Here Today

"My today is both my yesterday and tomorrow." ~Joseph Primm

Recently I returned from a two week business trip to Asia. It was a very good trip and successful in what I was able to accomplish. As always though, it is good to be back home.

When traveling to that part of the world, the clock is roughly thirteen hours ahead of my normal time zone. So for the length of my stay, I tend to be half a day ahead in time. In the practical sense, you are a day ahead of those you normally hang around.

The change can have a dramatic effect upon your body. There is an appropriate scene in the movie "Lost in Translation" in which Bill Murray is sitting on his bed looking out the window. It is the middle of the night in Tokyo, but he is wide awake as if still sitting in the U.S.

The movie itself is not my wife's favorite, but I like it only because of the lost feeling one experiences during a dramatic time change.

Writer's note: The movie does not depict the writer's beliefs in how one handles the situation.

The feeling is one of not being in one's own present time. The balance of past, present and future is out of whack. You push through and do the right things, you tell yourself that its simply a time adjustment. But deep inside you feel you have missed something.

Upon returning home, my adjustment is normally pretty quick. Sure, a few nights of sleeping extra and getting back into the swing happen. Yet the feeling of slipping back into the normal comes quickly.

Its the idea that where you are now is where you are supposed to be. It is the balance of what has happened to you and the direction you are headed. We each live our lives the best we can.

We are products of our past but we should not live there. Also, we can not live in the future until we have fulfilled the present. Learn what you can from what has happened in your life and use today in preparation for a greater tomorrow.

Choose The Life

"Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be." ~Grandma Moses

So how do you make a great life? Is there a procedure manual laying about in some box that someone forgot to give you? Can we perform an internet search and find the perfect blog? Or maybe there is a college course we can take that wasn't listed in the general catalog.

Unlikely and very impossible to achieve without just living life. Getting up every day and putting yourself out there will teach you the most. It is likely you will get hurt along the way. It is likely that you will make mistakes. But it will be the life you make it.

I had always thought there was some secret to all of this. A well kept secret that no one would ever tell me. A secret so hidden that if only I found it, my life would achieve greatness.

Then it happened on a rainy day, sitting on my back porch. It was my life and it was mine to determine how I felt about it. It was a pact between my God and myself to make it a great life.

You have the ability to create a great life as well. It is up to you to change the way you think, the way you feel and the attitude you choose. It is your choice. Make it a great one.

Millions To Love

"If you want to be loved, be lovable." ~Ovid

In a city of twenty-two million people you can start to feel lost among the sameness of it all. You can begin to think you are actually alone while so many people pass you by. In moving through a crowd, it becomes easy to avoid eye contact with others. Especially when in a foreign land and unable to understand the language, you want to close down.

What I found though was the more I opened up, the more smiles I got in return. The same tends to happen with any one and any place you go. If you open up your heart to people, you may find them opening up to you.

But start at home, with your family, your friends and those close by. In time you will find others opening up to you. We can hate each other or we can love to be around each other. Like the huge number of bicycles to ride in this mega huge city, the same number of people are out there to love. Why not get on that bicycle and start pedaling. You may just find a whole lot of love waiting for you.

For me it starts with one person, my wife. It all gets bigger from there.

For Every Nickel

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." ~Albert Einstein

If I had a nickel for every mistake I have made in life, my riches would be boundless. And without those mistakes, I would not be nearly the person I am today.

We all make mistakes at one point or another in our life. some of us make a lot of them while others seem to have a perfect track record. The amount of mistakes is not what is important though. It is how you handle those mistakes which is important.

If you never learn or grow from a mistake, then it is the mistakes which control your life. But with each misstep or failure, if something new is learned then it only improves your life. It puts you closer to a greater life. Certainly it can feel like one step forward and two steps back. But in reality a mistake is just the opposite.

One step back and two steps forward should become your way of thinking. Learn from those mistakes and try to never repeat them. You will of course repeat mistakes from time to time. Again its all about using those mistakes to move your life forward.

Maybe now is the time to put a nickel in a jar for all the mistakes you make. Allow those mistakes to add up in your favor. A jar full of nickels is not a jar full of mistakes, but a jar full of life.