Versus - vs

Living Now vs. Living Tomorrow

We all say we are suppose to live everyday to the fullest, but do we actually walk the talk or just talk the talk.  From my observation of many lives of people around, including my own, we tend to live for tomorrow.  What is tomorrow?  Is tomorrow truly happiness?

I went to a beautiful 22 year old girl’s funeral yesterday.  She was such a smart, enthusiastic, loving, caring, friendly, fearless, inspirational girl who just graduated from Washington State University about two weeks ago. The loss of her precious life just made me think.  Think about life, about living, priorities, what's truly important and how fast life can be taken away.  Just in a blink of an eye, before she could even realize what was happening, the car rolled over due to a drunk and angry driver, who wouldn't let anyone else drive his car, and their went Tanya's life.  It happened within seconds and a precious life was gone.  Although I didn't know Tanya extremely well, I knew she was a girl who lived everyday without fear or regret.  In her honor, I would like to share with you her outlook on life.  I think she would want everyone to cherish every minute of everyday and live with happiness and joy to matter what happens.  None of us know when our time is up.  It could be tonight, tomorrow, a month from today or several decades from now.  Not only is our life with an expiration date, but so is everyone else around us.  This includes; husbands, wives, best friends, children, parents and the list continues.

Since we have no idea when our time is up, stop living tomorrow and start living today.  As we rise to become angels, our memories, experiences and love is what we can take with us.  It's also what people can remember us by.  In no means am I or would Tanya suggest for us to feel fear or live in sorrow.  Quite the opposite is true.  Live with happiness, love, inspiration and fulfillment by recognizing your dreams and goals.  Don't live to see the future.  Live to rejoice the everyday journey of you life.  The journey is where the memories are created.  During the journey is when you meet new people, reconnect with the old, share laughs and stories, enjoy the each others company, make memories and then retell them over and over again. 

Take a look at your life for a second.  Are you where you want to be?  Are you happy with your everyday self?  If you had a year to live, what would you change?  

The above questions are three questions that can help us determine if we are walking the talk or just talking the talk.  I have heard many people say, I live life to the fullest everyday.  From the same people, minutes late I have heard complain after complain come out of their mouth. Be honest with yourself.  We are the ones making our own decisions.  No one is here to judge us, but our own self when the time comes.

Here are few tips in order to start living today vs. living tomorrow.  From little that I knew Tanya, this is how I think she would have put it.

 

1. Be yourself, know yourself and love yourself. Don't compromise yourself for other people's acceptance.

2. Happiness is something that you create for yourself.  Make yourself happy first.  Without your happiness, you can't make anyone else happy. 

3. Determine your dreams, aspirations, desires, goals and stimulus.  Write them down and figure out a way to incorporate them into your everyday life.

4. Find some time to devote to your mind, soul and spirit while taking a deep dive into figuring out what fulfills your needs.

5. Keep a balanced life.  Everyday, make yourself happy.  Do something that you love. Do something that brings you joy and warmth to your heart. Nothing is good if it's over done.  Not even the good things. 

6. Cherish your moments.  Make every moment a moment of happiness.  Abandon the negative thoughts by remember that it can always be worse.  We are blessed to be living right now, right here.

7. Love with your heart.  Feeling of love can be pleasuring and devastating.   Both of them end with lessons learned and memories created.  Even a devastating love always has a good outcome.  Many times, we don't see that until much later down the road.

8. Think with your brain.  Life has many options and opportunities.  Some good and some bad.  Some of the options lead down the wrong path.  Think before making a decision and way the risk.  Why is it that when we can look back and understand the risks of our previous decisions?  Why is it at the time of the decision, the risk becomes transparent?

9. With the deep dive exercise, find your passions, get to know them and incorporate them into your daily life.  Life lived through passion is so much more gratifying.

10.  Don't hold back.  

 

If you think I missed something please let me know. 

Perfect Person vs. Good Person

Have you ever thought which one is better?  Is it better to be perfect or to be good?  Is it better to love a perfect person or to love a good person?  We always want to be perfect, meet the perfect man, have the perfect job but is that really better than good.

What is perfect?  Is it ultimately the best that can be achieved?  Is it even real? 

Perfect is defined as being complete of its kind without defect or blemish in the Princeton dictionary.

To me a perfect person represents someone who has the entire life figured out without any shortcomings and has no flaws in personal life, work life, personality traits and every other aspect that comes with being a human.  A perfect person makes no mistakes.  Never says or does the wrong thing.  In my mind, this person sees life as a beautiful experience with no negative thoughts.  Can a human be perfect or could it be called a robot?

On the other hand what is good?  Is something good, good enough?  I ask myself this question when I receive an “oh is everything okay” question after an answer to a “how are you” with “I am good”.  Why does it seem that “I am good” answer doesn’t translate to exactly what it is that I am saying?  To me, good sometimes doesn’t feel good enough.  Definition of good from Princeton dictionary is having desirable or positive qualities...  So what is a good person?

For me a good person is someone who has is desirable and has many positive qualities.  Most likely many characteristics are similar to a perfect person but with room for flaws and blemishes.  A good person is someone who makes mistakes on an occasion, but follows up to fix them.  It’s someone who is caring and considerate of others feelings but sometimes can experience a feeling of selfishness or jealousy without triggering any actions.   A good person in my mind knows his flaws and tries to avoid releasing them. 

Although, many of us see perfection as idealistic, I don’t think perfection is realistic or appealing.  Let me tell you why.  I think a perfect person is predictable.  It’s someone who doesn’t make mistakes and always does the right thing every time.   From my experience perfect is quite boring.  That means no mistakes, no hidden treasures, no surprises or lucky draws.  It also means life is pretty much all figured out.  Instead, I want mystery, spontaneous behavior, different levels of excitement, variety of experiences and just a fun person.  I heard someone say a quote which always struck me.  He said “a perfect person is the one that’s not perfect.”  

To conclude, I think we should all strive to be perfect, but not actually be it.  Work on being a better, nicer and a more considerate person.  Don’t figure everything out.  Leave a little for spontaneity.  Take risks when you can and hope to get lucky.  Try to do everything to the best of your ability, but leave room for error.  If mistakes are made, learn from it without punishing yourself.  In my mind, this is a perfect person.   I believe when someone reaches perfection that’s when they stop learning and living.  Work towards perfection, but be a good person while living. J

 

I would love to hear what you think.  Please comment. 

Owning one dog vs. Owning two dogs

What’s the difference when owning two dogs instead of one?  Which one is better? 

If you are considering bringing in a second dog into your family, let me give you my comparison, insight and thoughts. 

When my fiancé and I first bought our Yorkie named Sachi, we were both working from home with very flexible schedules.   It was a perfect time to bring in and train a little puppy who needed to use the bathroom every two to three hours.  While the training process was difficult, he still kept us entertained throughout the day.  The most amazing part about owning Sachi was his warmth and comfort towards us.  It’s truly a feeling of unconditional love without judgment, contingencies, rules or expectations.   

Sachi’s favorite daily activity was to bring us his toys and rub them against our legs until we gave him and played with him.  He usually got what he wanted.  It was so hard to say "no", especially to his cute puppy face.  After several months of Sachi begging for our attention, my fiancé and I started to feel more guilty as we dedicated less and less time to playing with Sachi.  If I rejected Sachi’s play request, he would either try to find someone else he could play with or just get sad and lay down in his bed. 

Dog’s happiness is not based on the same principles as of human's.   If I was to really narrow it down, Sachi’s happiness was based on two things:  1) love and attention for him; and 2) his play time.  If these two conditions were met, his was happy.   

As the months went on, we spend less time playing with Sachi.  Our playtime decreased from the whole day to just a few hours.  We like to go out several days out of the week to dinner, drinks, or clubs, and leaving Sachi at home all alone was even more painful for my fiancé and I.  As more feelings of guilt came upon us, I brought up the question of adding another dog to the family.  He was completely, 100% against the idea.  It wasn’t even an option.  As more months went by, an opportunity came by to adopt another Yorkie name Lucky.  Without hesitation, my fiancé had a change of heart and we took Lucky in a heartbeat.

Adding Lucky to our family was the best decision we could make.  And here is why.

We saw a sudden decrease in our need to play with Sachi, because Sachi and Lucky were entertaining themselves.   Even after a year and a half, he seems to be preoccupied with Lucky.  There are still times when he asks for our attention, but nowhere near the amount as before.  Sachi and Lucky have playtime virtually the whole day, everyday playing with each other.  If they want to run after each other, they can do that at a moment's notice.  Now, when Sachi or Lucky ask us to play and give them attention, we are more than happy to devote our time to them since it doesn’t consume the majority of our day. 

Pros

• No feeling of guilt when left alone
• Keep each other company
• Have playtime 24/7 as they feel needed
• Twice the love and comfort for you
• Twice the entertainment for you
• Same amount of time spent for walking one dog or two

Cons

• Twice the vet bills
• Twice the food and treats
• Twice the grooming
• Traveling with two dogs is more difficult

I did some research on how other dog owners felt about having two dogs over one.  The majority of the dog owners said they would never go back to owning one dog after experience having two.  The difference the owners stated was the amount of time the dogs dedicated to each other rather than the owner.  

If you are going to go through the trouble of having one dog, the increased trouble of having two isn’t much different.  The activities such as taking the dog to a park, the vet, grooming and feeding are the exactly the same, except for the bills.  If you can afford to pay double of everything and have enough space for a second dog, then the pros of having two dogs who keep each other company outweigh the cons of having to pay double.