Mario Cavolo

LIFE IS LIKE ROLLERBLADING

Ideas are especially cool and meaningful when they come along in a flash of inspiration. Mine often magically pop into my head when I’m engaged in sport or exercise. I run five to eight kilometers three or four times per week.

“Life is Like Rollerblading” came to me in a flash around 1998 while I was living, naturally, in ultra-cool Newport Beach, along the Pacific Coast Highway, between the Huntington Beach pier and the Newport Beach pier. I had taken up rollerblading, which was a blast and great exercise too. I became quite good at it. I would often rollerblade to the Huntington Beach or Newport Beach pier areas with my laptop in my backpack and work at a local café on the beach. Of course, nowadays that would be an even better proposition with Wi-Fi being available at so many public locations.

One day while getting myself mentally psyched for the coming evening’s speech, the words “life is like rollerblading” suddenly popped into my head. I loved it the second it came to me and my mind, but the weird part was I hadn’t yet come up with how life is like rollerblading. My mind raced with questions. Like other similar times, times of inspired thought, ideas were flowing out of the mind faster than the pen could keep up. I wrote furiously for 20 minutes to an hour before the stream of ideas and concepts was finally exhausted. Here’s what I came up with.

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4

Here's another chapter from my upcoming book. I welcome your comments. Cheers, Mario

THE PIVOTAL BOOK

On my own journey over the past two years in particular, I’ve found abundant inspiration in a number of books that I strongly recommend. I’ve found myself fascinated and stirred as I read Bill Bryson’s A Short History Of Nearly Everything, Malcolm Gladwell’s recent bestsellers. Historian Daniel Boorstin, Deepak Chopra and thought leader Warren Bennis are some of my favorite authors.

Yet, as good as these books are, it was a single book from my childhood that led to the most inexplicably powerful event that has ever shaped my life.

I was in the eighth grade at St. John the Baptist Catholic School in the town where I grew up, Yonkers, New York. I was a rather typical boy, playing basketball, hating English class. Judging from the bruises on my shins from the girls’ kicks, I was also a typical boy, learning what chasing girls was all about.

Pages: 1 · 2 · 3

II was asked by a reader to post the inspirational note that is located at the bottom of my emails with some thoughts on its meaning. Please do clear your mind of distractions and read it slowly. Here it is:

By clear vision, persistent effort, deliberate thoughts, we manifest. But dispensed only by his Divine Grace & Infinite Wisdom. So is all, so is my being, so am I. We ponder and analyze, to understand what cannot be, to capture what cannot be, to unravel the mystery that will always be, to know unknowable. Society's blurring strokes we must notice and reject. Our strength and enjoyment in measures of simple goodness, kindness, humility, appreciation. Joy arrives, the accomplishments and manifestations arrive and so I have known the meaning of miracles, the nature of love. In loss I meet life’s nature. Facing the misery of deceit and selfishness, I grow wiser. The anger to give way to the infinite sorrow and sadness of a weeping heart, to the tears, marked by their weeping and quiet, marking our souls for eternity.

These thoughts come from deep inside the genuine person that I am, the experiences I've had, the lessons I've learned, the rules of life it seems we need to be aware of and follow. At the same time, it is my attempt at being a bit of a poet. In the last two lines we find the urge in each of us to find the redemption and transformation that can come from the suffering we may endure. Suffering as a natural part of life's plan according to God's wisdom and creation is an endlessly difficult subject to resolve.

Hence I found myself referencing the "marking of our souls" for eternity, believing that our karma, our destiny, our path (call it as you wish) is somehow in our hands, that everything we do in this life is somehow connected with and impacts everything else. So what could be more important than to wake up, to be awake, to be aware, without any distortion or denial of what is realistically present in front of us? Cheers, Mario

II have to say this is a great thing happening and impacting a lot of people. As often in life, good things will suddenly appear from an unexpected and surprising direction. Founder of nonprofit Grass Roots Community Network and radio host, Grass Roots Talk Radio Thursdays 8pm PST, Dr. Al Brown is doing very well with a rapidly growing audience of listeners and callers, who like many of us, simply want to get a grip on where they are, who they are, what's really important and where they're going. Many of Al's radio show listeners, callers and guests are a part of the Afro American community in Los Angeles and it seems that the perspective of someone such as myself, an Italian American businessman living in China for 10 years is adding a fresh point of view to shake things up a bit...on yesterday's show we batted around the meaning of money and the values we attach to things, which themselves have no value other than that which we attach to them...hmm, seems we've unexpectedly got ourselves an LA-based global radio show folks...Cheers and Blessings, Mario

...I've had a lovely little miracle in my life lately, reconnecting with my old friend Dr. Al Brown who invited me to be interviewed on his new radio show, Grass Roots Talk Radio, which is part of Grass Roots Community Network (GRCN), the organization in Los Angeles he founded 20 years ago. Along with his son Allen II, his organization provides life skills and mentoring programs to youth facing today's challenging transition to adulthood and uniquely uses performing arts to empower youth and communities.

Callers into the radio show have genuine challenges that need to be faced realistically and courageously. As I was waiting in the caller queue preparing a message to share with listeners, it was amazing to hear my old friend playing disc jockey with a purpose! I suddenly realized that while he was talking a caller through their challenges, it was like a live one-on-one coaching session being witnessed live by a few thousand people. In my hand was the book No Man Is An Island, one of the bestsellers written by famous spiritualist and Trappist monk Thomas Merton, which I was glancing through as I was preparing my thoughts for the show.

I quickly came upon the lesson for the day reminding us that our purpose in life is to discover, sometimes through struggle, the meaning in our lives, and then, to LIVE ACCORDING TO IT. The first part is trite, talked about too commonly, too often, and too simply. The second part; that's the real deal, where all the fluff and bullshit fades away, leaving YOU stand firm where you are, to fulfill your ultimate purpose, to lift the world in ways small or grand, but to lift it nonetheless, finding that life is well worth living.

The second part of the lesson is to not let people pull you off that path. The world wants to distract you. Bad people want to ruin you and your plans. You need to see that, to realize that, to know that and to know it deeply so that when they come along, those influences are powerless in their attempt to weaken and distract you from who you are. Cheers, M

Our thoughts and actions are like streams and rivers that feed the ocean.

If one can accept that analogy, one will quickly realize that as we are responsible for the quality of the water that is flowing into the ocean, we are responsible for the quality of thoughts flowing into our minds, greatly influencing our life. If the water flowing down the mountains and valleys flowing into the ocean is polluted, obviously this pollutes the whole ocean.

Likewise, if the thoughts flowing into your mind are polluted; dark, negative, unhealthy, distorted, you pollute your mind, your state of being and the actions and circumstances you create will certainly follow.

It’s a nice, powerful analogy to keep in mind and share with a friend…Cheers, Mario

Never try to stop or push away a problem or emotional pain. Greet it. Acknowledge it and realize that what you really want is for it to be transformed. Matter and energy is never destroyed, it is only transformed into different forms. This is also true for our thoughts, emotions and behaviors, which are also a type of energy, matter and vibration. In fact, ideas are the most important type of matter because mankind’s thoughts are the original source of the world’s great inventions and creativity. It was in Napoleon Hill’s classic book, Think and Grow Rich, where I first read this idea that the entire world’s existence starts with the energy of thought.

Everything we see exists first because someone thought of it, formed a plan, and then took action and worked toward making it become real as a...

Read more »