“Be happy while you are living...you are a long time dead!" ---A Scottish proverb



One of the most serious problems in this dynamic compulsive driven world today is stress.  It appears to haunt us everyday in all that we do, whether we are at work or home. It seems to me, that with approximately six billion of us folks on this beautiful blue marble we refer to as earth, and with all of the marvelous communication systems, we could somehow get together and figure out what is causing all of this work and stress. Oh well!

However; there comes a time in our lives (about every other day), when our bodies and minds click onto all those synaptic connections in our brains that it is time to relax. many of us rush out and enlist in Tai Chi  or meditation classes...naturally; there isn’t anything wrong with those methods, for they are wonderful things to do---They work!
 
Yet, it seems to my happy self, that there are enormous quantities of other schemes we could achieve that would accomplish the same results, and be much more fun. And that is exactly what this booklet is all about---doing things we have either forgotten,  didn’t register with us, or because we are too busy being stressed out.

The most prominent explanation for my writing this, is because I went through open-heart surgery eleven months ago --- something akin to that will cause most of us to realize how precarious our lives are;  plus it has a tendency to make us consider very deeply what is, and is not, important to us. We immediately discover that being cut off in traffic, spilling something, having a flat tire, etc., really means absolutely nothing. No matter what event occurs to me now, I always tell my happy self that if that is the worse that happens to me, I’ll be one happy man.

As a result, I began making a list of people who carry great weight in my life, places I highly desire to travel, types of books I wish to read, things I crave to do, subjects I want to ink-sling about, and a few other items... before the day comes when the world throws my remains in a bone-box. Some of the consequences of relieving the tenseness within our assemblage of genetic codes are, we become more sensitive to those around us, we think clearer, and are more interesting to be with.

Try to recollect when we were very little and the whole world was new to us. The trees were enormous, the leaves were soft and colorful, our first warm summer rain that made us feel all clean inside and out. The time we were out side with our coat on, and suddenly there were millions of tiny things that melted in our hands, and our world turned white. and of course, there were all those wee creatures crawling on the ground that only we could see. our world was wondrous, and every day was an amazing safari. And then, night fell, and out of no-where, we beheld another new world to explore. those tantalizing and amazing natures are still all around us --- we just no longer see them, because we are now so-called “adults."

As an example, I personally live in the fifties, and I finally bought my first computer-a laptop...and I’m taking it back to the fifties with me. Why do I “live" in the fifties? Quite simple, for it was a slower moving time for me. a time when I would sit on our front porch and watch a lightning storm, or just play with our dog. Yes, we have to provide ourselves with the basics---food, shelter, and clothing, plus a few other items. However, we also are required, for our health, to just plain relax, and wrap ourselves up in the myriad modes of enrapturing and serene experiences of natural life.