Knowing and Doing...

"I am not interested with your talk about my ideas. I am more interested in your applying them to your life. If you do not, then you are essentially not in accord with your own mind." - M. Musashi; It's one thing to "know" what to do, it's another to actually do it...

There's a man...

There's a man
Who woke up today
With a smile on his
Face

There's a man tonight
Who's going to sleep
With a smile on his
Face

There's a man
Who's going to
Die tomorrow
with a smile on his
face

That's wondered today
Why you can't be
happy

Why he is 
And doesn't understand
Why you're sleeping
In a sad place

Why he's happy
And your slowly
Dying
at a negative pace

There's a man
Whose dreaming
That you can
Find this certain
grace

There's a man
Whose dying tomorrow
That wants to share
this which is
His bliss

His last dream
Is that you can

Become this...

Here's to a better you...

"Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart." - Marcus Aurelius

"The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence." - Herodotus


"Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself; the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which can be pointed out by your finger." - Cicero

I will update with a reply to the quotes above. I just felt like I needed to post these to get me through tonight...

Vision or Sight

I want to tell you a story as I sit here in the hospital with my Dad after he had a major heart attack, after I took a random 3 day trip that started in the middle of the night, after I...well I'll stop there and just say that none of these past couple day events were planned. Spontaneity is sometimes king of our lives. So the story goes a little like this...
My Vision.
There I was in the 3rd grade painting a picture. Everything that stands out to me I say happened to me when I was in the 3rd grade, even if in reality it probably didn't. It's just a good grade to go by I guess. I'm sure you have a grade in which everything life changing happened. So there I was in the 3rd grade beginning to paint this picture. As I was figuring out what to paint I remember my art teacher saying, "Have a vision of where you'd like to be later in life and paint it." Have only being to the mountains of Northern Mexico when I was like 3 or 4, I wanted something like that scene. Vision - "imagination, or an unusually keen perception, a mental image of something imaginary." So I closed my eyes and tried to envision this picture. Once I had this fixed picture in my head, I picked up my brush and began to piece this picture stroke by stroke. I don't know if it took me an hour or a few days, I just know that when I finished, this place I painted is where I wanted to be. In the foreground was the colors of the flat plains. The skull of some bull left in time laying in the field, the slight wind swaying the grass, the fence line marking the boundaries, and this point of view - the place where I would stand watching this moment. Mid-picture was the rolling hills with the shadows of the flowing clouds casting different shades across the fields. Then as you looked above into the background, the legendary white-tipped mountains which will cause any bystander to wonder in amazement of how violent and beautiful this earth can be. The last piece to my vision - was this sun that set to the west that was like a red cyclopsed eye staring back at you in this multicolored blue wonderment of a sky. This was my vision.

My sight.
I'll try to make a long story short. I went into the military for a couple reasons but the top two were that I was trying to get away from the bad situation I put myself in, but most importantly to give myself to my country. First they sent me to bomb school, then on I went to missile school, went on a crazy dream ride from living on the beaches of Florida and California, then ended up in the wild west and settled for a while in Cheyenne, Wyoming. After living in Cheytown for a while, I got a bright idea and moved to Wellington, Colorado. I did all this, mostly only being able to see what was directly in front of me, going off a whim. I didn't think too much in those days, I just rolled with the flow, only making it up one hill to see another. Sight - "a perception of an object by or as if by the eye, to take aim, or to look carefully in a particular direction." I perceived an idea and took a certain direction, not knowing where it could lead me next. Taking things a step at a time and just mostly going with the flow. I moved to this awesome place called Wellington north of Fort Collins; Gods country. I would then go into a mortgage and buy my first place at the young and immature age of 25, but none-the-less it was a very smart decision. I knew deep down that place was suppose to be mine. After a few days, once settled into my condo, I remember looking out of my living room windows and then seeing what I had envisioned many years ago...I saw my painting in real life. I stood up, put my book down, and stared at what seemed a little unbelievable. My breathe, some what taken away, by a moment that time will not forget. That next weekend, I decided to drive out into and immerse myself in this scene and think about what got me there. A combination of both vision and sight.
I think that's what we need in life. To close our eyes and have a vision of something or someplace where we'd like to be in the future and put that picture in our hearts and minds for a future reality. Then take the steps we need to take, to make it through day by day. To see only far enough and not get a head of ourselves. One day realizing that what we envisioned, had come true. I don't know if I have that picture that I drew many years ago. What I do have though is a picture of me and the scene that I envisioned when living in Central Texas, which came true to be the Foothills of Colorado.
This weekend I went off a whim on an adventure with one of the prettiest gals around and had a great time with new friends. I'm now in this hospital with my family enduring with my Dad as he suffers. I've been taking things day by day, only seeing the next hill. What now lingers in me as I live throughout all this, is a picture I have in my heart and soul that I put into vision 6 or so years ago, maybe one day I might share it with you sometime...one day I know it will come true.
(Below is a self timed picture of me and the Awe that is in the Foothills of Wellington)