Thank You Turkey Day

If you're an American living abroad with no American country-folk around you, you know it starts to suck when the middle of November rolls around. Pumpkin filled dishes start coming up on your Pinterest…cute little french bulldogs dressed in turkey costumes appear on Instagram…and stories of terribly fun and yummy looking "Friendsgivings" show up on Facebook.

Why Australia! Why do you not have a Thanksgiving?! I know, the whole thing with Pilgrims and Indians doesn't fit but that's not what modern Turkey Day is all about. It's a brilliant day - a holiday that isn't centred around consumerism, doesn't involve material things and isn't associated with a religion. It's so beautifully simple. A table, friends and/or family, food, drink and some "Thank You's" are all you need.

So, as I sit here celebrating Thanksgiving by watching American TV (Woohoo! for the new US channel in Sydney!) while eating homemade stir fry, I need to come up with some sort of holiday substitution to keep myself from sulking. No, I don't have 5 of the turkey day essentials (especially the turkey) but thankfulness is accessible anywhere in the world.

Here are my top 5 so I don't bore you.

Thank you…

1. Mother nature for putting trees in places that are better off with trees, flowers in bleak nooks and crannies and invisible unicorns.

2. Friends and family for unconditional love.

3. Body for being whole and getting out of bed every day.

4. Animals for being nourishment, comfort and so damn cute.

5. People of the world for random acts of kindness. I hope you're given the same treatment you give.

Gobble gobble.

Remember the Bill and Monica drama? It's not just Clinton in the spotlight anymore.

She's now over 40 but almost 20 years ago she was all over the news as that woman. The home wrecker of the POTUS. Brown hair, pretty and so much younger than him. Remember her?

During the beginning of the talk, I wondered as I watched, why come out and speak now? What is the point? Why even bring it up? Honestly, it kind of made me cringe. I was incredibly surprised  to see her standing on that stage. She would have been the last person I imagined to be standing up in front of a TED audience.

But, you know what? She is well spoken and has a story to share. A story, I realised, that had never been told through her own lips. She absolutely should share it! She should share it for herself and for others out there who are violated and isolated. She deserves every right to stand up for her shame and humiliation. That takes some real guts.

Almost humiliated literally to death? Oh my. The YouTube video even has the comments section disabled!

What is it with us and humiliation? What feels so good about publicly shaming people we don't even know? Click click click. Numb numb numb.

Let's not celebrate the negative side of our species, no matter who it is. I don't know Monica. I don't care if she is an angel or a skank. Don't tar and feather. That is so antiquated.

And, she receives a standing ovation. Woohoo! You go girl.

Big, fat drops of altruism to make your day.

The raging storm outside is seriously impressive. The winds are blowing, the water is dumping and the light is booming. I would take a picture but pictures of the weather never do it justice. I'm sure there is good reason for it, but my photos never seem to capture the light striking or the rain coming down in sheets. They usually look like unimpressive grey blurs. Plus, the best part of a storm is the sound, which is completely lost in a picture. A picture can speak a thousand words…but maybe only in sign language.

So, I close my eyes to listen to the sounds. The rain on the metal roof of the overhang outside my balcony. Big, fat drops, heavy on the tin. (Or, whatever it is made of. Sure sounds like what tin should sound like. Isn't there a play, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof? But it's probably aluminium. Anyway…Back to the sounds of the storm.) Then I went upside down. Just because everything sounds better upside-down. Don't believe me? Oh well, try it.

Lots of splashes. Water on the streets kicked up from wheels. And, it's silent. Silent from the sound of people. All the crazy people who roam the streets have ran and hidden somewhere in the big game of storm against loony hide-and-seek. But, then the storm lets up and the drops become fewer. The water on the road gets more displaced and the sky is still. It's called the calm after the storm, right? Or is that the calm before the storm? Maybe there is both.

But, I'm not ready to listen to things right side up yet. Back into the handstand. What a good opportunity for some Matthieu Ricard.

Altruism with a background melody of raindrops? Oh the silence of selflessness! The symphony of the anti-ego! Sustainable, harmonic collaboration. Grow quantitively together, doing more with less, not because it is all fuzzy and warm feeling but because it makes sense as a society and as an individual. Have more consideration for others.

Start small. Start with the individual. Become the society.

What if something as simple as collaboration could save our species?

Collaboration. Altruism. Words of the day! With a background ballad of rain.

The Happiest Man Alive

Can we change? Train our minds to be happy? Better yet, actually change our grey and white matter? Yes, neuroplasticity!

Can we not really be happy and hateful at the same time, in the same brain? Oh, what a contradiction! But, wait! Geroge Orwell calls this doublethink! Oh yes, it exists, at least in 1984.

Do you confuse happiness with pleasure? Do you confuse consumption with happiness? Consumption is not happiness but fleeting pleasure. What is pleasure? Having one piece of cake. Maybe two. But, after three pieces, pleasure quickly turns to disgust and probably sickness.

My greatest goal, the most important thing to me, the thing I strive for, that I live for, the way I define good well-being, the ultimate thing that I aspire to be, the real reason behind why I do things, I do everything to be happy. Who doesn't want to be happy? Real, true happiness…inner happiness. Well, the happiest man alive, a French microbiologist turned Buddhist monk with an entertaining sense of humour, says just change your mind! Train your mind through meditation to be happy.

Well, you heard it from the pro. Namaste.

The Awakened Man - Not who you would have thought it was.

We are flesh puppets that are part of a culture of puppets that celebrate the negative side of our species. We are the people we don't want to be because we are entertained by the soulless, the bad and the heartless. We accept our own limited consciousness that is created when we don't look within ourselves…really see our selves…not with our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hands, but our own magic…our own infinite consciousness.

Yep, his ideas sound kind of insane but he is totally on to mainstreaming something so powerful. Something within each and every human being. He is celebrating that thing that is so not a thing and yet is so simple. Your inner possibilities are endless. Maybe the world that you want so bad, that you keep trying to buy one object at a time, is actually quietly hibernating inside yourself and all you need to do is wake it up! Wake yourself up and unleash your magic.

Come on you dolphins! You unicorns! You monkeys! Welcome to the brand new world.

Love. Unity. Togetherness.

What started with a spirit animal...morphed into a rainbow bridge.

You're going to think I'm crazy and lost the plot. Oh well. Here it goes...

I've kind of felt like in the last two weeks that my spirit animal is the unicorn. 

OK, so, you're either thinking, "She's gone feral hipster" or "She's got that whole earth goddess warrior priestess gonna save the world vibe." Or maybe neither. Probably neither. 

There is something going on and it involves unicorns. Or maybe it embodies them. (It's probably all that telling myself I'm magic; it's seriously messing with my brain and my self-perception.)  But honestly, I don't think it's possible for the words unicorns and uncool to be in the same sentence so there. Ha! More importantly, are there spirit animal rules? Can you be a unicorn one month and the next a hummingbird? 

So to answer my seriously important spirit animal questions I started looking around Google. What I've learned in five minutes.

1. If you're hipster, you're likely to have a spirit animal. (There is even a hipster spirit animal flow chart!)

2. There are about a million quizzes out there to find your spirit animal. 

3. Urban dictionary says its a representative of you or what you want to be.

And that's about the extent of Google's first page of search results. (What even exists on the second pages of Google searches? It remains a mystery to me.)

Oh well,. Nayyyy! Maybe I just wanted to use the unicorn picture.

OK stay with me here...

After my failed spirit animal Google quest, I started thinking about spirit animal origins and assumed (i.e. convinced myself with no actual evidence) they came from Native American stories...which made me think about the Chumash people who were natives to parts of coastal California and the story that someone recently reminded me of.

It's the story of the Rainbow Bridge.

The Earth Mother made a bridge out of rainbow so that the Chumash people could cross from the islands to the mainland and populate the world. It stretched from the tallest mountain on the island to the tallest mountain on the shore and the Earth Mother instructed the people to cross. But, being a rainbow, it was no modern day bridge. Some crossed safely but those who looked down became dizzy and fell into the water. To save them, the Earth Mother turned them into dolphins. Thus, dolphins are our brothers and sisters.

I think July will be my dolphin spirit animal month. I'm starting to feel like my pre-reincarnated self fell into the water.  

Full Moon, New Moon

It's the second day of winter here in the southern hemisphere and it's a full moon. Specifically, it's a full moon in Sagittarius. I'm feeling particularly feisty this full moon but at the same time peculiarly wistful. Honestly, one minute I feel like I could run a marathon and the next all I want to do is scroll through old high school photos. Maybe it's the fact that I'm so freakin' excited to see my sister that I haven't seen in 8 months this Saturday coming (!!!)  Maybe it's that I've greatly decreased the amount of sugar that's going in my gob. Whatever it is, something is making me full of energy and something is making me feel stuck because I can't go forward and reminisce at the same time. It's like running downhill looking over your shoulder and that sucks when you lose your footing because you end up falling on your face. And when I fall on my face, I really end up screwing it up. 

Anyway, I'm fired up with life right now but I've got a lot of crap I'm creating and hanging onto. This full moon is a great excuse to remind myself to let go. So, I'm going to release those things that come up that just aren't serving me anymore. Thoughts, ideas, beliefs, etc, they're all going to the wind!

What better time than to start a new month and new moon with an article titled 30 Things You Should Stop Putting Yourself Through? Or, if you're like me and 30 sounds like a few too many for one new start of letting go, here are 10 that I'm embracing.

1. Stop trying to be someone you're not. You're amazing. When you wake up tomorrow morning tell yourself that. You're freakin' awesome because there is no other you other than you. Also tell yourself you're magic, just for kicks. 

2. Stop lying to yourself. I'm going to spend less time trying to convince myself that my truths aren't true. Embrace myself.

3. Stop trying to hold onto the past. The past gets heavy if you carry it around all the time. It also gets costly if you put it in storage. With some things, give them to the wind, close your eyes and turn the other way.

4. Stop being scared to make a mistake. The paths of success are actually paved with failure. As Paulo Coelho says in The Alchemist, "The secret of life, though, its to fall seven times and to get up eight."

5. Stop trying to buy happiness. The things that truly satisfy us are always free. 

6. Stop looking to others for happiness. Happiness is a created inside. First create it, then give it. 

7. Stop thinking you're not ready. I know I'll never feel ready. I just have to keep reminding myself this. 

8. Stop being jealous of others. They're probably jealous of you anyways. What's the point of that?

9. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. Somehow the little things always turn out to be the big things. 

10. Stop being ungrateful. When you wake up tomorrow, after you tell yourself you're amazing and magic, ask what you can do for the world today because you're so lucky to be able to give. 

Smile. Let go. 

Want to read all 30?

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/30-things-you-should-stop-putting-yourself-through.html