The Importance of Family

I'm sitting here on a wood deck, shaded by trees that are 60 feet tall, listening to the sounds of laughter, splashing water, birds chirping, and "Land Down Under" playing on the loud speakers at the camp across the lake. Here in the mountains of the Cherokee National Forest, it seems like we are eye level with the white clouds hovering at the base of a radiant blue sky. There is a juxtaposition of people and animals, technology and nature here, and yet, they are in complete harmony with each other. I can hear speed boats cruising the waters of Lake Ocoee. I was born in Texas, but Tennessee blood flows in my veins. 70 years ago, my grandparents got married and started a legacy I don't think they could have ever envisioned. When I think of family, I think of Cleveland, TN. You may not have heard of this little town, but it has had a strong influence on the values I hold today. Every year, someone will say the phrase, "but, we're family." The older I get, the more that phrase has come to mean. Through good times and bad times, we've mostly had good times. Here in Cleveland, TN, I now travel 800 miles just to hear my cousin say Kim-bur-lay in the Tennessee drawl that is unique to this area. Once upon a time it would have annoyed me, but today, it is the music to my ears that reminds me there is no place on earth like where I'm at right now. My family is a family of story-tellers and every year we get together to re-tell our tall tales and create new ones. Every day is an adventure and every year I'm reminded of that in a little pocket of Polk County. In Texas we say, "Go Big or Go Home", but in Tennessee is where I learned that means big adventures, big stories, and big love. We've stuck together through kids, college, marriage, divorce, jobs, lay-offs, addictions, broken bones, broken hearts, fights, food, and fun. It is an amazing legacy my grandparents have passed on to us. A love that keeps giving even when it's not deserved. Values like freedom, hard work, laughter, generosity, and, most of all, being a good parent are values I learned here. It matters more whether you're willing to go on a pontoon boat ride and watch the sun set over the dam, or go on a kayak trip down the Hiwassee than how fat your bank account is. I'm a part of something special, a family like no other, and I wouldn't be the person I am today without them. So every year when I think I don't have the money or the vacation time to travel to our family reunion, I remember, "but, we're family" and I make it happen. I believe in a world of infinite abundance; let us create it together! Cooke Clan Summer 2014: Sharing Is Caring

Metamorphosis

As I write this, I am sitting outside on the back porch, looking up at a bright blue and cloudless sky. I feel the warm rays of sun on my back and the contrast of a cool breeze that makes this afternoon seem as if it was made just for me. A flash of dull orange flits by me. It is fitting that as I attempt to write my weekly blog advocating positive change, a monarch butterfly is dancing around the patio. Butterflies are an iconic symbol for the growth process and that is what I find myself reflecting on. Butterflies are beautiful and make flying look easy and fun. However, each butterfly started as a caterpillar: a creature that is slow, grounded, and relatively unbecoming, although still fascinating. Caterpillars consume. Then they disappear from the world, wandering from their homes, their places of comfort, then create a chrysalis, a shell if you will, and inside the confines of that shell is where the change takes place. This shell is integral to the process. It is the protection that allows metamorphosis to take place. According to howstuffworks.com, inside the chrysalis the caterpillar cells are broken down into imaginal cells or undifferentiated cells, meaning they can become any type of cell. They come back together in a new shape. This process can take a couple weeks or a few months. The website continues by saying that most people find grown butterflies and moths to be both beautiful and beneficial but may not feel the same about caterpillars. We, also, are like caterpillars and butterflies. We start out slow, plodding along, and focused on our most basic needs being met by the environment around us. Then, as we grow, either literally or metaphorically, we leave our old life behind. We move away from the comfort that we know into the realm of change: The Unknown. We create hard shells to protect ourselves from the environment that surrounds us as, internally, we strive to become something more than we were before. The harshness of the environment will determine how hard a shell we create. As we undergo this change, we become an unwritten page and our very cells become available to an infinite number of destinies. Any goal is not out of reach. We went into the cocoon slow, creatures of habit and emerge beautiful, unique and able to soar to any height. We can cover ground easily that once would have been unimaginable. The difference between between humans and butterflies is that we will undergo this process more than once in our lifetimes and be able to achieve greater heights than even the monarch. Whatever step in the process you are in, you are where you are meant to be. Each step is vital and cannot be skipped. And when we encounter someone who is in a different phase of the process, it is not for us to judge their progress but to recognize the beauty of the place they are in and offer encouragement for the journey. All of us can fly. Sometimes it takes two weeks, and sometimes it takes a whole winter, but after the time of change comes freedom and a new and beautiful perspective. Remember the butterfly and embrace metamorphosis this week. I believe in a world of infinite abundance; let us create it together.

It's a Coin Flip!

"There are two sides to every coin". We have all heard this maxim, perhaps so many times it may have lost its meaning, but I really believe there is genuine wisdom in this saying. Take out a coin, any coin. One side is heads, one side is tails. If you are looking at heads, you cannot look at tails at the same time, and vice versa. So it is with life. Your perspective always determines which side of the coin you see. When I first realized the gravity of this lesson, I was writing from a plane on my way from Chicago back to Dallas after a wonderful success conference where our speaker told us, "some people fly." He wasn't talking about our flight attendant on Delta Airlines. He was talking about Ghandi, Michael Jordan, Steve Jobs, Andrew Carnegie, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Amelia Earhart, and the Wright Brothers: people who soared above the limitations of their environments and inspired those around them to dream a little bigger. As I stared out across the wing of our plane and looked down upon the fluffy clouds that looked like a playground of cotton balls in an atmosphere of purest blue, the captain informed us of the storms, high winds, and rain punishing the earth below the clouds. But that's not what I saw. I saw a village of cloud castles shrouded in a fine mist of wispy white. From up there, I could not see the storms, and from below, a person on the ground could not see our plane. When you look at the world, which side of the coin do you see: storms and danger or beauty and peace? To see heaven on earth, all you have to do is learn to fly. I believe in a world of infinite abundance; let us create it together!