Three Kinds of People

The Clueless Says...

"Everything is great!!!"

or

"Everything is perfect!!!"

The Realist Says...

"Well actually, only a few things are great."

or

"There is not such thing is perfect. Most of life is hardship, pain, and toil."

The Practical Says...

"I will concentrate on the good, because if I don't I'll be miserable"

Dreams from My Father

I just finished listening to Dreams from My Father by Barak Obama. It was a wonderful audiobook! I really enjoyed hearing about his struggle to keep his worlds together. Born to a Kenyan international student and a white lady from Kansas, he grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, attended college in LA and NYC and got a law degree from Harvard. Through it all he had to deal with what it meant to be highly mobile and cross-cultural. Most touching to me was the description of his first trip back to Kenya. Having lived in Africa (Malawi and Kenya) I was able to relate in some way to the struggles he faced, especially with regard to the haves and have-nots. Please read this book!

Write, Just Write!

January 1 I was looking through some old journals. I'm a journaler and am collecting quite a stack of half filled journals. I'm lucky to get 150 entries in a year.

I found a poem that I wrote on September 17, 2002.

Get up!
Face the day
You have the energy

Look at yourself
Look and see
Who stares back?

It is up to you
It is your choice
Make the most of the day!

Get up, go!
God is with you!

Well it isn't much of a poem and it doesn't rhyme (My brother-in-law questions from time to time who it was that said poems didn't have to rhyme... since that fateful discovery, very few actually rhyme...). But it was enormously rewarding to read back through an old journal and find something interesting...

I guess the moral of this blog is journal! Get a book and write down your thoughts. Write down what you ate and what you did, just write!... If for no reason but the promise of opening up an old journal and reading something that reminds you of times gone by.