Partially Know Ourselves

"I had a sense of something, but I really had no idea!  This really help me understand myself."

How many times have you heard someone say something like this?

The reality is, all of us only know parts of ourselves, both before and after moments of enlightenment.

In its purest form, this is just simple observation. There really isn’t even a need for any particular moralization about it either — as it is just simply true. 

Most healthy human beings seem inclined to learning more about themselves. This also seems simply observable. Awareness overall, especially self-awareness, is generally both a good and helpful thing.

It is when we become preoccupied with the prospect of self-knowledge that things seem to get off track rather quickly. Full self-knowledge is not only unattainable, it is also unnecessary, not to mention unhelpful because it is usually driven by other, unhealthy forces. It can end up in a kind of narcissism, which is destructive both to oneself and to others because it doesn’t stop.  It can't stop — as its appetite is relentless and insatiable.  And, it invariably projects itself on to others.  A preoccupation with self-knowledge is too often just disguised desire for perfection:

We can (and should) still honor and follow our natural instincts to better understand who we are; being aware, however, that obsession with doing so is no longer about understanding and growth...as much it is about a false sense of control and superiority.

Perhaps it is helpful to acknowledge that there can be freedom in simple self-acceptance, especially when it comes with a healthy understanding of our limitations.  Recognizing that we only partially know ourselves can actually provide a kind of humility and freedom that we all need.

The poor in spirit are blessed and are not crushed by criticism because they are not trying to protect an idealized version of themselves. 

-- Rich Villodas

When You Come Out

When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in.

-- Haruki Murakami

LT: Who They Naturally Are

We don't want people to try to be somebody they aren't when they come to work. That's just exhausting. We want them to be able to learn how to aim who they are naturally in order to succeed at work.

-- Bob Jordan, CEO Southwest

10 photos and videos of the stunning double rainbow that appeared last night over NYC

(@GaryHershorn) September 11, 2023

See more images here.... 

Our Senses

I'm wondering...about how much of what we fill up our senses with influences the quality of the whole rest of our life?

Our Obsession With Meaning

If we could let go of our own obsession with what we think is the meaning of it all, we might be able to hear [God’s] call and follow Him in His mysterious cosmic dance…. 

For the world and time are the dance of the Lord in emptiness. The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness, absurdity and despair. But it does not matter much, because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there. Indeed, we are in the midst of it, and it is in the midst of us, for it beats in our very blood, whether we want it to or not. 

Yet the fact remains that we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.

-- Thomas Merton

Nice News: M51

This is a photo of the galaxy M51, which lies about 27 million light-years away from Earth. Per NASA, the gravity of its neighboring galaxy is thought to be part of what causes those mesmerizing swirls and ripples, but we’re frankly too busy staring at them to focus on the science. And if you think this image is something, wait until you see the full photo captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.

Previous Nice News....

3 Observations & A Question….

Knowing about something or even how something works is not the same thing as actually experiencing it.

 

It is more than a bit conspicuous how those in the political sphere who appeal to law-and-order are the very ones being indicted (and convicted) for abusing it — it looks a lot more like law-and-order applies to other people (not them)...to the ones they want to maintain power over.

Nothing in the Earth is ours — so, that would seem to call into question whether anything that we put on the Earth is either….

Aren't most quality and long-term friendships, in the end, sustained by deep levels of acceptance?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Satisfaction with Education in U.S.

AXIOS

...well, look at that, would ya?  Really makes you wonder who is fanning the flames here (but, I think we already know...).

Hungry Mosquitoes, Irritable Bears and the Glories of Wilderness

One of the paradoxes of urban America is that millions of people speak reverently about wilderness but are much less eager to venture into it and risk real bites from actual mosquitoes.

I’ve been musing about this while backpacking with family on the Pacific Northwest Trail, sometimes known as “America’s wildest trail,” on the Canada-U.S. border in Washington State. It’s stunning, mountainous country, right at timberline in the Pasayten Wilderness — yet we have it pretty much to ourselves (along with the bears, lynxes and mountain goats).

Perhaps I’m running away from home, for this is a dispiriting time in America: A former president has not only been indicted four times but may actually also be re-elected, our life expectancy is among the worst in the rich world, and large majorities of adults polled say our country is on the wrong track.

Yet there’s something still spectacularly right about the United States: our wild spaces.  

For me, wilderness backpacking is a profoundly healing experience. It restores my soul.  

Continue here....

-- Nicholas Kristof

Where You Belong

When you know and respect your own Inner Nature, you know where you belong.

-- Benjamin Hoff

How Thoughts Embed Themselves

In any given day, we have SO many thoughts.  

So why do certain thoughts grab a spot and settle in...so deeply?  Some even cause rumination — cycling over and over them in our minds.

How do thoughts embed themselves in the library of our brains anyway? 

And, when this happens, what is it that does the embedding part?  

Two things seem noticeable about which ones stick.  For one, personal experience is often glue-like for something to attach to our consciousness. It is what we associate with certain kinds of thoughts that contributes to its stickiness.  

The experience-set we are working with is set in motion early in childhood.  It is how we learn and understand things.  Those things can be positive or negative, but either way they form the base from which our subsequent thought-patterns emanate.  When I was a child, I developed all kinds of perspectives on what I thought things looked like (including what they were supposed to look like).  Among other things, I formed impressions about family, marriage, friendship, church, society, money, success, the world, our existence, and God.  I developed thoughts (even expectations) about them, without even realizing it, that carried over into my adult life.

Often, as adults, our earlier experience-set is either affirmed or put into conflict by additional experiences.  Our thoughts, once again, evolve and continue to take shape from our surroundings and circumstances (especially our painful ones).  Whether by continuance or adjustment (sometimes significantly), our experience forms the fabric against which our thought-patterns lay.  It deeply sinks the thought-poles of ideas that makes sense to us.

There is another dynamic, too, that has an adhesive quality to it — the mood or energy that is often connected to a pattern of thoughts. It doesn’t take very much of this “mood" about certain thoughts or ideas for that energy to actually become even more significant than the thoughts themselves.  Fear, for example, is like this and is often used to tap into an idea; it rides below the surface and energizes the thoughts we have on the surface. Thoughts, in this context, can often become like lightning-rods for our fears. 

We have to know that this kind of thing is going on because it is often the energy behind certain thoughts that is what is most important about them.  More often than we realize, there are significantly influencing forces prevailing on the thoughts that circulate around us.  And, these forces are part of what embed them deep within us.  Social-media has done nothing if not confirm this dynamic.  In fact, it appeals to it...because it works.  It is often selling the energy even more than it is the ideas.  If this or that idea falls out of popular favor, we'll just change to the new thing.  This is easily done because it runs on the same energy.

Though not completely new in concept, this kind of energy often harnesses our thoughts towards what is wrong with things (using fear again) — we often become near experts at finding flaws with things.  And, so, our challenge (and opportunity) is to consider, not only how our thoughts form and are sustained, but also how we can change the dynamic of the thoughts we so actively maintain.  It is much harder, for example, to work at discovering what we can do rather than simply pointing out what we can't (or shouldn't) do.  Doing this requires that we understand and then reposition how what embeds itself, in our thinking, needs to change.  

This could not only affect how we think, but what we think...which might position us to actually do something constructive for the world.

LT: Bigger Than Themselves

The best leaders are also the best followers. They follow a purpose, cause, or belief bigger than themselves.

-- Simon Sinek

Eat Something

I've noticed...when I sense someone’s disappointment in something that I am involved with, I often want to eat something.

Sunday morning, back in the fourth pew

One good reason to travel around America is to meet American people, all the more so if you’re one of them yourself. I went out West for ten days and rediscovered what I always knew, that our people don’t mind talking about themselves. You call a cab at 5 a.m. in Flagstaff and a cheerful guy pulls up at your hotel and you ask him how his day is going — “Fine,” he says, “I’m on the midnight shift and I love to see the sun come up.”

“You from here?” No, he’s from Boston, he came out here to help his son who owns the cab company, and he loves Arizona, the climate relieves his arthritis. “So what did you do back in Boston?”

In Europe, this question might raise hackles, like asking, “What’s your annual income?” but he doesn’t mind. He’s a retired Baptist minister. And now the door opens wide...continue here.

-- Garrison Keillor

4 Observations (from Others)

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each.

-- Henry David Thoreau

Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due.

-- Etty Hillesum

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses, and disappointments.

-- Joseph Addison

Love does not allow people to flee or shield themselves from the pain or the troubles of this life. Genuine lovers move deeply into the life-and-death dramas of this world, like a plant that sinks roots deep into fertile soil, and there give themselves wholly to the flourishing of life. To withhold oneself from love is to withhold oneself from participating in a complete life.… 

-- Norman Wirzba

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Health Spending & Hate Crimes

New York Times

AXIOS

Advice for a Gray Afternoon

'Poem for the week' -- "Advice for a Gray Afternoon":

Do not assume the worst, a trap 

Loneliness sets for old age, 

Or make impossible demands 

On your equally lonesome peers. 

Set your children free, 

Not always at your beck and call. 

Because your needs keep growing 

And are endless, don’t imagine 

There are answers to everything 

Your heart cries Yes to. 

Give yourself permission to question 

Certainties you once bet your life on. 

Establish and maintain a good forgettery, 

Welcome that angel with others. 

Make trust the keeper of your house. 

Sit in the sun that banishes doldrums, 

Useless apologies, guilt. 

Open your eyes, uncurl your fingers, 

Take in what you need. 

Give sleep the upper hand, 

Fall often into the arms of that god.

-- Jeanne Lohmann

More Sensitive

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.

-- Alan Watts

Walking, Nature, Words & Engagement

When I go on walks, I almost always take my phone with me now.

Not because I have so many people to talk to, but so that I can talk to myself.

Unless I've fooled myself somehow (not actually that hard to do), my phone's availability is not as much for media-tetheredness as it is about capturing some of the many thoughts that flow more freely through my mind when I'm out walking (not to mention the sights involved — like the red flash of a cardinal darting across the path in front of me). The words those thoughts generate sift and sort as they inch me towards the sensations I’m feeling physically (pain, pleasure, etc.) and the emotions I have been carrying around psychologically. 

And then, there is the whole spiritual dimension that seems conspicuously more accessible in the context of the often harmonious dynamics of nature (and, according to Richard Louv, apparently I'm not the only one impacted in such ways). Although nature certainly includes disruption of that harmony, the more consistent experience, at least as I have observed it, seems to be the interplay between everything that appears to be living and breathing together in many contexts like the woods or the ocean or even the skies. I have developed an affection of spirituality, after an extended relationship with it through the lens of religion. Religion seems to often leave you either with a drum-beat to perpetuate itself, or the urge to get as far away from it as possible. Spirituality, on the other hand, seems far less interested in co-opting and moralizing and controlling (even systematizing) things. It just is. It serves both itself and the co-inhabitants of its environment, and perhaps even something greater than mere affective activation (why, for example, would it include so much beauty if it’s all just a personal function?).

Sidebar: All of us, after all, are only partially on to truth. If that feels disputable, what actually is the alternative? That we understand all truths? That certain people understand all truth? If we acknowledge that the body of truth is ultimately not fully known by anyone, wouldn’t that leave us with a slightly different disposition towards our relationship with what we think is true? The reality is, among other things, this makes us far more vulnerable than we prefer to be. Because which part of what is true am I actually after all acquainted with?  And, what if someone else’s partial relationship with the body of what is true has awareness of parts of it that are different from what I am familiar with about it?

So, spirituality has become something, for me, that transcends some of the more limited contexts of my experiences with truth.  There is belief (what you think is true), and there is faith (what you are really trusting in).  And, there is religion (among other things, what tries to aggregate and socialize).  Then, there is spirituality against which they all seem to lay or, at least, tap into.  

Walking then (as confirmed here) — the physical act in a context like nature — awakens my awareness to some of these realities (both within myself and externally...all that is going on around me).  And, words are one way I can engage with all these dynamics.  

I have noticed that my attempts at verbal-framing are pretty ephemeral.  Thoughts fly in often unannounced and then promptly proceed to evaporate (kind of like that cardinal).  If I don't jot something down as it happens, too often I can only remember that I thought about something that seemed significant, but not what it actually was.  And, so, my phone (or, should I say from a functional perspective, my recording device...which also happens to be a phone) is a handy and helpful way for me to capture conversation with myself about this engagement I have with life and the world.

Wait, hold up...I'm making a note, as I merge my technology with the sublime.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

-- William Shakespeare

Without Shifting Blame

Instagram: drop-the-stones

To the degree to which a person can grow is directly proportionate to the amount of truth they can accept about themself without shifting blame upon someone else.

-- Unknown

Spiritually Healthy

Ever noticed...that the most spiritually healthy people are also among the most humble?

Touch the Suffering

God is the presence that spares us from nothing, even as God unexplainably sustains us in all things. God depends on us to protect ourselves and each other, to be nurturing, loving, protective people. When suffering is there, God depends on us to reach out and touch the suffering with love that it might dissolve in love.  

But here’s the thing: To be present to suffering and to touch the suffering with love, that it might dissolve in love, means to be grounded in the peace that is not dependent on the outcome of the effort because, regardless of how it turns out, God is unexplainably taking us to God, breath by breath, moment by moment.

-- James Finley

This requires some meditation, but it is so energized by the mystery of its invitation.

Its appeal to the adjustments we need regarding outcomes is quite compelling, especially when established on the foundation of peace.

Consider, after all, the inadequacies (if not violence) of its alternatives, many of which are not at all hard to spot around us right now.

Family Wealth

Substack: Rich Mean North of Richmond

3 Observations & A Question….

As a society, we seem to be less and less capable of recognizing that good and bad are invariably mixed together — which obviously leads to significant problems collectively (whichever way you’re pre-disposed to noticing) and a distorted of ourselves individually.

One of the conspicuous and unfortunate characteristics of modernity is our failure to recognize the impacts of manipulating so many of the ecosystems of the earth — especially the ways its profit-seeking consumption throws so many things out of natural balance.

If it’s not good for everyone (in other words, only some), then it’s not really good for anyone.

Doesn't real power come from the actual experience of something, as opposed to just the knowledge of something that can be experienced?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

Visual: Sprouts

Visual - "Sprouts"

Colorado Springs, CO

As Long As

People are very open-minded about new things — as long as they're exactly like the old ones.

-- Charles Kettering

Sponges, Con't

Another lingering reflection, on a recent Ever Noticed...:

Ever noticed…that most children in healthy environments are often sponges for everything that is going on around them?

So, what happens along the way that inhibits our ability, especially as adults, to continue to absorb reality? Why do we so often cut it off? The answer is probably not too difficult to identify. But, perhaps it is the ever-emergent posture of defensiveness or self protection that can actually be reconsidered. 

While often a bit more dense or complicated, it is too often pain that seems to engage mechanisms in our life which prevent us from continuing to be as receptive as we were when we were young children. The reality, unfortunately, is that there is a lot pain in life. But, deeper understanding (if not experience) no longer retains pain in the position as something that needs to primarily be avoided, as much as it something to be embraced, engaged with — to actually, in one way or another, cooperate with.  Such a disposition seems to put us on a much more healthy footing and allows the possibility of not only healing, but also growth. We can learn, albeit not easily (or often quickly), that pain often presents an opportunity to not only heal ourselves, but also the world.

But, the original thought here relates to the sponge-like nature of children.  One oft-associated characteristic of childhood is play.  We almost automatically assume that they do it, should, and need to.  It is pretty commonly accepted that there is even something developmental about it.

In other words, even as they play, they are absorbing things...all kinds of things, related to objects, dynamics, relationships.  They are taking in all kinds of information and learning from it.  Fun is a thing in and of itself, but it also enhances engagement and learning.  Play is one way to incorporate fun into the process.

...and this observation likely leads back into the question above — what happens to this phenomenon as we become adults?  Does is morph?  Or, does it largely just stop?  Play is often difficult for some adults.  Sometimes it is a physical thing.  But, more often, I suspect, it is about something else.

Either way, being sponge-like is a disposition we might be better off to retain.  After all, what in effect does it look like when we don't?  When we no longer allow new information to permeate us? When we are no longer able to relate to our environment (or to those in it — you know, when we only like to play with our friends, not yours, etc.)?  

...maybe it looks a lot like what we see all around us so much today — preponderance of fear and all we end up doing with that.

It is a happy talent to know how to play.

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

LT: Rank

Rank does not confer privilege or give power. It imposes responsibility.

-- Peter Drucker

Enjoyment

I'm wondering...when did enjoyment become our highest standard? 

Somewhere along the way, of course. But, at some point, if we don't do things simply because they aren't enjoyable, we've ended up somewhere quite problematic.

What ever happened to good...as a standard? 

Don't we do things at times, simply because they are good to do?  Obviously, either can be misused (and has been), but sometimes I wonder if we've thrown the baby out with the bath-water on this one. 

I don't find some of my neighbors particularly enjoyable people.  They're not bad — just not enjoyable (...what irony if they would say the same thing about me?!?). But, that doesn't mean it's not still good to talk to them, to relate to them, to offer to help them when they need it. 

Why?

Because it's a good thing to do. 

Which begs the next question; what is good, in this context?

Deadly Mix

Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy.  He was brought down by law and order allied with religion, which is always a deadly mix.  Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and who are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform.  Beware those who cannot tell God's will from their own.

-- Barbara Brown Taylor

Even some helpful history underscores this observation...continue here.

As does this description of women (like Taylor), who speak truth to power...continue here.

3 Observations & A Question….

Whether it’s the slavery of the past or the Wall Street of today, distance from the impacts seems to perpetuate the worst problems.

Being harmed by reality can make it hard to see reality accurately — and, amazingly, sometimes being healed from harm, can really clarify reality.

So many things that we fear will reduce us are actually pathways to what expands us; not unlike how so many things that we feel we need to hold onto to maximize ourselves actually make us less and less capable.

Nearly everything you are working at is creating an opportunity (of one kind or another, for one time or another) — so, what are you working at?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

On the Lighter Side: I,J,K

 On the Lighter Side:

What We Give

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

-- Winston Churchill

Limitations

Ever noticed…that there appears to be more people, that society considers on the margins, out and about...walking greenways or trails or doing whatever they can do because society has made it easier for them to do so?

This is something, it seems to me, that society should both be able and sensitive enough to help provide for its citizens, who struggle with things in life. It seems consistent with a Judeo-Christian ethic, at the very least. Some may view such things as a subsidy, or an enablement (whatever terms might be closer to somehow being a benefactor). But, perhaps a less conspicuous benefit, so to speak, is that seeing people with everything from simple inhibitions all the way through serious disabilities being able to participate and enjoy more of life might actually inform those who remain naïve to the truth about our own condition. Or, put this way, we can consider the possibility that whatever losses may still await us, there are many others who have not only endured what we might otherwise call setbacks of these kinds, but also turned their disposition towards what can still be done, in spite of certain limitations.

I suspect that there are very few human-beings, over the course of their existence, that don’t encounter some kind of disablement. Those that have not chosen (or been forced) to deal with even some of the harshness of those realities might have a more difficult time embracing the possibilities that remain, rather than simply the losses incurred.

I was walking on a greenway the other day and noticed a woman walking her dog. She obviously had some problems with her legs. As she got closer, I noticed that she had special shoes, which I’m guessing were part of what it took for her to be able to walk at all (not to mention to walk for leisure on the greenway with her dog). It struck me as I observed her go by that she quite possibly was still in some degree of discomfort, even as she was possibly enabled by different forms of assistance (like her shoes). The thought occurred to me that it was as much about her choice to try to participate in something that she wanted to be able to do as anything else. Perhaps she was thinking the whole time about many of the things I suspect would go through my mind (at least at one point or another) about how hard it was for her to walk or why she couldn’t more freely do it like everybody else on the trail (or a whole host of other forms of complaint). But my impression was, having seen her walking before, that her disposition was closer to something like, "I’m going to try to figure out a way to do what I can and what I want to do and not let my disability keep me from participating in and living life as much as possible".

What slows me down, too often, is pain. I can too easily become disheartened by the endurance pain sometimes requires (not saying this to minimize the impact of pain). I have to wonder whether I feel like the highest concern — pain — is too often the most acid-test of what it means to exist in healthy ways, to whatever degree I am able to do so. I suspect, though, that merely the observation of someone moving even within their limitations, creates new space for questions I might not have otherwise imagined. We all, in fact, have kinds of pain and limitations...continue here.

What makes you vulnerable makes you beautiful.

-- Brene Brown

Groundwork

The groundwork of all happiness is health.

-- Leigh Hunt

Keeping Track

I've noticed...that when I am keeping track of others, I'm not doing well.

...like when it’s easier for me to find inconsistencies in others, than in myself.

Something We Realize, Discover, Become Acquainted With

This is how I've come to understand hope.  It arrives when we realize that nothing taken from us can defeat us.  When we discover that the pain we've been running from was never going to destroy us.  When we become acquainted with the healing mysteries that are laid bare in our most difficult experiences.  When we discover that God is growing us up in to our shared calling as healers.

-- Jason Miller, When The World Breaks

3 Observations & A Question….

Solutions that are comprised of high proportions of fear and power are usually more destructive than anything else.

 

Where spirituality includes sensitivity to what might be true, religion too often seems to assume it has exclusively found it.

Grasping anything is an attempt to make it finite.

Is it just me, or does the political electorate seem increasingly focused on single-threaded versions of issues with candidates, rather than on candidates who can most affectively relate to and deal with multi-threaded issues (so little of it seems to embrace needs of the collective, rather than simply one person’s experience)?

Prior 3 Observations & A Question….

As Another School Year Begins...

What You Want In Life

It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life.

-- P.D. James

Not Helpful, Con't

Another lingering reflection, on a recent 3 Observations & A Question….:

There are so many things that we do to ourselves that just aren’t...helpful. 

Perhaps 'helpful' isn't the word you were expecting (maybe it was something more like, 'right' or...). If moralization is a shark, its remora is often resistance. But, when framed this way, what shifts? If we could switch the metaphor, maybe we might be more free to ask a different kind of question — this time from a lens of what isn't helpful for us.

So, if something isn't helpful, why do we still do it?

Many times, we do things along these lines because of something that we don't want to feel (or, that we do want to feel). The easy ones are often things we do — things we eat or drink or smoke or watch. But, we often we don't do things, too, that would really help us — it's just easier to veg out, after all we're SO tired because of.... And, we have so many forms of escape in our economy.

But, perhaps what is most unhelpful about such things (whatever they are), at least primarily, is what they draw us away from — from what we really need.  Even more, perhaps, is the distance such things tend to create from what we actually want. And, they often mess with our ability to distinguish between the two — functioning more like a distraction than something useful because, most of the time, unhelpful things are not actually enabling anything of particular use or help to us.

And, whatever form such things take for each of us, they often seem largely unable to truly satisfy us.

As we recognize unhelpful things for what they are (and aren't), perhaps when facing opportunities to do them, we can simply learn to re-orient ourselves with something like, "How does this help me?" or "How does this serve what I really want or need?"

I have found this to be the case with a number of things in my life, including some food I have perennially liked to consume. Over time I have learned to ask myself something like, "After this action (or this neglect), how will I feel later?" And, often, the unhelpful psychological, emotion, or spiritual things I do also impact my well-being. So, I'm thinking about areas of my life, where these dynamics exist. Where the frame of 'Is this helpful?' would help me.

There are so many forms that good information takes — so, we have the opportunity to discover which ones, in particular, help us.

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.

-- Laozi

Try THIS the Next Time You Have an Uncomfortable Conversation

"I need to have an uncomfortable conversation with you.  I am afraid of having it, because...."

-- Simon Sinek

Sponges

Ever noticed…that most children in healthy environments are often sponges for everything that is going on around them?

Transform vs Transmit

We each carry a certain amount of pain from our very birth. If that pain is not healed and transformed, it actually increases as we grow older, and we transmit it to people around us. We can become violent in our attitudes, gestures, words, and actions. 

Jesus became the crucified so we would stop crucifying. He refused to transmit his pain on to others. 

-- Richard Rohr

4 Observations (from Others)

Exclusion operates by the same rule of mutuality as welcome, for it harms both the excluded and the excluder.

-- Cole Arthur Riley

If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are — we can all be freer.

-- Emma Watson

Beware of overconcern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.

-- Rudyard Kipling

I’m not responsible for fixing all the world’s problems. I’m responsible for doing my part. 

-- Jess Morales Rocketto

Prior 4 Observations (from Others).

Your Game

'Poem for the week' -- "Your Game":

You talk
like this is the only game in town

You act
like this is the only game in town

it smells
like yours is the only game in town

it sounds
like other games...are just games

but yours is not

it tastes
like you are the only game in town

so, 

it feels
like it is just a game

that I don't  want to play anymore

Power of Empathy

The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.

-- Meryl Streep

Creature, Con't

Another lingering reflection, on a recent I'm wondering…:

What comes to mind when we hear the term ‘creature’?

Maybe our minds most immediately go to something SCI-FI or perhaps to something in the depths. Whatever our definitions or working understandings may be, what characteristics of creature are involved...when applied to another human-being? 

For me, one nuance of the term creature is otherliness. In the context of another being — even a human-being — is there not nearly always some element of otherliness about anyone?  Something I don't really know (or can't really know)?

Or, if there isn’t, should there be?

Most, who have some healthy degree of sensitivity, would not automatically approach a new living thing they’ve encountered with the automatic intention to disturb it. Rather, there is often a certain dimension of respect for what it might be that we are actually seeing. What is this thing? What kind of a creature is it? What unique things about it should I be either aware of or sensitive to? Is it dangerous? Is it shy? Is it as curious about this encounter as perhaps I am? 

Whatever it is, we tend to respect something when we encounter a creature (of one kind or another), often perhaps through the use of things like space. For example, we don’t automatically just charge at it; and, we may not need to immediately run away from it either — we try to leave enough space to see what will happen.  Something happens in such situations that seems to be pretty close to a kind of respect for whatever it is that we are not familiar with about the other (creature). This is why the term otherliness seems, at least, partially descriptive of such situations.

When I run into seeing, say, an animal in the wild, more often than not I try to not immediately spook it off by any suddenness of action on my part.  This happened yesterday when I came across a deer.  I nearly walked right into as it stood there just looking at me.  And, then it simply went back to eating nearby leaves.

When a new baby is born, we often at one point or another wonder what kind of a person it will grow to be.  What will it be like?  What won't it like?  What things will happen in its life that will shape it?  How is it already made that will guide its natural response to things?  Until then though, and we know it better, we just don't know what exactly the person is, in this new little body.  It, too, is still a bit other to us.

Too often, otherliness (especially collectively) in general, seems to illicit all kinds of forms of...disrespect. If it's different, we tend be somewhere between suspicious and...just not liking it.  We want things to be...like us.  

I suspect, however, that a more, in fact, natural response to the uniqueness of any creature is actually…respect — a genuine curiosity about it that seeks to honor whatever it is, rather than simply tame it into likeness we prefer (ours).

Somehow along the way, we tend to unlearn this God-given response (perhaps because we get so tangled up seeking our own identity through all kinds of acceptance).  But, it might do well to reconsider how each living thing is like a creature of its own being (not unlike we are ourselves) and start with, if not maintain, a sense of respect, curiosity, and wonder.

LT: 7 types of self-care that increase your ability to be an inspiring leader

Business leaders often find themselves deeply invested in their organization’s success and growth, focusing on strategic planning, decision-making, and meeting objectives. Such pressures and responsibilities can be time- and energy-consuming, leaving little room for self-care.

Self-care is often viewed as a temporary fix or a quick solution to alleviate stress or exhaustion, which is seen as a selfish luxury or an indulgent act that takes away time and energy from work and other responsibilities. However, it is an integral part of overall success, and is intertwined with performance and leadership effectiveness. Here are seven types of self-care every busy leader should practice.  Continue here....

-- Ella Zhang

Creature

I'm wondering...what comes to mind when we hear the term ‘creature’?