take notice.

Any first grade teacher will tell you that.

In some ways, we’re all 6 years old.

Who couldn’t use a generous smile on a Monday morning?

It especially works for the one doing the smiling.

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Song of Life: Right Outta Nowhere

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My Heart Is Always Singing

When I read Dawud’s post about the songs in his heart, I knew I was a goner. My heart is always singing. It’s the way I wake up. It’s the way I go through my day. It’s the way I think of my friends. It’s my life.

Sometimes I think that everything I know has been set to music somewhere.

Right Outta Nowhere

by Christine Kane

I was walking with Richard in London. We were talking about his international travel, my international travel, my first trip to the UK, his trips to visit my office, and my bicoastal commute.

“In the last year,” I said to this lifelong friend, “the longest time I’ve been home is 21 days. Once I was gone for 63 nights. I have a “home” at home, another at Peg’s, and several in small hotels in cities like this. What d’ya make of it?” I was walking half-backwards to see him as I spoke.

He pondered. Then he said, “I think it means, you don’t want one home anywhere.”

I turned to walk beside him, keeping pace and thinking his thought. Then I turned back to say, “Could be, yet when I try it on, it feels more right to say ‘I want to live everywhere!’ ”

“Oh dear,” my dear friend remarked. “That is you, spot on. Takes courage, that.”

We think of courage as a loud battle, but in my life it’s never been a fight. It’s been a waking up to something that isn’t right.

When courage finally comes you never see it coming.

Just three years before that walk, I’d been hopelessly lost about life. I’d gotten caught in trying different clothes and dfferent shoes to figure out how to walk the road that everyone else was walking. I’d tried desperately, valiantly — with amazing resilience — to remake myself to fit the success story.

Some people got a lot to prove and that’s the way I used to be.

From the first misstep I took, I lived in my head, over-analyzing At the same time, I believed I wasn’t good enough, yet I thought that I could prove my value by changing who I am. Where’s the logic there? Look again —> prove the value of who I am by changing it?

Disconnected from my head, my heart knew I was moving in the wrong direction. It took a chance at being me again. My heart understood that I needed my own shores to find my place to stand. That’s where the courage came in.

Dream and the way will be clear.
Pray and the angels will hear.
Leap and the net will appear.

When my heart and head came back together, those shoes that fit were walking on a road away from trying to change myself to prove my value. It wasn’t easy, but it felt better.

And I could be sure that the folks who met me . . . met me, and those who like me . . . like me.

So when people ask me about how to find their way, I point them to Christine’s song a song in my heart and tell them what it says . . .

Right outta nowhere
Open your heart, believe in everything
And you’re going somewhere.
And all you need to know is that you’re free.

I had asked Richard before I ever got to the UK, “When I get to London on business, will you take me around to all of the publishers?” I’d been asking him for 6 years, before my plane actually landed.

I had to learn that I was free to go.

Right outta nowhere, you open your heart, have faith in everything
And you you’re going somewhere.
And all you need to know
Is that you’re free
to go.

Thank you, Christine, for saying it so beautifully.

Open your heart, believe in everything — especially yourself.
That’s how you get to where you want to go.

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I’m Lucky; I’ll Reach Out, and Celebrate

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I've been thinking . . .

about helping each other.

I’ve noticed something about the people who know me as a blogger and those who have known me longer, but don’t know the blogosphere.

Over the past few months, many blogger friends — friends I have known less than two years — have asked for help and offered help. In fact, I told someone yesterday that it’s hard to talk to a blogger without hearing, “How can I help you? or Thank you for reaching out.” In the past few days, blogger friends and I have found work for each other, worked together on projects, and when someone was in trouble people immediately rallied around to help.

Helping is a bloggerly thing. So is blogger synchronicity.

Friends I know from the 3-D world — friends that I’ve known longer, much longer — are having the same kinds of problems. Yet, they don’t call me or each other. I hear about their troubles when I call to see how they are. They struggle alone or with one friend who helps them. It’s not that they think I won’t help. They don’t think about me at all. They think they must walk alone through paved streets.

Asking for help seems to be not a worldly thing. Neither does letting many people too close seem to be.

I wonder at how small a big city seems when the world is our community.

I can reach out to people across the country. People of so many skills and gifts have taught me incredible things. I have learned to believe in the power of people and dreams.

I introduced a friend from the world of brick and mortar to a friend in the world of blogging today. She said she believed that when the learner is ready, the teacher appears.

Another blogger friend brought a nonblogger in trouble to me for help.

This weekend I’ll celebrate blogger generosity by looking for ways to give help away.

How could anyone how has received so much, do any less?

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Change the World: Get Some Perspective

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Selective Memory

changetheworld8

As we get to be adults, we have conversations about growing up. Often those conversations center around our parents and what they did wrong. . . . I often recall a college friend saying, “When does it stop being our parents fault?”

I don’t know whether my childhood was happy, I only remember specific memories — even those seem to be a story told from my own point of view . . . as I found out about this one.

I told my older, older brother about my son’s attitude as teenager. I said, “I never had the nerve to talk to my mother that way.”

My older, older bother laughed. He said, “Ah, your selective memory! When your niece was your son’s age, I heard her talk back to her mother . . . how often I thought ‘Oh that’s familiar.’ It was a replay of my little sister talking to my mother. Why do you think I say my daughter is so like her aunt?”

Now I look back and think,”Yeah, I was a brat just like every other 17-year-old kid. It’s the nature of 17-year-olds. Young lions do it to their parents too. It’s part of growing up and leaving home.”

Part of becoming who we are is getting events into perspective. I’ve always been a little slow at catching on, but when I did that day, I saw my son and myself in a new way.

The rest of that year was lighter for one 17-year-old and his mother.

We can change the world — just like that.
–ME “Liz” Strauss