All I can say about today is “UGH” and “I’M UP TO THE CHALLENGE!!” Sometimes ppl will accuse me of being a pessimist (usually when I point out something to do with my looks or position in life) and sometimes people’ll accuse me of being an optimist but in both cases I respond the same way: I’m a realist…I see the truth and I’m not afraid of it. Life is beautiful. Life is discouraging and ugly but NOTHING can take away from the fact that despite the beauty and the ugliness we can CHOOSE to enjoy it and wring every bit of pleasure from it….and in that way even the ugliest circumstance becomes immeasurably gorgeous. …so beautiful that it brings tears to the eyes….I have THOUSANDS of photos of beautiful sunrises,sunsets, storms and rainbows. ..they’re all spectacular and worth living to see the next one. The greatest wonders in life are free and just accessible to the pauper as the prince…priceless in their originality just as much as in their promise to come again in a slightly different incarnation. Life is a series of cycles. Tiny little cycles too small to notice and enormous cycles so big we could NEVER comprehend them and no matter if time is linear or deviant we can experience it only one moment at a time….each moment to be appreciated or ignored. If we fully experienced each moment we would be useless….so we are open to distraction and interpretation which actually preserves us but the truth remains and our lives are the results of our random as well as meaningful choices. We are all but pixels in the bigger picture. The smaller we make our universe the more significance we play in it and the grander we make existence the less influence we have on it. Some people say look at the bigger picture without realizing that the enormity of the actual BIGGER picture is that we have absolutely no influence on the cosmos as individuals….so I choose to live the not so big picture and actually make a postive difference in the lives of my loved ones and my community. If everyone chose to do so the world would be infinitely better and the universe and the multiverse as well…but science decrees that a positive can’t exist without a negative which is great because I love lightning and magnets and equal and opposite reactions and sometimes the best thing to accept is that I only have so much power and therefore a limited responsibility even though the potential is available if we ALLL worked together. The chance that all creatures will work together for the greater good is slim to none which basically means that the pressure is off. Enjoy your little slice of life. That’s the way the cookie crumbles, the ball bounces and let the chips fall as they may. It’s all good. Inhale love exhale love…not one breathe wasted 🙂