Category: Words To Live By

Recently in the news I noticed an article that said British actor Benedict Cumberbatch was on the set of the BBC series Sherlock and held up a sign for the paparazzi camped outside. His sign read, “Go photograph Egypt and show the world something important.” While I’m not anyone famous at this point in my life, and a I don’t have any paparazzi following me around to know what it feels like, I have a pretty good idea and I can understand Benedict’s point that he was trying to make.

Doesn’t the world have more important things going on in it right now than following someone who people consider “famous”  just to get a headline that is often just the spreading of gossip or the reporting of potential news oddities about them? Unfortunately, there are many in this world who enjoy that gossip and it’s those people who thrive on the Paparazzi’s news.

One of the definitions of the word “gossip” that I found online is the “casual or unconstrained conversation or report about other people, usually involving details that are not confirmed as being true.” In much easier terms, gossip is often the exaggeration or complete fabrication of factual information about someone.

It’s hard to not miss some of these news headlines as they are everywhere these days. They talk about the latest celebrity relationships on the rocks. They talk about someone famous who’s just beginning a new romance. They talk about a star who is arrested and might have a potential alcohol or drug problem, or maybe even a mental imbalance. And of course, there’s even those many headlines these days about some famous person’s baby that is on the way or was just born.

Frankly, I don’t understand why so many people really care about this type of news. On the grand scheme of things, why do any of those things matter to people? Don’t we all have those same exact news going on around us all the time in our own lives with our friends and families? Why is it so important to see what’s possibly happening in the personal lives of all these famous people? Regardless of the reasons, I have noticed that for those people who like what the paparazzi report on, they are generally also guilty themselves of gossiping in their own lives. At one time in my life, I was guilty of this and did spread a lot of my own gossip. The more I think about it, I probably did pay a lot more attention in those periods of my life to the stuff the paparazzi was reporting on.

Thankfully, I am doing everything I can now, on every level, to not be a part of gossip. I have seen the destruction it creates. It often hurts and can destroy the lives of others. When I used to gossip, I would sensationalize something that I heard or saw and add my own spin to it. I did this for the sole purpose of trying to be the center of attention, or to avoid bringing any negative attention to the drama I had back then in my own life. Sadly, this moved me in the exact opposite direction from being a spiritually God-centered, and unconditionally loving person. And unfortunately there are too many people in this world who still thrive on gossip regardless of the potential of this happening within them. Because of this, I don’t think things such as the paparazzi, those news tabloids, or any of those reality shows about famous people are going away anytime soon. It wasn’t until I began to see how much I was hurting people when I spread gossip or even more importantly when I was on the receiving end of it, that I made the decision to start moving away from all forms of it.

If you really want to see this world become a better place to live in, there is one thing you can do, if you haven’t already. Stop reading, watching, spreading, or being a part of any type of gossip. Ignore the gossip the paparazzi reports on and what you might hear even closer to home from your friends or family. Whether or not there is factual based information in what you are seeing or hearing, it often hurts and destroys the people it’s about. Ask yourself what it might feel like, or what it has felt like, when any gossip is about you? It usually doesn’t feel very good and often evokes a lot of negative feelings inside. The one thing I do know is that if you remove yourself from all forms of gossip, then you and this world will become a lot brighter because of it. I know I did…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

In life, it’s inevitable that at some point most people will experience a break-up or the parting of an intimate friendship with someone they, at one time, loved dearly. In each case, there usually is a grieving process that can include any of the following: tears, anger, isolation, denial, confusion, bargaining, depression, and eventually (and hopefully) acceptance. I put the word “hopefully” in parentheses because often people don’t make it to this stage because of one difficult task that is necessary to get there. One of the most critical stages of coming to COMPLETE acceptance for a break-up or the loss of an intimate friendship is to remove all the “things” that could possibly be holding on to that person’s energy.

One of the biggest reasons why people don’t remove these “things” out of their lives from those moments with past loved ones, is solely for the fact that each can evoke an emotional response that is often favorable and can feel like the same love that was once shared between them. But what many people don’t realize is that it also prevents them from moving on in life because essentially what they are doing is holding on to that person by holding on to those “things”.

“Things” contain energy. Everything contains energy in this world. Some energy is dense and some is light. But everything can be broken down into energy. Just because you might not understand this principle so easily and not see it so well, holding onto something so simple as a ticket stub from a game that you attended with a former loved one years ago, can still hold onto their energy and keep you from moving forward in your journey in life.

I’ve gone through several long term relationships in my own life as of so far. At a certain stage in each of those relationships, I felt tremendous love for those partners. And during those times, I collected a vast amount of my own “things” that contained the loving energy from the moments that were so precious between the two of us. “Things” such as jewelry I was given from them, ticket stubs from events we attended together, special greeting cards written by them from various occasions, tons of pictures from the times we spent together, cute stuffed animals they would give me as gifts, and trinkets we would pick out together on trips, were just a few of what was collected and treasured by me. The same held true of me storing away those “things” for many close friendships I’ve had throughout my entire life that for whatever reasons have since ended. Piles and piles of these “things” did nothing more for me than collect dust and hold onto a small amount of energy tying me to those people even though they hadn’t been part of my life for a long time and probably never would be again.

I have been doing everything in my life lately to move forward spiritually. To move forward spiritually means to let go of the past. It means to let go of those “things” that didn’t work out so well. It means to part ways with those people that I once loved on every level. It means letting go of them once and for all by getting rid of all those “things”. And I have been doing just that.

Just the other day, I happened to look in a drawer and found an old jewelry box that I hadn’t looked through in awhile. I found four old tarnished silver rings, three of which were from my seven year relationship with my last partner that ended terribly. The other had a loving inscription from a person who once loved me very deeply. I also found in there a silver necklace given to me from a friend I spent several years obsessing over. Each of them triggered emotions and thoughts that on some level still connected me to them. With the amount of work I’ve done today on myself to removing the energy of my unwanted past, I immediately took those “things” and threw them away in a garbage can in a plaza nearby my house.

In that same jewelry box, I did find one “thing” that took a lot more of my deliberation to part ways with it. What I found was a set of dog tags from the man who I had been sexually intimate with and toxically close to for almost two years because he was also a married man to another woman. At the height of that toxic relationship, he had given his war time dog tags away, one to me, and one to his son. They were something I wore all the time and kept them constantly close to myself. The amount of emotions that came up in even holding them in my hands was immense when I found them the other day in that jewelry box, even though it had been many years since I had been connected to that man. But because of how precious something like that was, I actually took and put them in an envelope, said a prayer of release, and went that night to his job where I gave the envelope to a person in the parking lot who knew him and was able to put it in my former friend’s work folder. And when I walked away, I felt so greatly relieved.

Over the course of the past year, I have done many actions like this to removing all of those “things” that still held people’s energy I no longer wanted to be connected to. It’s working as I am feeling lighter and lighter every time I do it. I’ve removed many old pictures both digital and in print, hats and other various clothing, many trinkets, and even an old couch in my storage unit I was holding onto for someone that I was also toxically close to but had parted way with over a year and a half ago.

The bottom line here is this. If you are still holding onto various “things” in your life that can bring back any emotion of someone you’ve parted ways with, I encourage you to take a moment, breathe, and ask God to help you to remove those “things” out of your life as soon as possible. Each of those “things” contain energy that still ties you to those people and can keep you stuck by holding onto them. If you truly want to move forward in your life and reach that COMPLETE acceptance stage that let’s those people fully go, then this is a necessary step and one you will feel much lighter in life after doing so.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

There was a time my sister Laura and I fought like cats and dogs. I guess we both might say that I was the dog who barked at her all the time, and she was the cat who scratched and hissed back at me. This fighting started between us way back in our childhood and even continued into much of our adulthood, but along the line, all that began to change. Today, I regard my sister totally different but that wasn’t the case from as far back as I can remember.

When I was a young kid, I can remember so many times that I did nothing more than torment her daily. I believe it really was due to the fact that she was so popular while most considered me a dork or a nerd and I became jealous of that. So I did whatever I could to take away the glory I thought she had in life by teasing and ridiculing her constantly. I can’t remember much of the things I said to her back then but I do know they weren’t nice as they often were met with doors slammed in my face or on my hands. One time she even put a pencil through the palm of my left hand. And another time she slammed my head into a garbage can cutting it open. Looking back, I don’t blame her for these reactions. We both endured immense difficulties in our household with codependent, alcoholic, and mentally imbalanced parents. And I was just icing on the cake for her stress. I was definitely that kid who always told on his sister all the time. This always shifted my parents negative focus and yelling away from me and onto her. And it’s a shame because she didn’t just suffer from my parents imbalances, she did from my own as well.

When she left for college, I’m sure she was greatly relieved to get away from our family. We didn’t speak much, other than at holidays, and within a few years, I turned into my parents by quickly becoming an alcoholic and addict. This complicated my relationship with my sister even more because as most alcoholics and addicts like to do, they find ways to blame and manipulate others quite easily. Unfortunately, this is what I did to her for years. I learned how to make her feel guilty to get what I wanted from her and I was never there for her when she really needed a friend.

The first positive change that came to our relationship was when she called me in tears in October, 1996 and told me that our father had committed suicide. I think somehow the shock of losing him so suddenly at his relatively young age really made me begin to look at how I had been treating her and so distant as well. For about nine years after that, our relationship went from avoidance to reconciliation on some level although much of my controlling and manipulating behaviors still remained active at times. In February of 2005, she called me again in tears and told me that our mother had died tragically from a fall down the stairs while she was drunk. For a healthy brother, this would have been the time to reach out and truly support the only remaining family member I had, which was her. But I wasn’t healthy, not in the least bit. I had remained active in other addictions since getting clean and sober years earlier, which only kept my disease alive and me in unhealthy behaviors. For years, my sister made many attempts to reach out and call me. When we spoke, it was always about my drama, my messes, my fears, my worries, and well, me. And suddenly, her calls started subsiding and the distance began to grow great again between us.

It wasn’t until I became so broken in my own life to realize just how much I had lost. And that was when I landed in a mental hospital where my sister came to see me during visitor hours on one of those days. You see, that’s my sister. No matter how much of an ass I ever was to her for all those years that began back in our childhood, she always stood by my side faithfully. It’s unfortunate, but true, that when the brain is foggy and the heart is clouded over with blackness, and when a person does nothing more than think of their own self by living in addictions and darkness, it’s impossible to see the beauty in life that is right around them all the time. And that’s how it was with me and how I failed to see just how amazing my sister always was.

Slowly but surely after that five day stint in that locked ward, I began letting go of all the things that essentially had continued to keep me this way for most of my life. Thankfully this allowed me to clearly see how amazing my sister really is and always has been.  And the following is just a handful of the reasons why I know my sister is amazing…

My sister is amazing because…

…she made me so many home cooked meals of things she knew I loved even when I never cooked anything for her and rarely took her out for a meal.

…she made my favorite desserts at the holidays even when they weren’t anyone else’s favorites.

…she created many unique gifts for me that included necklaces, bracelets, and pressed glass even when I gave her many thoughtless gifts or no gifts at all.

…she invited me into her own home to live for a time when I had no where else to go.

…she listened to every single problem I ever had and had compassion for me, even when I had often had none for her.

…she always believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

…she was there for me when I didn’t know how to be there for myself.

…no matter how mean I was to her, no matter how bad I yelled at her, no matter how guilty I made her feel, and no matter how terrible I acted towards her, she continued to love me even when I didn’t know how to love myself or anyone else.

This entry is my dedication to my sister Laura and all those other sisters out there who have loved their brothers as unconditionally as my own sister did with me. My sister is awesome and I love her dearly. She really an amazing woman, is one of my best friends, and definitely a blessing from God.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson