New year, new start, new plan, but same old you.  Ai-yah!  It’s the perennial conundrum that!

At the start of every new year, it’s “traditional” for those of us who follow the 365-day Gregorian calendar to make some sort of list of resolutions at the start of the new year.  Many of us do.

We start the process by reviewing our actions and our lives over the past year.

Self-flagellation ensues.  Some of us pull out special whips for the occasion.  (Most of the rest of us use wet spaghetti noodles to beat ourselves up, I think, but some folks get really serious with it and go S&M on themselves.  Ouch!)

WHAT USUALLY RESULTS WHEN YOU MAKE NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

In any case, we take the Polar Plunge, driving ourselves into the freezing-cold waters of the self-judgmental seas of You-Ain’t-Enough.  Our Inner Critics have a field day.

We make up special to-do lists of outrageously ambitious, overblown goals that target our awfullest “faults” that we are determined we should obliterate once and for all, or we aim to acquire esoteric skills we say we should absolutely have.

And, for at least 80 percent of us who do this dance, the Smarty Pants in the white lab coats say, our latest new year plan somehow dies a quiet death within a couple of weeks of its inception.  Again.

ANOTHER TAKE ON NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

One of the gentlest and most insightful looks at this annual phenomenon is this “Ask a Psychologist” YouTube video uploaded by founder Dr. Elliott Carthy in 2021.  It is called “Watch This Before Making Any New Years Resolutions.”

In his notes that accompany the video, the good doctor says, “I have no training in making resolutions as part of being a psychiatrist, but there are some really interesting parts of my training that have translated to more broad goal setting in my life.”

Then he explains about a thing called “meaningful reflective practice.”  What this training does, he says, is help the practitioner focus on better understanding their own self and what works in their life instead of the more usual focusing on other people’s expectations of them.

SOME KINDS OF GOAL-SETTING MAY BE LIKE DOING THOSE STUPID OUTLINES BEFORE YOU ACTUALLY START TO WRITE…

Carthy’s little explanation of the meaningful reflective practice reminds me of my earliest lessons in writing essays.

It occurred to me that all of my English writing teachers started out by trying to get me to write an outline, laying out all the points to be covered in a piece, and then writing the thing.

I suck at outlines.  I don’t know what I think before I get it down on paper.  I have to play with all the potential ideas and likely-looking concepts first.

Essays became my favorite way of arguing.  Nobody could talk back and distract me with other interesting concepts or get me so riled-up that I start spluttering.

Eventually I got so good at it that I could write the piece and put together the outline at the same time.

I have noticed, though, that writing’s a lot more fun since I tossed the outline thing into the cylindrical file.

ONE MORE LESSON = ANOTHER INNER PEACE SYMPTOM

ANOTHER IPS (Inner Peace Symptom):  an understanding that your life is your very own story and it all begins and moves and ends with you.  [The only thing you can change in the story is you.  The rest comes along after that.]

Hmmm….

SO, HOW DOES A LIFE-STORY WORK?

The thing about your life-story is this:  it runs through your head all the time, every moment of your life.  Whatever you tell yourself about your life, you need to be aware that all the thoughts you’ve ever thought about it, keeps cycling through over and over.

It’s how you make sense of this very big and confusing old world all us humans are creating together with Life Its Own Self.  It’s like you are standing there watching the world unfolding all around you and you keep saying, “See, see!  I’m right!  This is how it is!”

The story that keeps repeating in your head is so familiar that it is likely that you don’t even know what you are actually telling yourself.  (Fish don’t notice that they are swimming in water, you know.  The water is just there.)

Many times the story in your head keeps you doing the same old stuff over and over again.  Those thoughts keep you repeating the same old stuff you always do.  Usually you keep on getting the same old results you’ve always gotten.

Sometimes this is good.  Sometimes not so much.

WHY WE DON’T REALLY WANNA CHANGE ANYTHING

The only way to get yourself to do different is to start telling yourself a different story.  At least, that’s what all the wise guys down through the ages keep telling us.

However, if you actually try to do that, you may find that you really do seriously consider your life-story to be like your life’s blood.  You may not be so yipsy about interrupting or changing its regular flow.

After all, to stop or divert the blood flowing through you by yourself, you have to do something drastic. And that’s why, despite all the urgent motivational talking about it and all the rah-rah-rah, for most people committing life-story hara kiri is actually not a popular option.

BECOMING THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IS HARD

It isn’t easy to change the story in your head.  It takes a heck of a lot of effort to move your life around to accommodate any kind of change in your story because everything around you in the life you’ve made so far can be a major thing that anchors you to your old story.

You have to make room in your life for even a little change because any change in your story is probably going to displace something that’s already in your life.  Who wants to CHOOSE to do that kind of hassle?  Haven’t we got enough to do already?

SO WHAT CAN WE DO ABOUT THAT?

Veteran coach and management consultant David Allen has a whole system that you can use to manage your actions and tackle the conundrum of personal productivity.  You may want to take a look at his book, GETTING IT DONE:  The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

His later work, READY FOR ANYTHING:  52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done, is also a good one and a lot less intimidating.

Using Allen’s strategies can help you figure out how to set up systems that allow you to stay on top of all of the everything coming at you, especially during times of severe stress.

Click the button below to explore the GTD website.

Allen’s work and the massive numbers of people who have gotten good results by following his method do make a case for the concept that managing your actions well can help you reach a point where you can get yourself out of the overwhelm threatening to engulf you.

• You can use it to clear the space around you so you can see where you are standing and what is all around you.
• It can even help you figure out which of the available options and actions you can choose will help you start to make some needed changes in the old same-old story that keeps running in your head.
• It can make room in your head to go figure out your new story.

FIELD NOTES

I actually immersed myself in the GTD thing for a time.  Getting through deconstructing, dissecting, reframing and reconstructing the various aspects of the actions I was making in my life using the methods Allen delineates took me at least five years of concentrated effort.

I maintained the thing for quite a while after that.  I still fall back into patterns I formed then when things get hairy.  The GTD system helped me enormously when I got serious about changing my own life story.

GTD was one of many systems and aids that I tapped, trying to answer the question, “So, who is just-Netta NOW?”

It worked because it suited my way of walking.  It worked because I already had space in my life so I could actually set aside time to practice it with the kind of intense focus that is needed to make anything of this sort work.

The system does take a lot of time and it does take a lot of effort.  As usual, half-assed effort and trying to short-time it do not work so well. You do have to put your whole butt into it.

Every system is a series of routines strung together so that they all work effectively and well.  Open-ended ones like the GTD method can help you shape your world.

AND A METAPHOR

It seems to me that playing in a brand-new-to-you system feels like moving into an older, fixer-upper house.  Some parts of it will work for you, other parts need to be worked around and still others leave you cold or just have to go.

If you bang away at it, move walls around, give the thing your own kind of styling and do a bunch of living in it, the old house can become home.

And that can be a very good thing.

AGAIN

Over and over again I am shown that I do not control

The way the world dances and flows onward.

I can only do what I can do.

Nothing more, nothing less.

One more time I am shown that I am a helpless leaf

Fallen into some burbling stream, moving on to I don’t know.

I can only stand empty.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Waiting and trusting that the Tao will flow as it flows

And clarity will come one fine day when I do not expect it.

I can only keep on trying.

Nothing more, nothing less.

By Netta Kanoho

HEADER PHOTO CREDIT:  “Old Friends” by Jenny Tañedo via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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SOME OTHER POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you…)

• A QUESTION OR TWO
• VALUES-BASED WRITING
• THOUGHTS ARE YOU

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post MAKE ROOM FOR CHANGE (Another IPS) first appeared on Life-Built Poems.

Poet, artist and musician Joy Harjo is a member of the Mvkoke (Creek) Nation.  (More usually, that word is spelled “Muscogee.”)

Harjo became the first Native American to be appointed as a Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the American Library of Congress in 2019 by Librarian Carla Hayden.  In case you didn’t know, the Library is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and is said to be the largest library in the world.

As well as other things, national poets laureate get to help the huge library develop programs that foster the art of poetry, expand the library’s collection of all things related to poetry and help them figure out how to provide services for poetry makers, scholars, and the rest of the citizenry.

When she elevated the poet to the post, Dr. Hayden said, “Joy Harjo has championed the art of poetry – ‘soul talk’ as she calls it – for over four decades.  To her, ‘poems are carriers of dreams, knowledge and wisdom,’ and through them she tells an American story of tradition and loss, reckoning and myth-making.”

A POP-UP POETRY READING

Shortly after she became the poet laureate for the United States of America, Harjo stopped by the offices of the Academy of American Poets, where she was a member of the Board of Chancellors, in order to do a pop-up reading of her poem, “Grace.”

The reading was uploaded to YouTube by the Academy.

The last lines of her poem still resonate with me:

“I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw.  We didn’t; the next season was worse….And, Wind, I am still crazy.  I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people.  We have seen it.”

WE INDIGENES ARE POETS TOO

When she accepted the position as poet laureate, Harjo was working on a major book project.  She was acting as the chief editor for the first-ever comprehensive collection of poetry by indigenous writers ever made.

The book was a 400-plus page anthology with works from 160 indigenous poets who represented 91 of the more than 500 federally-recognized tribal nations in America.

The ages of the featured poets range from high schoolers whose poems appeared in tribal or community newspapers more than 100 years ago, to more mature spoken-word artists, to the late Louis Little Coon Oliver (Mvkoke), whose first poetry collection was published after he turned 80.

Harjo was helped in this endeavor by her fellow editors, Leanne Howe and Jennifer Elise Foerster, by her students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where Harjo was teaching at the time, and by “contributing editors” who were all expert native poets knowledgeable about at least one of the five different geographical sections into which the team somewhat arbitrarily divided up the country.

The collection has been called a “landmark” book.  It is the first time anybody tried to recognize and honor such a wide diversity of native voices and viewpoints.  The book has also been credited with helping to make our collective story as a country bigger and more layered.  More of the missing voices can now be heard and acknowledged.

We are poets, we have accomplished poets, and we had poets long before there was an entity called America. We were here, we are here, we didn’t disappear or die; but, we are living voices and we are poets.

 The Norton anthology is proof of that one.

(For the complete interview, which includes a very interesting account of how the book came to be, click on the button below.)

THE POET LAUREATE’S SIGNATURE PROJECT

About half of the poets laureate appointed over the years have created and developed large scale poetry projects designed to raise awareness and appreciation of poetry on a national scale.  These major works are called “signature projects.”

When she was appointed for a second term as the national poet laureate in 2020, Harjo began work putting together “Living Nations, Living Words.”

This amazing digital project which includes the works of 47 contemporary Native American poets from across the country including Harjo, Henry Real Bird, Joan Naviyuk Kane, b: william bearheart, Alex Jacobs, Mahealani Perez-Wendt, and Luci Tapahonso.

Each of these poets were asked to choose a poem based on the theme of place and displacement.  They were also asked to choose poems that focused on visibility, persistence, resilience, and/or acknowledgement.

The STORY MAP – an interactive ArcGIS web map – is the foundation of the signature project.

The map was developed by Harjo with the Library’s Geography and Map Division after she asked the poetry makers to pinpoint the place on a map of the United States that each participating poet gave as his or her point of origin.

You can click the markers on the map to access each of the poets and their work.

Harjo says (and I agree) that “place is central to identity, to the imagery and shape of the poems, no matter what country, culture or geographical place.”

The words of poets rebuild the worlds they have known and create the worlds of their dreams.  That’s one of the most awesome power of words.

The map is connected to an ONLINE AUDIO COLLECTION.  These are the captured voices of each of the participating poets in the “Living Nations, Living Words” project reading one of their original poems and then talking about their work is housed in the Library’s American Folklife Center.

Hearing the poets adds another dimension to the project.  Poems are meant to be heard.  The voices of the native poets reach out for your ears and for your heart.  Maybe it might be a good thing to light a fire or listen to the poets speak by candlelight.

AND THEN “GREAT” GOT EVEN BETTER

In 2021 Harjo became the second poet laureate ever to be appointed to a third one-year term by the Librarian of Congress.  Harjo still had work to do as the 23^rd Poet Laureate of the United States.

During her final year the poet collaborated with her anthology’s book publisher as well as with a group of educators as she worked on expanding the usefulness and the scope and outreach for her remarkable signature project with two more elements:.

A book, LIVING NATIONS, LIVING WORDS:  An Anthology of First People’s Poetry, was published in May, 2021 by W. W. Norton and Company in association with the Library of Congress.  The book is a compilation of all of the poets featured in the project.  Readers could hold the poems in their hands.

Then a COMPANION EDUCATOR GUIDE was released by the Library of Congress in November, 2021.  Harjo, an educator herself, wanted to point out various resources that can help teachers of children in grades 7 or older to do their work.

This guide for teachers was developed with help from an advisory committee of educators that included members of the National Council for the Social Studies, the National Council of teachers of English and the National Indian Education Association.

[If you click on the names of the different elements in Harjo’s master work, you’ll be able to access or get information about each of them.]

LAST THOUGHTS

Harjo pointed out in her interview with Clancey D’Isa:

“We can speak out in poetry in a way that allows people to hear multi-dimensionally. A poem can be constructed of many dimensions. Therein is the gift of metaphor.

“Collectively the arts are like that; but, poetry, because we’re humans and we speak, has that power.”

The lady speaks a profound truth, one that she has served for her whole life.

Header Photo Credit: “Giving of Life and Spirit” (painting by artist Allan Mardon at the Booth Museum of Western Art, Cartersville, Georgia) by JP R via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Please note:  If you would like to contribute a poem to this blog, please let me know by leaving a comment below.  I’d be happy to hear from you.

I do ask three things of my guest poets:

• a poem of your own making that has great meaning and mana for you,
• the back-story for the poem — what inspired you or how you made it or whatever you want to tell about it, and
• an image you own that I can use as the featured photo in the header. (The last is optional. I do ask that the image you share is one you own — either an image of yourself or something that relates to the poem.  If you choose not to send an image, then I’ll go find something that works.)

If you click on the “Guest Poet Portal” in the menu above you can submit a poem right now.

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post OTHER VOICES: Joy Harjo first appeared on Life-Built Poems.

It’s a perennial bit of advice from most of the entrepreneurial advisers and advocates of DIY bootstrapping in the world to get yourself organized by working out routines and systems of routines that will help you get ‘er done and help facilitate your making that run towards your dream.  It does work.

It has occurred to me more than once that we humans are routine-building fools.  For some of us the whole routine-building thing may even be automatic.

We can do lots and lots of stuff over and over again, day in and day out, without thinking.  We can get an awesome lot done.  We can even use those routines and systems to bulldoze our way through all kinds of obstacles on the way to our dreams.

Being an ersatz Tonka Toy might mean that we pass through our days without noticing much of anything except how far down we got on our never-ending To-Do List.

A friend of mine, artist Phil Sabado, used to make the 23-plus mile (38 km) run between Kahului and Lahaina towns every morning to get to his job as a graphic artist for one of the independent newspaper rags on the island at the time.  It took close to an hour when the traffic got going good.

He is now a wonderfully successful painter, Phil is.  None of his old friends can afford to buy his work these days and his collectors are many.  Murals and other art installations he designed grace several public buildings and parks and so on and so forth.

He is also a Molokai fisherman, born and bred.  The idea of him going past a fishing spot without even checking to see whether the fish were running is a mind-boggle for me.

OKAY…WHAT ARE ROUTINES, REALLY?

It seems to me that the best and most effective explanations for how to do basic life moves often come from the people who have had a harder time either doing them or making them work well.

These folks find effective workarounds because they must.  If the rest of us are lucky, they are willing to share their experiences, their mindsets, and their strategies.

I stumbled across this sprightly 2017 YouTube video that explains, step-by-step, how we humans build routines.  It was uploaded by the “How To ADHD” organization and features the lovely and upbeat American actress Jessica Lauren McCabe.

McCabe is best-known as the host of the “How To ADHD” YouTube channel which she started in 2016.

She tells about that time in a 2017 TEDxBratislavia talk that she gave at the University of Iowa.  The talk was titled, “Failing at Normal: An ADHD Success Story.”

McCabe started the YouTube channel when she was 33 years old.  Coming off a divorce, McCabe was a broke college dropout who had gone through a string of jobs one after the other, and was miserably wondering what she was doing with her not-so-together life.

As a child just starting middle school, McCabe had been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD.  Prescribed stimulant medication during her adolescence was an effective treatment for her and she seemed to be on-track to a bright future.

As life grew more complex, she experienced more and more difficulties and challenges that resulted from trying to do her walk through our world without making allowances for the very real differences in the way her brain was wired compared to more “neurotypical” folks.

The self-help books did not help.  Inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity, the three primary characteristics of a person who has a high degree of ADHD tendencies, make for a chaotic sort of life.

The channel, which is dedicated to all topics relating to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, presents tips on how to take advantage of the neurodivergent brain type and all things ADHD.  It has grown considerably, with more than 900,000 subscribers.

McCabe says that when she first started out, she thought she should do a channel about how NOT to ADHD.  Her brother talked her out of it, pointing out that most people don’t even know the kinds of challenges someone with the condition faces on a day-to-day basis.

It occurred to her that she, herself, did not really know much about the condition and how the ADHD brain architecture can affect other people who are either more or less affected than she is by it.

She went looking for more knowledge and understanding about ADHD, talking to experts working in that field of study and to members of the ADHD “tribe,” which makes up (it has been estimated) between five and eight percent of the global population.

She used the channel to share her feelings and her findings and to build a community of volunteers and others who added to the work she began.

The organization she founded is now a crowd-funded Patreon membership business and can be supported by clicking on the button below:

It is a very cool thing.

MCCABE’S TIPS FOR BUILDING NEW ROUTINES WHILE NAVIGATING LIFE CHANGES

The previous “How To ADHD” YouTube video helped to explain how to set up routines and systems.  The next, also put together by the same people, tells you what to do when things go kerblewy and life changes happen.

FINAL THOUGHTS

In her TEDx talk, McCabe tells her audience, “…seeing the positives in fellow ADHD brains helped me recognize and appreciate my own strengths, ones I couldn’t see when I was just staring at my weaknesses, which I’d been doing for decades.”

And maybe that’s the biggest take-away in all of this:  If you spend all of your time looking at what you’re doing wrong, you might not be noticing what you’re doing right.

Here’s a poem…..

ONE MORE TIME

One more time…

One more time…

Just sitting there spacing,

Looking at the all of everything and doing…NOTHING.

I used to call it “being overwhelmed.”

I used to call it “procrastinating.”

“Hanging fire,” I’d call it,

And “foolish” – a thing to overcome.

Set-up’s done,

Motives seem right,

And those be-bopping, recalcitrant ducks

Are all lined up and straight and sure….

And I stop, go catatonic.

And, hey…you know ducks:

The dummies have probably shifted again

While I was blanked out.

I don’t make the “right moves,”

The ones with the quotes implied,

The ones that Everybody says

are the very best ones.

They say those moves get you to that Heaven

Where there’s no sorrow and no hardship,

No suffering, no pain, and everything’s

Wrapped up in a warm, beige gentleness.

And here’s me moaning and whinging.

F’r real, I do have to ask:

Why does that perfect prefect

Look like a boring sort of blah?

And now, here I sit in post-stupor mode,

Coming out of my non-drug-induced daze,

Feeling like street pizza and wondering,

What WAS that?

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit:  “Hammerers” by RedCraig via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

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SOME OTHER POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you…)

• JUST PAY ATTENTION
• SHIFT TO IDLE
• FLOW WITH YOUR GO

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post RENOVATE ROUTINES: An Un-Seeing Exercise first appeared on Life-Built Poems.

Maya Angelou’s life story always reminds me of a quote by William Blake that never fails to lend me heart when I’m feeling low:

“No bird soars too high if it soars with its own wings.”

The woman probably qualifies as a “force of nature.”  What can you say about someone whose first autobiography, I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, which was published in 1969 when she was 41, has gone through 154 editions so far?

That book wasn’t her last.  There were six more autobiographies, stretching from her childhood in Arkansas to Africa and back to the United States, covering a span of time from the beginnings of World War II to the death of Martin Luther King.

She was a steady and prolific poet as well and gave powerful performances as a spoken-word artist.  There are at least 18 books of her collected poems.

The following YouTube video, “And Still I Rise” is my favorite.  It was uploaded by mohitbahi in 2007.  What I love best about it is the interplay of emotions that move across the lady’s face and her delightful laugh.

The poem itself was published in 1978 in her book of the same name.

Angelou wrote screenplays as well as plays for the stage.  An accomplished performer and actor, she was also the first African-American woman to direct a major motion picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.

Besides this, Angelou was a sought-after public speaker, joining the lecture circuit in the 1990’s and giving talks until she was in her eighties.

She has been called, “one of the most honored writers of her generation.”  The awards and honors rained down on her.  One more wonderment:  the woman received more than 30 honorary degrees from all kinds of bastions of higher education.

The Poetry Foundation has a page devoted to Maya Angelou.  Click on the button below if you’d like to find out more about her.

About her work, Angelou once said, “All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.”

That one resonates with me.

——

This is the first in a new series of posts, “Other Voices,” that I’m trying in this thing.  I’ll throw them in the mix whenever I stumble across spoken-word poets whose words make your heart open.

We need more of that, I am thinking.

Header photo credit:  “Soaring” by Jim Roberts via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

Please note:  If you would like to contribute a poem to this LIFE-BUILT POEMS:  Living Out Loud blog, please click on the button below and check out the “Guest Poet Portal.”

I do ask three things of my guest poets:

• a poem of your own making that has great meaning and mana for you,
• the back-story for the poem — what inspired you or how you made it or whatever you want to tell about it, and
• an image you own that I can use as the featured photo in the header. (The last is optional. I do ask that the image you share is one you own — either an image of yourself or something that relates to the poem.  If you choose not to send an image, then I’ll go find something that works.)

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post OTHER VOICES: Maya Angelou first appeared on Life-Built Poems.

I have some most excellent, scientifically correct news:  We humans are a lot more than big old naked brains riding around in vehicles that are kind of like animated meatballs with feet.  I have to admit that is a bit of a relief.  (I like albondigas in their place, but life, it seems to me, is more than a tapas bar.)

All during my growing-up years, I was dragged kicking and screaming into the prevalent paradigms that told me that my cerebral matter was the only thing about me that was of any value.  All the rest of me was supposed to be some kind of fidgety wild beast or kooky goofball that had to be tamed and brought into line by the all-important, almighty encephalon.

For the whole rest of pre-rationalist human history, it seems to me, the ancient wise guys believed that we humans actually were more than just a brain walking around and cogitating.   In the old days, we had things like a body that included guts and a heart as well as a spirit and even a something called “essence.”

The guys in the white lab coats did rediscover what the ancients knew.  Lately, the leading-edge guys who are doing work on artificial intelligence have come around to the notion that our bodies and their reactions to the environments in which we live are an integral part of how we get to be conscious beings.

The Smarty Pants have apparently figured out that a brain floating around in blah soup probably won’t reach a mindful, humanistic awareness no matter how much you poke at it and tweak it.  It’s just a bundle of sweetmeats with built-in electrical wiring, after all.

Our brains need feedback from the world to grow good minds.  We get that because we have a body with all kinds of cool senses and sensations.

COMES NOW “EMBODIED CONSCIOUSNESS”

This 2018 YouTube video was uploaded by THUNK, Josh Pelton’s YouTube channel that promises to “tickle your brain.” It has a great explanation about “embodied consciousness” – what it is and what it means to the world at large.

Pelton is a mechanical engineer-cum-philosopher whose thought that “until you’re actually standing under something you’ve built, it’s all just ‘thought,’” resonates with me.

If you’re curious about Pelton, you can click on the button below.  It will take you to Daniel Podgorski’s The Gembok blog for a fun interview with the guy.

Pelton’s YouTube offering is especially exciting to me because it references the book, METAPHORS WE LIVE BY, written by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.  That book, is now a classic.

Lakoff, it says here, is a professor at UC Berkely and was one of the founders of the field of cognitive science.  The book he wrote with Johnson in 1979 has since gone on to become a go-to resource for guys who are studying how we humans think and how we express our thoughts.

[Poet-Me stands around wrapped in smugness, bathing in the reflected glory.  Poets and metaphors are naturals together, ya know.]

EMBODIED COGNITION ALWAYS GETS PHYSICAL

The ideas uncovered by the philosophers, psychologists and sociologists studying embodied cognition in all its various flavors that have big, long tongue-twisting labels like “phenomenology” and “enactivism” and “connectivism” and so on do resonate with regular humans.

Before his untimely death in 1962, French philosopher-turned-phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty built on the work of his predecessors, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, to bring up arguments against the view that the way our minds work and grow can be completely explained by a mechanistic, nuts-and-bolt approach.

We are not just fleshy machines full of circuitry and chemical reactions and our minds are not made up of streaming and morphing inner symbols that dance around each other and merge and break apart.

In his masterpiece book, PHENOMENOLOGY OF PERCEPTON, which was published in 1945, Merleau-Ponty says:

“The body is the vehicle of being in the world, and having a body is, for a living creature to be interinvolved in a definite environment, to identify oneself with certain projects and be continually committed to them.”

What the philosopher is saying is that you learn about the world through your body.  It’s what you use to figure out your own individual “point of view” about the world.

Since you and your brother have different bodies, is it any wonder that you might have very different points of view?  Your mind and his mind are sitting on different rocks even when your bodies are both in the same place.

Anyway, assorted phenomenologists agree that “all cognition is embodied, interactive and embedded in dynamically changing environments.”  Your mind grows and changes because of the way your body interacts with your world.

(Yay!  We moderns talked ourselves back into believing that Bodies Matter Too!)

All the various flavors of phenomenology and its offshoots have proponents and every one of them blathers on and on and on.

Whatever.

MIND MOVES BODY UNTIL BODY MOVES MIND…ONE STORY

I have a confession to make.  I am a lousy practitioner of Southern Style Praying Mantis kung fu.  I actually got into it because, at the time, it was the only way I could learn how to do “Six Healing Sounds” ch’i kung, a system of body movements, breathing and visualization that helps to ground and center you in your body.

David Moragne, a disciple of the late Grandmaster Gin Foon Mark (the fifth lineage holder in Kwang Sai Jook Lum Southern Style Praying Mantis kung fu school), became my sifu (teacher) in a serendipitous confluence of events.   He was there in my life when I needed a way to get past some hard, when I was shattered and scattered and in a lot of pain.

Frankly, the kung fu style my sifu taught was not really one for martial arts sports tournaments.  The style is not particularly showy even though it can be devastatingly effective for real fighting if you’re into that sort of thing.

I didn’t care.  I was in the class for the ch’i kung.  I did the kung fu part because I liked feeling like I was in a Jackie Chan movie.

Sifu indulged me.  I’d bring a battery-operated CD player to the classes which were variously held in an old rackety pineapple plantation camp community center or in the moonlight on a sandy beach in Paia or on the expansive green lawns of the Maui Community College which has since become part of the University of Hawaii.

I’d play world fusion music and Carlos Nakai flute CDs so we’d have a sound-track to do our moves.  (You gotta have a soundtrack if you’re in a movie, ya know.)  We students would sit around after class with Sifu and talk Tao-ish philosophy and kung fu mindsets even though we all had to go to work the next day.  It was cool.

Sifu would often tell us students that the way we trained our bodies to move would become the way our minds would begin to move.  He told us that we would struggle to learn to dance the ch’i, maybe for years.  Then, he said, one day the ch’i would dance us.

[You see why I loved the guy?  He even sounded like a kung fu movie.]

He was right.  When we students were learning a new form, we had to deliberately and intensely focus our minds to embed each of the movements we learned into our muscles.  In time, we trained those muscles to flow smoothly from one movement to the next without needing to think about how or when or why to do each move.

Sifu called the training we did “sinking the lessons into your bones.”

The first stance at the start of every Southern Style Praying Mantis kung fu form is called “begging hands.”  You stand strong and balanced with your body relaxed, your elbows close to your body, and your open hands out in front of you with your palms held up facing the other.

Standing like that, you wait for your fellow player’s first move.

That one was a mind-boggle for me.  It became a model for me, the first stance I always aimed for (and was never able to do right).

The system also taught us to instantaneously respond to whatever our partner did, to block the initial move and then answer with a series of attacking moves of our own.  We practiced a lot.

About a year and a half into the training, I complained to my Sifu that I was starting to “trip” over other people.  They would do something and I would spontaneously begin responding to their mind-moves with a bunch of my own.

If they were up to the dance, my stuff often caused them to joyously come play with me.  We could zip along having a grand old time, getting things done and tackling any obstacle or problem facing us.  If they were slow on the uptake or if they were reluctant or fearful, they would stall out and things would go like molasses.  I often found myself wanting to scream.

Sifu laughed and laughed.

After several years of this, life changed and I no longer had room in my life for the kung fu classes.  At the last class I attended, which happened to be held at another school’s kwoon (training hall), my Sifu did his “begging hands” demonstration before all of the other students and, again, nobody had any urge to attack him.

I stepped up behind him, wrapped my arms around his still body and hugged him.  He rolled his eyes, laughed, dropped his arms, and gave up immediately!  That one made everybody laugh.  It is still a good memory.

My sifu died in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic had been raging through the world for a while.

I still do the ch’i kung exercises.  I am still trying to do the first form I learned — “Three Step Arrow” — better.  And I am still sinking new, not-kung fu body lessons into my bones and learning how to use them to do better mind-moves.

Here’s a poem:

KWEI

(Opposition, Disharmony)

Opposition and divergence

Resistance and disharmony….

It seems a given:

Strength calls to strength.

Push and you hit a wall of shove

Coming right back at you.

Wise guys say you do better

When you can turn sideways,

Let the oncoming force flow on past you,

Let it turn you ’round

With your striking hand extended

To tap that incoming power,

Influence and turn it

Towards the place it wants to go…

(Right out of your face).

Circles and angles and lines,

Leverage and motion,

Spin you in and out of the slipstream,

Sliding you away to your own place

Again and again and again.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit:  “Kung-Fu Style” by Henry Sudarman via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

……

SOME OTHER POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you…)

• DEVELOPING PRESENCE
• PRACTICE THE GIFT YOU WANT TO BE
• ISLAND-STYLE VIRUS FIGHTING

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post SHAPING 101: Your Body Moves Your Mind first appeared on Life-Built Poems.

I’ve been circling around this latest concept I’ve stumbled across like I imagine an awestruck fan would do to take in Michelangelo’s Pietà at the Vatican.  My head keeps going, “Wow…wow…wow.”  My heart is drowning in the swelling sound of some Gregorian chant or something.  OOOH!

The idea that each human being’s ability to make choices can absolutely affect and shape both the forms their own lives take as well as the world in which they live is a mind-boggle of the highest order to me.

The only problem is that, at the same time, I am also getting the same feeling I used to get when I opened my uncle’s fishing tackle box and found yet another tangle of fishing line from the last time somebody or other used the thing.  ACK!

It does amaze me that we humans take this singular super-power of ours so much for granted.  It is even more astonishing that most of the Shapers in the world (who are actually all of us) often march around routinely denying that we even have this power in us.

WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?

Every one of our actions can do a number on this world of ours – even something as innocuous as planting flowers.

We Littles were endlessly given some version of the Spider Man mantra: “With great power comes great responsibility, you boob!”

We probably heard some version of that every time we messed up by doing something that either went against the Laws of Nature or missed the mark of the Sweet Spot of Same-Old towards which we were, all of us, supposed to aim.

Somehow, the majority of us did not get the part about what the great super-power we were supposed to be holding was.

MAYBE IT’S A CULTURAL THING

I noticed a while back that tucked into each of the Hawaiian teaching stories is the unspoken assumption that we humans are all cousins somehow and that we are all descended from gods.

Of course, it could be that’s just me being delusional.  Whatever.  (I like my delusion way better than that other thing, guys!)

AND WHAT IF IT’S REALLY TRUE?

Let’s suppose for a minute (or ten) that it’s a truth that each of us humans carry within us the ability to shape ourselves and to shape the world

Let us also suppose that this ability to shape stuff arises from the perfectly learnable skills that surround the making of decisions and choices that align with and are congruent to our own natures.

We can think of it as the spark of the Creative that we carry into this world we are making together.  We might even think of it as the gift that Life has given us to carry with us into this learning place that is the world.

How else can you explain that our species — one that lacks major physical prowess (compared to, say, lions and tigers, bears and sharks) — is actually at the top of the food chain here?  All those gnarly predators are our prey.  Wo!

SO WHAT CAN WE DO WITH THAT?

Lisa Bilyeu who is co-founder of the billion-dollar company Quest Nutrition is also the president of Impact Theory, a company whose supremely vague-sounding mission is to “give people an empowering mindset.” What they do, basically, is sell you on the power of your own self.

Bilyeu has a podcast show, “Women of Impact” that features conversations with women who overcame “incredible hardship to achieve massive success.”

One of Bilyeu’s guests on the show was Mel Robbins, an American lawyer turned television host, who is also a noted motivational speaker and author.

Robbins uploaded a 9-minute segment of her “Women of Impact” conversation with Bilyeu on her own You-Tube channel.

In it Robbins delineates how she is using a really simple, non-verbal high-five gesture to activate and access her own shaping power.  She tells us the gesture helps to strengthen her own feelings of self-acceptance.

Robbins is convinced that developing a strong sense of self-worth is the key to clearing the way for you to take effective action in the world.  She can point to all kinds of scientific evidence that supports this, even.

It does resonate with common sense, I am thinking.  Without a strong sense of self-worthiness, after all, how could you even begin to imagine that

1. you actually can change the world for real, and
2. you will like the changes you are likely to make?

As Robbins says, “it all starts with you.”

I have been testing the high-five thing my own self, and, by golly, it sure seems to be working!  At the very least the thing lets me start my day with a smile and that’s a good thing, I say.

An old Buddhist teaching story tells about the student monk who was asked, along with all the others in his class, how many mantras he was going to pledge himself to recite every day in order to reach enlightenment.

Every one of the other students came up with larger and larger numbers, trying to outdo each other and impress their teacher with their extravagant goal-setting.

This student looked at his teacher and quietly said he was going to commit himself to doing only one mantra every day for the rest of his life.  The teacher beamed at him and told him that he was well on the road to enlightenment.

Just because a goal is small doesn’t mean it is not powerful.  Powerful goals are the ones on which you don’t give up.  Small goals help you practice for tackling bigger ones.

WHAT SOME OLD WISE GUYS SAID

On the slopes of Mount Parnassas in Greece, the remnants and ruins of an ancient temple to Apollo, the Greek god of music, harmony, light, healing, and oracles still stand.

Over the centuries, there were at least five recorded iterations of the structures on the temple site.  Eventually the temple housed the ancient Mediterranean world’s most-consulted oracle.  These buildings kept getting destroyed by assorted conquering armies and by natural disasters over the centuries.

The last one, the Pausanias “modern temple” was made of limestone and was built in 330 BCE.  That one survived until AD 390 and was destroyed (along with a lot of “pagan” statuary and artwork and other wonders) by the Roman emperor Theodosius I in the name of Christianity.

Delphi got to be a powerful city-state in the ancient world because of the fame of their oracle, who had a really long waiting list as well as a team of devotees to take care of the place and priests who charged her customers a heck of a lot for her services.

Like modern-day oracles (economists, political analysts, and other such forecasters) the Pythia’s answers to the questions of the day were often obscure riddles that left everybody scratching their heads.  (That one reaction hasn’t changed much with our own modern oracles either.  They, too, also charge a heck of a lot for their prognostications.)

Whatever.

Inscribed on the columns that stood on a porch outside the temple’s inner chambers were as many as 147 wise sayings or proverbs that were variously attributed to assorted popular traditional sages.

The three main ones are usually listed as follows:

1. Know thyself.
2. Nothing in excess
3. Surety brings ruin.

Notice that the one that’s come down to us as the most important in all this collected wisdom of the ancients is “Know thyself.”  If you don’t know yourself, none of the other aphorisms works as well, it seems.

And maybe that’s another clue.  You have to put in the work of getting to really know yourself in order to figure out what you’re going to do with all of that potential power you’re carrying around.

ONE MORE TAKE

This engaging 2017 YouTube video was created by UPROXX Studio and features surfboard shaper Tyler Warren who is very much aware of and honors his own super-power of shaping.

Enjoy!

Here’s a poem:

A NOTE FROM STUPID

Another conundrum,

Aa paradox and puzzlement

That dogs my heels like

Some mangy, lost, lonesome pup:

The “waiting-for-my-savior-to-come,”

(A stance encouraged by a world

Apparently determined to transform

And morph persons Into

Clingy, wet sops,

All tears and self-sorrow)

Is alive and well.

“I can’t…

“I cannot do this.

“Oh, help me, help me,

Help, help, help.

“Sure, SOMEBODY has to do it,

But that’s not me, no, not me,

Because…because…because…

“Well, I can’t,

“And I won’t,

“So YOU have to.”

Ummm….

Lemme get this one straight.

I do mine.

I take the blows that come

When I inevitably misstep or

Some other dumbness happens.

I carry my own load.

(Okay, sometimes I grumble….

But, hey, I’m still carrying it)

And I make my way.

The gait gets gimpy sometimes,

And there are harrowing moments,

But I go along.

You stand there telling me now

That I have to carry you too?

When did I get elected the hero of your story?

Did I miss the nomination?

Can I decline the honor?

Gee, wow!

See, I’m the hero of my own story.

I decided that a while back,

When the poo’-thing-me thing

Got to be kinda stupid-looking.

(I do so hate looking stupid.)

So, lemme ask you something:

Did I forget to take the “STUPID” label

Off my forehead or what?

 By Netta Kanoho

Header Photo Credit:  “Friendship is a sheltering tree” by Duane Romanell via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

……

SOME OTHER POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you…)

• ABUNDANCE THINKING
• MAKING ROOM
• SHAPER CHALLENGE (AN UN-SEEING EXERCISE)

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post SHAPING STARTS WITH YOU first appeared on Life-Built Poems.

John Milton (an English poet who wrote epics in the 17^th century) once wrote:

“The mind is its own place, and in itself

Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.”

Milton did call it right.  All of us humans do have one super-power.  Every single one of us can shape our own reality and make up our own world.  It’s why we find everybody else’s stories so fascinating, I suppose.

Because we each have our own mind and every single one is different from every other one, we often confuse each other.  One person’s way of seeing the world is often not at all like the one the person standing next to them is seeing.

The disparate choices the people around us make and the ways they walk are likely to be consistent with whatever world they are looking at in their own minds.  Since these minds can be so very different from our own, it’s likely that we are going to be a lot confused by other people.

At the same time, because we are all human and we all have the same need to survive and the same desire to thrive, we do have many commonalities and similarities with which we can hook our worlds together and play that way.

The super-power we each possess is the foundation of our ability to shape the world around us and it helps us to connect with other people as well.

People who see pieces of the world in the same way can join together to do and make lots of grand things together.  People who don’t see things in the same way tend to blow things up fighting about it.

IT’S SIMPLE…BUT IT’S NOT

Somebody not-so-famous once said, “At the end of the day, it always comes down to small and simple things.  That’s the way the world really works.  It’s just us humans who make it so complicated.”

And that’s another truth, I think.

It occurred to me that, for real, there is only one big conundrum with which every renowned wise guy and smarty-pants in every relatively complex society down through the ages has spent considerable amounts of time wrestling. 

The thing that had them scratching their heads and formulating theories and strategies and systems and such is this one: 

What are we humans supposed to be doing with our in-born power to build and shape the worlds we are seeing in our own minds when we choose from among the actions we can take in any given situation? 

The wise guys and smarty-pants invariably tell us it’s supposed to be pretty simple to make your own choices because there are only two basic ways you can actually use that inherent human super-power of yours:

1. You can shape yourself to fit into the consensus world in which you want to live.
2. You can shape the world around you so that there is room for you to sit or stand or move in it as you like.

And then those know-it-alls have to elaborate…because (except for the guys who like to keep you dizzy) they ALWAYS have to elaborate.

They tell us that sometimes you do one way and sometimes you do the other.  They then go on to tell us that sometimes you have to do both at the same time.  The worst part is when they tell us about how sometimes you can do nothing at all. 

ARGH!

The wise guys point out that all kinds of complications arise or ensue because, no matter what, you are also obliged to take care of yourself, your heart-people, and your own little bit of the world around you.

Hmmm.

Actually, that does makes sense.  Here’s why:

1. If you get broken, you can’t play.
2. If you squish the other people around you and leave a trail of street-pizza behind you, then eventually nobody will want to play with you.
3. If your playground falls apart because you are not paying attention to maintaining it, after a while you won’t have a place where you can play.

See?  Simple.  Right?

But then, of course, there are all those other people who are not you.  They are likely to have their own ideas about it all and if their ideas are a lot different than yours, everybody’s going to be tripping all over each other.

It’s enough to engender a lot of sighing and grinching and whining, that.

A COUPLE OF VIDEOS TO ILLUSTRATE THESE AMORPHOUS THOUGHTS

I stumbled across a 2017 YouTube video of a spoken poem made by a young Arizona middle-schooler, Olivia Vella, for her seventh-grade writing assignment. 

The video went viral.  The thing has received over 19 million views so far and garnered 1.2 million Likes and not one Dislike.  ABC Television Stations uploaded it onto YouTube.

It’s a perfect model of what happens when you focus entirely on trying to shape yourself to the world in which you want to be.  (As we know, middle-school-aged girls are notorious for making this a specialty.)

And then there was this ESMA animation movie, “Sauve qui pneu,” a playful spoof on the “Fast and Furious” movie franchise, was uploaded to YouTube in 2021. 

The little film is apparently the work of students who attend an art school in Montpellier, France.  It struck me as a giggle-inducing, highly flavored commentary on some of the ways you can use your one human super-power to shape the world and make room for you.

It’s interesting to note that the title is a play on the phrase “sauve qui peut” which literally means “save himself who can” and has come to mean “every man for himself.”  The word “pneu” means “tire” (like a car tire).  Hmmm….

The little fantasy gets a bit uncomfortable when you remember what your mama or your aunty (or somebody who was more certain than you about the ways and means of this old world) always used to say, “What if everybody did that?” 

Ummm….not so good, maybe.

THE SHAPER CHALLENGE = FIGURING OUT WHAT TO DO WHEN

There are, of course, many wise guys and smarty-pants and know-it-alls and such who are more than happy to tell Shaper-you what you are “supposed” to be doing in this world.  You can probably stack up these guys and gals and their words, ideas, and mind constructs like cordwood in a corner or something.

I’m here to tell ya they are not much of a help if you’re really trying to figure out how to move your own way in the world to get to a place where you want to be.  The thing is anybody else’s systems and strategies very often does work, but maybe not for you.

Remember, though, that it’s human to make the simple stuff complicated. 

The whole thing is really, really simple if you can actually see what is sitting there in front of you.  Unfortunately, that can be the hardest thing for humans to see, it seems. 

(Click on the caption of the image and read the story behind this simple picture.  It adds a whole other dimension to what looks like a “simple” picture of a dock on a lake.)

My own feeling is that all that stuff from wise guys and other smarties are only supposed to be fuel for your own fire.  You try them out and burn them up to make your own light so you can suss out how You, Your-Own-Self, are looking at this world that enfolds and encompasses all us humans.  

The next very short YouTube Video was uploaded in 2014 by MindToolsVideos.  It asks, “What Are Your Values?” and gives some simple pointers on how you, too, can pinpoint what your own values are.

I’m going to spoil it for you and tell you what it says to do.

1. Think on the times you were happiest, the times you were proudest, and the times you felt fulfilled
2. List the values that you were following that led to those moments and ponder on the other values that you hold which could lead to the same kinds of moments.
3. Then list your top five.

This admittedly dorky little video is attached to an article written by expert, Big-Brain People Who Know about figuring out what your own values are and how to find the meaning in your life.  (Okay…maybe it actually doesn’t say THAT.)

Be aware that it’s likely that all of this is really just a reminder of stuff you already know.  And that’s the thing:  YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS STUFF.  You probably don’t need anybody else to tell you what you already know.

However, if you are feeling like you need some help, then the little video and accompanying article can be a good starting point. 

Once you get a handle on your values and the principles that you are already embracing to make your own life run well (or not), then you can go make your own plan of action. 

If you follow your plan, making assorted course-corrections and such as needed along the way, it is likely that you will end up in a world that matches your own perceptions better.   

The thing is, it’s still all on you whether you build yourself a Heav’n or a Hell.

Here’s a poem:

PAPA WAS RIGHT

Papa was right.

Every day is a blessing,

He used to tell me,

Every day you start out with a smile.

But me, I was the smart one:

I thought that was TOO simple,

Not the Real Deal nor worldly-wise.

I knew better; I was cool; I had it wired.

Now, I sit here, thinking ‘bout my Papa,

Sit here thinking how he lived and died,

Thinking of the hard that dogged his dancing,

Thinking of the sad hidden underneath the smiles.

He’s gone now, but mostly, I remember

The laughter and the songs he used to sing

And the quick, wide smile that always drew an answer,

The sparkle in his eyes and his jaunty swing.

He walked and walked for miles and miles and

His hands were tough and calloused from work unending,

But his heart, oh, his heart stayed baby-soft,

So tender, he was, so warm, and oh, so very kind.

I’ve been living out my life for a while now,

Been knocked around by lessons not too sweet,

Tried dancing hard and fast and playing it fancy,

Moved in the groove and flowed with all that go.

And I thought…well, gee, I’m really very smart.

And my hands stayed soft

But my heart got tough and calloused

And my eyes, sometimes they turned to stone.

And then the world dropped me a memo, a reminder,

That all its glittering games are rigged somehow,

That power and control is all illusion,

That the Real sits just quiet underneath.

Life pounded and it hammered me to gravel,

Left a raw heart that lay bleeding in the Real.

It took some while to stitch that back together

‘Mid raging storms and floods of flowing tears.

So now I sit here thinking ‘bout my Papa,

About days you bless and honor with your smiles,

And how you build your heart with song and laughter,

And rub it baby-soft with tear-washed love.

I think ‘bout love that lights you up and sparkles

As your hands get tough and calloused while you work,

And the sweet, sweet joy that sprouts and grows inside you

As you walk your jaunty way for miles and miles.

By Netta Kanoho

HEADER PHOTO CREDIT:  “geometry shapes 3” by frscspd via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

……

SOME OTHER POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you…)

• SET UP YOUR OWN RULES
• GET TO CLARITY
• HOW TO LIVE WISDOM

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post SHAPER CHALLENGE (An Un-Seeing Exercise) first appeared on Life-Built Poems.

I didn’t get it; really, I didn’t.  It took a long time, but finally a light dawned.  The whole pseudo-argument about Life being a “journey” rather than a “destination” is a crock.

I mean, think about it.  How can you have a “journey” without having a “destination?”  It’s sort of a package deal.

If you’re a tourist yearning to go traveling, you’ve got all kinds of professionals – a whole industry — trying to help you find a way to get to some destination or other.  Isn’t that why they call tourist traps “destinations?”

DON’T BLAME IT ON WALDO

Some dork-head saddled poor Waldo (Ralph Waldo Emerson, that is) with the blame for starting the whole thing.  Ever afterwards, assorted nerds and other wannabe wits have constructed those silly memes in his name.

Emerson, in case you didn’t know, was an extraordinary 19th-century man of words.  He was an American lecturer, a poet and an essayist-philosopher whose lectures drew rock star-sized crowds.

A young Unitarian minister in Boston, Emerson quit the clergy in 1832 about a year-and-a-half after the untimely death from tuberculosis of his beloved first wife, Ellen Louisa Tucker, brought on an identity crisis.  He was deeply affected by her death.

Emerson did some traveling then, wandering about in Europe looking for answers to his Big Questions.  When he returned home, he began giving public lectures (at a then-new-fangled form of paid-for entertainment that got really huge).

In the lectures, he told larger and larger gatherings of people about the questions he pursued throughout his life and the conclusions he reached in his ponderings.

He also wrote and published essays that were based on those speeches that often stirred up a lot of controversy.  He made a career of it, eventually giving over 1,500 lectures all over the northern United States and publishing books of his thoughts that sold like hotcakes.

In this 2020 “NBC News Learn” YouTube video, David S. Reynolds (Professor of English and American Studies at the City University of New York) talks about the man.

Emerson was a firm believer in self-reliance, individualism, and clarity of thought as well as an advocate for the abolition of slavery at a time when it was not politically correct.  He also helped to start the American version of the transcendentalist movement in New England.

The man died in 1882 at the age of 79. His legacy of words has inspired generations of deep-thinkers ever since, despite the shifting landscapes of prevalent mindsets and the assumptions, premises, hypotheses, and such that have developed since his time.

Many of his thoughts and ideas might seem out-of-fashion, dated, or just plain unpalatable (aka Politically Incorrect) these days, but many more seem to be spot-on still.

Emerson remains, always, a quintessential maverick, following his own path.

WAYFARING IS A WAY OF WALKING

Emerson was famous as a “wayfarer,” a person who travels by walking.  He was also a great believer in the value of walking for the thinker.  He once opined,

“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”

That was Emerson…the same guy who also advised, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Click the button below for a map of the walks the two men used to take.

(You might also want to explore NATURE AND WALKING, a book put together by editor John Elder that brings together thoughts on “Nature” by Emerson and Thoreaus thoughts on “Walking.”)

THE “UBIQUITOUS THEY” (UT) AND WHAT THEY SAY

So, what does all this blather about dead deep-thinkers have to do with journeys and destinations?

Let me introduce you to the “ubiquitous They” (abbreviated by me as “UT” to avoid having to continue to repeat that queasy-making phrase over and over again).

Since everybody’s got their own definition of what “good” is as well as their own purposes, agendas and all that, this can be a big Problem (with a capital-P).  It can certainly get dizzy-making.

POINT A –> POINT B = JOURNEY

The thing about Journeys, the UT will tell you, is that there is always a Point A (where you are) and there is always a Point B (where you want to be).  After that, it gets complicated.

If you choose to proceed, you, the Wayfarer, are officially on a Journey.  (The story-telling part is optional.)

If you don’t get to Point B, then you face a choice:  continue onwards towards the destination Point B or quit.  At that juncture, the story takes a different turn as your stopping place becomes your new Point A (because that’s where you are now), whether your Point B stays the same or not.

If you do get to Point B, you will have accomplished your mission and all sorts of celebrations will ensue all over the place.  (Whoopee!  Whoo-hoo!  Yay, you!  Cue the fireworks.)

What the UT usually neglect to tell you, though, is that when you do reach Point B your old destination point will automatically morph into your new, where-you-are Point A, replacing the old Point A from where you began this trip.

They also don’t tell you that once the celebrating’s done, Wayfarer You will probably start looking around for another Point B that you will then want to reach because (the UT will say if you ask) that is what us humans do.

Okay.  Fine.

So, like a good little Wayfarer, you go look for another point B.  When you do find your new Point B, obviously, it will become your new and improved destination.

This will mean that, of course Wayfarer You will then start on another leg of your Life-Journey (notice the capitals) which will continue onward until you either decide to stop goofing around doing this stuff or you drop dead.

Dropping dead signals the end of the ongoing Journey-story of Wayfarer You.

That is how it is.  Ask the UT.

There will, of course, be a lot of advice, suggestions, recommendations, guidance, pointers, admonitions, directives, and so on offered and even pressed upon you at all times.  All the people talking at you only want to help you, the UT say.

Right.

These helpful sorts will also routinely toss in many warnings and caveats and cautions and downers at you.  (More “help,” one assumes.)

ACK!  A whole bunch of other choices to face!

SOME THOUGHTS…NO ANSWERS

My major problem with all of this is that, for real, I am a wayfarer born.  I am going to do this thing regardless of the very real consequences of getting dizzied, confused and frustrated by all the steep switchbacks and nonsensical detours and useless spinning around trying to figure out where I am in this old world.

I’m just too fidgety to do otherwise, I suppose.

Knowing the pitfalls of being a wayfarer who focuses on just destinations to the exclusion of noticing and enjoying one’s surroundings and circumstances is one way to be aware of and try to mitigate the effect of having your mind turn all of your world into a gray and featureless wasteland that you have to get through in order to reach some ecstasy point or other.

However, the biggest bennie of it all is that it also means that I can turn down the volume on the UT blather.  Someday, maybe, I will even be able to switch the thing off.

That last would be a mighty relief, I say.

Here’s a poem:

HUBBUB AND STRIFE

The push-me, pull-you continues

As this one’s needs and that one’s desires

Just do not mesh.

I must confess:  I am nonplussed.

I do not know how I am supposed to move

When extreme polarities insist on standing toe-to-toe

In direct opposition to one another.

What am I supposed to do?

Each one is so very sure

That theirs is the only Real that counts.

They act as if the whole balance of the universe

Will tip over into the Abyss

If this one or that one does not move out of the way.

Rigid, they stand, nose-to-nose and scowling,

Trying to stare through the other one and insisting

That I must lend my weight to one side or the other.

(As if me joined with one of them

Will be able to disappear the other;

As if the Universe is not big enough to contain us all.)

This is too weird, guys.

I do not want to play.

Guys…guys…can you hear me?

Yeah, right….

Me, I can hear the sun laughing

And the breezes are dancing through the trees.

I’m going to watch the grass grow now.

Call me when you’re done, guys.

Call me when you’re ready to stop standing there.

Call me when you want to play nice.

By Netta Kanoho

PHOTO CREDIT: “Lonesome Traveler” by Ram Yoga via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

……

SOME POSTS TO POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you….)

• POST MODERN MEANING AND MANA
• SEE THE WHOLE GLASS (AND USE IT)
• BE TOO BOLD:  An Un-Seeing Exercise

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post BEYOND STUFF-LOVE (PART 6): WAYFARING first appeared on Life-Built Poems.

Urgency, the repeated hammering on the direness of some situation or other that absolutely requires your personal immediate attention (or else), has become the go-to stance for so many of the professional and amateur persuaders in our lives these days.

They tell us that urgency is different than panic.  Panic is a freak-out.  You run around like a chicken without a head, not knowing where you are going, bumping into things and falling down a lot.

The proper response to urgency, they tell us, is supposed to be purposeful action, perseverance, and an empowered determination.

Right.

LET’S LOOK AT THE REAL

You can get a major dose of urgency about every issue there ever was every time you tune in to the various information channels and assorted media outlets – on the Internet, on television and the radio, and on the printed page.  Continuous wake-up calls are sounding all around us.

You get them in casual conversations and serious discussions with the logic bullies and the passionately opinionated people in your life.  Even your own Inner Crusader Rabbit is likely to have a go at you on any given day.

I stumbled across this cute YouTube video that is the first episode of “Crusader Rabbit,” the very first animated series produced specifically for television.  The show starred a most idealistic little fixer-rabbit with big dreams and his sidekick Ragland T. Tiger (a.k.a. “Rags.”)

The pair made their debut in 1950 and the series ran for 195 episodes until 1951.  The cartoon animation was created by Alexander Anderson and the show was put together by Jay Ward who went on later to create the long-running “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.”

The video was uploaded by candolex in 2006.

Back to the diatribe….

On top of all of the dizzy-making doom-mongering, there are also the mind-games marketers play to get you to pull out your wallet and buy, buy, buy.  The games push buttons that trigger another sort of urgency — the possibility of missing out on something rare and really good unless you act now, now, now.

When everything is urgent, all the spazzing about it drowns out thoughts of what you yourself value and hold dear.  How many purposeful and effective actions are you really going to be able to make in response to all of this when you can’t get two ideas to hang together right in your head?

There is also no shortage of inequities, injustices and suffering in the world that do need our attention.  The who, how, what, and when that is needed to mitigate these situations are all open to endless, mind-boggling, time-wasting debates.

You can get lost in the discussions rather than just getting on and doing what you can to help.

ACK!

WHAT DO YOU DO WHEN IT GETS TO BE TOO MUCH?

The ever-growing pile of accumulating urgencies has grown huge and it seems to be having a deleterious effect on us humans who are living in them.  What do you do when you and everybody else around you are heading into a major case of overwhelm?

I know this is going to look sort of weird, but it seems to me that this 2019 National Geographic YouTube video, “’Zombie Parasite Takes Over Insects Through Mind Control” is an analog for the way all the accumulated mass of “urgency” live-streaming through our lives affect us.

The video is part of National Geo’s “Hostile Planet” series hosted by Bear Grylls.

The musings and blatherings of the urgency mongers seem to me to be like the spores of the featured parasitic cordyceps fungi that take down ants and other insects in order to reproduce.

All the endless Urgents piled up all around us and on top of us seem to be having a similar effect on us humans as the growing spores of the fungi have on the ant in the video.  We seem to be turning into vehicles for the Urgents that are conquering the world.

This is not a happy picture.

BACK TO BASICS

These days we’ve even got scientists and other guys and gals in lab coats studying resilience and other responses to rapidly moving change and lots and lots more advice about coping with the anxieties these transitions and transformations engender.

The biggest bit of advice common among all of these wise guys and smarty pants boil down to the same basic things:

• Step back.
• Take a breath.
• See where you are and look towards where you are wanting to go.
• Feel your feelings and think on it all using your powers of research, focus and analysis.
• Figure out what you’re going to do next.
• Go do that.

One particularly lovely book about standing back and assessing where you are so you can make effective responses to all the sturm und drang came out in 2019.  Jenny Odell’s best selling book HOW TO DO NOTHING:  Resisting the Attention Economy reminds us that we do already know what we need to do in times like these.

Odell is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer and educator based in Oakland, California.  She has taught Internet art and real-world design at Standford University since 2013.  One commenter says the lady’s fascinated by the in-between transitional spaces that happen in our everyday lives when things really start to change all around us.

Her book shares her thoughts about her own journeys through these spaces and she brings her artist’s eye and thoughts and feelings upfront and center so we can put together our own takes on whatever is going on around us.

Here’s a newsflash for you:  Plans don’t come easy in the middle of a hurricane.  You can’t control the weather, but you do have the ability to control your responses to it if you can get yourself away from all the whoot-whoot-whoot blaring and the images brought to you by your friendly neighborhood doom-sayers.

Odell’s book might be a good place to start to work on making the space you need to get to your own kind of strategic planning.

ANOTHER IPS (Inner Peace Symptom):  an understanding that the tumult and turmoil of an “urgent” situation may actually be somebody else’s attempt to rearrange your priority list or it might be a filler story for a No-Big-News day.  [Step back and look at the whole glorious mess in all of its nuance and emotional hoo-hah.  Give yourself room to think on the best way to maintain your own smooth running.]

Here’s a poem:

PROTECTING THE COLLATERAL

Two warrior-chieftains square off,

Revving up their steam-roller engines

That scream out challenges, strong and fierce,

As each one stakes out their territory.

Blare of trumpets, beat of drums

Boom-ba-da-boom, boom-ba-da-boom.

Cue the skirling of the pipes.

Start the thrill of fifes.

They are not noticing the collateral damage

In their fierce drive for victory –

One over the other.

I am.

They do not see her distress,

Too caught up in their own imperatives

And “shoulds” and “musts” to see the gentle one

Tearing apart like tissue-thin paper

Melting in the rain.

I do.

It makes me strong, that –

Me in the middle of these titans with

My Teflon shield held high.

I keep my sword sheathed, though.

Swords don’t help in the middle of

Threats and counter-threats of

Weapons of mass destruction being deployed.

I am watching.

She has turned into a puddle of tears,

And my heart goes out to her.

This other stuff’s just rubbish:

A fire-fight between two passionate ones

With exactly the same goal,

Arguing about how to get there and

Throwing their armies behind their words.

I am seeing her trying to understand,

Trying to grab and hold onto

The peaceable harmony the warring beasts

Have thrown out the window with

All their stupid shouting. 

I roar my own self,

Backing the titans off each other in shock,

And I drop to my knees and hold her strong

So she can bring herself back

Out of the hopelessness and despair

Into which she has fallen.

She is so strong, this one.

She just needs a stopping place,

A little time and space to pull herself

Back together.

And as the useless battle-idiocy subsides,

I am pleased that I can see her

Coming back to herself.

The battle will end,

But she is not broken.

A good thing.

Warriors forget

When they are in the middle of

All their guts-and-glory puissant posturing

That there are gentle ones crying in their storm.

I won’t.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit:  “Frenzy” by Oblivious Dude via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

……

SOME OTHER POSTS TO EXPLORE

(Click on each of the post titles below and see where it takes you….)

• REVIEW: F*CK FEELINGS
• SET YOUR OWN RULES
• RULES OF THUMB FOR WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE

……

Thanks for your visit.  I’d appreciate it if you would drop a note or comment below and tell me your thoughts.

The post STEP BACK FROM THE URGENCY (Another IPS) first appeared on Life-Built Poems.