Honesty

Great Pyrenees

Monday Moment: Gas Pump News

This is just brilliant.

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names —
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don’t remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there.

— Linda Pastan

Let the stars take us away

Tonight we'll escape the constant glow of the city lights and toward the constellation from which the meteors will appear to radiate. Tonight, nature will provide to us a spectacular light show, where debris from Halley's Comet will light up the sky in this year's Eta Aquarid Meteor shower.

Halley's Comet won't make another appearance in our solar system for close to fifty years, but on the its last visit, in 1986, it left some pieces of itself behind. Halley's cosmic litter has been making biannual appearances in the night sky ever since - once every year.

Meteor watchers call such shooting stars "earthgrazers" and they are known for spectacular long, colorful, long-lasting trails. "Earthgrazers are rarely numerous", NASA meteor sxpert Bill Cooke, a member of the Space Environments team at the Marshall Space Flight Centre has Said. "But even if you only see a few, you're likely to remember them".

Is it worth it? That's for you to decide.

But for me, it's one of life's best experiences. The feeling is so indescribable. The sheer magnificence and beauty, of something so mysterious yet so profound. The wonders of the universe.

This year I've chosen to visit Lake Moogerah again. The scene setting is just perfect. The reflection of the milky way glowing over the silent vast lake of serenity. The silhouettes of the mountains in the background accentuating the calm expanse of the surroundings. This is one of my favourite locations to stargaze one moon-less night.

I've always been a dreamer. This is when I feel most at home. Looking up into the night sky, watching the luminous stars twinkle. Each individual one with a story of their own. How they came to be. Imagine looking at Earth from another star. Just a dot in the sky.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Now look at the all the others dots.

It really gives you context of the deeper meaning behind the universe. Star gazing is food for the soul. It's the revitalization of our spiritual self. It's a break from our materialistic and shallow aspirations, to work and to spend and to buy a house.. We dreamers seek a higher level of spirituality. This is our home. Let the stars take us away.

Is not discontent essential in our life, to any question, to any inquiry, to probing, to finding out what is the real, what is Truth, what is essential in life? I may have this flaming discontent in college; and then I get a good job and this discontent vanishes. I am satisfied, I struggle to maintain my family, I have to earn a livelihood and so my discontent is calmed, destroyed, and I become a mediocre entity satisfied with things of life, and I am not discontent. But the flame has to be maintained from the beginning to the end, so that there is true inquiry, true probing into the problem of what discontent is. Because the mind seeks very easily a drug to make it content with virtues, with qualities, with ideas, with actions, it establishes a routine and gets caught up in it. We are quite familiar with that, but our problem is not how to calm discontent, but how to keep it smoldering, alive, vital. All our religious books, all our gurus, all political systems pacify the mind, quieten the mind, influence the mind to subside, to put aside discontent and wallow in some form of contentment. Is it not essential to be discontented in order to find what is true?

J. Krishnamurti, The Book of Life

Appreciating your mother's hands

One young man went to apply for a managerial position in a big company. He passed the initial interview, and now would meet the director for the final interview.

The director discovered from his CV that the youth's academic achievements were excellent. He asked, "Did you obtain any scholarships in school?" the youth answered "no".

" Was it your father who paid for your school fees?"

"My father passed away when I was one year old, it was my mother who paid for my school fees.” he replied.

" Where did your mother work?"

"My mother worked as clothes cleaner.”

The director requested the youth to show his hands. The youth showed a pair of hands that were smooth and perfect.

" Have you ever helped your mother wash the clothes before?"

"Never, my mother always wanted me to study and read more books. Besides, my mother can wash clothes faster than me.

The director said, "I have a request. When you go home today, go and clean your mother's hands, and then see me tomorrow morning.

The youth felt that his chance of landing the job was high. When he went back home, he asked his mother to let him clean her hands. His mother felt strange, happy but with mixed feelings, she showed her hands to her son.

The youth cleaned his mother's hands slowly. His tear fell as he did that. It was the first time he noticed that his mother's hands were so wrinkled, and there were so many bruises in her hands. Some bruises were so painful that his mother winced when he touched it.

This was the first time the youth realized that it was this pair of hands that washed the clothes everyday to enable him to pay the school fees. The bruises in the mother's hands were the price that the mother had to pay for his education, his school activities and his future.

After cleaning his mother hands, the youth quietly washed all the remaining clothes for his mother.

That night, mother and son talked for a very long time.

Next morning, the youth went to the director's office.

The Director noticed the tears in the youth's eyes, when he asked: "Can you tell me what have you done and learned yesterday in your house?"

The youth answered," I cleaned my mother's hand, and also finished cleaning all the remaining clothes'

“I know now what appreciation is. Without my mother, I would not be who I am today. By helping my mother, only now do I realize how difficult and tough it is to get something done on your own. And I have come to appreciate the importance and value of helping one’s family.

The director said, "This is what I am looking for in a manager. I want to recruit a person who can appreciate the help of others, a person who knows the sufferings of others to get things done, and a person who would not put money as his only goal in life.”

“You are hired.”

This young person worked very hard, and received the respect of his subordinates. Every employee worked diligently and worked as a team. The company's performance improved tremendously.

A child, who has been protected and habitually given whatever he wanted, would develop an "entitlement mentality" and would always put himself first. He would be ignorant of his parent's efforts. When he starts work, he assumes that every person must listen to him, and when he becomes a manager, he would never know the sufferings of his employees and would always blame others. For this kind of people, who may be good academically, they may be successful for a while, but eventually they would not feel a sense of achievement. They will grumble and be full of hatred and fight for more. If we are this kind of protective parents, are we really showing love or are we destroying our children instead?

You can let your child live in a big house, eat a good meal, learn piano, watch on a big screen TV. But when you are cutting grass, please let them experience it. After a meal, let them wash their plates and bowls together with their brothers and sisters. It is not because you do not have money to hire a maid, but it is because you want to love them in a right way. You want them to understand, no matter how rich their parents are, one day their hair will grow gray, same as the mother of that young person. The most important thing is your child learns how to appreciate the effort and experience the difficulty and learns the ability to work with others to get things done.

Try to forward this story to as many as possible...this may change somebody's fate.

Source: Unknown