Today, 8 March 2011 , is the birthday of my special friend. We have been friends for about 11 years. Development in information technology has been maintaining our long distance friendship during that time. On this special day, I wish I could make him very happy with something I could give as a birthday gift. I know he would not ask me for a gift as he has had everything I could afford for the gift. Moreover, we are separated by thousand miles of distance. No, he has never hoped anything from me instead of seeing me happy. He would come as a flash soon he knows I need a hand, care, or attention. He always have time for me, until I could face the world again with more confident and a big smile. He does want to see me happy.
Looking happy before him on his birthday may become a good gift for him. By developing my imagination I would take a seat next to him and show him what I have learnt today that has brought me to go into a deep thought of life. I read a short chapter of the book : SIMPLE ABUNDANCE : A Daybook of Comfort and Joy. The author is Sarah Ban Breathnach. The book is like a daily personal journal. So, I read the book everyday according to the date of the calendar as the title of each chapter. This morning, I read Chapter “MARCH 8” after I sent him a short birhday message via mobile phone. The content suits to our last conversation and I hope he would be happy that his effort to make me staying happy is fruitful. “Happy Birthday, my great friend : William Stanley Lilley”. May God give a healthy and joyful life always. I would buy a nice cake and ice cream to celebrate your birthday from afar.
MARCH 8
Take The Plunge
Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content wih what you have (Doris Mortman)
Simplicity gains importance in our lives as we begin to make peace with ourselves. This is because we gradually come to the inner awareness that we don’t need to gild the lily. Some of the trappings can be relinquished because t he Real Thing is finally ready to be revealed.
I call this point in the Simple Abundance process “ taking the plunge” because it involves a courageous leap of faith in the most intimate way. exploring the way we express ourselves to the outside world through our personal appearance. But this is much more than just how we dress or style our hair. It’s about the many subtle ways we choose either to celebrate or conceal our authenticity. It’s about learning to become comfortable wih who we really are. “ We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later,” Mary Antin wrote in 1912 in The Promise Land. “ Our mothers are racked wih the pains of our physical birth, we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.”
Simone de Beauvoir put it another way. “One is not born a woman, one become one”. This becoming takes time. We need time to consider, time to reflect, time to make creative choices, time to emerge from the cocoon, time to clean out our closets, and time to clear away psychic cobwebs so that we might pare down to our essence.
Some of us have remained dormant for years-oblivious to our genuine beauty-drugged senseless by our own numbing disapproval, nagging doubts, and benign neglect. Coping strategies that once brought a sense of relief now only offer regret. To undo the damage and reconnect with our authentic selves we need to take the plunge, confident that the Spirit is holding the net. Above all, we need to treat ourselves gently with the kindness we would bestow on amnesiacs who need the patient reassurance of their true identities.
