SOUL MUD: Random Ramblings of my 24/7 Brain

On my 43rd birthday, I received an unexpected and truly remarkable gift from my mother - an written recollection on my birth.  I was brought to tears at her words.  What an amazing gift my mom is to me!  Memories (Remembering October 25 th , 1974) With a smile, I remember it well. Finally, pain was bringing the moment closer & closer.   I was so excited, couldn't wait!  It seemed like we had been waiting forever!   I was sure you were a girl.  Your daddy wanted a girl so badly.   We had your name all picked out and waiting.  What if you were a boy?  We hadn't decided on a name because we were sure you were a girl. At last we got our wish - SHE was here!   Red hair just as we pictured.  What a fireball!   So alert - Staring at the world with an independent curiosity, that seemed to be a challenge to the world.  The nurses said you kept the nursery in an uproar - better for me!  They let me have you more than the other mothers got their babies.   What h

This morning I started thinking about success and what that means.   It means different things to different people, and I would go one step further to say that the idea of success changes at different stages and times in our lives.   But, what recently caught my attention and got me to thinking about it is that society seems to have a blanket definition of success.   A definition that, instead of motivating individuals to pursue their own success, encourages – or practically demands – that one achieve the kind of success that sprouts from commercialism and greed, and ultimately benefits a puppet master.   I recently read a book and this quote stuck with me:     “While simply surviving may sometimes not feel like a very nice way to be living, we only realize that surviving is a success and an achievement to be proud of once we are old.   When we are young, we feel we are meant for more obvious triumphs.”     I took the above mentioned “obvious triumphs” to be accomplishments

Tuesday, October 17, 2017 Have you ever stopped to think about fighting?   While the basis and reason for conflicts themselves are a mingled assemblage of circumstance, ferocity, meaning and motive, the fact remains that everyone fights.   But, it is the how of the fight, and the many times the moral barometer (and how far an individual is willing to push their own morals) of those involved in the conflict that determine the outcome – the winner and the loser.    When I think of a fight, a school-yard scuffle pops into my mind.   You know the one.   The quintessential bully, picking on the defenseless kid who is three times smaller than him and yet, the smaller kid wins because he has more determination and will.   Don’t get me wrong, in a fight, physical strength can play a significant role in the outcome.   However, it seems that more often than not, drive and grit are factors that cannot be ignored. I sat today rolling in my mind the basic construction of conflicts, fight

Undefinable Love I randomly riding the waves of thought and surfing my mind today when I came across a thought that stymied me.   I briefly contemplated love and what I thought to be its meaning.   People the world over, for as long as we have historic proof, have been trying to express love - in poems, songs, writing, art, actions, etc.   It is a quest at which I would venture to say no one has conquered.   It really isn’t definable.   I do agree that love is a language in and of its very own.   But I think that language is mysterious and fluid.   Just as one believes to have a grasp of love, it slips through the fingers.   When love is searched out, it remains elusive, yet when least expected, it is found.   Love is part circumstance, part faith, part fate and part imagination.   When you tally all the variables of love itself with the inconsistency of individuals, their circumstance and personalities, not to mention the experiences of the people and lives that intersect with