YOU ARE HERE.

When I was little I was fascinated with the maps that Six Flags and Malls displayed behind glass that had big arrows saying "YOU ARE HERE!" In some ways I guess it was comforting to be able to tell where I was fitting in on the broad canvas representing a location that was large enough to get lost in.

In my adulthood, or later adulthood, I still like to have those moments when I realize, "I am here!" I have many different things that can do that for me that I would call my "go to" touchtones. Things that get me out of my head and off the hamster wheel of thought can let me restart an entire day as far as I how I feel. I can interact with my dog and it brings me back to center. It is completely my choice if I let the chatter start back up afterwards. Sometimes it doesn't stick on the first try. I have read that some people will smell their kids heads to bring themselves into reality and let them stop fighting the monsters of fear, guilt or anger in their heads. The catch is you have to be willing to make the switch.

I read a figure this morning that the average human life has 25,000 mornings. That is 25,000 chances to start all over again if we can let yesterday be yesterday and tomorrow be tomorrow.

I really want that! I'm made some progress but there are still things that pop into my head to feel remorse or contempt over. A great piece of powerful advice I was given once is, " Clinton, your are not responsible for the thoughts that pop into your head, but you don't have to pour them a drink and entertain them".

One of the hardest things I have had to learn is to become an observer of what chatter is being broadcast in my head. The second hardest thing for me to learn is how to stop them or jump tracks so I don't give all my energy to them.

A thought has measureable energy. Anything I spend time "thinking" about I am providing the thing real live detectible energy. My doc likes what Oprah said about this phenomenon, "What you focus on expands". So if I focus on fearful things they get bigger, if I focus on anger, it enlarges til it consumes me. I am also pulling into my life things that reflect what I focus on.

The very cool numbers on a human life I found this morning we.

We live an average of 657,000 thousand hours.

We have 25,000 mornings to wake up.

155,000 people die on an average day in the world.

Normally, I don't pay attention to stats or numbers. Maybe if they were sequinned or colored I would care more, but either way you look at the first two sets of numbers, I am half way done.

I really am focusing on what experience I would like to have in my remaining roughly 14,000 hours. The one thing I am deadly sure of is I don't want to spend those hours feeling guilty of stuff that happened so long ago that I am the only one who even remembers it and I don't want to live my life collecting resentment and nursing contempt or anger. I want to live this portion freely and compassionately.

When the day comes to exit to wherever, I just want to know that I have fully researched how great it is to be a human on the blue planet, embracing the spectrum of all the pain and the bliss.