THE REWARDS OF 25 CENTS

I realize I can never just have a normal day. The fact that I understand that is the reason why  nothing ever surprises me that much. Luckily, I use my blog from time to time to share it with you guys. This is my event from today and I just had to tell the people who read my blog about it. I hope you enjoy it, just as much as I did experiencing it.

Today, like ever Sunday,is my food prep day! I gotta eat! In order to keep myself from blowing up I have to have food prepared during the week for me to eat so it takes all the guess work out of trying to figure out what to eat thats healthy. One of my favorites places to go to shop is Aldi. If you've never been you need to go at least once. The cost of the food there is very reasonable, and their bottled water is very cheap. This store is different in the fact that when you go to get a shopping cart you have to put a quarter in it to get the cart free to use. You get the quarter back when you return the cart  to the place where you got it from. Normally, when I leave out from that store I try not to get the quarter back and just hand off my cart to a person that is on their way inside. I always say to the person I give the cart to "This is a gift from me to you." I always get a big ol smile and a thank you. Well today something different happened. I came out with my cart and I saw an elderly lady coming up with her 25 cents. I stopped her and told her that she could have my cart. She tried to give me her quarter but I refused and told her it was a gift from me to her. The lady asked me why I was being so nice and I told her I was always this nice. She said she needed someone to be nice to her today and starting crying a little outside the store. I was so confused but I wanted the lady to stop crying because people were looking at me like I did something to the lady. So, me being the silly person I am, I told her I really wanted to be nice to her. I pulled out one of the bananas I had bought and said here is a gun for you to have. Haha! She smiled through the tears and laughed a little. I asked her why she was so sad. She told me that she is a mother of two adult children. One was living in Texas and the other was living in California. They were supposed to come and spend the weekend with her but her daughter has a sick child and couldn't come and her son's job had some sort of emergency so he couldn't come either. I said they will just come next weekend then. She said that today was the anniversary of her husband's death. He passed last year on today. I was speechless. I told her I was so sorry. She said it has been rough on her all day and that me being nice to her really just made her lose it. She asked my named and I said it's Emmanuel. Her eyes filled with tears again and she said that that was her late husbands name also. I told her to hold a second. I went and put my groceries in the car and told her I would go with her in the store to help her shop. I had stuff I needed to get done, but I felt like that I bumped into this lady for a reason...

The point of me telling you this story is to hopefully show that even the smallest random act of kindness can mean the world to someone. I gave this lady a shopping cart and ended up feeling just as good or better than when I work out. I look at the news lately and see all this killing and people being angry at each and it's like we all have turned into wild animals. We've forgotten how to show empathy and love one another. We are all human beings, even though we've forgotten how to be human. I challenge everyone who reads this to do some small random act of kindness for your fellow man. I don't care if it is just as simple as holding a door open for someone when you go in a store to shop. You never know whose life you can affect in a positive way. I helped this lady to the car with her stuff and she gave me a big hug. We will probably never see each other again, but doing something nice for this lady made me feel as good as I figure I made her feel. The rewards of 25 cents can be awesome. Until next time people.. Rest in peace Mr. Emanuel...

Become a Phoenix (Life as I see it and motivation to keep going)

Normally, I try to keep most of my blogs about fitness and eating healthy and within that there is another hidden meaning. Well, this time it's going to be mostly motivational stuff because I think that is what's needed this time around. What made me want to write this is something that happened when I was at a store recently. I was in line with my stuff and there was a conversation going on at the counter. The guy who was checking out was talking about how July 2015 was a horrible month for him. The guy who was checking him out said "It was bad for me too". The next guy in line said the same thing. There was a lady pushing a cart by and heard the conversation and said me too. I started thinking to myself about how this past month was for me and to be damn sure July was horrible for me also. It got quiet and we all looked around at each other. It was just like a scene from a movie when something dramatic happens and everyone gets a chill. If you're reading this, think about this past month and ask yourself was it unusually crappy for you. Did that girl/guy you love start acting kind of funny? Did that co-worker that was getting close to getting on your last nerve finally reach that last nerve? Was your boss acting like that had lost their mind this month? Did you get fired or laid off? Family members acting crazy? Car broke down? Spouse do something stupid? Etc.. I know it happened because it happened to damn near every person I asked over the past of weeks. It came in waves. If you heard about something bad happening to someone, the next thing you knew it hit you. A lady in that store said that Venus was in retrograde and that's why all this stuff was happening. I don't know that much about all that astrology stuff, but I do have a different insight on what's really going on.

Try to follow me with this one. If you don't get it, it's totally fine. I know someone will get it and that's the most important thing and hopefully it will help them through this tough time. "Life!" Life is a beautiful thing. If you are living and breathing then it's a miracle that you are here. It takes so many different biological and chemical reactions to make life, and it has to be damn near perfect for it to succeed. My personal belief is that we were given the life that we have because we were chosen to be happy.  We were also given free will to make decisions and do things. All living things experience pain, and when that pain happens it throws off our happiness. In order for us to make that happiness return when we are in pain things must be corrected. Look at our planet for instance. Our big huge lovely planet. Believe it or not, it is alive. We don't take care of it like we should and do things to harm it at times. When we don't take care of it and do bad things to throw off it's happiness  natural disasters occur. Floods, earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, tornadoes, etc.. These things have been known to take out whole cities at times. Once it's done our planet is back to being happy. Blue skies and sunshine all around. It corrected the mistake we made on it. Take yourself for example. You go about your daily routine and lets say a fly flies around your head. It annoys the crap out of you so you swing at and it goes away. It may even sit on you and you never even feel it. Now, let say a mosquito sits on you. If it sits on you for long enough, you're going to get bitten and it's going to hurt. That mosquito just threw off your happiness, so what do you do? You swat that sucker and brush him off! You put some ointment on to keep it from itching too bad and then your happiness is restored. You corrected that problem.

I tend to look at life itself like living human being versus something I can't see but i know it exists because I'm living it. We go about our lives making decisions here and there not knowing that we are causing harm to our self  and putting into place things that are going to upset our happiness. We think we are doing the right thing but, we can't be sure. We just use our free will and go forth. For example, we took that job that seemed really good, we started dating that guy/girl we thought we could have something with, we kept taking that co-workers crap etc. Then all of a sudden life steps in and changes things because we made choices that are going to disrupt the happiness in our lives. When this happens it just like a natural disaster to some, but there is no need to worry. The reason why this is happening is because life has your back. When your life has burst into flames and turned to ashes, that is when you should BECOME A PHOENIX. A Phoenix is a mythical bird that bursts into flames and turn to ashes but miraculously arises from it's own ashes just as strong and powerful as ever. That is what we must do in order to survive and live a happy life. As I stated before that's what I was believed it was designed for anyway. So, when life seems to be tough for you, don't get all sad and down. You should feel thankful that life is correcting your mistakes in order to put you back on track to a happy life. How do I know this is true you may ask? Are you not just fine
now that all that bad stuff has happened? :-)  Until next time....