Life has a way of draining your fuel tank, and it’s much harder to handle the curveballs that come your way when you don’t have a reserve tank ready to push you through. You become unhappy because you’ve stretched yourself too thin and everything starts to bear down on you like a ton of bricks. Leo Babauta at Zen Habits suggests you keep yourself energized and excited about life by knowing when to hold back on things:

When we go to a great restaurant, we want to try all the dishes, eat as much of the delicious food as we can. And we leave overstuffed, sometimes painfully so, and our waistlines expand. When I go for a run, often I’ll want to run as far or as hard as I can … and then I’m exhausted, and less likely to want to run tomorrow. When we work or read online, we go from one task to the next, continuously, quitting only when we’re spent, well past what might be healthy for us. How can we counter the tendency to want to do as much as possible? Leave yourself wanting more.
It’s no wonder you don’t want to exercise. You’ve worn yourself out and all you can think about is how hard it was last time. You don’t want to go to work tomorrow because you’ve burned yourself out today.

We may not be aware of it, but we communicate with our eyes. They bring in information, and enable us to make sense of the world. However, they also give out information. Others are able to read your true feelings by what your eyes reveal.

Our brain and our intuition, process what we see in another person’s eyes, yet we feel we have disguised our own true feelings and falsely believe our eyes are unrevealing.

When all is not well within us we think that we can fool those around us to believe otherwise. I guess William Shakespeare summed it all up when he wrote:

All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,

What about you?

2. Don’t give up. Moses was once a basket case.

3. What part of “Thou shalt not” don’t you understand?

It was mealtime during a flight on EL AL. “Would you like dinner?” the flight attendant asked Mr. Goldberg, seated in front. “What are my choices?,” Goldberg asked.”Yes or no,” she replied .

An elderly Jewish man is knocked down by a car and is brought to the local hospital. A pretty nurse tucks him into bed and says, “Mr. Cohen, are you comfortable?” Cohen replies, “I make a nice living.”

A rabbi was opening his mail one morning. Taking a single sheet of paper from an envelope he found written on it only one word: “schmuck.” At the next Friday night service, the Rabbi announced, “I have known many people who have written letters and forgot to sign their names, but this week I received a letter from someone who signed his name and forgot to write a letter.

Three Jewish women get together for lunch. As they are being seated in the restaurant, one takes a deep breath and kvetches a long, slow “Oy!” The second takes a deep breath as well and lets out a long, slow “Oy Vey!” The third takes a deep breath and says impatiently, “Girls, I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to talk about our children.”

Just be aware that life is all about solving problems. When you realize that, you won’t feel burdened by adversities because they will come along as surely as the sun rises, but fortunately for us, less frequently.

When you apply this way of thinking, you become the one person in the world that controls your destiny.

Mrs. Murphy said, “Don’t be holdin’ back now, Mrs. Cohen, how do you like it here?”

Mrs. Cohen went on and on about the wonderful food, the facility and the caretakers. Then, with a twinkle in her eye, she said, “But the best thing is that I now have a boyfriend.” Mrs. Murphy said, “Begorrah! Isn’t that wonderful! Tell me all about it.”

Mrs. Cohen said, “Well, after lunch, we go up to my room and sit on the edge of the bed. I let him touch me on the top, and then on the bottom, and then we sing Jewish songs.” Mrs. Murphy said, “For sure it’s a blessing. I’m so glad for you, Mrs. Cohen.”

Mrs. Cohen said, “And how is it by you, Mrs. Murphy?”

Mrs. Murphy said it was also wonderful at her new Catholic facility, and that she also had a boyfriend.

Mrs. Cohen said, “Good I love that you met someone! So tell me what do you do?”
Mrs. Murphy said, “We also go up to my room after lunch and sit on the edge of the bed. I let him touch me on top, and then I let him touch me down below.”

Mrs. Cohen said, “Yes? And then…?”

Mrs. Murphy said, “Well, since we don’t know any Jewish songs, we screw.”

As we interact with one another in a civilized society we put on our “pretend” faces, and in this way we can control emotions that sometimes have us raging inside and smiling outside.

In certain situations we must cloak our feelings . For example, when dealing with your boss, your wife, a client, or police officer; you many times disguise what you are really thinking in order to survive in this world.

Trouble and problems arise when people wear a mask when they do not have to. At times, we wear too many masks. The weak man wears a mask of stoicism that covers up feelings of being overly sensitive. The vain woman wears a mask of indifference to cover up her desire to be liked. The man who fails his family as a provider may become a braggart, boring people with tales of his success. A woman who is desperate to marry pretends that she has no such intentions.

Sometimes masks will protect you from hurtful things that are said and done, but they also isolate you from contact with good people who appreciate fundamental honesty, a trait that is rapidly disappearing.

In a good friendship or good marriage, you and your friend or wife will know each other “unmasked,”and will be loyal to each other’s interests.

When you’re 14, World War I begins and ends when you’re 18 with 22 million war dead.

Soon after a global pandemic, the Spanish Flu, appears, killing 50 million people. And you’re alive and 20 years old.

When you’re 29 you survive the global economic crisis that started with the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange, causing inflation, unemployment, The Great Depression and famine.

When you’re 33 years old the Nazis come to power.

When you’re 39, World War II begins; it ends 6 hears later when you’re 45 years old with 60 million dead. Six million of the dead are Jews, killed by Nazis in the holocaust.

When you’re 50, the Korean War begins; it ends when you are 53.
When you’re 65 the Vietnam War begins; it ends when you’re 75.
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A child born in 1985 thinks his grandparents have no idea how difficult life is, but knows from school history classes, they have survived several wars and catastrophes.

Today we have all the comforts in a new world, amid a new pandemic. But we complain because we need to wear masks. We complain because we must stay confined to our homes where we have food, electricity, running water. Nowadays, we even have computers, Wi-Fi, home security, Netflix and all kinds of electronic devices, tools and gadgets which didn’t even exist back in the day. Hell, we even shop from home for all imaginable items including our food and it arrives at our door the next day. The pandemic is taking its toll but humanity is surviving the deaths and havoc and we never lost the joy of living.

I’ve heard all this explained with a vivid analogy: They say if 10 men were all naked in a Turkish Bath, nobody could know who was who, as the main difference in that setting would probably be penis size. However, when they go out to their cars in the parking lot and one guy gets into a Bentley while the others have to settle into a Chevy, Ford, or a Toyota; we get the message.