The Water Speaks, I Try to Listen

When the going gets tough, the tough gets going. How tough am I? What would keep me going? Where am I going? When do tough times stop being tough?

All of us go through this stage at every point in our lives. I myself have gone to different ebbs and flows, and even if I've been there, I still find another low point sometimes unbearable. I still cry when I feel hopeless; doubtful when I feel time is going on forever; emotional when I feel God is nowhere.

Today, this is where I am. It has been this way for quite a long time. Does affirmation and positive thoughts do not anymore work? When will the water down under find its way on the surface so that everyone who drinks it taste the best of what stored energy can offer?

I am life. I am the living water living in the far away desert. I give comfort to thirsty travelers. I am refreshing. I am cool. I am pure. I am hidden.

Am I lost in my very own world? Has everything changed and become unfamiliar? Has my absence made you change your course and forget me? This is where you were some time ago. This is where I dipped my hands to gather and drink you. Where are you now, oh living water? I am tired from a long journey and the road still seems endless and rough. I am alone in the cold dark nights, and still alone in the scorching heat of the One Great Light.


I am Life. I am revealed to those who have the eyes to penetrate the unseen. I have not left you. I changed, yes, but only because you have changed also. You have come this far and I have come this far. When you progress, I also progress. When you fall, I also fall. When you rise after learning the lesson, I also rise and learned the lesson. We are one and you cannot be alone. Search and you will find me. Take away the cobwebs of doubts and fears, and you will see me.

I don't seem to hear you now. The whirling and splashing are gone. The more I hear your silence, the more I feel so sad.

I am now the Silence. You can only hear me through silence. I have been transformed into Serenity when you took the Great Journey in solitude. I admire your courage to go alone as the Great Journey can only be traversed alone.

Single Parenting - Revealing the Authority Figure

Growing up in an environment full of authority figures creates experiences that may put more harm than good things for the children. Ordering the children to do this and that, and don't do this and that is one example of how authority figures tend to manipulate the young minds.

Parents and all adults in the house who think that they are more knowledgeable and more experienced than the children are providing argument that is rapidly becoming obsolete. Age and education do not always provide the best measurement to gauge one's intelligence and wisdom. As more and more intelligent if not fully gifted children are born every day, grown-ups are often lost for the best reason to stop whatever "unlikely thing" a child is doing. Of course, an unlikely thing for an adult is usually the best thing for a child.

Many parents would like to see their children excel in school. In their excitement to raise highly intelligent children, they choose the best and often expensive school, hire tutors or exert additional time teaching their children. They do everything to be proud of their children.

However, most parents only think of intelligence in the academic sense. Marks and grades have become their way of measuring the children's development. If they are not performing according to the standards of the parents (which are usually the standards of the school and the teachers), the children receive unkindly remarks or even punishment. The children are compared openly with siblings, relatives or other children. If the other child is performing well than the other, the latter receive more scolding. Parents usually defend their arguments by saying they are only after the good of their children.

The negative words parents say to their children only belittle them and make them feel inferior. Growing up, they would find it difficult to build themselves and trust people, try new things and face challenges of the ever changing world. Any loving parent would not want this.

If the child is not performing well in school, there is definitely something that a responsible loving parent should try to know about the child. The child maybe experiencing trauma from school or from the immediate environment; feeling some pain or any form of sickness; having more fun with non-academic activities such as sports; or maybe too active to withstand formal schooling. Whatever the reason is, the parent has to understand and support the child in whatever way possible. Some tips on this will be shared in the next article.

Single Parenting - The First Lesson on Acceptance

As the number of broken marriages and pregnancies out of wed lock increases, the number of single parents also increases. At first, these events seem to prove how life can be so unfair. While the separation hurts both the couple, one would claim more pain than the other. The self-thought pain then produces hatred that directly or indirectly reverberates to the children. The extent of psychological impact to the parent is passed to the children who are so fragile and easily absorbs whatever their environment presents them. If anger, anxiety and fear would not be transformed positively, the children suffer the consequences until they themselves learn to take charge of their lives. The parent, who is supposed to be guiding the children, also suffers unless he or she looks at life and its circumstances positively.

Everyday, we are confronted with several circumstances and choices. Sometimes, the things that we choose offer excitement and very temporary happiness that we forget these things have consequences we would have to deal in the immediate or distant future. Let us take for example the sexual relationship we choose. Many unwanted and unplanned pregnancies have been the result of this type of relationship. While the freedom to engage in sex would initially send thrill to the partners, the new life produced out of this union would suddenly change the initial excitement to anxieties.

The same is true with marital relationship. Once the honeymoon stage is over, couple wakes up with a lot of complains, financial worries, attitude problem and incompatibility, and a lot more issues. The situation becomes unbearable until one initiates to leave. Each of these break ups produces single parent that decides to choose the responsibility and challenge of rearing the innocent children.

Accepting Things as They Are

All things do not last. Happiness ends to welcome grief; but sadness does end, too, to welcome new form of joy. This is one important universal law that all of us must master. When a door closes, several new doors open and present unlimited windows of new and better opportunities. All the pains that we experience carry with it a seed of greater happiness and blessings in disguise. By focusing on happiness instead of the pain, the latter quickly disappears and gives birth to the desired happiness. The sufferings we experience are prolonged because we choose to delve on it by thinking so much of it. To accept things as they are in the fastest way possible results to a calm state of mind that allows us to make better decisions and timely grabs the passing opportunities and circumstances in life.

Enjoy life in its fullest. There is only the PRESENT MOMENT to experience it.