Craig Ruvere

01May 2013 by CJ

Strength does not come from physical capacity

So often the trivialities of life consume us. Societal demands cause us to live stressful lives filled with anxiety as we struggle for relevance and acceptance in this material based world. We assign value to the unimportant, while shunning those whose presence we come to discover we could never live without. But there are some people who’ve developed an understanding of what is truly valuable in life. People with incredible strength to overcome hardships that might otherwise cripple the average human being. Fred Rogers always carried around an inspiring quote by Mary Lou Kownacki which read simply, “There isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story.” This blog has enabled me to hear some incredible stories from people all over the globe. And each one has profoundly influenced…

29Apr 2013 by CJ

Having patience means seeing beyond the emotion

Life & Living

I’ll admit it – my life is often driven by emotion. I like to think that creative, passionate people often are – or maybe that’s just our excuse to justify our being that way. My wife on the other hand is intelligent and solid – rarely crazed by the same things that often send me into a frantic frenzy. Take this weekend for example. Meteorologically it was utterly beautiful. Blue skies, bright sunshine, mild temperatures and an orchestra of birds singing sweetly just about everywhere they landed. But the peacefulness was short lived. You see my neighbors (who are habitually known for disrupting the silence) thought this absolutely perfect Sunday was in need of a little noise – compliments of an air gun used to work on a car in…

28Apr 2013 by CJ

What’s on your to-do-list?

Life & Living

Take a look at your own life and ask yourself, what’s on my to-do-list? Our lives seem filled to capacity with a plethora of errands, chores and commitments which often pull us in different directions — robbing us of the more memorable moments life has to offer. In short we prioritize our lives based upon what we believe to be important and inadvertently forget about the people we always assume will be around when our to-do-lists are finally complete. It’s funny how our lists seem to focus so much on taking care of responsibilities, yet pay little attention to taking care of the people who provide our lives with meaning. Imagine turning off the television and tuning out all distractions to interact with that special someone who’s been sitting right…

25Apr 2013 by CJ

Suicide is NO joke

Life & Living, Youth

The following was one of those headlines which left me shaking my head in bewilderment. It read, “Hyundai pulls ad that plays suicide for laughs.” No, you’re not reading that wrong. It appears that the Korean automaker has apologized for an online advertisement that featured a man attempting to commit suicide by using the exhaust fumes from one of their SUVs. The rather distasteful punch line? The SUV was powered by hydrogen and therefore emits only water vapors incapable of killing anyone. As you can imagine, many at the popular car company are all pointing fingers or playing dumb as to who initially signed off on the inappropriate messaging of this ad. As my wife just said after telling her what I was writing about, “what a bunch of dopes”.…

24Apr 2013 by CJ

Finding a single moment of understanding

Life & Living

Last week I was featured on the motivational and inspirational website TinyBuddha.com. It was my third appearance on this amazing site, but something was different this time. You see my last two posts were not as personally revealing as my most recent titled, “Get Past It Instead of Getting Even: Revenge Isn’t Winning”. In fact it took me almost five months to finally get up the courage to try and tell a story which had been bottled up inside of me for almost five years. Needless to say it was difficult not to feel embarrassed and uncomfortable about something so near and dear to my heart. I had hoped that in telling my story a handful of people from the TinyBuddha.com community would find inspiration and maybe even a little…