Be Happy in the World as Long as You Live

“And what would you do,” the Master said unto the multitude, “if God spoke directly to your face and said, “I COMMAND THAT YOU BE HAPPY IN THE WORLD, AS LONG AS YOU LIVE,’ what would you do then?”

And the multitude was silent, not a voice, not a sound was heard upon the hillsides across the valleys where they stood.”

--Richard Bach, Illusions

 

Have you ever noticed that a foul mood brings more annoyances, irritations, and mistakes?

However, a happy mood usually brings good stuff.

Dr. Gabor Mate’ told of a time when he was an infant. His mother called the Pediatrician and said that little Gabor was crying all the time. The Pediatrician said that all the babies were crying. They are picking up the anxiety from their mothers. The Gabor's lived in Poland, and Germany was about to invade it.

That's the way I have been feeling for the past month.

I wrote a blog yesterday about what was on my mind, then lost what I had written. Was that a lesson regarding my foul mood?

Was that the universe telling me to either shut up or up my foul mood into a tinier fowl?

Once I fed some tiny quails for our landlord in California.  Have you ever seen their cute little spotted eggs? 

Our landlord sold the eggs to a Japanese restaurant, which considered them a delicacy. His little gathering of quails—a bevy is an old-world term for them—was so tame they would flow as a unit out of the enclosure, and I had to push them back in to close the door.  Later, he collected another group and housed them in a business structure on the property. Those young quails were so wild I couldn't open the cage to feed them without fear of losing one, and once I did.

The door to their cage was on top of a low container. When I lifted the on-top-of-the-cage door, an ace pilot quail flew out faster than a speeding bullet, aimed for the door to the great outdoors, and was never seen nor heard from again.

I never told the landlord.

What lesson is there in that story? I don't know—watch which door you open, I suppose.

Yesterday I closed a door on my Real Estate ability to sell. I'm keeping my license current, for I worked my butt off to get it. However, I am dropping my associations.  Fees are due and paying a considerable sum of money for something I don't want to do seemed ridiculous. I was following up on leads that my principal broker was buying and giving to me to call.

How do you feel about cold calls?

“Ok? Don’t bother me? I won’t answer. GO AWAY.”

Luckily nobody got really angry with me.  

I could call ours “lukewarm” for the person I called had filled out a form. I know they wanted information, probably not a call, but then I was playing the game.

No more.

I resent getting calls to sell me something. I figure most other people do too, and I don’t like to bug people. At least here you can read or not read, it’s your choice. Lead gathering headlines were something like this: “Downpayment Assistance, Cash Deal.”

Really? I was a Real Estate agent. Everybody knows that a Real Estate Agent can make a living only by commissions, which many people resent or try to lower. Calling irked me. My procrastination irked my boss.

I felt like a quitter.

But I quit anyway.

That means I cannot list a house for sale, help an owner sell, or help a buyer buy. Agents must belong to the RMLS and Realtor ®, for we are required to use their forms.

My time and efforts belong to what I am passionate about.

And that is writing.

I could continue the Newsletter concept I began when I created our website for Vibrance Real Estate LLC. Our mascot/logo was a Pink Flamingo—thus I titled the Newsletter A Flamboyance—which is a gathering of flamingos. (Those exuberant vocal, chattering birds are sometimes called the long-stemmed rose of birds.) It's odd that occasionally, we see that tropical bird, not indigenous to the Pacific Northwest, perched in someone’s yard.

People do want information. That’s the reason they signed a form to get it. Now if I could get them to sign up for a Newsletter I could do what I like to do and still be in the Real Estate business.  I could tell people about FHA loans, (low down payment, government-insured) or VA loans (no down payment). There are other loans like a bridge loan that will loan you money so you can bridge the gap between the time you sell your house and the time you purchase your dream home. (Once you find a house you love you don’t want to lose it before you can sell yours.) The Real Estate Association recently required a buyer to sign a buyer’s agency, so read carefully.

My daughter and I could give tips. Want a brainstorming session to make that oblong room look more inviting? Daughter dear and I once flipped a house where we touched about everything except the roof. We did siding, flooring, tiling, painting, carpentry and installing. A sledgehammer with my daughter’s muscle behind it bashed out a wall, opening the living room to the kitchen. We found a beautiful piece of Tiger wood” that made a bar to separate the two rooms. Daughter’s mantel over the kitchen range sold the house. (A single lady—first time buyer bought it, and we helped her find downpayment help.) That was a thrill. We were not real estate agents at the time, but we still made a profit

I learned to use a table saw and make mitered corners. The worst of the flip was installing a garbage disposal. Well, hanging kitchen cupboards was no piece of cake. But we were proud of our accomplishment and loved the design aspect. Maybe that's what we can do. Have people send us pictures, and we will critique the house and offer ideas. Sometimes a little runt of a house can transform into a jewel.

When everybody wins business is simply more fun. (Aka, the Pink Flamingo.)

I General Contracted the building of our log house. That went from getting a forest Land Use permit, to building a road (hiring contractors) to the finished product—with a little help from another general contractor who took me under his wing, including taking me to the county to get a septic drain system permit.

(You know what a “French drain is? Ask me. You know about rock dust, and road fabric? Ask me.)

One of the fun things about writing is it clears the mind and sweeps the house so the muse can enter without soiling her gown.

 

Richard Bach, the author I quoted at the top of this blog wrote Jonathan Living Seagull. “A nice little book,” said Ray Bradbury. “It will probably sell about 15,000 copies.”  Jonathan was first published in 1970 with little advertising or expectations, by the end of 1972, over a million copies were in print. The book reached the number-one spot on bestseller lists mainly through word-of-mouth recommendations. It is about a seagull trying to learn about flying, personal reflection, freedom, and self-realization.

Bach's following book, Illusions, is my favorite book of Bach’s. Released in 1977, Illusions sold 15 million copies in 35 languages.

'What if somebody came along who could teach me how my world works and how to control it? ... What if a Siddhartha came to our time with power over the illusions of the world because he knew the reality behind them? And what if I could meet him in person, if he was flying a biplane, for instance, and landed in the same meadow with me?"

I'm going to reread Illusions.

 

 

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive."

 --Howard Thurman 

Let's Go Fly a Kite

 Let’s go Fly a Kite

“When you send it flying up there, all at once you’re lighter than air…” 

--Richard and Robert Sherman 

My daughter and I watched Mary Poppins a couple of nights ago. That was after we watched “Saving Mr. Banks,” how Walt Disney persuaded P.L. Travis the author of Mary Poppins to allow him to make the movie.

Neglected kids had a magical nanny come to take them on outings, play games, never be cross or cruel, never give them castor oil or gruel and never smell of barley water…. They got to laugh on the ceiling, jump in and out of chalk drawings, and Mary Poppins, instead of allowing Mr. Banks to fire her, tricks him into taking this children, Jane and Michael, on an outing to the bank where he works.  The father, George Banks, gives Michael, his son, a tuppence to start a bank account.

On the walk to the Bank, Michael sees the old Bird Lady at the Cathedral and wants to spend his tuppence to feed the birds as the old Bird Woman pleads but is dragged along reluctantly to the bank.

The bank wants the money, the tuppence. They want it enough to grab it from the boy’s hand. In the tussle, noise and confusion there is a run on the bank.  

Any reference here to us?

The movie was about saving Mr. Banks, about personal crisis and redemption. It takes Travis’ tragic childhood and writes a happy ending to it.

 The healing value of Art.

When you don’t know what to say, say a nonsense word like  "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Take a sad story and write a happy ending.

And go fly a kite.

 

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,”

Jo

 

 

 

"Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art."--Andy Warhol

It is Today. It is not Yesterday. It is not Tomorrow. It is Today.

 

I want something uplifting.

I want my life back!

This morning, I made a conscious choice NOT to read anything political. I didn’t read the “experts” who popped up in my email box. I didn’t get caught by any Google images or headlines with dire warnings. I didn’t go to any of the “expert’s” sites I’ve been reading. And I never watch regular television news.

As I searched the Internet for uplifting sites, a quote from Jane Roberts popped up as an image.

“Suffering is not good for the soul unless it teaches you to stop suffering.”

I woke up this morning from a nightmare—which I rarely have—grateful the dream wasn’t real.

If you’ve been reading me, you will know I’ve been in grief over the election and how I feel about our country. I felt, and still feel, that our freedoms are, one after the other, being dragged from us.

Then I read that suffering is not good for the soul unless it teaches you to stop suffering.”

Teach me.

I have no magic wand. I have no brilliant advice to bestow.  I have learned that you do not change anyone’s opinion or belief by arguing. It just makes them dig in deeper. They have a principle to uphold, and so do I.

However, we can inch toward the light.

Our souls are good, but we have been neglecting nourishing them, at least I have.

Last night, from the documentary The Mindwashing of My Dad, I learned how Nixon turned a blue US into a red one. A media mogul groomed him to think that Americans were dumb, lazy, and wanted to be fed. From Nixon, we learned that the only thing that trickled down from the Trickle-Down Theory was meanness.

WHO ARE WE?

Actually, we are people who want TO TRUST.

We want to learn THE TRUTH.  

Once, we looked to Newspapers, columnists, and journalists to bring us the news. We can’t all go out into the world and collect it. We have lives to live, families to feed, work to do, creativity to express and enjoy, so we trusted the collectors to bring it to us.

We paid them to do their job.

We trusted that they had reliable sources, that they were ethical, and that truth in reporting was not only morally essential, but the law.

That morphed into television- a great potential to bring us together, give us information, and tell us how the world was doing. However, it can be bought like most everything else. It became a fight for control and attention. We didn’t think it was our job to legislate morality. Foolish us.

We have been blatantly lied to, fooled, bought, or wrestled by nefarious means into a corner. And this wrestling has been skillfully orchestrated—so much so that people don’t trust anything. We can be manipulated. Take a good magician using the shell game: They can remove the ball from under the cup without us even seeing it. I once heard a magician say that even magicians can be fooled.

We aren’t lazy people. We are confused people. We’re tired.

Keep the people stirred up, and they are controllable. Give somebody the military, and we are sitting ducks.

WHO ARE WE?

WE ARE THE PEOPLE who once stood behind the principle that we are a GOVERNMENT FOR THE PEOPLE AND BY THE PEOPLE.

Once, we believed that “our problems were caused by man; therefore, they can be solved by man.” (Or women or humankind.) Then we got the idea that it wasn’t happening fast enough and that we ought to force it.

The mystical part of who we are is bleeding.

I searched Oprah and found that the real purpose of her show was to teach responsibility. That the choices we make every day have to do with what we receive.  She has paid attention to the soul since beginning of her television appearance. At first, she was afraid television wasn’t ready for it, and it wasn’t. Now she isn't afraid to mention the Soul--as in Soul Sunday, and her interviews. Many of us believe our internal Knowingness can lead the way.

Some points I learned or were reminded of this morning are:

• Don’t try to convince anyone of anything.

(It leads to anger and despair with little chance of improvement.)

• Do my positive thoughts or negative ones affect the situation?

(You are in the gap from where you are to where you want to be. That is often the case)

• Get an idea that rings your soul.
• Find something you can focus on and allow well-being, like the pity-pat of rain on the roof, to pour down on you.