Chorus

There has to be more to this life

More than just the struggle to survive

There has to be more from the days I have seen

There has to be more to me

Verse 1

I’m going 90 miles an hour

the way these days go by

leaves you spinning in circles

sick from the ride

The faster that I go

the more important things I miss

This can’t go on forever

I can’t keep up like this

Chorus

There has to be more to this life

More than just the struggle to survive

There has to be more from the days I have seen

There has to be more to me

Verse 2

When you look you see a stranger

my face is just a shell

No one else has noticed

but you know me too well

The light that shone inside me

has dwindled to a spark

who knows how long it will be

before it all goes dark

Chorus

There has to be more to this life

More than just the struggle to survive

There has to be more from the days I have seen

There has to be more to me

Bridge

Can you save me from this ride? Take this fear from me?

Can you bring me anything to curb the insanity?

Chorus

There has to be more to this life

More than just the struggle to survive

There has to be more from the days I have seen

There has to be more to me

I wrote this several years ago. This one is not about me. I am thankful for that.

Verse 1

Time passes slowly, the seconds turn into days

Missing the time we spent together before you went away

I can still feel your touch and smell your fragrance in the air

The color of your eyes and the softness of your hair

Chorus

I look for you in every crowded room

As I walk down the street under the light of the moon

I search for you all day in every face I see

Longing for the day that you return to me.

Verse 2

My heart still chooses to ignore the fact that you are gone

I refuse to accept it though my friends tell me to move on

When I close my eyes at night you are still with me in my dreams

I can almost feel your touch, lying next to me

Chorus

I look for you in every crowded room

As I walk down the street under the light of the moon

I search for you all day in every face I see

Longing for the day that you return to me.

Bridge

If it takes days, if those days turn into years

No matter the time I will be here

Chorus

I look for you in every crowded room

As I walk down the street under the light of the moon

I search for you all day in every face I see

Longing for the day that you return to me.

The best is yet to come. I love this Frank Sinatra tune. I like it because it is a good love song. It is also a good mantra for life. The best is yet to come. Things may be good now, but that doesn’t mean that can’t get better. Maybe things are hard right now…the best is definitely yet to come. For 2020, this is how I am going approach the new year. This is also how I approach every day.

One of the cool things about writing my thoughts down over the years is it provides perspective. For years I have come to the beginning of a new year with the hope that ‘finally this year will be different’. I have looked at the beginning of the year as a fresh start. While it definitely can be, I have come a long way in my thinking regarding this. I have discovered that each moment holds the potential for something new. You don’t have to wait for the New Year. You have the power to choose on any day, not just New Year’s Day.

For the past few months I have been working on a few specific things…fitness, reading and writing. As I wrote in a previous post, I have been working to get my habits right around these things. As I continue to practice good habits in these areas, I am finding that it leads to building habits in other areas as well. It all started with the power I have to choose. I finally got tired of looking in the mirror and seeing my face, knowing I could be more.

Knowing you can be more and doing something about it is the difficult part. What more could I be? What did I need to do? How was I going to do it? Let’s look at this through the lens of New Years resolutions and see if we can spot the problem.

Lose Weight. Yes. That is one of the most common New Years resolutions out there. I have had that on my list several times. We all want to lose weight and finally feel our best…or just look good on the beach. How do we plan to lose weight? Sign up for a gym membership. Eat better. Avoid cookies. Can you see why this doesn’t work? None of what I have written in this paragraph is specific.

If it is important enough to write down on your list of resolutions, then it is important enough to make a plan. So, you want to lose weight? How is it really done? If you don’t know, there is this cool thing called Google. You can find out the information for yourself, or you can find someone who has already done it and see what they have to say. For me, I bought a fitness program and have been following it. Now I know that after I get my gym membership here are the exercies I have to do and on which day. When I go to eat every day, I know now what my calorie count and nutrition breakouts need to look like. I am no where near where I want to be, but moving from the general to the specific has me a lot further down the right path.

When you know what you want, you can make choices that support the goal you have identified. When you get specific about the goal, the choices that you make become clearer and much easier to make. It is a process and takes time. Any goal worth pursuing will.

There is greatness inside of you. There are amazing things that you are meant to do. What do you want? You have the power to choose. A mediocre life is not an acceptable choice. The best is yet to come. I choose to be the best I can be. I choose for 2020 to be a year of purpose. Will you join me?

There are many who believe these two words go hand in hand and that to have one you must have the other. I have a different take. (For this post I define nice as pleasing; agreeable; delightful. I am defining good as excellent or virtuous.)

There are four ways to look at this:

1. There are things that are good and nice at the same time.

2. There are things that are good, but not nice.

3. There are things that are nice, but not good.

4. There are things that are neither.

I know a woman who I find to be a good person. From the conversations we have had she seems to be very genuine and heartfelt. She can be nice. But that is not her strong point. She is good. Good at her job. Good to her friends. A good person. I wouldn’t consider her a consistently nice person. It wouldn’t fit her if she were. She doesn’t have to be both.

There are times when people refuse to tell you what they should. They don’t want to hurt your feelings. They don’t want to turn into a difficult conversation. The could choose to be good and do the right thing. The settle for being nice and letting something continue that shouldn’t.

It has been a paradigm shift to look at things like this. Knowing that the good thing to do is not always the nice thing to do flies in the face of convention. People aren’t used to hearing the truth. It hurts, but the truth is a good thing. It is not always a nice thing though.

We face the choice everyday of how we respond to things. If we can do both nice and good, great. If we must choose one over the other, do it with caution.

I can’t think of many things that hurt more than seeing hurtdisappointmentrejection/loss in the face of your own child. This is especially true when they felt safe and then no longer feel safe in a place or situation.

Not long ago we were visiting somewhere new. My boy (T) was around a group of kids that he was meeting for the first time. I am always curious how the interactions will go, but am confident that he can handle most things thrown at him. The adults were gathered in one room, and the kids were off playing in another. Everything appeared to be fine.

As we were wrapping up the evening, T came out you could tell that something was off. His mama checked on him and found out that some of the boys were playing a bit rougher than he is used to. He felt like they were being bullies. After a bit more conversation, I realized they were not just being bullies, but were engaging in competitive banter. What is that? Trash talk.

Now what, you ask, is the difference between bullying behavior and being competitive? There is a distinct line, in my opinion. It is fairly thin though.

I have grown up around competition. I have had guys tell me that I am awful to throw me off my game. It occurred in the game and they knew and so did I that it was being done in competitive fun. Generally afterwards there was friendly conversation and no one left feeling insulted.

Bullying, on the other hand, is done to purposely put the other person down to make the bully feel superior. There is no game that is being played. It is not being done as a joke. It is done to suppress and hurt the person being bullied. I think if we all are honest, there are times we have been bullied and there are times where we have acted like a bully.

Where do I stand on the issues of trash talk and bullying? I don’ t like either one. Once I realized what they are and what they do, it made me aware of why I never liked them to start out with. If you are trash talking, you are being mean to help you play your game better. If you are bullying, you are being mean to make yourself seem better than another.

If I am playing a game now, and I am playing to win….I do it quietly or I tell jokes. I find making your opponent laugh is much more distracting than trash talk. If someone starts to trash talk me now, I usually ignore it. Just because they are stooping that low doesn’t mean I have to. Most games I play these days are not winner take all. Playing to enjoy is usually what I am up to now. Jokes work in this environment as well.

As far as bullying…yeah…don’t do it.

So, how did we handle the situation with our boy? I asked the dad of the trash talking boys to join us. I unpacked what had happened. With real compassion he apologized to my boy and offered to have his boys apologize as well. My boy thanked him. After the scene was over, we reminded T that things like that are going to happen. How we respond to it is what is important. He did the right thing. He told us what was wrong. He was honest about what happened. He asked for help immediately.

We were then able to remind him that his worth and value have nothing to do with the hurtful comments that he received. Just like when you are offered something you don’t want…you don’t have to take it. He was offered mean comments. He now knows he doesn’t have to accept them.