As we watch the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico unfold, many of us feel helpless and angry. How could this happen? What can we do? Who will pay for this? Can this ever be undone? Not positive news, this is true.

In response, today, I decided to post a baby animal born in LA Zoo; a thriving, beautiful creature that symbolizes hope and grace.

On April 5, 2009, a male Masai giraffe was born here at the L.A. Zoo! He’s currently in the giraffe habitat with his parents, Neema and Artimus. Able to stand shortly after birth, calves can grow four feet during their first year. When full grown, giraffes can reach a height of 18 feet, making them tallest land mammal.

Native to Kenya and Tanzania, giraffes can reach a speed of 35 miles per hour. Their kicks are so powerful that they’re capable of decapitating a lion.

Giraffes communicate with one another through posturing, movement, the way they carry their tails, retreat and sometimes vocalization, which can include moos, bellows and whistles.

Source: PetLvrBlog

Ah, that elusive idea…finding yourself. As if you’ve lost yourself in some cosmic game of hid and seek and you are both the seeker and the hider…or something like that!

These quotes will remind you that finding yourself is at once easy yet seemingly impossible at times.

People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself.  But the self is not something one finds, it is something one creates.  ~Thomas Szasz, “Personal Conduct,” The Second Sin, 1973

You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition.  What you’ll discover will be wonderful.  What you’ll discover is yourself.  ~Alan Alda

Never mind searching for who you are.  Search for the person you aspire to be.  ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor.  ~Dr. Alexis Carrel

The greatest explorer on this earth never takes voyages as long as those of the man who descends to the depth of his heart.  ~Julien Green

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.  ~Anaïs Nin

The value of identity of course is that so often with it comes purpose.  ~Richard Grant

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.  ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

All men should strive
to learn before they die
what they are running from, and to, and why.
~James Thurber

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.  ~Michel de Montaigne

If you don’t get lost, there’s a chance you may never be found.  ~Author Unknown

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  ~Henry David Thoreau, 1854

A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it.  ~George Moore

It is good to feel lost… because it proves you have a navigational sense of where “Home” is.  You know that a place that feels like being found exists.  And maybe your current location isn’t that place but, Hallelujah, that unsettled, uneasy feeling of lost-ness just brought you closer to it.  ~Erika Harris, lifeblazing.com

Most of us know the basics when it comes to lifting our spirits: exercise, socialize, express, eat well, meditate. But there are a lot of boosts out there you may not know about. Here are a few “out of the box” aids when you’re feeling down:

•Kriya Yoga. This is a form of Yoga that uses a type of rhythmic hyperventilation, and its daily practice has been shown in studies to alleviate several or all of depressive symptoms in whole ranges of depressive symptoms.

•Bright Light Therapy. Originally a test and treatment for depressed pregnant woman, the Bright Light Therapy has also been used to treat SAD (seasonal affective disorder), where the sufferer has a depression due to the season’s lack of sunlight.

•St. John’s Wort (hypericum perforatum). This is a long-studied, and well tolerated natural herbal cure for depression.

St John’s Wort contains a variety of natural antidepressant substances including, hypericin, pseudohypericin and hyperforin. These work at the root of mild depression, boosting neurotransmitter function and returning your mood to normal.

It may not work as fast as the pharmaceutical alternatives, but there are NO side-effects, and in time (perhaps 6 weeks) are just or more effective.

•EPA. This is one of the Omega-3 fatty acids, derived from fish oil. Recent studies show high does of this natural substance are curing acute depression, even suicidal tendencies.

•Saffron. New studies have indicated that saffron (long known for its anti-depressive qualities) is as effective as imipramine and Prozac.

•DL-Phenylalanine (DLPA), is now considered by many doctors an effective antidepressant. This herbal remedy for depression works by raising phenylethylamine (PEA) levels in the brain increasing the production of Norepinephrine. This natural antidepressant also protects and increases the lifetime of Endorphins (chemicals involved in mood and pain regulation). DL-Phenylalanine converts to L-tyrosine in the body.

•L-Threonine is an essential amino acid. In several studies, L-Threonine supplementation gave people with acute depressive symptoms a greater control over their moods.

•5-HTP. This is an herbal remedy for depression that is also the immediate precursor to Melatonin and Serotonin. Serotonin gives a neurochemical balance during times of stress, and is essential to regulating mood and other important bodily functions.

* Skullcap (scutellaria laterifolia). ) Skullcap is rich in the minerals that are essential for the nervous system. This herbal remedy for depression is also used for agitation, neurasthenia, anxiety, fatigue, hysteria, and headaches, Skullcap as an herbal remedy for depression is useful to relieve withdrawal symptoms when going off of pharmaceutical antidepressants and tranquillizers.

Source: Light Therapy Boxes

She may look like a puppet to you, but to baby owls, she looks just like mom.

Animal rescue workers at Hampshire, England’s Hawk Conservancy Trust came up with a novel and wonderful use for an owl hand puppet that had nothing to do with children: feeding orphaned owl chicks.

Two chicks and one egg were brought to the center recently, after their nest was inadvertently damaged by farmers. The egg hatched within days of arrival, and the three tawny owls were named Brownie, Woody, and Ivy. The tiny birds were all healthy—but the rescue center wouldn’t be able to release them into the wild if they fed them by hand.

“Owls imprint whatever they first see, this means if they see a human feeding them they will trust humans from that moment on,” Gale Gould of the Hawk Conservancy Trust told The Daily Mail. “These little owls are wild and we want them to remain wild - that’s why we created Super Mum.”

“Super Mum” is the Center’s name for their handmade owl puppet, which Center workers and volunteers use to feed the three baby birds. Super Mum has a pair of tweezers that sticks out of her nose, and the baby birds’ food is placed in the tweezers. For the babies, it’s very similar to how they would take food directly from the mother’s beak in the wild.

The babies will need to continue eating from the hand puppet for the next two months, but after that, they’ll be free to fly off and build their own nests, thanks to Super Mum and her friends.

Source: Gimundo

Okay, so Memorial Day threw me off a little this week. It sure feels like Wednesday! Not to worry - inspirational quotes can help any day of the week. Today, we look at the idea of releasing. Many of us hold on to anger, pain or even bad habits without realizing the answer lies within. Here are some reminders:

“Sincere forgiveness isn’t colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don’t worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time.” Sara Paddison

Forget all rules, forget all restrictions, as to taste, as to what ought to be said, write for the pleasure of it — whether slowly or fast — every form of resistance to a complete release should be abandoned. ~ William Carlos Williams

“I heard an Angel singing

When the day was springing,

“Mercy, Pity, Peace

Is the world’s release.”” William Blake

“Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; knows not the livid loneliness of fear.” Amelia Earhart

“It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.” Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

“It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” Alan Cohen

“Our repeated failure to fully act as we would wish must not discourage us. It is the sincere intention that is the essential thing, and this will in time release us from the bondage of habits which at present seem almost insuperable.” Thomas Troward

“Orgy Porgy, Ford and fun. Kiss the girls and make them one. Girls at one with Boys at peace. Orgy progy gives release.” Aldous Huxley

“Unto this wood I came As to a nest; Dreaming that sylvan peace Offered the harrowed ease- Nature a soft release From men’s unrest” Thomas Hardy

“At least one way of measuring the freedom of any society is the amount of comedy that is permitted, and clearly a healthy society permits more satirical comment than a repressive, so that if comedy is to function in some way as a safety release then it must obviously deal with these taboo areas. This is part of the responsibility we accord our licensed jesters, that nothing be excused the searching light of comedy. If anything can survive the probe of humour it is clearly of value, and conversely all groups who claim immunity from laughter are claiming special privileges which should not be granted.” - Eric Idle

Leave it to Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson to think out of the box with this one!

Former Velvet Underground frontman, Lou Reed, and his wife, performance artist Laurie Anderson, are curating a music and arts festival called Vivid Live at Australia’s Sydney Opera House this month—and one of their events promises to be a barking good time.

On June 5th at 10 AM, four-legged visitors will be welcomed to the Opera House Forecourt (along with their human companions) for the first event of its kind in the world: a concert only for dogs.

Laurie Anderson has created a performance piece consisting of tones so high that we humans won’t be able to hear them, but our canine friends are sure to enjoy the sound. “Our canine friends will be treated to a glorious cacophony of sound, while all we will hear is the lapping of the water on the harbor,” says the Vivid Live website.

Actually, we’ve got a feeling that the human audience members may well be treated to the sound of a few hundred dogs barking in unison—but maybe that’s just part of the music, too.

Live Down Under and want to see the show with your favorite pooch? Check out the details on the website.

Source: Gimundo

I stumbled across this article over coffee this morning and a light bulb went on over my head. Of course, career changes aren’t linear! They are often messy and multi-layered. Our ability to embrace that process means the difference between a happier career or a just so-so career. Thanks to The Tough Guide to Work for this sound advice:

If you are like most people you may believe that cracking a major career question goes something like this: realise that there is something wrong about your current situation

• reflect on what you really want to do, your ideal end point
• identify your options against your fixed goal
• take a series of linear, sequential steps to get there.

It’s a great plan on paper. Unfortunately it’s not the plan followed by people who successfully reinvent their career. Alternatively you might imagine a storyline more like a movie script. The film’s hero (you) has an epiphany about what they will do for the rest of their life. They write a Jerry Maguire-like memo and stick it to their boss. They start afresh in a new industry and become incredibly successful. The End.

The reality is much messier. Successful career changers tend to start experimenting with new job ideas. You might start volunteering somewhere at the weekend. You might go and work-shadow a friend who has a job that kind-of appeals to you.

Change happens in fits and starts. It is rarely the transformative revelation that great novels & movies will make you believe. Neither is it a slow, steady, gradual evolution. You will likely start chipping away at a new idea, suddenly you will get huge traction and everything will be changing and before you know it, it has all slowed down again.

The main message here is that opportunities for significant transitions in your life will come and go. If you are looking to make changes then you will need to embrace these moments of opportunity even though you will never feel quite ready for them.