A Method to replace Moodiness (or Madness) :

Know that in 10 days you will be leaving.

You are going to some place that you really want to go to, to do something you really love to do.

You will meet up with someone who knows you and understands you like no one else does.

In 10 days, it will be the first day of the rest of your life.

We are social animals; we crave connection and community; we crave a wide, encompassing identity that connects us with all of humanity – not just our friends and family, not just our city, our country, our species – but every living being on Earth: plant, animal, human.
It is a new philosophy – and perhaps a very ancient one. It leads to the most profound and meaningful kind of happiness one could possibly experience. It adopts the happiness of others as its own … and also shares in their suffering.
You can’t buy that kind of happiness at a store. You can’t get it from beating the last level of a video game. It doesn’t come out of the end of a pipe or at the bottom of a bottle. It doesn’t come from watching sports. It doesn’t come from how you dress or what kind of car you drive. It doesn’t come from getting a college degree or a fatter paycheck. It comes directly from the final and profound realization that there are no isolated islands of “self” and “other.” We are inter-woven into everything. We are all of it.

Tim Hjersted - Adbusters #91: The Revolution Issue

truth. in a paragraph.

Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world. Instead we turn inwardly and begin to feed upon our own personalities and little by little we destroy ourselves.

You and I need the strength and joy that comes from knowing that we are loved. With it we are creative. With it we march tirelessly. With it, and with it alone, we are able to sacrifice for others.

There have been times when all we wanted so desperately to feel a re-assuring hand upon us...there have been lonely times when we so wanted a strong arm around us.... I cannot tell you how deeply I miss my wife's presence when I return from a trip. Her love was my greatest joy, my strength, my greatest blessing.

Chief Dan George

B.A.L.A.N.C.E.

Believe in and commit to feeling great
You are what you think. Essentially, feeling great is as simple as believing you are healthy and committing yourself to actions that promote well being. Your attitude directs the outcome of your life, so think and behave with purpose and conviction. Dare to believe and you will achieve!

Admire Yourself
Take time in your day to enjoy being you. Let go of negative thoughts and harmful stress. Consider the things you wish to achieve and what actions you must take to ensure your success. Fill your mind with positive talk. Encourage yourself to succeed. Set achievable goals and take positive action. This is your time to visualize, nurture and promote the person you wish to admire both presently and in the future.

Live to Eat and Eat to Live
The body is an amazing machine with the power to rejuvenate and heal naturally: you simply need to give it the fuel it needs to run efficiently. Eat sensibly. Avoid foods that are low in nutrition and high in fat, preservatives and harmful chemicals. You are what you eat, thus nourish yourself with whole nutrient-rich foods. 80% of your diet should include green, alkaline and unprocessed food that together balance your nutrient and coloric intake with your body's daily energy requirements. Eat to live, not to DIEt. Rapid weight loss can result in changes in temperaments and any number of health complications.

Aspire to Perspire
Take care of your body by practicing the art of play. Your heart and lungs require a minimum of 30 to 40 minutes of active play everyday. Choose activities that elevate your heart rate and cause you to sweat and set youself in motion. Remember this is your play time; make it fun and you are more likely to stick with it!

Naps are Natural
Nurture your mind by giving it the rest it needs to keep your body vital and healthy. An alert and positively focussed mind is apable of directing the body to naturally rejuvenate itself during periods of rest; thus to maintain our vitality we must rest both the mind and body with sufficient frequency and duration to allow this process to happen.

Calcium is Not Enough!
Strong bones are hard to break! Respect your body by performing daily weight baring activity that is sufficient to encourage the development and maintenance of healthy bone density and muscle mass. Aim to walk a minimum of 10 000 steps per day and undertake at least three strength and agility based activities per week.

Effort is Everything
A body in motion will stay in motion providing you make sufficient effort to balance your intentions with your actions. Believe in yourself; think to be, act to become, and allow knowledge to guide your efforts. Open yourself to answers, and you might be surprised where the inspiration comes from!

Ann Marie McCaffery, In Motion Fitness, Health Matters, Financial Divas Magazine

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.


Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"That big glorious mountain. For one transitory moment, I think I may have actually seen it."
...
For one flash, the Mommy had seen the mountain without thinking of logging and ski resorts and avalanches, managed wildlife, plate tectonic geology, microclimates, rain shadow, or yin-yang locations. She'd seen the mountain without the framework of language. Without the cage of associations. She'd seen it without looking through the lens of everything she knew was true about mountains.
What she'd seen in that flash wasn't even a 'mountain.' It wasn't a natural resource. It had no name.
"That's the big goal," she said. "To find a cure for knowledge."

Ignorance truly is bliss, when you overthink every moment, when you can no longer see the beauty of anything, when you are just looking at the information behind it, the knowledge.

When I look out at the waters and all I see are nodes and antinodes.

When I watch the rainbows glow, and nearly sparkle and all I think of are reflecting and refracting prisms of light.

When I listen to the music and hear the tones changing an octave, and think it should have been one lower, not higher...

Watching the logs burn and pop and instead of imagining magic, knowing some form of copper chloride or boric acid is making them those beautiful colours of fiery blue and green.

Ever since the story of Adam and Eve in the Bible. humanity had been a little too smart for its own good, the Mommy said. Ever since eating that apple. Her goal was to find, if not a cure, then at least a treatment that would give people back their innocence.
Formadehyde didn't work. Digitalis didn't work.
None of the natch highs seemed to do the job, not smoking mace, or nutmeg, or peanut skins. Not dill or hydrangea leaves or lettuce juice.
"I figure if Eve could get us into this mess, then I can get us out," the Mommy said. "God really likes to see a go-getter."
...
"The cerebral cortex, the cerebellum," she said, "that's where your problem is."
If she could just get down to using only her brain stem, she'd be cured.
This would be somewhere beyond happiness and sadness.
You don't see fish agonized by wild mood swings.
Sponges never have a bad day.
....
"My goal, the Mommy said, "is not to uncomplicate my life."
She said, "My goal is to uncomplicate myself."
...
Every addiction, she said, was just a way to treat this same problem. Drugs or overeating or alcohol or sex, it was all just another way to find peace. To escape what we know. Our education. Our bite of the apple. Language, she said, was just our way to explain away the wonder and the glory of the world. To deconstruct. To dismiss. She said people can't deal with how beautiful the world really is. How it can't be explained and understood.
...
"We don't live in the real world anymore," she said. "We live in a world of symbols."
The Mommy stopped and put her hand in her purse. She held the boy's shoulder and stood looking up at the mountain.
"Just one last little peek at reality," she said. "Then we'll have lunch."
Then she put the white tube in her nose and breathed in.

 Choke, by Chuck Palahniuk

Go on. Go get a dose of reality.

Night before last Edward Scissorhands branded itself in my mind for the first time as I sat on a park bench in a theatre under the stars. Free B Movie put on by the Victoria Film Festival was a spectacular way to spend a Friday evening after a yummy picnic in the park. As twilight sprung upon us we could see bats darting through the trees- many of the peacocks in Beacon Hill Park were roosting 20 feet up in the huge trees around us, making wild crying sounds in the night like lost children.
As the movie began, the wind would blow the screen every now and then making the pastel houses swell up and shrink, everything felt so surreal.
It was a wonderful birthday celebration. I'm going to pretend it was mine.

Little Miss Asia fumbles by, 40 years too late in matching zebra print blazer and velvet pants. She comes up about the height of my breast, helped by her 3 inch platform sandals and as she shuffles by I can't help but imagine everyone in their respective animal types. It's so easy to imagine.
It's easy - the same way I admire my Mayan semi-sweet spicy 4 oz chocolate drip back into the takeaway shot glass leaving no trace on the brim and turn that image into trees growing backwards on the streets, backwards into the ground. It's easy to imagine.

If one attained perfection, what to do for an encore?

Ideals are like stars; you will not succeed
in touching them with your hands. But like
the seafaring man on the desert of waters,
you choose them as your guides, and
following them you will reach your destiny
-Carl Schurz-
address, Faneuil Hall, Boston, 1859

Did you ever feel like you were in constant anticipation, constant excitement for the future, for the dreams you imagine will come true, places to be, people to meet, life to live? Constantly seeking something always out of reach, something that will never exist in this moment?
I think the secret to existence and the purpose of life is to live in a state of happiness and to be at peace and content with your present. Set goals, anticipate, seek nostalgia: all in appropriate dosages. Absorb the life around you and appreciate being right there, alive in that moment. Be gracious. Be grateful. Be.