Love - the reality of realities

“Love is, without a doubt, the basis of everything. Not some abstract, hard-to-fathom kind of love but the day-to-day kind that everyone knows-the kind of love we feel when we look at our spouse and our children, or even our animals. In its purest and most powerful form, this love is not jealous or selfish, but unconditional. This is the reality of realities, the incomprehensibly glorious truth of truths that lives and breathes at the core of everything that exists or will ever exist, and no remotely accurate understanding of who and what we are can be achieved by anyone who does not know it, and embody it in all of their actions.” ― Eben Alexander, Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife

Advancing age in all its glory

Is age a bane or a benefit?

reblogged from Crumbs of Comfort

"Old age is no place for sissies," moaned actress Bette Davis. George Bernard Shaw agreed. "Youth is a wonderful thing," he said. "What a crime to waste it on children." But according to a story in today's Wall Street Journal, many studies have found that how we think about age determines how we feel. Thinking in terms of decline and disability impacts our health. We feel better if we see age in terms of opportunity and growth. According to Yale researcher Becca Levy, we have the ability to overcome and resist negative stereotypes and "compensate for the ill effects of automatic ageism." If you still think age is gloom and doom, meet 100-year-old Felimina Rotundo of Buffalo, NY.

She's causing a problem for her son Gary. "I'm 74," he says with a laugh, "and I can't retire 'cause she's still working! She's sharper than me, no question about it." Felimina isn't just working part-time either. She works six days a week, 11 hours a day, at the College Laundry Shoppe on Maine St. in Buffalo. She drives, and handles all the operations at the laundromat. She attributes her longevity to her hardworking nature, claiming it gives her "a reason to always wake up in the morning and a reason to always hustle." She feels 75 is a good age for most folks to retire, if they have health issues, but she hasn't considered it yet. Maybe baseball star Satchel Paige was right when he said age is a case of mind over matter. "If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."

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See the Daily Mail's video of her in action below:

About those bad things that almost happened

Crisis averted

We've all done it, thought it, or said it.

"I almost fell."

"Be more careful. You almost dropped that!"

"We almost crashed! We could've been killed!"

Life seems chock full of 'almosts,' and we're pretty vocal about the hazards and potentially awful outcomes of things that didn't happen. But what good does it do to harp on about the bad that could've occurred when, ultimately, it didn't?!

Frankly, it's like being 'almost' pregnant. Either you are, or you're not. There's no being 'sort of' pregnant.

So instead of complaining about all of the things that almost went wrong, perhaps we can all spend a little more time being grateful for what didn't go wrong ... along with the thousand things that went right. ❤