Poem of Saint Valentine's Day by Cesar Augusto Marin

To love a human being is to accept the opportunity to know it truly and to enjoy the adventure to explore and to discover what keeps beyond its masks and their defenses.

To love is to tenderly contemplate his deeper feelings, their fears, their deficiencies, their hopes and joys, their sadness, its pain and its yearnings. To love is to include/understand that behind its mask and its armor, is a sensible and solitary heart, hungry of a hand friend, thirsty of a sincere smile in which it can feel in house. To love is to recognize, with respectful compassion, which without harmony and the chaos in which sometimes it lives is the product of their ignorance and its unconsciousness.

To love is tells that if generates misfortunes it is because not yet it has learned to seed joys, and sometimes it feels so empty and devoid of sense, that it cannot trust nor if same. To love is to discover and to honor, over any appearance, its true identity, and to appreciate honestly its infinite greatness like a unique and unique expression of the Life. To love a human being is to be sufficiently humble like receiving its tenderness and its affection without representing the paper which nothing needs. A human being lands on water is to accept with taste which offers you without demanding that it gives you what cannot or does not wish; he is to thank for to the life the prodigy to him of his existence and to feel in his presence an authentic blessing in your footpath.

To love a human being is to enjoy the experience knowing that every day is an uncertain adventure and the morning, a lasting incognito; it is to live every moment as if he was the last one that you can share with the other. To love a human being is in such a way that each encounter is so intense and so deep as if it was the first time that it takings of the hand, causing that the daily thing is always a different and miraculous creation. To love a human being is also a way to establish your own limits and to maintain them firmly; he is respective to same you and not to allow that the other transgresses what you consider your rights personal.

To love a human being is to have as much confidence in same you and in the other, that without fear to that the relation is harmed, you feel in freedom to express your anger without offending the wanted being, and you can show what it bothers to you and incommode without trying to hurt it or to hurt it. To love a human being is to recognize and to respect its limitations and to see it with esteem without idealized it, it is to share and to enjoy the agreements and to accept the discords, and if a day arrived in which evidently the ways diverged without remedy. To love a human being is to be able of say go bye peacefully and in harmony, in such a way that both remember with gratitude by the shared treasures.

To love a human being is to go beyond its individuality like person. It is to perceive it and to value it as a sample of the whole humanity, like an expression of the Man and the Woman, like a concrete manifestation of that important essence and intangible call to "human being", of which you also comprise important. To love is to recognize, through him, the indestructible miracle of the human nature, which is your own nature, with all its greatness and its limitations; to as much appreciate the luminous and radiating facets of the humanity, like its dark and shady sides.

To love a human being, in fact, is to love the human being in its totality; it is to love the authentic human nature, as it is, and therefore, to love a human being is to love to same you and feel then proud of being a note in the symphony of this world.

Believe by Yasmin Moses

When you feel discouraged, BELIEVE
When you have no where to turn …. BELIEVE
When you leave me behind do not fear… BELIEVE
I am always near, just look forward, and
BELIEVE
Do the best you can …. BELIEVE
Seize the day and the moment ….
Live each day without measuring it…. BELIEVE
Be strong-minded and always think the impossible is possible.
Why do you question yourself?
Giving hope and believing in yourself is all you can do.
Why? …. Because I BELIVE IN YOU!

Still Today We Have Not Mastered Ourselves! by Andrea Austin

Our forefathers of the people have lifted their voices, spoken their speeches, made their stands for righteous and most of all made their differences.
Differences that still are in effect today, for not only one part of the population, but for all of America.
Our forefathers, our veterans, and our deliverers of revolution have sadly come and gone.
So who will make a stand now, who will stand out from all the rest?
In the year 2008 we as a people still have battles to master and a battle can’t be fought without a commander and chief.
So my people answer this question Who, When, and Where?

Simple Wisdom for Rich Living by Professor Bert Lorenzo

In her book Simple Wisdom for Rich Living Oseola McCarty outlines the philosophy that helped her through a lifetime of hard work, loneliness and hardship. Born into poverty in 1908 Mississippi McCarty worked almost 80 years as a washerwoman and amassed a $280, 000 fortune. In early 1995 she gave away most of it to the University of Southern Mississippi. In August 18-year old Stephanie Bullock received the first Oseola McCarty Scholarship. “Miss McCarty had made sure that others would have the education she was denied.” xiii

McCarty had to leave school at eight years old. Her father died and she had to help her grandmother, mother and aunt financially. She worked side by side with the three women. Shannon Maggio writes in the introduction,

In her adult years, it was faith that sustained Oseola through the greatest trials of her life: the loss of her grandmother in1944, her mother in 1964, and her aunt in 1967. Those three women had been her nurturers, housemates, coworkers, and confidantes since her birth. Their absence left her alone in the world. xii

McCarty offers words of wisdom about work, money, faith, relationships and the good life. She wants to share the values and philosophy of simplicity that helped her live a full life without material things. About work she says, “I knew there were people who didn’t have to work as hard as I did, but it didn’t make me feel sad. I loved to work, and when you love to do anything, those things don’t bother you. I just loved the work.” 6 About money she says, “The secret to building a fortune is compounding interest. It’s not the ones that make the big money, but the ones who know how to save who get ahead. You’ve got to leave your investment alone long enough for it to increase.” 18 This summarizes her philosophy: work hard, save and invest and practice gratitude.

I have just one criticism of McCarty’s book. I wish it wouldn’t end. I don’t tire of her stories. The book’s strength lies in its timeless message. I recommend it to college students. Her message reminds me of Professor Keating in Dead Poets Society who asks his students, “Law, banking, medicine these are all important to sustain life but what do we sustain life for?” For McCarty work becomes her life. She works because she has to but also because she wants to. Her work gives her purpose. She always offers her best and because she does her job expertly she loves it.

College students have the opportunity to choose the work they will do. Not everyone gets that chance. They should choose carefully and work not just to sustain life but to define it. They should do their work with pride no matter what others in society may think of the value of said work. They should do their work well and then they will learn to love it.

McCarty teaches the reader about contentment and simple pleasures. She says, “It’s important to make special memories with the people you love… I remember Christmases spent with my mother, grandmother, and aunt… They worked most nights babysitting or serving at parties. They came home loaded with big plates of food. We would light the Christmas tree and sit down to a late dinner. We took joy in being together.”53

College students in debt should heed her message, “A smart person plans for the future. You never know what emergency will come and you can’t rely on the government to meet all your needs. You have to take responsibility for yourself.” 31 Her message of self-reliance seems foreign in 2008 supposedly capitalist America.

I read Simple Wisdom for Rich Living in 1996 at a crossroads in my life. I felt burned out as a teacher. I felt what I did and whether or not I did it well didn’t matter. McCarty’s philosophy helped reenergize my work. I changed a lot of what I do in my classes and rediscovered the importance of my work. I try to always do my best, respect my students and give thanks I can do what I do. I love what I do. I’ve also applied the wonder of compounded interest as I’ve worked to grow my small fortune. I live modestly and could probably afford to retire now at age 43 but I won’t. I choose to work. I need to work for the purpose and direction it gives me. Like McCarty I’ll probably work as long as my health allows it and each day I do my work I love it more.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” Financial freedom gives me choices a debt slave can’t imagine. Like McCarty I’ve learned to control my desires. My philosophy has almost a Zen quality to it. Desire breeds pain. Its absence breeds freedom and fortune. McCarty reminds the reader, “I try to keep things as simple and organized as possible.” 78 Mastery of simplicity rests in the art of no. I learned to say no to those things that complicate my life, those things others might deem important but I consider a waste of time or an obstacle to the goals I’ve set for me. Many in America have an obsession with debt. Their desires exceed their ability to pay and they wonder, “Why save? I could die tomorrow.”

McCarty writes, “Some people make a lot of noise about what’s wrong with the world, and they usually blame someone else. I think people need to look at themselves first.” 79 We can all take control of our lives. It just takes a wise, simple philosophy.

Copyright Bert Lorenzo, 2008