Trying for Thursday

 

"Indulgence in resentment and vengeance will only further increase miseries to oneself and others in this life and in lives to come." Dalai Lama

"To me there is no difference whether president, beggar, or king." Dalai Lama

"Cut down the whole forest of desire, not just one tree only." The Dhammapada

"We have one common goal, and that is the perfection of the human soul, the god within us." Swami Vivekananda

Some powerful quotes today to get us thinking. I have been offline for a couple days while my brother tried to get the new computer working. Unfortunately he can't get power to the motherboard no matter how hard he tried. He replaced the power pack and did everything he could but we can't get enough power to the motherboard to get it up and running. Then AOL has been down. I could not get on yesterday at all but we were having a severe thunderstorm. Today AOL is dropping the connection. Sigh.

The good news is that we were able to find an external DVD drive for the old computer and we can download the goodies that he brought. I will finally have different people, cats, dogs, horses and dragons to work with plus the latest version of Bryce. He also brought one of my favorite games and its two follow-ups Myst, Riven and Myst III Exile. So good old Marvin will keep chugging along although we are pushing him to capacity. If I didn't know better I would think that this computer jinxed the other because he doesn't want me using another one. Hmmm, I hope he isn't turning into Marvin the depressed robot from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy instead of Marvin the Martian whom he was named for. ;-)

I am taking a couple of days off from work and hopefully before I get my brother to the airport tomorrow afternoon we can get everything up and running on this computer. I am disappointed that the other one won't work but I may take it over to our computer place and see if they can figure out what is wrong or we may ship it back to Eric and he will replace the motherboard and then ship it back. But I still have my old computer and I can still do my work so I can't really complain. Yes it would be nice to have more processing power and speed but I can live with what I have.

The quotes today however bring me back to earth and what is really important. While material goods are nice it isn't what motivates me. It is what is inside of me that counts. The Dalai Lama reminds me that we are all one people no matter what our position is in life. We can be rich or poor, famous or common people but we are still a member of the human race. We all need to wrestle with our own demons and try and conquer them. We need to learn to show respect for all life and all people if there is to be peace in our lives and in this world.

At the end of the day I am still me. I strive to be the best me that I can be. My immediate goal is taking care of Mom with whatever time she has left. I need to do the best I can at my job in spite of the frustrations we face. I have art work that I still want to do. I still want to get my book published. I still have a future to plan.

I am finding that I am achieving more peace inside of me. A few years ago I would have been raging inside that the new computer isn't working. Now I am thankful that I still have this computer. Maybe I am finally become mature. The picture is called By Dawn's Early Light 2. It is a reminder to me that things don't always last. I had to redo the picture because a computer crash wiped out the large version of the original and I had to recreate it.

The real counter is 5655