Category: Living A Life With Purpose

La La La

The streets are relatively empty here in my neighborhood. Snowbirds have gone north and many of our permanent residents are traveling during the SoFi summer months to escape the heat. In all the years that I’ve been coming to South Beach this is the first summer I have ever spent here and I’ve discovered how it’s interesting that life changes with lightly traveled sidewalks that are usually filled with foot traffic and intercontinental languages filling the space around me. The once crowed outside café tables are vacant. Hungry souls are still here, but they are dining inside enjoying a temporary respite from the heat. 

Sofi and I take our walks a little earlier in the morning and on the way home sometimes stop at our favorite little café for a croissant and cappuccino. I usually fill my time waiting for my morning coffee scanning Facebook on my iPhone.

All of this reminded me this morning about an article I recently read about the psychological effect Facebook has on people. Looking at my Facebook’s posts by friends one would think that everyone has a perfectly happy life, busy doing things, enjoying experiences we wish we could have, and leading a la la life. 

The idea that everyone else is living a utopian life but not us, well, it’s kind of depressing, isn’t it? Thinking about this I clicked on my home page and reread some of my posts, and it’s really true. I am so guilty! It sounds as though I’m living a la la life. The image I’m projecting is that everything’s is la la every day. That is so not true, my friends. 

As we all know, real life is not la la all the time. The reality is that my life is just like yours – full of ups and downs. Arthur and I are getting older and we have lost most of our dear friends. It seems that we are always getting calls with news about the people who have been important strings to our past have gone. A piece of our souls are slowly being eaten away by time as months and years roll by.

Last year the one pill I take. Only one pill. It was changed by my new doctor and the new beta blocker put me into the hospital with AF (atrial fibrillation) for 56 hours and I had to be converted. Certainly not a Facebook event.

Then my oldest very active, young and healthy daughter was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, my middle child who devotes her life to helping humans and animals by no fault of her own, due to torrential rains and delayed contractors cutting her crop, lost an entire field of hay planted to feed the rescue horses that she has taken in and kept from certain death. Money out of her pocket down the drain and no way to replace it. 

https://www.gofundme.com/feedahorses

 All of these are just small hick ups in our family in the scheme of things, but this is real life. No one ever, ever has a Facebook life, believe me. Ever. 

Even if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence believe me it’s not. There are weeds in there just because this is the way the real universe works. 

The challenge is to look for the small beautiful moments every day and focus on each sunrise and sunset as being a special gift. Don’t pass a small flowering tree without taking in its beauty. Don’t pass any stranger without a smile and nod. It just may be the emotional medicine they need at that moment.  
Never ever under estimate the value of positive thinking and how it radiates beyond us to others. And for heaven’s sake don’t believe everything you read on Facebook. As my son wrote twenty years ago, life is a Lemon Parade. La La is only a reality in music.

Copyright Sandra Hart 2016©. All Rights Reserved

Truth Be Damned


Where oh where has my country gone? Where oh where can She be? The America that I am watching in the news and in the social media posts I have been reading these last few months are not mirroring the America I have known. It’s not the America that I have been proud of. Not the America that nurtured me. 

America is lost. America is broken. Crazy glue is polarizing the nation . We have become stuck together in groups defined by religion, ideology, sexual preferences and color. Cultures have stopped embracing each other. Our proud heritage as Americans of being ‘a melting pot’ seems to have disappeared. 

As I have often written, I was so lucky to grow up in one of the most culturally diversified communities in this country and nothing other than moral discrepancy, honesty and truth, would divide us. We were of all backgrounds, all colors and faiths and traditions, yet we were excepting of one another. There was no other way we lived our lives.

 

That said, I really have to be honest with you, today, even at the highest level, those moral compasses, honesty and truth, seem to be virtues that no longer matter. It is so disparaging and so horrible that we have come to this point where virtues don’t seem to be valued. Whatever people can get away with that’s what goes. Truth be damned. There is no personal accountability, nor any court of reckoning for deception and dishonesty today. A lie is a lie, is a lie and habitual. How can we even think of rewarding this behavior? Have we lost our collective minds?

There is no white washing of dishonesty and any acceptance of such immorality as ‘the norm’ is taking our country down Alice’s rabbit hole and a dangerous slope of no return. It’s a very disconcerting picture. 

There is no doubt America has significant challenges ahead. We have to get our heads on straight. We have to have a call for tolerance and respect for all peoples; including the brave men in blue who devote their lives to protect all of us. 

There are still bridges to be built and we have always been a nation of builders. A nation of good Samaritans with compassion for all peoples. A nation of proud patriots. 

It is my opinion, my friends, we have to bring back respect for trustworthiness and honesty and diversity before we run out of time for any type of reversal. 

Copyright Sandra Hart©. All Rights Reserved.

Living A Life Of Purpose

Living A Life Of Purpose


When  my children were growing up our house was home to a myriad cache of animals, four- legged and otherwise. I think the only creatures my salary was not feeding were those without legs and crawled on their bellies.

Dogs, cats, water fowl, rabbits, gerbils, turtles and birds, both wild and caged, were given TLC and a haven in our home. After a long day at work, I was never sure to whom or what I would be feeding and giving a forever home when I opened our front door, kicked off my high heels and threw the keys on the entry table.

I admit, my three children and I are all animal lovers. My daughters drooled ‘dog’ and ‘horse’ when letting their parents know they were getting the hang of expressing themselves as humans, but honestly, I point my now over-fifty finger at my middle child, Alison, for the menagerie on Ballinswood Road. Her first word relating to a four-legged creature (that should have been a red flag for sure) was an omen that her family then and now would have to accept her compassion for animals big and small.

Today, five decades later, Alison is still caring and giving shelter to rescue animals on her 75 acre thoroughbred farm, Tower Hill Farm, near Lexington in Paris, Kentucky. It’s a family affair – the three of them working as a team, she and her children giving a home to retired race horses, fostering dogs through the local humane programs and caring for and nurturing their own horses and pets.

A single parent of two active teens with a full-time job, I touch base with Alison daily on my iPhone, finding her most often in the barn late at night caring for the horses after a long day at work, followed by chauffeuring her children to and from their sporting activities. The phrase ‘a farmers work is never done, from sun to sun’ rings true for my daughter. Her passion for animals and caring for abandoned creatures sets her above and beyond most. Out of her own pocket she has been funding this humanitarian cause for years, because it is what she was called to do.
Veterinarian, farrier fees, feed, hay and other related expenses for these rescues are all a part of Alison’s humanitarian efforts to save these beautiful animals from the reality of being sold off at auction for slaughter to meat/dog food industries, or sold to medical industries for experimentation.

With all of the chaos and hate around us in the world that is out of our control, I would like to see something positive happen that IS within our grasp right here. Right now. I have set up a
GoFundMe account to help these animals in need and to assist Alison in proving a safe haven for others as well as these horses and foster dogs in need of a deserved forever home.

If we can assist Alison by raising at least $2,500 for hay for the rescue horses it would be a great support for these beautiful animals who don’t deserve to be cast aside.

Thanks ever so much

Sandra Hart
Hay For Horses Go Fund Me Account won’t you please donate now.