It can be pretty easy to judge something or someone two-dimensionally.  To take something at the face value or even the first impression.  To fully understand and appreciate all the layers of a person you have to go beneath the surface and that takes time – often time that most don’t want to put forward at first.

I love character transformations in stories.  I love how they start with this “imperfection”, whatever that might be, and as the story beats away at them, kind of like a mason on a stone, in the end what you are left with is this beautiful work of art.

I think that we are all kind of born showing our “true colors,” but as we age and gather experiences like cloaks around us, layer upon layer of camouflage is added to disguise or protect what is underneath.  The story of The Ugly Duckling, however, takes us on the opposite journey and shows the poor duckling turning into a beautiful swan and shocking the others that had bullied and teased him when he was young.  I guess, there’s no rule that the layers have to be ugly? *smiles*

I was reading an article the other day about bullying and while I won’t go into that topic too deeply, I wanted to quickly touch on that in this blog.  Bullying is not something new, most every generation has had to deal with this beast, but I feel like the beast today has got claws and sharp teeth – worse than I’ve ever heard or seen before.  I’m not sure I understand the metamorphosis of this beast, how we could have gone from pranks, to hurting a child so much that their very life is in danger…what has happened to our world?

In recognition of this problem, how about today, wherever you are, you pass forward one kind comment to someone?  Would you try this for me?  Just one nice comment, because you never know the difference that comment might make to someone who’s heard nothing but trash and negativity lately.  Remember that everyone has cloaks that they gathered for a reason.

“Slow and steady wins the race…”

How many times have you heard this little nugget over the years?  When I was younger, I thought this was a ridiculous saying and wasn’t even sure how anyone could possibly think that winning could be done by any other means than quickly.  When your life kind of revolves around blocks of time (school day, practice, homework, sleep), there isn’t much else that you think about except hurrying to the next step.  In fact, you can’t wait to cross that invisible finish line in your head because that means that you can do what you want now.  Did you ever think like that?

It’s not till you have a few more years under your belt and start to look back at what your life was and now is that you take stock and realize that you didn’t take the time when you were younger, you shouldn’t have been in such a rush.

Our whole world is about what’s next?  It’s about that quick satisfaction of pushing a button and filling our desires.  We are rushing from place to place, hardly paying attention to what’s around us because we are so focused on “next.”

I’m going to ask you for a favor today – is that alright?  If not, that’s ok but if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love for my readers to take this moment, take this breath…let’s slow things down.  Just for a moment.  It’s Saturday after all.  I promise I won’t tell anyone…just breathe.  Look around.  What is it that you haven’t seen before?

I love goofy songs that we used to sing as kids and for today’s post we are going to be “remaking” an old favorite, “On Top of Spaghetti.”

Click the video if you’ve never heard the song before to get the melody.  Here is a quick remix of the lyrics for our song today:

I’ve got this new puppy,

She pooped in the house,

She cries all night long,

And killed a field mouse.

Her heart may be pure,

She may be so sweet,

But this little puppy,

Has mud on her feet.

Haha – or something like that. *smiles*  What’s your favorite childhood song?