Category Archives: Writing

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He Says, She Says… Being or Doing?

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Hello, Dear Reader:

There’s a saying:

“There are only 168 hours in a week, no matter your age, how much money you make, what you’ve invested, how attractive you are, or how much information you can access on the Internet. No exemptions. Your quality of life is a function of how you chose to spend that time.” ~ Bill Bachrach, in “Values-based Financial Planning”.

Time is a funny thing. We can’t make time, lose time, or really, even waste time.  What we ‘do’ with those 168 hours each week is a matter of choice that each of us makes, as much as some seem to want to try to squeeze more time out of the clock.  A ‘few’ years ago, a coworker had a sign in his office that read, “We are becoming human doings, rather than human beings.” We’re certainly not the first to deal with this idea, as we’re joining the ranks of people like Neale Donald Walsch and Eckhart Tolle.

With that in mind we thought we’d make the topic of this week’s He Says, She Says… post, “Being or Doing?”

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Poetry Corner – For Poetry Lovers

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Hello Dear Ones!

It has been a rather dreary day, weather-wise. I needed a bit of a lift. Poetry always provides that lift for me. I  was moved to peruse through some of Mattie Stepanek‘s poetry with hopes of adding some exceptional quality to the emotional energy that seemed to be lacking in my day. I was not disappointed!

As I was preparing this post, I also went to Mattie’s website to happily discover the following article:

The World Premiere of “Heartsongs”, composed by Joseph Martin and based on the inspirational works of American child-poet Mattie J.T. Stepanek will be performed by the Houston Children’s Choir at Carnegie Hall on June 6 at 8:30 pm.  The concept of placing the young poet’s words into a choral setting, has been transformed by the composer into “a gorgeous musical experience that truly captures Mattie’s universally inspirational and life-affirming message”…

That event took place a mere few days ago.

I’m  sharing with you today, from his Journey Through Heartsongs book, Mattie’s accolade to someone in his life (obviously Mr. Thompson according to the poem’s title) who loves poetry. Being a poet, and loving the art as much as Mattie did, this poem is a gift to all people whose love of that art brings us all together in joy and the wonder of life. Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Ladybugs and FREE HUGS!

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Hello Dear Ones!

It’s been my hands meandering today – over poster board with glue and markers, 3″ diameter paper ladybugs and brightly coloured flowers.

Tomorrow, June 8th, 2010, Mike and I celebrate the eighth anniversary of the day I proposed to him. Yes, I did! Down on one knee, rocks and all, by our favourite river. June 8th, 2002.

In honour of the day, Mike and I shall be down at what is referred to as the Inner Harbour here in Victoria, British Columbia at 4pm …. the same approximate time that I popped the question and Mike responded with a resounding YES!

Mike and I are both dolling up these placards to say, simply, FREE HUGS. Yet they are decorated by each of us individually – so each is unique – as are we! Mike’s has a butterfly, hearts and bright colours. Mine has ladybugs and huge flowers.

We’ll be giving out free hugs to any willing participants and we certainly hope there may be a few daring souls. Should you happen to be in the neighbourhood, come join us – even if it’s just to watch two mature adults make absolute fools of themselves – enjoying and savouring every single moment of it! There’ll be ample supply of laughter, hugs, smiles and yes, even free hug certificates as giveaways.

If you’ve not yet checked out our Hugs Certificates page, take a moment to do so here. Mike and I carry a stock of these business card-sized certificates which we delightedly give out to: cashiers; people we see sharing hugs with a friend; as bookmarks in magazines and books in the stores we frequent; on the seats of buses; anywhere we happen to go and someone either gives us a reason to smile or really needs one of their own – which we happily oblige by giving them one of ours. What a joyous adventure this has become – such fun!

An exceptionally BIG thank you to Mike for this marvelous idea, for providing the materials and for the inspiration to make this a play day! A lifetime supply of HUGS, just for him and him alone …

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

BTW: we’re not the first to do this and hopefully not the last! Check out the Free Hugs Campaign that inspired us to do the same.

Update:

We had a great time, and we shared over 200 hugs in 3 hours. Our friend Aaron came by as well and made some photographs. Here are a couple of the best of them:

Anticipation Group Hug

P.S. Be sure to check out our International Free Hugs Day 2012 and International Free Hugs Day 2011 posts!

He Says, She Says… Free?

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Hello, Dear Reader:

What does the word ‘free’ mean to you?  Is it a word that implies value, such as ‘freedom’, or ‘free will’, or is it something that denotes no value, as in ‘Free to Good Home’?  The word freedom itself can mean freedom from something like oppression, or it can mean having freedom of expression.  Or, as in the immortal words of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster, is ‘Freedom just another word for nothing left to lose’?  The word ‘free’ seems to have many contradictions, and so for this week’s ‘He Says, She Says…‘ post we thought we’d address when something is ‘Free?‘

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View

Poetry Corner – Haiku Galore!

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Hello Dear Ones!

If I submitted a tweet for every haiku I write, everyone who follows me would see my smiley-faced avatar umpteen times a day. It also means I’d not have time to do much other than write haiku and enter tweets in to Twitter! I tweet enough as it is without adding an additional load to my followers’ HootSuite or TweetDeck or other such options!

As a result, today’s Poetry Corner will offer a compilation of the haiku and related styles of micropoetry that I have recorded the past week. They are provided here in the order in which they came to me.  Haiku subjects vary moment by moment in topic for me – just the way my mind works and my heart connects to all that is in my life. You’ll notice there is seldom a common theme: with one exception – the Progressive Haiku poems (seen as #progressivehaiku in Twitter) that have an emotional series or chain of thought over several stanzas from sadness to joy.  Enjoy! Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – The Immobilizer

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Hello Dear Ones!

Sunday’s She Says – Embracing Perfection post may have given you a hint as to what my discussion might be today.

Two very powerful reasons almost brought that potential to a screeching halt:

1. The weekend’s passionate excitement became yesterday’s fear.
2. Yesterday’s fear brought forward old beliefs of not being good enough.

The plans I had to take my first baby steps forward into a new venture yesterday fizzled out with self-doubt and fear traumatizing my courage and questioning my value. What right had I to approach people promoting my hobby as a tool they should a) need and b) pay for … ? If there was no value to my own self in what I do, how did I expect others to see value in this?

Confidence flew out the window and perched on the nearest tree laughing at me, taunting me. I just wanted to cry. Yet I wanted to sleep – lay down, take a nap and forget the ugliness I was feeling inside. The Immobilizer – FEAR – had found a perfect place to nestle, expanding the terror and frozen world of inaction within me.

Doesn’t sound like the Pollyanna – the woman who sees the glass as being full (1/2 liquid plus 1/2 air) – that you’ve come to know over the past 6 months, does it? In Sunday’s post I spoke about embracing the perfection of who I am in every moment – with the excited anticipation of becoming even more. Yet knowing there could potentially be more for me, I was astonished to awake with immense self-doubt. As the day progressed, I became more and more agitated, convinced that my excitement was totally misguided.

My e-friend (and a very wise woman) Renee Ludwigs’ recent post discusses her dog Rudy and his persistence. Sad as it may seem, I envy Rudy his level of ‘dogged’ persistence. Me, I get truly excited about something and it’s the best thing since chocolate … yet, without continued variety and excitement, my enthusiasm has the potential to dwindle, fizzle, sputter and die.

Thinking back, I realized that only the things that kept me impassioned over time ever made it from the drawing board out into the ‘real’ world. I had to give serious thought as to whether this new adventure had such potential within me – enough to give me the ‘dogged’ determination to not only start but to follow through to its finish.

I decided today that it did have that characteristic.

The first step I was going to take yesterday and did not – I took today! I just hit the ‘SEND’ button on an e-mail that has the potential to jettison me into an exciting future!

Pollyanna is still alive and well and she’s living in Victoria, BC, Canada! And the Immobilizer? The Immobilizer has been vanquished … for this situation at least!

In Light and Laughter,

Marcia

He Says, She Says… Embracing Perfection

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Hello, Dear Reader:

What does it mean to be ‘perfect’?  To some this appellation implies a ‘best possible’, whether it be a perfect day, a perfect moment, a perfect meal…  To others perfection can only be a goal, something that can never be achieved or attained.  As such there are those who would suggest we not even try.  In his book ‘The Bridge Across Forever‘, author Richard Bach described his search and failure to find what he considered to be the ‘perfect woman’.  He eventually came to realize that his goal was an impossible dream, that his perfect woman was, in his words, ‘a peacock’.  When he surrendered this dream he found instead the love of his life, Leslie Parrish. Continue Reading →

Poetry Corner – Punc:tu;a’tion!

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Hello Dear Ones!

Over the years there has been controversy regarding the appropriate use of punctuation in poetry. From when to insert a simple comma, to the applicable introduction of a hyphen – and all the way to the final stop, or period.

Discussion ranges from using or ignoring an apostrophe, such as it’s and its, to the more demanding option of a colon or a semi-colon. Depending on the style of poetry used, punctuation can vary. Many poets use the breath as the only natural comma and hence end a line and create movement down to the line beneath it to effect that breath.

Gertrude Stein, who called the comma ‘servile’, expressed an interesting dispassion for semi-colons.  She wrote (notice her lack of commas in this writing) back in 1935 in her book “Poetry and Grammar”:

“They (semi-colons) are more powerful more imposing more pretentious than a comma but they are all the same. They really have within them deeply within them fundamentally within them the comma nature.” Continue Reading →

Marcia’s Meanderings – Children as Teachers

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Hello Dear Ones!

As adults, we often hear what most of us don’t realize was originally a biblical expression: “Out of the mouths of babes.” The term is usually in reference to something a child has said or done that has adults amazed at the wisdom emanating from a tiny being, as yet untrained in things adults should know. We remark on such wisdom with awe, not giving much thought to the Source from which it comes. We all have the ability to tap into Divine knowledge and a knowing beyond our own human capacity, whether we be eight or eighty, or somewhere above, below or in between those ages.

This past weekend I had a profound experience that I wrote about in my She Says – Intrinsic or Extrinsic? post. Though I only mentioned some of my situation and the results that led to my writing that post, I had two additional teachings come as part of that overall experience, both of which came through children. Continue Reading →

He Says, She Says… Intrinsic or Extrinsic?

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Hello, Dear Reader:

How do we measure the true value of something – is it intrinsic or extrinsic?  According to Wikipedia:

Intrinsic value is an ethical and philosophic property. It is the ethical or philosophic value that an object has “in itself” or “for its own sake”, as an intrinsic property. An object with intrinsic value may be regarded as an end or end-in-itself.

Extrinsic value is the idea that something has value only because of outside factors. It is an end to a means.  Work is, by many, considered to have extrinsic value. We work because we need money in order to survive.

With that in mind we thought we’d take on ‘value’ as the subject of this week’s ‘He Says, She Says…‘ post.

Hugs,
M&M

Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View