Daily Gratitude: Yes I write a lot about death. But it’s healthy and much healthier than ignoring it until it’s too late. So I hope I can open people’s minds to the point where they can have a normal talk about death and teach others that it’s not a 4 letter word. There are so many aspects of dying that it’s hard to separate them. I think it’s important that we recognize at least some of them because doing so changes how we view and interact with the person who is dying. This idea is mine alone not from some book and the words are the best I can find to describe things but they are far from the best words. I think that we often get hung up in one of the two bookends of dying and forget the all important middle one. First there is the spiritual partition. What is going to happen to the soul or spirit? Is there a heaven or hell? Is there even an existence after death? “Oh they will be out of pain and no longer suffering” etc. On the opposite end is the basic primal needs of the individual that we don’t want to deal with – the poop, the pee, the other secretions, the wounds, the smell, etc. all the functions that make us living beings and the things that we’ve been able to hide all our lives. Now everything is on display for the world to see. It’s like caring for a baby again. “Ugh, gross” all those things you’re thinking but aren’t polite to say. Here’s where the middle partition comes in. This person is still alive, albeit with a much shorter life span and awareness of such. But the sun comes up and sets for them each day. They have desires, they still love and want to be loved; they want comfort and want to give comfort; they want to watch funny tv shows and movies. They love music and still have favorites. They want to laugh. They want company and conversation (and not always about death). They are people, not babies and not yet ethereal beings. They are just like you and me with similar problems as well as different problems. We need to treat them as being alive until they are ready to give that up. Don’t abandon them and stop talking or visiting. Keep them in your circle of friends, acquaintances and loved ones. Sometimes they don’t want to be different (they want to discuss and have the same things you do) while sometimes they need to have different conversations. Keep them as an important part of your life for that tells them they are still an important part of your life. We are a tribal race and we all need to be part of someone’s life- right up until the end.

Daily Gratitude: All too often we become complacent and don’t do anything new. I think that in order to keep young, we have to continually learn and do new things. It keeps our mind active instead of letting those vibrations move up and down the same neural pathways over and over and over, never even stepping out into another path. Why? Why do we stop moving (and learning and discovering)? We need to ask ourselves this question. And we need to answer it honestly. Are you happy with where you are? Will you be happy to be in this same place a year from now? Sure we all need breaks but maybe we need to put a timer on those breaks – the point at which you say “ok that’s enough hanging out doing nothing. Time to get my butt in gear and go out and learn/do something different”.

Daily Gratitude: Have you ever noticed this? It’s as if you can get on the “good train” and each station you stop at allows more and more good to board the train. The bad stuff is on the other platform waiting to board someone else’s train (and there are plenty of riders on that one). Of course, a lot of this is perspective, too. You must “declare it good” no matter what you encounter. When we do the race across Tennessee every year some people judge us by how we look and that’s not very good. But there are so many others that can see beneath our grungy exterior and see the good within. They aren’t swayed by appearances. That’s how we should look at everything that happens in our lives. Don’t just determine “good-bad” based on how it looks. Make up your mind that everything either is good already or will lead to something good no matter what it looks like right now. Bless it, praise it, caress it; marinate it and let it rise if you’re into cooking and baking; let the seed grow its root system and then pop up a bud if you want a nature example. It will be good. We just have to care for it as if it already is good. Just as a 2 year old child is good deep within despite the antics of the terrible twos. Do we hate the child because it had one temper tantrum? Find a way to look at things in your life and practice that with the easy things. Then it becomes a habit and it won’t take any effort to declare everything good!