Inside Out

Life Lesson Here

We met a group of people for dinner at one of those patio restaurants where you sit outside and listen to music.  A huge place. 

It is loud and hard to hear and I am looking at mom who looks drop dead good looking in this blue shirt I have never seen her wear before.  About 30 minutes into dinner, I see the tag on the seam of her blue shirt outside of shirt at the waist.   I lean over and tell her that the shirt is inside out and pull gently on the white tag.

She looks down and without skipping a beat laughs and starts to eat french fries off of my plate.  It just did not matter to her, not a bit.  We walked around the patio listened to music for a while and left.   I swear after she laughed and smiled that frigging tag melted away.  She did not for a minute let it get in the way of her evening and if you looked at her all you saw was a damn good looking woman in a blue top.

Most people would have turned it right side out, done something with the tag, or would have spent some time worrying about what people would have thought.   You have to admire that perspective.  There was no way a 1 inch white square tag was going to loom larger than than where and who she was with at that exact moment. 

A lot of things are like that.   We are all quick to let that inside out shirt wreck our night, bruise our ego, or be the harbinger of a bad day/night.  One square inch of white tag can kill an evening an should never be allowed to do so.  So next time you find your literal or figurative tag on the outside instead of the inside follow the example of your mom the Zen master and let a 1 inch square be a scrap of cloth and nothing else.

Love Dad 

Beyond Measure

I read this almost every day, I am not sure if it is a poem or not.  When I first heard it I was struck by it.  The author is Marianne Wilson.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure,
It is our light,  not our darkness that most frightens,
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won’t feel insecure around you,
We are all meant to shine as children do,
It is not just in some of us, its in everyone,
And as we let our own light shine,
We unconsciously give others permission to do the same,
As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others,

There is also a you tube video at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STp1UtMrKR4&noredirect=1 

Love Dad