Category: Words To Live By

Do you ever relive any of your good childhood memories?

I do and I’ve found it to be very therapeutic, especially given that I had such a dysfunctional family growing up. Coming from a dysfunctional family always made it very easy to talk negatively about the experiences I had growing up. And for awhile that’s all I did. But I found that was holding me back from healing and growing spiritually. When I started realizing that, I began doing work to reshape my thoughts of my childhood to a more positive level. It wasn’t an easy process given the fact that I had so much suppressed anger inside about what I went through back then. But the more I worked through and released those things, the more I began to remember moments from my childhood that I truly cherished. I wrote specifically about one of those yesterday when I spoke about my family’s annual day trip to New York City during the Christmas holiday season. Remembering good memories like this was only part of the healing process I went through to reshape the thoughts of my childhood. The other part was in taking an action to relive them in the present. And since 2007, I’ve been doing just that by going to New York City during the Christmas holiday season on or around the second Saturday of each December.

I’m quite sure I wasn’t fully conscious of the healing that was taking place inside of me that first year I went back down to New York City in December. But I was definitely conscious of a constant urging coming from somewhere within me to get me to actually do it again. It started with me asking my closest friend if he was interested in going and it turned into us asking a few other friends to join us as well. When the second Saturday arrived in December of 2007, I had a car full of people heading with me to the train station in New Haven, CT at five in the morning. Over the next 14 hours or so, my friends allowed me to guide them along the same exact path I had taken with my family almost twenty years earlier. By the time we were back in my car heading home late in the evening, all of our faces hurt from laughing so hard because of the amazing experience we had with each other. But what I felt inside was even more special than that and it was the same sense of joy I had in reliving a happy childhood memory.

For seven years now, I have visited New York City around the second Saturday of each December solely to relive one of the fondest memories I have from my childhood. While some of those outings have been more fun than others, I have always been able to remember my family with positive thoughts during each. Things have changed over the years in each of those outings including the people who went with me, the activities we did there, and the destinations we had during the day. But one thing has never changed with these trips and that’s the fact that I’m still doing them, like I did last Friday.

My honest truth is that I don’t feel anger anymore about my family and I know reliving my happy childhood memories, like our Christmas trip to New York City, is a big reason for that. It’s helped me to shift my focus completely away from the negative thoughts and experiences I had back then. Now, I’m able to reflect so much easier on the good things that actually did happen with us during my childhood, as there were actually many of them.

I know how difficult this task may seem if I was to ask you to recollect your happy memories from childhood, especially if you grew up in a dysfunctional family like I did. But I want you to know that it’s not only possible to recollect them, it’s also possible to completely heal from all the bad ones too.

My healing began with God guiding me to forgive my family and let go of all that anger. And the more that I forgave my family and let go of all that anger, the more those happy memories of them started trickling in. And the more those happy memories of them starting trickling in, the more I had urgings to relive those memories in the present. And the more that I have relived those memories in the present, like my annual outing to New York City during the holiday season, the more I’ve realized how God has guided me to reshape my thoughts of my family to that of the positive.

So please know if you are finding it difficult to recollect any happy memories from your own childhood, all it may take for them to surface is a little bit of forgiveness and the letting go of some anger. In doing so, I’m sure that some of them will begin trickling in and when they do, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and start reliving them as best as you can in the present. As the more you do just that, the more I’m sure you’ll find your own thoughts being reshaped of your family to that of the positive too.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

New York City is quite magical during the Christmas holidays. While many movies do their best to portray this, my family liked seeing this first hand when I was a kid. That would happen early on a Saturday morning in the first or second week of December and it was then my family would board a Metro North train in Poughkeepsie to head to New York City for the day. I don’t remember how many times we did this outing, but what I do remember is how special each of them were to me.

They always began in Grand Central Station a few hours later where we would begin our day by heading into one of the several bakeries there. Chocolate croissants, buttered hard rolls, hot chocolates, and warm coffees in hands, we would all then venture out of the train station onto the busy streets of New York City. There was a particular smell that I grew quite fond over the years that hit me once I began walking with my family towards Macy’s, which was always our first stop. That smell was a combination of the roasting chestnuts, hot pretzels, and sizzling hot dogs on the grills from the many food stands we’d pass by along the way. My father made it a ritual to consume each of them during the course of the day and I specifically liked the slathering of a lot of mustard on a salty pretzel the most.

By the time we arrived at Macy’s on 34th Street and Herald Square, we consistently were freezing cold. I really can’t ever remember a warm Christmas outing in the city back then, but I was always quick to forget about the cold once I saw this store’s unique window displays looming in front of me. I never knew who was responsible for decorating them, but they definitely wowed me every single time I saw them. So as my family sifted through the line with the many others to see them, I was mesmerized by their moving parts going in various directions. At the end of this window show, my family would next walk into the main entrance of Macy’s with a smile. That’s also partially because we liked seeing the two Salvation Army people stationed at that door ringing their bells, dancing to Christmas music, and thanking people for donations in their red kettle.

Walking into Macy’s was always an absolutely breathtaking experience for me during the Christmas Holiday season. The store was filled everywhere with holiday tress, lights, and decorations. Even many of the store’s employees wore festive outfits while they worked. The pinnacle of my visit to Macy’s back then though was the ascent upwards through smaller and smaller fitting escalators that went from modernized to old wooden ones. At the top of that ascent was Santa’s Village where my family waited patiently in a long line for what generally seemed like hours just so my sister and I could walk through the village and sit on Santa’s lap. The wait was always worth it though.

When we left Macy’s, it was on to Times Square, which in my opinion, always looked like Christmas year round with all its brightly lit signs that existed high up on buildings there. There we would get lunch somewhere in that vicinity where my father always found some unique eatery for us to dine at. I specifically remember enjoying those oozing slices of oily New York Pizza and mile high sub sandwiches I’d get year after year.

After our bellies were full, it was onto Central Park to see the horse drawn carriages with their Christmas lights on their carts and the skaters that skid across the ice on the rink in the front of it. A hop, skip, and jump away from there was our next destination, which was FAO Schwartz. This toy store was once considered the largest in the country and it invariably held the most distinct toys and things such as huge stuffed animals, a tall moving tower with a smiling clock, a large piano you could walk across that was made famous in the movie Big, huge lego monstrosities, and so much more. To get into this store and see all these things though, we had to wait in another long line that wrapped around a building in the blustery cold. It too always ended up being worth the wait for me.

Upon leaving FAO Schwartz, my family would head down 5th Avenue stopping in many of the brightly lit retail stores. My favorite was the Warner Brothers store which sadly, no longer exists there. My parents were preferential to Trump Towers because of its gold colored glamor and glitz that existed within it’s walls. Next was our quiet walk into St. Patricks Cathedral and a silent rest in the pews while we regained our stamina.

By the time we emerged from there, it usually was dark so we headed over to Rockefeller Center to see the mammoth Christmas tree lit up and the skaters on the rink swishing around on the ice below it. If I was to place one moment to be the most magical filled on our annual Christmas outing, it would have been that one, maybe because it’s how that trip always ended for us each year.

Well actually, the real end to this trip was our rush from Rockefeller Center to the train station to catch the next one going to Poughkeepsie. On our way there was usually a grab and go of something to eat. But once those doors were safely closed on the train and us all in our seats, my eyes would get heavy and close with my final thoughts for the day always being the same. That I was able to truly enjoy my own very special New York Christmas Story.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Have you ever noticed how being negative breeds only one thing, more negativity?!

Have you ever been around a negative person or a group of people long enough who were being so negative that you ended up becoming that way too?

Negativity is like a disease that spreads quite easily. I often compare being negative to that of drinking alcohol or taking illegal drugs while trying to get over the flu. I know that might sound like a drastic example to provide but there’s great truth to it. When a person has the flu, aren’t they normally advised to get bed rest and drink lots of clear fluids to help their body flush out their sickness? Would that happen if a person decides to consume alcohol or take illegal drugs while they are sick like that? Of course not. Doing either would only weaken their immune system, making it that much harder to fight off their flu. While I’m not sick right now with a diagnosed illness or disease, I am currently in the process of doing everything I can to heal my mind, body, and soul from all the toxic stuff I’ve done to them throughout this life and all previous lives. (Yes, I do believe in reincarnation, but more on that in a future posting.) Thus I know now that doing anything like drinking alcohol, taking illegal drugs, and even doing something like being habitually negative would jeopardize my healing process.

This is the main reason why I have been spending more time alone lately than not. Unfortunately though, it often seems as if there are a lot of negative people in this world who would rather focus on everything they perceive is going wrong in this world rather than on what actually might be going right. When I’ve spent time around any of those people, I have found myself becoming just like them. It may start out innocently with me joining in on a conversation that’s bashing someone or something in some way, but it always eventually leads to me looking at the rest of my life through a negative set of glasses. Ultimately, when I participate in that long enough, my life turns into one negative mess where I can’t see anything positively.

Doctors and scientists have proven that being positive leads to a healthier body. They’ve also proven that being negative can lead to further sickness in the body. I can’t handle anymore sickness in my body thus I am very cautions these days on who I spend time around. So when I happen to be around anyone these days who is becoming too negative, I always follow one of three paths.

I remain silent.

or

I try to change the topic.

or

I remove myself from the negative situation until it improves.

Some may feel that being negative with others feels good. It’s a common misbelief that can happen when people come together and find they share similar negative beliefs about things. Others may feel that being negative may feel good because it often invokes compassion and support from another. Then there’s those who may feel good being negative solely by themselves because they have found some level of comfort in being that way consistently. And while all of those people in each of those different situations may feel ok with being negative, all its doing in the long run is poisoning their bodies, their minds, and their souls. The healthiest thing though for each of them is to try to be as positive as possible in all things.

In my case, I have found it difficult to do at times lately because of the amount of physical pain I’ve been feeling. This has led me to occasionally veering off that path of positivity and spewing out a bunch of negativity instead. The down side of doing this has always been me feeling worse at some point later. While I don’t believe that it’s humanly possible to be perfectly positive all the time, I do believe that it’s important to strive for it as much as possible. For the moment, the best things I know I can do when it comes to my physical pain issues is to ignore my ego’s negative thoughts by telling myself I’m going to completely heal, and keeping myself away from negative people as much as possible.

The bottom line comes down to this with being negative. Whether it’s by myself or with others, it’s just not a healthy thing to do, especially given that I’m trying to heal so much of myself. Being negative works a lot like a disease and brings about nothing more than sickness, darkness and unspiritual-like behaviors. Thankfully, God is helping me to do what I can these days to remain positive, even in all the adversity I continue to go through. I encourage all of you to do the same and together I know we will all become so much brighter because of it.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson