Living in Peace and Harmony

While we have passed through the calendar year of 2020, we are still struggling with all of the challenges that it brought to us.

In this New Year, I want to let you all know, don't worry about doing your best. Do what you can.

Doing your best suggests that not achieving everything you know you are capable, means that you have failed or let your own part of the world down. Don't do that to yourself.

Last year, and what is continuing this year, is enough challenge for any of us to deal with. Don't drive yourself to the point of collapse, by constantly striving to do your best.

Do what you can. Make sure you eat. Make sure you take your meds. Make sure your children are safe and accounted for. Try to keep your rent and utilities paid so you can continue to have a soft, warm bed to sleep in.

Don't worry about anything else, unless you have the mental energy to spend on it. We will all get through this.
It's going to continue to being a mess, it isn't going to be easy, or pretty, but we will get through this.

Don't destroy your mental and emotional health to satisfy standards that we aren't going to able to reach this year.

This is most often heard as, "Be the change you wish to see." Here is the full quote.

Looking at our world today can be worrisome. We too, feel anxious about the disappearing wildlife and the climate crisis. But sometimes you just need to take a magnifying glass and walk into your yard. There is a whole universe right there. And making that 'little' universe hospitable for beneficial insects, birds and other small wildlife is easy: just stop using toxins, leave the leaves, and plant more native species. Let's start to restore our environment, one yard after the other. www.healthyyards.org

February 2020 challenge. Choose and read one important literary work. It can be one you remember enjoying from school, or one you have always meant to read. Some examples that I read last year:

I reread Brave New World for the first time since high school.
I read To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time.
I read The Grapes of Wrath, this one especially I took a great deal from, it was sad to see how little has changed about our culture in the 80 years since it was written.
I got halfway through a non fiction work, Man's Search For Meaning, the copy I bought says there are more than 12 million copies in print worldwide. It's written by a psychiatrist who was imprisoned in the N**i death camps and lived to tell. It's a candid writing about how the Jewish people found a way to survive the mental and emotional destruction by altering the way they viewed the world they were living in. I put it down one night half way through, and then started reading entertaining fiction because I was too mentally tired to be able to fully process his writing. I need to restart and read the whole thing this year.

A little humor for your Wednesday...Try not to howl...

Change doesn't happen overnight. Even the baby steps need to be celebrated.

https://www.businessinsider.com/levis-investing-in-h**p-as-a-cotton-alternative-2019-5?utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=topbar

Levi's found a way to make h**p feel like cotton, and it could have big implications for your wardrobe Levi's debuted a soft cotton-h**p blend, and its head of innovation expects to have 100% cottonized-h**p garments in five years.

2020 Week 3 challenge:

Commit to spending one night this week without using your cell phone, your computer, or your television.

Suggested alternate activities:

Read a book (or magazine)
Write (on paper or on your computer)
Draw (or color)
Create something
Paint
Work on a puzzle
Play a board or card game
Spend quality time with your family or friends (offline and with the TV off)
Spend time with your fur family
Make cookies (or bread, or pies)
Knit (or crochet)

Come back and comment to let us know how you reconnected with the analog world.