Category: Words To Live By

I love the internet for many reasons. I remember a time when the internet didn’t exist and I was using a dial up modem to log onto someone’s private computer. In fact I remember a place I dialed into eons ago named Pirate’s Palace where one could get video games for free. I can still hear the noise of the model as it dialed this baud location and got a connection.

Today with just a few keystrokes, a person can find just about anything and everything on the web. From game playing to doing research, from looking for a person to connecting to someone, the list today of what the internet can do seems infinite. Unfortunately, as much as I love the web, there are also many things happening to society as the internet grows that I don’t love at all.

There is a much easier access now to engage in addictions such as gambling or porn. Information about a person that once was deemed private now seems to float around readily on the web. In-person communication once existed as the only way to connect is now slowly drifting away as more and more opt for living in a cyber world versus the real world. And something I noticed recently that I’ve been trying to tune out is the vast numbers of opinions that are being placed on the web about anything. There are opinions on places to go eat, on places to go on vacation, on all types of businesses, on different types of medical, holistic healing, and nutritional paths, on movies, and on people directly as well.

Recently with my vacation, I went to a place that had gotten some seriously terrible reviews on the web from other people that had travelled to the resort I was going to. So many different aspects of the resort had been trashed in online postings. I had decided to go against what they were saying and had booked anyway. Ironically in the end, I loved the property, the hotel on the property, and all the things the resort had to offer. For me it was a five star experience. The same thing has happened for me as well with restaurants that have gotten awful reviews online. I’ve gone and experienced them for myself and felt completely opposite having had amazing meals. With movies, so often lately they seem to be getting more and more bad reviews through places that pool them together such as rottentomatoes.com. I’ve gone to many of those poorly reviewed movies and in the end loved them completely and bought them later on DVD. In the medical and holistic realms, there are many different ways of approaching the journey of healing. Much of the healing techniques that I have tried and gotten success from have been denounced somewhere on the web if a search was done on them.

I’ve come to the conclusion with the internet that while it may be good for doing research on finding someone or something, learning the history of anything, or locating phone numbers and addresses for various things, it’s become a dumping ground for people to express their opinions on just about everything. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that I don’t want to live my life based upon the opinions of what someone else is saying about anything. My journey in life to be more God centered has led me to a place of trusting my own inner soul’s guidance. Many of the things that I’ve visited, dined out at, watched in a theater, or gotten healing benefit from can be found on the web with scathing reviews and warnings to not go pursue. What I’ve learned in all this is that sometimes it’s better to not do any research in the cyber world, and instead to go experience it for myself. This way I don’t become biased by someone else’s thoughts or feelings, and my experience becomes just that, my experience.

I’d rather not spend my life avoiding things that people have bad opinions about, especially those I don’t even know other than through their keystrokes left behind on the internet. Some of the best things that have happened to me in my life come from doing exactly the opposite of the mass opinions that now exist on the web. My only advice to anyone when it comes to the internet is this. Just because someone has posted one of their bad experiences on anything online, doesn’t mean your experience with that same thing is going to be the same. You never know, it may end up being one of the best things you ever pursued in your life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

On my recent travels, I was grateful to have visited a handful of islands in the Caribbean. My trip began in Puerto Rico and continued onward from there to St. Croix, St. Kitts and Nevis Island, Dominica, Grenada, St. Thomas, and finally back to Puerto Rico. Each of those islands had its own unique differences but there was one thing I noticed they all had in common. Poverty. And a lot of it.

Growing up in a middle to upper class family, I never saw a lack of the basic necessities in life of food, water, or shelter. I never experienced not having a television, a radio, nice clothing, a phone or a car. And I spent all of my time around people like me who had a lot and didn’t know what it was like to have very little.

I found it interesting that on each of those islands, there were so many people begging for money or selling hand made items at very cheap costs. What I found even more interesting and sad too is how tourists treated those island natives. The homeless were vastly ignored as their hands were outstretched. And for those selling the trinkets, they were bargained down over and over again to amounts for their products that thinned out any ability to make any profit.

To even get on the cruise I was on, a person would have needed to spend at least $1000 or more. And for those that might have travelled directly to those islands, even more would have to be spent. During any vacation, people buy drinks that aren’t cheap from bottled waters to juices to alcohol. They might even go to the casinos and drop several hundred dollars a day. They will go to restaurants and spend over $100 on a meal. Yet, these same people see a product on a table of one of these poverty stricken people who are asking for a few dollars and they refuse to pay what is being asked, instead bargaining it downward to a much lower number. With change and single dollar bills rolling around in their pockets, these same people will walk by the islanders in tattered clothing asking for help and judge them.

Many if not most of these island people live in shacks and don’t have the abundance of what any of us will ever experience in our lifetimes. On this trip, I did something completely different. I gave more than what was being asked for in the few things that I did buy. I generally only buy necklaces made of shells, beads, or crystals when I travel. I have many from around the world and enjoy wearing them. On this trip, when just a few dollars was being asked, I gave a few dollars more. What I always found interesting, was the total look of surprise on these people and a smile of gratitude when I did that. A dollar goes much farther in these places then what it may go for in the continental United States. As for those that were begging, when I walked by, I gave a dollar or two and did not judge them on what it might be used for.

For most of my life, money in my pocket was spent as I wished. I ignored those with less, and did what I could to get more. I judged those who had less and said it was their fault and never reached out to help any of them. Seeing all of those people with next to nothing on these Caribbean islands brought out a level of compassion within me. If I can buy a bottle of water for $3 to $4, why can’t I spend an extra dollar on a trinket? If I can go on a lavish vacation and spend a considerable amount of money, why can’t I give an extra dollar to a homeless person?

I truly believe that the world’s poverty issues could be solved if everyone pooled their abundances together to help those less fortunate. Sadly, most don’t and most won’t. I know that my desire today is to serve God faithfully and do my part. I attempted to do just that on this vacation, and will continue to do what I can both when I’m on a vacation and when I’m not. What I have today in my life would be considered luxurious to so many. Poverty is everywhere, even close to home where I live. I want to do my part in sharing any abundance I have and it’s my hope that more and more people might do the same.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I decided I wanted to write about a really wonderful place I found in my recent stay in Ponce, PR. Whenever I travel somewhere lately, I generally like to try something of local flair. With a few days to spend on my own, I decided that I would do some venturing out during that time. In a recent posting, I talked about how there are things that sometimes are right in front of us when we are looking for them. The subject of that posting was this specific night that I went into downtown Ponce. That evening I had planned to dine at a local Spanish restaurant, see a few sites within walking distance, and then have ice cream at a very well known place in all of Puerto Rico named Kings Cream. Thankfully I was able to find all three, especially Kings Cream, after spending time being lost.

In most cases, Kings Cream is a place that if one was driving down the street and saw the sign, they probably wouldn’t stop. Appearing essentially as a hole in the wall in a slightly run down section of the city, I parked and walked in to look at the flavors. Everything was in Spanish which I kicked myself for not knowing. I found the place on Trip Advisor, which I use often when I travel. It was rated by quite a number of people with close to five stars. What Kings Cream is known for is having unique flavors of ice cream that one probably wouldn’t find anywhere else. I recognized one word, “Coco” and ordered a medium cup of coconut ice cream. And it was amazing.

What’s funny is that the old me would never have ventured out alone to a place in an old city that primarily speaks a language I didn’t know. What’s even funnier is that I went back again another night and got a tropical fruit flavor named guanabana which was even better than the coconut. While I was there, I found out they even had passion fruit, corn, and pineapple as flavors. I had a sample of the corn ice cream which was definitely unique. Regardless, for a place that only charged a couple of bucks for a very large portion of their delectable ice cream, I was glad that I made the trip and am even more glad that I’m much open in my life to trusting in God to try new experiences.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson