Turntable of Life

“Nothing Is A Waste Of Time If You Use The Experience Wisely.”
Rodin (1840-1917)


Well. It has been one year since the day I first began this page of restless thoughts. Time has been flying by. Ticking away at my brain as if I am a prisoner tormented with Chinese water torture. Time. Time has so much impact on your emotions. You either are a master to it or a slave to it. Nothing is a waste of time...if you use the experience wisely. If. I have learned countless lessons in life over the past 4 years of what may seem to most as a wasted relationship. Some look at time as a turntable that is continuously turning steadily. But, one day the music will stop. Queen Elizabeth I who was regarded in her day as the wealthiest person alive said on her deathbed that she would give all of her possessions for one moment of time.
So why do we place the urgent over the important? So often what is important is not urgent therefore always gets shoved to the back of the line or swept under the rug for what is urgent….which generally is not important at all. So you are either a slave to time or a master of it. It has the ability to stress you endlessly if your “To Do List” seems to take more time than your life can handle. The waves of times are going to continue. So it is important to take the time for yourself and reflect on who you are, where you are heading and what lessons you have learned from your past in order to not make those mistakes again.

Snipits from "The End of Time" by D. Horowitz

Over 350 years ago in Paris a great scientist lived named Blaise Pascal. He was a brilliant man but became deathly ill at a young age. Wracked with pain due to his illness he busily began taking notes on scraps of paper. The scraps were cut with scissors and sewn with needles without any order. When he died they found this work and of course nobody knew how it was supposed to be put together. Their order was left in Pascal’s mind. The little notes he had been unable to complete before the end scattered everywhere. When they found these scraps they decided to organize them with numbers and created his final work. They called it Pascal’s Pensees: “The Thoughts of Monsieur Pascal about Religion and Other Matters, Which Were Discovered among His Papers after He Died.” The number 205 captured me and thought it would be perfect for my anniversary blog.
“When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I fill I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here?”
Time will continue on even when you are gone. There is no getting it back. This prayer will not be answered. The question is, do you believe in God or not…should you or should you not? Pascal was torn between this due to his scientific background and decided to weigh the options and crunch the numbers of either or…He proposed a mathematical solution to this problem or “gamble” in the game of life and death. The players in this gamble must calculate the risks of believing that there is a God and that He will provide us with what we so pitifully desire. They must weigh the risks against the chance that there is no God and that we are alone. Then they must make their choice. Pascal summed it all up in Fragment #233. “A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. God is, or He is not…What will you wager? Weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is…If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is!” This riddle is now infamously known as Pascal’s Wager and the bottom line is this; Since you cannot know, it is better for you to believe than not. So pray all you want, believe in God but know Time will not stop ticking for you so cherish this day and reflect on your past often.

"Regret For Wasted Time Is More Wasted Time.”
-Mason Cooley

Can't Blame White People!

Can't Blame White People
by: Bill Cosby

They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: Why you ain't, Where you is, What he drive, Where he stay, Where he work, Who you be... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. Everybody knows it's important to speak English... except these knuckleheads. You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth. In fact you will never get any kind of job making a decent living. People marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education, and now we've got these knuckleheads walking around. The lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids. $500 sneakers for what? And they won't spend $200 for Hooked on Phonics. I am talking about these people who cry... when their son is standing there in an orange suit. Where were you when he was 2? Where were you when he was 12? Where were you when he was 18? And, how come you didn't know that he had a pistol? And where is the father? Or who is his father? People putting their clothes on backward: Isn't that a sign of something gone wrong? People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn't that a sign of something? Or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn't it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up and got all type of needles piercing going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? We are not Africans. Those people are not Africans; they don't know a thing about Africa. With names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail. Brown or black versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person's problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. People used to be ashamed. Today a woman has eight children with eight different 'husbands' -- or men or whatever you call them now. We have millionaire football players who cannot read. We have million-dollar basketball players who can't write two paragraphs. We as black folks have to do a better job. Someone working at Wal-Mart with seven kids saying... you are hurting us. We have to start holding each other to a higher standard. We cannot blame the white people any longer. It is not for media or anyone of this time anymore to say whether I'm right or wrong. It is time, ladies and gentlemen, to look at the numbers. Fifty percent of our children are dropping out of high school. Sixty percent of the incarcerated males happen to be illiterate. There's a correlation. Tell the media to stop asking me what I think about people who don't believe what I'm saying or feel that I'm too harsh or feel that I'm just running my mouth because I'm old. Seventy percent of the teenagers pregnant happen to be African American girls. Don't ask me to soften my message.

Hmmmmm, Good Question

If you were going to die soon
and had only one phone call you could make,
who would you call and what would you say?
And why are you waiting?
~Stephen Levine~

Life is a long lesson in humility.

"The secret of a good life is to have the right loyalties and hold them in the right scale of values."
Norman Thomas (1884 - 1968)

From Mountain Wings-

Big muscles don't come from light loads. They come from carrying a lot of weight. Weight can build you up or bend you over.It depends on how you use it...and how you see it.