Wishing for Others (repost)

“I must respect the opinions of others even if I disagree with them.” ~ Herbert Henry Lehman


A few days ago, a friend sent me a note with the following sentence: “I wish for you what you wish for yourself.” I immediately liked it, but it was only after I thought about it for a while that I realized how truly profound those few words are.

Many times, while wishing someone something, or while praying for other people, we tend to customize the wishes we have according to what we believe it is best for them.

In reality, nobody can really know what is right or wrong for someone else. Each person lives a unique life, and is the product of a unique pattern of circumstances. Even if we have seen a similar pattern before in someone else, all it takes is one small difference in the type of personality or in the way the person internalizes information, to dramatically change how certain events will affect this individual’s life compared to others who have walked in those very same shoes before.

When we can accept that each person has a different path to walk, we enable ourselves to love them unconditionally, and to wish them well for their greater good, without making any assumptions. What we believe to be their greater good, might in fact not be good for them at all, and could hinder their growth. Each person has different things to learn, and by being free to follow the course of action they have mapped for themselves, they are able to fail or succeed – either way, they will assimilate what they must.

It is easy to worry about a friend or a loved one if they are walking down a path we perceive as negative, but it would be more helpful to them if we could just focus on sending them unconditional love and support to accompany them on their journey, rather than charting a new route for them which is only fit for us. Some people need a detour before they can reach their destination, and their timing might be different than ours, but in the end not one path is necessarily wrong – just different and specifically customized for the individual’s life experience.

We can control what happens in our own lives, to some extent, but laying claim on the destiny and the choices of others – especially when our flow of love is directly proportional to their decisions – hinders the growth of all.

Live your life and love unconditionally. And when the urge of judging the actions and choices of another surges, it’s important to remember that we are only human - limited sight and arrogance can only cloud our better judgment.


http://www.sandracarringtonsmith.com

The Little Flower That Grew Into a Garden

“Plant the seed of desire in your mind and it forms a nucleus with power to attract to itself everything needed for its fulfillment.” ~ Robert Collier


A couple of years ago, I visited a friend whose thumb is a lot greener than my own. Her yard was amazing, front and back – from herbs to giant sunflowers, gardenias, roses, and even succulent vegetables, her home was surrounded by an explosion of different colors, and was easily distinguished from the much more subdued neighboring houses.

One day, I asked her about one particular pink flower growing on one side of her house, and she told me it was Evening Primrose. When she explained how resilient this plant was, and how easily it spread, my interest was piqued. She offered to give me a few flowers to plant in my own garden, which I put in the ground the moment I got home. It wasn’t but a few days later that my Evening Primrose appeared dead.

Last summer, when I went to prepare the flower beds for planting, I noticed a few plants that I thought were weeds. I pulled them, but I think I missed a few. This spring, I went outside one morning, and saw there were hundreds of the same plants, but this time they weren’t little any more. They had grown to about a foot and a half in height and were full of tight blossoms. A few days ago, I had the surprise of my life. A few of the blossoms had opened overnight, and they were the same flowers I had seen at my friend’s house!

When I went back out this morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes – the hot temperatures of the past few days, coupled with a rich moisture in the air, had worked the rest of the magic, and my house suddenly looked like a cottage in a Thomas Kincaid painting -- a cloud of pink flowers swallowed the tiny pathway from the driveway to the porch entrance, barely leaving a foot-wide of concrete to walk on. It was breathtaking…three little flowers had created a slice of Paradise!

All this time, I thought the flowers were dead; never once did it occur to me that they were working overtime underground to give me the yard I had always wanted. And yet they were; unbeknownst to me, tucked into a soft blanket of soil, the seeds had continued growing, spreading and exponentially multiplying.

And so can be with life – not all we plant sprouts immediately; all good things take time to manifest, but once the wheel is set in motion with intention, changes take place though we might not readily notice them on the surface. While we think everything is blocked and dormant, there is instead a tremendous amount of work taking place that we cannot see.

Life works on its own time schedule, unscathed by our complaints and wants, but once it finally decides to make its entrance it might be a manifestation we won’t soon forget.


http://www.sandracarringtonsmith.com

Redefining Perfection

"When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target." ~ Geoffrey F. Fisher

Last night, while I was on the phone with my mother-in-law, our conversation led to a discussion on the concept of perfection.

According to the Merriam-Webster’s dictionary the following are two definitions for perfection: 1) the quality or state of being perfect: as a: freedom from fault or defect : b: the quality or state of being saintly; 2) a: an exemplification of supreme excellence b: an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence.

Nice definitions, but if we look at them closely, they are not definitions of perfection per se, but definitions built around individual perceptions of it.

1a- "Freedom from fault or defect – what exactly does that mean? Who is perfect enough to decide what is faulty or defective? Our perception spins from what we have been taught, and it rarely reflects reality; it merely shows what we consider right or wrong in base of what we have learned. Even when we are sure to be "thinking with our own head," our perception of the world around us is filtered through our senses, which are limited and faulty at best.

1b- "The quality or state of being saintly" – What constitutes a saint? Is it someone who spends their life doing for others? Most likely it is someone who’s considered good when measured against our societal scales, which are created by men and are not perfect.

2a- "An exemplification of supreme excellence" – The only supreme excellence is that of a higher intelligence – no man, or anything created by man, can perceive the full concept of it. It equates fitting the waters of an ocean inside a bottle – only a tiny part of it can go in.

2b- "an unsurpassable degree of accuracy or excellence." – Big words, but again, who decides what is accurate and excellent? What parameters do we use to decide if something is completely correct?

Although amazing milestones have been conquered, even science is not perfect, and it is baffled by Nature quite consistently. Just like a virus, perfection cannot be isolated – it mutates and assumes different identities depending on what trends it contends with, and the perception of it changes from individual to individual. That explains why some people can see something or someone and think they are perfect and wonderful, while some others can look at the same and see only faults and defects.

This distinction applies to many concepts – good and evil, beauty and/or lack of it, religion, politics; the list could be endless. Our perception is largely affected by our environment and the rules we have grown to identify with. There is no such thing as a perfect human or a perfect thing – the sooner we realize this simple reality, the closer we will be to understanding that being unique is perfect in itself.


http://www.sandracarringtonsmith.com