Today is Saturday, April 28, 2012 - a cool cloudy day. I'm grateful for another day of "I'm HIV."
This morning I did yoga, the exercise ball and walked 36 minutes = 2.0 miles for an April total of 66.5 miles. My weight went down to 163.6 pounds.
I've been reading a book entitled - "BE THE MIRACLE: 50 Lessons for Making the Impossible Possible" by Regina Brett. It is a real inspiration as I love stories about humans doing wonderful loving things to their fellow humans and doing great things to help themselves. Every lesson is great but some have caught my attention more than others.
Lesson 32 really hit me, I wish I had read it in high school. Lesson 32 was entitled, "Be an original. Forge your path." The basic message is create your own path in life - you don't have to take the path your parents laid out for you, or your friends or grandpa and grandma, or your teachers etc.
How do you follow your own path? By learning from your experiences in life. What worked and what didn't work for you - but you have to learn from it and apply these learnings to your life now. The author said love the work in progress that you are right now. You aren't a finished product. You are constantly evolving. Be creative. Daring. Outlandish. Outrageous. Be an original. Be you. I remember hearing about the man who was so enamored by the work of Mother Teresa that he wrote her often about coming to Calcutta to make her work his life's work. One day he finally got a letter back. Her words stunned him: "'Find your own Calcutta." The author went on to say - Create your own map. Instead of finding your place in the world, design one. Don't use someone else's map. The problem with maps is that they only take you to where someone else has already been. That's why there is no map for the rest of your life. There's a true place for everyone on this earth. Your place in life doesn't belong to anyone else. If you aspire to be someone else, you will fail. The world already has them. The world needs you.
I feel the most satisfying years of my life have been the last 10. I finally have become the person I want to be:
I've learned to say "NO"
I've quit worrying about what other people think
I've become more outspoken towards bigoted, ignorant and racist people
I've finally had time to do what I always wanted to do and that was to write my autobiography
Writing that led me to write two other books
Which led me to start a BLOG
I've always enjoyed doing research and learning new things and I now have the time to do it on a daily basis
I've learned how to look forward to each day by starting with a prayer and being grateful for my health and rewarding myself every three hours with something I enjoy (like chocolate and nuts and herring and my pipe and a beer at Happy Hour)
I've learned to look at the negative and positive aspects of situations
I've learned I don't have to associate with people I do not especially like and not feel bad about it
I'm proud I had the will power to lose 30 pounds and get back to the 32" waist I had in high school, those 5 small meals I eat every day help keep my weight at 164 pounds
And I'm also proud to say I have the self discipline to take one hour out of 24 each day to exercise -
I do it from 7-8 am. It is a great way to have good physical health and good mental health.
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