My garden and art

SUN

Let the sun shine in.  Yes it's true.  Light can brighten your mood.
  Lamps are good, and even candles and other flames, but there is no
 replacement for natural light from the sun.  You just can't fool your body.

So if you were wondering which of those renovation projects would make
 you happiest...it's the skylight.  It's the bigger windows.  It's the
 greenhouse wall on the sunny side of the house.

The happy guy

WAITING

What are you waiting for?  Well, you might be waiting for a lot of
 things.  In fact, most of us spend our lives waiting.  We wait for things
 to get batter.  We wait for something exciting to happen.  We wait for
 the kids to grow up.  We wait for life to get batter.  

And what happens while we are waiting?  Life.

If life happens while we wait, we have very little control over our
 lives.  If, on the other hand, we choose to stop waiting and create our
 ideal life, we have much more control over how our lives play out.  It's
 OK to wait, but the results are much more arbitrary.

Either way, it's your choice.


THE HAPPY GUY

ANGER

"Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger
 you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him."

The Greek philosopher Epictetus understood anger quite well, and it is
 only amazing that after all this time, so many of us still do not.  We
 people who live freedom so much ands who claim to be our own persons,
 so easily give ourselves up to slavery by allowing the words and actions
 of others to anger us.

We do not control the words and actions of others, but we absolutely
 control our reactions to them.  When we choose anger, we choose slavery
 of the worst kind.  Negative.  Uncontrolled.  Destructive.

Free yourself from slavery. Free yourself from anger.  Make your choice
 and stand 

THE HAPPY GUY

The Rain

They say the rain can wash away anything
Paint, blood, debris, sorrow, hurt, and suffering
But my one question is
What does the rain really bring?
To some people happiness
Washing away all that is wrong
Giving them a cleansing
But to others, sadness
It brings memories that can't be forgotten
I personally love the rain
As the quote goes
I love walking in the rain
Because no one knows I'm crying
Rain brings back painful memories
But I can always cry and go unnoticed
They say the rain can wash away anything
Can it?

REFLECTIONS

That reflection in the mirror is not you.  It is just a reflection of
 you.  It shows a part of you, specifically the outside and more
 specifically the outside part that is facing the mirror.  That is part of you,
 but it is only a small part of you.  And even that it shows in reverse.

Your friends reflect you, too.  You can tell a person by the company
 she keeps.  Change the company you keep, and you change the person…over
 time.

Do not confuse your reflections with you, but do make sure to leave the
 best reflections possible, because those reflections will show
 important parts of you.

YOU

Have you ever been afraid to copy someone, because you would feel like
 you were just not being yourself?  Of course, you don't want to be a
 carbon copy of somebody else.  You want to be your own person, true to
 yourself. 

But if someone else is doing something g right, if they are achieving
 goals you also wish to achieve, if they are carrying themselves the way
 you want to carry yourself, why not copy them?  In fact copy a little
 something from everyone you admire.  After all everything you admire in
 someone else, they copied from another person.  

And everything about you has also been copied.  What?  You say you
 didn't copy?  You learned the things you know?  Well, learning involves a
 lot of copying.  So don't be afraid to copy from wherever you can if you
 think it will make you a better person.

FRIENDSHIP

This poem was sent in by a reader. 
 I don't have the attribution, but I
 am sure you will like it.


Around the corner I have a friend,
In this great city that has no end,
Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
And before I know it, a year is gone.
And I never see my old friends face,
For life is a swift and terrible race,
He knows
I like him just as well,
As in the days when I rang his bell.
And he rang mine but we were younger then,
And now we are busy, tired men.
Tired of playing a foolish game,
Tired of trying to make a name.
"Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim
Just to show that I'm thinking of him."
But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
And distance between us grows and grows.
Around the corner, yet miles away,
"Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today."
And that's what we get and deserve in the end.
Around the corner, a vanished friend.

FAILURE

Have you ever heard someone called a failure.  Maybe you have even
 thought, "That person is a failure."

Unfortunately, that is a fallacy.  Failure is an event, not a person.
  Nobody has failed as long as he or she is still trying.  You cannot
 fail as long as you keep trying.  This attempt or that attempt can be a
 failure, but you are a success as long as you hold on, push forward and
 keep going.

Let's make failure extinct.


THE HAPPY GUY

LOVE

"A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are
 loved."  I paraphrase the Great Oz, from The Wizard of Oz.

So be loved.  

Uh…how exactly does one be loved?  Well, it helps to love.  In fact,
 the more we love, the more we are loved.  Loving really is an
 investment, and love is the return on investment.  Remember that the best way to
 have a friend is to be a friend.

Loving means to care about others, to do good for other people rather
 than judging them.  In fact, to love somebody is to be his friend.

So perhaps a heart is judged by how much we love, after all.

THE HAPPY GUY

APPRECIATION

So, how appreciative are you of the things you have?  How much do they
 contribute to your happiness?  It's a very important question, because
 we all have so many things, so may skills, so many opportunities, etc.

And we all have pretty lengthy wish lists.  In some cases, we are even
 thinking, "If only..., then I would be happy"  Fill in the blank as you
 wish.

But first we must ask ourselves if we are appreciating what we already
 have, because it is a sure bet that if we don't appreciate what we
 already have, we won't be much more appreciative of what we are now
 hoping/wishing/asking for.

Watch tomorrow for an innovative application of this idea.

THE HAPPY GUY

VICTIMS

It's pretty easy sometimes to feel like a victim.  After all, there are
 some pretty major forces that affect our daily lives - the weather,
 the government, traffic, things that break.  

But those are just things that happen around us.  They don't actually
 happen to us.  What happens to us is our reactions to these and other
 happenings.  What happens to us is our decision to do what we choose with
 our lives or our decision not to do what we choose with our lives.
  Only by choosing not to take action can any of these major forces control
 our lives.  In other words, we cannot be victims without our own
 complicity.

Don't make yourself a victim - choose to control your own destiny and
 be exactly the person you want to be.


THE HAPPY GUY

MASK

I see you.  Behind that mask...I know it's you.

Like characters in a pantomime or celebrating Mardi Gras, we all wear a
 mask.  You don't know everything about the people closest to you, and
 so much less about people just outside your immediate circle -
 including colleagues and neighbors, and even some relatives.

And they know about as much about you, because the rest of the details
 are all hidden behind your mask.

The lighter your mask, the more open you are, the more fruitful your
 relationships will be.  And the more risk of getting bruised.  But
 without risk, there is no reward.

I am not going to ask you to remove your mask, as such a drastic move
 would be more traumatic than helpful.  But I do ask you to find ways to
 make that mask lighter, to share more of yourself with more people, and
 to invite them to do the same.  The more fruitful our relationships,
 the happier we are.

So let me see a little more of the you behind that mask.   

The Happy Guy

"The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining."

John F. Kennedy said this.  I have no idea if he was the first, but I
 know he was not the last.  I also know that it can get very hard to
 motivate oneself to patch holes in the roof when the sun is shining.  Or
 holes in our personality when all our relationships seem to be going
 well.

But if there are things that could use improvement, better do it while
 things are going right...before our weaknesses cause problems we might
 not be able to fix later.

Yes, self-improvement is for everyone and it is for now, not for when
 everything falls apart.

The Happy Guy

STRESS I

For the next three days, some quick stress-busters.  By the end of the
 series, I hope you will be as relaxed as a Salvador Dali masterpiece.

Don't do anything that you might have to lie about later.  It is a
 simple concept.  If you do everything in an open and honest fashion, you
 won't have the stress of lying, of covering up the lie, or panicking and
 of having to admit to lying later on.  Nor will you have the stress of
 worrying that someone will discover your lie.  And you will be able to
 look yourself in the mirror.

Honesty is more than just the right thing to do; it is an incredible
 stress buster!

PAIN

"Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had
 wonderful things happen to you."

Mary Tyler Moore has an explanation for why God lets bad things happen
 to good people.  Pain is a part of the equation that is our own
 mortality.  It is the balance for all the good in the world - and there is
 just so much good!

For every joy, we need something to balance, and that is pain.  In
 other words, every pain is also a cause for joy.  If you can find a way to
 rejoice in your pain, or at least accept it as what makes joy possible,
 please do.

TEXTURE

Little Lady and I played with texture.

Instead of just painting on the paper, we first placed something
 underneath, something with a pattern of bumps, and moved some crayons across
 it.  This created "texture" on the paper, over which we could paint.
  The result?

The sun had texture.

The mountains had texture.

The trees had texture.

A painting with texture is far better than one without.  A life with
 texture is far better than one without.  Don't just paint across your
 life.  Rub across some bumps.  Make things move.  Create some texture.