life: acoustic & amplified
poetry, quotes & thoughts about life
Archive for the category “commitment”
we are the story
The story of lives lived. That is what makes up the world. It has brought us here to this time and place. Poet, Jon Sands, puts it so well in The Wake of What I Love: A Commencement Address. It was the 2010 commencement address for the Bronx Academy of Letters – A charter school in Bronx, New York, founded on the concept that, “students who can express themselves clearly in writing can do better in any path they choose.” –
Class of 2010. Here we are. 27 years, 6 months, 26 days, 7 hours since Michael Jackson released Thriller (which is still the best selling album in music history). 143 years since Christopher Latham Sholes invented the modern typewriter. 46 years, 9 months, 28 days since Martin Luther King Jr. told a crowd of over 200,000 that he had a dream. And, 36 years, 4 months, 6 days, 8 hours since my own father – after dropping out of his second year in college – decided to take a computer class to make more money than was possible at his construction job. And with a clear Manhattan morning waiting outside the glass windows, he asked the foxy lady wearing big glasses – who would turn out to be my mother – if the seat next to her was taken… and here I am.
All of which is to say, there are many paths that have brought us to this room today. Stories which led to stories which lead to right now. There is no person in this room without a great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother. Or more accurately, 128 great, great, great, great, great, great grandmothers. Beautiful ladies (I’m assuming) with favorite foods, dreams at night, who lived entire lives, and created lives that have led specifically to you… which has led you – here. We are in this room because an incredible line of history said, “yes,” when it could have said, “no.”
In 2003, my Uncle Don was practicing law in New Jersey. Don taught himself to play guitar when he was in high school, spent years covering other people’s songs at parties or reunions. Every so often – he would write a song for a funeral. Always, it would land with precision on what that person actually meant to each of us, individually. At 47, he decided his guitar made him happier than nearly anything else. He sunk an incredible amount of everything he had, financially and energetically, into creating an album; contacted professional musicians with samplings of his work, to ask if they would join him. Now there are maybe 1,500 people outside of my family who have this remarkable CD – someone I love doing what they love. Eighteen months after the disc was released, my uncle was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. After a strikingly short 5 months, he passed, leaving behind a wife and three children (ages 13, 15, and 17).
When we miss him. When the people who love him need to spend time with him – they skip photo albums and old videos, and instead go to a CD. To the documentation of him doing what he loved. Not to be a millionaire. Not to be famous. But to give this world some account that says, this – this right here – is what it feels like to be me.
Each of us entered this room – as we do any room – carrying many labels. Which is to say, today, you are high-school graduates. There are 64 of you. Two months ago you may have been the kid freestlying battle raps outside McDonald’s with three friends who couldn’t stop laughing, or the quiet girl in the back of a library – her nose glued into a 3.8 GPA.
I spend a significant amount of time being the crazy dude who came to someone else’s classroom to talk about how poetry is amazing. Right now, I’m the commencement speaker. I promise, in three hours, I’ll be the guy who looks uncomfortable in a tie on the downtown 4 train. The way it feels to live a life that can only be yours is never as clean as whatever label this world attaches to you. If you are alive — Is every person here alive?… If you are alive in this world, you can attest. What it feels like to be you is more complicated than what it looks like to be you.
So, is there ever a time you are more yourself than when doing what you love – with the people you love? Who you are exists in what you love. It is how you tell the children you have yet to bring into this world the person you were today. To tell the you who will exist 20 years from now what it felt like to close the locker door on your high school years.
We are all here because today is important. A chance to reflect on the way our lives are changing. We are also here – to celebrate – the choices you have made that led to your caps and gowns. I think we can take a minute to blow the roof off for that.
But, you will have many todays. No one else can decide how they will look. Michael Jackson, when recording Billie Jean, could not have known the way our ankles would pop for decades. Martin Luther King Jr. chose to ascend the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, not to become a cultural icon, but to communicate the vision he had for a nation. My Uncle Don could never have known what his artistry would mean to his wife, his nieces and nephews, his parents, his three children. He made music because it was what he loved. It was who he was. A choice to say, “yes,” when he could have
said, “no.”
We have been afforded the opportunity to write our own chapters in the story of this life because millions of people, over thousands of years, have said “yes.” It is not feasible for me to tell you what is possible in your life. History has written you here, the next chapter is yours. Here is the news: It’s supposed to be fun. It’s not supposed to be easy (the juiciest stuff rarely is). It is supposed to be yours. And what better news can there be?
Very well said!!!!
To read more about Jon Sands check out his website at http://www.jonsands.com/
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Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement. – Florence Scovel Shinn
Nothing stops the man who desires to achieve. Every obstacle is simply a course to develop his achievement muscle. It’s a strengthening of his powers of accomplishment.
– Eric Butterworth
Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quitting does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits. – Richard Nixon
It can be VERY hard to see the road ahead – especially when we are on the growing edge of our personal growth journey. By its very nature personal growth takes us out into uncertainty and into the unknown – and so we can sometimes feel like we are in a forest with no path or map.
And that’s how it should be. We are each here to carve our own unique path – to be trailblazers of Love. And at the same time, we cannot do it alone. No one can do it alone. We aren’t meant to exist in a bubble. And so we also need help.
There’s an old saying that states, “If you want to know the road ahead ask those who are coming back.” You see, as we are growing, if we don’t have the experience of ever reaching the goal or creating the outcome that we want to create – it can seem impossible at times. Which is why surrounding ourselves with people who have been there before is SO vital.
I am beyond lucky to have an amazing group of friends, advisors, mentors, therapists and experts to be able to call when I have a question. And in doing so, I can rely on their expertise when it comes to their area of focus. So instead of doing all the research or taking time to only grow by trial and error, I can turn what is sometimes years or decades of experience for someone else into hours or even minutes of advice for me. It’s awesome.
And because I am blessed to have this amazing peer group, I am able to make quicker moves and grow in a more direct and thought out way. I have consciously surrounded myself with people who know the road ahead because I got sick and tired of learning only by trial and error. It’s a powerful thing to have a group of people that you can trust to help you wade through the forest of the unknown.
You are the hero of your own life and every hero has friends and allies who go on the journey with them. Heroic deeds are a team effort. Luke Skywalker would be dead without R2D2.
So, who do you have in your life that can help you see the road ahead? Be it a relationship, a friendship, a business, fitness or other outcome?
Here’s to having an amazing peer group and buddies on our hero’s journey!
Mastin Kipp
The Daily Love
http://www.thedailylove.com
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Defeat doesn’t finish a man, quitting does. A man is not finished when he’s defeated. He’s finished when he quits. – Richard Nixon
It can be VERY hard to see the road ahead – especially when we are on the growing edge of our personal growth journey. By its very nature personal growth takes us out into uncertainty and into the unknown – and so we can sometimes feel like we are in a forest with no path or map.
And that’s how it should be. We are each here to carve our own unique path – to be trailblazers of Love. And at the same time, we cannot do it alone. No one can do it alone. We aren’t meant to exist in a bubble. And so we also need help.
There’s an old saying that states, “If you want to know the road ahead ask those who are coming back.” You see, as we are growing, if we don’t have the experience of ever reaching the goal or creating the outcome that we want to create – it can seem impossible at times. Which is why surrounding ourselves with people who have been there before is SO vital.
I am beyond lucky to have an amazing group of friends, advisors, mentors, therapists and experts to be able to call when I have a question. And in doing so, I can rely on their expertise when it comes to their area of focus. So instead of doing all the research or taking time to only grow by trial and error, I can turn what is sometimes years or decades of experience for someone else into hours or even minutes of advice for me. It’s awesome.
And because I am blessed to have this amazing peer group, I am able to make quicker moves and grow in a more direct and thought out way. I have consciously surrounded myself with people who know the road ahead because I got sick and tired of learning only by trial and error. It’s a powerful thing to have a group of people that you can trust to help you wade through the forest of the unknown.
You are the hero of your own life and every hero has friends and allies who go on the journey with them. Heroic deeds are a team effort. Luke Skywalker would be dead without R2D2.
So, who do you have in your life that can help you see the road ahead? Be it a relationship, a friendship, a business, fitness or other outcome?
Here’s to having an amazing peer group and buddies on our hero’s journey!
Mastin Kipp
The Daily Love
http://www.thedailylove.com
href=”https://lifeacousticandamplified.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/20120923-080623.jpg”>;
take a little faith and just one word
In an interesting and diminutive book called “The Breviary of Medieval Knights,” there are some passages that have to be remembered in these moments of waiting:
“The Path’s spiritual energy uses justice and patience to prepare your spirit.”
“This is the Knight’s Path. An easy and hard path at the same time, as it urges us to let aside useless things and relative friendships.
“That is why, at the beginning, we hesitate so much to follow it.”
“This is a Knight’s first teaching: you will erase everything you wrote up to now on your life’s notebook: turmoil, insecurities, lies.
“And in place of all that, you will write the word courage.
Beginning the journey with this word and going on with faith in God, you will arrive where you need to arrive.
The Breviary of Medieval Knights
by Paulo Coelho on September 17, 2012
http://paulocoelhoblog.com/
Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach. -Tony Robbins
The most powerful tool we have at our disposal is the power of choice. Almost everything that happens in our lives is the result of a choice that we have made. And for the things that happen in our lives that we didn’t choose to have happen – how we CHOOSE to respond to these events is still our choice.
Choice is everything. And what I’ve come to see after doing TDL for so many years and working with thousands of people is that a lot of folks don’t think they have a choice in their life. It is not until we investigate where their actions come from that we discover they actually DO have the power to choose.
We don’t always get to choose what happens in life, but we do get to choose how we respond to what happens. There is a BIG difference between reaction and response. Reaction is when something happens and we just react – without thinking. It’s like the animal in us takes over and wants to either fight or run. We react with defensiveness, judgment or shock. We react with anger or even hate. We react with disgust. We react with all kinds of emotions that don’t represent our highest nature.
I’ve come to believe that our journey is to first become aware of how we react and not make it wrong. To understand that we and everyone we know are doing the best that they can from their point of view. And we can investigate where these reactions come from. And slowly over time we begin to see that when things trigger us “out there” – there is a precious space in between something happening and our reaction. And in this space we now have a choice – a choice of how we want to respond.
To me, the ability to respond is far more powerful than unconscious reaction. This is respons-ibility is – the ability to respond. And in this space, where we can choose, lay our power.
What are we going to make this mean? And why? What’s the root of the trigger I’m having? What do I have to believe about life to have this reaction? And then what do I want to believe about life, what empowering perspective can I take that will allow me to see the lesson in this moment and then let it go?
This is like spiritual fitness training. Emotional muscle building. To be able to choose a response instead of be at the whims of our unconscious reactions.
Mastin Kipp
http://thedailylove.com/
life: acoustic & amplified 
