Reba McEntire revisited

I am a fan of Reba McEntire, the great reigning Queen of Country Music. Her voice is just fantastic. I wrote about her in my blog of 30 September 2009 which you can back-track and go read.

Thanks to “kingmojopin0” here’s another number from that great artiste. If you like good old country music, I am sure you’ll like this rendition entitled “You Lie”.

Follow the lyrics given below. You might just fall in love with Reba’s beautiful great voice like I did. Cheers!



Lyrics:
We lie in the dark I know you're awake
The only sounds are the sounds this old house makes
Oh, how I long, I long to hear your voice
Desperate to talk, yearning to touch
Burning inside 'cause I want you so much
So I say I need you and leave you no choice

You lie, you don't want to hurt me
So you lie, buy a little time, and I go along
What else can I do, maybe it's wrong
But you know how much I love you
So you lie, 'til you can find a way to say goodbye
You lie

How long until you just can't go on
And the urge to break loose is just too strong
You should let go that's what you want to do
Oh but you don't know, you don't know
If it's the right thing to do

So you lie, you don't want to hurt me
So you lie, buy a little time, and I go along
What else can I do, maybe it's wrong
But you know how much I love you
So you lie, 'til you can find a way to say goodbye
Oh, You lie
You lie
Oh, You lie...

On blogging

Blogging or writing a “blog” on the Net is fun but it can be stressful too.

When you open up your “blog” and you have nothing to write or say the fun can suddenly stop short.

It’s quite a common experience, an affliction which is known as “writers’ block”. Once afflicted you can’t write. It smacks at you literally in the face and it won’t go away.

What do you do? What else could you do but to take five? Do a walkabout even if it’s around the house or go read a book or something.

If the thoughts do come back in a flash, the key is to jolt them down quickly before they disappear.

One or two key words at a time or a phrase in broken English perhaps but that don’t matter as you can always edit and/or modify them later.

You’ll be surprised how quickly words become lines and lines become paragraphs and the story slowly unfolds before your very eyes.

It’s really fun to capture your thoughts and to write them down.

I totally agree with what one William Makepeace Thackeray had said and it is this, “There are thousands of thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen and writes”.

What I like best about blogging (or any form of writing for that matter) is expounded by Norbet Platt. This is what he had said, “The act of putting pen to paper encourages pause for thought, this in turn makes us think more deeply about life, which helps us regain our equilibrium.”

On another occasion someone had this to say, “The wastebasket is a writer's best friend.” Unfortunately, this may be true for many a budding writer or would-be blogger. The hand is willing but too often the mind is weak.

You try and try but somehow you just couldn’t get the hank of it but for heaven’s sake don’t give up!

Come to think about it, it’s not just on blogging. I would say the stress of “a thousand attempts” also goes for almost anything in life that has value or of significance that’s worth pursuing, isn’t it?

They say whatever is worth doing is worth doing it well and you really can’t deny the truth of the often quoted saying, “no pain, no gain”, can you?

On writing, Enrique Jardiel Poncela had put it this way, “When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing.”

And I’ll say it again echoing the words of Nathaniel Hawthorne which are these, “Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

I know because I have gone down that road but I tell you fellows that keeping this blog alive and interesting has been an exhilarating experience both to my body, soul and spirit.

Somehow you’ll feel good when you see your piece (of writing) finally in print and is posted for the world to see. Try it yourselves some day and you’ll see what I mean.

I think a regular exercise of the brain cells isn’t going to hurt anyone. In fact the “stress” which if I may call it, is good for everyone young or old.

Thank you for visiting my blog. I hope I’ll see you back soon. You light up my life!

Cheers!

Here's a lovely song for you entitled "Let's keep it that way" by Anne Murray. It's one of my favorites. Thanks to "elitewowmacho69" for sharing. Enjoy.

On feeling grumpy

Hi folks, can feeling grumpy be good for you? Yes it can says a BBC report.

Believe it or not but in every negative there can be some good, even if that negative is "feeling grumpy".

You can actually think better in a bad mood than in a good one. I don't know about you, but that beats me!

Quote from a BBC report.

"An Australian psychology expert who has been studying emotions has found being grumpy makes us think more clearly. In contrast to those annoying happy types, miserable people are better at decision-making and less gullible, his experiments showed."

Unquote.

If you want to read more of this rather extraordinary article, click here.

So the next time you're down in a bad mood, don't worry you can actually articulate better in such a situation than when you're not!

Cheers!

On friendship

When we were young we had many friends, in fact too many to count but as we grow older and moved on in life I find that the number of our friends has actually shrunk, dwindled to be exact. Wonder why?

And for those who have retired the number of friends you have is probably less than a handful.

The irony seems to me is that when you were busy crafting out a career, friends of all kinds flock to you like bees to flowers in bloom but now when you have plenty of time on your hands (in retirement), how come you have so few friends to spare?

I guess when we retire we retreat from the social circle of life. For many of us, we shied away from the public life that we once had.

We spend our days with family more than anything else and I would say like it or not, the time may have come when our spouse has actually become our best friend.

Henry Brooks Adams said this a long time ago and it’s probably still true even today, “One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, and three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, and a rivalry of aim.”

If I might say most of our friends are superficial; they all put on a mask of some sort and often are not there for you when you needed them most. I dare say that there are a few who will even take advantage of you if you are “not looking”. So be warned.

Now I can see why Charles de Gaulle, the great French general (who later on became President of France) had this to say about men and friendship, “The better I know men, the more I find myself loving dogs.” How pathetic?

But as we grow older we actually need friends more than anything else. Honest and sincere friends to spend time with, to roam together and to talk about almost anything under the sun. Indeed friends that we will not be bored with one another even until the cows come home. Is that too much to ask?

The famous modern day English philosopher C S Lewis had this to say, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” I wonder what he really meant.

Can we survive without it (i.e. friendship)? Of course we can if we must but I like what Lois Wyse had advised which is this, “A good friend is a connection to life, a tie to the past, a road to the future, the key to sanity in a totally insane world.”

Question is this, how do you find a good friend if you have not found one already in your senior years?

Well, an easier way out is that there’s no need to go about finding it, just be one and you could be surprised by what you’ll get.

To tell you the truth probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a little. It’s a fact of life.

But that doesn’t mean friendship has no meaning or value.

Now, let me ask you this, if you were to sum up friendship in one word, what would that be? Think on it.

To all my friends out there I have this to say, thank you for being my friend. You’re simply the best!

Here's a lovely song entitled "The Friendship Song" or more aptly put "Friends are quiet angels" sung by Molly Pasutti, the music-video courtesy of "Musiconcepts". TQ for sharing. Enjoy.