FRIENDSHIP, LOVE, AND HOPE: MYTH OR REALITY?

 

A series of essays....

LIGHT BREAKS THROUGH FROM THE HEAVENS WHILE DRIVING
ON THE RING OF KERRY: CAHERDANIEL, COUNTY KERRY, IRELAND, 2018

....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

FRIENDSHIPS mean the world to us. Friends keep us feeling alive in so many ways. It's much more than knowing that they have our backs; it’s understanding why we will always have theirs. Friends keep us motivated and being the best that we can be....even though, some of our escapades show how naughty and fun-loving we actually are. This alone can make us feel tremendously alive. 

You can be yourself around your friends without a false face or pretext. Rather, showing genuine respect for each other with smiles, laughter, dreams, and memories thrown in for good measure. 

The best part about being a true friend is being there when your friend needs a helping hand; a listening ear. Perhaps a hug and shared tear or two denotes a unique understanding between you that nobody else is able to fully comprehend. Genuine warmth of words from the heart shared over the phone when you are living many miles apart can be like a full-blown hug to someone in need of your compassion and strength. 

My friends do mean the world to me. And, they know that I will always be there for them....in good times and in sad times, as well. 

Feel alive! Virtually hug a friend today and let them know how much you love them. I just did and, even though the tears do fall....we both truly know how important and comforting our friendship is to one another!

LOVE isn’t a word anyone of us should take lightly or for granted. Love is the gift of a strong feeling of affection and concern towards all fellow human beings. Love is about family, whether they are blood relatives or not. It is sharing a special affinity together due to respect for similar ideas and goals. Love is having a close friendship or relationship with others.

Having a strong sexual attraction towards someone often leads to physical expression of your love for them. To be swept off your feet by love and be able to bestow on one another the same strong affection and concern is a feeling to treasure for a lifetime.

The affectionate utterance of calling someone ‘a love’ is a term of endearment, sweet talk, and a sign of the tenderness and fondness you may have for them. Being human means we often display an intense and emotional attachment to something, as to a colorful, handmade quilt passed down from a cherished grandmother, or an adorable ‘fur baby’ (pet) who shares your domain and heart, as well. Think of a special place where you’d like to be at this very moment; a particular country, city, or favorite beach with sun-drenched sand tickling your toes as you stroll along the shoreline.

Love is feeling a devotion to something or someone whom you deem as a higher or greater part of yourself as God or a god. 

Buddhism, often known as a Path of Freedom, could equally be called the religion of love. One of the most rewarding spiritual practices is to cultivate the ability to bring love into all aspects of our life and to all the people we encounter. This entails learning how to include love’s presence while we speak to others, are in conflict with others, and are living with others. Often, this can be a daunting task, but, if achieved, the benefits of loving kindness are immeasurable.

HOPE, in reality, is another way of revealing how much trust and confidence you have in someone else and how this unshaken faith may be a determining factor in the positive aspect or outcome of your life. Hope is the longing or desire for something accompanied by the belief in the possibility of it successfully coming to pass. It is having faith in the possibilities of eventually achieving our dreams and desires for things we expect, long for, and aspire to. Hope is understanding that there is light at the end of the tunnel and soon, the light will, hopefully, shine down upon us.

Whether we believe it or not, hope is a part of everyone’s life. We all hope for something and it’s an inherent part of being human. It defines what we want in the future. Hope is part of the personal development regarding our lives that we all have running inside our heads on a constant basis. 

If you want something badly enough or deeply desire something to happen, you must have hope and faith in all of the factors that lead up to the final moment of truth. To have hope is to want an outcome that makes your life better in some way. Hope can not only help make a difficult scenario more tolerable, but it can improve our lives exponentially due to imagining a better future as it motivates us to take the direct steps to make it all happen.

A MOMENT OF ZEN 

Friendship, Love, and Hope are obtainable and available to everyone with an open heart and an open mind. If we have the freedom to choose the path we take in this lifetime and we incorporate friendship, love, and hope into this soul-searching itinerary, this trek will be our personal reality; our life fulfilling understanding of truth and faith in what is to come and what can and does shape our future. 

The only myth is that we do not have the freedom to follow our individual path filled with goodness, kindness, and an abundance of love. With free will and acceptance, we do!

The outcome of next week’s presidential election will determine whether or not we, as Americans, wish to improve our present lives by imagining a better future for everyone! If we strive to be the best that we can be, have a close and personal attachment to helping others obtain happiness, and truly want something badly enough, deeply enough, to make it happen—than a vote for the Biden/Harris ticket will help make it a reality. 

Let’s wipe-out the myth that the present administration consists of our friends who love us and hope to make our lives better. This idea could not be further from the truth, whether we choose to admit it or not. These past four years have more than proven this clear and present falsehood. Instead, let us adhere to the reality of a better outcome and a good life for all of the people.

PLEASE VOTE! Wear a mask when in public and take good care of yourselves and others.

Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

Photo Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved

MILESTONE BIRTHDAY, JOHN PRINE, AND WAKING PEOPLE UP TO REALITY

 A series of essays....

OUR ATTEMPT TO ORGANIZE A SLEEPING PEOPLE AROUND SPECIFIC GOALS.
YOU HAVE TO WAKE THE PEOPLE UP FIRST, THEN YOU'LL GET ACTION!!!

Photo courtesy EMPA

....as seen through my eyes!

By: Jacqueline E Hughes

A meme offered by a friend on Facebook this morning struck a nerve in me; one that has been tingling and sending some of us important messages since November 8, 2016. I say “some of us” because a vast majority of us among the left-wing persuasion had either acquired so much faith in the goodness of humanity during the Obama era or, were blinded by the fact that ‘laws’ written into our Nation’s Constitution, would never tolerate stupidity in any form and 45's sorry behind would be removed from the White House in record time. I was hoping that the vast majority of citizens and politicians would not take his actions for long and his hand-picked vice president would just have to do throughout the duration of this presidency. Pence would have to do until 2020 when we could legally make change happen. 

That never happened. The beast was allowed to exhale his rank smelling breath from sea to shining sea right alongside his equally sick and greedy friends in high places. 

Every. Single. Time. An individual or group prepared to mentally or physically challenge his early regime, his minions upheld his rank and status with nothing less than their own lives. Why? Money, status of their own, out of plain fear itself, or a combination of all three? Back then, I don’t think many of us had the exact answer. Hell, we were still in speculation mode! This could never happen to a country as great as ours; a nation built upon a collection of laws and strong principles and enough people who would certainly adhere to these laws through thick and thin, come hell or high water...

Sadly, a saying I first heard in college that has stuck with me all these years comes to mind: Good guys finish last. Or, if you don’t cheat the system, you will always lose the fight. I never knew how real and hurtful to so many the application of this saying would become in my lifetime. 

We knew, for the most part, what was in store for us right from the beginning. Did we wish to believe it? No. We chose to believe in the basic goodness of mankind. This man had been around doing his nastiness for many years. People who worked for him knew him well and even came out in 60 Minutes interviews to offer examples of his hate and acknowledged stupidity as a businessman and failure as a human being. A spoiled brat of a man whose daddy bailed him out of trouble but failed to give him love now sits among us, in the highest office, distributing his revenge upon the little people he has always despised and always feared of becoming himself one day.

But, he just happened to be media’s circus clown, too. His policies and antics guaranteed a good show and great television. The Native American people and friends giving-up their time and health to prevent an oil pipeline running down from Canada and bisecting their precious lands certainly knew. The false hope he offered to the coal miners and their families in a time when even he knew it was a lost cause but his pursuit of them could guarantee him future votes, have now opened-up their eyes enough to know the truth. 

Recalling his extreme ‘Executive Order’ phase beginning his first few days in office, “If people don’t like it, we’ve got to have a country folks. Got to have a country. Countries in which immigration will be suspended would include places like Syria and Libya. And we are going to stop the tens of thousands of people coming in from Syria.” All of this was under the guise of protecting our Nation from foreign terrorists entering into the United States. He knew then what it would take to stir the pot of hatred among his minions and place genuine fear in those of us who disagreed with him on one policy after another.

His total disdain for the well-being of human life in general and the manipulation of those who could and would carry-out his desires of what many of us entitled ‘early on dictatorship’ should have been more apparent and feared from the very beginning. After all, he gave every sign and indication of taking control of the country on his terms and in his time schedule. But, unfortunately, it was a sideshow the media could not give-up on and they followed him to the ends of the earth while verbalizing every phrase, showing each disgusting mannerism, and opening up about his genuine distaste for strong, intelligent women (which we already surmised through Hillary) and his personal experiences of physically abusing woman for his own entertainment.

The meme I alluded to in my beginning thoughts refers to the greatest mistake of ours as a law abiding, people loving nation:  Our greatest mistake has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you’ll get action! It's time to wake-up, go to the polls or write-in your votes in November, and vote him out for good!!  

PRINE IN 1975

JOHN PRINE -- A GENTLE MAN
WITH A HUGE HEART AND A KIND SOUL...

                                  Photos courtesy Tom Hill/Wireimage

As I sit here in my own home, isolated from my children, grandchildren, and friends, listening to songs written and performed by the great John Prine as a mid-April snow-shower blankets the world outside, I can’t imagine a more severe wake-up call than a global pandemic threatening and  taking so many lives. It’s invisible grip has us alone and lonely watching the chaos of thousands fighting for their last breath and wondering if we could be the next number that fattens the statistic column featured in bright red on the right side of most cable channel screens these days.

I can only ask what will it actually take to wake the people up first before we get the action required to shut this scourge on humanity, in the form of a man who could care less about his fellow humans, down for good? A man who not only has never offered comfort to the living members of families now mourning the death of loved ones, but who is actually responsible for their death in the first place by not handling the pandemic with speed and wisdom. Think about that for a moment. 

This man has touted the strength and power of a strong economy from day one. Ironically, he is now personally  responsible for our nation’s greatest economic demise since The Great Depression nearly one hundred years ago, lasting from October of 1929 to 1941! He either does not truly understand that by his actions, along with those of the Republican Party in all levels of government, or his lack of action to subdue this pandemic from its earliest stages, his complacency, lack of caring, and fear of losing his election this year, will always be remembered by his immortal words...”I don’t take any responsibility.” 

For now, I am finding solace in the lyrics of John’s songs that make me laugh, make me think, and make me wonder about my life as a young woman growing-up as a citizen of the Midwest, or the ‘Small Heartland,’ with its amber waves of grain blowing on a warm, summer breeze, taking long walks along the Lake Michigan shoreline holding hands with someone you care about, and living the uncomplicated (even though we didn’t agree at the time) life of a passionate youth hell-bent on becoming whomever they wished to be. 

Today, all I want is an opportunity to have my grandchildren enjoy the same freedoms we often took for granted back then.. Maintain the hope that their innocence is not stripped away from them too soon.. And, pray that they are more selective about the woman or man they vote for to lead and run our country in the future. I would do anything to take back the outcome of the Presidential election of 2016...for their sake, as well as for the thousands of martyrs who have died from complications of COVID-19, including all of the caregivers who have worked so hard to save their lives only to have lost their own in the process.

FRIENDS

I refer back to John, the falling snow, and one of my best friends celebrating her milestone birthday today. At this moment, I will have to find solace in that which I still can enjoy and have a small amount of control over. It will always be the little things that provide us with the happiness we  seek; even when one of those things happens to be helping to organize and ignite a fire under a sleeping people around specific goals. We have to wake-up and find our voices before our opportunity to do so is lost forever. Vote in November!

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay smart and we will get through all of this.

Copyright © 2020 by Jacqueline E Hughes

All rights reserved