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Tag: Unity

Our Focus Is Often Out Of Focus

C.L. Harmon

We are taught from a very early age to focus. In our education, personal lives and careers we are instilled with the belief that we achieve more by focusing on what we are doing. But do we ever stop to think just what we are accomplishing with the importance we place on this focusing? The very essence of focusing is putting ourselves at the center. We must focus in order to be better. We must focus to reach our goals. We must focus to create. We must focus to succeed. At the center of all our focusing on these actions is always ourselves.

It is true that there is a need to focus on certain aspects of our lives at specific times. However, many of us allow our desire to focus to become the focus of our lives. What should only be a tool in the building of our lives, becomes the structure we are building. We have become so involved in our efforts to achieve, we ignore the needs of others. We become the center of our own attention shutting out the world around us.

We were not created to focus solely on ourselves. Our purposes are rooted in inclusion. We are designed to function as an intricate web connected to each other with each strand intentionally woven to the next. The focus on one strand alone creates nothing beyond itself. We must shift part of our attention to others so that their strands will connect with ours creating a stronger outcome for all. To be a million strands disconnected is to be broken; to be a million strands intertwined is to be the structure of life and a vision worthy of focus.

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Mindset: Don’t Be The Missing Link

Mindset: Don’t Be The Missing Link

Imagine you were created to achieve one incredible accomplishment. This one achievement is a link in a chain that began long before you were born and will continue long after you are gone. Your link is every bit as important as the ones before it and just as crucial for the next. Our understandings and meanings of life, as well as our ability to grow as one, are in this chain that links past to present, present to future and future to comprehension.

This chain is unique in the sense that it does not need to be connected by each link to be functional. So each time there is a missing or broken link, a new section begins leaving a void between the two sections. Because of this, as the chain stretches out across time, there are gaps between the missing and broken links. And once they are broken or missing, they cannot be replaced. Time does not reverse and allow us to repair the chain. What should be there is not and only a dead space is left in its place.

Each time we fail in our hopes, give up, take an innocent life, corrupt what is good or pure and fail to achieve our purpose in life, we are not achieving our one task that is to be our accomplishment, but instead destroying a link and leaving that dead space between links. As a result, what we were supposed to contribute to life never materializes and future links to connect with are absent.

Each link is knowledge, wisdom and an accomplishment that the next generation uses to further the chain. Each of us is responsible to add a link to the chain while also helping others to do the same. Missing links leave us lost and disconnected from the past and each other. So when we ask ourselves why our lives seem to have no reason to them, perhaps it is because we are the start of a new section of chain that was broken because of someone else’s failure to provide the link we needed to connect with. If we can all just remember how important our contribution to the chain is, then undoubtedly we can create one that is never broken.

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Mindset: We Are But Grains Of Sand

Mindset: We Are But Grains Of Sand

Most of us focus on our individual lives. We live in such a large world with numerous activities abound at every moment that we tend to remain in the small part of the world which makes sense to us. As a result, we become disconnected from others even as the technology works to bridge us closer together. This implies that we choose to be separated. But what if we were to perceive the world differently? Would this change not only affect ourselves but our involvement in the world?

How would our lives be different if each of us saw ourselves as grains of sand? What is the nature of sand? At times it attaches to other grains in an effort to build something or to be a part of something larger. Other times it blows singularly in the wind to other destinations. But it’s very essence is that it moves. It moves across oceans and continents to other places in a never ending process of migration with its nature never changing. It is a minuscule grain of sand that follows a plan much greater in scope than what it represents in size.

We mustn’t fight that which uproots us physically, mentally or emotionally because it will move us to where we are needed most. That wind that blows us or wave which carries us away is part of a greater plan that is meant to connect us to others for an ultimate purpose. It is part of a greater plan that we may never get to view in its entirety, but we do get to feel and know deep inside that we are a small part of a very large idea. If we simply accept that we are part of a plan, then the wind and the waves will always carry us to where we are a part of something better, something more meaningful.

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Unite And Conquer

Unite And Conquer

We are divided in so many ways and history shows us that we have always been. What is the cost of such division and what do we gain or lose because of it? What do we do in the name of these divisions and do they save us or destroy us?

Does anyone believe that slavery is acceptable? And by this, I mean would they be willing to not only have slaves, but be one themselves. When men and women in the world took actions to eradicate slavery throughout history, there was always opposition. There were wars, murders and uprisings on both sides, but time would show us all that it was wrong. And along with the eradication of slavery also came the end of two sides. Countless people suffered and died because of two sides that would eventually be irrelevant and erased. Where is the common sense in such divisions?

We allow race, religion, political ideals and arbitrary lines in the sand to divide us. But how do another’s views actually affect us? Does it take away your right to practice your views or worship the way you choose? No. But it will divide us because we want to be right because we want to win because we are arrogant. We are prideful choosing pride over love, friendship, mutual respect and open-mindedness We divide and that division conquers us and defeats our unity.

What must it take for humanity to learn that who we are, what we are, is simply our identities our belief systems and not something that is given or taken by others? If we ask ourselves what we consider to be fair and just to both sides and then act accordingly, division begins to evaporate. Differences in opinion do not divide us; lack of acknowledgment and respect for differing opinion creates division. The price for harmony always comes at the cost of humility which favors no side.

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Mindset: 10-14-16

By C.L. Harmon

When we make room for others in our lives, we fill up spaces in our souls that might otherwise become cluttered with the baggage that accumulates over time. Life is in constant motion from our first breath to our last and within that time comes the sum of all our actions.

We have no control over the rate in which time passes, but we do have dominion over how that time is spent. We can spend it creating baggage that we must store in the limited spaces that are available. Or we can use that time to share with others.

Time with others is not the creation of a burdensome load that clutters the chambers in our soul, but the expansion of a life that creates more rooms to house the valuable relationships of love and friendship we acquire.

Happiness and misery are both results of time plus choices. When we choose baggage, we crowd ourselves into a small existence that revolves only around ourselves. However, when we share ourselves with others, we grow as large as we need to be to hold all the valuables our time allows us to discover.

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