Prolific Living

life

Someday I Will Go Back to Iran

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Going back to Iran

Someday I will go back to Iran. It will be summertime so the roses will be in full bloom, the air will be full of optimism, tinged with a trace of nostalgia, and the warm Tehran sun can quickly dry my tears to save my lush eye makeup, just in case.

My life revolves around a sense of urgency today. It is a reality I have created for myself and would not trade for the world. Yet I accept that some dreams cannot afford the luxury of immediacy in this life. They cannot happen just yet. The right stars have to align and the right circumstances have to emerge first.

The time for some dreams has not yet come.

Hence the word: someday.

Someday, I will go back to Iran. [Read more…] about Someday I Will Go Back to Iran

Taking Back the Reins: Guilty Feeling Begone

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Maui blue waters jet skiing in Lahaina

What Guilty Feeling?

The guilty feeling is the uneasy, unsettling, not-good-enough feeling at the pit of our stomach when we fall short of delivering on all the promises that we made to ourselves — never mind that we made far too many unrealistic ones to begin with.

Guilt, the type which follows no crime, no offense, no misdeed and no wrongdoing – unlike Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment — and yet it survives with disturbingly large influence in many of us. Guilt, the kind that serves no purpose and has no good reason to exist. Guilt, the heavy burden we choose to carry about things we thought we would and should do at a particular instant in time but we fell short instead. Never mind how much we accomplished instead.

The remorse for what was left undone over the appreciation and joy of what was beautifully done. [Read more…] about Taking Back the Reins: Guilty Feeling Begone

2010 Year-End Review in Relevance to You

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Splashing water in Las Vegas

So it is December again, another year bidding us a swift goodbye when we are just starting to like the sound of it. Ready or not, like it or not, in the cold of the night (except for you lucky souls on an island or in the southern hemisphere), we switch over to a new year. Every year, I would hold a ritual not uncommon to a million others; I would write down (with a pen on paper in a notebook, remember those?) my year-long deep reflections and promises of command performance for the new year.

This year is different, a massively better kind of different. [Read more…] about 2010 Year-End Review in Relevance to You

A Manifesto for Meditation

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Meditation in BaliToo many mornings, I chose email over mediation, I chose twitter time over introspection time. Too many nights, I collapsed into deep sleep without taking a moment to quiet the mind and reflect on the day. Too many days in 2010, I chose impulsively rather than consciously. The heart longed to make meditation a ritual, a habit, a permanent part of daily life and yet, the body and the stubborn mind won the negotiation game far too often. I love doing – prolific living is the essence of a productive, rich, and creative life. But doing does not complete us without the being. [Read more…] about A Manifesto for Meditation

Top 65 Quotes on Making the Choice about Children

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Thank you to my readers

The incredible response to my last post has seriously thrown off my focus and made it nearly impossible to move on. I have written and re-written several drafts of fresh new posts – highlights from travels to Switzerland and Berlin, visits to authentic tea shops and seeing the breath-taking 3000-year old Nefertiti bust – only to set every draft aside unfinished. I took the weekend off and spent it in Seattle to refresh my thoughts and clear my mind, to absolutely no avail! It has taken all my emotional energy to consume and respond in kind to the out pour of my reader feedback on a subject that no doubt struck a chord with more than a few of us.

I haven’t the words to thank you for sharing your stories, offering your insights, asking me the tough questions and leaving the choice with resounding confidence in my hands.

The only thing that felt right following 40,000 plus words of conversation in 206 comments was to follow with a thank you. [Read more…] about Top 65 Quotes on Making the Choice about Children