Forwarded Messages

by Steve Ridgell I was helping clean up my sister-in-law’s yard after a recent wind storm when it happened. The neighbor’s dog got me. I knew he was not happy with the chain saw, the activity, and the work going on. After all, he kept barking at us. I was carrying a load of wood to the back gate, walking about one foot inside the fence. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of this dog trying to jump over the fence. As I jumped sideways, he managed to extend his head over the fence and catch my arm. There was not any lasting damage. My arm was swollen and stayed bruised for a couple of weeks. The dog was as surprised as I was. My father-in-law worried about whether the dog should have gotten shots. Ha, ha. The neighbors were apologetic. The yard got cleaned up, and we all stayed several feet away from the fence. And I thought about how much like life this was.

Why saying no still means you are a good person, and why there's honesty in refusal... It's a simple two-letter word, easy to remember and simple to say. Yet why is it often difficult to say No? Every fibre in your body might be screaming a no and yet you might find yourself nodding your head and uttering a meek ‘yes'?

Fear is an emotion and the symptoms of this emotion manifest in each of us in various ways. Some of the symptoms of fear are shallow breathing, sweaty palms, upset stomach, nervousness, headache, inability to speak, inability to think clearly, depression, uncontrollable shaking, inability to moved, and anger. People literally lose their lives and have been known to take someone else's life out of fear. All of the "isms" are the children of fear -- racism, chauvinism, classism, sexism. Wars and crime thrive on fear. Fear takes away our creativity , imagination , freedom and peace . Fear stops us from pursuing our dreams . Fear destroys relationships and can make us physically ill .

I have learned along the way that failure is riddled full of success, if you open your eyes to it. Even though most people would count our venture as failure, it was the start of our 'adventure' to get a grip, and swing it all back around. Objectively speaking, it is our finest moment. To come back from this type of overwhelming adversity in the present economic climate is utterly amazing. So many things that could have sunk our battleship along the way have not presented themselves. We dealt with situations that came up. But, we always seemed to come up on top. We have been blessed time and time again. The Fight is Engaged: If you find yourself at the bottom of the stack and you are retching because you feel that you have been kicked in the gut from all directions -- that is where we were. We decided to 'fight'! But we decided to fight in a different way . *** FOCUS  We decided what we wanted -- our 'target' at the end of the tunnel we could focus ...

 ONE

When we list our desires, wants and life goals, we often omit "failure." We must fail if we are to risk living passionate lives. We live in a culture that has become soft, in that it conditions us to seek comfort and avoid discomfort. There is a lack of appreciation for the wisdom that hardship bestows. There is an illusion that it is possible to live in a world where things come easily and failure can be avoided, and if your life is not "this ideal," there is something is wrong with you. We will naturally take the path of least resistance, clinging to the familiar, staying within our restricted safe places in an attempt to control the outcome.