Love

Love

What is love?

I am not sure I know the answer to this question. I am not sure anyone really does. Webster says that love is "an emotion of a strong affection and personal attachment. Love is also a virtue representing all of human kindness,compassion, and affection —"the unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another". Love may describe actions towards others or oneself based on compassion or affection

OK so I read this definition over and over and over again after starting this post and something started to really settle into my brain-"the unselfish......concern for another."
Unselfish part-that is the part that really garnered my attention.

Unselfish
Hmmmm
Unselfish

Lately,
I have found myself on a journey that I really had no intention of going on. Hmmm, I don't suppose anyone has ever felt that way before :) but I digress. I have been on a journey and it has been a most unpleasant one to say the least.
I can see that our most unpleasant of journeys typically can be avoided if only by choosing to follow our intuition about people and situations, and to take emotions out and to judge situations and people with complete objectivity. It is amazing how ugly people and situations can seem when the lights are preverbial turned on.
On this journey I have realized some truths about myself and about life and mostly, well about love.
First, I am here to learn a lot of very difficult lessons and I have no idea why I signed up for this school some days and other days I have amazing things that happen that remind me why I am here.
Second, life is a school of hard knocks. Trying situations, grief and loss will not go away there is no going around these lessons, you have to go through them-which sometimes, no most of the time, SUCKS.
Third you will eventually get to a point where you start to questions the very sanity of the word, LOVE.

I have a family. You have a family. I would venture to say that most of us would not make a claim to that being a perfect intitity, am I right?
I think many of us have pasts that haunt us to this day, things we wish would could change about our childhoods the way we grew up, the way we were parented, and maybe even the siblings we were given.
I think however, that we may have chosen to surround ourselves with these challenging individuals. WHY, do you ask? Good question, I find myself many times asking that SAME question.
But truth is growth comes from pain, it comes from questions, it comes from being bigger than a hurtful situation. Growth comes from breaking through the hardness of difficult situations.

And then the mother of all questions arose- HAVE I ever been really loved? In my entire life has anyone ever REALLY, REALLY loved me? I am not sure, it is a surreal thought to stop and ponder this-I thought this through and really pondered this question for days and I meditated on this and read book about it......and then as plain as day once I started to blog about it another thought popped in my head-HAVE I EVER REALLY LOVED? What of course I have, I have loved......I have loved.....wait what is love again....."unselfish....concern for another" Hmmmm, have I ever really loved-maybe the truth is I have to learn how to love first, so I can recognize it another person when I see it!!!!



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Seek Within Ourselves

There are times when negativity over powers any amount of light that is in our lives. We give focus and waste energy on things that overpower our minds with negative thoughts. Not only does the body suffer from the stress, but so too does the outlook on life in general. While in that negative moment we tend to not only miss what the challenge can teach us but we also allow other peoples opinions and judgements to derail us from what is truely important. We lose faith for a hopeful outcome, and most importantly the faith in ourselves. It is always important to know that it is in our greatest hours of desperation, disbelief, saddness, bitterness, and anger that we find more about our individual "soulful" energy. It is in these moments that we aquire individual strength, new outlooks, and a greater perspective in whole. They teach us to humble ourselves, realize our humanness, and seek advice from within. Going "within" ourselves truely proves that we are "never alone" even in our darkest moments. We are apart of something bigger than ourselves, and apart of a greater good. It teaches us to seek knowledge beyond a text book, and helps us to make wiser choices for our future.



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Fall

I see the fall colors of red yellow and orange
I see the waxy green leaves disappear
I watch as the pieces painted red yellow and orange find their way to the soft carpet of grass
I think to myself
This is the cycle of life
This is the way that life is
All things in their time
Will fall to the soft carpet of grass
The question becomes
When it becomes our turn to fall to the soft carpet of grass
Will we have allowed ourselves to be changed
to be painted in bright red, yellow or orange
Forever leaving our beautiful essence in the world as we go


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Computer curse

So Here I am on this electronic device wondering if its well distracting.Yes it is a great medium for passing on information but do I use it, do we as a society use it so we don't think.
I am not implying no one out there thinks, and I know I use the computer to research lots of things,
But I mean think
really really think
like Einstein think 
or Galileo Galilei think
are we so stuck in the not thinking virtual reality that is brought to us so effortlessly
that streams so much in to our mind that we have no room to think any independent thoughts because we are so busy with the influx of mindless info from the virtual world! 
I just wonder what would happen if we walked away from the mindless chatter for one day, one week, one month, one year-can you imagine what we might accomplish as individuals, as a society, how about the entire world!!!!
It is a fascinating thought to say the least
do I think it will happen,
I don't know
BUT if you can unplug for a day or a week or a month, you def need to tell us about it!



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Fall

I see the fall colors of red yellow and orange
I see the waxy green leaves disappear
I watch as the pieces painted red yellow and orange find their way to the soft carpet of grass
I think to myself
This is the cycle of life
This is the way that life is
All things in their time
Will fall to the soft carpet of grass
The question becomes
When it becomes our turn to fall to the soft carpet of grass
Will we have allowed ourselves to be changed
to be painted in bright red, yellow or orange
Forever leaving our beautiful essence in the world as we go
Nicole Brown



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

electronic

So Here I am on this electronic device wondering if its well distracting.
Yes it is a great medium for passing on information but do I use it, do we as a society use it so we don't think.
I am not implying no one out there thinks, and I know I use the computer to research lots of things,
But I mean think
really really think
like Einstein think 
or Galileo Galilei think
are we so stuck in the not thinking virtual reality that is brought to us so effortlessly
that streams so much in to our mind that we have no room to think any independent thoughts because we are so busy with the influx of mindless info from the virtual world! 
I just wonder what would happen if we walked away from the mindless chatter for one day, one week, one month, one year-can you imagine what we might accomplish as individuals, as a society, how about the entire world!!!!
It is a fascinating thought to say the least
do I think it will happen,
I don't know
BUT if you can unplug for a day or a week or a month, you def need to tell us about it! If i can I will share I promise or threaten LOL-depends on how you see it :)
Blessings
Niki Brown







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Lessons only a child can teach us

I woke up this morning in a irritable mood! Why? I didn't know, but I was not in any mood for mom mode! Getting 3 children around for school, baths, breakfast, book bags around! No matter how I tried to analyze it, let it go, find the energy and joy inside myself, I just couldn't shake it. Not only me, but my children could feel it as well!

As my children were sitting at the table eating breakfast this morning, I over hear my 9 yr old son say, "Mom isn't mom today, we must be making her really mad and she doesn't want to be our mom anymore!" My 10 yr old daughter responded, "She's just grouchy, she must not of had enough sleep last night."( When in truth I slept 10 hrs straight and that def. wasn't the reason.) Suddenly, my 4 yr. old said, "It's ok, I was a baby at pre-school yesterday and I cried, but today Im much older, I am no longer a baby, but a big boy. Tomorrow mom will not be a baby, but a big girl!" It hit me suddenly, even at 4, my son realized that even as an adult we can turn into a "wounded child," a "victim"-but it isn't what defines us-it consumes a moment in time, but at the next given moment we can let it go, and grow up. That it is a brief state, but once we are aware of it we don't have to stay in that state! That it is "ok", accept it for what it was and just start over. We don't have to allow the "victim" moment to turn into guilt, or a vicious cycle that tears us down and carries on for days! Its as simple as realizing that we were there, but don't have to stay there~



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