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Dalton Roberts
--My Sunday Journal

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MY SUNDAY JOURNAL
By Dalton Roberts
For IPSFeatures
4-14-02

LIVING THE GREAT THINGS

We all believe some great things. I love to meet a new person and get them to talking about the great things they believe in. Their eyes light up. Their energy brightens. Sometimes they become a new person, it seems.

You've touched their magic button. For the great things we believe are our magic buttons.

The thought keeps coming to me that we could have a great world if we would just all live out our great things. Nothing else. Just our great things.

Why is it so easy to talk about the great things we believe in and not live them out in some practical ways?

I have some potential answers but the real power of living is in asking ourselves the right questions. Once we answer something, we tend to drop it from our awareness. But if we hold a great question in mind, it keeps digging into our brain.

So I'm not going to try to provide a glib solution to why we don't live out the great things we believe. I'm going to suggest that we think about that question every day.  The truth is there is no one big fat reason we don't live out our greatness. There are many. And as long as we ask the question, we will keep seeing reasons. And one day we will break through and sprinkle some stardust all over the place.

POSSESSION

Peace Pilgrim said, "Anything you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you."

That means we are all possessed. Not necessarily demon-possessed but possessed by un-useful things. Which is worse? How are they different?

What's worse than reporting in to a job every day when you have ceased to feel you are doing something useful? What's worse than going home to a person when you know your relationship has ceased to be useful to either of you?

Question #1 is, "Is there anything I can do to make this situation more useful?" Question #2 is, "Do I have the heart and will to do it?" If not, question #3 is, "How do I find a kind and graceful way to move away from this un-useful situation and find a life with a touch of gusto?"

I liked that old Schlitz commercial about grabbing gusto. If we pass through our three score and ten without grabbing any gusto, we sure have wasted a good chance to live.