If you’ve ever been to a Hard Rock Café, then you probably know about one their mottos – “Love All, Serve All”. Personally, I’ve sought out Hard Rocks’ at many destinations: Chicago, Orlando, San Francisco, Venice, Fiji, Mexico and Jamaica. The restaurants are outfitted with tons of Rock memorabilia, which is different at every location. The food seems to be pretty consistently good no matter what country you visit and the atmosphere is always fun.
I honestly don’t know the origination of the Love all, Serve all theme, but it certainly is a worthy way to go. Hard Rock also has other Mottos: All Is One, Save The Planet and Take Time To Be Kind. Simple words, all of them, but certainly quite inspirational.
Now, the main reason I go to Hard Rock is not because of the food, the rock and roll music, memorabilia or the inspirational themes. I go to get the hat.
Here is my Hard Rock Hawaii hat on top of the world in Maui.
Here is another Hard Rock hat in Utah – (with apologies to all of my many Packer loving friends – nah!)
Here is another Hard Rock hat in Fiji.
OK – several things are obvious from these pictures. I like to go places, I like to wear hats and I need to lose a few (or more) pounds. I must also add that the hats come in handy on very sunny days when you have thinning hair – which by the way is not my fault, it’s a genetic thing after all!
OK – but this is not strictly speaking a travel post, as I put it under the Grace heading. Seriously, I enjoy travel, especially travel with my wife. The biggest part of “enjoy” is “joy”. For me, travel with Sue (and wearing Hard Rock hats) is definitely one of life’s many joys. I don’t know that I ever thought much on how Joy and Grace actually go together until recently. Author John Ortberg wrote “Joy is at the heart of God’s plan for human beings. The reason for this is worth pondering awhile: Joy is at the heart of God himself. We will never understand the significance of joy in human life until we understand its importance to God. I suspect that most of us seriously underestimate God’s capacity for joy.” He goes on to add “We are invited to rejoice in every moment of life because every moment in life is a gift.”
I sincerely hope this blog finds you joyous. Even trying to implement simple sayings such as Love All Serve All, can spur us on to a more joyous frame of mind. Jesus told his friends that his aim was they should be filled with joy, not that they should be just a bit joyful, but filled with joy – filled to capacity. It’s not always easy, but I can always try harder for it to be more of who I am, more often.
Thirsty Travels 