WE MUST Cultivate the GARDEN!

“Cultivate Peace,” © Frau Kolb 2013

I often find myself thinking of this line “WE must cultivate our Garden,” Voltaire’s Candide’s verdict, at the end of the skinny little, up and down, adventure-novella.

My understanding of the quote is that WE can and must actively create the living vision of PEACE and ABUNDANCE we yearn for in some by-gone golden age or futuristic utopia.   Few of us live in daily bliss of our own construction.  Yet, I insist that it is possible to be HAPPY with LIFE most of the time.

YES! Friends!  It is true.  You can be HAPPY!  YES!  YOU!!!!

 The key: apply “The Vacation Approach.”  Yes.  NOW.  “What?” “HOW?”

YOU ask.

Here is the abridged version: 1. Appreciate that every obstacle is a miracle waiting to unfold.  2. Laugh.  Seriously.  NOW, practice laughing every day, make time for laughter.  Prioritize it.  SO: Hah!  HAH! HAH!  HAH! HAH! HAH!  That is how WE do it.  OK.  3.  Limit your intake.  You are what you watch.  You are what you read.  You are what you eat.  Think about it.  Your life is a garden.  YOU decide what you grow.   Weeds?  Pluck ’em or smoke ’em or eat ’em.  You decide.  It is your world.  In this vein, your home is your sanctuary.  (I don’t care IF you live under the bridge, you can experience bliss at home by INTENDING it.  Start by turning off the horror the horror THE NEWS and allowing yourself to listen to your own breath.   Inhale.  Exhale.  Yep.  See THAT!  You are a miracle!  You breath! (Don’t allow the dirty river of television to stream uninterrupted into your house with bad ideas and BS images of food and weight or diet plans.)  Simply be selective what you put into your body.  Porn.  Junk Food.  All of it debilitates YOU!  Choose: healthy (organic is best) food.  Beautiful harmonious images can make you feel better about the world (make time for nature) in art and LIFE: one place where you can get the extra special GOOD healing viewing is at the Frick Museum in NYC or the Rothko Room at the London Tate, in LA we have the beach and mountains as a source of comfort, healing, and rejuvenation.  ART here, I think fills the gap of needed mental excersize, for some.  4. Pick your friends/travel companions/crew, first mates, and officers wisely, actively.  Terminate relationships that don’t work FAST!  IF you have a captain other than yourself be sure that person will go down with the ship (YOU) IF needed.  Dump the assholes.  Cut.  Prune.  KEEP IT TIGHT! 5.  Focus on what you want MORE of… in order to create peace in the world you must experience it daily,  spend time alone, pray, paint, draw from within yourself and find the infinite power of creative activity and focusing on our preferred activities of service and LOVE.  Thus we cultivate prosperity, celebrate wealth, create a sumptuous feast of JOY for our many loving friends, COOK!  EAT!  YES!  Remember: celebrating LIFE is a skill and the more that you do it the better you get at it.  6. Volunteer.  Give back to the community.  I garden.  I touch DIRT!  Find a way.  Do it everyday and encourage others to PICK UP TRASH and take their own bags to the super market.  IF we ALL made these choices the entire planet would be a beautiful garden with healthy, happy, well fed people EVERYWHERE (That is my wish for the planet.  I see it clearly.  I see a world where EVERY HUMAN has everything they need and MORE. I write this truth here and thus this possibility is one step closer to be the absolute truth of human experience, to which I believe we are headed, despite our mis-steps and blunders along the way to paradise.)   Think about how the water keeps the plant alive and the SUNLIGHT how it caress the leaves and brings out the best in them. Let that dazzling truth soak into your soul.  Allow yourself time to heal.   REST in the garden, as you WORK in the garden of your LIFE cultivating peace today and everyday, make time for small rituals of rejuvenation and beauty, like those provided by the one and only Nite Spa in Venice Beach California.  Save your own LIFE.  Don’t forget to get out there and grow some organic lettuce, tomatoes, and yummy dark green kale!  & last butt not least: APPLY The SEVEN BOOK RULE!

 THE SEVEN BOOK RULE

 The Seven Book RULE is the secret to my abundance of LOVE and desire to LIVE it UP!  I am the original BON VIVANT!  I thrive in wine bars, dancing, kissing, romancing, flirting, to music!  I live in BACCHIC Splendor!  I am AFRO LATINA.  My parents come from Dominican Republic and Spanish is my first LANGUAGE (don’t forget it).  I am a first generation American.  I had the good fortune to be well raised by caring, intelligent, and educated parents.  My father was an attorney in Dominican Republic when he met my mother.  My mother comes from an illustrious Dominican Family.  History book… people of wealth and class… yet, her grandfather gambled away not one, not two butt three inheritances… I ran away from home at 17 not because my parents were horrible people butt because I was adventure ready.  I’ve had a BLAST!

I’m still having FUN!  I plan on keeping it UP!  Hah!

Anyway… Apply the SEVEN BOOK RULE if you want to solve any problem, tackle any obstacle, achieve any goal; GO! to the public library (the most blessed and noble institution in the most wonderful and abundant United States of America) and get yourself a stack of seven books on whatever bugs you: DIVORCE, DEATH, Disease… Whatever the problem the more you know about it, what others have done before you to deal with the issue and get on with the business of living THE BETTER!

YOU think SEVEN BOOKS is too many?  Well let me assure you that reading ONE book on any topic is NEVER enough (…and I don’t care IF that book is the Bible…).  Read only ONE book and base your opinion on it and you will sound like and idiot babbling on topics with no clue.  Two books is a little better.  Three is much better.  Four and you are looking good and feeling informed.  Five and YOU know a good, useful, amount about the topic.  Six and you are ready to deal with almost any aspect or complication related to your problem and SEVEN!  SEVEN BOOKS means you are a MASTER ready to deal with whatever issue with dignity and style.

I know because I wrote the unpublished book “THE VACATION APPROACH,” before I got THE CANCER diagnosis.  I wrote it from the perspective that I had something to say about success because I felt and feel successful because I have lived my life according to my innermost callings and thus have found a measure of fulfillment in LIFE.  Yes.  It is true.  I have.  This doesn’t mean that I am perfect or that I think I am perfect.  I am divinely flawed LIKE you.  WE are all perfectly flawed and our flaws often house our greatest strengths. Yet, everyday I cultivate peace and enjoy the fruits of that labor.

Much LOVE,

Frau Kolb