Month: January 2017

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard and taken heed to words of wisdom. I’ve even echoed those words to others when the situation called for them. Go for a drive without directions and you may get lost. Take that last second shot at the buzzer and you may actually miss. Rush into love, as only fools do, and chances are you will be hurt. Write a novel then seek representation and you should expect a healthy dose of rejections.

Still…we decide to take our chances anyway, don’t we?

Why do you think that is?

I can’t speak for anyone else, but what I do know is that some of us just can’t help ourselves. Men, by nature, tend to believe we are capable of overcoming just about any challenge set forth at our feet. Whether it’s replacing a faucet only to have it still leaking water a year later! (Yes, I actually did this and thankfully my brother-in-law helped me repair it).

Yet we take the family on that road trip with our own directions because we believe that we don’t “need” to stop and ask for directions along the way. Yep, even if we’re thirty miles off-course in the wrong direction, we will find our way back on track.

Taking the last shot? Ah, that’s a competitor’s ideal situation. We want that shot. We need that shot because it validates our self-perception as winners. We know there’s a chance we will miss but we believe in the possibility that we will make it!

As a romantic, and as a writer, I know that for me the idea of love and my love of writing are intertwined like the fate of soul mates. I have taken my chances in love despite the potentially painful outcomes of my past because I often asked: what is a heart if the emotions within aren’t permitted to overflow?

I still believe that one must always allow for their emotions to keep flowing because they are the rivers of your soul. Whether happy or sad, they glide thru you and form the valleys of your heart…. elaborately carving the beauty that lies within you. Akin to the way rivers run along the lands of the Earth…. look at the Grand Canyon now, after millennia of rivers flowing through it! 🙂 It’s what brings you the sediment of wisdom and marks the depth of your love.

Allow this to happen and then, when God has completed his work with you, He’ll bring you someone worthy of your inner beauty. Someone who will appreciate everything that you have become as a result of what you’ve been through instead of being someone who faults you for your past, or lacks the depth with her/himself to value who you truly are… a genuine person, with emotions.

Love, as with writing, becomes a story… the story that we need to tell, and like true love it speaks to the heart! Despite the challenges along the way, I am never discouraged for too long.

What I find even more compelling is that there is no way my soul has ever been able to let go of either. Focused as I am, distracted as I sometimes allow myself to be, and with a mixture of numerous emotions in-between I have this undying need to share my story with the world.

There’s no two ways around it.

I’m simply incapable of leaving my manuscript on a shelf to never be published, or on my Cloud to remain unopened for a lifetime. Just as I breathe to hold the love of my life, to be a dad and a father to my children, I inhale and exhale to be a writer, a published author and a best-selling novelist. This feels inevitable because it’s my passion. It’s who I am and what the flowing rivers of my soul have left in their wake.

Come take a swim in the sea of my story and discover new islands of my imagination!

“Follow the river and you will find the sea.”

~French Proverb

 

Your life begins and ends with you.

Your success and your failure are yours.

Your destiny does not belong to a deity, nor is it limited to the constraints of time.

Own it.

Though time is a cosmic force as invincible and immortal as a god it cannot define you, it must not define you. For despite its’ boundless nature—interwoven into every aspect of our lives, yet detached and indifferent—its purpose is to urge you to discover your true self and fulfill your purpose.

It is the one thing you have without possessing, and the one thing that may be lost or stolen without ever truly having belonged to you.

Every second, every minute, every hour is borrowed, and though we believe they add-up to a lifetime it is merely a drop in the vast ocean of eternity; for it is said that the present becomes the past as the future becomes the present.

Perhaps this is what makes life precious. Time is to our existence what water is to us. We need it without want, and we always thirst for more. But when we factor in the eons that add-up to forever and compare them with each blink that is our lives we cannot deny the possibility that our gods envy us. They envy us because any moment could be our last. Every sunrise and every sunset, every kiss and heartbreak is more beautiful because in an instant they could become a whisper in the wind.

Irretrievable, incomplete…a destiny unfulfilled.

Do not allow this to happen to you.

Do not be haunted by regret.

Life is too short and tomorrow is promised to no one.

You have a brief moment in time to define your life. You have a mere drop from the well of eternity to quench the thirst of your soul. What will you do with that time?

Time, which Einstein radically postulated was not constant, but rather changed depending on relative speed. Meaning, for example, that if a mode of transport is capable of moving at a rate just shy of the speed of light, the rate at which time flows on the mode of transport in question depends on whether you are on board, or looking in from the outside. More to the point, assuming you could peer into the mode of transport from the outside, time would assume a divergent quality or, perspective.

According to Einstein, the faster an object moves the slower it’s time will pass to someone observing from a remote location.

What will you do?

Will you sit back and watch others live their lives only to allow yourself to feel as though your days are simply dragging by like a slug in the mud? Or will you take control of your destiny and live your life to the fullest?

We’re one week into the New Year.

The previous year flashed before our eyes.

Perhaps we’re on the right track and we haven’t given ourselves enough credit for what we have achieved.

After all, time flies when you’re having fun.

And if this next year is to be greater than the last, despite the failures and challenges, then we must cease giving credit and blame to anyone but ourselves, because the only thing that is yours is your life.

It belongs to no one else.

It is influenced by no one else.

The sooner you realize this the sooner you will take control of your destiny.

Live it for you.

Because in the end, no one will feel your regret and no one will cherish your memories the way that you will.

“Time=Life. Therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life.” ~Alan Lakein