'Should'

This is from an email I sent to a loved one August 4th, 2011:

'In life there is no 'should', should is an illusion, a collection of other peoples' thoughts and beliefs... ever heard the phrase 'it's your life' thats the key to the whole thing... the only thing to constantly remember every moment of everyday... only thing to do is what inspires you... what makes you feel good and alive and happy... what makes you want to wake up and what makes you feel like if it all ended in 24 hours you could say you liked how you lived... who you were... what you did... know... saw... experienced... its your life... live it how you want!'

Orion Nebula

Ever since I was a little girl I have had a deep facination for outer space. I love star gazing, and learning about the constilations and being able to map them out and recognize them by sight now. The stars are just so powerful, yet so peaceful, and deeply moving, completely captivating my inspiration and overall attention. I love that organizations like NASA exhist to bring us books and books of so much space information and photographs. my favorite things out there would have to be Nebulas or space clouds. I could just stare at the beautiful colourful pictures of them for hours.

Currently my favorite nebula out there is the Orion Nebula, perhaps mostly because I love purple so much, I find it to be so beautiful, up close and far away.

To me this is the stuff that art is made of, I mean just look at the energy and the movement, as well as the still and the calm, the fantasy, the awe! You just can not get this stuff here on earth. Out in space there is jsut so much of this vastness and wonder even more than we know or could yet graps, it just is infintily larger than our minds could ever truly understand.

This makes me think of a scene in the film Charlie Bartlett when a teenage boy tries to end his life with too many prescription pills and Charlie goes to visit him at home when he returns from the hospital and the dialog goes a little something like this:

'Charlie Bartlett: I just think you're missing the big picture.
Kip Crombwell: What big picture?
Charlie Bartlett: The universe.
Kip Crombwell: What about the universe?
Charlie Bartlett: Well, the universe is a pretty big place.
Kip Crombwell: Yea. It's infinite, theoretically.
Charlie Bartlett: Right, which means there's probably life on other planets.
Kip Crombwell: Not life like we think, but yeah. Probably at least single-cell organisms.
Charlie Bartlett: Well, see, that's my whole point. I mean you could've been born a single cell organism on the planet Zortex. In fact, given the odds, it's probably more likely, but you weren't. You we're born a human being. And not just any human being in the history of human beings, but a human being that gets to be alive today. That gets to listen to all kinds of music, that gets to eat food from every culture, that gets to download porn off the internet. So really, you have everything to live for. '

Sure it was a comedy teen flick, but the kid has a brilliant point. With the vastness of the universe and all the possiblities of life and atoms coming together or not coming together and electrons and neurons and everything that exhists, here we are, you, me, your mom, your boss, we are all human being alive here today, sure we feel pain or anger, frustration, feel alone and vulnerable and homicidal and suicidal (depending on the individual out there) but we shoud pause every once in a while and put things into perspective, we are here, alive today, a free thinking individual, we are human, so life as we know it is completely blessed! Charlie is correct, we DO have everything to live for.

So here it is the Universe:

 and looking a little closer those are not stars those are Galaxies, see:

Need a closer look?:

Now here is a galaxy by itself:

And even closer inside a galaxy:

Up above is the Milky Way, a branch of a Spiral Galaxy, aka the place in space where we live, see:

As we all know inside a small section of that large band of stars making up the Milky Way is our Solar System:

And then there is the small-ish planet we call home that has been named Earth:

And i dont know where you reside here on this globe:

but I myself am in North America:

In the small state of Washington:

In a small corner of the bottom called Vancouver:

So you see, we are a little out numbered in the Universe as a whole as far as we have been able to map out thus far, making us truly unique and very lucky! Be thankful to be here, be thankful for now, be thankful to be alive, be thankful to be human, and most of all be thankful to be YOU!

~Namaste,

Stephanie

Hospice

As you know from my previous blog I am  Yoga Instructor at Vamonos Studio in Vancouver, Washington, what I did not mention is that I also help Jennifer by working as a secretary at the front desk, because I love her so much, I find her to be a very inspiring woman and I love the idea of supporting her and her new business however I can to be a good friend. This is just some background before getting into my main point about Hospice. 

So while I was working the desk this morning one of Jenn's Zumba students was sharing with me about how she helps volunteer for a Hospice foundation here in Vancouver and how a while ago there was a questionnaire filled out at her center asking people their top regrets as they lie in wait on their death beds. She shared with me the top 5 most common responses and I found it to be so moving and inspirational that I had to come here and share it all today:

5. Not expressing themselves and their emotions enough or not having learned how.

4. Devoting too much time/thought/energy towards their jobs. (Then she further made the joke that its like the age old adage: people on their death beds never complain about not having worked enough.)

3. Losing touch with friends and loved ones over the years.

2. Living for others - living for the pleasure and comfort of others rather than living for themselves and their wishes and pleasures.

The VERY TOP main regret people shared on their death beds is : Not realizing soon enough that happiness is an active choice everyday!

And so I want you all to meditate on that and really let this simple words sink in : Happiness is a choice! and I encourage you all to work on practicing that for yourselves, because life is too short and too precious not to, so make it your own, after all it is your life!

~Namaste Everyone, Enjoy

Stephanie-