It was a trying year for Dre. I walked around for most of it feeling like I just got kicked in the gut. Mostly because I had been. But it wasn’t all bad. Some of the lessons, tricks and treats for me this year came in places I went, people I met, the dear souls who soldiered right along with me, and the feelings that delivered me. Here is my Life Lesson List for 2011:
1) Passion
2) Compassion
3) Abandonment
4) Stillness
5) New Friendship
I am so blessed to have made so many new friends this year…
6) Doctors, patients and patience
7) Solitude
8) San Francisco
9) The Dalai Lama
“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck” ~ Dalai Lama
10) Cancer
11) Chemotherapy
12) A Hero
13) Loss
14) Age
15) Sadness
16) Betrayal
17) Horrible Bosses
18) Death
19) A beautiful Russian
20) Agape- a spiritual community
21) The Artists Way and Vision Quest- A Creative Community
22) New York
I took this photo in April in Central Park…
23) Rumi
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“It’s good to leave each day behind,
Like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing.” ~ Rumi |
24) Lost Love
25) Movie: Midnight in Paris
Ernest Hemingway: No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.
Gertrude Stein: You have a clear and lovely voice. Don’t be such a defeatist.
26) Movie: Beginners
Oliver: You can’t be ugly. Except to people who don’t understand.
27) Movie: 50/50
Alan: You want a macaroon?
Adam: Oh, thanks I’m alright.
Alan: There’s weed in ‘em…
28) Allowing myself to cry… buckets!
29) Pema Chodron
“Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.” ~ Pema Chodron
I read her book “Taking the Leap” twice this year…
30) Self Discovery
31) Love
32) Art, writing and bravery
Julia Cameron’s book “The Artist’s Way” and Kelly Morgan’s Artist’s Way class in Los Angeles, was one of the greatest gifts I gave myself this year…
33) A poet and a couple Bloggers (you guys can fight over which one of you is the ninja)
34) Yelp Friends
35) Therapy
36) Runyon Canyon
37) Silverlake
38) Long Beach
39) Koreatown
40) Hollywood
My view. ”One always begins to forgive a place as soon as it’s left behind.” ~ Charles Dickens
41) Downtown LA
to live and die in L.A…
42) Steve Jobs
“Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me. Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful, that’s what matters to me.” ~Steve Jobs
43) Oprah (the finale season!)
“Nobody but you is responsible for your life. It doesn’t matter what your mama did; it doesn’t matter what your daddy didn’t do. You are responsible for your life. … You are responsible for the energy that you create for yourself, and you’re responsible for the energy that you bring to others.’Please take responsibility for the energy you bring into this space.’” ~Oprah on her last show
44) A lion
45) Adele 21
46) Family
I encourage you to make a list of people, places, words, and things that come to mind when you remember this year as it comes to an end. Then, and this is the hard part; Be Grateful. Be grateful for the joy and sorrow that came to you this year, for everything comes and goes in its own right time. The joys and the pains are always on time. Not when you’re ready, but when they will serve you best. Whatever challenge you faced this year is an expansion for your soul. It came to push you out and take you to the next stage of your unfolding. The worse it was, the deeper you are as a person. At least that’s what my therapist says. Now that you have been through that challenge, just trust that because of it, you now feel more, you empathize more; you can forgive and understand more readily. You aren’t weaker, you’re stronger. Experienced. You survived. As did I. So dear reader, be Grateful. And carry on…
I hope you had a beautiful year! I wish you an even better 2012.
Tell me what’s on your list! Give me 10! C’mon!
