Buying Bananas and Vacation Time

I am so excited! We are booked to head to Belize, that is my best friend Erin and I. We booked our tickets and I am looking forward to joining our other friends in Belize. I am also looking forward to visiting the Holy Cross Anglican School. I want to go down to the school and volunteer for a day and see how things are working in a school in a third world country. It will be good exposure for the life I am planning on living.

http://tacogirlblog.blogspot.com/
http://holycrossbelize.blogspot.com/

University is moving along great. I just can't believe how much there is to learn. I have been learning about the poverty in Jamaica and the Kingston Free Zone.

I am just appalled to really learn how much wealth is in so few countries, and how the rest of the world survives or struggles might be a better word. I thought about that tonight when I was buying my bananas. I recently saw a clip in the movie "Life and Debt," how Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte have slave labourers working on Banana Plantations. It was disgusting to see the workers being beat and forced back to work at gun point when they tried to form a union. All because bananas is a big money business. The more I hear about slavery in the year 2008, the more grateful I am to be privledged to live in a country like Canada. The next time you reach for those bananas when you are in your local grocery store, take time to give thanks, for the people in South America that are getting paid 1.00 per day and living in squalor, to ensure that we can send a snack in our kids lunches.

Anger -- WHAT CAN IT DO FOR ME

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow. ---- Chinese Proverb



WE are all too familiar with the feeling of anger. It can temporarily paralyze us, cause impairment to our vision, hearing and reflexes.It can have long term affects on the human body's ability to function normally causing psychological, cardio-vascular and digestive disorders. In many cases anger can lead to heart attacks and even death. It is a major contributor to divorce, domestic-assault, murder and finally war. Anger is an attack on our natural sense of equillibreum and balance. In it's purest form it is a "get even mentality" that causes much more destruction than rewards.

Anger itself does more harm than the condition which aroused anger --- David MacKay


Yet, as unhealthy and unnatural as anger is to us we are still able to conjure all kinds of jsutifications for holding onto it. Bitter thoughts flow through our minds like a rapid racing river, "he left me for another woman, I was abused as a child, she got the promotion that I worked hard for" or even things much more trivial like the all to familiar "road rage" and someone jsut interupting a conversation can set us on an angry rampage for the day.

Anger is like a poision brewing in our bodies. It affects us mentally, spiritually, physically and emotionally. It is an energy that most people try to avoid. Anger can easily be decribed as cold, hostile and unpredictable. It is therefore essential to our own well-being that we rid our mind body and soul of anger. We must learn the tools for looking beneath the anger, analyse it and never get lost in it.

Generally there are deep underlying factors that erupt in anger and make us see red. Anger is an emotion that does not stem from love, but grows from fear. Some of the many issues that fester into the anger blister are: abandonment, sorrow, injustice, rejection and disappointment. However, if we peel back just one more layer we find beneath all of these feelings is fear.

Anger: an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured. --- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

We may fear failure, success, being alone, not being good enough or worthy but the most crippling of all fears is the fear of change. When some type of fear cripples us we often disguise it with an ugly mask of anger. We can always think of ways to justify anger, and we might be quite right, but the fact still remains that anger only hurts the one that holds onto it.

Taking a step back from the situation and looking at it from a spiritual eye, with understanding and forgiveness allows one to see things from a different perspective, another viewpoint or a fresh clean lense. Anger is a choice.WE can feed it, and baby it, and hold it and pay attention toit, talk about it, and watch it grow into an ugly monster. We have options of letting it go, looking at the underlying fear, being open to change, writing, discussing, accepting and allowing. When disected properly we can make positive change by seperating the emotions from the reactions and heal the heart and cheer the soul. Anger, when looked at deeply can be a valuable tool used to propel us forward into self-growth and discovery, healing and success.
Ultimately anger is a choice, and how you deal with it will be yours.

Don't hold to anger, hurt or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love. -Leo Buscaglia.