About a month ago I reached the age of 72. A full life, lived intensely, with many ups and downs, but with the unfailing and untiring support of my wife and children, who now zealously surround us with their love and care, in our retirement days.
The marriage wows of mutual love and support, in riches and poverty, health and sickness, have been a real thing in our lives. We have learnt the real value of the fundamental things needed to live.
Social, political and financial upheavals have rocked our boat and our children´s boats, but all this has brought more cohesion, mutual love, care, protection and support from one another. We have been and keep on being blessed, for sure.
Motivated by this already extensive, and long, journey through life and experience of all types, and as a gift of remembrances for myself, and a gift of memories to meditate upon, by all my friends and whoever could read these comments, I have prepared the postings down below.
Each one of them, by itself, is an encapsulated message. I have tried to turn them into a message that could be read one at a time, or in a sequence. A sequence that leads from a start of lived experiences, reflections and ruminated meditations, to an ending message of thanks and hope, and gratefulness to the Lord of the Lords of our lives.
I have tried to present the equation that causes and decisions have inevitable consequences. I have tried to present the human need for valid, idealistic but practical at the same time, values and parameters to abide to, and comply with.
Values and parameters so profoundly and sorrowfully ignored by our generations, from the top of the social ladders to the abysses of abuse, rejection and despair of the lower classes and the dispossesed, through the provoked exaltations of the vilest opportunism, greed and disregard of every fundamental value.
Even if by doing so, we are discriminated or rejected, or even worst, victimized by the ruthless moral midgets of today´s circles of political, social and financial power, that prey upon the misery of the less privileged and the dispossessed of this world.
Because the Lord said that His peace is not the peace as the world dreams it and understands it. Because we can enjoy life, even in the midst of the direst situations, that fade away when you have a God´s and family love to rest upon, and shield yourself from the most negative, and painful ups and downs of an extended life.
JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE
How are we supposed to live our lives? Are we just a fleeting second in the universal and unending time? Is it enough just to live the easiest way we can, avoiding unpleasantries, challenges, misunderstandings and defeats?
What´s more important? The pursuit of happiness on this earth? The outward success whatever the cost or compromising? Or the deepest understanding that we are here for something better, worthier, and significant than just going along, getting along?
Isn´t worthier purposing ourselves to make a difference, even if becomes apparent , and noticed, only, by us, and not by the surrounding world?
THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM
Sometimes this becomes possible, when retirement age comes around. Usually due to your own efforts and your planning. Other times as the result of raising up a solid family where the grown up children take care of their parents.
This becomes real when you recognize, accept and enjoy the simplicity and affordability of the easier, and slower, living within its parameters and limits.
AS TIME GOES BY
Love and family! Love that can start at the closest level of the individual towards him/herself and his/her family, and then expand to embrace, in wider circles, the whole societies and nature!
This is the only way to journey through life in a real and meaningful way. And then reach maturer phases with a wonderful baggage of memories and learnt lessons to leave behind for the benefit of the ones to come!
If we do we will be able to enjoy walking at a slower but sedater pace along the roads filled with beauty along its sidewalks, after reliving all the pleasant memories that in harmonious ways, return to you, to walk alongside in the most intimate communion with your fulfilled hopes and longings
MOON RIVER
We must always have in mind that we are journeying through a world of wonders, moons, rivers, beauties and circumstances, that frame and serve as the foundations of the remembrances of our past, that gave meaning and support to our present autumnal living.
And in doing so, we find that all the clouds past were inevitable incidents, as they already came and went, and that there is no better way to live but to extract from them the valuable lessons that enriched our passing through the different stages of life.
THE WINDOWS OF LIFE, AND PEACE AT THE END OF IT!
Now, safe and secure in the coziness of our homes we can serenely look out through the windows and encourage others to do the same by opening theirs and grasp and make their own the lessons learned while we were younger.
IN PEACE
We must face life, specially in its twilight, remembering that every beginning has an ending. Because by understanding it so, we can approach our twilights, with a sincere recognition to the goodnesses and blessings received, in peace with life, owing her anything and being owed nothing, too.
MALTIOX LOY, THANKS, LORD!
For making possible that we understand what real love and trust is. As individuals! As families! As community members! Respecting people and interacting with them as wholesome human beings
IMAGINE!
Sure we can, but climb beyond human imagination, pessimism and utopian unrealistic hopes!
Humans, per se, and without higher sensitivities, values and concerns will never go beyond the self-centeredness of today´s greed, manipulation and abuse.
GOVERNMENT OFFICERS AND BUREAUCRATS! ARE THEY IDEALISTS OR OPPORTUNISTS?
"You're a Government officer", says Bud. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?". "No guessing required." answered the cowboy.
"You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living, or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog”.
Holy cow! This has been one of the best emails I have ever received, as it showed to me the dire contradiction of the scenarios of the leaders and the followers, the self labeled saviors of the nations and the wasted human debris of their societies.
Meanwhile the people, the people of the less developed but euphemistically labeled as “on the road to development of popular democracies”, impoverished, coarsened, dissociated with reality, drunkenly dance on the streets.
And the contradicting picture completes itself, because the drunkard dances, oblivious of his surroundings, while nearby school girls pirouette through the dilapidated streets and houses of every small village of their respective country.
That is the vivid image of the people, while the smarter ones enrich themselves with the spoils of the power exercised and power abused.
IF YOU CAN!
Some weeks ago, while sharing comments about the present international political conflicts and maneuvering, some of the responses were: What's new?
Countries are misunderstanding the meaning of democracy. We can attest to the fact that it is not enough to be elected. Democracy goes beyond elections. It is a lifestyle with true meaningful values.
Whether we like it or not: Things will not get better, they will get worse.
The final solution is the millennial kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. My final vote is for the Kingdom of God.
Recognizing the validity of these statements, I would like to add that we must give to our children the opportunity to have ways to understand what could and should be done to do our part so the miracles of God, derived from His undying love for every one of His creatures, may become not just a hope but a reality.
We must show them how, and lead them if we can. We must tell them what they can accomplish in life if they can…
And to all those who are doing their part to provide a glimpse of hope to the children of this world, as Fresh Air Fund does, praise the Lord! Check: http://freshairfund-news.com/
The marriage wows of mutual love and support, in riches and poverty, health and sickness, have been a real thing in our lives. We have learnt the real value of the fundamental things needed to live.
Social, political and financial upheavals have rocked our boat and our children´s boats, but all this has brought more cohesion, mutual love, care, protection and support from one another. We have been and keep on being blessed, for sure.
Motivated by this already extensive, and long, journey through life and experience of all types, and as a gift of remembrances for myself, and a gift of memories to meditate upon, by all my friends and whoever could read these comments, I have prepared the postings down below.
Each one of them, by itself, is an encapsulated message. I have tried to turn them into a message that could be read one at a time, or in a sequence. A sequence that leads from a start of lived experiences, reflections and ruminated meditations, to an ending message of thanks and hope, and gratefulness to the Lord of the Lords of our lives.
I have tried to present the equation that causes and decisions have inevitable consequences. I have tried to present the human need for valid, idealistic but practical at the same time, values and parameters to abide to, and comply with.
Values and parameters so profoundly and sorrowfully ignored by our generations, from the top of the social ladders to the abysses of abuse, rejection and despair of the lower classes and the dispossesed, through the provoked exaltations of the vilest opportunism, greed and disregard of every fundamental value.
Even if by doing so, we are discriminated or rejected, or even worst, victimized by the ruthless moral midgets of today´s circles of political, social and financial power, that prey upon the misery of the less privileged and the dispossessed of this world.
Because the Lord said that His peace is not the peace as the world dreams it and understands it. Because we can enjoy life, even in the midst of the direst situations, that fade away when you have a God´s and family love to rest upon, and shield yourself from the most negative, and painful ups and downs of an extended life.
JOURNEY THROUGH LIFE
How are we supposed to live our lives? Are we just a fleeting second in the universal and unending time? Is it enough just to live the easiest way we can, avoiding unpleasantries, challenges, misunderstandings and defeats?
What´s more important? The pursuit of happiness on this earth? The outward success whatever the cost or compromising? Or the deepest understanding that we are here for something better, worthier, and significant than just going along, getting along?
Isn´t worthier purposing ourselves to make a difference, even if becomes apparent , and noticed, only, by us, and not by the surrounding world?
THE IMPOSSIBLE DREAM
Sometimes this becomes possible, when retirement age comes around. Usually due to your own efforts and your planning. Other times as the result of raising up a solid family where the grown up children take care of their parents.
This becomes real when you recognize, accept and enjoy the simplicity and affordability of the easier, and slower, living within its parameters and limits.
AS TIME GOES BY
Love and family! Love that can start at the closest level of the individual towards him/herself and his/her family, and then expand to embrace, in wider circles, the whole societies and nature!
This is the only way to journey through life in a real and meaningful way. And then reach maturer phases with a wonderful baggage of memories and learnt lessons to leave behind for the benefit of the ones to come!
If we do we will be able to enjoy walking at a slower but sedater pace along the roads filled with beauty along its sidewalks, after reliving all the pleasant memories that in harmonious ways, return to you, to walk alongside in the most intimate communion with your fulfilled hopes and longings
MOON RIVER
We must always have in mind that we are journeying through a world of wonders, moons, rivers, beauties and circumstances, that frame and serve as the foundations of the remembrances of our past, that gave meaning and support to our present autumnal living.
And in doing so, we find that all the clouds past were inevitable incidents, as they already came and went, and that there is no better way to live but to extract from them the valuable lessons that enriched our passing through the different stages of life.
THE WINDOWS OF LIFE, AND PEACE AT THE END OF IT!
Now, safe and secure in the coziness of our homes we can serenely look out through the windows and encourage others to do the same by opening theirs and grasp and make their own the lessons learned while we were younger.
IN PEACE
We must face life, specially in its twilight, remembering that every beginning has an ending. Because by understanding it so, we can approach our twilights, with a sincere recognition to the goodnesses and blessings received, in peace with life, owing her anything and being owed nothing, too.
MALTIOX LOY, THANKS, LORD!
For making possible that we understand what real love and trust is. As individuals! As families! As community members! Respecting people and interacting with them as wholesome human beings
IMAGINE!
Sure we can, but climb beyond human imagination, pessimism and utopian unrealistic hopes!
Humans, per se, and without higher sensitivities, values and concerns will never go beyond the self-centeredness of today´s greed, manipulation and abuse.
GOVERNMENT OFFICERS AND BUREAUCRATS! ARE THEY IDEALISTS OR OPPORTUNISTS?
"You're a Government officer", says Bud. "Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?". "No guessing required." answered the cowboy.
"You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of dollars worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living, or about cows, for that matter. This is a herd of sheep. Now give me back my dog”.
Holy cow! This has been one of the best emails I have ever received, as it showed to me the dire contradiction of the scenarios of the leaders and the followers, the self labeled saviors of the nations and the wasted human debris of their societies.
Meanwhile the people, the people of the less developed but euphemistically labeled as “on the road to development of popular democracies”, impoverished, coarsened, dissociated with reality, drunkenly dance on the streets.
And the contradicting picture completes itself, because the drunkard dances, oblivious of his surroundings, while nearby school girls pirouette through the dilapidated streets and houses of every small village of their respective country.
That is the vivid image of the people, while the smarter ones enrich themselves with the spoils of the power exercised and power abused.
IF YOU CAN!
Some weeks ago, while sharing comments about the present international political conflicts and maneuvering, some of the responses were: What's new?
Countries are misunderstanding the meaning of democracy. We can attest to the fact that it is not enough to be elected. Democracy goes beyond elections. It is a lifestyle with true meaningful values.
Whether we like it or not: Things will not get better, they will get worse.
The final solution is the millennial kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. My final vote is for the Kingdom of God.
Recognizing the validity of these statements, I would like to add that we must give to our children the opportunity to have ways to understand what could and should be done to do our part so the miracles of God, derived from His undying love for every one of His creatures, may become not just a hope but a reality.
We must show them how, and lead them if we can. We must tell them what they can accomplish in life if they can…
And to all those who are doing their part to provide a glimpse of hope to the children of this world, as Fresh Air Fund does, praise the Lord! Check: http://freshairfund-news.com/
Blessed be, and keep on blessing, making the difference, to shame all those who prefer to stand in the balconies, without doing anything that could signify a daring, and uncomfortable decision to make.
Only by doing so we will be able to tell and proclaim, at the top of the mountains of life, experience and learnt wisdom: I give you thanks, Lord.
Only by doing so we will be able to tell and proclaim, at the top of the mountains of life, experience and learnt wisdom: I give you thanks, Lord.
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