Philippians 4:13

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

The road to success is not straight.
There is a curve called Failure,
a loop called Confusion,
speed bumps called Friends,
red lights called Enemies,
caution lights called Family.

You will have flats called Jobs.
But, if you have a spare called Determination,
an engine called Perseverance,
insurance called Faith,
a driver called Jesus,
you will make it to a place called Success.

Author - Unknown

Thanks Luth for emailing it to me.

Rules for being human by Cherie Carter-Scott

I was cleaning the garage [for relaxation!] the other day and I found this piece of paper with ten rules for being human. It does not say who the author was and so I Googled and found more about the origins of this set of "rules". These "rules" first appeared from the book "If Life is a Game, These are the Rules" by Cherie Carter-Scott; and it seems there's more than ten of these "rules". I compared my written copy to what I found on the net and changed bits and pieces below:

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When you were born, you didn't come with an owner's manual; these guidelines make life work better.

1. You will receive a body. You may like it or hate it, but it's the only thing you are sure to keep for the rest of your life.

2. You will learn lessons. You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called "Life on Planet Earth". Every person or incident is the Universal Teacher.

3. Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may not like the lessons or think of them irrelevant and stupid.

4. There are no mistakes, only lessons. Growth is a process of experimentation. The "failed" experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiemtns that ultimately "works".["Failures" are as much a part of the process as "success."]

5. A lesson is repeated until learned. A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you learn it. When you have learned it, you can go on to the next lesson.

6. If you don't learn easy lessons, they get harder. External problems are a precise reflection of your internal state. When you clear inner obstructions, your outside world changes. Pain is how the universe gets your attention.

7. You will know you've learned a lesson when your actions change. Wisdom is practice. A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.

8. Learning lessons does not end. There is no part of life that does not contain its lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

9. "There" is no better than "here". When your "there" becomes a "here" you will simply obtain another "there" that will, again, looks better than "here."

10. Others are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects something you love or hate in yourself.

11. Your life is up to you. Life provides the canvas; you do the painting. Take charge of your life -- or someone else will.

12. To say in another sense: What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours.

13. You always get what you want. Your subconscious rightfully determines what energies, experiences, and people you attract -- therefore, the only foolproof way to know what you want is to see what you have. There are no victims, only students.

14. There is no right or wrong, but there are consequences. Moralizing doesn't help. Judgments only hold the patterns in place. Just do your best.

15. Your answers lie inside you. Children need guidance from others; as we mature, we trust our hearts, where the Laws of Spirit are written. You know more than you have heard or read or been told. The answers to life's questions lie inside you; all you need to do is to look, listen, and trust.

16. You will forget all this.

17. But you are allowed to remember these anytime you wish, remember life is a continous lesson!

Live a life that matters by Michael Josephson

I am a fan of Michael Josephson and his Character Counts website commentaries. A friend, Inez sent me the following article and I am reposting here to share with you. By the way, above photo was taken late last year on a holiday - Santa Monica pier in California, on a "not so sunny day" but for this one-legged seagull it doesn't seem to matter - it already made a choice.

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WHAT WILL MATTER by Michael Josephson

Ready or not, someday it will all come to an end. There will be no more sunrises, no minutes, hours, or days. All the things you collected, whether treasured or forgotten, will pass to someone else.

Your wealth, fame, and temporal power will shrivel to irrelevance.

It will not matter what you owned or what you were owed. Your grudges, resentments, frustrations, and jealousies will finally disappear.

So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.

The wins and losses that once seemed so important will fade away.

It won't matter where you came from, or on what side of the tracks you lived, at the end.

It won't matter whether you were beautiful or brilliant. Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.

So what will matter? How will the value of your days be measured?

What will matter is not what you bought, but what you built; not what you got, but what you gave.

What will matter is not your success, but your significance.

What will matter is not what you learned, but what you taught. What will matter is every act of integrity, compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched, empowered or encouraged others to emulate your example.

What will matter is not your competence, but your character.

What will matter is not how many people you knew, but how many will feel a lasting loss when you're gone.

What will matter is not your memories, but the memories that live in those who loved you.

What will matter is how long you will be remembered, by whom and for what.

Living a life that matters doesn't happen by accident. It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.

Choose to live a life that matters.

Life's unopened gifts - Author unknown

I keep receiving this email from well meaning friends, the last a few days ago from a former work mate [that's you Ka Hal!]. It's been going the round of emails for more than five years [or more], as far as I can tell!

I've Googled but couldn't find the author, who sounds to me a mother; or any reference much less the provenance of this article.

Anyway, I've re-titled the piece and if you haven't heard or read this one before - enjoy and please follow the inspiration behind the tome: carpe diem!

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Always be ready to dance - Author unknown

"Too many people put off something that brings them joy just because they haven't thought about it, don't have it on their schedule, didn't know it was coming or are too rigid to depart from their routine.

I got to thinking one day about all those women on the Titanic who passed up dessert at dinner that fateful night in an effort to cut back. From then on, I've tried to be a little more flexible. How many women out there will eat at home because their husband didn't suggest going out to dinner until after something had been thawed? [Ouched!] Does the word 'refrigeration' mean nothing to you?

How often have your kids come in to talk and sat in silence while you watched 'Jeopardy' on television? I cannot count the times I called my sister and said, 'How about going to lunch in a half hour? She would gas up and stammer,'I can't. I have clothes on the line... My hair is dirty. I wish I had known yesterday, I had a late breakfast, It looks like rain.' And my personal favorite: 'It's Monday.' She died a few years ago. We never did have lunch together.

Because Americans [or for that matter, most people living in urban areas] cram so much into their lives, we tend to schedule our headaches. We live on a sparse diet of promises we make to ourselves when all the conditions are perfect!

We'll go back and visit the grandparents when we get Steve toilet-trained. We'll entertain when we replace the living-room carpet... We'll go on a second honeymoon when we get two more kids out of college.

Life has a way of accelerating as we get older. The days get shorter, and the list of promises to ourselves gets longer. One morning, we awaken, and all we have to show for our lives is a litany of 'I'm going to,' 'I plan on,' and 'Someday, when things are settled down a bit.'

When anyone calls my 'seize the moment' friend, she is open to adventure and available for trips. She keeps an open mind on new ideas. Her enthusiasm for life is contagious. You talk with her for five minutes, and you're ready to trade your bad feet for a pair of Roller blades and skip an elevator for a bungee cord.

My lips have not touched ice cream in 10 years. I love ice cream. It's just that I might as well apply it directly to my stomach with a spatula and eliminate the digestive process. The other day, I stopped the car and bought a triple-Decker. If my car had hit an iceberg on the way home, I would have died happy.

Now.... go on and have a nice day. Do something you WANT to.... not something on your SHOULD DO list. If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? Have you ever watched kids playing on a merry go round or listened to the rain lapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

Do you run through each day on the fly? When you ask, “How are you?” do you hear the reply? When the day is done, do you lie in your bed with the next hundred chores running through your heard? Ever told your child,'We'll do it tomorrow.' And in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch? Let a good friendship die? Just call to say 'Hi'?

When you worry and hurry through your day, it is like an unopened gift......Thrown away........ Life is not a race, take it slower. Hear the music before the song is over."

'Life may not be the party we hoped for...but while we are here we might as well dance!

Boom and bust by Prof Lee Wei Ling

[Reflections by the daughter of Singapore's former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Prof Lee Wei Ling. The writer is also a director and in the research faculty of the National Neuroscience Institute based in Singapore; as a Senior Consultant Neurologist, Paediatric Neurology & Epilepsy.]

In 2007, in an end-of-year message to the staff of the National Neuroscience Institute, I wrote:

‘Whilst boom time in the public sector is never as booming as in the private sector, let us not forget that boom time is eventually followed by slump time. Slump time in the public sector is always less painful compared to the private sector.’

Slump time has arrived with a bang.

While I worry about the poorer Singaporeans who will be hit hard, perhaps this recession has come at an opportune time for many of us. It will give us an incentive to reconsider our priorities in life.

Decades of the good life have made us soft. The wealthy especially, but also the middle class in Singapore, have had it so good for so long, what they once considered luxuries, they now think of as necessities. A mobile phone, for instance, is now a statement about who you are, not just a piece of equipment for communication. Hence many people buy the latest model though their existing mobile phones are still in perfect working order.

A Mercedes-Benz is no longer adequate as a status symbol. For millionaires who wish to show the world they have taste, a Ferrari or a Porsche is deemed more appropriate. The same attitude influences the choice of attire and accessories. I still find it hard to believe that there are people carrying handbags that cost more than thrice the monthly income of a bus driver, and many more times that of theforeign worker labouring in the hot sun, risking his life to construct luxury condominiums he will never have a chance to live in.

The media encourages and amplifies this ostentatious consumption. Perhaps it is good to encourage people to spend more because this will prevent the recession from getting worse. I am not an economist, but wasn't that the root cause of the current crisis - Americans spending more than they could affordto?

I am not a particularly spiritual person. I don't believe in the supernatural and I don't think I have a soul that will survive my death. But as I view the crass materialism around me, I am reminded of what my mother once told me:

"Suffering and deprivation is good for the soul."

My family is not poor, but we have been brought up to be frugal. My parents and I live in the same house that my paternal grandparents and their children moved into after World War II in 1945. It is a big house by today's standards, but it is simple - in fact, almost to the point of being shabby. Those who see it for the first time are astonished that Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's home is so humble. But it is a comfortable house, a home we have got used to. Though it does look shabby compared to the new mansions on our street, we are not bothered by the comparison.

Most of the world and much of Singapore will lament the economic downturn. We have been told to tighten our belts. There will undoubtedly be suffering, which we must try our best to ameliorate. But I personally think the hard times will hold a timely lesson for many Singaporeans, especially those born after 1970 who have never lived through difficult times. No matter how poor you are in Singapore, the authorities and social groups do try to ensure you have shelter and food. Nobody starves in Singapore.

Many of those who are currently living in mansions and enjoying a luxurious lifestyle will probably still be able to do so, even if they might have to downgrade from wines costing $20,000 a bottle to $10,000 a bottle. They would hardly notice the difference. Being wealthy is not a sin. It cannot be in a capitalist market economy. Enjoying the fruits of one's own labour is one's prerogative and I have no right to chastise those who choose to live luxuriously.

But if one is blinded by materialism, there would be no end to wanting and hankering. After the Ferrari, what next? An Aston Martin? After the Hermes Birkin handbag, what can one upgrade to? Neither an Aston Martin nor an Hermes Birkin can make us truly happy or contented. They are like dust, a fog obscuring the true meaning of life, and can be blown away in the twinkling of an eye.

When the end approaches and we look back on our lives, will we regret the latest mobile phone or luxury car that we did not acquire? Or would we prefer to die at peace with ourselves, knowing that we have lived lives filled with love, friendship and goodwill, that we have helped some of our fellow voyagers along the way and that we have tried our best to leave this world a slightly better place than how we found it?

We know which is the correct choice - and it is within our power to make that choice. In this new year, burdened as it is with the problems of the year that has just ended, let us again try to choose wisely. To a considerable degree, our happiness is within our own control, and we should not follow the herd blindly.

The story of Kyle - A Simple Gesture

According to Snopes' Barbara Mikkelson, this story originated and was based from John W Schlatter's 1993 best selling book: "Chicken Soup for the Soul".

Barbara continued that "The tale is best viewed as a parable meant to encourage acts of compassion by pointing out the consequences of actions and inactions through the power of example."

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"One day, when I was a freshman in high school, I saw a kid from my class was walking home from school. His name was Kyle. It looked like he was carrying all of his books. I thought to myself, "Why would anyone bring home all his books on a Friday? He must really be a nerd." I had quite a weekend planned (parties and a football game with my friends tomorrow afternoon), so I shrugged my shoulders and went on.

As I was walking, I saw a bunch of kids running toward him. They ran at him, knocking all his books out of his arms and tripping him so he landed in the dirt. His glasses went flying, and I saw them land in the grass about ten feet from him. He looked up and I saw this terrible sadness in his eyes. My heart went out to him. So, I jogged over to him and as he crawled around looking for his glasses, and I saw a tear in his eye.

As I handed him his glasses, I said, "Those guys are jerks. They really should get lives." He looked at me and said, "Hey thanks!" There was a big smile on his face. It was one of those smiles that showed real gratitude. I helped him pick up his books, and asked him where he lived. As it turned out, he lived near me, so I asked him why I had never seen him before. He said he had gone to private school before now. I would have never hung out with a private school kid before. We talked all the way home, and I carried his books. He turned out to be a pretty cool kid. I asked him if he wanted to play football on Saturday with me and my friends. He said yes. We hung all weekend and the more I got to know Kyle, the more I liked him, and my friends thought the same of him.

Monday morning came, and there was Kyle with the huge stack of books again. I stopped him and said, "Boy, you are gonna really build some serious muscles with this pile of books everyday!" He just laughed and handed me half the books. Over the next four years, Kyle and I became best friends. When we were seniors, we began to think about college. Kyle decided on Georgetown, and I was going to Duke. I knew that we would always be friends, that the miles would never be a problem. He was going to be a doctor, and I was going for business on a football scholarship.

Kyle was valedictorian of our class. I teased him all the time about being nerd. He had to prepare a speech for graduation. I was so glad it wasn't me having to get up there and speak.
Graduation day, I saw Kyle. He looked great. He was one of those guys that really found himself during high school. He filled out and actually looked good in glasses. He had more dates than I had and all the girls loved him. Boy, sometimes I was jealous. Today was one of those days. I could see that he was nervous about his speech. So, I smacked him on the back and said, "Hey, big guy, you'll be great!" He looked at me with one of those looks (the really grateful one) and smiled. "Thanks," he said.

As he started his speech, he cleared his throat, and began. "Graduation is a time to thank those who helped you make it through those tough years. Your parents, your teachers, your siblings, maybe a coach...but mostly your friends. I am here to tell all of you that being a friend to someone is the best gift you can give them. I am going to tell you a story."

I just looked at my friend with disbelief as he told the story of the first day we met. He had planned to kill himself over the weekend. He talked of how he had cleaned out his locker so his Mom wouldn't have to do it later and was carrying his stuff home. He looked hard at me and gave me a little smile. "Thankfully, I was saved. My friend saved me from doing the unspeakable. "I heard the gasp go through the crowd as this handsome, popular boy told us all about his weakest moment. I saw his mom and dad looking at me and smiling that same grateful smile. Not until that moment did I realize it's depth.

Never underestimate the power of your actions. With one small gesture you can change a person's life. For better or for worse. God puts us all in each other's lives to impact one another in some way. Look for God in others.

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"Friends are angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly."

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

He who loses money, loses much; He, who loses a friend, loses much more; He, who loses faith, loses all.

Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

Friends, you and me....You brought another friend....And then there were... 3. We started our group.... Our circle of friends....And like that circle....There is no beginning or end...

Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is mystery. Today is a gift.

God lives here...

"Raindrops and a dragonfly" Photo and text by Maria

"I remember hanging out at the Lotus Pond… got lost in time taking one perfect lotus photo after another. I finally put the camera down when it began to rain. It was so awesome to do something totally being in the moment and one with the Creator."