PRIORITIES
* Play with my friends
* Happy to have a dog
* My friend in 5-th grade named Sandy
* To meet my uncles and cousins

FUTURE
* Good university
* A veterinarian
* All the dogs have a place to stay
* Would like to travel to Florida
* To have a good family

This early morning, way before sunrise, I experienced something disturbing.

What happened would make for a very graphic story. One of those whose imagery is hard to forget.

But the reason of this writing is about something else:
Silence. Silence’s all-encompassing reach.

I felt that silence is the only right way to handle the aftermath. As if silence contained it all  – the entire story, the pain, the inability to change anything, the heavy feeling of accidentally being part of something irreversible, the respect;

Silence as the way to atonement.

Sometimes the sadness comes to you like a powerful quiet wave. It is dark blue in color.

It’s the sadness of the world – the struggles of individuals, the circumstances that surround the unsuspecting, the tragedies of whole nations.

In those moments one can only hope to remember that a wave is a part of the sea.  A sea that can also heal.

Every morning I visit a tiny creek near my house. I look for subtle details – just one single thing every morning.

Sometimes it is a few blades of swamp plants that were not there the day before. Sometimes it is a swift insect that blazes through and disappears in a second. Sometimes it is the mother turtle and her baby.

I’ve seen this creek raise and dry up. I’ve seen it polluted with trash.  I’ve seen it overgrown with plants. Covered with flowers for a day. Welcoming passing birds for a day. I’ve seen it come back in a new way many times.

Sometimes all that I see there is the sunlight.

At times everything around is reaching to you.
Waiting for you to open.
Open to life.

 
An interesting person that I know posted this video on Facebook.  Apparently it was first posted on the internet just a few days ago.  I now like to think that for some people it had the effect that it had on me when I watched it tonight.

I can tell you why the video had a strong impact on me.  Or you can read what I wrote to the friend that posted the video on Facebook.  I’m copying my reply to him below.

There is one thing that you must learn today too – the fact that YOU can change your own brain too.  I have done it over the course of the last 3 or so years. I have to say that the first tangible changes become obvious in only 3-4 weeks.  It is a very pronounced effect.

If I did that at the age of 45 you can do it too. This is not about anything else but living a better life – whatever you put behind that term. As my grandmother told me when I was a little child – “If you want – you can.”.

You can too.

Sometimes a place leaves you before you leave.

Sometimes a place comes to you before you go there.

Sometimes life has other things in store for you and they will happen.

“You’re trying to paint a masterpiece on a sticky note.”
– Me

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

–Howard Thurman
[Thurman historian Walter Fluker: “I don’t believe you’d get a Martin Luther King, Jr. without a Howard Thurman.”]

When I was little… I had a wonderful childhood.

But you would not have liked me.

Should have kept your hands deep in your pockets and even that was no guarantee for anything.

When I was little… I had many toys.

But you would not have liked to play with me.

You’d fall in love with me and it’d hurt in many ways.

After going through a 90 second “full physical exam” and a 20 second “consultation” by a radiologist I do believe that a doctor sitting in a comfortable office somewhere far away actually prescribes medication without even thinking for 1 second.

But I like to believe that is a very rare thing.

Don’t get Bulgarian negative now and silently think otherwise.

Here’s a funny to clear the air: In addition to the 90 second magic exam my “D” magazine doctor had me in her records as a “Female” for about a decade.

Oh, how funny!