11Nov 2020 by CJ
Life is long if you know how to use it – WHO are you ignoring in life?

Life is long if you know how to use it – WHO are you ignoring in life?

Love & Relationships
Roman Philosopher Seneca the Younger once wrote, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. When it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. Life is long if you know how to use it.” Lately, I find myself thinking a lot about the notion that life is long if you know how to use it. Life is not a particularly easy experience to navigate and few of us, if any, have mastered to progress without our share of unexpected circumstances and challenges. At times, I tend to think that we ourselves overcomplicate the…
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28Jun 2020 by CJ
Our bodies are constantly changing and so should our view of ourselves

Our bodies are constantly changing and so should our view of ourselves

Love & Relationships
“The reality is that our bodies are constantly changing, and they will never remain exactly the same. If we base our self-worth on something as ever-changing as our bodies, we will forever be on the emotional roller coaster of body obsession and shame.” - Chrissy King The other day, my wife and I were going through an old shoe box filled with photos chronicling my life from the day I was born up until the day I was married. This picture-timeline was a fond reminder of the people and places who are now absent from my life, but also highlighted the reality that our bodies are constantly changing as King states above. I was a cute, curly-haired little boy with an ever-present smile. But puberty was not kind to me…
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09Jun 2020 by CJ
Acknowledge me to affirm that my contributions matter

Acknowledge me to affirm that my contributions matter

Generosity & Kindness, Love & Relationships
“It amazes me that we are all on Twitter and Facebook. By ‘we’ I mean adults. We're adults, right? But emotionally we're a culture of seven-year-olds. Have you ever had that moment when are you updating your status and you realize that every status update is just a variation on a single request: Would someone please acknowledge me?” ― Marc Maron, Attempting Normal I once had a co-worker who would often question whether or not she was invisible. Now before you call in for a straitjacket, she was speaking metaphorically as she struggled with the feelings (both professionally and personally) which Maron highlighted above – would someone please acknowledge me? While the two of us would often joke about her feelings of being invisible, I knew there was some truth to her…
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21May 2020 by CJ
There are no goodbyes in life – just a warm hello again

There are no goodbyes in life – just a warm hello again

Love & Relationships
“There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” - Mahatma Gandhi The other day, my wife and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. At times it seems we’ve only just begun our journey together, yet almost two decades later we’ve already experienced so many things; created so many memories. When we were preparing for our wedding back in 2001, neither one of us gave much thought to a videographer. Each of us are fairly shy and humble individuals and the idea of watching ourselves on television wasn’t very appealing to either one of us. Not to mention, we’d already reached the top threshold of our budget. My brother in law at the time, who fancied himself fairly adept at working a camcorder,…
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11May 2020 by CJ
Consequences of our choices are impossible to avoid

Consequences of our choices are impossible to avoid

Life & Living, Love & Relationships
“The universe does not judge us; it only provides consequences and lessons and opportunities to balance and learn through the law of cause and effect. Compassion is the recognition that we are each doing the best we can within the limits of our current beliefs and capacities.” - Dan Millman It seems some normalcy is returning to the United States, or at least pretending to anyway. States are easing or completely eliminating their quarantine restrictions, social distancing is being encouraged but often not properly followed and soon the 80,000+ lives lost to Covid19 will soon be forgotten – if they’re not already. This is a time for choices and the American people have clearly shown that when faced with having to alter their normalcy for any length of time, they’d…
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