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Category Archives: Purpose

Going Back to School…

28 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Cheryl Ries in aging, Attitude, Change, Choices, Growing, Lessons, Life, Maturity, Peace, Purpose, Wisdom

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Back to School, Maturity, Wisdom

Going back to school is really just waking up every day to face life! We never stop learning! All of our lives we must face the fact that we’re always students. We might wish we had moved past that when we left our late teens or early twenties, but in truth, we’re always students having to learn something, taking tests, studying, and moving on. It never ends, this relationship of ours as students in life! It is ongoing, through all facets, stages, and conditions in which we exist. We never stop learning, even when we are adamantly opposed to the notion, or reject the idea outright! If only we could learn to embrace the role, perhaps the role itself would help bring direction to our lives and some peace to our minds.  

During our childhood, we endured years of mandatory schooling, whereby we had to meet certain standards necessary for us to move forward into new pursuits and educational challenges. There wasn’t a way to evade that part of our journey, especially during my generation. Public schools were the norm, and standards were created nationally as well as by each state to keep all students aligned with the pursuit of obtaining certain educational goals. There were standards required in every subject, for every grade level, and for every type of school. The only way we could get to higher grades and levels of achievement in those grades was by accomplishing each grade’s standards before moving on to the next. In my generation, the late baby boomers, there weren’t many opportunities to bypass public school, unless our parents could afford to send us to private schools. There weren’t many home-schooled children that I knew of, and there were no online schools or diploma alternative tests. We were either students, at least from kindergarten through the end of high school, or we were drop-outs. 

Having no real choice in the matter, as education seemed essential and mandatory, I then went into each new grade with a sense that it was necessary for my future and inevitable for my progress! Being a student was the role I was in from the age of five through seventeen. I went from grade school to middle school and then high school. The first period of choice I had after those twelve years of not dropping out was going to college when I was seventeen. I chose to go. It wasn’t until sometime in my mid-twenties that I realized the whole student/learning process I had celebrated when it had finally concluded in my early twenties actually hadn’t ended at all! It was still ongoing and never ends until the day we die!    

Every day we are learning, going through some lesson, facing some test(s), and determining through such profound moments whether or not we progress onward in our lives! Our role as students in life never ceases, as we are always moving into new circumstances, developing other skills, becoming more adept, learning something new, changing our minds, and growing in wisdom. Each new day we should wake up preparing for that day’s classroom called life! Every day we are really still just students going back to school, but in a classroom without walls, our teachers coming and going with their unique lessons, and our homework found in attitudinal shifts, mental challenges, and quizzical mysteries. We are in one long grade from the time we leave our formal educational confines, the role of actual student, and officially graduate into life. It’s called the process of maturing, and it takes all of our lives to do well! It also takes accepting that we’re never done being a student of something, today, tomorrow, and the next. Each day we must face our lessons, tests, and hope for promotion onward to the next day’s subjects, lessons, tests, and so on. 

Tomorrow when you awaken, the bell will be ringing…school has begun! 

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Maturing is What Our Souls Do…

10 Saturday Feb 2018

Posted by Cheryl Ries in aging, Attitude, Choices, Fear, Growing, Lessons, Life, Maturity, Persistence, Purpose, Strength, Trials, Wisdom

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Maturity, Strength, Wisdom

Growing up is what our bodies do, maturing is what our souls do. When life comes at us rapidly and we don’t know how to handle what we are experiencing, it’s just life’s way of letting us know we aren’t as mature as we could be or need to be! We need to do more to prepare ourselves to deal and cope with the future challenges ahead.  

Don’t cheat yourself out of the necessary experiences which propel you to maturity by evading them or escaping from your share of responsibility for them! All of that in life which you might experience which is really difficult, painful, or frightening, cannot destroy you unless you let it. In the face of everything which feels uncomfortable and at times disturbing, you must hunker down, find your strength, persevere through, and eventually overcome! 

That is our challenge throughout life, to resolve our own dilemmas, to face our fears, to cope with our emotions, and to learn through experience the wisdom necessary to move onward even through the most difficult, life-altering, or perplexing matters. At the end of our road, with such purposeful focus, we’re sure to be as noticeably mature within as we are visibly grown on the outside!

Hope Is the Beating Heart . .

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Attitude, Choices, Contentment, Faith, God, Hope, Joy, Peace, Purpose

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Contentment, Hope, Joy, Peace of Mind

Something sorely lacking from our society today is hope. Hope, the promise of something more than this life, something better tomorrow than today, is the fulfillment of God’s Word as truth. Hope is the beating heart which refuses to quit when every single impulse screams otherwise! Hope is looking through, beyond, and with your heart filled with promise because there is actually more than this, more than this one moment of pain, discomfort, failure, loss, and brokenness. Hope leads us each new day with faith into all the unknowns, beyond all our negativity, past our own emotions, and through all that seems to weaken our will. Hope. Hope in something more than this! Never cease in hoping, regardless those “realists” who insist that being hopeful is a weak man’s game played with no prize or victory in the end! There is always a reason to hope, and in spite of those intellectuals who insist otherwise, hope compels us to live with more joy, peace of mind, and contentment within. Hope is a reward in and of itself! A hopeful attitude keeps us afloat when others around us are drowning in uncertainty, despair, worry, or other temporary states of being! Hope within keeps us from letting our current emotions color our life for all time!

 

Sure, someone reading this may speak to the triteness of these expressions and adages regarding hope. They may have their own personal experiences to prove me wrong! They may have tried consistently to be hopeful, yet things never reversed or turned out otherwise! Perhaps they just let the world and their temporary circumstances define their lives in total. Letting others in this world, or even the present state of the world as you perceive it, dictate your emotions is like giving the keys to your home and car to another for safe keeping! Your emotions are in your control, they’re not contingent upon the actions, words, beliefs, or even emotions of others. Sure we may empathize or sympathize with others, we may share in many emotions such as joy. But we are the only ones who decide whether or not we are joyful, peaceful, content and hopeful about our lives now and in whatever time we face ahead! Hope is our choice to believe that this life is purposeful, meaningful, and even with momentary hardships, failures, or despair, that this life is worth living!  

A lot of what our lives become is in our will and hands to decide! Our emotions surely are, even if circumstances, events, and the state of the world overall are not. We could just go with the flow, allowing our lives to become purely reactionary in response, rather than purposefully choosing to be hopeful in spite of whatever happens to us or around us! Hope is God’s promises for our lives realized in our faithful perseverance through everything, knowing that we are ultimately here for His purposes! Things are not promised to us, our lives will not always be pain-free, happy-go-lucky, or even seen constantly through rose-colored lenses! Life happens, our duty is to learn, develop, change, grow, choose, and to move forward with hope. That is our chosen role. Hope for our own lives is not something we should leave to others who have their own lives to live. Hope is not a far-fetched concept only the lucky can master! Hope is merely a choice we make every single day to not just exist in our current state of being, but rather to look forward, through, beyond, and into the future with joyful expectancy as well as contented faith in God’s plans for us! Hope promises us that this is not all there is. Hope assures us that today’s events and our present emotions are not the sole markers of our lives overall. Hope affirms to us that life is uncertain, but the choice is always ours to be content, to stay peaceful, to stay joyful within, to feel what emotions we must for a time but then to heal and move forward. We owe it to ourselves to keep hope ever-present within, as it provides the comfort, compass, and blanket of rest over everything we experience and feel! 

Time to Flex My Creativity Muscles . .

02 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by Cheryl Ries in Change, Creativity, Gardening, Happiness, Inspiration, Opportunity, Outdoors, Purpose, Surprise, Uncategorized

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Creativity, Gardening, Imagination, Re-purposing, Salvage

I’m going to take on a little bit of salvage and repurposing, it’s time to flex my creativity muscles! It’s not something I get to do every day, but I feel prompted to try after the completion of a household project! After having a tune-up and refresh of the outdoor, in-ground pool, I have a used fiberglass filter pod leftover. Now, it’s not an item of beauty, to say the least! It’s big, beige, round, with points of entry for various tubes and a piece removed on top where my pool man gained access to remove the sand which was held inside. To replace the filter with a new one means that a whole new pod has been located in the very spot this one sat, filled with clean, new sand and ready to begin a renewed phase of pool usage. So, with the old sizeable pod sitting there staring at me, I felt compelled to be creative and to discover a new use for it! Rather than seeing it find a home in some landfill, there must be a way to make this lackluster gizmo shine with reuse!  

It’s not the first thing I’ve nurtured into a new life. Last year, I took on the remodel of an antique wheelchair which was rusty, partially disassembled and rather ugly. It was purchased at a flea market years ago, almost forgotten, it sat in my outdoor shed for years. Now its wood seat, back, and arms gleam with coats of protective spar varnish, a cushion sits upon the seat for comfort. It’s useful in a new way, fortunately not as it was originally intended! After all, I would much rather not need a wheelchair anytime soon! It will never be perfect, but for my taste, it’s a charmer as an extra seat!

And so, I endeavor upon the repurposing of this strange pod-shaped thing. It’s not heavy, so I’ve moved it safely to another area of the yard until I figure out what it’s meant to be. It might be a water feature, as I can imagine all sorts of plumbing opportunities, given the natural openings it already has. Or it might become a planter of sorts, as it surely is a container of sizeable proportions. I might turn it into part of my edible garden next year, perhaps tomatoes or melons will find it a delightful growing space! Needless to say, it’s going to be reused. I just have that itch within to turn it into something unique! I’m pretty sure whatever I do, no one else will have the exact same “whatever”! 

That’s the fun of gardening and outdoor spaces for me! I’m not one of those people who want everything to be perfect and just so, as I realize life and all living things are never perfect. It’s the imperfections and the individuality of each person’s personal patch of nature that makes it special! In this domain of mine, I can paint a landscape of color, texture, and beauty all my own! And this pod will soon find a home among the plants and other elements which make up my landscape. I look forward to the dreaming, designing, planning, and implementation! It’s all part of the fun of creating!

 

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Cheryl Ries-Author & Model

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