Although it May Seem Like It, the World is not Really Coming to an End
Another mass shooting, missile launched, high profile controversy, along with all the assorted bad news we hear so often and it is easy to believe we are spiraling the world into oblivion. As an immigrant child who was separated from my parents by Castro”s Revolution when I was ten, news about raids on immigrants, the crisis in the southern border and the separation of children from their families leave me feeling depressed. My heart aches every time I see pictures and videos of the empty and sad faces of children in American internment camps. This experience of family separation that saw me start life over in an orphanage in a country where I didn’t know the language is by far the greatest trauma I have ever survived.
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You Don’t Have Any More Birthdays to Waste
A few weeks have gone by since two of my greatest childhood idols, John Havlicek and Bart Starr, passed away. I mourn their losses and thank them both for the thrills they brought into my life. Who can ever forget Bart Starr leading his Green Bay Packers to victory against Dallas in the “Ice Bowl”, one of the greatest football games of all times? John Havlicek won eight NBA championships during his sixteen-year career with the Boston Celtics.
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Six Perplexing Things You Must Learn to Understand about life
My parents were batshit crazy. It wasn’t so much that they had faults, every human has them, it was that their marital union blended their failings into a cocktail of emotional and psychological poison. As you read this article, make no mistake, I am grateful for them and how they helped shape the person I am today, but it was no picnic.
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What to do With a Family Member Who Betrays You
Game of Thrones and human history have one thing in common; life is just one damn thing after another. But there is one other thing that may not seem so obvious; they both contain a lot of episodes about family members betraying one another. The fact is that “blood is not thicker than water” as the adage proclaims. Being related by blood is not the strongest human bond there is.
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Living a Happy Life Amidst the Negativity that Surrounds You
Although you may not know of it, you are being influenced by many negative forces. This is more prevalent than you think. It is in books, TV Programs, the workplace, church, your favorite sporting venue, etc. It is even there when you engage in gossip about others.
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No Matter How Hard You Try, You Cannot Make Another Love You
Nothing in life is guaranteed, especially when it comes to being loved by someone else. This can apply to anyone who surrounds you, be it mother, father, sibling or lover, their love for you is not automatic. For that matter, it may never be.
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Everyone Falls in Love with the Outcome they Want, but not Everyone Loves the Process to Get There
The day we stop having dreams is the day we stop living. Dreams can motivate us to become better people or to accomplish greater things. Having a vision for the future separates the human species from the rest of the animal kingdom. Dreaming, therefore, is an essential gift a Higher Consciousness gave us as part of our creation.
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Just Because the World Measures Someone as Having a Lower Social Status and Less Money than You Does not Mean They Have Lesser Value
Hard to pinpoint where it all began, but somewhere in human history people began comparing ourselves to one another. To make matters worse, society assigned hierarchical values to these comparisons. They invented terms, like “upper or ruling class, working class and lower class”, to designate a person’s importance in society.
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What Dancing Salsa is Teaching Me About Life
Some of the best salseros (salsa dancers) in the world come from the Caribbean Island I call home, Cuba. During my two return visits to Cuba—in 2001 and 2016, forty years after my parents sent me fleeing Castro’s Revolution to the United States—this joyful and sensuous type of dancing was still front and center in Cuban culture. Like baseball (beisbol), salsa rhythms are part of every Cuban’s DNA (or so I am told).
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Reconfiguring Life After a Major Loss
Major losses spare no one in this world. I am reminded of this by my children who lost their mother to Early-Onset Alzheimer’s disease a few days ago.
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