Quote for the Day

You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. 

–Christopher Columbus

A Quote for the Hard Times

Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.

Why I Love Working Where I Do

http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/15/myheritage-partners-with-familysearch-to-add-billions-of-historical-records-to-its-genealogy-database/


I work for MyHeritage and this is something major that just happened with our company. I hope you read and pass it on because this is huge! Family history is amazing and it just got a whole lot sweeter!

Life in Warp Speed

Okay, so I saw this picture on Facebook the other day and it has really made me consider what I have done with my life so far. If this is correct information, I would have been one when this movie was released so I am starting to see how fast time is moving.

Life doesn't wait for anyone. This is something we hear in different forms from different people at different times in our lives. Normally we hear this from those who are at more advanced stages in their life because these mature people have seen for themselves that his saying is absolutely true. It is interesting to look back on your life from time to time and see what you have accomplished or missed out on.

Time will always continue on and there is no way that we can make it slow down. Yes, if we had a time machine, time would be at our disposal but I don't think that this will be available to the public anytime soon. Seeing that we are unable to go back to fix things that we regret in our life, how are we to make it with the blotches that might be staining our character? How do we really "move on" from the past and become the "person we are meant to be"?

These questions have always bothered me and made me wonder why they are even asked in the first place. Yes, I will admit that I have groaned and moaned about my life from time to time and expressed my frustrations about why things happen the way that they do but I don't think that i am too unlike anyone else. The truth is that we are, in a sense, all the same. One can have that which they determine valuable in another if they will only work for it and yet we always are held back by something: ourselves.

We are our own worst enemy. Yeah, that quote is true too. We pick and pick again at the things that we really have control over that we see as sub-par and tend to obsess over those things that we have absolutely no control over. Why do we do it? Because we are our own worst enemy. The hardest person to ever prove something to in our lives is not the person on the outside looking in but the person who is on the inside looking out. Every morning, our reflection stares back at us. While we would like to change this and that about our body type, hair or facial features, we most often than not bash ourselves even though we haven't even made an attempt to change.

What holds us back from becoming who we really want to be? The fear of the crowd's opinion? The ominous thought of never being good enough to accomplish that which we endeavor to do whether it be love, a career or a hobby? Our answers may vary from a small change to a large scale but one thing is the same across the board. We don't have the faith in ourselves that things will ever become the reality that we perceive in our heads. We don't allow ourselves to search for the dream that we have in our hearts. This is what truly holds each of us back from being that which we are "meant to be".

In my mind, these are the reasons who time doesn't wait for anyone or why life waits for nobody. We spend so much time wishing for that which is at our fingertips. We are just afraid to reach out and grab it. We fear the unknown because we do not believe that we are able to become the person that we truly can be. Is all lost? No. Not yet. We all still have a choice whether to continue on with that which we have always done and put off what we desire until tomorrow or the day after or we can unchain ourselves from doubt and self pity, spread our wings and soar towards that future which we all yearn for.

Soar eagles, soar. Look back to learn, not to dwell. Look forward to progress, not just wish.

The Darkest Night

I was going through some of my things that I brought home from my mission and I found this poem that I had written. I was at a very low point of in regards to my spirit and happiness. It seemed like nothing was working out for my companion and me and I just didn't know what to do.

I hope this can help you in some way today or in the future.

Brightly beams the darkest night,
Catching all in its deceiving trap.
I pray to God to see me through,
To dry my tears, to pat my back.

Where am I to look for peace?
Under rocks or ocean deep?
Will I ever find my happy day?
Can it stay for me to keep?

When will these rain clouds fly away,
Or am I meant to always soak?
I feel so lonely and lost,
So tired, forgotten, broke.

Can I please rest from weight so large?
Please, just this once, let me sleep.
Give me chance to go and search,
For that heaven on earth, to which I'd keep.

Just give me a reason to keep moving on,
Through the night, the darkess and pain.
Teach me now, to keep my path straight.
Let me my happiness finally gain.

Give me now, a sun to light,
To drive out the darkness in my life.
So I can move to that bright day,
And leave this life of pain and strife.

I now close my eyes and try to sleep,
I want to finally float away,
From this night so black,
To leave at last, my darkest day.

Becoming an Adult

I got to thinking today about where I am in my life and what I'm going to have to be doing in the near future to make sure that I am going to "make it" in life. As I was pondering over this, I had a thought come to my head. I guess you could call it more of a quote and ever since I've thought about it, I've heard it a couple times which I guess could be a sign that I needed to write about it so it isn't just sitting in my head for weeks. The quote people sometimes say is, "You can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been."

Now the thought of growing up had always appealed to me as a kid but as I moved throughout the different stages of my life, my perspective began to change. I always wondered what it would be like to be successful in the things that I did and how I would one day have all my dreams come to life. I guess you could say that I was naïve or that I was living a fantasy but growing up has taught me things that I would have never learned if I didn't experience them for myself. Just to clarify on what I mean by this, I figured I would share one with you.

Friends will be friends as long as you are the type of friend that you think they want you to be.

Now this can be confusing to some (well, probably all since it is my confused mind trying to speak English) and so I might need to explain. What I mean is that when you are growing up, you aim to have friends that like/love you for "who you are". However, how can we expect to be ourselves when we are always trying to fit in. Yeah, we shouldn't all give into peer pressure and do disastrous things but to some extent, we become those that we surround ourselves with in particular ways.

I watched a some little kids playing in the street the other day and tossing a ball between the group of them. All was going well until one kid, who was clearly more athletic than the rest, stretched out and dove from the sidewalk to the lawn of a nearby yard in order to catch the ball. Seeing this unfold before them, you could see the others get huge smiles on their face and marvel at the stunt their friend has performed. Now it wasn't anything spectacular like the one hand catches that you might see on Sportscenter, in fact, the "leap" was probably less than a foot, but to these children, it was a death defying feat. Once the athlete dusted himself off, he threw the ball to another kid a couple yards away. This is where I began to see something interesting happen. The child who the ball was being thrown to also tried to stretch out and dive to get the ball only he was not as athletic as his friend and he was a good two or three feet further than his althetic friend was standing when he had also dove for the ball. This all resulted in the kid hitting the concrete of the sidewalk full force and missing the grass by a long shot. He got up crying and ran up the street to his house so his buddies couldn't see his shame any longer. Many would say that he was just being a boy and trying to out do his friends, but I saw this event in a different light. Did this child think of the consequences before he tried to copy his friend? No, small children rarely do. Did he intend to be hurt in the process? No, I don't think anyone does. So why would he jump? He was trying to be like his friend. He was trying to emulate something he branded as desirable.

What does this story have anything to do with adults? In a way, we also take leaps that we fully know that we aren't capable of making. Do they always turn out for the worse causing us to experience pain? Not always but there are times that that is exactly what happens. So why do we do things the way that we do?

I read a quote today that became my answer the more that I mulled it over in my head. The quote is:

"We never really grow up, we just learn how to act in public."

This is such a true statement to me. We don't ever really grow up. No matter what the age of a person may be. To some extent we still get upset and pout, get that feeling in the pit of our stomach when we know we've been caught in a lie, and we are always mesmerized when the dessert cart rolls up to our table at a restaurant. We still have people that we try to befriend and impress. We wouldn't spend the amount of money that we do on make-up, hair products and other cosmetic materials if we didn't. In reality, we are just like the children that we see in the neighborhoods around us. In a way, we will always ooo and ahh over John's new bike, we have just moved up to sports cars. We will always think that Sara's doll are better than ours, we have just graduated from action figures and dolls to boyfriend and girlfriends as well as husbands and wives. Instead of the biggest insult we could receive being "I'm not playing with you anymore", we gave moved onto more cruel and nasty remarks.

No matter what our age is, we still act the same as we did when we were kids. We just do things on a larger scale that we see to be more "grown up". In reality, we are never more grown up as the time passes, we just learn how to apply that which we learned when we were small a little bit more to our lives. 

A Better Look Into the Everyday

http://mybestdaysofar.tumblr.com

Second Chances

A second chance. We are always hearing that in the world around us.
"She decided to give him a second chance." 
"They decided to give the restaurant a second chance."
However, no matter how often we decide to give something a second chance, do we truly give it a chance?

No before you go on trying to correct me or say that I didn't type that right, I want you to think about it. Do we really give things a true chance to succeed or do we already have presumptions about how something will turn out? Personally, I have seen this subject go either way and in some cases, people can really lose a lot with deciding on a second chance. On the flip-side, I have never seen someone gain so much from a second chance.

One time we went to a popular restaurant for a family outing. As we walked in, we could just tell that it wasn't going to be the experience that we were hoping for but since we were there already, we decided to stick it out. After checking in at the hostess station and being told that it would be about a ten minute wait, we took our seats in the waiting area. Well, ten minutes came and went and still, we were sitting there. Twenty minutes, thirty minutes and then forty-five minutes passed and still no table even though there ones that we could see that had been vacant for ten minutes or more. Finally, after about an hour of waiting, we are seated and the server comes to take our drink order. Now, maybe she was having a bad day and had just broke up with a boyfriend or something but this girl was rude from the start. She was put out by any request that we had, acted like we were wasting her time and gave the message that we shouldn't try to even ask about certain dishes or we would become involved in a food fight of some sorts.

Finally, the food came and with the luck that we were having that night, it was completely wrong. Tomatoes were on the burgers that were just supposed to have meat and cheese or the meat wasn't cooked to the specifications ordered. Of course, we did what any other customer would have done and politely called our server over. Once explaining what had happened, it must have been the last straw because she went ballistic. She told us that she was right and took the order down correctly, that we were in the wrong for being so picky in the first place and then instructed us that we should just eat quietly and leave.

Now, after an experience like that, would you personally ever consider going back to that restaurant? Would even remotely think that you would ever spend money there again? What about second chances? If you did go back, would you be so consumed with how the staff treated you, how messed up your order was or how many minutes extra they made you wait until you could be seated? Or would you be willing to give them a genuine second chance, holding nothing in reserve about your previous encounters?

Eventually, we did go back to that restaurant and do you want to know what happened? As we approached the hostess station, we explained our previous experience at their establishment. To describe the look on her face would be equivalent to uttermost embarrassment. Not for anything that she had done personally but for the torturous time that we had been through in the past for the place that she was now working. After explaining, things just seemed to click. We were seated immediately, even with a large group. They cheerfully and dutifully pushed tables together and sat us in a prime spot of the floor. Two senior servers instantly came and recorded our orders and then proceeded to tend to our every whim. In a very timely manner, our food came flying out of the kitchen and within minutes of ordering, we were digging into our correct orders.

As the night went on, the general manager approached our table and offered his most sincere apologies for the events that had unfolded in the past. He even ended offering our whole meal on the house and then packing up dessert for us to return home with. He told us that if we ever have anything else that we would need in the future, he would make sure it was taken care of.

We have been back to that restaurant many times and plan to continue to go for a long time yet.

Now... Would we have ever known what change could have been made if we had never decided to give them a second chance? Would we know that they had changed all the parts that were negative to better serve their guests? Would we have known we would gain a great standing with the management and now consider them our friends? The answer is no. We would have continued on to be bitter about what had happened and never have gone back. If we had been back, we would have been sour the whole time and made the environment undesirable for ourselves, no matter how good the staff might have been. It would eat at us every time we saw any advertisement from them or seen their store as we drove past it.

Second chances are great but they are only great if they are true second chances. Nothing can be held in reserve. No preconceived notions can be brought into the setting.

Next time you find yourself with the choice of whether to give something or someone a second chance on something, decide whether you are going to have in your mind the outcome before they even begin or if you are truly going to see what happens and just go with it for the ride. Life is not about judging people and things based on what they have been in the past but by enabling them to become something great in the future.