A Couple Movies

I love movie trailers. If you have ever looked at my website before, you would definitely know this.  I saw these featured yesterday and wanted to share them. 








What are you going to do with your one and only life?

Opportunity Equality

I didn't have a fully functional computer for most of my life.  I was blessed when a friend gave me her used lap top in 2004 so I had something to type my stories on and slowly use the internet.  Because of this, I was never one for technology; Out of sight, out of mind.  You can ask all of my friends, I didn't text until late, never checked my myspace and was one of the last in all of my circles of friends to join facebook.  It wasn't until Thanksgiving of 2009 when I purchased a computer that would catapult me into the technological age, high impact correspondence and a plethora of opportunities that I had no idea that I was even missing. 

This segment from The Rachel Maddow Show with Ezra Klein does a great job of sharing the inequality of opportunity.  It is all about the resources we each have.  I couldn't get the computer until I had a descent salaried job.  The salary and computer has opened up doors that allowed me to quit my job and pursue my own endeavors.  I am blessed; I know this. I am also humble because I am no where near rich and still have found my happiness through the opportunities that have crossed my paths.  I don't want this post to be about how sad it is for those without opportunities or a vent on how the rich are able to get richer. It is just a moment to be thankful for what we all have and continue to bust our asses as we move forward.
 

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LGBT News Besides Obama's News

This was from The Rachel Maddow Show last night.  It is an excellent update of what else is happening on the level of LGBT rights in our federal and state governments.
 

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Clarity

I'm currently re-learning a lesson that we all learn over and over again.  The lesson is that everything will work out.  This is so brief and so androgynous, but yet so true.  Obstacles come up and the outcome is going to happen and just going to work out. It may not work out in our favor, but we will have to handle the outcome no matter how difficult yet we will still have opportunities when we get through it.  Getting through the obstacle unfortunately is when we tend to think that these are the cards that we are stuck with.  We get stuck there instead of keeping our eyes beyond that point and acknowledging that what ever is in your way will soon pass.  Today, I send love to all of you out there fighting through something trying to get to a point that is bigger and brighter.  Keep you eyes on the prize and just breath, everything will work out.

The Opportunity of Time

I am back to the place where I love being the most;  Having my days to work on what I feel is the most productive projects that allow me to use my talents in the largest form of influence that I feel possible.  I most identify myself as a writer.  Through words, I feel that I can connect to people the best.  I know we all wear many hats.  The hats I wear under the category "profession"  alone varies from radio host to entrepreneur, restaurant manager, consultant and of course writer. 

Writing is definitely where I feel most comfortable and most fulfilled.  Through writing I get to examine my experiences along with the experiences of the great many people that have crossed my path. I share these experiences, dissect them, and hopefully find ways to establish common ground so that through either reading or writing, we can become greater human beings.  This happens in the comedic moments, the sad moments, and the moments that happen so quickly that if we don't identify them, we will just loose them and the lesson those moments deliver. 

I also write because I am a student of people.  I learn from everyone and every moment I find myself in.  Being a student of people has allowed me to find my own philosophy in a time where it seems that philosophy is something only found in a section of the library.  Yet, the rows of books that fall under this category has a purpose that needs to be transformed into this post-modern, technologically advanced time. For me, my writing helps give reasons to why and hopefully translates to others.  As I write, I still give my thanks to the modern philosophers of our day like Micheal Hardt, Martha Nussbaum and Cornel West.  Even though many of them would never self-identify as philosophers, they very much are. 

For the next two months, I get the opportunity of time to write, re-connect and find my center on where I am and why I write.  I say this with the title of "Opportunity of Time" in an ironic form because time is always there as an opportunity.  Despite what is fed to us through the media and most other outlets, time itself does not actually cost us anything.  Time is the constant and we are the ones who decide how we spend it. 

For the next two months, I will write and connect and share; it is my commitment to myself. As I share, ask yourself, what can I commit to?  What do I want to do for myself that I never make time for?  Give yourself two months, two weeks or two days and share what it is and what you are accomplishing. I repeat sharing because it is the most important part.  Sharing gives inspiration, it allows others to share their stories and it makes a platform for collaboration for even greater things to happen.

For whatever reason it is, make the decision to give yourself the opportunity of time. 

Embracing It

One of those days when I just find myself in a melancholy-sort-of mood.  I am just embracing it and I feel that it is the only thing to do in that state of mind.  I recently contributed to Light of Love-LA and wrote about what to do when in one of these moments in our lives.

I don’t often speak about my faith. I bring it in to conversation from time to time as a side note and it is always extremely “other party polite” but is never direct or fully subjective. When I do braze it into conversation, not only am I careful of what other parties may be feeling on the subject of faith, but I state my thoughts in a “matter of fact” point so despite what other party’s religious beliefs are, they still can relate to my view. On a day where I am coming off of a spell of illness, have a complete loss of focus and a supreme lack of belief in myself, I feel it is a great moment for a self-check on what I believe. By reminding myself of my beliefs, I gain a starting point as how to look at the obstacles as well as the celebrations that are happening and continue to happen.

A few weeks ago, when I was at a much worse mental state, a close friend of mine reminded me that now is the time to be patient and see what the universe is saying. She of course was completely correct and days later I knew why everything was so topsy-turvy. This is something that she and I have to continuously repeat to each other, sometimes on a daily basis. Patience is so important in everything we do yet unfortunately, we are a society that is continuously growing more and more impatient. Patience gives us time to think, time to digest and time to truly see situations as the whole picture they are. Sometimes patience is tested and needed just for waiting for your morning coffee, and sometimes it is a life-long struggle to truly be in a place where we are comfortable. For me, one of my greatest strains of patience has been getting to this place where I know that I want to do everything possible to make the place we live to be better than ever; A place where acceptance, innovation and human connection can flourish. Only patience allows us to get to a place where we know and understand our circumstances.

I believe in patience so severely, that it is probably the most common thing to come out of my mouth. Patience is something known and controllable yet I also believe in the unknown in which we cannot control. I believe that there is an infinite power that we are still completely clueless about. This comes in many forms such as god, the universe, Buddha, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, Allah, Isis, or Gaia. This infinite power can only explain the unique harmony that the universe plays through, as well as the treacherous circumstances we continuously find ourselves in all the while, having a unique coincidental routine and irony come in and out of our lives. This great force is not itself a coincidence but something I believe is there and may never be understood or known. I don’t know if when I die I will meet my creator but hope to do so. I am, however, eternally grateful every day that I am here to experience being alive while continuing to believe in the greater goodness of this infinite power I cannot yet understand.

Believing in an unknown infinite power is frightening, so there needs to be something to comfort that fear. Through my conversations and observations in the past five years, I have seen the growing need for human connection. With the technological revolution, we have become more involved and informed in each other’s lives but we are still missing that face to face connection. With the global interface of correspondence that we have access to, we have an obligation to strengthen those relationships not only in our physical address communities, but in all the communities that we find ourselves involved in. We will never know what this greater force is that conducts us, but we do have one another whom have the same needs to answer the great questions like why are we here? How did we get here? What is the meaning of life? Is organic truly organic? We have one another and therefore we need to find communion with one another in any way we can. Communion can be church, over a beer, a campfire, a walk, over coffee, on a boat or in the car on a trip. While communing, any topics of discussion can be incorporated; Love, faith, politics, fashion, sex, food, family, the sky color, music, power tools, hunting. It is completely about being with another person and enjoying that unknown beast that connects all of us. Despite our lack of understanding of an infinite power, I believe we need to be globally responsible for one another. This can only be done through human connection.

Last week I woke up at my normal crack of dawn time and just wasn’t “feeling it” so I stopped making coffee and crawled back into bed. About an hour later there was a knock at my door and when I jumped up and ran to the door I saw that it was my friend Holly and her two youngest children, both under the age of three. I was so raged at why she was just stopping by at such an early hour. Extremely upset, I still went to the door with a smile on my face, said come in and asked if she wanted some coffee. Ten years ago, there would have been no anger in me because it was still common to have people just stop by. Especially with us, as well as other friends, it was extremely common to just stop by in the morning for coffee. I was patient and let my anger on this morning pass because I knew I really needed to sit and visit. Remember the term visit? Just sit and visit? Well, that is what we did when Holly came by; I put on a pot of coffee, made a little snack for the boys and we just sat there and visited. With patience to get through my anger, I had that communion that I needed and saw that the universe had a plan for me that day. That plan was to be late for work because I needed that proper beginning to my day before work. That visit with an old friend was exactly what I needed to be stopped and enjoy the moment.

I write this for you to read not to learn from my experience and not to force my beliefs on anyone, but to encourage you to think about what you believe in. Knowing what we believe is a great part in knowing ourselves. For me, going back to these beliefs helped me to take action on the next step of my life. Not only, as I mentioned before, is it a beginning point, but it is also a way to hold myself accountable and help me to keep my integrity. When the day ends, we can only be as good as who we are and what level of integrity we have. Knowing my beliefs helps to keep that in check.

Articles to Check Out

This last week I came across a couple articles that really caught my eye.  The first one strikes me with a big grin because it is about nuns.  The Vatican is reprimanding this group of nuns for having "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith".  The big statistic that I loved from this article is that these nuns make eighty percent of all nuns in the United States.  Vatican Reprimands a Group of U.S. Nuns and Plans Changes

The second article is an editorial about how the National Labor Relations Board (NLBR) issued a rule for employers to post people's rights to organize.  There was a backlash by The National Association of Manufactures and this article goes into the lawsuit.  It's definitely worth the read. Do You Know Your Rights?