Planting Seeds of Intentions

[The theme of January 2018 posts is Intention – Choice – Responsibility.  May these quotes reinforce the value of choosing your intentions for the coming year.]

Happiness is not something ready-made.  It comes from your own actions.

– HH the Dalai Lama

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions [and choices], and not upon our circumstances.

– Martha Washington

From Eve Decker’s song, The Gardener

It’s really hard not to go where my whims urge me to go
But I know what sort of person I’m longing to become.
If I want to help anybody in this world before I die,
If I want the suffering all around us to subside,
I have got to be more conscious of the things I do and don’t do.
Every little seed in time will flower.
Plant the ones that lead me down a path toward really helping.
I am the garden, but I’m also the gardener.

In this very moment I reap fruit from choices past;
Choices for the future are made now.
Certain habits, deeply rooted, flourish in the heart of me.
Repetition, like the seasons, comes naturally.
Some of it’s good; some of it’s not;
Right now this is all I’ve got,
But it doesn’t mean it’s all I’ll ever be.

Choosing which part of me to act from is easier
When I know what I want to become.
I am and garden, but I’m also the gardener.

This planting of seeds is more subtle than it first appears
Its’ not just about a dollar to the homeless man.
It’s about perceiving what’s happening in this very moment
And deliberately choosing to extend love.

It’s really hard not to go where my whims urge me to go
But I know what sort of person I’m longing to become.
If I want to help anybody in this world before I die,
If I want the suffering all around us to subside,
I have got to be more conscious of the things I do and don’t do.
Every little seed in time will flower.
Plant the ones that lead me down a path toward really helping.
I am the garden, but I’m also the gardener.