Category Archives: Appreciation

Increase Your Abundance of Perspective

This morning was another exploration into my new neighborhood. To those of you who haven’t read my previous articles, I’ve recently moved, and because I like to go for a walk every morning, I’ve been finding it a good opportunity to see what’s around me. Like when you are in some kind of environment, and you really don’t know what kind of things you have to you can use these things to your benefit. Just like that I find myself walking new paths every morning as I find new things of interest.

One thing that I found interesting was three different perspectives on my neighborhood from three different levels. And from each level, you can see different things, if you can open yourself to what is around you all the time.

The first level, of course, is ground level. On this level you can only see just what’s up ahead. And if you look behind you, you can see that as well. Only if something really big is on the horizon does it come into your conscious awareness. Like big buildings, or the Ferris Wheel that is on top of the department store downtown. Other things, which are big and important, you really can’t notice them until you are right on top of them. You need to be careful, because when you are out walking around, you have to make sure the path you are traveling on doesn’t end abruptly. Because then you’ll have to turn around and go back, and hopefully find your way on to where you were going in the first place.

The second level is up higher. I live on the fifth floor, so I’ve been stopping on stairwell landing just outside the hallway. From there you can see where you’ve been, and where I want to walk tomorrow morning. The long roads around the small rice fields look very neat and organized from higher up. And the things that seem so big up close, don’t really look that big when you compare them to other things, like the hills in the background, and the sea that you can’t see but you know is off in the distance somewhere, as they always are. Of course I only have a limited view, so I can only see one direction. I don’t really know what’s behind be.

The best view is the third one. This is if I only go up one flight of stairs higher. Normally, I wouldn’t go up any higher, because I live on the fifth. But when you increase your viewpoint just for the sake of looking rather than needing a reason, you really can see all around. I can see the Ferris Wheel downtown, the baseball stadium that is behind me, and a whole nother set of hills that I didn’t even know where there. And all this time I thought I was getting a good exploration simply by walking around on the ground level.

It’s really amazing what you can see when you raise yourself up so you aren’t blocked by things in your way. And it’s kind of silly to think that one can let themselves be blocked by something that can’t move. Because all you need to do is go around.

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Feel Youthful Dreams At Any Age

So today I was hanging out with these four junior high school kids. Which isn’t really something I normally do, but sometimes when you find yourself in an odd situation that happens every once in a while, you can use this opportunity to learn something new that maybe you’d forgotten about. Like sometimes when you get older, you sort of forget what it’s like to be a kid, so when you talk to them, they seem to have a fresh and new perspective on things, until you realize that they are really looking at the world through eyes that you’d had before, and you’d neglected to look through for too long of a while.

So I was asking these kids what they wanted to be when they grew up. One kid said she wanted to be a nurse. Ok, sounds good. A job where you can help people, work in a hospital, wear a cool uniform. The next kid said he wanted to be a teacher. So far, so good. Help out kids to learn about life, help them to discover new things everyday. Next kid said he wanted to be a professional soccer player. Now we’re talking.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professional baseball player. That was before you learned that you sort of had to be good at what you want to be when you grow up. Because I wasn’t all that great in baseball. In fact, when I was as old as these kids, I didn’t even make the junior high school team. Before you feel sympathy, realize that I was kind of relieved, because by that time, I’d learned that the baseball team was always the last to go home everyday.

Kind of strange how that works out. You develop these big dreams, then you sometimes realize that your dreams aren’t really based on anything other than a wish. You sort of make your goals based on what you see on TV, which really is just a bunch of imaginary stuff when you think about it. Not that watching baseball on TV is imaginary. It’s just that they only show the fun part, or at least what they think that you’ll think is the fun part. Who wants to watch the part where they stretch and practice and line the field? Unless you really enjoy that, which I guess professional baseball players do, which is why they are professionals, and I didn’t make the junior high school baseball team.

But as you go through life and learn new things, you start to really get a taste for what it is you want to spend your time doing something rewarding, right? I don’t suppose you could be a professional singer unless you really enjoyed band practice.

The thing that struck me the most, is that you can develop a realistic view of life as you grow and learn and experience, and still retain your youthful expectation that you always have the possibility of being able to become something greater than you are. I mean, who wants to stay a junior high school student your whole life?

And the fourth kid said that he wanted to be a taxi driver, which is actually my favorite answer of them all. Because instead of saying something that he thought other people might approve of, he said something he thought would be really cool, for whatever reason it was. And when you can combine your youthful expectation of greatness with saying what’s really on your mind, you got yourself a winning combination. 

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The Road Is Better Than The Inn

I was having lunch with a friend of mine today, a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. He’s one of those people that even though you haven’t seen this person in a long time, when you meet up with them, you can just pick up where the two of you left off. Like when you learn something, like playing the piano, you can go for several years, but once you sit down, you can remember easily whatever it was that you learned so long ago. And it’s interesting how you can remember things, isn’t it?

So my friend was telling me about an addition he’s adding on to his house. He and his wife had been planning it for sometime, but they always think of a reason to not do it right away. Need money for this, have to buy that. You know how it is. And both are working full time, and trying their best to raise three kids. It’s no wonder they are so busy, they haven’t really been able to spend much quality time together. Which I think is a misnomer, because all time is really of the same quality, it’s how you can choose to spend your time is what really matters. Like you could spend time watching TV, or you could spend time working on a project that could make it easier for you to make money and improve yourself.

And he said that building the addition to the house was really turning into a special time for him and his wife. Both working together, on the same goal. Not that raising three kids isn’t working together on the same goal. I guess something happens when you spend time with somebody actually building something physical. It’s like you can stand back, and see the progress. You can look at your plans, and compare how you are doing with where you want to go. And my friend is actually not looking forward to finish the addition as much as he thought he would. He said he is really able to enjoy the process, rather than the expectation of an end result.

Like when I was a kid. I was in boy scouts, and every summer we’d go on these long hiking trips. Sometimes a week or longer. And although we went to some great, beautiful secluded spots with fantastic fishing, my fondest memories were hiking with my buddies, looking up at the mountain pass we were aiming for.

Some people look at life itself as a long process, ever changing, ever growing. The moment we begin to lose interest, or lose that spirit of wonder is when we fool ourselves into thinking that we have arrived. We get tricked into thinking that our everyday, day in, day out routine is what life is about.

One way you can jump start yourself off the same old same old routine is to look at experiences with fresh eyes. Ask yourself before falling to sleep every night, “What did I learn today?” And let the answers come in your dreams. You may be surprised to find that you knew the secret all along, you just needed to remember. 

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Create New Traveling Paths For Success

First allow me to apologize to my readers who have been wondering where I’ve been the last couple of days. I moved to a new city this weekend, and in the hustle and bustle of moving I haven’t had time to write any new articles. Henceforth I shall be posing at my regular intervals, so those of you that have sent emails wondering what’s up, all is well. And thanks for the thoughts.

Moving to a new city is both exciting and sad. Exciting because you get to meet new people, introduce yourself to strangers, and explore new areas of a new neighborhood. One of my favorite parts of moving into a new neighborhood is finding all the local coffee shops and bookstores. It’s places like that where you can chill out and read something interesting that can perhaps expand your mind.

Another thing that is both exciting and sad is saying goodbye the old and creating a new morning walk. My previous walk in my old city took several iterations until it was just right. You know how you try something, and keep shifting it a little bit until you get it just right, right? Like when you order a coffee and you get the sugar and milk ratio just right. It’s as though you don’t really want the refill because you don’t want to mess up the perfect mix that you’ve created.

So I was on my first exploratory morning walk, going down this small side street, checking out this bridge, looking in the window of that shop. And it made me think of how the brain is able to create new memories. From a structural standpoint, it’s almost identical to creating a new traveling route.

Like for example, if somebody says ‘baseball,’ and you automatically think of ‘hotdog,’ that means there is a strong electrical/chemical/physical connection in your brain between the collection of neurons for all things ‘baseball’ and all things ‘hotdog.’ Mentioning one automatically makes you remember another.

So as I was walking I started wondering, as I usually do, which is one of the main reasons for my walks. What if you could engineer the connections in your brain, instead of letting them grow on their own? For example, what happens when you think of the following words:

Test

Economy

Money

Sex

Race

What words did you come up with? Did you like them? Would you like to change them? One of the great things about human development is that you can learn to create associations in your brain, just like you create a new traveling route, as I was doing this morning. For example, when you think of the word ‘test,’ what if you automatically thought ‘a great opportunity for to show your knowledge?’ Or if somebody says ‘economy,’ how would you like to think ‘a fantastic complex structure where you can make incredible amounts of money?’

Of course, just as it will take time for me to create and settle into a new walking route, it won’t be automatic for you to create new connections, but don’t you think that it’s worth the effort?

I can’t wait until tomorrow morning. There is another street I saw that I hadn’t been down yet. How about you?

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The Incredible Power of Importance

So I was talking my friend tonight, we went out to eat in a local restaurant that specialized in spicy food. In fact I think the restaurant name was Spicy Food, if you can imagine that. I guess the owner wasn’t able to feel really creative when he was designing the name of the restaurant. Which is kind of how some things go, you just kind of pick a name, and off you go. And I suppose that the name worked, because the place was fairly popular. We were lucky to get a table because it filled up rather quickly after we sat down. It’s not a big place, it’s actually on the third floor in a small building above a clothing boutique. Kind of like those weird shops that sell strange things that make you wonder how they manage to stay in business.

So anyways, my friend was telling me about his big plans to start up his own restaurant. He’d been checking out a lot of the local places, you know the way you do because you just feel it’s the right thing to do, right? And because you can realize this you can probably understand why my friend was making sure to go slow and make sure he was able to understand the process. Because nobody really wants to start a business and then have the business not make any money, right? Of course you realize that the most important part of a business is to make money. Or it probably should be up there on the list of important things, if indeed you are one of those people that keep lists of important things.

And it’s kind of interesting when you think about the whole concept of important things. Because what is at the top of the list of course is usually thought to be the most important thing, but what happens if stuff at the bottom is not met, how in the world can the stuff at the top important if the stuff underneath isn’t being taken care of?

For example, I was a at a lecture once given by a Buddhist Priest that was visiting from a different temple that the one we were. There were a lot of people there, and some had some from clear across the prefecture. There was one guy who took a day off work to visit this lecture, and another guy who had to bribe his wife with a day of shopping for the lecture.

And he started talking about things that we think are important, and it turns out that they really aren’t all that important, when you stop and think about it. And the things that we don’t think are important are the things that we neglect, but most of the time the things that we neglect turn out to be the most important of all. Unfortunately a lot of times we don’t realize important things until they are gone. It’s like we never learn to realize the significance of all that is around us. He said that we need to really understand that all of the big things in life are really made up of important little things. And without the little things, there are no big things. And one of the cool things about that, at least according to him, is that the first thing you’ll realize when you accept this simple idea is that you are literally surrounded with fantastic abundance just waiting for you to recognize it.

Like that table of really cute girls that came in to the restaurant midway through our dinner. We sure recognized them, and they sure recognized us. But I’ll leave that to another story.

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How to Create Reality to Match Your Desire

What would be the odds of flipping a coin twice, and getting heads both times? One out of four, or 50% times 50% (1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4).
How about tossing it four times in a row and getting heads each time? One in sixteen, or (1/2×1/2 x1/2 x1/2 = 1/16).
How about ten times in a row, and getting heads each time? A little over a thousand, or (1/2)^10.

How about the odds of hitting the random button on wikipedia and hoping to get an article on the Klingon language? About one in a million?
What about the odds of winning the California state lotto? About one in 13 million.

Of all the billions of people that have lived in the world, are living in the world, and will live in the world, what are the odds that you happened to have been born in an age of unprecedented communication technology which allows you to read blogs like this one? A billion to one? More?

Of all the of planets that exist in the universe, how many can support life? How many of those can support human life?

Starting from just before the big bang, when all there was was a pure concentrated focus of pure consciousness, what were the odds that it would explode and trigger  billions upon billions years of interstellar and planetary evolution to create that which sits and reads these words? They are to staggering to even begin to try to comprehend.

The miracle of the universe is not the unlockable secrets of physics that make it all simple to understand and predict. It is not the incredibly improbable events after improbable events that led to life on this rock we call earth. It is not the connection of machines spanning the world that can send messages between citizens of different countries at the speed of life. It is not even the message itself.

The miracle is you.

Of all the possible outcomes that could have resulted from all the interstellar and biological activity since the dawn of time, here you sit. Reading these words. Having thoughts in your head. Thoughts that can create wonder if only you direct them in the right way.

You are constantly on the cusp of eternity. Reality is continuously being created before your eyes. You have two choices. Watch it unfold, or make it unfold.

Which do you choose?

All it takes is to just project your thought out, just only a little bit. Go into every situation and imagine the outcome just a few seconds ahead of where you are.

For example, you are walking down the street. You see a cute girl or guy. Instead of wondering if you should smile, or hoping that they smile first, all you need to do is hold a powerful image of them smiling. Only just a second before you would normally smile. This will naturally make you smile, which will naturally make them smile to match the image you created. If you create a strong enough image, it will become reality.

Try it. You will be amazed at the results you’ve easily created.

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Your Incredible Power of Thought

Have you seen the movie, Titanic? The one where that ship crashed into the iceberg, and sank? I’m sure you realize that the reason they crashed into the iceberg is because ninety percent of the iceberg is below water, where they can’t see it. And of course, since they didn’t have very advanced sonar back in those days, they didn’t really see it coming. The fact that they were trying to go fast to impress the newspapers, and weren’t willing to always pay attention didn’t help either.

How about that episode of Seinfeld, where George went the movie theater and that guy was shining a laser pointer at the screen? Because everyone thought it was so funny, George decided he would try the same thing, only he got different results.

Or how about those books that have all those satellite pictures from space? When you look down at small towns in sparsely populated areas, you can barely see a dot of light. Yet in that dot of light are hundreds if not thousands of people, all with thoughts, dreams, fears, hopes, and memories of wonderful pleasure.

Your brain is like that. The thoughts that you are thinking now are the proverbial tip of the iceberg, because there are literally millions of thoughts that are going on in your mind that you aren’t aware of. And the difference between the thoughts that you know about, and the thoughts you don’t know about, are a lot different than the 90/10 ratio in that iceberg. George’s laser is a little bit closer, with the dot being the thoughts you are conscious of, and the whole screen being your other than conscious thoughts. 

For example, what are you thinking right now? What were you thinking before you thought that? What are you thinking now, as you read these words, and remember to feel your left foot? How about as you feel your left foot and begin to wonder what is going to happen exactly one week from now? And when you think about that, can you remember your birthday when you turned seven years old? How about your first kiss? How about the first amount of money that you truly earned? How about the first time you were alone with that someone special? How about the night you were so scared, you didn’t think you were going to make it? (But thankfully you did!) How about that time you were so happy you cried, and then wondered if anybody noticed?

One of the most fantastic thing about the brain being set up like this is that there are literally millions of thoughts in your mind that you can harness to support you. While the magnificent potential is always there, sometimes our thoughts aren’t as cooperative with each other as you’d like. It’s when you give your brain a clear, strong, direction, infused with good emotions, that these thoughts start to sychronize.

A great way to do this is to think of something you want to accomplish or attain. Imagine how it will look when you accomplish it. What will you see, what will you feel, what will you hear that will show you, without a doubt, that you were able to accomplish this? Make another picture, filled with other pieces of evidence of your accomplishment. 

For example, imagine that you want to earn a certain amount of money. Decide on the exact amount. How many things can you picture that show evidence that you have your goal, already achieved? What do you hear people saying to you about your achievement? How do you feel? Can you feel the paper? Is it a bank statement? Are you opening an envelope? Can you feel the weight of the actual cash in your hands?

Once you have a picture in your mind of what you want, close your eyes and sit with it for a few minutes, and really feel gratitude for having it. Really feel thankful for yourself, already achieving it. Feel thankful for all the people that have helped you achieve this goal.

Do this at least twice a day, every day. This will powerfully align the thoughts in your brain to be more cooperative so you can achieve what you want.

And if you think that this is encouraging, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.

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Four Power Sources for Success

In all the interactions that you’ve ever had, all the interactions you ever will have, there are only four things that are in your control. Luckily, these four sources of power are all you will ever need to achieve any dream, manifest any goal, and create any situation that you desire in life. These are not something you need to go out and get. You cannot buy these, you cannot steal these. You need do absolutely nothing to attain these, for you already have them.

These are your thoughts, your emotions, your words, and your actions.

Everything you see around you was created with these. All things tangible and intangible. From the great Sphinx to the very computer screen you are now reading, all were created with only these four powers.

Lets see how you can tap them now.

Thought

Those ideas you have floating around in your head. The result of billions neural synapses firing to create mental images. Created by evolution or God, to assist you in moving through the world to plan, learn and conquer. Have a look on the article regarding focus to get an idea how you can begin to control your thoughts, so that they don’t control you.

Emotions

Emotions arise in our minds when we use our thoughts to give meaning to events. Suppose you sit next a cute girl (or a cute guy, depending on your gender or tastes) at a coffee shop. As soon you sit, you notice that she inhales, and then turns her body slightly away from you. What just happened? If you assume that she finds you repulsive, and turned so she wouldn’t have to face you, what emotion would that cause? If you assume she finds you irresistibly attractive, and suddenly became very shy, what emotion would that cause? The secret here? Any meaning you give to a situation is perfect. The important thing is not whether it’s accurate or not, because we never really know why other people do what they do, but what emotions we create in ourselves by giving certain meanings to things.  When you start to pay attention to how you interpret the world around you, you can start to play around with giving different meanings to give yourself better emotions. This takes time and effort, and I will be writing several future articles to that end, so stay tuned.

Words

Words can be powerful. Words can be eloquent. Speeches throughout history have moved people to great heights of goodness and love, and to evil, horrible depths of destruction. A kind string of words can convince somebody not to kill themself. A kindly said “hello” can change a persons complete outlook. The Jurassic 5’s The Verbal Herman Munster said “..word power can plow through acres of cornfields, paragraphs cut like warm steel..” When you begin to pay attention to the words that you use, you can become incredibly powerful. It’s no coincidence that the ‘spell’ which describes the correct order of letters in a word is the same ‘spell’ that describes the correct order of words in a magic incantation.

Actions

The vehicle that carries the sum of our power is our actions. What we do. How we do it. Not just large physical movements. Body language, facial expressions, smiles, frowns. Our actions and words can synchronize together to either display a congruence so powerful that we can become kings, or with such chaotic psychosis that people steer wide to avoid us altogether.

Our reality is indeed a reflection of how we manage, control and use our four powers to our advantage. By releasing the childishly dependent strategy of hoping for free gifts from others, you can realize that when you harness your four powers for great achievements, you will receive more abundance than you ever imagined possible.

Good thoughts lead to good feelings, which naturally spawn congruent words and actions which lead to success. If reality is not how you like you need only go to your source of power. Change your thoughts, change your world.

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Return to Source

Once upon time there was a large body of water. Freshwater. Up high in the mountains, surrounded by pristine trees and unspoiled landscapes of many colors. Every summer the water would evaporate itself and mix with his friend the sky, and they would hang out together for a while. When it was time, the evaporated water would then turn into frozen water and would snow down on the mountaintops. He was always worried, however. Sometimes he didn’t think the animals below would have enough time to fatten their bellies enough to make it through the winter. The other animals usually moved to nicer neighborhoods when the time came. It always worked out, though.

Frozenwater would sit on the mountaintop, relaxing, waiting for his other friend the sun to come and thaw him out. When it came time to thaw out, he would run down the mountains, and separate himself out into many streams, and rivers. Eventually he would go back and rejoin himself in the lakes that spotted the various high mountain plains. Every year they had a long discussion, actually a discussion with himself, about which part would go up into the sky, and become air, and then become snow, and which part would stay behind and freeze itself under it’s own skin.

Of course, the part of himself that had the most fun was the small part that every year got to flow all the way down to the ocean. It was kind of like a cultural exchange of sorts, set up long ago by who knows what or who. The freshwater would allow a small part of himself to flow all the way out to the ocean, where he would see different fish, and animals and creatures that he would never see up on in the lake or the sky or the mountaintop.

And every summer, the large ocean would send a small part of himself, up into the air, and would make it up to the mountain, and then back down into the lake. Where he could play with new friends that he hadn’t seen in a while that belonged to his other self, which of course was all part of the same self.

This continued, season after season, year after year, millenia after millenia. Until one day, the part of freshwater that was chosen (usually with a couple rounds of rock scissor paper) to go down to meet with it’s other self, the saltwater self, couldn’t. Almost couldn’t. There was some kind of a giant wall that was keeping the freshwater self from meeting his saltwater self. So he had to go back, but when he turned around to go back, he was already back. There was a giant lake, a new lake, where there wasn’t one before. The freshwater looked around. The trees looked different. The sky looked different. He stuck his finger up into the air and checked the temperature, and decided that he wouldn’t be able to freeze that year. Oh well, he decided to make the best of it.

A few hundred years passed. No freezing. No mountaintops, no splitting into stream and river and many small lakes. It was no big deal to freshwater, because he was still together with himself. Freshwater laughed. It wasn’t like he would ever be apart from himself, despite wherever this weird wall came from.

It’s like when you have one of those days, and you can just see yourself in all other people. For some strange reason, you just feel connected. Like when you see somebody, you kind of have a feeling, that you know this person. Even though you’ve never met, you just feel something. And despite how much you feel wonderful when you notice this feeling, it never is able to stay long.

Then one spring, when the snow part of itself was melting, and flowing into the new lake part of itself, (although by this time the new lake was rather old,)
the strange wall had dissappeared. So the freshwater just kept right on flowing. Down. Down. And a lot of the other freshwater selves wanted to join itself on the way down, since there was so much of it.

And then a funny thing happened. Because the freshwater had been apart from itself for such a long time, he kind of forgot that he was a small sliver of the larger saltwater part of himself. So when the freshwater self greeted his saltwater self, for a moment, it seemed as if he were a small child meeting with an old grandparent. Of course the feeling lasted only a flash, as whenever freshwater reunites with the saltwater, you can remember who you are. All is well. Because water never really is separate from itself, as any scientist will tell you. Always flowing, never static. And despite having the allusion of being separated, you are always together.

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Eruption

Once upon a time there were two rabbits.  Rupert and Rectangle. They were hanging out, doing rabbit stuff. Looking for carrots, finding turtles to race, and resting from making more rabbits, as it was their day off. Rupert, the younger rabbit, decided he wanted to make a model volcano. Kind of like Peter Brady, only without the electricity. Most rabbit experts will tell you that rabbits generally don’t use electricity.

So this young rabbit was building this volcano, but he couldn’t quite get it to work right. He didn’t have the lava mix quite down. I think he was using a combination of egg whites and mulch, or perhaps some kind of gelatin derivative.  He kept getting really frustrated, and he was about to give up. The wise older rabbit, Rectangle, said “Don’t give up yet, Rupert!” But Rupert just threw down his volcano making tools in dismay.

“Nothing is going right. I want to do this, and instead it does that. I want to make it lean right, and it wants to lean left.”

“Relax, Rupert relax. Go with the flow. Don’t fight against the natural order of things. It will come in time. It always does. Just remember to do things one step at a time. If it doesn’t go the way you want it, change what you are doing. Step back, take a bigger look, and figure out what to try next. It’s only practice, after all.”

Poor ruper was following along, but he didn’t quite understand the last part. “Practice? Practice for what?”

“Why tomorrow, of course. Everything you do today, is just practice for tomorrow. Because if you allow yourself to release your expectations, and let things be just the way they are, you’ll be fine. As long as you learn from what happens, you can do it better next time. Especially because you always have tomorrow to look forward to, right?”

“I guess so,” Rupert replied, “But how will I ever finish, if I only practice?”

“Take a look around you young sir, take a look at everything. Does everything look finished to you? Are all your friends not still growing? Are all the trees not still getting bigger? Does father not upgrade and improve your rabbit hole every winter? Do you not need to learn new things in school every year? Does your Uncle, the carrot farmer, not have to learn new carrot planting methods every year? Practice. It’s all just practice.”

 “Practice for tomorrow. I got it,” Rupert said, getting back to work on his volcano.

“And one of the best parts about realizing that everything is practice for tomorrow, is that no matter how bad you mess up or how well you do, you can always look forward to being able to get better.”

And Rupert proceeded to make the best volcano ever.

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