Coop Harper - Adventures In Paradise

Greetings My Friends, Well, I haven’t posted anything since August 17 so I suppose it’s time to get back on the horse that threw me (or I threw myself from, I’m not quite sure). So here we go… I’d like to talk about gratitude. Not having it, finding it, having it, losing it, being unable to see it when it’s there. You know, LIFE. On its face, gratitude seems like a simple proposition. You either have it or you don’t. But is it OK to have gratitude for some things in your life, but not others? Does this “gray area” make us actually ungrateful in total? These questions pester my subconscious, and my serenity. I’m by nature a gray area person. Absolutes make me absolutely nuts. Most peoples’ absolutes, in my experience, are basically their opinions dressed up as facts. My father told me when I was a young man that opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one and they usually stink. I’ve found his choice wisdom on this subject to be true (this includes my opinions) about 99.99% of

Hello Friends! Welcome to another wonderful week of love and discovery. I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. A LOT. Normally I do a lot of talking sprinkled with a little of making sense, with any reading being confined to the library (translation: bathroom). But lately, people I love and respect have been recommending a number of books for me to read. I’m pretty sure their real motive was to shut me up for a while. Good luck with that. So I decided to take their learned advice and read the tomes they recommended, mostly out of fear of being quizzed on them later by those who recommended them. Turns out I’m glad I did. I learned a few things about the world and myself, and for some strange reason my throat feels better than it has in quite a while. During this reading/learning experience, I came to a personal epiphany. Words, it turns out, MATTER. Now I don’t mean words in general. I mean that the right word , at the right time and used in the right place can make a huge di

Hello Friends... Each day I like to post a quote on my Facebook page that I've found personally inspiring. I even go so far as to post a quote of my own from time to time in an effort to "keep it real." Recently, I came across a quote that really made an impact on me. I'd like to share it with you and some of the idea seeds it planted in me. Eleanor Roosevelt said: "Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people." I previously mentioned Facebook, so I'll let that be my first area of human thought communication on which to test the validity of this quote. I can't even imagine what Eleanor would have to say about the type of minds on Facebook (including my own). What are some of the great minds on Facebook saying right now? "Sunbathing is the best-whats even better is when you're doing it by a pool ♥" "Maria just balanced her phone on her big toe. Epic." "Eatting lunch and o