" THE BEST EXERCISE FOR YOUR HEART IS TO LIFT UP ANOTHER PERSON."
-David Bailey

Three-time motorcross national champion was paralyzed for 12 years from a racing accident but completed the 1998 Hawaii Ironman triathlon and has been named 1998 Disabled Athlete if the Year.

SPRING IS A TIME TO CELEBRATE LOVE AND LUCK
(Valentines Day and St. Patrick's Day.)

I'm sure it will be after Valentines Day by the time I get this newsletter posted on my web page. So I figure, why not extend the powerful definition of romantic love to include understanding, acceptance, and respect. That's a truer definition of love because unless all these qualities are combined love is only a very superficial experience - and certainly there's not much of a chance for lasting pleasure. At the heart of love is full acceptance and a learned ability to embrace many individual and different qualities that exist in each person. Without accepting and appreciating the differences, there cannot be true or lasting love. At least that's the way I see it. And unless we can know and accept ourselves, we stand little chance of loving others.

So I encourage people to adapt to situations but not to adapt or change who they are to please other people. The ability to adapt to situations is surely a human strength; but the need to become what others want you to be causes you to sell out.

To love someone means helping them discover and become who they truly are. This is such an important lesson to reinforce because in every environment there is stress but the most negative stress you will experience comes when someone wants you to be someone else. There is, indeed, implicit rejection and unkindness in this unacceptable demand on you.

"Resolve to be thyself, and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery."
-Coventry Patmore

A friend of mine named Sharon Skartston Aby, (many of you will remember Sharon from her Apple Days) sent a description of The Global Village . I'm eager to share it with you and hope it will do for you what it did for me - add a clearer perspective plus a pinch of humility - both vital ingredients in all relationships -- especially in love.

THE GLOBAL VILLAGE

" If we could shrink the earth's population to a village of precisely 100 people with all the existing human ratios remaining the same, it would look like this:
57 Asians
21 Europeans
4 from the Western Hemisphere (North & South)
8 Africans
52 would be females
48 would be male
70 would be non-white
30 would be white
70 would be non-Christian
30 would be Christian
89 would be heterosexual
11 would be homosexual
59% of the wealth would be in the hands of only 6 people
all of whom would be U.S. Citizens
80 would live in substandard housing
70 would suffer from malnutrition
1 would be near death
1 would be near birth
1 would have a college education
1 would own a computer.

so, considering this compressed view of the world, the need for understanding and acceptance becomes glaringly apparent."

And a few thoughts on love and luck...

"I love laughing."
-William Blake

"Let no one who loves be called altogether unhappy..
Even love unreturned has its rainbow"
- James M. Barrie

"Scatter love."
- Arynne Simon

"Take away love and our earth is a tomb."
- Robert Browning

"Luck is what you should expect."
- Arynne Simon

" Luck sometimes visits fool, but never sits down with him."
-German Proverb

"Sure, luck means a lot in football. Not having a good quarterback is bad luck."
- Don Shula

"Success is simply a matter of luck; ask any failure."
-Earl Wilsom

"I shut my eyes in order to see."
- Paul Gaugin

"If I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come."
-Chinese Proverb