Hi there!
And welcome to our last e-zine for the month of May.  We wish you
all the best of the end of the month, and we hope that you're able to start
June in ways that will help to make it one of the best months you've ever
experienced, no matter what may be going on in your life these days! 

Your Life Within
Marcus Bach

You Can Have It
tom walsh

Desert Water
Norman Vincent Peale

Please feel free to contact us at info at livinglifefully.com (no spaces, replace "at" with @),
or on our feedback page.  Living Life Fully home - e-zine archives - Daily Meditations
Don't forget that you can receive an e-mail reminder each time that our e-zine is published,
a free e-mail of our daily quotations and/or our weekly Digest.  Click here to learn more!
Our Weblog is back!      Download your free e-books!

Happiness comes of the capacity
to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think
freely, to risk life, to be needed.

Storm Jameson

Cheerful givers do not count the cost of what
they give.  Their hearts are set on pleasing and
cheering the person to whom the gift is given.

Julian of Norwich

If you haven't forgiven yourself something,
how can you forgive others?

Dolores Huerta

Your Life Within
Marcus Bach

You are a distinctive and individual expression of a Creative Force.  You are not a blueprint or a carbon copy or a ditto of anyone past, present, or future.  You are you and there is no one quite like you in the world.

You don't look exactly like anyone else, you don't live exactly like anyone else.  There are things you can do better than anyone else can do them, and there are qualities and talents that no one else can possess in exactly the same way that you do.  There are thoughts that are your own special revelation.  That which makes you YOU is personal, unique, and exclusive.  All of this is a reflection of a world and a life within.

Talk about how to be a success!  The successful person is simply the one who does his or her best with the things he or she can do better than anyone else.

Talk about living well!  Who lives better that the ones who are true to their own inner light?

Talk about being interesting!  What is more interesting than the person who is being him or herself?

Talk about how to be happy!  The happy, self-unfolded people are those who, with a will to believe in the world and the life within, have found that the secret of really getting the most out of life is to make the most of the qualities that are innately their own.

This inner world grows as we will to believe in it.  It is not through searching or feverish groping that we enter into it.  It is through the gateway of our will to believe.  You will to believe that because you are an individual expression of God there is purpose, real and meaningful, in your life, and you will to believe that to achieve this purpose you are also equipped with the talent and potential necessary for its achievement.  Will to believe it!

There is that within each of us that makes us great--I do not mean greatness in the sense of getting one's name in the headlines or making a million, but greatness in the sense of coming to terms with God and life.  We might call it getting hold of what we are and have and want to be.  For it is the originality in each of us ad not our uniformity which gives life its deepest meaning.

In this world within, your world, you are the most important figure.  There is a place that no one else can fill.  There is an influence that no one else can impart.  There is a life that no one else can life quite as well as you can live it.  What you do with your life within, in terms of self-realization, self-awareness, self-denial and self-expression, is the greatest challenge that can come to you.

just for today, i will appreciate all that i have. . . .

just for today, i will share my smile. . . .

just for today, i will be me, and only me. . . .

Just for Today, Kindle Edition, now on sale!

Forgiveness helps you come to terms with the past.  I've learned how to forgive myself, and this has helped me no longer feel deep regrets or sadness about my past.

Morrie Schwartz

Living Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement.  Our articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live life.  Take
from them what you will, and disagree with whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you each week.

You Can Have It

I went to a store recently and watched a man wheeling out a cart that had a 60-inch television on it.  That's five feet of television, from corner to corner.  I know that he had to pay a significant amount of money for such a television, and I couldn't help but think as I saw it, "You can have it."

It's not a judgment at all.  It's a simple fact--I don't want ever to have such a television.  I have absolutely no need of such a thing in my life.  We do watch movies and TV shows on DVD now and then, but we don't have cable or satellite, and we're very glad that we have neither.  Our lives are much simpler without the constant presence of television stations in our home, and without the constant bombardment of advertising that TV brings.  We don't miss it a bit, and when we walk by houses that have two or three satellite dishes on the roof, we always think or say, "They can have them."

When I see someone driving a huge car that seems to serve no purpose other than to be big and imposing, I always think, "He can have it."  I don't want a huge car--I don't want to have to pay for the gas, I don't want to add the extra pollution to the environment, and I don't want to contribute more than I do to our world's dependence on fossil fuels.

Sometimes I'll be with someone who's having a nice, relaxing time having fun with friends, and all of a sudden his or her cell phone will ring, and their lives suddenly are filled with some sort of stress that some other person feels that they should have in their lives.  At those moments, I feel very fortunate that I don't have a cell phone at all, for I appreciate being able to be fully in the moment wherever I may be, instead of constantly being at the beck and call of anyone who happens to have my phone number.  Cell phones?  You can have 'em.

And no, I'm not anti-technological.  I was among the first to have a cell phone, but I got rid of it when I found out just how much they affected the quality of my life.  I'm not anti-people--I love people, and I love being around them.  I just also love being with just one friend when I'm with that friend, and keeping my attention on that person instead of being distracted by phone calls.  And I appreciate it when a friend is able to stay focused on me and on what we're doing.

As I get older, I realize more clearly just how important the teachings of some very wise sages have been concerning our attachment to things in our lives, whether they be big cars that cost us more money than we really can afford, or cell phones that distract us from the present moment, or televisions that keep us addicted to their programming.  I watch as people become enslaved to their things--mere objects--allowing those things to influence their decision-making to an amazing degree.  How often do people decide whether to spend time with family based on what's on TV?  I think that even once should make us re-evaluate our relationship with the television.

People obviously can do whatever they want, and I'm not going to change them.  I know, though, that the quality of my own life has gone up significantly since I decided not to allow any things to have a large amount of control over me.  And while I don't like to see others controlled by things, I know that I really can't do anything about it if they are.  For me, life's far too short for that, though, so as far as I'm concerned, you can have them!

* * * * *

Jean Paul Sartre

Visit our pages on possessions and materialism. 

The reading revolution is here!  If you're like many people, you get tired of lugging around books that sometimes weigh more than anything else we carry.  Imagine carrying hundreds of books--novels, self-help, history, travel, you name it--and reading them comfortably on a no-glare screen, setting things like text size to your own preferences.  It's an amazing experience, and it's available to us now for less than the cost of ten books.  And there are plenty of free books to download, especially timeless classics.  Give yourself the gift of wonderful literature that you can easily bring with you, wherever you go!

Free wallpaper!  Just click on the size
you want, then right-click on the image that
comes up in a new window and choose
to set the image as wallpaper.

The most important element in human life is faith; if God were to take away all his blessings--health, physical fitness, wealth, intelligence--and leave me with but one gift I would ask him for faith.  For with faith in him and his goodness, mercy and love for me, and belief in everlasting life, I believe I could suffer the loss of all my other gifts and still be happy.

Rose Kennedy

Desert Water
Norman Vincent Peale

Let me tell you about one of my favorite personalities, whose life teaches pre-eminently how to reach goals.

I met one of the world's great positive thinkers in the wilderness of Judea, where, in the long ago, John the Baptist preached.  His name is Musa Alami and he has made the desert to blossom as the rose--a desert that in all the history of the world had never blossomed before.  He succeeded because he believed that he could, and he kept at it until he did, which, of course, is the way you succeed at anything.

Musa, an Arab man, was educated at Cambridge, went back to Palestine where he became a well-to-do man--well-to-do, that is, by Middle Eastern standards.  Then, in political turmoil, he lost everything, including his home.

He went beyond Jordan to the edge of Jericho.  Stretching away on either side was the great, bleak, arid desert of the Jordan valley.  In the distance to the left, shimmering in the hot haze, loomed the mountains of Judea, and to the right the mountains of Moab.

With the exception of a few oases, nothing had ever been cultivated in this hot and weary land, and everyone said that nothing could be, for how could you bring the water to it?  To dam the Jordan River for irrigation was too expensive and, besides, there was no money to finance such a project.

"What about underground water?" asked Musa Alami.  Long and loud they laughed.  Whoever heard of such a thing?  There was no water under that hot, dry desert.  Ages ago it had been covered by Dead Sea water; now the sand was full of salt, which added further to the aridity.

He had heard of the amazing rehabilitation of the California desert through subsurface water.  He decided that he could find water here also.  All the old-time Bedouin sheiks said it couldn't be done; government officials agreed, and so, solemnly, did the famous scientists from abroad.  There was absolutely no water there.  That was that.

But Musa was unimpressed.  He thought there was.  A few poverty-stricken refugees from the nearby Jericho Refugee Camp helped him as he started to dig.  With well-drilling equipment?  Not on your life.  With pick and shovel.  Everybody laughed as this dauntless man and his ragged friends dug away day after day, week after week, month after month.  Down they went, slowly, deep into the sand into which no man since creation had plumbed for water.

For six months they dug; then one day the sand became wet and finally water, life-giving water, gushed forth.  The Arabs who had gathered round did not laugh or cheer; they wept.  Water had been found in the ancient desert!

A very old man, sheik of a nearby village, heard the amazing news.  He came to see for himself.  "Musa," he asked, "have you really found water?  Let me see it and feel it and taste it."

The old man put his hand in the stream, splashed it over his face, put it on his tongue.  "It is sweet and cool," he said.  "It is good water."  Then, placing his aged hands on the shoulder of Musa Alami, he said, "Thank God.  Now, Musa, you can die."  It was the simple tribute of a desert man to a positive thinker  who did what everyone said could not be done.

Now, several years later, Musa Alami has fifteen wells supplying a ranch nearly three miles long and two miles wide.  He raises vegetables, bananas, figs, citrus fruit, and boys.  In his school he is growing citizens of the future, farmers and technicians, experts in the trades.  Imitating Musa, others have also dug until forty thousand acres are under cultivation and the green is spreading over the sands.

I asked this amazing man what kept him going, kept him believing when everyone said it couldn't be done.  "There was no alternative.  It had to be done," he said, then added, "God helped me."

As the twilight turned the mountains of Moab and the Judean hills to red and gold, I sat watching a huge stream of water gush from the heart of the desert.  And as it splashed into a deep, wide pool, it seemed to say, "It can be done, it can be done!"  So, don't let your difficulties get you down and do not believe those croakers who say you cannot do it.  Remember Musa Alami, positive thinker of the wilderness of Judea.