lucky or unlucky?

Sitting at my computer working on my novel when I feel a drip, drip, drip on my head. I think my imagination is really getting good. Oh... is it raining in my book because it certainly isnt raining here. I touch my head. Wow. Its wet! I look up. Its too dark to see anything. I start to panic. Maybe I'm losing it. I rub my fingers together to be sure they are still wet, that I didn't dream it all up. No...my fingers are still wet! I get my new flashlight. Click and scan skyward. I can't see anything and then....I see it. A GECKO!!!! I decide to call Mom. "Hi Mom. Sorry to call so late but I had to tell someone." "What Honey, what's wrong?" "A gecko just peed on my head!!" SIlence. And then...."I hate to tell you this, Brynne, but gecko's don't just pee." Ahh....the presence of magic.

Caroline Myss on The Mystical Experience

Sivan Garr Presents - I Love You

I love you, too.

All In This Together - Ben Lee

Enjoy Being

The rain still smelled of ozone, its fresh scent arriving just in time for my hurried drive up North. I turn on to the freeway, the on ramp already black-wet, my wipers rushing as fast as they can back and forth, back and forth. ‘We’re trying, we’re trying’, they seem to be saying. But they aren’t good enough. Nothing is.

Where did all the traffic come from? Why can’t they get out of my way? Isn’t anyone going to let me in? What is wrong with people? Where did all the nice ones go? My face furrows. My body tenses. My mood turns thoroughly irritated.

Damn. I hate being behind cars bigger than mine. But I need to get over. That one, the one I have to get behind, he will probably be WAY too slow, too. All hippies are. And surely a hippie is driving. It’s a VW bus after all.

Then, there it is. Right there on the VW bus in front of me.

Enjoy Being.

And just like that, a simple script-written bumper sticker pierces me through the heart. Wake up. Enjoy being. Traffic? Costing you joy? What? I stare, shocked. What was I doing? I shake my head as if to shuffle it all away.

I roll my window down. Rain mixed with wind massages my face and shoulders, even my lap gets drizzled with the juice. My cheeks turn pink. I can feel the cold air on my teeth. Because I’m smiling. I want to thank the driver. He saved me from an ugly day. I put on my blinker and someone slows to let me in. I wave my arm out the window. I see a lone weed on the side of the road. It’s flowering. And beautiful. ‘I almost missed you,’ I sing out to it. I’m coming up next to the VW driver. He, too, has his window down. He is smiling. Enormously. His hair is completely soaked. He turns to me as I near. We smile at each other.

I want to tell him what he did for me. But I see he already knows. He looks at me with a knowing, a deep heart-centered knowing. Your heart is driving you, too?, his smile says to mine.

Are those tears on my cheeks or is it rain juice, showering my day with joy?

Don't forget to dance today!

The world can be as intimate and spirited as we want it to be!

Bodhisattva in metro

UNC study: To build resilience, don't worry, see happy

Researcher says focus on small moments

CHAPEL HILL - People who seed their life with frequent moments of positive emotions increase their resilience against challenges, according to a new study by a UNC psychologist and colleagues.

The study, "Happiness Unpacked: Positive Emotions Increase Life Satisfaction by Building Resilience," appears in the June issue of the bimonthly journal Emotion.

"This study shows that if happiness is something you want out of life, then focusing daily on the small moments and cultivating positive emotions is the way to go," said Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology in UNC's College of Arts and Sciences and the principal investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory. "Those small moments let positive emotions blossom, and that helps us become more open. That openness then helps us build resources that can help us rebound better from adversity and stress, ward off depression and continue to grow."

In the month long study, 86 participants were asked to submit daily "emotion reports," rather than answering general questions like, "Over the last few months, how much joy did you feel?"

"Getting those daily reports helped us gather more accurate recollections of feelings and allowed us to capture emotional ups and downs," said Fredrickson, a leading expert in the field of positive psychology.

Building up a daily diet of positive emotions does not require banishing negative emotions, she said.

The study helps show that to be happy, people do not need to adopt a "Pollyannaish" approach and deny the upsetting aspects of life.

"The levels of positive emotions that produced good benefits weren't extreme. Participants with average and stable levels of positive emotions still showed growth in resilience even when their days included negative emotions."

What is the Greatest Gift?

What is the greatest gift?
Could it be the world itself—the oceans, the meadowlark,
the patience of the trees in the wind?
Could it be love, with its sweet clamor of passion?

Something else—something else entirely holds me in thrall.
That you have a life that I wonder about
more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a life—courteous and intelligent—that
I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
That you have a soul—your own, no one else's—that
I wonder about more than I wonder about my own.
So that I find my soul clapping its hands for yours more than my own.

Mary Oliver, from Red Bird: Poems
published by Beacon Press

Lost love letter reunites couple after 16 years

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AFP/File – A couple embrace at sunset in Peru. A British man and his Spanish former sweetheart have finally married …

Mon Jul 20, 6:01 am ET

LONDON (AFP) – A British man and his Spanish former sweetheart have finally married 16 years after they drifted apart, reunited by a love letter lost behind a fireplace for over a decade, reports said on Monday.

Steve Smith and Carmen Ruiz-Perez, both now 42, fell in love 17 years ago when she was a foreign exchange student in Brixham, southwest England, and got engaged after only a year together.

But their relationship ended after she moved France to run a shop in Paris.

A few years later, in a bid to rekindle their love, Smith sent a letter to her mother's home in Spain. It was placed on the mantelpiece, but slipped down behind the fireplace and was lost for over a decade.

The missing missive was only found when builders removed the fireplace during renovation work.

"When I got the letter I didn't phone Steve right away because I was so nervous," Ruiz-Perez told the Herald Express local newspaper.

"I nearly didn't phone him at all. I kept picking up the phone then putting it down again.

"But I knew I had to make the call."

When they were reunited, it was as if time had stood still, said Smith, a factory supervisor.

"When we met again it was like a film. We ran across the airport into each other's arms. We met up and fell in love all over again. Within 30 seconds of setting eyes on each other we were kissing.

"I'm just glad the letter did eventually end up where it was supposed to be," he said, after the couple married last Friday.