How much fun would it be to be the letter A? Think about it. A is always first or it signifies excellence. Who doesn’t want to be in the A group? Or who doesn’t want to always get straight A’s when in school? I would love to be the letter A. Life would be pretty simple.

Life goes by so fast. It’s so easy to be caught up in the daily minutia that consumes us all. It’s so easy for time to slip by and before you know it a day, a week, and then maybe a month goes by without talking to the several people in your life the that calls you a friend.

Like anything in life worthwhile friendships take work. You just can’t sit back and expect friends to stay close. There has to be continuous effort to stay close and relevant in your friend’s lives. It’s pretty simple if you put your mind to it. Just try to call at least one of them once a day. The conversations don’t have to be long or deep. Just reach out and ask them, “How’s their day going?” Or something like that.

Most people can count on one hand their truly close friends. Why not make sure that these people never feel ignored or abandoned? Friendship is one of the blessings of life. Cherish i

Becoming “empty nesters” is quite an interesting phenomenon especially when for most of your married life you and your spouse were parents. Like any other segment of someone’s life there is no “how to” guide to adeptly transition from one part of my life to another.

When a couple has similar aspirations and values on how to raise their children beautiful things tend to happen. Oh, I forgot the most important ingredient that they must have in common, it’s LOVE. Un Mitigating love that never wanes to just being parents. To me and my wife that’s always been the easy part.

Fast forward to the day when we both waved goodbye to our youngest and he was off to his freshman year of college. Alas, the empty nesting period in our lives began. There are so many questions that are unanswered when the front door closes behind us and this new phase in our life as individuals and as a couple begin.

There are so many wonderful things that have unfolded over the past 12 months since our youngest left for college. We have recaptured time again. It has given us time to pursue interests and passions that we never had time to explore over the past two decades. That’s the best part.

The scary part though to me can be explained in one word, compatibly. Is my wife and I still compatible alone like we were before we had children? It’s a question that most couples have to explore and hopefully conclude that the answer is a resounding yes. Unfortunately, some couples don’t come to the same conclusion and tend to drift apart.

The answer takes time. It’s something that you just don’t wake up one day and have figured the outcome. Hopefully, love will seep through you and your significant others’s veins and keep your love alive!

I have written in the past how music can be inspiring. I haven’t though taken it one step further and talked about one of the most magical events that we get to experience, live music. It’s definitely one of my favorite things to do. It really doesn’t matter the genre of music, I just like to see live bands in concert.

Sometimes though there is a chance to experience a truly special performance. The Coldplay concert was one of those events. There has been recently so much sorrow and hatred going around in the world. From Orlando, to Dallas, to Nice, to Turkey, to Baton Rouge, the list is sickening. At times you really wonder if there is still love in the world.

Then you get to see Coldplay. The show can only to described by one word….LOVE.
The whole show was a journey of love between the band and the audience and hopefully everyone around the world. There was plenty of confetti, pyrotechnics, and spectacular lighting that is a Coldplay trademark, but this show was much more than that. Chris Martin the lead singer’s actions exuded love and gratitude to his fans. He successfully took all of the cynicism and bewilderment away from the audience for 2 wonderful hours. It kind of reminded me of show that the Beatles might of choreographed in the psychedelic decade of the 1960s. During the Vietnamese war they only spoke of love not hate. Coldplay did the same.

If you have a chance go see them. What a treat!

When does a person stop growing? Is it when puberty ends or is at some other age?

I stopped growing as measured by my height at age 20. That was though just the beginning of my adult life. I couldn’t be done growing as person. Or was I? In most all of us the growth is just beginning.

We all grow at different speeds and at different times in our lives. I look at all of people who I have been exposed to in my life and they are on such different paths of personal growth. Some of them have been on the same trajectory throughout their entire lives. They continue to find ways of growing personally. I have known very few people like that. I think they are truly blessed to have that quality.

Most people tend to “stair step” growth in their lives. They are generally positive loving people that just like the status quo. Then some event or something or someone pushes them along to a new level of personal growth. I am one of these kind of people as are most of my friends.

There is a third group of people that I have observed and they are the ones who are “energy zappers” and are no growers. I am not going to spend anytime writing about these people because I think we all know examples of them in our lives. They don’t grow, they are no fun to be around. Enough said.

It’s fun to observe a friend or a loved one take a leap of personal growth. If you take a second to look at the people around you in your life I bet you can pick them out very quickly. Those are the people I want to surround myself with and be inspired by their growth to help me to become a better person.

When was the last time that you felt like a true outsider? Where the place you are visiting has a different language and a different set of customs that are foreign? Before last Friday the last time I felt that way was when I traveled overseas. Curiously this new foreign culture unfolded in front of my eyes just 3 miles from my home. It was called Starbucks.

My friend was running a few minutes late for our eight am meeting so I volunteered to get in line and get him a cup of coffee. I saw there were two lines of people patiently waiting to order their “morning pick me up”.

As I stood there I began to observe and listen to a vibe that was new to me since I don’t drink coffee. Some people had their Starbucks mobile apps opened and ready to be scanned while others just waited in line like myself. Whoever came up with whole “app thing” idea at Starbucks was a genius because in sort of a passive aggressive way it divided their customers into two distinct categories, the “haves and the have nots”. The app carrying customers just looked and acted way “cooler” than everyone else. I wanted a Starbucks app just to fit in too.

As I got closer to the front of the line I started to hear a language that I had never heard before. It kind of went like this. A nice dressed man with his Starbucks app ready to be scanned exclaimed to the barista, “I’d like a vente espresso, half caf, with a little bit of foam.” Each person in line would give their own unique coded lingo to the barista and amazingly she understood every word of it. I of course had no idea what they were saying and furthermore the whole ordering thing was pretty intimidating since I didn’t know the language. It was like I was in a foreign country where no one spoke English.

Suddenly, it was my turn to order and it felt like time had stopped and everyone in Starbucks was watching me. I didn’t have a Starbucks app and I didn’t know the Starbucks language either. I said to the smiling lady that I’d like a grande Colombian mild roast coffee. She acknowledged my request and I thought I got through the ordering part without a glitche until she asked me, “Do I need some room?” I stopped and thought to myself, “Some room?” Some room for what? I was at a loss for words. For a moment I felt like I was in France and the waiter asked me something in French that I couldn’t answer. I sheepishly asked her, “Room for what?” She answered, “Cream.” “Oh!” I said, “Sure leave a little room.”

As I paid for my coffee I just wondered how many other little alien cultures existed around me just waiting to be discovered. I bet many more than I think. Probably not many of them though have the size of the Starbucks world.