Unlocking Your Highest Potential: 2 Brief Lessons from Death.

Happy April 1^st Everyone! A new month, a new start, a new everything! Just the way I like it. March was not a good blogging month for me because I worked on a big project due at the end of the month, and it occupied most of my time. However, the deadline was extended so now I can breathe and relax a little bit.

Loved it! 

This weekend I finally had a chance to watch Les Miserables and I loved it because of its grand story, plethora of interesting characters, and a message of hope for tomorrow despite the wretchedness, pain, and darkness that surrounds existence. It unveiled the amazing power of love and mercy, and how one act of kindness or cruelty can ripple into the future to dramatically change the lives of people interconnected by faith, hope, and despair. And I love musicals so of course I replayed the songs on Spotify until the melodies were stitched on my brain. Despite all the death and sorrow diffused throughout Les Mis, I found it inspiring and uplifting. Ironic, I know.

This brings me to today’s topic of Death. This is not my first post on Death. However, I want to expand a little more on what can be learned from this morose truth of our lives.

Death helps one to stop sweating the small stuff.

A good friend forgot a birthday or rescinded a promise to meet-up? Sister or brother annoyed the hell of out of you because they forgot to do something important? Parents on your case about this or that, and you’ve finally hit the red zone? Boss gave you crap over something that wasn’t your fault? That important package didn’t arrive on time? Another rejection from a coveted job application? Agent? Potential love interest? An idiot made an ignorant comment about you or others? And so on and so on.

via samishra.com

These things may be small as isolated problems but do the addition and it all becomes an overwhelming mess that turns you into a sour patch kid when you expend energy on losing your cool. When I think that I’ll die tomorrow or that the person annoying me at some particular moment might die tomorrow too, that insignificant problem diminishes even further and I recover from it quickly. The steam escapes, I take a deep breath, and I choose love and calm, the path of peace and onward to bigger and better things. Because they’re really are bigger and better things out there. Ain’t nobody got time for sweating the small stuff!

Death helps one to focus on the bigger and better things.

Usually people are very concerned about safety and security, and they are within their rights to be so concerned. Nobody likes the feeling that his or her life is in danger of failure or that tomorrow looms like a big question mark. It’s easy to settle because settling usually offers a means of safety and security. Some people don’t mind settling and they’re quite content with it. Good for them. However, if you’re like me, I don’t want to settle in anything—career, life partner, dreams, etc. To settle is to throw time away, invite boredom, which is worse than death, and slowly torture and kill passion. One of my worst case scenarios is to die knowing that I had settled in the most important things, that I didn’t have the gall to take risks, dance a little with danger and uncertainty, be patient in the long journey to achieve my dreams, and attain the rewards for such courage in the midst of voices preaching reason to settle.  

I don’t want to live that way, and my decision to pursue the bigger and better things has put me in a vulnerable place. I don’t have misguided fantasies about working on what I love and rejecting stability and security through a means I know will make me unhappy. When you make a decision to pursue dreams, difficulties will come like a flood, people will talk negatively about or to you, and doubts and impatience will rise, along with the fears that you’re wasting your years on some big idea or project you can’t let go. There will be tears and grinding of the teeth. In other words, you will be tested and walk through fire. And that’s what sets you apart from others who can’t take the heat, so they settle.  

via daybreaksdevotions.wordpress.com 

However, it’s in the fire that you grow more than you ever thought you could, develop the endurance to withstand the darkest days and nights, inspire others and stand out for your uniqueness and courage, and ultimately find and receive something even grander than your dreams. If I must die, I want to die doing something above and beyond myself, not living a life of a person who settled. I want to die living, not die dying. Like Victor Hugo said, “It’s nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.” 

How about you? What has death taught you? I’d love to hear your responses!

Thanks for reading,

Sammy :)

What Life has taught me about Friendship (So far…)

"A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow." ~ William Shakespeare 

The nature of friendships has been on my mind lately. I don’t need to tell you the benefits of having a friend because I’m sure we’ve all felt the positive impacts of a friend, especially a good friend. And if we haven’t, we soon will. Sometimes when I emerge for a quick break out of my writing world, I think about how somewhat anti-social I’ve been or rather that I haven’t been as a good a friend as I should be. I obsess over the details of what makes a great friend and that process leads to absolutely nothing because in the end there really is no perfect formula for the perfect friendship. And who wants to stress over friendships? Love and the actions that back it up are the most important things. But, I still want to share a list of what life has taught me about friendship:

Don’t over think it.

It’s better to let things be without torturing yourself over minute details about whether this was done right or wrong, especially when it concerns the past. Just go with the flow, live in the moment, and if there are big decisions to be made, trust your gut to do the right thing. We’re all old enough to have learned a little from life about right and wrong. You should also never ever be anyone but yourself because if you can’t be real with your friends, then who can see the real you? Sometimes we feel we can’t be our true selves around our own families. That’s when friends lend an arm to save us from drowning. 

"The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for." 

~ Bob Marley 

A long period of non-communication doesn’t necessarily mean it’s over.

Sometimes you can pick up where you left off. We’re all involved in some project or other, and it can take time away from friendships, but as long as one friend or the other remembers to give that call or send that message, true friends can continue right along as if there was never a lull in the friendship to begin with.

It’s okay to let friendships finish their course. Don’t force it.

There’s a time for everything, and if you sense a friendship is stagnant with no more room for growth, it’s okay to let that person go and move on. Also, if you’re the only one putting effort into a friendship and the other person isn’t, well, that can be a signal to release as well. It’s never a good feeling for both sides when someone is forcing something to exist that is no longer there. People change, and that's okay.

"Silence makes the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts." ~ Margaret Lee Runbeck 

Don’t mistake companionate love for Eros love.

This one is tricky. There’s this consensus peering over our shoulders that you if love someone, you should tell them, which is true, but not all love is the same. Misunderstandings can take over to bring about painful awkwardness and may even transform a friendship into something else that is less satisfying or poignant than the previous nature of the relationship. However, I’m not saying people shouldn’t fall in love with their friends because it’s been shown to happen, and sometimes friends even marry each other. Shoot, I hope the person I marry ends up being my best friend as well. But, this isn’t always the case, so this is where a little thinking before acting wouldn’t hurt.

You will find a friend who becomes family.

Soul mates aren’t limited to couples that have found eternal romantic love, but include friends too: two people who swear they must have been born from the same mother sometime or another. Or as like to I call my own soul mate of a friend: “My sister from another mother.” You’re in sync, cry and laugh together, share the deepest secrets, reveal yourself completely and truly without fear of judgment or rejection, and love unconditionally. No fear, no pressure, total acceptance, and genuine love for each other and each other’s growth. If something good happens to this person, you feel as if it’s happening to you. This friendship is no accident and has no end.

"We'll be Friends Forever, won't we, Pooh?" asked Piglet

"Even longer," Pooh answered. 

~ A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

These are solely my experiences with friendship. How about you? What do you think when it comes to friendship? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Have a happy weekend!

Thanks for reading,

Sammy