Nelda's wisdom

I visit the Washington Park Senior Center every first Wednesday of the month during my lunch hour.  My hour is devoted to anything related to brain fitness.  We do not have a fixed agenda or any content that has to be covered.  It grows from our interaction and I lead by encouraging the interaction with an environment of friendliness and empathy.  I have grown to love my regular attendees and they love me back.

Nelda is my favorite attendee.  Tiny, twinkled eyed, and sharp - Nelda cautions me not to say that she is a bit older than me but than I am a bit younger than her.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I have become attached to her.

About five or six years ago, Nelda started to attend my mind aerobics sessions.  At the time, I would go there whenever convenient.  Nelda is the one who insisted that we should meet more often and since then I have been diligent about my first Wednesday visits to WPSC.  Seldom have I missed a visit and seldom has Nelda missed attending a session.

Last week, I told Nelda about my thoughts about what I wanted to recapture from my twenty five year old me and when I would like to carry forward to my eighty five year old me.  She encouraged me to journal my thoughts and advised me that these journal entries would help me in my journey forward.

Nelda, thank you for this wisdom.  I thank you; my twenty five year old me and my eighty five year old me thank you too!

Listen to Your Heart

LISTEN TO YOUR HEART

Do you want to listen to what you want in your heart?  Are you afraid that your head will not agree with your heart and that your heart will get disappointed?

Is this what tears you apart in those difficult moments?  Is this why you are afraid to listen to your feelings?  Feelings are the pathway to your heart.  If you block the road to your heart, nothing can reach your heart, and your heart becomes separate from your head.  The head starts ruling you and makes you forget about your heart.

Your focus turns to the thoughts in your head rather than listen to the longings in your heart.  How will you start listening to the longings in your heart once again?

Remove the blocks to your feelings and open a pathway to your heart and wants.  Remove the roadblocks. 

Do you know what you want?  When did you stop knowing what you want?  What did you cast yourself adrift?  When did you stop doing what you want?  When did you become a drifter in life? 

Take control of your life by learning to listen to your wants and act on your wants.  By doing what you want, you feel satisfied and complete.  If you just do, without purpose of satisfying a need, there is no satisfaction or closure.

You deserve to listen to the goodness in your heart.  Your goodness is real and your beauty is real.  You are good and deserve the love that your heart craves.

Get pulled into your heart and listen.  Listen well.  It has been a long while for you.  There is a lot to hear.  It will warm the cockles of your heart.  You have been cold and distant for too long.  Awaken the spirit in your heart.  Discover your longings and you will find that they are pure.  Feed the longings and you will emerge as a champion.

Rekindle some warmth in the cold cockles of your jaded heart.  And why is your heart tired or exhausted?  It is tired of trying to get your attention.  Pay attention to your heart.  Find the song and dance in your heart.  Share it with the world.  You are special and you should share your joy with the world.

CONNECT WITH YOUR HEART

Find out what you want and go for it.  Connect with your heart to find out what you want.  Your heart is special and needs attention.  You are special and need attention.  And you are a winner and will activate your success mechanism and achieve spectacular success.

An Experience worth remembering!

My New Year 2013 began with a spirit of adventure and service.  I traveled to Guatemala to participate in a project designed by Engineers without Borders (EWB) – UWM Chapter.  I spent a week in a small village called Visiban located in the Mayan region of the Cuchumatanes Mountains in Northwestern Guatemala.

The team consisted of two professional mentors and six UWM students.  Their project this time was to build a Spring Box.  Most springs in a mountainside do not have a steady or adequate flow rate. A Spring Box is a structure engineered to make optimum use of a natural spring.  It functions as a point of collection of water and also to protect the spring water from contamination. The EWB team had designed the Spring Box and they oversaw its construction by the local masons. 

The team also educated the local population about the importance of clean water and the need for good hygiene related to water.  The outreach involved relationship building with the village elders (la committee), speaking in Spanish, communal living in one room in a school house using sleeping bags, no electricity and usual amenities, and slippery terrain in the mountains at an altitude of 10,000 ft. where it rained often.  Temperatures were in the 40s at night and 60s during the day.

The Spring Box was successfully built and a steady flow of water was achieved from it.  The next phase is to build a Holding Tank and then to pump the water to the village at about 600 ft. above.  This is an unusual approach due to the lack of power infrastructure.  Most of the Distribution Tanks built by EWB in this area during the past five years use gravity fed water distribution.  In this village, there was no choice but to use a spring at a lower altitude and to pump the water up.  Here, EWB will need a significant amount of sponsorship to pump the water up to the village of Visiban.  A fund raising event will be held on Feb. 23, 2013 by silent auction beginning at 3:30pm in the Union Building at UWM.  For details, please contact me at Tel: 414-227-3121 or email me at mvedula@uwm.edu

Do it with interest

The concentration and the learning follow if you are interested.  You are willing to do the extra work to overcome the obstacles if you are interested.  Without interest, nothing happens.

Am I interested to write about this topic?  Or am I quickly bored with it?  Is there a story that I would like to share about it?  Or is it a whim and fancy to mention on my blog and preserve it here so that I do not forgot about it?  When will I read it again or act upon it?  If the answer is never to both those questions, then why bother preserving it here?  So many interesting blogs that I have written over the past few years and I have not revisited them.  Maybe I should cull my blogs to find some nuggets.  My nuggets are fragmented in these bursts of activity.  Why have I not consolidated them?  Do I lack the conviction to compile them into a collection of useful thoughts that will help others?

Well, at any rate, I am baring my soul on this topic with considerable interest (and frustration, I might add).  Wait, wait, it is not all bad.  In the sharing of my feelings, I feel authentic and liberated and the writing is continuing to flow.  This is a good thing.  I may be on to something here!  I am interested in my chagrin about my fragmented thoughts in my blogs.  It is clearly a self love of some perverted form. Self love nonetheless.  Thank you for this moment of chagrin and thank you for reading, if you are reading, I mean.

Flow of Creative Energy

Creative energy needs to blossom into reality without resistance.  It is an act of unconditional love and caring for our own thoughts.  We have to learn to honor our own thoughts and follow them without fear.

As I look toward the door of my room, I see the "I love Pi" apron that I bought at Discovery World last year.  For me it is a memory of my preparation for the United Nations World Water Day Milwaukee.  I had walked from Milwaukee Water Works to Discovery World to experience how it might be after the walk.

As I look at the window of the room, I see the circle/bubble print curtains that Usha and I purchased after careful shopping together.  After taking measurements, we went to several stores to find curtains for this room.  When we did buy them at JCPenney, we both had a pleasant discussion with the sales person and really enjoyed the decision making to buy this combination of curtains.  The print for the outer two and the transparent ones for the middle two.

As I look at my desk, I see my Crayola Washable Markers.  "The Power of Kindness" by Piero Ferruci, "The Creative Life" by S. Radhakrishnan, a plate reading "Wander down the pathway of your dreams", and an owl and a tortoise from Park Guell made with tiles that are the trademark of Gaudi's creation.

This is the room that I would like to think is the room that puts me in the Open Mode.  Each day it would be sufficient for me, as a practice to sit in this room and remember the process of how the contents of this room came to be.  This would in itself allow me to honor my thoughts and feel reenergized and ready for the challenges in my life.  This is the source of my creative energy.  This is my creativity pool that I can immerse myself into each morning and emerge soaked with creativity.