Daily Quote

People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges. - Unknown

The thought of someone being lonely makes me incredibly sad. I can’t imagine how absolutely horrible loneliness must feel. Being an only child, you’d think I’d have some idea of lonely, but pets, friends, and family (not necessarily in that order!) more than made up for a shortage of siblings.

The quote above certainly doesn’t apply to everyone who’s lonely. After all, the elderly often find themselves alone simply because they’ve had the “good fortune” of outliving their friends and spouse. If they don’t have compassionate, loving family members nearby, their days must be unbearably long.

This quote has another group of people in mind. Those who have bickered, nitpicked, stirred up trouble, and sought out strife most of their life. The crowd who no one seems to ever be able to do enough for. The ones who want “this person” to be at odds with “that person” and everyone to hate the other one. After all, what better way to rise above the crowd than to have everyone hating one another. Right? Wrong.

Without realizing it, they’re putting up walls - closing everybody out, while shutting themselves inside, alone. It doesn’t take long before they find themselves so lonely that the things that once bothered them about these other people now seem so incredibly trivial. They wonder why they didn’t have sense enough to realize that the people in our lives are our greatest treasures. Houses, cars, boats, purses, jewelry, furniture - none of that matters. Not one of them hugs back or laughs at your jokes. I’ve never had one greet me at the back door when I’ve been away and tell me they’d just put a cup of coffee on. Not even my favorite purse.

We can all agree that the people in our lives are everything to us. But do we treat them that way? Do we try to foster harmony and happiness - with fat doses of humor thrown in? Do we put our own needs AFTER theirs? Do we tell them every chance we get that we love them so much it makes our head swim?

If you think you have so much as one wall in your life - tear it down today. It’d make a perfect spot for a bridge, don’t you think?

“Life is a joke. The only way to survive it is to find the right punchline.” - Becky Alunan

A few months ago, it struck me just how important it is to have a sense of humor.  My husband and I had looked forward (literally for months) to a particular event.  When the big day finally arrived, we were like cats in a field of catnip.  I bought a great new purple top and we drove out of town to where the “next big thing” was going down.  Okay, okay, so buying a new pink or purple top isn’t that out of the norm for me, but still…

Our first stop was to eat a nice dinner out, of course. So we took the new purple top into a restaurant that’s normally flawless.  If I’m lucky….if I’m really lucky… my stomach may one day forgive me.  They may have turned me against food forever.

So, we laughed that off - knowing the dinner wasn’t the big deal of the evening anyway.  We were on our way to that!

We should have stayed at the restaurant.

Months of anticipation, money that could have paid for more Starbucks trips than I care to calculate, and a great purple top all for naught.  Yet, on the way home, all we could do was laugh about it.  Oh, yeah, it just struck us as terribly funny.

Isn’t it strange the way things happen sometimes?  You see a movie or show that you really hadn’t thought much about and BAM it knocks your world off its axis.  Then you look forward to something for two forevers and boing  it bounces off the radar.

Oh well.  New top, good visit with the spouse, good laughs.  Hard to call it a bad evening.

During the ride home, it occurred to me just how important humor is.  It’s the secret behind taking life’s lemons and making lemonade - the missing ingredient, as it were.

I had a really bad burn on my arm one time, courtesy of a grill that decided to shut on me.  It hurt 24/7 like the devil, itself, was running up and down my arm.  The only time it didn’t hurt was when I had aloe vera gel on it.  When the burn was exposed to the elements without the aloe vera gel, it was excruciating.  It felt like the tortures of the damned. 

But as long as my cold, comforting salve was on it, everything was as beautiful and right as Halle Berry’s face…and, well, eveything Halle Berry possesses.

A sense of humor is like a comforting salve.  It’ll protect you from the burns of life - as long as you remember to put it on.  So always keep it nearby, you never know when you’ll need to apply it liberally.

Some of My Favorite Quotes about Humor:

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. - Wystan Hugh Auden

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. - Sir Francis Bacon

You grow up the day you have your first real laugh at yourself. - Ethel Barrymore

Some people are so dry that you might soak them in a joke for a month and it would not get through their skins. - Henry Ward Beecher

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is. - Francis Bacon

There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor. - Thomas W. Higginson

Want more Quotes about Humor?

“If you bang your head against a brick wall long enough, the wall will fall.” And once you start banging your head against that wall, others will join you. - Ingrid E. Newkirk, One Can Make a Difference pages xiv and xv

You know how you normally say, “I just read this book…” or “I just read that book.” In regards to the book this quote was pulled from, One Can Make a Difference, by Ingrid E. Newkirk, the appropriate quote is, “This book recently changed me.”

I’m working on my book review for this amazing book - hopefully I’ll have it up tomorrow. Amazing book.

“Eventually, there comes a point in every life where you can no longer ignore the enormous and expanding gap between the life you could be living and the life you’ve settled for…. Every day of your life that you’re not actively engaged in staying fit, eating well, and strengthening your body the gap grows.” - Stregnth for Life, by Shawn Phillips, page 10

To read my review of the next book you should read (Strength for Life, by Shawn Phillips), see Why You Should Read Strength for Life by Shawn Phillips This Week.

This isn’t a book you’ll read, shelf, and then forget - it’s a proven system that’ll help you bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again. - Og Mandino

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Happy Father’s Day to dads and grandfathers everywhere! My dad (who, incidentally, I thought hung the moon AND stars) is spending his 12th Father’s Day in Heaven. He died alarmingly young, but I’m thankful to have had him in my life as long as I did. His sense of humor and laid back approach to life were his trademarks and our world’s loss was Heaven’s gain.

Even though there’ve been 12 Father’s Days without him, it still gets to me. Today when I drove by a steakhouse, there were people pouring out of their cars with their dads. Waterworks. Time heals wounds but the scars remain.

The tears gave way to smiles though when I got home to another character that hung the moon and stars - my husband and father of our three daughters and 4 cats. No father in the world has ever out-loved their children more than Michael does our girls. Like all fathers, though, he doesn’t get the sometimes gentler role in the parenting equation.

I feel for fathers, I really do. They have to be the tough guys so often - while the mothers pat on the child’s back, smooths the hair and whispers lovey dovey mommy-isms. Sometimes it resembles a good cop/bad cop scene and fathers seldom get to be the good cop! The decisions they make, the stands they take - they’re always for their child’s best. Funny thing about children though, they generally don’t see past their own little noses.

The quote at the top of the post, at least in our own household, symbolizes a father’s mindset. Fathers often look further into the future than mothers do. I think the reason’s obvious… “mommies” don’t want to see the future. Give us the present, give us the past, but spare us the future!

It’s a good thing that fathers and mothers look at things differently and have different approaches. Two of either approaches would make the kids nutty. -er. Nuttier.

Know that the day will come when your loving strictness, your stern no’s, and, yes… even your lectures…. will be very much appreciated. Keep up the good fight - being a parent in this day and age isn’t for the faint of heart. Or stomach, for that matter.

Happy Father’s Day!

If you have anything valuable to contribute to the world, it will come through the expression of your own personality - that single spark of divinity that sets you off and makes you different from every other living creature. - Bruce Barton

So often time it happens, we all live our life in chains, and we never even know we have the key. - The Eagles, “Already Gone”

The next time you’re listening to a song by The Eagles, pay close attention to the lyrics. Their songs are very well-written and, of course, flawlessly executed.