Do We Know What Will Happen Tomorrow?

A couple of mornings ago, I listened to a message on my phone from my business partner. He had called earlier and was informing me that he'd had chest pain all night and was going to the local hospital.

After verifying his presence in the emergency department at the local hospital, I hopped into my car and drove over to find out what was happening. The news I received when I arrived was not good. He had suffered a heart attack and was "not out of the woods yet."

This came as a total shock to me even though my partner is 75 years young and one might expect to be greeted with such news. You see, he's had only one and a half lungs as a result of numerous bouts with pneumonia when he was a child and has battled bronchitis and other lung ailments for most of his life. My assumption had been that his lungs were the reason for his chest pain and what had brought him to the hospital in the first place.

But I was wrong!

All of a sudden, I was faced with the possibility that my business partner and one of my best friends would not be around for much longer. The thought left me dazed and bewildered. Since I am not "family" I was not allowed to visit him so I drove home to await further news.

To be honest, I'm not sure how I managed that drive. I certainly don't remember much of it. All I do recall is a feeling of shock as I contemplated what may lie ahead. Would he survive? Would I ever see him again? How much damage had been done?

The worst feeling however was the sadness I felt about the fact that he may die without someone by his side that loved and cared for him.

Well, a couple of days have passed and he's still holding on. He's undergoing tests today to determine a course of action. It could be a simple procedure or it could be by-pass surgery. Time will tell.

What has been going through my mind during these days is the knowledge that I am but one in millions who face this sort of news daily. How many people have loved ones in the hospital? How many are mourning the loss of someone close who didn't survive the heart attack, or the cancer, or the car accident, or the disaster, or the ______?

I've thought about all the hospitals in the area I live in and multiplied it by thousands throughout the world to get a vague estimate of the number of people suffering with physical problems. Then my thoughts go to all the others who are suffering because of war, or famine, or natural distasters.

It can seem overwhelming to consider statistics such as these, but it has been a real eye-opener for me... and all because someone I care about had a heart attack!

Grand-children: what lies ahead for them?

Above is my grandson Foster who is a little more than 11 weeks old when this photo was taken recently. He is such a 'boy' and promises to be an active toddler in the months ahead.

He tends to wake quite often during the night and I remind my daughter that it's now pay-back time for all the nights she kept me awake during the first five months she refused to sleep! But if he takes after his mother in any other ways, he'll be an amazing person with a quick wit and a wonderful personality that others are attracted to instantly.

My grand-daughters: Keira, on the left, is very much a little lady who loves fashion and exercising her personal taste. She enjoys highland dancing which she has been doing for 4 or 5 years, music and swimming.

Bryna couldn't care less what she wears... as long as it's comfortable. Her passion is horses and she's been taking riding lessons for about three years now.

Who can doubt that angels exist when you see beautiful children such as these? I am truly blessed.

But, like many other grandparents, I often wonder what lies ahead for them all. What sort of world will it be? Can we change it to reflect the love and peace that is the core of who we all are? Will we ever connect with that core as a species?

As Eckhart Tolle reminds us, as does many others, our outer world is simply a reflection of our inner. If that is the case, the news we view on TV each day does not bode well for us. But I refuse to believe that it is hopeless. We simply don't get to see all the wonderful things that are also taking place around us.

Yes, the world is an insane place where there is much violence and suffering, but there are also individuals and organziations dedicated to changing it. However, it seems the TV news editors aren't aware of them so we don't usually get to hear about their work.

If YOU are interested in helping to bring about world peace, check out the Global Coherence Initiative at http://www.glcoherence.org/. This is a group of individuals who empower co-creation with others for the benefit of all. This is what they say about themselves:

The Global Coherence Initiative is a science-based initiative uniting millions of people in heart-focused care and intention, to shift global consciousness from instability and discord to balance, cooperation and enduring peace.

This is an opportunity to sow the seeds of change. If, like me, you feel this is important work, please register and become part of the solution to changing our world.

What's happening?

A few days ago, my business partner and I attended a local Word on the Street Festival as we have a small business helping writers to self-publish their books (http://www.petnyaa-self-publishing.com/). Our booth was quite a long way from the parking area and there were no trolleys available, so we carried all our books and supplies ourselves.

The following day, my arms were sore from the exertion plus my head and my body ached. But that wasn't all I experienced.

For some reason, I also felt very 'fragile.' I was ultra-sensitive to everything going on around me - even to the point of not being able to stay in the same room while my daughter did some research on the computer. The sound of the mouse wheel aggravated me!

Doing any sort of computer work myself was out of the question as I couldn't seem to focus on the screen.

Even reading my new Deepak Chopra book was out as I couldn't get my brain around what I was reading so I opted to occupy the day by reading something a little lighter... in my bedroom of course.

When my daughter prepared to go shopping for groceries and asked me whether she should use cash or debit, I almost freaked out because I couldn't make a decision. I simply couldn't. And that's not like me!

I can't see how this has anything to do with carrying stuff, but I'm at a loss to understand what caused my feelings.

Perhaps it was something to do with a dream I had the previous night where I was working at the same place as a friend, but while he was out of the office on some sort of business, another guy came in to clean off the hard-drive on his computer and replace everything with a single new program. I was very protective and wanted certain things left on, although I understood that cleaning it was the right thing to do.

I tried to justify leaving some information on my friend's computer - things I knew he had spent a lot of time learning and working on, but I don't think I was successful. The computer guy just smiled as if to say, "You know this has to be done," but never actually said a word. My dream ended before anything was actually done.

I don't usually remember my dreams, but when I do, I KNOW it's important so I recorded this one in my journal and gave it a lot of thought the next morning. I don't know much about analyzing dreams, but I understand that everyone featured in a dream is usually some aspect of our self, but I couldn't figure out what the message was.

It took a while, but a couple of hours after waking it occurred to me that my friend's computer was really my own outdated internal hard-drive that needed to be wiped clean and one single program needed to be installed to run everything from a fresh, new perspective. My requests to retain information were simply my attempts to hang on to items in which I had a vested interest because I had invested a lot of time in acquring them and I didn't want to give them up or lose them.

Well, whether that's what it meant, or whether that's something that needs to be done, or whether it WAS done the next day... I don't know. All I know is that I had a VERY strange day.