Grandpa and grandma came to the USA when they were in their very early twenties.

They came with little money, so they had to rent a place to live. Grandpa was a wise man and a great observer.

In Italy he trained as a shoemaker, but here that job would not provide adequate income. So he found a factory job for steady income, but he also found wealthy clients who could pay richly for handmade shoes.

Grandpa marveled at the public transportation system. With one coin you could ride, then “transfer to anyplace you want to go.” He never spent money on owning a car.

All the foods that we are close to, both drink and hard food, vegetables, fruit, etc., how do you know if they are good for your body?

There is an easy way of finding this out. The autonomic nervous system, which lies down the center of your body in the front of you, all the way down to your belly button, can identify, if you hold the product in front of you under, your chin, dead center in your body.

If it is good for you, you will tilt forward.

If it’s not good for you, you will tilt backward.

Here are some principles to live your life by.

Set high performance standards for yourself. Don't set your goals and standards according to what satisfies others. Set goals that seem a little out of reach. Persevere. When those goals are reached, set new ones at a higher level. Keep doing it.

Never be satisfied with what you've accomplished so far. Always demand more from yourself. When you fail to live up to your standards, don't make excuses for yourself. Accept that you failed and resolve to do better next time.

Introduction

John:

This is John at Heart Speak. I am here with Matt Del Rosario. Matt, from the short I met you, you started talking about the future and the unknown and your perspective on the unknown. Could you please over that and share what your thoughts were on that?

Matt speaks:

I always felt like an outsider. I always felt I have been on the edge of life. I can participate in it, but for some reason, I catch myself needing space, needing to pull back, needing to feel myself away from others.

This is the story of how I learned about Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who had a jungle hospital in Equatorial Africa. The reverence for life for all animals, he created this idea when he was in Africa in 1913, when he first went to the hospital in the jungle.

The reverence for life came to me when my mother passed away. I was stationed in Germany. I came home to New York, and my father said, “I want you to meet this woman”. She was a Jewish refugee from Vienna. She won the 1958 Oscar for a documentary on Albert Schweitzer, who I’d heard of.

It pains me to have to recycle glass jars, but we simply do not have room to store every jar we get.

Of course, many items in the store are packaged in plastic or cardboard. The day may come when there will no longer be glass jars.

When I was a little girl, each glass jar was put to use.

Ever notice that sometimes it’s just hard to get it done? Sometimes it’s hard to get a job, or an event, or an activity you had planned to do, and just do it.

Sometimes, that thing called procrastination bites you in the ass, and you can’t move forward. And no matter how hard you try, no matter how much you think about it, it eludes you.

Now you’re a smart person, you’re capable, you get a lot of things done all day. But sometimes the one event, one activity, one task just can’t get done. So how do you get it done? Here’s a little trick that might work.

Garden life began for me at the age of 12. When my mother worried she was so busy she might not get her dahlias planted, I volunteered for the job. I seldom volunteered for chores on our busy family farm, but, even then, the magic of these flowering plants had me under their spell. Dahlias grow from thick, elongated roots called tubers that we dug each fall and stored for the winter. By springtime the gnarly clumps were like shriveled starfish, testing one’s faith any life could be left in those dusty, wrinkled remains.

Let’s play a game.

Imagine that you had no enemies.

No, I don’t mean you should imagine that all the things you think are your enemies died or went away. What I mean instead is to imagine that all those things you think of as your enemies were actually your friends. A friend is someone or something that serves your highest good, that helps you learn and grow, that reflects back to you who you really are and that at the very least doesn’t get in your way as you travel through life.

   The actual song itself is available only in spoken form, as requested by Philip.

About the Author

Phil Gross has written poetry and turned them into songs since he was about 19 years old. Many people write in diaries or journals.
Poetry and songs are his journals, documenting his life, strife, loves and the passing of his years.