Life of an Ice Cube

Imagine Yourself as an Ice Cube

Free-flowing water captured into a tray with an entrapping mold, restricting movement as the temperature drops, freezing the water into a solid state making it into an Ice Cube. A force begins turning the tray upside down, detaching, and pushing the frozen Ice Cube into a container with a swirling rod in the middle of it. A motor begins to  physically turn the swirling rod in the middle pushing all Ice Cubes forward as the Ice Cubes in the front disappear down a hole. The Ice Cube starts falling down a small tube into a smaller container being stacked one upon another not knowing what is next. A foreign free-flowing liquid is poured upon all Ice Cubes in the small container experiencing moving freedom once again, but in a frozen state. Some Ice Cubes start shrink in size. Some fall into a dark place where the crunching sound begins to break them up into pieces, slowly dissolving into a different liquid state, disappearing from sight.

Can You Relate to an Ice Cube

Do you ever feel like an Ice Cube? Have you ever felt trapped? restricted? People around giving you the cold shoulder? Your life turns upside down, dumping you out? You ever feel like something is pushing to a place you can’t see where it goes and you get there to discover a forever falling feeling? You finally stop falling, it starts to rain, and when it rains it pours on top of you? Have you ever felt like you have been crunched on, chewed on, and swallowed?

The Imagination is a Powerful Tool

It is funny how the Life of an Ice Cube relates to our lives. Some may call this the “Cycle of Life”. We are formed, born, exist, transformed, and returned to our former state, but different. What is the moral of the story of the Life of an Ice Cube? Live while you have life in you and don’t become lifeless before your time. Be happy for the day has not yet come. Have a great day in-spite of what comes your way.

Life of A Bubble – Part 2

I never (and this is to my shame) sit down, listen to the rain, and watch it stream along the driveway or in the yard. It was raining a good steady rain and our garage door was open. I looked out seeing the rich green color of the grass and trees dripping with rain drops I was compelled to take time and watch. I took a bottle of water out to the garage and pulled out a chair that had a cup holder for my water. There was a small stream slowed down into a puddle by debris in the corner of the driveway under a thick leafed small tree. I watched as the rain drops dripped off the leaf into the puddle, which was creating different shaped bubbles. They would swirl around alone or connecting with other bubbles. Some would flow to the end of the puddle popping against the debris at the end. Some would be swirling around freely when a drop of rain would directly land on it popping it where it floated.

I saw a parallel of life with people in the bubbles. The rain drop is like water of life coming down from up above splashing an air pocket below the surface in the puddle of this life bringing forth the existence of an individual bubble swirling around in the time clock of this world. Some will float through this life to the end of the cycle popping naturally at debris end giving up the air inside the bubble, disappearing into the sky, and returning to the other oxygen. Some will join themselves to others creating family units of bubbles. Some will be swirling around freely in this life and out of no where something comes along and pops them before their time or before they reach the end of life. We are born, we live, we move, and have our being for a time that could be quickly over as a bubble in a puddle of water.

“… What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” James 4:14 (NIV)

Increase Your Personal Value

Society has increased with it’s demand on people to produce profitable results with as much speed and quality. The pressure on individuals to meet the requirements can be overwhelming and depressing. Good news is you can increase your personal value that will effect where ever you go and whatever you do in life.

First Step is to slow down and observe the overlooked or unattended needs. There are things that need to be done, but for some reason they are left with half-way done or nothing done at all. It can be a step skipped, something no one has thought about, or no one cares about. You probably know the story of “Everyone thought Someone would do it and Anyone could have done it, but No one did it.” Seeing the need or needs is the first step towards increasing your personal value. Once you see the need start the brain processing ideas of solutions using the trial and error formula until you find the one fact that answers with speed, quality, and dependency. It does not have to be a grandeur level idea. It can be small, simple, and efficient with smooth flowing results. You can use the internet to research the needs you have seen, which makes a resourceful person.

First Step Example:  Inventive Multitasking

I like to change oil in my vehicles. It is personal time of hands on a machine that take care of my needs daily. I have bought different kind of funnels, but was unsatisfied. I began to see what I wanted personally for pouring in the new oil and its controls. I wanted something that showed measurements, had an open and close function, a filter for debris, a holder for the plastic oil container to drip all of its contents, and something I did not have to stand there holding it until it was finished. My solution: I found a funnel with a handle, measurement lines on the sides, filer in the bottom, a twist value for opening and closing, and a tube for the oil to flow. I took a light chain and fixed around the funnel where it would remain level. I put a hook at the top of the chain that holds the funnel to be placed in the holes or car hood latch above the oil cap. I took a wire hanger and twisted it in a shape that I could place a plastic oil container in it over the funnel to allow it to drip all contents without standing there and holding it.  What this did to increase my personal value was while it was dripping on its on I could be doing other things, creating a multitasking ability in me.

Second Step is practicing your new idea until you build a fully functional model that you have complete confidence in before sharing or implementing to anyone else. This step is important because the key word is “New”. A large number of people can not stand anything new. You have heard people just because it is new does not make it better. This is why the second step the proving ground your idea can take the tests of reality. Sales pitching an idea that has not been proven decreases your personal value because they remember what you said standing behind the sales pitch when it fails or fall short of its bragged about performance. What does proving my idea works do to increase my personal value: Your actions speaks volumes of desire to make things better, faster, and with integrity.

Second Step Example: Proof of Results

People where I work uses browser for a great deal of their work. They use a wide variety of internal and external websites to do their work. As I have listened to them complain about their browsers and the different websites they use. I had customized my browser for what I used daily. As I heard and saw where they were coming from about their complaint. When I visited them at their desk I would ask permission to sit down with their browser and I would inquire what websites do you use every day religiously? I would create a series of tabs of the websites they spoke of and made them their home pages in their browser. Now, when they turn on their browser their working websites are waiting on them ready to be used for the day. This is a simple fix customized to the individual needs making things better, faster, and a good practice.

Third Step is to ingrain into your senses and thought patterns of being a solution finder. Majority of people fall in step with negative seeing and hearing. They verbally complain filling the atmosphere with a taring down acid like feeling dissolving hope and closing the blinds to light. You have heard of the saying, “Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem”. It is easy for almost all people to see the problem, but it is a rare few that snaps out of the band wagon mentality and sees possible answers to the situation. What does ingraining my thought process into have to do with increasing my personal value: You will become the go-to person with trust, belief, dependability and resourcefulness.

Third Step Example:  Presently Aware

Inside my mind where no one else can see or hear what is going on. I gather key words people are saying and start my mind on the process of a possible common sense solution with the belief of “Everyone thought Someone would do it and Anyone could have done it, but No one did it.” My Mom loves to work in the flowers, but carrying all her tools needed at each flower bed section got to be to much as she got older. There is a little wagon with a seat for a lid that could be pulled by a rope with tools inside. She could get the tool or tools she needed for that flower bed, close the lid, and sit down near the flowers she wanted to work with.

Be one of the few, building your self esteem, and making yourself resourceful in an open variety of ways.  “Have a great day in-spite of what comes your way” this is from my Dad when he was alive, which I have deemed a “Solutionarian” way of thinking and not a “Problemnarian” way of thinking.

Smiling Faces

1971 The Undisputed Truth sang this song that had these words:
Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend
Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within
Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes
They don’t tell the truth uh
Smiling faces, smiling faces
Tell lies and I got proof

The truth is in the eyes
Cause the eyes don’t lie, amen
Remember a smile is just
A frown turned upside down
My friend let me tell you
Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes
They don’t tell the truth, uh
Smiling faces, smiling faces
Tell lies and I got proof
Beware, beware of the handshake
That hides the snake
I’m telling you beware
Beware of the pat on the back
It just might hold you back
Jealousy (jealousy)
Misery (misery)
Envy

I tell you, you can’t see behind smiling faces
Smiling faces sometimes they don’t tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces
Tell lies and I got proof

Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes
They don’t tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces
Tell lies and I got proof
(Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes)
(Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes)
I’m telling you beware, beware of the handshake
That hides the snake
Listen to me now, beware
Beware of that pat on the back
It just might hold you back
Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes
They don’t tell the truth
Smiling faces, smiling faces
Tell lies and I got proof

Your enemy won’t do you no harm
Cause you’ll know where he’s coming from
Don’t let the handshake and the smile fool ya
Take my advice I’m only try’ to school ya

This song has come to my remembrance in three different stages. In all three stages my first thoughts are sad and ashamed. I want to believe in people. I want to trust in people, but the final conclusion a person must face is “you can’t afford to“. After you are bitten several times the realization is you cannot afford to give a person a high percentage of believing or trust, but on the contrary a very low percentage of trust. It is a building project comparable to public building. You do not build a large structure in one minute, one hour, or one day. It takes a long time if you don’t want to make mistakes along the way. I have made it a personal goal to be the opposite of this song and become a believable and trustworthy person, but the way our society is today I, too, am placed into that category of a “Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within” until proven otherwise. I would love to tell children the world is a believable and trustworthy place, but that within itself is a lie. The truth is to “Be Aware” and “Wise” to your surroundings with slow acceptance. The sadness and ashamed feelings I feel come from the naive of to this day is “I want to believe“. There are so many people quietly and silently suffering of starvation of someone to really believe in and trust in. I am have met so many different kinds of people who have the smiling faces, but believe whole heartily that lying to others is a “social lubricant“, an acceptable pacifier for a means to an end.

Growing up with many different events occurring in my young adult life, I came to trust animals more than I did people. At least animals were true to their nature, whether good or a bad nature. I was in a down spiraling fall, when I thought I would give God a chance. I had tried other things, why not give Him a chance at the screwed life I was living in a screwed up world. The first thing God told me I had to learn to do was to “love people”. This started a very long and hard road for me. People have proven over and over… and over to be “Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend” to me. People treat each other as a “means to an end”. I have found this every where. I mean every where (so far). They are friendly to you because you are a vehicle that will take them to the end they want to reach and then they are done with you with someone else in their sight to take them further. Teachers looking for that student to shine their glorious teaching skills, the athlete to show the world the coaches abilities or the water boy to do the dirty work without appreciation, politicians using others for their money and influence, and the list goes on and on.  People using people for person gain. We are all books being written on new pages daily with eternal ink that will be opened in the day before God and all of mankind. I want to be rebellious to the world system and be an individual you can believe and trust. It does not mean we are perfect. It simply means there is a real effort in being a true person daily.

The song I referred to is a sad song, but with a truth that is almost gospel. The only repeating factor that has come through with belief and trust in my life has been the Bible and God. God has never back stabbed me, gossiped on me, betrayed me, or pretended to be something He is not, though there are forces out there that try to make God look like another Smiling Face with lies behind it. I have learned to be still, be patient, and listen to His still small voice speak understanding into my ears. He is my best friend. I only wish I could hold up the standard of being the best friend in return. The daily effort is what keeps me getting back up, dusting myself off, and moving forward in the hopes of reaching the good goal in life. Pleasing mankind is a bad goal, but pleasing God is a good goal that will put everything else into place. Thank you, and have a great day in-spite of what comes your way.