lifebuiltpoems

GO OUT AND PLAY (An Un-Seeing Exercise)

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 05:56:19 GMT

I just stumbled over a quote from the amazing Maya Angelou that resonates with me enormously, especially during this time of lockdowns and disconnection:

“Life is pure adventure, and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art.”

The lady knew. To become fully human, we have to go out and play. Then we need to come back inside and tell each other our stories.

“First Adventure” by Ana Garcia Saiz via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

During a career that spanned over 50 years, Angelou published seven autobiographical memoirs, three books of essays, a number of poetry books, and a bunch of Hallmark greeting cards. She worked and was credited in a long list of plays, movies and television shows.

Poet laureate, mother, dancer, sex worker, best-selling author, daughter, singer, street car conductor, sister, political activist, actress, film maker, scholar, and wife, Angelou embraced and emphatically owned her life. She learned her lessons and she used them to help the rest of us learn and accept our own.

Angelou imbued the experiences of her life with meaning to such a degree that she became a beloved internationally-known icon and a lasting, powerful voice for heartfulness and connection.

Even now, she remains as a testament that our identity, our sense of self, is made up of the stories we tell ourselves and each other.

As a result of her accomplishments the lady received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Her words shine on even after her death in 2014.

The following YouTube video, “The Evolution of Maya Angelou” was published in 2019 by Now This Entertainment. It gives a short overview of the long and multi-faceted life of one who embraced all that Life had to offer, turning it all into a magnificent poem.

A NUTS-AND-BOLTS GUIDE TO SELF RE-INVENTION

I came across a book, PERSONALITY ISN’T PERMAMENT: Break Free From Self-Limiting Beliefs and Rewrite Your Story by Benjamin Hardy, PhD. It was published in 2020. It will probably have a place on my bookshelf for a while.

In the book, the good doctor, best-selling author and blogger starts from the premise that every personality test ever devised is basically B.S.

Things like the Color Code, the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator, the DISC (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Conscientiousness) assessment, the Enneagram, the Winslow Personality test, the NEO (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness) Personality Inventory and the HEXACO (Honesty, Humility, Emotionality, eXtroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientious and Openness to experience) personality framework as well as all the off-the-cuff personality quizzes in magazines and online apps that say they can tell you who you are lie, he says. Period.

He does have a point. Most personality quiz things and assessment tools are flawed, but people do like to play with them. Sometimes they use these quizzes (or the quizzes and assessment tools are used by other people) to make decisions that can affect their lives adversely.

The personality quiz fetish got so bad that in 2019 Facebook had to ban the things from the platform…after 87 million people had given away their personal information in exchange for answers to a personality quiz.

Every personality quiz that ever was, according to Hardy, is based on a cognitive bias (a systemic error in thinking) held by schools of psychology that “places a great deal of emphasis and value on the past.”

“error” by strange little woman on stream via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

I’m not sure that the guy is right about that, but the book does drill in the point that the choices you make and the actions you take now do affect how your future is going to look.

“Adventure” by J. Michel (aka: Mitch) Carriere via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

As a self-help book on the road to your own kind of success, I’d say it’s way useful.

At one point Hardy tells us, “This is how successful people live: They become who they want to be by orienting their life toward their goals, not as a repeat of the past; by acting bravely as their future selves, not by perpetuating who they formerly were.”

“Going UP!” by Wendell via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Using his impermanent-personality paradigm, Hardy delineates the four major factors that he says determine our personality and explains in typical, hup-one | hup-two | march-march-march “self-helpese” how you, too, can shift those factors around to achieve your desired outcomes.

As promised, Hardy tells us how — replete with assorted exercises and head games as well as role models galore. His musings are summarized and categorized in the chapter headings:

Transform your trauma. (CAVEAT ALERT: This book is not a substitute for good psychotherapy if you are suffering from post-traumatic stress or other extreme anxiety or mental health issues. It seems to me to be mostly about “little-t” traumas.)
Shift your story. (There’s some really good stuff about how to play with your stories and create your own meanings.)
Enhance your subconscious. (These are mostly common-sense things about taking care of yourself.)
Redesign your environment. (These, too, are pretty standard stuff about building a support system and an environment that helps you stay focused on your desired outcomes and making your goals become real.)

It’s all put together in one place as a system and way of doing things, and it at least gets you to look at what you’re doing from a perspective that might help you break away from the limiting beliefs and thought patterns that keep you spinning in circles.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once pointed out that, “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” (Hardy even uses the quote in his book.)

“On Top of the World (1978) by Collin Key via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Hardy’s book does make a good run at the topic, but, somehow, I don’t think that you’ll get to be another Maya Angelou following his model.

Angelou’s stance seemed to start from seeing all of the experiences of her life as gifts. The lessons she gained were ones that she could use to enhance her sense of the worthiness of her own self and to help us see her in that way too.

Angelou danced directly and honestly with Life-Its-Own-Self and with the rest of us as well. And maybe that is the real difference.

“Go out and PLAY” by Alan Levine via Flickr [CC0 1.0, Public Domain]

Here’s a poem….

CAULDRON

You are sitting in the middle

Of the cauldron now.

The perfume of your sacrifice

Rising all around you,

Reaching up towards Heaven

As you ripen, as you mellow,

Giving up the old,

Letting go, letting be.

Others crowd around you

Wanting, needing, demanding juicy bits,

Scraping, bowing flatteringly,

Trying to get you to notice

That they are there waiting

For you to pick them up and carry them.

After all, you are so very strong

And they need you, don’t you know?

But Heaven’s there, up above

That cauldron where you sit,

Marinating in the juices of the world.

It opens wide to swallow you up,

If you’ll just release this need you have

For being needed, being noticed.

There will be no thunder if you turn aside.

There will be no hallelujah chorus if you don’t.

The only thing that happens is,

Eventually, once you’ve steeped

As much as you can stand,

You’ll climb back out and wander

Down the eternal road again,

Maybe doubling back or maybe going on,

Dancing or drooping, weighed-down or floating.

The ripe scent of you wafts upward,

Tickling the nostrils of the ancients.

You are being helped,

Even though it feels

As though all that has been

Is in disarray and disorder,

It means little…

Only that what is flying apart now

Will join again in splendid new arrangements.

Press on….

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “Adventure shoes” by Ardelean Samuel via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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

THE BIG S.L.O.W.

Wed, 16 Dec 2020 06:18:59 GMT

For years now, I’ve heard about the “Slow Movement.” The ideals of keeping to a human pace, puzzling out and enjoying inherent creative processes, caring about human interactions and needs, and savoring life’s little moments one by one have always resonated with me.

But, hey…I’ve been busy! As the consensus-world kept picking up speed and going hyper, all kinds of interesting things were popping. The razzle-dazzle got brighter, and the pyrotechnics were grand.

Busy, busy, busy was the order of the day. I felt like the littlest cousin again, chasing after the big kids yelling, “Hey, guys! Wait for me!”

All that running was getting exhausting and I noticed that we were all turning a bit whiny and irritable.

“Exhausted” by cristian via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

And then the Covid-19 pandemic happened. All of a sudden, the world got the Slows. The pace went molasses on us and we all had to step back and take another look at what we are doing, where we are going, and how we’re going to get there.

Perhaps the Universe is telling us what actor Eddie Cantor once advised, “Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast – you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.”

“Go Slow” by Qi Wei Fong via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

It shouldn’t be that difficult to do. A bunch of us have been practicing on it for some time now.

IT AIN’T JUST ABOUT SPEED

That name – “The Slow Movement” — is deceptive. For one thing, the ideas behind this so-called movement have very little to do with speed and a great deal to do with how we get things done and why.

The word “slow” in that label is actually an acronym for “Sustainable, Local, Organic and Whole.” Knowing that one factoid turns the thing into a whole other movie.

Chroniclers of the S.L.O.W. like to point to the year 1986 as the start of it all. They credit Carlo Petrini, a Leftist Italian journalist, as the leading light in this reiteration of an older way of walking.

Petrini initiated “Slow Food” as a protest against the planting of the McDonald’s Golden Arches above a restaurant doorway at the foot of the Spanish Steps in the Piazza di Spagma, the most famous square in Rome.

The invasion of cheap American fast food into the heart of an extraordinary foodie culture provoked a big push-back. Petrini and other like-minded lovers of good food raised the banners for mangia bene, “eating well.”

“real slow food” by Slow Spain via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

The rhetorical storm grew into a manifesto that emphasized locally grown regional ingredients and local food customs as well as sustainability and biodiversity. The activists plunked for skillful food-growing and -processing methods.

“Snail Bread at Slow Food Nation” by esimpraim via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The Slow Food protests did little to stem the fast-food tide. The busy-buzzy ultra-efficient lifestyle in which the notions of “fast” have been evolving since the birth of the Industrial Revolution swept on.

“McMussolini” by Brian Wallace via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

This did not stop other fans all over the world from picking up the banner and running with it.

(You can get an overview of the history and growth of the Slow Food organization by clicking on the button below. It is remarkable.)

-click-

IS IT EVEN A “MOVEMENT”?

This so-called movement is sort of amorphous. There isn’t actually some organization or association overseeing the development of this S.L.O.W. thing. Slow Food had many, many sprouts and off-shoots all over the place.

Maybe it should be called an “up-welling” instead. Maybe it is just another way to “Just Say No.”

“Living Waves” by Ken Douglass via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The core focus of it all, it seems to me, is on figuring out how to maintain a humane (and human) lifestyle while taking advantage of the technology that is available to us and using it to enhance and enliven our own lives.

Slow living, its proponents are quick to point out, is NOT about being lazy, good-for-nothing so-and-so’s. It’s not about living like a sloth or turning into some dazzled lotus-eater wandering around in a daze.

“Going nowhere slowly” by Mary(n_n)West via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

It seems that it’s more about avoiding the life of a grub and maximizing the joys of less as well as appreciating JOMO, the “joy of missing out”.

MAYBE IT’S JUST ANOTHER, OLDER WAY OF DANCING

In the more than three decades since the Italian protestors took to the streets, the whole S.L.O.W. cultural meme sparked international interest in a more humane, alternative way of walking through the world.

For real, guys, as we all know, the Hustle can get tiresome.

People all around the world questioned the modern-day perceived need to force ourselves to keep up with the mechanically measured nanosecond pacing of the techy paradigms that have spawned and spread since the Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain in the 18^th century.

They questioned the whole paradigm of people viewed as “human resources.” They keenly examined how the quality of our lives are being affected by these kinds of mind-constructs.

“Human Resources – Lawrence Epps” by Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park via Flickr (Photo courtesy of artist) [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Many deep-thinking folks thought “slow living” was a better alternative than turning cyborg or going into Blade Runner mode.

“Cyborg” by Michelle Zell-Wiesmann via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

“Slow living” does not consider human needs (like health, relationships, and the environment) as a suitable sacrifice for an increasingly giddy and glitzy vision of “success” towards which we post-modern sorts are routinely urged to gallop hell-for-leather at breakneck speeds.

“happy day lunch” by maki ataca via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Slow activists and practitioners understand that Life-Its-Own-Self is complex. “Faster/cheaper/more” is not necessarily more efficient, more productive, more effective or even more desirable than “slower/better/less.”

“Less is more” by Jeff Laitila via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Living slow means embracing the understanding that in order to be a better (perhaps more complete) human you do have to pay close attention to what is in front of you and what is inside of you. Incorporating sustainable practices in your own way of walking and taking responsibility for the actions you take are all stances embraced by the slow life practitioners.

Taking care of yourself, and treating all of the other people involved in the transactions of your days equitably and empathetically as well as making the effort to take care of the places where you are living your life are just a part of their How.

“Indian shaman statue overlooking Seminole Canyon in West Texas” by mlhradio via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

As I look at all of this, it occurs to me that my ancestors and forbearers would certainly recognize all of those stances. It is an ordinary and integral part of what Hawaiians call “malama” or “taking care.”

Hmmm….

Maybe I never officially joined the “Slow Movement” because I never felt the need to stick a label on my forehead, buttons on my lapels and bumper stickers on my vehicles. I just never stopped trying to live in the Hawaiian real old style.

Each of the ways of moving in malama-mode requires deep thought, quiet consideration, an intense attentiveness and a sharp focus that just are not possible when you’re in the middle of a roller-coaster ride.

“Dorney Park 115” by Jeremy Thompson via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Geir Berthelsen, who founded the World Institute of Slowness as a think tank in 1999 to promote slow awareness and activities around the world, once opined,

“Slowness is the forgotten dimension to time. Unlike chronological time, it is nonlinear, time here and now, time that works for you, extraordinary time. So why be fast when you can be slow? Slowness is also about balance, so if you must hurry, then hurry slowly.”

“Go Slow” (Caye Caulker – Belize) by Luis Alvert via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

GETTING THE RHYTHM BACK

The various tenets of the slow living mindset have been applied to all kinds of different human endeavors. Among the “Slows” (besides Food) that have emerged are things like:

Slow Architecture
Slow Art
Slow Beauty
Slow Church
Slow Cities
Slow Communication
Slow Consumption
Slow Counseling
Slow Dance
Slow Design
Slow Exercise
Slow Fashion
Slow Gaming
Slow Gardening
Slow Goods
Slow Investment
Slow Marketing
Slow Media
Slow Medicine
Slow Money
Slow Parenting
Slow Photography
Slow Reading
Slow Sex
Slow Schools
Slow Scholarship
Slow Science
Slow Technology
Slow Television
Slow Thought (Philosophy)
Slow Travel
Slow Urbanism
Slow Work

Well…you get the idea. Like the Slow Food model, many of these were grassroots initiatives, started by one or more persons who believed passionately in an idea and practiced it and talked it up until they got a whole bunch of other people behind it.

Some of the explorations have come and gone. Others keep on going. Some of it might just be authentic and genuine expressions of Being while the rest of it might just be posturing and matters of Style.

“Their idea worked out!” by Stéphanie Vaudry via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Some of it may arise from a feeling writer Pico Iyer once pinpointed, “In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.”

Perhaps it is just the change of pace that affects us so deeply.

Another possibility might be that we really do need to get into better sync with our own natural visceral life-rhythms.

One of my favorite YouTube videos is “FOLI (There Is No Movement Without Rhythm),” a short film by Thomas Roebers and Floris Leeuwenberg. This version is the original, uploaded in 2010 by Thomas Roebers for sharing with the world. It is dedicated to the people of Baro who appear in the video.

LAST THOUGHTS

It occurs to me that, as a group, we have a heck of a lot of experience – good and bad — at being human. Maybe the only thing we actually need to do is to stop trying to mimic the machines we created to help us make our human lives better.

Maybe all we need to do is learn more appropriate ways to fit our new tech into our older and more appropriate ways of walking.

Hey! Here’s a good idea: let’s stick our tools back into our toolboxes and pull them out when we need them, letting them just sit there when they are not necessary.

“Grandpa’s old-fashioned toolbox” by andreweb77 via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Maybe then we can get on with our dance.

Here’s a poem:

MECHANICAL POEM

I AM … I WONDER … I HEAR …

I SEE … I WANT … I AM …

I KNOW … I SAY … I DREAM …

I TRY … I HOPE … I AM …

[Hmmm… How ’bout marching in two-by-two?]

I AM/I WONDER

I HEAR/I WANT

I SEE/I AM

I KNOW/I SAY

I DREAM/I TRY

I HOPE/I AM

[Oh, cool! How ’bout a do-see-do?]

I AM/I KNOW

I WONDER/I SAY

I HEAR/I DREAM

I SEE/I TRY

I WANT/I HOPE

I AM/I AM

[Then there’s breakdancing (on its head)….]

I TRY…

I KNOW/I SEE/I AM

I… WONDER

I HEAR/I AM

…I WANT

I DREAM/I SAY/I HOPE

I AM, AM, AM, AM, AM….

[Hmmm…echoes, even!

So few words.

The power’s in the ‘I’.]

By Netta Kanoho

Header Photo credit: “In Praise of Slow” by saoriweaver via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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

CHOOSE A STANCE AND CHANGE YOUR PROBLEM

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 16:31:49 GMT

One of the most-quoted (often illustrated) inspirational bits hanging about on the Internet platforms and in assorted posts and books is this one:

“Happiness is a journey, not a destination. For a long time it seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be gotten through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. This perspective has helped me to see there is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way. So treasure every moment you have and remember that time waits for no one.”

It’s apparently a one-off, almost always attributed to one Alfred d’Souza (sometimes called “Father”) or alternatively, Alfred D. Souza, who was, they say, an Australian writer-philosopher.

The guy died in 2004, it says here. Nothing else seems to be known about him.

As a springboard for riffs about tackling problems, you have to admit the quote is stellar. The advice that follows afterwards – using happy-face mindsets and memes (aka gratitude, appreciation, cherishing, savoring and so on) as an antidote to life’s trials and tribulations – is often very useful as well.

The quote is used a lot by the bliss-meisters. Thoughts that arise out of this stance do work, up to a point. You can live a very good life in your happiness bubble….as long as you can ignore that wave of Visigoths coming over the hill.

“Visigoths come to town” by Blink O’fanaye via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

You also have to refuse to look at the possibility that there are other happinesses that you may not able to access when your old ones get stale.

And you have to refuse to consider the seemingly heretical idea that true happiness may be a side-effect of a way of walking rather than a for-real goal. (If you’ll notice, this idea is a part of the quote. Most people seem to leave that part off when they use the quote, however.)

Hmmm….

LIFE IS PROBLEMS

It does seem to me that for the rest of us who don’t reside in happy-bubbles there are likely to be some problem or other coming at us every time we turn around.

Sometimes the problem is specific to you – the results of your own ill-made life choices.
Sometimes it’s a physical malfunction or a glitch (either in your body or in the physical world around you). This is usually brought on by entropy ignored or unbound.
Oftentimes it’s somebody else’s problem that is getting in your face or it’s some circumstance beyond your control that is the result of a widespread consensus-world catastrophe.

All of that can be enough to grind you down to a nubbin.

SOMETIMES YOUR ONLY PROBLEM IS THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE ONE

I did run across a very interesting thing. It seems that having no real problems at all can lead to a condition very much like this one:

“No problem” by Josie Elderslie via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

There you are sitting all grumpy, floating in the middle of a peaceful lake in a very leaky boat. You’re on the verge of sinking, but for some reason you just can’t (or won’t) try to figure out how to start bailing out the water that’s filling up that boat.

I have a young friend who has beaten “the game.” An extraordinary business woman, she is now independently wealthy at a relatively young age through her own efforts. She has made more money than she is likely to spend any time soon and she has a really good support system that helps her stay on track with that.

She is beautiful. She is massively talented. (Her artwork is sublime.) She is personable and has no problems forming satisfying relationships with others. She likes herself just fine. She can do pretty much anything she wants.

And her life, she says, has gone flat somehow. She’s in the middle of trying to figure out how to deal with that. (If she hears one more person tell her how “lucky” she is, she says, she is going to throw something horrible at them.)

I told her to go get some problems. She threw a pillow at me.

SOMETIMES YOUR PROBLEMS ARE YOUR HOBBY

Of course, there are also the ones who have nothing BUT problems.

When they don’t have a problem to work on, these folks go find another one and then another one and then one more. They pile up mountains of problems. They turn their problem-solving into a pastime.

I’m not exactly sure why they do that. (I wasn’t really sure why I did it my own self.)

Maybe they think Life-Its-Own-Self is broken and they feel obliged to fix it or something. Perhaps they like feeling like a super-hero when they whittle their problem collection back down to nothing. (I do understand that one. I’m a recovering wannabe super-hero my own self.)

This YouTube video, “The Last Knit,” was directed by Laura Neuyonnen in Finland in 2005. It is a funny (and, for me, more than a little poignant) look at this do-bug sort of mindset. It was uploaded by annekeAnna in 2006.

SO, WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH ALL THOSE PROBLEMS?

We know there are all kinds of difficulties and challenges and struggles and so on and probably as many ways of dealing with them as there are people. Some ways work; others, not so much.

In his 1993 book, A PATH WITH HEART: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life, Buddhist teacher-philosopher and author Jack Kornfield had an interesting take on it all. He divides up the complications and issues, the set-backs and hitches, and all of the other sorts of quandaries and predicaments we encounter in our lives into two distinct categories.

Some of these messes, Kornfield says, are clearly just regular problems that need to be resolved somehow. They are situations that call for compassionate action and a direct response from us. They are puzzles that actually have solutions that really do work.

(These problems are relatively easy ones. If you make good moves, they tend to go away.)

But, Kornfield points out, there are also those muddles that we create for ourselves by trying to make life radically different than what it is or by becoming so caught up in our own point of view that we become blinded to whatever is right there in front of us.

(These snags are never easy because they always have more than one “right” answer and, perhaps, a dozen different possible solutions that maybe-could be-might work well.)

Kornfield points out that when you’re confronting some difficulty or other of the second kind, you are likely to deal with it in one of three different ways. Each one of these styles of walking produces markedly different results. (Since I’ve tried all three of the styles he describes, I feel I can report on some of the diverse results that tend to happen when you employ these methods.)

TWO COMMON WAYS OF DEALING WITH PROBLEMS, ACCORDING TO KORNFIELD

SUPPRESSION OR DENIAL. You can suppress or deny that there are any difficulties in your life and try to fill your days up only with light and beauty and ideal feelings, Kornfield says.

The biggest lesson I got from doing this one, I’ve found, is that it actually does not work very well.

For one thing, if you take it too far into the hap-hap-happy, you end up looking and acting like some kind of demented Pollyanna-clone. It is really not a good look.

Also, some things are just NOT OKAY, all right? Some things do need to be faced, addressed, and corrected in order to have a life worth living. You’ll have your own list, I’m sure. Pay attention to it.

Acting like everything is hunky-dory when it really is not can sometimes lead to very bad consequences that could be devastating or even fatal.

It’s sort of like shoving stuff under a big old rug in the center of your studio-apartment rather than actually sorting through it all and putting things away properly or doing what you need to do to get rid of all the junk.

You invariably end up tripping over the big hump that forms as you keep shoving stuff under that rug. Eventually it gets hard to walk across the room to get to the door.

Kornfield makes the point that your mind and body are connected and if you suppress “non-approved” thoughts and feelings in your mind, you will probably get some kind of body reaction – ulcers, for instance.

He also says that if you clench those problems in your body, making all your muscles tight because you’re trying to keep them from escaping into the world out of your control, then your mind fills up with all of the fears you refuse to face. They can stack up into a really huge and scary pile.

You tend to get a lot of sore muscles and a low-grade sort of malaise when you walk around all tensed up like that. I notice that my chest caves in on itself and I get dumpy-looking after a period of intense suppression or denial of some issue or other. Often I catch a really cramped expression on my face when I go past a mirror. Yipes!

Did you ever notice that people who are not for-real happy seem to have smiles that start looking an awful lot like snarls?

“Fake Smile” by Eric Fleming via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Hmmm….

Somehow faking happiness just doesn’t work really well. I guess if you’re not truly convinced that you are happy, nobody else will be either, so what’s the point of doing that?

2. LET IT ALL HANG OUT. This is another common practice, Kornfield says. You can choose to let all of your strongest emotions and heart-burnings out, freely venting about every situation and acting out every feeling that arises in you, no matter how contradictory or confused or just plain tiresome they become for you and for the people around you.

Tantrums, whining, moaning and other expressions of high drama can become your default modes of expression.

However, if you do it often enough you may start to notice that very few people want to hang around with you. YOU may not want to be hanging around with you either.

“Tantrum” by Chirag Rathod via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Also not so good.

AND THEN THERE’S DOOR NUMBER THREE

3. TURN THE STRUGGLE INTO YOUR PLAYING FIELD. Take a look at this short 2020 YouTube video featuring best-selling author and blogger extraordinaire Mark Manson, “How to Overcome Any Problem Life Throws at You”. It was uploaded by The Outcome, a motivational YouTube channel that’s fun to explore.

Manson, in the video, is speaking from a stance that incorporates Kornfield’s third way of walking. It delineates the practical effects of learning how to transform your relationship to the outside world in a very useful way. He says, “…the point that I make is that…what we should actually shoot for is…let’s just find the problems we enjoy having.”

In his book, Kornfield talks about a Tibetan Buddhist tradition explained by Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche, one of the first of the most influential modern-day teachers of the tradition to come out of Tibet and India to the West.

This life-strategy is called “making difficulties into the path.” What you are supposed to do with it is take all of the sufferings and sorrows in your life and use them to develop your own kind of meaningful walk through the world.

Manson’s video gives a succinct step-by-step process that is very clear. If you can get your head around it, then the problems in your life turn into a valuable resource. By working your way on through the situations that are in your face and by improving the quality of the dilemmas in your life, you can build up and refine your ideas of what life means to you. This can help you work on constructing your own best self and build your own best life.

It does work. (Otherwise all those wise guys wouldn’t keep recommending that you do this stuff.)

The cool thing about this one is that you don’t actually have to go searching for problems to work with. They just come. It’s what you do with them that makes them such valuable resources.

ONE LAST TAKE

The next video, “Miles Davis According to Herbie Hancock” was uploaded by SafaJah in 2014. It features a story by Hancock (who is a warm and sparkling raconteur as well as an iconic jazz pianist).

The story Hancock tells highlights the improvisational genius that Davis was and contains a pertinent life-lesson.

I especially liked one comment from a fan that quoted Davis as saying, “It’s not the note you play that’s the wrong note. It’s the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.”

Uh-huh. That’s jazz, all right. It’s also another way to turn your problems and challenges into a part of the way you play.

Here’s a poem:

LESSONS

My loves have always been

The mavericks and rogues,

The ones who blithely walk

Down paths that others shun,

The ones who touch the wind,

And hear the laughing of the sun.

They called to me, these ones, and

I am not one to turn from

Challenge and double-dare.

They made me want to spread

My wings to fly among the stars,

Dissolving fences built by dread.

And, maybe, in all this,

There is some lesson or other

That again I have to learn:

That to dare is all that’s real,

That surety sinks you into muck

And fear is the seventh seal.

By Netta Kanoho

Header Photo credit: “Obstacles” by Riccardo Cuppini via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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

MARY OLIVER: Poetry and Peace

Thu, 05 Nov 2020 16:02:47 GMT

Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom): an understanding that every form of Making is ultimately another way of practicing being human. [Humans make things. It’s how we connect with one another and with the World.]

I am pleased when I can wander through poet Mary Oliver’s words and borrow her eyes and her heart to see again the beauty and the mystery of Life-Its-Own-Self. The words remind me: I am not alone.

That one helps me get back to peace again amid the hurly-burly bustle and the noisy push-me, pull-you tumble fades away. AHHH….

My favorite Oliver quote does not come from a poem. It was part of a rare interview she gave with Rachel Martin on a 2012 National Public Radio’s “Weekend Edition Sunday.”

She said, “I said once, and I think this is true, the world did not have to be beautiful to work. But it is. What does that mean?”

That, I think, is a worthy big question. It’s certainly big enough to fuel a life-long work.

“Sunlight After Rain 7/02/16” by diane cordell via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

To answer the question, Oliver spent her life in the woods, standing among the trees and the weeds and the wild, looking at and noticing what was in front of her with her heart open to it all and her notebook and pencil at the ready. She paid attention, deeply and well.

And then she wrote about it so the rest of us could see it too.

She also said, “One thing I do know is that poetry, to be understood, must be clear. It mustn’t be fancy. I have the feeling that a lot of poets writing now are… they sort of tap dance through it. I always feel that whatever isn’t necessary shouldn’t be in a poem.”

I do agree.

WOMAN OF A THOUSAND SONGS

Mary Oliver died at the beginning of 2019 at the age of 83. During her long and illustrious career that spanned over five decades, the prolific nature poet put together 26 collections of her verse, many of them best sellers.

There were also a number of prose books as well. She routinely put out a new book every couple of years, it seems.

She was that rare phenomenon: a poet whose work sold strongly.

Her prose books include two on the craft of poetry. A POETRY HANDBOOK and RULES FOR THE DANCE: A Handbook For Writing and Reading Metric Verse have been widely used in workshops and programs for beginning writers and wanna-be poetry appreciators.

A consummate artisan and word-lover, Oliver lays out the basics beautifully and well. She was a popular educator. She held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001.

In 1984, she received a Pulitzer Prize for her fourth book, AMERICAN PRIMITIVE. In 1991 her HOUSE OF LIGHT won both the Christopher Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award and in 1992, her NEW AND SELECTED POEMS won a National Book Award. They were only a few of the many honors she received for her work.

Her work frequently appeared in many national magazines.

Oliver would probably have won the “People’s Choice” award (if they gave out that sort of thing in the poetry world). She was often dubbed “America’s best-beloved poet” despite some sour critic’s disparaging snark about her being “the poet laureate of the self-help biz and the human potential movement.”

A profoundly private person, Oliver rarely gave interviews, preferring to let her work speak for itself.

One of the best overviews of Oliver’s work and life can be found in the 2017 New Yorker magazine article by Ruth Franklin, “What Mary Oliver’s Critics Don’t Understand.” Click the button below if you’d like to read it.

As one who touched the hearts of many people with her unadorned, straightforward language and clear-eyed, humble observations of the natural world in all its glory as well as its impermanence and shadows and her joyous celebration of the Great Mystery that is Life-Its-Own-Self, Oliver was often quoted by clerics in their sermons, even though she admitted that she personally was not comfortable with religious institutions and dogma.

It didn’t matter. As a poet, Oliver was determined to make her life out of the simple but radical practice of paying close and deep attention to what was around her, and somehow, in doing so, she was reaching for the Divine.

“ferns and excerpt” by Kim Manley Ort via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Composers like Ronald Perera, Lori Laitman, and Augusta Read Thomas set her work to music. Celebrities like Laura Bush and Maria Shriver and Oprah Winfrey were staunch fans, as were thousands of Instagrammers who treated her words as gospel.

Throngs turned out for her popular public readings as if she were some kind of reluctant bookish rock star or oracle. Many others read and spoke her work in public presentations.

In the following 2011 YouTube video, “What I Have Learned So Far” by Mary Oliver, the poem is spoken by students at Marquette University.

Inevitably, some of Oliver’s best lines were over-quoted, gracing coffee mugs, bumper stickers, assorted crafts and photography projects, and walls.

“The Summer Day – Nicollet & East 26th Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota” by jpellgen (@1179_jp) via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Poetry therapists found her uplifting sensibility well-suited to their work.

“The Uses of Sorrow” by Lulu Lovering via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

UMMM….POETRY SAVES LIVES?

Poetry therapy is a real thing. It has its own national (American) organization, The National Association for Poetry Therapy, which was incorporated in 1981. There is even an International Federation for Biblio/Poetry Therapy.

The American group provides credentials for poetry therapists, a sort of subculture among therapists (like the guys who use massage or hypnosis), who have successfully completed 440 hours of training and study. The international group has also developed a similar program of training and certification.

The idea that poetry can be used to help people who are suffering from inner turmoil apparently originated with New York psychiatrist Smiley Blanton. In his 1960 book THE HEALING POWER OF POETRY, he wrote:

“Suppose you are depressed and you read a poem about sadness. If your feelings overflow, if you find yourself crying, then your sadness is reduced. You realize that others have suffered, and the communion of feeling is helpful.. It is like being able to share your grief with someone else, someone who understands.”

The book, with its forward by Norman Vincent Peale, was reissued in 2012.

Poetry therapists use the power of verse that connects people heart-to-heart to help their clients explore and recognize their hurts and their brokenness in the hope that this will help them start to heal.

Some poems work; others not so much. Often the work of 19^th century ecstatic, mystical, vision-walking poets – the “wisdom” poetry — serve this purpose better than other more modernistic offerings. Short poems work better than long ones. Clarity works better than obscure fancy-dancing.

“To Be Happy Again” by diane cordell via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Because Oliver’s poetry is often short and always clear, they lend themselves to the focused discussions the therapists use to help their clients and serve as models for poems the patients write for themselves as they work their way towards a better sense of self and a more stable emotional balance.

“What will you do…” by Vern via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

If you’re interested in learning more about Poetry Therapy, you can click on the button below for an article put together by Louise Hoffman, PhD, for the GoodTherapy.org people.

The online service, founded by therapist Noah Rubinstein in 2007, is an information center for people looking for help and provides information about and access to a network of member mental health workers from over 25 countries.

A SPECIAL BOOKSTORE

One smile-inducing story is a new crowd-funded book store, The Poetry Pharmacy, that opened up in 2019 in a quiet small town, Bishops Castle, in rural Shropshire, on the borders of England and Wales.

(You can read Sheryl Grant’s story about the venture by clicking on the store name above.)

The store is the magical brainchild of writer Deborah Alma, self-dubbed the “Emergency Poet,” who spent years traveling round British festivals and literary events – tongue set firmly in cheek — in an old ambulance giving one-on-one “consultations,” listening to her patients’ tales of woe and “prescribing” a healing poem for them.

Alma called her service “the world’s first and only mobile poetic first aid service.”

I’m not sure whether the physical store is open during this time of the Covid-19 pandemic response madness, but it does sound delightful.

Who wouldn’t love a place where “poems are packed in jars and prescribed for heartbreak or stress, desire or mindfulness”? Alma’s consultations continue; tea and cookies and all sorts of wonderful books are served up in a charming Victorian-style setting.

I do know that you can access the store’s online offerings by clicking here:

“To Love What Is Mortal” by diane cordell via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Here’s a poem:

LOOKING FOR BELLS

A connoisseur of the absurdly profound once said,

“When a thing is true, you can let it alone.”

She’s right, you know,

‘Cause the thing sits itself down in your bones

And chimes out a clear pure note

That floats into the morning sky

When someone tells its story.

And you don’t even have to wonder

How or why such a thing might be, could be so.

Unless, of course, you are slow on the uptake like me

And you waste a lot of time wandering around

Listening to all the chiming

And looking for the bells.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit:. “Dawn Blaze” by Angelo Juan Ramos via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

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

MINDFUL ROAD-BUILDING

Tue, 27 Oct 2020 18:15:58 GMT

Lately I’ve been stumbling around after tripping over a mind-game construct called “doing a mindset reset.”

Apparently, it’s based on pretty recent neurological studies that the guys and gals in lab coats say reveal the inherent “plasticity” of a human brain’s ability to control our body’s functions, actions and all that.

There are all kinds of big words and dizzy-making charts and boring numbers and, as usual, my poet-brain goes to sleep when I try to think on them.

The best I can do with all this stuff is to come up with yet another story. So, here goes….

BUILDING NEURAL PATHWAYS TO SURVIVAL

One of the major super-powers a human possesses (the people in white lab coats say) is an amazing ability to adapt to all kinds of diverse circumstances and situations in our consensus-world.

We can survive almost any kind of adversity. It’s our biggest “thing.”

“Avalanche!” by Crisitan Janke via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Humans pull off this survival thing very well, they say, because we come jam-packed with all of these nerves that are arranged into systems which affect how our bodies work and how we move through the world.

What we do (or don’t do) is the result of the movement of our impulses and thoughts that scoot down neural pathways that start in our brain and run through our whole bodies.

The coolest thing about these neural pathways is that every one of us can build new ones for our own thoughts and impulses.

We can shift around the courses of the pathways and we can use them to develop new patterns of actions and behaviors. We can do all kinds of tricks with some pretty basic body chemical reactions that affect our body tissues and muscles and all that.

It’s like each of us has our own Department of Transportation road-building crews working on all of these pathways of ours.

“Reverse Work Ahead?” by Alan Levine via Flickr [CCO 1.0 – Public Domain]

The crews are ubiquitous. They are out there every day, maintaining all of these roads running through our bodies as well as building new ways and abandoning or tearing down older ones.

“Road Construction|Kabul” from World Bank Photo Collection via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The crews are tireless. They work 24/7 – even when we are sleeping.

They are also really low-tech, using sometimes ancient and often dull tools on their projects. (These tools, after all, have been in constant use over the course of the thousands of years us humans have been around.)

“Road worker” by shahee ilyas via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Often the crews are kind of confused about where all these trails and paths and roads and highways are supposed to go. A lot of the guys on these crews are also pretty lazy or they are in overwhelm or maybe even burned-out.

“Ruining a Perfectly Good Road” by Chris Waits via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Inevitably, it seems, the neural pathway building projects are usually behind schedule, over-budget, and often badly managed.

Still, the pathways do get built. (They can get bigger and wider. They also fall apart, end in cul-de-sacs that go nowhere, or they fail. Sometimes they are abandoned. Whatever.)

“Half a Sign” by PF Anderson via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

MIND ROAD-CONSTRUCTION (SORT-OF) EXPLAINED

Every day our command-thoughts and nerve impulses go scooting around down these neural pathways zapping a set of muscles or something as they go.

There are natural, built-in feedback loops between our command centers and our body tissues so the body moves we make in response to circumstances and situations outside our body help (or hinder) the efforts of all the neural pathway road crews who are hard at work doing their thing.

If you start consistently doing a new thing that involves the same set of physical body movements done over and over again, an exciting thing happens.

Over time, the road crews start making new pathways so it becomes easier for your thoughts and impulses to trigger your muscles and tissues into doing your new preferred behaviors.

Eventually your body will be able to manifest a new pattern of behavior that will require almost no actual hard thinking from you.

“trompe-l’oeil” by Magilie L’Abbé via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

We call these patterns “routines” and “habits.”

You get to be that starship commander who was always telling his people, “Make it so!” You get to be the “get-‘er-done” guy or gal.

Also, it gets a lot easier for you to keep on using the newer pathways. Your reward is being able to do more stuff that affects the consensus world around you in ways that are satisfying to you.

And, maybe some of the other, older pathways (like the one that had you reaching for that mind-numbing pill or drink or that lovely new pair of shoes or an entire cheesecake or placing that one-in-a-million chance bet) get abandoned as a result.

“Forsaken Road” by drpavloff via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

It’s all good.

WHEN CRISES STRIKE

When you get rocked by some disaster or a series of cataclysms in your outer world, your brain may fall back on using old pathways, which, of course, will affect how your body responds to the effects of the new-to-you catastrophe. You may start reusing old mindsets and patterns of behavior in your attempts to cope with the new set of circumstances.

It’s likely that these older default patterns of behavior won’t work very well. (Probably, this was why you tried so hard to change the patterns in the first place.) It’s also why rampant recidivism is a fact of life.

Anyway, when that happens and you find yourself having to make some major life transition or other, all the assorted advisors in your life (the guys in the lab coats, the ancient wise guys, and assorted other know-it-alls) tell you that you have to stop, step back and reflect, ponder and just think about what you are going to do next.

That’s when it’s really important to “reset your mindset,” it says here.

UMMMM….WHAT ARE “MINDSETS” ANYWAY?

In case you don’t know, “mindsets” are collections of related thoughts and body moves that make up the various ways that people walk through the world. Mindsets are very much like road-maps of the patterns of behaviors that you’ve used to build up your systems and ways of walking.

If you’re into it, you may also collect various good ideas by taking note of the ways other people walk. It’s a good thing to do that because it means more building material for you to use when you build your own pathways.

By being aware of the mindsets you and other people use to walk in the world, you can actually build up a library of the things in your mind. You can go to that mindset library (we call it “memory”) and look over the options and ways of moving that you’ve collected.

“library time” by NoirranMarx via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

You can even think on how to make adjustments to certain of these mindsets that might be useful in the new situations you are facing and, perhaps, you might be able to suss out new ways to move that might possibly help things work out in your favor.

ONE AUTHENTIC TAKE ON A MIND AND BODY IN TRANSIT

Mel Robbins is a world-renowned life-coach. Recently, in the middle of dealing with the effects of the changes wrought in her life during this year of the Great Pandemic, she uploaded this birthday vlog post, “Today is my 52^nd birthday and, honestly, I feel lost….”

Robbins shares her thoughts and her feelings as she faces multiple challenges that require her to transition away from the life she has already built which she has enjoyed very much.

She tells us the steps she has decided she is going to take to get past her own turmoil so she can move herself forward to a new chapter in the story she is making.

Her five steps are these:

Recognize and name the feelings you are experiencing in order to help you get back to clarity.
Move your body so you can get the feelings out of your body.
Do one thing that makes you happy.
Do a brain dump – write out your thoughts and find out what you’re thinking by using that pencil.
Use the mantra, “This is temporary.”

And then she adds one more: Force yourself to start dreaming again. “Dream big,” she says, and she points out that your new dream can help pull you forward out of your sad and overwhelmed state of mind.

This life hack is a good one. It even has the Good Scientific Research Seal of Approval. All the stuff she suggests that you do has been proven to work by assorted scientific studies at one time or another.

I have actually used these suggestions my own self (more times than I like to remember), sometimes with very good results. It works fine when the world-changes are not too radical and not stacked too deep.

A CAVEAT OR TWO ABOUT MIND “RESET BUTTONS”

I do notice, however, that when the events are unfamiliar and new-to-you or when there are too many of them happening all at once, it can quickly become evident that you don’t actually HAVE routines, habits, or actions that you can fall back on, that you know will help you make it past all the confusion and angst you may be experiencing.

The biggest problem with this whole “mindset reset” thing is that, for real, we humans actually do not come equipped with a reset button that automatically activates a switch which can instantaneously put us into a head-space that will allow us to deal effectively with a new-to-us major upset.

“Press to Reset” by Patrick Lauke via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The reset mechanism is actually an add-on that we humans have to build for ourselves over the course of our lives. (Some people use meditation as a reset mechanism. Others go fishing, head for the garden, or take out the knitting needles and yarn. Whatever works.)

A lot of us don’t put the time and effort into building a reset mechanism that we can use in these kinds of situations. Many of us don’t even know that we can actually do that.

So, panic ensues when you feel like you’re skiing down some steep mountain slope ahead of an avalanche. Your internal road crews trip all over each other and run around crazy. They often get buried under the avalanche. ARGH!

“Avalanche” by Maureen Barlin via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]]

When things settle down a bit and you figure out that, hey, you are still alive and you have survived all the battering and bruising, then you can get back to making pathways and start doing your walk again, maybe in a new way.

It’ll be hard going at first, but it will get easier. (That’s just how it works.) The story will continue and you are still going to be the one who makes it happen.

As Robbins says, this here thing is only temporary. More is yet to come. (You can tell THAT is so because you’re still alive.)

It does take time and effort to get on with doing whatever you decide you need to do to get out of whatever mess you got pitched into. There will be missteps. You can try stuff out. Sometimes it works; sometimes not. And you do go on.

ONE MORE TAKEAWAY

The thing I got out of all this mulling around and making up stories is an appreciation for the power of developing your awareness of the worlds inside and outside of yourself as well as the value of the attitudes and mindsets you cling to as you do your walk-about.

I fell in love with this cute and cheery little award-winning animated short film called “Head Up”. It was put together by director Gottfried Mentor and his crew and uploaded to YouTube in 2016 by FilmBilder and Friends. It stars a couple of goofy goats.

Maybe there’s a lesson in there somewhere. For sure there is a smile.

And here’s a poem:

SHEDDING STRATEGOS

I make stories in my head

Of what might be and how.

Sometimes all the dreaming

Covers over what is now.

Strategos, the warrior-mind,

Plans out every step.

At moves and counter-moves

It is particularly adept.

My training has made me so.

My need to map it all out

Arises out of a lifetime full

Of fears, desires and doubt.

The wanting and the need

To always be the best,

To make a mark – some impact –

To be better than the rest.

To lay this all aside

Is a challenge I now face.

The path I have chosen

Leads me to a different place.

I am going back to wonder,

To beauty and to awe,

And I am shedding all the armor,

Standing in the raw.

It’s scary, this thing I am doing.

And, sometimes, I question why

There is this need inside me

To take this path…to try.

But, I have tried the other,

I gave it my best shot.

It left me lost in darkness,

My heart squeezed down to a clot.

This road that I am taking

Leads me to the light,

And I guess I’ll just keep trying

To stay ahead of fright.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit:. “NTS path restoration” by nineonesix via Flickr [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

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

WALK LIKE A "BESTOWER”

Thu, 15 Oct 2020 17:12:24 GMT

Nipun Mehta walks his talk. He’s been doing it for over 20 years now and his walk has been highly successful at helping other people walk theirs.

Mehta was a UC Berkeley computer nerd and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who witnessed and participated in the peak of the DotCom madness. By the time he was in his third year at UC Berkeley, he was at Sun Microsystems doing work that gave him what he says was more money than he needed.

There he was, well on his way to finishing a degree at Berkeley with a career in fabled Silicon Valley ahead of him, and he felt hollow somehow. It felt like he was coming to a personal dead end and he didn’t like it.

DANCING WITH CONNECTIONS

Mehta, along with several other equally successful friends who felt the need to find deeper meaning in their work and skills than they gained from simply working in the for-profit sector, began a project in 1999 called “CharityFocus,” which grew into an incubator for non-profit projects.

Together they worked on designing small, people-sized projects that helped other people satisfy their own impulses for generosity that were more than accumulating more and more capital and then “doing something good” or “giving back” by writing a check.

The following video, “Pay It Forward,” is a TEDx Talk from 2011, in which Mehta talks about the discoveries they made about giving and gifting during the early days of their walks.

CharityFocus was later renamed “ServiceSpace.” It has grown exponentially into a global network of more than 500,000 people who volunteer their skills and their time to help others.

ServiceSpace operates by three rules: no paid staff, no fundraising, and no strings attached. The organization uses the resources they have – volunteer time and energy as well as money given to them by people who like what they are doing.

The momentum they build through their efforts keeps going because each person does what they want and what they can, expecting no pay-backs or accolades for the work they do for others.

The global network continues to thrive and the effects of their efforts – many of them very small — ripple outward in unexpected ways.

Among the projects that have been incubated in or supported by this network of ServiceSpace volunteers over the years are the following:

DailyGood: News that Inspires — a site that promotes uplifting news from around the world;
Karmatube — a site that allows people to access and stream inspirational videos;
Work and Conversations — a site to learn about and from artists;
MovedByLove — a network to promote radical generosity projects in India;
Karma Kitchen — a group of volunteer-run restaurants all over the world that are modeled on the first one started by the ServiceSpace in Berkeley, Calfornia, where people gift for the meals of those who come after them but do not have to pay for what they ate themselves;
AwaKin — a web-forum that helps people access inspirational tools for personal development and connects them to a community of kindred spirits; and
KindSpring which aims to promote a global movement of kindness through sharing stories and ideas like the “smile card” which people can leave behind for the person they have just helped anonymously to invite them to pay the gift forward and consider gifting or helping others anonymously.

Other projects include:

CFtools — a site that helps charities create custom websites at no cost;
Propoor — an internet portal offering information about resources and news relevant to development work in South Asia;
PledgePage — a free online platform that allows people to showcase their favorite causes and fundraise for them.

Two things strike me about all of the ServiceSpace philanthropic projects:

They are mostly online platforms and spaces that share useful or inspirational information that engender or foster actions that show kindness and caring.
They allow like-minded people to gather together so they can do small things that make big differences in the lives of other people.

Sharna Goldseker is the executive director of a large New York City-based nonprofit philanthropy consulting organization, 21/64, that works with families with funds, foundations and other family enterprises to make effective choices in charitable contributions and such.

She points out that donating “time, talent or treasure” is often the focus in the philanthropy world, but “ties” (the networks people have and maintain) are just as valuable.

Today, she says, connections can help with strategic ideas, inspirations and more, multiplying the effectiveness of any money gift exponentially.

“HELP!” by drburtoni via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

And, it seems to me, if everyone in an organization is an unpaid volunteer and the actions that further a cause are all doable by individuals or very small groups, then it’s likely that little helpful projects get off the ground and gain momentum a heck of a lot faster than some big vision-project with a massive name like the “War on Poverty” or some gargantuan goal that requires hundreds or thousands of dollars and an army of folks to implement.

It is sort of like bootstrapping a business except what you’re bootstrapping is an endeavor that is basically about reaching out a helping hand to someone else. It seems to me that ServiceSpace excels at developing and providing vehicles to do just that.

“His Hand” by Jlhopgood via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

The unlooked-for accolades came to the group and to Mehta anyway. As the front man for the movement, Mehta has been the recipient of many honors and awards over the years, including the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the President’s Vounteer Service Award and Wavy Gravy’s Humanitarian Award.

He is a regular presenter of TEDxTalks and a tireless advocate for his “Giftivism” (gifting + social activism) concept before wide-ranging audiences from inner city youth in Memphis to academics in London to international dignitaries at the United Nations.

He has also served on advisory boards of the Seva Foundation, the Dalai Lama Foundation, and Greater Good Science Center.

And his way of walking continues to spread.

Giving” by Ilya Haykinson via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

THE GIFT OF LABOR

Indigenous Australian Murri visual artist, activist and academic Lilla Watson is often credited with this quote:

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

“Help giving” by Bournemouth Borough Council via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

According to Wikipedia, one possible origin of the quote is a speech given by Watson at the 1985 United Nations Decade for Women Conference in Nairobe.

(Watson has always said that she feels uncomfortable with being credited with something that was born of a collective process and prefers that it be credited to “Aboriginal activists group, Queensland, 1970s.”)

For decades before the speech, an indigenous NGO (non-governmental organization) in Sri Lanka called the Sarvodaya Shramadana Sangamaya movement was already living and working this precept – outside volunteers working with the residents of many of the poorest villages in the island-country to build strong and vital communities and then move forward to help their neighbors as well.

The idea for a community-building effort began in Sri Lanka in 1958 as a government project and one of the bureaucrats tasked with getting the thing started coined the word “shramadana” (gift of labor) to describe the type of help needed from the volunteers.

In response to the idea of this initiative, a young high school teacher, A. T. Ariyartna, organized a group of forty high school students and twelve of his colleagues from Nalanda College Colombo to conduct an “educational experiment” at a remote back-of-beyond village, Kanatoluwa.

They made a camp outside the village proper and together the outsiders and the villagers worked to improve village living conditions.

In the process, Ariyartna’s students and teachers also began gathering information about what the basic needs of the villagers were and how they could be met. Their studies later expanded into exploring ways that sustained and enhanced the lives of the villagers as well.

They kept asking the question, “What makes a strong, viable community?” Using their research they developed better and better ways to help the villagers help themselves get to better living conditions.

The first success led to other villages and more success, more volunteers, and more community-building until, eventually, after about 15 years of effort, the government recognized the group’s work and lent its support as well.

“Heaven and Soul Connection” by Alice Lee via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

The movement has become a network of more than 15,000 villages now. It has impacted the lives of millions of people and has gone through many changes while keeping their central idea the same.

At each village, a team of student volunteers (aged 16 to 24) and their adult leaders stay for a minimum of seven days and work for six to eight hours daily on projects alongside the villagers on projects that the residents have decided will enhance their village life.

Experienced community organizers who are members of the Sarvodaya Shramadana movement help the villagers work their way through the process of deciding which project should be tackled first.

Hundreds of villagers work on these projects as well, and the work continues even after the volunteers leave.

Wells are dug where clean water is needed. Houses may be renovated or latrines constructed.

Developing a system for cleaning up the public areas, removing trash, creating a healthier environment and figuring out how to maintain the resultant orderliness is often an option tackled fairly early on by the villagers.

Establishing community gardens is another popular project.

As the basic survival needs of the villagers are met, the communities begin building schools and developing better market places or allowing room for the connections that foster the development of small businesses and trade.

The list of possible projects often grows larger as the villagers and their helpers learn more about how a healthy community works. Often the initial projects blossom into other civic projects that the villagers go on to implement by themselves using the techniques and strategies they’ve learned along the way.

Social activists from other countries heard about the movement and started coming ‘round to see what they were doing.

In 1978, American social activist Joanna Macy traveled to Sri Lanka to learn firsthand about the movement. After her visit she wrote,

“I am convinced that the chief strength of the movement lies in the fact that it asks people what they can give, rather than what they want to get. This is empowering to people. Even if all you can give is a betel leaf or a matchbox of rice, you walk differently on the earth as a bestower.”

“Politics of Food Service Learning Project” by University of Hawaii West Oahu via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

Now, isn’t THAT a beautiful concept?

BANANA PATCH TOM

As a counterbalance to these stories and yet another take on the subject of walking on the earth as a ”bestower,” I am reminded of a Maui character who, for me, represents the essence of a generous spirit.

“Banana Patch Tom” was a leftover from the Banana Patch, an “Open Land community” that thrived for about five years during the late 1960’s in a remote East Maui valley that was filled with banana trees.

Bananas” by Gerard Adriaanse via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The land, owned by David Joseph, was made available by him and his wife Hannah to the young, so-called “counter-culture” people who were flocking to the islands at the time. These kind-hearted folks wanted these “good young people” to have a roof over their heads and they provided a place for them to build their own community.

Unfortunately, their generosity made the Josephs a dartboard for the County officials and other residents who were not happy with the wave of strange that was invading the island at the time.

The pressure on them for their act of generosity was large. They eventually sold the land and agreed to have the 26 hand-built, not-to-County-code houses in the valley demolished in order to mitigate varied (and growing) fines and civil charges that had been laid on them.

Click the button below for the archived story about the Banana Patch episode by Maui Lahaina Sun reporter Buck Quayle.

The new owner allowed Tom to remain on the property after the rest of the “hippie” community left.

Tom was a familiar local figure for years. Dressed in rags and castoffs that looked like throwaways that even indigent folks would reject, he hitched rides to and from the remote valley into the communities of Paia and Haiku.

His walk was a kind of stomping glide and he covered a lot of ground with it. He was invariably cheerful and clean, and he was more than a little God-mad.

In several of the tiny local shops in the towns he frequented were coin boxes at the cash register that Tom had fashioned to collect change from the store’s customers. The boxes had little messages that asked for donations for his “Save The Children” child sponsorship campaign.

With the money he collected from those boxes, Tom sponsored more than a dozen children over the years. For a dollar a day, he could affect the lives of children in dire straits in some of the most hard-pressed places in the world.

His only topics of conversation were about those children. He was proud of their triumphs. He was devastated when they went off-track. It was a large part of his life.

It did not matter that he was a gaunt raggedy guy with few material possessions. He was a hero in the way he lived as a bestower.

He was also a humble reminder of the power of one sincere person who makes an effort to help change somebody else’s world for the better.

“Love Offering” by Naomi King via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

And that, too, is a beautiful concept.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Here is one more beautiful concept:

The Hawaiian word for “help” is “kōkua.” It means lending a hand and giving when you can. The giving is most valued when it is done without any expectation of personal gain or renumeration.

The giving is not a trade agreement. You give because you can without imposing any obligation on the other person to give something back to you. You give because it makes you feel good.

The word also means being considerate of the other people in your world and starting from a stance of being cooperative and kind just because it helps everything work better.

In all of the blather about gifting and charity work, the “gift economy,” and all that, most folks don’t seem to notice that there are two parts to this giving equation: There is a giver; there is a receiver.

The receiver is a person too and, perhaps, their greatest gift to the giver is their gracious acceptance of the help that is offered.

If a gift is too large or too much, all kinds of resentments can build up in a receiver and there is always a temptation to take advantage of this fool of a giver who is not seeing the person who is in front of him or her as just another person.

There also can be lash-back, where the receiver will actually mess up or abuse the gift or the giver. (What? Do you think you’re better than me?)

The whole kōkua thing is a dance, and in the dance you do need to see your partner and adapt to his or her movements in order to keep from tripping all over yourself or the other person.

There needs to be gracefulness and graciousness as well. The kindness cannot be overbearing or intrusive.

The thing about “kōkua” is that the word can be used as a noun or as a verb. You can kōkua, give or help, or you can BE a kōkua – the one who helps.

The world gets to be a pretty good place when you are a kōkua surrounded by other kōkua and all of you kōkua one another, doing the kōkua dance together.

“Giving Joy” by Carol Van Hook via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Here’s a poem:

NOT A DEAD MERMAID

I’m sorry.

I’m not good at

Dealing with your crazy.

I see it.

I understand why

You feel you need to

Do like that.

I do.

But, my world is built on good faith,

On hearts that reach out,

And hands that touch,

And arms enfolding one another

In the warm.

My world is constructed out of

Promises given and promises kept

And visions of human brightness

Wandering together through the darkness,

Holding hands and walking each other home.

Every lie you tell me,

Every broken promise,

Every twisty move

Bent towards some slight advantage for you

That turns my small generosities

Into an access-point for the

Insertion of some siphon you’ve constructed

To suck away all the sweet and tasty bits of me

Into that greedy maw of yours,

Trips me up and pulls me into

The morass of uncertainties and doubts and fears

That surround us always.

They make the Dark get deeper, more widespread.

You are really good at what you do.

You are a sharp one, you.

Slicker than snot, you are.

I am an easy target –

Me, with this raw and bleeding heart

All open to the wind-blown sands of time

And the ornery vicissitudes of

Just walking upright through this world,

Part of the parade of all the other pilgrims

On their journey to some other space.

It’s the price I pay, I suppose,

For reaching toward the sparkle

Of the joyousness of connection,

For dancing through fields of

Lavender-headed grasses

Under a golden sky,

For holding onto dreams and

Other glowing ephemeral enormities.

I am not fortified.

I have few defenses against one like you.

But, if I slam shut all the doors and windows

I’ve worked so hard to keep open,

You win.

So does the Dark.

The candle I have lit gets blown out.

The uncertainties crowd in.

If I give in to the despair that rises up in me,

Then I’d be drowning in a dead gray sea

Of rotting protozoa,

Going down for the third time.

I’d be just another one of those floating dead mermaids,

Drifting around with hair artfully spread out,

The subject of yet another

Adolescent girl’s dark fantasy painting.

Hmmm….

My only answer to all of that

(The only one that works)

Is to turn away from you.

I’ll go find some other ones

Who will play nice,

Who will be real –

The ones who are building worlds

That more closely resemble mine.

I know I’ll wonder, though, about

All the ones who didn’t get away

And I’ll wonder about you,

Sitting alone in your darkness

Sucking out the marrow from

The bones of their broken dreams.

I will probably cry.

By Netta Kanoho

HEADER PHOTO CREDIT: “‘Giving Wings to the Dream’, Calgary” by Bernard Spragg.NZ via Flickr, art by Doug Driediger [Public Domain]

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

ALL OF US ARE FREEDOM’S SLAVES

Thu, 01 Oct 2020 23:21:20 GMT

“Freedom’s slave.”

This phrase is fascinating to me. The words evoke a sense of mayhem and magic, and of paradox and painful lessons.

A world-traveling friend gave the words to me as a gift. (He knows I collect such things.) He told me he had seen a tattoo of that phrase two different times in his many years of travel.

One of the tattoos was inked on the forearm of a fellow traveler, a scammer and nascent chaos-hound traveling through Southeast Asia.

The other one, which he saw years later, was on the chest of a European refugee living in Ecuador and working on stabilizing a life for himself and his lady who was earning large as a mercenary soldier in some Middle Eastern skirmish somewhere.

I asked what the phrase meant. My friend did not know, so I went looking.

The best… okay…the most dazzling source I came up with for this phrase was the opus, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, created by, arguably, one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, Charles Mingus, in 1963.

The phrase appeared in the third movement, (Soul Fusion) Freewoman And Oh, This Freedom’s Slave Cries.

In the book, FREEDOM IS, FREEDOM AIN’T: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties, award-winning scholar-author Scott Saul opines that for Mingus, “it was those deprived of freedom who understood its meaning best.”

“It depends on the cage you’re in” by Guercio via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Apparently, according to Saul, Mingus believed that freedom manifested itself in the struggle against bondage.

Saul says that in Mingus’s vernacular, “slavery” was a metaphor for the self’s limitations as well as for the system of relationships and non-contractual work we encounter and develop in the world.

He quotes Mingus as saying in the liner notes for the opus album, “We create our own slavery, but I’m going to get through and find out what kind of man I am – or die.”

That is such a powerful concept, I am thinking. After all, legal “freedom” is an empty promise if you are denied the freedom to develop and express your own character or if you deny that freedom to yourself.

SO, WHAT’S THAT GOT TO DO WITH THE PRICE OF BEANS?

“Dried Beans” by mamichan via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Oh, wow.

All this playing around with yet another metaphor seems to have led me once again to another world-class paradox.

This all started out with me trying to come up with some sort of post about work and business and taking charge of the reins and all that. Instead, here we are looking once again at another puzzlement that kinda-sorta relates to that topic.

(Funny, how that always seems to happen when poet-brain takes over.)

“Freedom” by Daniel Enchev via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Now that we have jumped feet-first into the deep waters of this here swimming hole, let me present another huge mind-twister concept:

EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US HUMANS IS “SELF-EMPLOYED”.

Please note that the official definition of someone who is “self-employed” is actually a legal fiction, as defined by the people in charge of making sure our consensus world thought-construct keeps spinning along.

This definition is especially designed to facilitate figuring out how much taxes the lot of us are supposed to pay for the privilege of going our own, “non-traditional” way.

(“Tradition,” in this case, probably began about the time the Industrial Revolution revved up and people turned into human resources, but that’s another story.)

“Busy” by Tim Bouwer via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

So, take a look at this:

Even if we work for “the Man,” nobody else cares as much as we do about our own needs, wants, or dreams. Our wish lists are why we trade our time (a.k.a. our precious life) for lucre and bowls of pottage, after all.

Nobody else cares as much as we do about how our heart-people are cared-for and the lives they are able to live. Nobody else cares as much as we do about how well we can keep body and soul together and how adept we are at fostering our own self-expression, happiness and well-being.

And the for-real deal (if you’re living in any kind of society with a whole bunch of other people) is that all those other folks are not necessarily obliged to give a damn about any of your concerns.

We are all working on it, finding our own way through the mazes made up of other people’s assorted bucket lists and shovel lists as we work on our own.

“Freedom” by alessandro silipo via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

THE PARADOX OF FREEDOM

People who fantasize about “absolute” or “ultimate” freedom seem to believe that it means they can unthinkingly do whatever they want when they want and how they want all the time.

“Freedom” by Thomas Hawk via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

The ones who go for that particular Paradise-vision of theirs tend to end up crashing headlong into…you guessed it…Other People and THEIR ideas about how this consensus-world of ours is supposed to work.

This leads to the commonly held get-‘er-done dictum that urges us to assume more and more responsibility for what we do and how it affects the world. It leads as well to all kinds of quotes and thoughts about how the price of more and more freedom is more and more responsibility.

This then, apparently, tends to lead to arguing for (or against) developing and exerting more control over the world (i.e., the Other People) around us and on and on.

I am sure that you have heard all the arguments before. It would take way too long to go over them all because each side carries one kind of truth or another and the debates for and against each side of this freedom/responsibility/control thing have been going on for a very long time.

Even Eleanor Roosevelt, the American first lady who truly believed in personal empowerment once said, “In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die.”

“Eleanor Roosevelt portrait 1933” via Wikipedia commons [unknown author, Public Domain]

Then she continued, “And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”

Wise guys and other ancients tell us that each of us stands in the middle of our own Universe, making choices and taking actions of one sort or another.

Standing at that center in our own middles and following the dictates of taking a stance that honors it is what these wise dudes called “freedom.”

Inevitably, however, we each bump into the Universes of the other people around us and when we are forced to make accommodations for these Other People’s world-views we call those moves for making room the opposite of freedom.

I’m not sure whether “un-freedom” is a real word, but it does seem to me that if our lives are shaped by the choices we make and the actions we take, then this Freedom/Un-Freedom thing is going to have a direct impact of one sort or another on ourselves and on other people.

“Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at age 79” by Joseph Karl Steier via Wikipedia Commons [Public Domain]

The amazing German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once pointed out,

“It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

Since we are all in this consensus world together, we do affect and are affected by the walks we and the people we meet each are making, which does lead us back to the paradox of freedom.

As one old wisdom quote (attributed unconvincingly to an assortment of wise guys and thought leaders) says, “Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”

ONE MORE TAKE-AWAY

Reaching for our own freedom in a world with all these other people in it makes us all “Freedom’s slaves,” it seems to me.

“Freedom” by Kitty Cat via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

Until we can get a handle on where our actions are likely to take us and whether that is where we want to go, we are probably going to keep spinning around and around, doing this, that and the other, and trying to decide which way we want to go.

“Freedom” by Ken Mattison via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

And perhaps the way out of this tangle of a paradoxical dilemma is the one that’s explained in this 2019 YouTube video, published by The School of Life, “The Hard Work of Being Lazy.”

Here’s a poem:

HOMESICK

Okay.

I think I’ve got it:

In me there is a tendency

To hide, to run, to fly

To get away from all

The lessons that force me

To look deep into the maelstrom

Of dark, roiling emotions

That form a vortex, a whirlpool,

In the depths of me, whipping ’round,

Pulling at me, down and down

Into some center that I know

But am trying very hard to avoid.

I know (don’t ask me how) that

When the vortex stops and stills

There will be such a sadness there,

Bluer than a cloudless sky

And more transparent,

That pierces into the core of me

And touches again a most wondrous

Thing that I have lost somehow,

Maybe because of all of

My wanderlusting wonder-lust.

I am homesick then, yearning for

The truest of connections.

I want to pick up all of my marbles,

End the game, and announce

That I’m going home.

Never mind what the rules say.

That makes me feel like a wimp —

As if I am admitting that

I cannot handle the rough-and-tumble,

That I am too weak for it.

Pride it is that makes me run:

Lucifer, Morning Star, the brightest of us all,

Has got nothing on me.

One of his band of fallen ones am I.

They say that babies, newly born,

Still remember the face of God

And they come into the world

Trailing streamers and bits

Of His radiance and glory.

Maybe when all of the spinning stops

You can catch a glimpse again of the joy

You gave up when you chose to wander

And taste and touch and feel

All your separateness and pride.

(And, of course, the kicker is

That He holds you in His hand anyhow.)

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “Freedom” [11] by Ozge Gurer Vatandas via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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

FLOW WITH YOUR GO

Fri, 25 Sep 2020 18:30:43 GMT

It occurred to me that the most effective “time management” stance is basically saying “no” to all the things you’re asked to do – either by your own self or by other people — until you get to a thing to which you can or want or have to say “yes.”

The “yes” is your “Go.”

Ideally whatever task pulls that “yes” from you is one that you think will make some sort of difference in your life – one you really want to happen, one that adds something to the life you are living.

Sometimes, though, the tasks that carry your Go are buried under all of the other stuff you have to do. Time management, if you choose to use it, can be a big help when you want to flow with your Go better.

Advice about time management abounds. Dip into YouTube and you’ll come up with so many how-to’s about slicing up and dicing your days in a myriad of different ways that your head will feel like exploding.

Trying to stuff more and more things-to-do into teenier and teenier bits of time while watching the clocks, calendars and other time measures can get really confusing.

In many people, it gives rise to feelings of overwhelm. Me, I always feel like I’m getting cross-eyed after a certain point when I venture into these time management experiments and explorations.

I sure don’t want to get stuck that way!

The conventional antidote for that very common reaction to time managing moves, the advisers say, is to lay down systems and routines so that you don’t have to think about it.

First, you think and plan using whatever methods the experts (and every other person you meet on the street) might suggest, and then you do and do and do. There are all kinds of reviewing and re-thinking sessions along the way as well, so it really doesn’t get you away from the thinking.

The thing is, all of those suggestions and tips you encounter can work. How not?

After all, the guys and the gals in the white lab coats have been studying this stuff for decades now. They’ve come up with all kinds of findings that back up these suggestions.

All these things they tell you are supposedly research-based and scientifically or experientially correct or whatever. There are just so very MANY of them. (Yeep!)

Every one of all those Achievement Junkie hacks and techniques and systems and such can help you get lots and lots of things done in all of your born days of striving and doing.

“Hurry” by Cliff Johnson via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

The only problem with the whole stance, it seems to me, is that you do spend a heck of a lot of time thinking about Time-with-a-capital-T. You spend your days getting pressed for time and having a devil of a time trying to get to be a legend in your own time and so on.

It can get exhausting. At the end of the day (or week or month or year) of doing this stance, your world becomes a massive treadmill that just goes around and around and around.

The meaning and the mana sort of leaks out of your life as you make that wheel spin.

THINKING ON TIME

That road has been trod by many feet and every one of the travelers on the road (which pretty much means all of us humans who have ever drawn breath) has learned a thing or three about how to cram all the activities they want or need to do into each day that passes.

Some people can cram so much into the time they are given that the rest of us stand back amazed. Other times the pile of stuff some people attempt to do just turns into an enormous avalanche that falls down all over their heads and crushes them.

Time is precious, our faithful, cliché-driven advisers tell us on YouTube videos and in person-to-person coachings and courses as well as in books and articles and posts.

They tell us that even though we all get the same amount of time every single day we are alive, we don’t get to keep even one nanosecond of it with us.

We do get to hold on to memories of the things we’ve done and seen and experienced, but memories are not units of time. They’re just a different sort of thought-construct.

“Reverie” by Thierry Draus [CC BY 2.0]

We can replay them and use them over and over again until they wear out or morph into other constructs, but that’s another story.

We all get the same amount of time every day, it’s true, but Time-Its-Own-Self just flows and goes on and on until we are gone. Poof! We leave the stage that is the world, but Time keeps on going.

You can’t hold Time in your hand.

You can’t turn it back.

You can’t actually “save” it.

There’s no way you can hoard it. (Where would you put it?)

All you can do with it is use it in whatever way you choose.

“Too Much Time” by Josie Elderslie via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Time keeps everything from happening all together and all at once, which can be a good thing, especially when you think about things like explosions. There is a built-in orderliness to this world of ours because of this concept we’ve developed.

Time is a human thought-construct too, you know. I’ve never met a dog yet who has any notion of this thing we call Time. Have you?

“Kaleidoscope” by alamodestuff via Flickr [CC By-NC-ND 2.0]

Time is also sort of stretchy, like one of those lovely French net shopping bags that can hold an amazing amount of produce when you go shopping at a farmer’s market. Depending on how we happen to feel at any given moment, the speed of the flow of the Time going through our days can seem short or long.

“How did it get so late so soon?” the late Dr. Seuss once asked. And, probably, just like the rest of us, he also asked, “Why does it take so l-o-o-o-ong?”

“Me and My Shadow” by Jeff Sullivan via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

We spend Time to do things that help us fulfill our varied and various needs and wants and wishes. We can give, trade, or sell our Time to do things that help other people fulfill their own needs and wants and wishes. We use Time to reflect and think on what we’ve done.

Time and doing seem to be intrinsically braided together. Everything we do comes at the cost of our spending some amount of our precious Time.

It seems to me, however, that very often we forget that Time is only just one measure of our “Life” (which is what we call the doing part of it all).

“Rainbow on the Road to Hana” by Paul Nelson via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

One of my cousins once complained that focusing on measuring Time and thinking about what you do or don’t do with it actually ends up with you having lots and lots of paper — charts and spreadsheets and journal entries and like that.

When you get through all the exercises and head-games, you still have to figure out what you’re actually going to go DO with your day.

Hmmm. She does have a point.

LEVEL UP BY TAKING YOUR LIFE TO TASKS

Here’s a cool thought: Remember the part about how Time and doing are intrinsically braided together? It’s a given that you need Time to do anything and anything you do uses up Time.

So, looking at when (and how) you do whatever tasks you want to do and working on getting better at doing these things well and in the right order is very likely to help us use our allotted Time better too. This is a good thing.

We can actually get a handle on tasks. We can do them over. We can do them better. We can dump them in a fit of pique, cool off, and then wander on back to pick them up and try again.

Tasks are a heck of a lot easier to get hold of than that Time-thing.

“Just the Beginning” by Trina Alexander via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

One of the most refreshing explanations of a task-oriented focus is in this 2020 YouTube video, “Time Management and Time Focusing” by Rick Green, the founder of TotallyADD.com. I just found it.

In the video, Green tells us that focusing on our tasks in an orderly sort of way is more likely to get better results than trying to corral the amorphousness of Time.

He gives us a really simple plan. For each task we want to do, we need to stand there where we are and look at where we want to be. And then, we figure out how to get to the end of the task by asking a small series of questions:

What do I have to do right now?
What do I have to do next?
And what do I have to do after that?
And what do I have to do if I want to be there by then?

This makes sense, right?

He says the technique can be applied to a small thing like being on time for a dental appointment as well as a big thing like having a wife and family and a house of your own by the time you’re a certain age.

He doesn’t promise the world will bow to your greatness and shower you with gifts. He does promise that if you use it, you can finish a lot more of the stuff you need to do despite whatever challenges you face.

Totally ADD, by the way, is an organization built by people who have problems with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD/ADHD) and their tribes (family, friends, business associates and so on).

The group is dedicated to helping adults with ADD/ADHD by providing social support, tools and ideas for workarounds, as well as an interactive community where they can get the help they need to create a life they love.

The group is a Patreon crowd-funded group. If you’d like to learn more about the group and its mission click the button below.

(If you like what you see, maybe you might want to consider becoming a sponsor.)

SO…WHAT’S IT GONNA BE ABOUT, RALPHIE?

[Sorry….I had to do that.

To the young ‘uns for whom the headline reference above just went whooshing past, check out six-time Grammy Award winner Dionne Warwick’s magnificent rendition of an old Burt Bacharach song, “Alfie,” which was recorded by over 40 artists, many of whom sang it before Warwick did.

(Click on the title of the song and enjoy yourself.)

None of the other song iterations were better than Warwick’s. Hers was, after all, the voice for which Bacharach wrote the song.]

Okay. Entertainment break over….back to the spiel.

Even if you get the time/task management thing hammered and your abilities and skills that help you to get all kinds of things done becomes huge, your level of satisfaction with your moves and your life is going to be dictated by one other aspect of this whole get-‘er-done thing: your intention.

Your intention is, perhaps, even more important than your talent and your skill and all of your doing.

Intention is your cheat sheet that helps you choose when you are going to answer “yes” to a task you’ve been asked to do.

It helps you to see your Go well enough so that you can decide and choose the tasks that are worth doing from among the many actions you can take.

It is the reminder snapshot of your WHY that you’ve stuck somewhere visible and it is your answer to that universal question, “What do you WANT?”

Keeping that reminder in your face helps you make your own way to your own dream and helps you find your Go.

One of the most heartful monologues I’ve heard about this important aspect of getting good at flowing with your Go is this one by UK abstract artist Ed Swarez, “Brutal advice on why you’re not succeeding as an artist.” It was published in 2017 by Swarez Art.

Swarez is spot-on with his thoughts about wanting something badly enough to actually do the necessary work that allows you to achieve your biggest dreams. He’s also right-on about the prices you sometimes have to pay to get there.

“I will take my time, I have the shade of my hat” by Rawle C. Jackman via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Here’s a poem:

FOR THE GOOD ONE

Ah….

I heard you are gone now.

No one thought to tell me.

(Or maybe they did try,

But our paths had separated

Too much for hearsay’s reach.)

My dear, we were something

Back in the day.

Nobody could touch us;

We were going to play our way.

Nobody, no, nobody could stop us

(Nobody ‘cept you and me.)

It was me on the left and you on the right.

And we never backed down from any fight.

You had my back, once upon a time,

And I cut you slack ‘cause, together,

We were going to climb so very high.

But, you turned left at one crossroad,

While I took myself to the right.

We waved to one another

‘Til we were lost from each other’s sight.

I will remember the good times,

The warm, the laughs, the joys.

I’ve already released the memories

Of the hurts and the stabs,

The pinpricks and jabs of

Perceived betrayals, large and small.

They were prices we paid for the choices we made

That stood between us like stark fortress walls.

Your faith made your circles smaller

While mine led me to seek stranger skies.

But, I will always love you,

My obstinate, mule-headed sister….

Take with you, my fondest goodbyes.

By Netta Kanoho

Header Photo credit: “Let It Begin” by Tim via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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

THE PARADOX OF EXPECTATIONS

Thu, 17 Sep 2020 19:29:47 GMT

Expectations shape our lives.

Expectations are the stories that we tell ourselves when we wake up in the morning and begin walking through our days and nights. They can either help provide the motivation for us to get out of bed or make us want to pull the covers back over our heads.

Expectations are the stories into which we fit our actions as we move along our journeys by ourselves and with others to our own projected destinations. Not only do we make up these stories about ourselves, but we also make up stories about the world we live in and about the other people in our lives.

“Future Expectations” by loren chipman via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

They are built up by our anticipation of the desired outcomes for any adventure we undertake as well as the fears that we may not get what we want.

Expectations can help us build the WHY of our walks as well as provide the impetus for us to go do something. They can also be used to build up the WHY NOT of our walks — the obstacles we have to overcome before we can go do something.

They are all tied firmly to our needs, desires, values and beliefs. We use them to make a mental picture of how we think things “should” be and sometimes they can blind us to how things really are.

EXPECTATIONS AS ANNOTATED ROAD MAPS

It occurred to me that expectations are very much like the animist Australian Aboriginal songlines – Dreamtime maps in their heads — that tell the indigenes where they are in the world and the opportunities and dangers they are likely to encounter there.

These ancient peoples use their songlines to help them get to where they want to go in their harsh and beautiful world.

“Another Aboriginal Beauty” by Michael Loke via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Like those Aboriginal songlines, our expectations are built up from all the past events and experiences that we have lived through. Stories that other people tell about their own experiences add to our store of expectations as well.

It’s like every one of us has our very own catalog of (often unexamined) deeply held beliefs that are either handed over to us or that we have constructed all on our own over time.

“Great Expectations” by Thomas Hawk via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Some of our expectations are “realistic” and are based on historic (it-worked-the-last-time) or traditional (this-is-how-we-always-do-it) models and mindsets. These kinds of expectations usually result in your seeing what you and the whole rest of your world believe.

They can also result in your not seeing what you don’t believe. It is a given, apparently. If you cannot dream that a thing is even possible, then it probably will NOT be possible…for you.

Until British athlete Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile barrier in 1954, everybody thought it was impossible. After all, running a mile (1,609.344 meters for all you metric folks) in four minutes translates to a speed of 15 miles (24.14 km) per hour.

Nobody thought it could be done. Nobody did it.

After Bannister, more than 1,400 male athletes have completed the run in under 4 minutes. Several of them broke the record just months after his record-breaking run.

The current record time for the mile (3 minutes, 43.12 seconds) was set in 1999 by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco.

“The Miracle Mile Statue” by Jack Harmon (Photo by Paul Joseph from Vancouver, BC Canada) via Wikimedia [CC BY 2.0]

Other expectations we hold may not be as mundane and well-grounded as the historic or traditional mindsets.

Sometimes those unconventional sorts of expectations might prove to be springboards, launching pads or catapults for going where nobody has ever been before.

“High Expectations” by Joachim Dobler [CC BY-ND 2.0]

Often these so-called “unrealistic” expectations may become the seedbeds for sprouting new ideas and concepts that have never been seen before.

These expectations are derided as “magical thinking” by more practical-minded folks who warn the dreamers that those sorts of expectations can be sidetracks that are distracting or maybe even downright dangerous.

“Expectations” by Ralf Bechner via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Sometimes the practical ones are right, and sometimes not.

Whatever. The expectations we hold dear do provide the data we use to make our own personal maps of our world and to build the plans for our personal conquest of that world.

“Beyond Expectations” by topanoris via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

The different expectations we each hold are also why two people can stand together in the same place and see very different things.

We stick “pins” (tasks accomplished, complications overcome, goals reached, hopes fulfilled, and so on and so forth) on the maps we make using the data of our expectations because we think that will help us suss out where we are on this journey of ours.

We use our history of expectations met (or not) to develop our trust (or non-trust) in the world and in the places, circumstances, other beings, or things we encounter along the way.

“Expectations by John W. Iwanski via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Alternatively, you could think of the accumulation of expectations we pile up as us trying to jump ahead in a really engaging book and take a peek at the ending because we can’t stand the suspense anymore.

We really want to know whether it’s worth the effort of slogging through all the complications and convolutions of the thing to get to the very end. The only problem is the book is invisible and the ending hasn’t been written yet. Duh!

Expectations are a really big deal.

EXPECTATIONS ARE NOT GOALS

Some people mistake expectations for goals. They are not quite the same.

Example. You want a cup of coffee. You are hoping for a very good — possibly perfect — cup of coffee that will clear the morning fog out of your head handily so you can go tackle the rest of your day.

You set the water to boiling. You set up your pour-over drip coffee maker: You stick a filter holder over your cup. You put in a paper filter, choose your beans and grind them up, spoon the coffee grounds into your drip filter thing and then pour the boiling water into the contraption and let the water drip through the grounds.

Okay.

You met your goal. You now have a cup of coffee.

“Yea. I drink a lot of coffee.” By Carl Raether via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

You take a sip. Either the coffee is too weak, too strong, or just right. If it’s just right, your expectations have been fulfilled, you did it right, and all is right with the world. You can get on with your day.

Does that help you see the difference between goals and expectations?

GOALS are concrete. They are based on reality and facts and have a beginning and an end (some sort of result). In this example, you made the moves you needed to make and you got your cup of coffee.

EXPECTATIONS – the feelings and judgments you make about the result of your efforts – are based on more nebulous things. They are based on hopes and opinions and beliefs (a.k.a. “standards”).

Expectations” by Aleksandar Lazovski via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

You have the cup of coffee in your hand, but if your mouth and mind are not happy with the result of your actions, chances are you won’t be so happy either.

Every single action you take or don’t take is going to have this same dynamic. You’ll do a thing and get a result and then you’ll do the critique, comparing the real to your expectations of it. If you have Steve Jobs-like stringent requirements for your cup of joe, there are bound to be disappointments and maybe even angst.

So, there you are with your cup of coffee. Let’s say it is not satisfactory. Maybe it becomes a source of stress or even anxiety if you happen to be a tender and sensitive soul who really, really CARES about your morning coffee. What happens then?

Caffeine is caffeine, right? No? Hmmm….

If you’re really disappointed, you will probably either go make another cup of coffee or else you will shrug and drink the thing down with appropriate grimaces, grinching, and grief.

The difference between goals and expectations is just that: Expectations are the measure of what you define as “good enough” (or “better” or “best”).

“Measuring” by tracy ducasse via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

If the not-so-good cup of coffee meets your caffeine delivery expectations, then you can call it fine and focus on your next task — one about which you might have higher expectations and care about more. If the drink really doesn’t meet your expectations, then you have to decide whether it’s worth the effort to make another cup of coffee. And so on.

High expectations can turn even the simplest thing into an aggravation or a stress-point. Only you can decide whether it is worth all the agita.

“Expectations|Mail for me, by any chance?” by Vegard Iglebæk [CC BY-NC 2.0

AND THEN THERE ARE ALL THOSE OTHER PEOPLE

Just as our expectations of ourselves and the world we live in shape our lives and the lives of the people around us, the expectations of the other people in our lives also shape us. We humans are hard-wired to connect, after all.

One of my favorite Bobby McFerrin videotaped performances is this YouTube video published by the World Science Festival in 2009. McFerrin “played” the audience like an instrument, hopping around on the stage and leading the group through what music experts call a major pentatonic scale of notes.

“We were talking about expectations,” McFerrin says when he jumps out of the chair set among a group of neuroscientists on the stage.

In the video he proceeds to demonstrate the way humans resonate to one another through music as a counterpoint to the dry-as-dust discussion of the subject by the lab coat guys.

At the beginning of his demonstration, the philosopher-musician gives the audience a note which he assigns to the place where he is standing on the stage. Then McFerrin gives them a second note when he hops to another adjacent place on the stage.

He then proceeds to hop around and signals that the audience should sound those two notes and then other notes that are a part of a song he is building.

Together, in unison and with very little prompting, the audience members figure out the other notes needed in the musical sequence as the “Lord of Music” moves from place to place through his song just as if there was one of those electronic piano keyboards embedded in the stage floor.

There is a lovely palpable sense of the underlying connectedness of us humans about the whole thing.

And then there is the well-known “Pygmalion Effect,” a concept which was built on the research done in the early 1960s by Harvard psychologist Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobsen at an elementary school just south of San Francisco, California.

The Effect is explained and illustrated in this 2019 YouTube video by Sprouts, a Patreon-supported group of vloggers who use animation and simple language to explain complex ideas.

In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was a sculptor in Cyprus who swore off women when he observed the daughters of Propoetus prostituting themselves. He carved himself a statue of a beautiful ideal woman out of ivory and, ironically, he fell in love with it. In the old story, at least, the sculptor’s love and adoration transformed the statue into a real woman.

How other people see us and react to us does affect our own perceptions of ourselves.

The question at the end of the Sprouts video is an important one: “…is there a way to prevent ourselves from being shaped by others in a negative way?”

FINAL THOUGHTS

In her 2001 book, FINDING YOUR OWN NORTH STAR: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live,” life coach Martha Beck says,

“Our whole lives, all the actions we take are based on our concepts of who we are. Not knowing that one crucial fact undermines everything we feel, say, or do.”

Her book guides you through the process of figuring that one out. I’ve found that her explanations, plans of actions and exercises do help to cut through the B.S. likely to be generated by all those pesky expectations – your own and the ones that other people put on you.

It might even help you deal better with other people and help you control the expectations you’re probably putting on other people as you go through your days.

Here’s a poem:

MEA CULPA

I apologize.

I see your beauty, how it shines.

I see the gift you carry,

And my first reaction is the greedy-guts one.

“Give it here,” I demand.

“Give it to the world,” I say.

“You were not born for the shadows,” I tell you.

“You were meant to…[INSERT ACTION HERE].”

Perhaps you want to hold it to yourself, that gift.

Perhaps this is not yet its time.

Those veils you deploy so cunningly

Swirl about you and you laugh

As you play your mirage games.

Forgive me, please.

I do love that lovely light that shines

Through the cracks in the masks you work.

I have to remind myself that

It is not my right to pull them off,

To try to catch a glimpse of your true face

Before you choose to show it.

That was rude.

You are your own self

And you are perfect as you are –

As you choose to be.

My own judgements – the way I poke and prod –

My overweening expectations of you are superfluous.

I do know that.

I am an ant walking across a butter cake

Satisfied with the one crumb I am tugging along

Toward some destination I cannot actually see.

I do thank you dear one.

The veils you so effectively ply

In your Salome dance are entrancing.

I will stand here and watch as you swirl and twirl.

Your remarkable dance makes me smile.

By Netta Kanoho

Header Photo credit: “Endless Expectations” by Thomas Hawk via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

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

PINPOINT "ENOUGH”

Thu, 03 Sep 2020 20:49:15 GMT

Probably we’ve all heard the teaching stories – the ones that make us all nod as if we know something, the ones that make us mutter aphorisms and wisdom-words at each other about the consequences of greed and getting more and more.

The stories are usually about some guy sitting all alone in a big old mansion on a hill somewhere. He has everything and yet he feels like he has nothing.

(Usually the tale is about a guy, but, really, we could easily substitute a gal in there instead these days.)

Here’s a thought: Maybe it wasn’t greed that led that lonely one down the road to Empty. Maybe he or she just didn’t recognize when they had gotten to “Enough” and just kept on going.

“The Legacy of Prospect Hill Plantation” by Michael McCarthy via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

That does happen.

ONE ENTREPRENEUR’S STORY

It happened to The Light of My Life’s boyhood friend Ed. They grew up together, a couple of wild kids running through the Oregon woods, fishing and hunting and doing Nature Boy things.

“A Walk In the Woods” by Joe Parks via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

When high school ended, my LOML went off to roam the world and Ed settled in to a job in town hanging doors in houses and installing hardware (hinges and knobs and things).

Ed had a great work ethic. He was honest and honorable and did good work. He got more and more door jobs so he hired some friends to help out.

And then somebody asked him, “Can you do windows?” Ed thought about it and hired a friend or three who were good at that and on they went.

It was just around the time of a big building boom in Portland during the Vietnam war times and Ed and the boys kept getting tapped to do more doors, more windows. Apartment buildings and business office buildings have a lot of windows and doors, you know.

“Door and window” by Melanie B via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Ed accumulated a fleet of trucks for his crews of guys and he hired more friends who were really good at fixing them.

He built warehouses with baseyards for all the supplies and equipment he needed to get the work done and he hired some other friends to manage all those resources.

As an entrepreneur, he felt responsible for making sure that his friends kept working and he worked the hardest of all keeping everything running right.

He never knew what to do with all the money he was making so he bought stuff everybody said he should get. Unfortunately, he was so busy being responsible and taking care of business that he really did not have a lot of free time to enjoy all the stuff he had accumulated.

By the time he was in his mid-thirties “rich” had happened to him.

However, the Real was that Ed really had not thought much about the direction he was headed. He just went along wherever the road he was on was taking him.

“< — Direction — >” by Whatknot via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

In truth, he was a “victim” of the times and of his own honor and excellence. “Rich” happened to him; it wasn’t his biggest numbah-one goal.

“Enough” by Damian Gadal via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Everybody told him he “had it all”…a wife who was his childhood sweetie, children he adored, a big old house on a hill and lots of really neat toys guaranteed to warm the cockles of a born redneck’s heart. Whoo-hoo!

One day, a good long while after high school days, Ed came to visit his old friend Mathew who was living in the wilds of Huelo on the island of Maui. This is the poem that Mat wrote about the visit:

LOST MOORINGS

A boyhood friend who’d always dreamed

Of being a big success

Came calling down my forest path

To find me in my wooded nest.

He said he’d married long ago

A girl who also strived.

They worked for their dreams,

They bought a house and two turned into five.

He got a job doing piecework

And began to hire his friends.

He rented a big old warehouse

To put his equipment in.

Next, he got a fleet of trucks

Then men to tend them all.

The jobs piled up like the pages

Of his calendar on the wall.

His wife and family stayed at home

In their palace on the hill.

They never saw him ‘round the house

He had contracts and deals to fill.

My friend was working day and night.

He’d sleep from two to four,

Sometimes on his sofa,

Sometimes on his floor.

He made his magic million

In seven years of toil,

But he couldn’t stop the workers

So he made a million more.

One day his car broke by his home

On his way to a very big deal.

He walked to his house to use the phone,

But the door was barred with steel.

A note was pinned onto the door,

His name written on the page.

He opened it up and looked inside

And this is what it said.

“On August tenth we left with George.

“A man you never knew.

“He doesn’t have much money,

“But he loves us true and through.”

“We’ve gone to settle in the west

“On his farm in mountains high.

“I hope your millions were worth the price

“Of us leaving with no goodbyes.”

“I know you loved us dearly,

“But we’re tired of living alone.

“We’ll write you when we’re settled.

“It’s over now! We’re gone!”

Now he wanders the earth alone.

He looks on trails like mine

In hopes of finding his lost love

And restoring his peace of mind.

By Mat Westcott

Years passed. When Mat and Ed reconnected many years later Mat got to learn where his friend’s road had taken him during the intervening years.

Ed said he went through a period of confusion and pain. He sold all his extraneous stuff and moved to Tucson. A brand new start. He went on to build a life that included all of the things he had loved as a young boy. (Hunting and fishing played a big part in it.) He found another lady to share his life and they were happy.

And this time, the good times kept on rolling and Ed made sure they didn’t get away from him again. This time he made sure he paid attention and made the time to enjoy the life he had mindfully built.

SO…HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

It is a funny thing. There are all kinds of answers to that question, and the answer does depend on who’s asking…and who’s answering.

Here are several YouTube videos, each with an answer. Perhaps one of them will resonate with you.

The first “How Much Is Enough” was published in 2010 by ChickenSoul84. It’s a modern reiteration of a very old teaching story about an encounter between a fisherman and a businessman.

The second video of the same name was also published in 2010 by Retire Happy and features retirement counselor and financial educator Jim Yih in the middle of one of his workshops about how to retire happy.

This third one features author and motivational speaker Randy Gage and was published in 2014 by Prosperity TV.

Hmmm….

Which one speaks to you most?

MY FAVORITE VIDEO ABOUT “HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH”

This video is my own favorite. It’s a video-collage put together in 2020 by Green Renaissance, a collective of young filmmakers who tackle big questions.

This ten-minute video is made up of bits and snippets of other videos by Green Renaissance over the past couple of years that feature the individuals showcased in the video-collage.

In their notes about the video, the filmmakers say, “There’s no denying that money is an important part of our society and having a degree of financial stability increases our ability to enjoy life. But the reality is that most of us live in a world of overabundance. We need to realise that we have enough. We need to stop linking our self-worth and happiness to doing and having more. That’s a journey worth taking.”

Click the button below if you feel moved to support the efforts of these young people.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Perhaps the most important thing of all, when you’re working on constructing a life with meaning and mana, is knowing what nourishes and nurtures you and knowing what makes your heart sing.

If you don’t know what your “enough” is, how will you recognize it when you go on past it?

“Enough, already!” by Sandi (Very Busy Lady!) via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

This is something worth thinking on.

(Header photo credit: “Big Enough?” by Matthew W. Jackson via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0])

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

CONNECT WITH NATURE OR NOT (Another IPS)

Fri, 28 Aug 2020 18:17:38 GMT

Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom): a tendency to notice what you are noticing and to ask why you’re noticing it. [Sometimes you notice things that call to your heart and your heart responds by dancing. The best move then is to go do more of that dance….]

Have you noticed the latest trend (especially after the pandemic lockdown) toward hugging trees, galaxy-gazing, mooning over wilderness landscapes and generally dissing our man-made constructs and urban follies?

Going-Outside-with-the-capital-O has become the new default mode of operation. (Mostly ‘cause it’s pretty boring being stuck inside-with-no-capital-I, even with all the latest gadgets and doo-dads.)

“Bathe In the Light” by Martin Gommel via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

It’s been a-building for some time now.

Just in the last few months (after years of mainstream focusing on techno-induced euphoria and dystopic musing) it seems that our Inner Hippy Dippy Nature-Lover is standing up to roar.

The Great Pinball Game of Life is flashing “TILT” and alarums and sirens and whistles and bleeps are sounding. We’ve been called to pay attention yet again to this world we are making together.

“Tilt” by Richard Holt via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Something is emphatically Not Right. F’r sure, we’ve pushed that techy, global, materialistic and massively busy meta-game around so hard that it went off-kilter. Game Over. Start again.

The solution is “obvious,” uh-huh, uh-huh. We’ve got to get back and “re-connect” to Nature, it says here…as if we were ever really out of it.

“Fleeting Memories” by Elijah Hassler via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

THE HUMAN-NATURE CONNECTION

The human love of life and living things has been a topic of much discussion and dissection by assorted philosophers and wise guys down through the ages.

We humans are drawn to life. We have an instinctual “biophilia” — what American psychologist Erich Fromm in 1964 called a “passionate love of life and living things.” Fromm thought it was a natural and intuitive instinct imprinted on our DNA.

“Banyan Tree by Kapena Falls” by Jennifer Boyer via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Biologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson grabbed the word and used it as the name for a hypothesis he made up and explored in a book of the same name. He said the human condition it described is our “innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes.”

Wilson’s seminal book, BIOPHILIA, which was first published in 1984, is part philosophical treatise and part memoir with sparkling bits of field observations. At one point he says:

“To explore and affiliate with life is a deep and complicated process in mental development. To an extent still undervalued in philosophy and religion, our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises on its currents.”

According to Wilson, our love for nature could help us define our own selves and help us choose the way we walk in the world.

The book sparked a lot of questioning among the guys and gals in the lab coats. As is their wont, they asked all kinds of questions and did all kinds of studies that measured the effects being in nature has on human beings.

Over the years, the information the researchers accumulated has led to all kinds of explorations into nature-based approaches to healing and for living as well.

Meanwhile the poets and storytellers kept on waxing lyrical while musicians and artists of all sorts put together celebrations of the beauty in nature.

“Have you ever tried to hide the light?” by Gabriel Caparó via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

Thinkers and makers of all sorts kept expanding their thoughts and using the nature-based techniques the researchers uncovered to improve their creative and problem-solving capabilities.

Athletes expanded their abilities and learned new ways to develop themselves into even better performers as well.

Architects and landscape designers incorporated the findings into their designs for living and working spaces that were conducive to better living.

“Winchester Green” by Mike Beales via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

Broken and sick people were helped along in their healing processes by the new ecotherapy practices (also known as “nature therapy” or “green therapy”) that developed out of the growing body of research that highlighted the positive benefits of connecting with nature.

One interesting form of ecotherapy is the Japanese Shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing.” Beginning in the early 1980s Japan’s Forest Agency established what they called “recreation forests” within the national forests across Japan.

Around that time the idea of forest bathing was fostered and promoted. A number of studies that were made of the people who were doing the practice confirmed that it had a positive impact on these people’s lives, reducing stress, boosting moods and helping to build their immune systems as well.

This YouTube video, “I Tried Therapy in the Forest. Yes, You Read that Right” was published in 2019 by Thrive Global.

It features Thrive Global reporter Alexandra Hayes who spent time with the Urban Edge Forest Therapy group in New York City’s Central Park to learn how the practice works and feels.

There are many videos and posts and books and such that can help you if you want to pursue exploring the human-nature connection.

One of the most comprehensive (and reasonably short) how-to’s for connecting with nature that I’ve seen is in a post by Brian Mertins, who calls himself a “nature mentor.” Brian is a dedicated nature-lover who’s put together books and courses about getting back to the wonder of it all.

Click on the button below to be taken to the exercises and life hacks that he’s collected and developed to help people reconnect with the natural world.

BUT, WHAT IF YOU DON’T LIKE NATURE?

I stumbled across a very interesting video, “The World’s Most Relaxing Film,” published in 2015 by Destination Sjælland 2. The seven-minute video had over 2 million views and garnered over 1,500 comments.

As promised, watching the film can help you relax physically. It was recorded on the West Coast of Zealand (Sjællabds Vestkyst) in Denmark and the editing was guided by experts from the fields of stress, mindfulness, and nature and music therapy. Lovely!

The most amazing thing about the film is its length. Some of the other guided meditation and nature videos go on for a long time. (I’m looking at one “Up Next” video on the YouTube platform sidebar that boasts of being three hours long!)

What intrigued me about the Zealand video, however, were the unexpected-to-me comments from people who felt isolated, alone and sorrowful after watching the film. That is not a reaction I myself would normally have to Nature eye and ear candy.

And then I remembered a city-raised cousin of a friend who came to visit our decidedly back-of-beyond island for a summer vacation. I had not thought about Georgie in years.

Poor Georgie. He grew up in some faraway and gone city place in the American mid-west and the world we inhabited on the tiny island of Molokai was an extremely foreign place.

We kids ran around barefoot through the banana groves chasing the chickens for fun. We made stick bows and arrows and tried to “hunt” them down. (It never worked, but just the thought of it was very cool.)

We flew newspaper and stick kites in the blustery wind and had kite “battles” that could end in wrestling matches and crying protests when some adult stepped into the fray.

We caught 7-11 crabs off the pier at Kaunakakai and clambered through the mangrove roots along the shoreline dive-bombing each other in the water where those crabs with the big, toe-snipping claws lived.

We made “mud-boots” that covered our bare legs almost halfway up to our knees by walking through the thick mud along the shoreline of one of our favorite walking beaches and we got sand and yucky-tasting salt water all over our skin and in our eyes and ears and mouths as well as our shorts as we tumbled through the waves of our favorite swimming beaches.

“Perfect” by Bryce Bradford via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Nights were dark and very quiet except for the chorus of bufo toads, crickets and katydids as well as the occasional impromptu neighborhood dog howls.

No airplanes coming in for a landing. No police and emergency vehicle sirens in the night. No mechanized, mechanical sounds filling in the spaces between breaths.

We could see the canopy of stars at night when, to Georgie’s dismay, we slept outside in the back yard on tatami mats with our pillows and blankets piled all around us.

The rain forests were full of thorns and stickers and bugs and things and lots of mud and guck and the city-slicker could not believe the voracious mosquitoes and other miniscule critters that swarmed all over him every time he stuck his nose out of the door.

“Telostylinus lineolatus” by Anita Gould via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

We kept telling him there were no bears or mountain lions or snakes. There were very few little critters that wandered around being cute and fuzzy, we said. We also told him stories about wild pigs and mean feral cattle and ghosts walking.

There were no fancy shops in our town and few of the modern amenities that he had always taken for granted. Heck, we didn’t even have tall buildings. Our one traffic light made an appearance in Kaunakakai town way after Georgie went home.

Poor Georgie. We did tease him a lot. We marveled at his discomfort and we were not kind. We were a rambunctious, contentious bunch and we poked fun at him a lot.

He never did come back.

RIDDLE: WHAT DO YOU CALL SOMEBODY WHO HATES NATURE?

ANSWER: INDUSTRIALIST?

Not everybody LIKES Nature, you know. Not everyone is comfortable in it. For them, it’s all an alien space with which they prefer NOT to interact. They do not really want to “re-connect.”

Houseplants wilt in their presence. Mean cats fawn all over them, shedding long hairs all over their snazzy clothes. They go into conniptions around dogs and can’t stand birds or icky butterflies. Wildlife sends them over the edge and, frankly, they prefer their own species.

Not only that, wild water makes them nauseous and still water bores them to bits. All waterfalls pretty much look like water falling down and, for them, it’s all just kind of meh.

“Waterfall” by Glenn G via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Mountains and valleys have zero appeal. So do deserts or jungles, and forget about the ocean.

They like being surrounded by their fellow humans. Crowds are a part of their natural habitat. They do not want to learn how to move through the woods or endure and thrive in the desert or tool around the deep blue sea.

They’ve already spent a lifetime developing street smarts and being Dr. Doolittle or an intrepid plant whisperer or an exotic water-being or sand creature is not a part of their programming.

And then I started noticing that most of the ones who are into Nature were kind of looking down their noses at the ones who were frank enough to admit that they were not comfortable with all that specious communing with trees and wild things.

Talk about a Code Switch dilemma! There it is again: If you aren’t like us, then there is something WRONG with you!

To those ones who are trying to proselytize and advocate for the joys and pleasures of savoring nature, my congratulations. You are lucky to be able to embrace the world in that way.

But, don’t get too snooty, guys. There are pleasures and joys in a metropolis as well, you know, and sometimes we need a little bit of that kind of wild as well.

“Where the Wild Things Are” by Kevin Spencer via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Did you know that Michelangelo himself once said, “I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.”

Historian Lewis Mumford once rhapsodized, “The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.”

And those, too, are also truths.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I am becoming more and more convinced that all of humankind lives along a spectrum on a continuum of related characteristics and traits.

This one is more introverted than that other one who is more extroverted.
This one is more mechanically inclined than that other one who is a klutzy “broke-chanic.”
This one is more tree-hugger than that other one who loves taxis.

And so on…all the way down the line.

It really is just a matter of choice (and maybe upbringing as well).

Here’s a poem:

THE LAND OF MY BELONGING

And here I sit,

In the land of my belonging.

I can see the beauty that surrounds me:

In the green forest mountains

Wreathed with a lei of clouds,

Touched by the golden sun,

Adorned by rainbows;

In the deep rolling sea that sends playful waves

That kiss and tease the golden sands of my heart;

In Hina’s bright sanctuary floating in the velvet sky

As the stars winkle and shine through unimaginable depths

To shower their blessings on me

Are my beloved shackles.

I can taste the joyousness in

The cool wet of the mountain streams

That hide the battling ‘opae;

In the eternal salt of the sea

That surrounds this blessed land.

I can smell the flowers

Hiding in the green along the river banks

And the tang of limu

Wafting on the salty breezes.

I can feel the tingle of

Morning mists playing on my skin.

The heat of the sun beats out

Its own cadence through my blood,

And the gentle breezes caress me.

I can hear the birdsong and the life

That echoes through the valleys

And the pounding of the waves

Against the hard, black rocky shores

Growling deep and deeper.

I am bound to this place, you know,

By ties that will not loose me,

And I sink into contentment

In the soft embrace of the stillness

And the peacefulness of home.

But, my heart longs for you, my wanderer,

And hungers for your touch.

And I wonder at the visions in your eyes

That takes you out into the world

And keeps you moving in ever-widening circles.

Always you are called to the new, the different.

The world beckons and you must answer.

Your heart is pulled by other currents

Of wind and wave and ether

That lead to strange and distant shores.

May the sun shine on your road, dear one.

And may your heart lead you home….

[For those who don’t know: lei is a garland; Hina’s sanctuary is the moon; ‘opae are freshwater shrimps; limu is seaweed.]

By Netta Kanoho

Header Photo credit: “You Say That I Like What You Say” by Thomas Hawk via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

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

ALOHA AND GRIT

Fri, 21 Aug 2020 23:11:25 GMT

And now…we interrupt our regular post-building for an important public service announcement:

As Hawaii trudges through the COVID-19 pandemic, PBS Hawaiʻi is reaching into our vast video archive to share pearls of wisdom about living with and getting past adversity. This campaign features brief but potent manaʻo online, on social media and on-air between regular programming.

The non-profit, statewide television station, with support from the Kamehameha Schools, are building what they are calling “a community resilience program.” They are calling the program, “What’s It Going to Take: Aloha&grit,” and it is a beaut.

Apparently, the crew at PBS Hawai’i raided their film archives to find tidbits of wisdom that they’ve made into very short videos that are all uplifting and food for thought. It is a lovely effort.

Since the station has been around since the 1960’s, that is one big film archive!

In their first online newsletter, they’ve included words of wisdom from four mana wāhine, women of great presence, who are among the most beloved of our modern Hawaiian cultural heroes.

To give you a taste of what this new online newsletter is going to contain, I am going to include the YouTube videos they’ve uploaded from this first edition.

The first is a lovely bit from Auntie Nona Beamer, the late kumu hula, exemplary educator, song composer and musician, who talks about gratitude and the beauty of life.

Auntie Nona is an icon. From her youngest days she was an advocate and champion for authentic and ancient Hawaiian culture. It was she who coined the word, “Hawaiiana,” for the study of all things Hawaiian.

For me, it was lovely to see her again and remember her always-shining beautiful spirit.

The second video is of Puanani Burgess, poet and community mediator, and her thoughts on the importance of behaving like ‘ohana, family, during times of adversity and crisis.

Burgess was the editor and a contributor for one of my favorite books, FROM THEN TO NOW: A Manual For Doing Things Hawaiian Style,” which was originally written and produced in 1987 as part of the ‘Ōpelu Project, a community development grant.

The lady is many-faceted. At one time she was a committed protestor and resister in the Hawaiian Sovereignty movement. She is a Zen Buddhist priest, and a poet as well as a community mediator from Waianae, Oahu.

I love the description of her work with “Building the Beloved Community”, a community-building and conflict transformation process that she uses in her work as a mediator. The process, it says here, is “based on bringing people face to face for ceremony, storytelling and healing circles of trust and respect.”

Chee wow! Way, way cool!

In her Aloha&grit segment, native Hawaiian scholar and teacher Maenette Ah Nee-Benham explains the Hawaiian expansion of the definition of the concept of “family” beyond clannishness to include everyone sharing the same basic humanistic ideals. It is an inclusive vision.

Ah Nee-Benham currently serves as the chancellor for the University of Hawaii – West Oahu. She has been doing that since 2017.

The last of the featured speakers in this episode is slack key guitarist Ku’uipo Kumukahi, “The Sweetheart of Hawaiian Music,” who is noted for her soothing nahenahe style of singing.

Kumukahi talks about how we Littles were taught to “help others when you can” by the Bigs in our lives. It is a good, most pleasing reminder.

The first episode of this new PBS Hawaii series is a winner, I am thinking, and the series is one worth following.

Click on the button and you’ll be taken to the Aloha&Grit newsletter.

MORE THAN JUST A TV SHOW

PBS Hawai’i is the only locally owned, statewide television station in Hawai’i which is also the sole Hawaii member of the Public Broadcasting service and the only licensed educational broadcaster in the state.

A nonprofit educational organization, it is supported by donations from their audience – individuals, families, businesses and charitable foundations. The federal government kicks in about fifteen percent of the operating budget through the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Their mission is marvelous: “We advance learning and discovery through storytelling that profoundly touches lives.”

What I especially like is the listing of the values that the group espouses.

PONO – rightness and balance
‘IMI NA’AUAO – knowledge and wisdom
ALOHA KEKAHI I KEKAHI – respecting the dignity of others
KŪLIA I KA NU’U – strive for excellence
LŌKAHI – collaboration and unity
MĀLAMA – protect and care for

The values are similar to my own.

Here’s a poem.

THEY CAME

They came,

These women from

My past.

They came,

With old stories

And new.

They came,

Bringing with them

The breath of old dreams.

They came,

Bringing with them

Hearts full

Of long-standing love.

They came,

Reminders of where

I’ve been.

They came,

Memories of me

Now done.

They came.

I am grateful

They came.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “Maui sunset” by Ālvaro Reguly via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

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

DO WHAT YOU CAN

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 16:40:04 GMT

In the spring of 2020, world paradigms changed.

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declared that the Novel Coronavirus Disease, Covid-19, was a pandemic.

This came after China reported in December, 2019 that there had been more than one instance of a weird life-threatening respiratory illness in Wuhan, the capital and major industrial and commercial center in Hubei province.

The health-care professionals at WHO watched how the new disease spread and the effects it had on people wherever it popped up around the world.

The media, social platforms, and assorted rumor-mills went into overdrive trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Panic attacks and near-terminal confusion ensued.

Almost immediately after the WHO pandemic declaration the world-as-we-knew-it shut down. The rules changed and they still keep on morphing.

Every social system and economic construct that helped the world run along mostly predictable tracks was affected.

The underlying assumptions and trade-offs that built them proved to be flawed and mostly not-working so well when there is a contagious life-threatening disease that needs to be contained.

“damage limitation” by chris white via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

And because the lot of us have been aimed willy-nilly for a One-World, All-Together-Now Global Economy, it wasn’t just one nation or country that took the hit. The majority of the people in the world are affected by it in one way or another, it seems.

Uncertainty and fear ran rampant as projects large and small came to a screeching halt or were hauled off back to the drawing board for revision.

Businesses and other organizations stopped doing what they did as government leaders tried to get a handle on the rapidly changing situation. Everyone was forced to step back and pay attention to where their stories were taking them.

Meanwhile, life continues anyway.

“Don’t Fence Me In” by Michael Pardo via Flickr [CC0 1.0 Universal, Public Domain]

LIVING IN INTERESTING TIMES

The late Sir Terry Pratchett, fantasy novelist extraordinaire and a very funny guy, had this to say about “interesting times”:

The phrase “may you live in interesting times” is the lowest in a trilogy of Chinese curses that continue “may you come to the attention of those in authority” and finish with “may the gods give you everything you ask for.” I have no idea about its authenticity.

However, my favorite quote about these kinds of time comes from the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He said:

Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged – will ultimately judge himself – on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort.

The Great Lockdown of 2020 has certainly slung us into very interesting times. Challenges and opportunities proliferate through it all and it is surely a time that calls for creative thinking and actions, big and small.

Sending nations into lockdown — closing down borders and discouraging visits from strangers and outsiders of any sort — had a particularly devastating effect on the fortunes of folks in the travel and the hospitality industry and the retail industry and pro sports and the arts…and just about every other industry you could name.

We are, after all, decidedly interconnected.

“Door in Castrillo de los Palvazares” by Oiluj Samall Zeid via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Businesses that depend on the free-flowing transport of goods from where they are grown, processed, or manufactured to consumers everywhere else have been affected.

Almost overnight the unemployment stats went ballistic as people were told their jobs were not “essential” and had to be shut down in order to foster the continued well-being of the people around them.

“Coronavirus – stay at home save lives” by duncan c via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Many people got to be stay-at-homes. “Essential” workers went into overdrive and worked a heck of a lot more than they ever did before in increasingly stressful situations.

Often the shape of their jobs changed. Working remotely became more usual. Make-work and in-fighting fell by the wayside.

An initiative that’s a classic solution for keeping the projected large numbers of sick people from overwhelming less-than-adequate public health facilities mushroomed into governmental and social restrictions of various sorts that have paved the way for our current New Normal.

Everyday problems still remain the same: How do you feed the kids and keep them and yourself together? How do you keep a roof over your heads? How do you pay your bills? And what does this do to your Walk towards your Dream?

“Close of Business for Mr. surfer” by Lenny K Photography via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

BEING A PART OF THE SOLUTION IS STILL AN OPTION

In this YouTube video, “15 New “Pandemic-Created” Business Ideas in 15 Minutes” published in April, 2020, serial entrepreneur and best-selling author Pat Flynn has a bunch of suggestions that make a lot of sense.

(The video actually has 16 suggestions and runs about 5 minutes over the stated 15 minutes, but the guy says he likes to over-deliver.)

Flynn advises us to think on and consider the problems other people are encountering in these interesting times and figure out ways that we can use our skills to help them resolve those problems.

As Flynn points out, if we provide solutions that are useful and of good value, other people would be likely to pay us for our help.

It’s back-to-basics: Who are your customers? Who can you help?

Flynn has an interesting array of possible customers as well as off-the-cuff suggestions for people who are in these groups and are probably also looking for ways to use their skills to keep them and theirs fed and sheltered as well as safe.

Because he built and grew his own businesses online, Flynn’s suggestions and solutions are heavily tech-oriented.

However, his idea of looking at the needs and problems of the people around you and learning all you can about them so that you can figure out how to use your own skills to help them is a keeper.

Here’s a list of the customers Flynn points to in this video and a little taste of the kinds of solutions you might be able to offer:

PARENTS. Home-schooling, parenting help and ideas are among the possibilities Flynn mentions.
CONTENT CREATORS. Newbie bloggers, vloggers, podcasters, writers and other creators can use help with getting their offerings repurposed, organized and out into the world. With all the venues for large gatherings shut down and events and conferences and such canceled, many speakers are looking to book virtual events or even create them. Some want to write books or find other ways to share their knowledge. Can you help them?
STARVING ARTISTS. Flynn suggests that these folks can use their skills to teach their art or craft, develop courses and foster creativity in others. He suggests that they would need help doing it online.
STUDENTS HEADING INTO THE WORLD. Setting up ways to connect young people fresh out of school with the companies who are looking for them and helping those companies develop remote work solutions might be something you might be able to do.
ENTERTAINERS. Helping entertainers set themselves up online and build their personal brand is a possibility.
HEALTH AND FITNESS. Specialty fitness solutions that use your expertise and knowledge in these fields can be the springboard for developing your own online business
SOLUTION-SPECIFIC BUSINESS SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS. Developing software-based solutions for problems that are specific to a particular company or industry might be an opportunity to explore.
MEMBERSHIP PLATFORMS. Developing a place where people can go to connect with other people with similar interests is another possibility.
GARDENERS. Newbie and wanna-be gardeners are another group of customers that would definitely need help from those who have green thumbs.
E-SPORTS AND GAMING niches might be a good place to find people who need help connecting with each other as well. Tournaments, guides, YouTube channels, product reviews are all of great interest and people who can put them together could find a good place to make some money.
ATHLETES. Like performers and entertainment people, professional athletes might need help developing personal brands. Is that something you can do?
BRICK AND MORTAR BUSINESSES are probably looking at going online if they haven’t already. They are in new-to-them territory and you might be able to help as a native guide.
VIRTUAL REALITY can be another great way for people to connect with one another and you could be a part of that.
EDUCATION – online courses and trainings of various sorts — are definitely always going to be a large part of everyday life.

(There is one other, but I’ll let Flynn tell you about that one.)

Flynn points out that you don’t have to have a huge client base to do any of these things. You just need a small group of people for whom your solutions are a perfect fit and build your business from there.

In order to set yourself up as a helper and an ally, you do need to communicate with your target customers.

What are their problems?
Where is their pain?
How can you help?

Once you’ve successfully developed some solutions, you can expand your offerings to add other solutions for other problems to your repertoire of skills earned.

“Big bloody apple, this….” by Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

FINAL THOUGHTS

There is another important thing to remember: Doing what you can with what you’ve got where you are is the key to building something that will help to support you and yours so you can survive and, perhaps, even thrive in these interesting times.

We build the future one moment at a time, you know. So, what’s yours going to look like?

“Solar Rainbow….” By Steve Jurvetson via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Here’s a poem:

STILL THERE

Life has to begin again

When the fabric of life gets torn…

It says here.

“Torn” isn’t even the half of it.

When your life gets ripped,

Rent from stem to stern,

You go into a tailspin.

ACK!

Up-is-down…no…down-is-up…no…

What-what-what do I do now?

You sit there…

Crying and wailing,

Feeling all self-pitiful

Wondering why, oh, why.

You curl up in a ball.

You try to disappear

Into the wilderness of yourself.

But, that doesn’t really work,

Because you start feeling stupid.

As you wander around, lost and whimpering.

It gets to be a bore.

So…

You stop shuddering and shaking,

And you stop sighing,

Cease making all

The other funny breath-noises

And you blow your nose.

You put your feet back on the ground

And you walk

And walk

And walk…

And, maybe, after a while,

You notice that the world’s still there.

The world is still there….

by Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “my yard in the morning” by SoulRider.222 via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

This is probably going to be the first of a series of posts regarding the pandemic response and its effects on our ordinary lives. Like most of the topics I think on, this one’s way too big for a one-off.

We will go on, us humans. The only real thing to ponder is how we are walking and whether our choices bring us and those around us to joy.

Be well….

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

LET YOUR FREAK FLAG FLY

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 20:50:59 GMT

I’ve got some news for you: Just because you are “eccentric” (weird, quirky, odd, freakish, peculiar, unorthodox, unconventional, different…whatever you want to call that thing you do), it does NOT necessarily mean you are a Creative. It does not indicate that you are Innovative and/or a Genius.

Got some other news for you: It’s all good anyhow.

Maybe your apartment looks like a shrine to succulents or a stage for all those performer plants from Orchid-land Central.

Maybe you’re into search-and-rescue or treasure-hunting or trash bin diving.

Maybe you’ve got a major zebra finch collection or a flock of roller pigeons on your roof.

Maybe you like wearing outré or retro clothes or playing at being a cartoon or movie character.

Maybe you’re the lead singer in a rock and roll band or you play the cello as a side-gig.

Maybe you want to stump around and grouse at people during the election season and climb up on soapboxes and declaim something or other as an orator or spoken-word poet or storyteller.

Maybe you build little robots or rocket ships in the garage or mix up potions or bake doggy-biscuits in the kitchen.

Maybe you’re training for a walking tour around the world or practicing forest-bathing.

Maybe you’re a plein air painter or a macro/micro photographer who chooses oddball locations to do your discipline.

Whatever. It’s your life and, as long as you’re more-or-less street-legal and not hurting anybody else and you enjoy it, that’s cool.

If you want to add color and beauty, whimsy and joy, adventure and magic, or good-hearted service and help of some sort or other to the world we are making together…well, why not?

Boring is so meh! Do something else. Go play. Do it your way.

The following video, “A Different Drummer: Celebrating Eccentrics” is a trailer for an eclectic world-trotting documentary film by Academy Award-winning director John Zaritsky. It was published in 2014 by Celebrating Eccentrics.

The film itself is based on the findings of a Scotland-based psychotherapist David Weeks who claimed that eccentrics live longer and are happier and healthier than the conformists of the world.

A CAVEAT OR TWO

Just don’t delude yourself and buy into that hackneyed cliché that says eccentricity and weird is a pre-requisite for being Creative and a Maker. Just because you decide to take your pet lobster for a walk down the street on a silk leash does not make you Oscar Wilde.

“Lobster” by Maja Manner via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

I’ve been stumbling through a stack of posts and musings by assorted people who were apparently influenced by various sociological and psychological studies and such conducted by behavioral and neurological researchers. The guys and gals in white lab coats have found links between minor madness and creativity, they say.

From these findings, the opinion-mongers and life coach pros made the leap to the notion that behaving like an Outsider or Different or More You helps you unlock your creativity and lets your genius shine so that you can “make a difference” in the world.

“Me, Myself and I” by Shena Tschofen via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Ummm…right.

A strange wardrobe, histrionics, and unusual pastimes probably will make you memorable. You’ll stand out in a crowd, f’r sure, even with social distancing.

Probably, though, you won’t have a huge impact on the world as we know it all by yourself — unless, of course, you really are a slightly deranged creative genius who is either

independently wealthy,
employed by some corporation bent on exploiting your talents and skills, or
supported in your endeavors by a tribe of crowd-funding sponsors or fans.

FLYING YOUR FREAK FLAG

Just on general principle, I do have a fondness for freak-flag flying. It can add a whole other dimension to your life and it can be fun.

The phrase itself was first heard in a song written by guitar god Jimi Hendrix and recorded in 1967. In his song, “If 6 was 9,” Hendrix declares, “I’m gonna wave my freak flag high.”

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young took up the cry when they recorded their counterculture anthem, “Almost Cut My Hair,” in 1970 and the phrase, “I feel like letting my freak flag fly” caught on.

In 2008, Shrek The Musical, a play that included composer Jeanine Tesori’s song “Freak Flag,” opened on Broadway after a trial run in Seattle.

And then there’s this bit of loveliness from the Oregon alternative rock quartet Fortune’s Folly which is made up of vocalist Calysta Cheyenne, guitarist Ira Mazie, bassist Jesse Sanchez and drummer Alex Koleber.

The following 2019 YouTube video, “Freak Flag (acoustic),” features Cheyenne and Mazie performing at Track Town Studios in Eugene, Oregon.

HOW YOU, TOO, CAN PUT A DENT IN THE WORLD FOR REAL

All that said, there is a book, published in 2017 (and unpacked and expanded upon by a diverse array of YouTube videos), that has me bedazzled by visions of possibility: Nilofa Merchant’s THE POWER OF ONLYNESS: Make Your Wild Ideas Mighty Enough To Dent the World.

Merchant is a former tech executive connected to Apple and Autodesk. During her 20-plus-year career as an executive and then in her own consultancy business she earned an “impeccable reputation” for her ability to guide both Fortune 500 companies and start-up organizations through difficult situations.

She has personally launched more than a hundred products, netting $18 billion in sales.

An apparently indefatigable speaker, she has been tapped as a TED mainstage speaker and even helped to put together speaking events at the 2019 Meaning Conference, an annual gathering of people held in Brighton, UK, who believe business can and must be a force for positive change.

Merchant’s talks and interviews on YouTube all center around the topics of innovation, social change, leadership, collaboration, and the dynamics of power. A recipient of the “Future Thinker Award,” she has been ranked as one of the world’s top 50 management thinkers by the Thinkers 50 organization.

The lady is good.

One YouTube video features Merchant being interviewed about the book by Tracey Fitzpatrick. It is one of a series of videos about that interview which was put up in 2018 by Russell Sarder at Sarder TV. Like all of the other videos in the series, it makes little explosions in your head as the ideas strike home.

Merchant answers the question, “How can ordinary people make an impact?” with a story about her husband.

Sarder TV is an independent educational media company that’s part of NetCom Learning, a global organization offering managed learning services, IT and business training and talent development.

NetCom CEO Russell Sarder and his team put together Sarder TV in 2012. It provides exclusive interviews with authors, leaders and taste-makers that focus on subject to inspire business executives and leadership teams.

In this next video, “INBOUND 20 Bold Talks Spotlight,” Merchant explains the basic elements of her mind-construct and how it all comes together.

One of the major constellation of thoughts in this talk about “connecting by meaning” intentionally in this Social Age of ours, was Merchant’s aphorisms about the progression of how the whole thing works. She tells us,

AS YOU FIND YOUR PURPOSE YOU FIND YOUR PEOPLE.

AS YOU FIND YOUR PEOPLE YOU FIND YOUR POWER.

AS YOU VALUE ONLYNESS YOU ENABLE VALUE CREATION.

Inbound.com is an interactive online HubSpot community of entrepreneurs and geeky sorts who explore better ways and means for doing business in the 21st century through various social media platforms. The staff maintain a year-round blog and put together a digital conference very year with fascinating thinkers and interesting topics.

2020 was supposed to be the year when they went from disseminating digital content to going analog/physical where attendees would actually be meeting face-to-face. Then the Corvid-19 pandemic happened.

For more of Nilofer Merchant’s thoughts, you might like to click the button below and watch her talk, “Onlyness in Action” which happened during the 2019 Meaning Conference.

FINAL THOUGHT

This book is a keeper, guys….

Here’s a poem:

VULNERABILITY OR WHATEVER

I’m standing here all raw,

My heart exposed and bleeding.

All my nerve endings are jumping, you know.

And I think I lost my stomach somewhere.

My eyes are welling up

With tears that help me see

This whatever-it-is in

All its refracted brilliance.

I am standing here shattered

By a strange sorrow and a love

I can hardly keep contained

Inside this one small frame of a self.

This dream we call “World” is so beautiful, you know,

So wild and churning with possibility,

Rolled into one huge, glorious package,

A numinous gift that feeds you, that feeds on you.

I am standing here just waiting,

Knowing that all I am –

My weaknesses, my strengths —

Is real and true and good.

And even though I’m shaking worse than a sick puppy,

I stand in the knowledge that what I am is mine and

At least it is sufficient for

Whatever happens next.

When I was young and stupid I made a resolution

To live my life in good faith

And this is what that path

Has brought me to.

I am standing here, severely overwhelmed,

Hanging in there, watching

As the sun breaks through the morning clouds.

Oh, my!

This is supposed to be brave?

Then why does it feel so good?

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “What are you doing?” by Light Charmer via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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

BABY WISDOM

Fri, 24 Jul 2020 19:52:24 GMT

As you know, I invite everybody to send in a poem of their own making that holds meaning and mana for them. I ask that the poets share the back-story about the poem. The poems are often a delight and the back-stories are always interesting.

The following poem came from Andy Bia, a fellow online entrepreneur whose blog, BAD INVESTMENT ADVICE (And Ways to Avoid It), covers “the basics of the modern tools and markets” in the stock market world. His site focuses on making the esoteric world of finance more understandable for regular folks.

The blog stance is really sensible. If you get confused by the jargon and don’t even understand what all the mavens and pros are talking about, how can you (as a wanna-be financial wiz) make sensible decisions? Concepts come first, then action.

Andy says he is not a “financial professional.” I say he is still a wise guy.

About his poem, Andy tells the following story:

I wrote this poem when I was about 6 years old. I found it in a school exercise book my mother had saved and gave to me in my 20s. I have no memory of writing it.

My mother told me that I was always writing poetry when I was very young.

She said one day at school my teacher told us all to write a poem. “No problem,” I thought, and dashed something off.

The teacher walked around and saw mine and said, “That’s very good Andrew. You will have to read that in front of the whole school at assembly tomorrow.”

My mother told me I came home and said, “That is the last time I am writing any poetry!”

Sadly, it was “the last time” for many years. I have no recollection of the event at all. I was so upset I had blocked it out.

I started writing poetry again in my 40s for fun and distraction but they were mostly silly limericks. I suppose not entirely dissimilar to the little ditty I wrote when I was 6.

Here’s Andy’s poem….

If you want some rubbish
You buy it in a tin
But don’t be surprised when you open it
And find there’s nothing in.

Hee! That is just beautiful! Thank you, Andy….

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

(And if you would like to share a poem of your making that has meaning and mana for you, please go to the “Guest Poet Portal” in the header menu and submit it. We will all be happy you did.)

Header photo credit: “Tins” by Jessica Langlois [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

AT A CROSSROADS

Fri, 17 Jul 2020 17:42:07 GMT

Crossroads are an everyday, ordinary bit of magic. Each one is the meeting place of potentialities – where you can pause to consider all of the different Maybes of your mind. Each one is a demand that you make some sort of choice.

Legend has it that a crossroads is a meeting place of time and space, a magical but dangerous place where a traveler is likely to meet witches and demons. Crossroads are sacred to Hecate, an underworld goddess of the ancient Greeks.

“Crossroads” by Mikael Korhonen via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Hecate, it is said, was a guide and guardian especially for long-distance sojourners who crossed many borders and boundaries – even the ones between the everyday world and the Afterlife. Like her above-world counterpart, Hermes, she watched over travelers.

Hermes, it should be noted, is the Greek trickster messenger god of trade, wealth and thieves, luck, fertility and animal husbandry, language and communication, and sleep as well as travel.

“Hermes’ Winged Sandal” by Mark Cartwright via the Ancient History Encyclopedia Foundation website [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

At one time, it was a common practice to bury suicides, felons, and suspected vampires at crossroads to prevent their spirits from returning to haunt the living. The ancients believed that crossroads confuse these spirits.

“Crossroads” by Alejandro Polanco via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

It seems to me that crossroads – both physical and metaphorical — do a pretty good job confusing us ordinary humans as well.

“Crossroads” by Mariano Mantel via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

THE ANTI-POWER OF MAYBE

Like crossroads, “maybe” – the word and the mindset – can either facilitate or stop the natural flow of energy that runs through the world and through us humans.

“Yes” is a decision. “No” is a decision. You make a decision and you can move.

You can move forward. You can step back. You can move sideways. You can “Pass Go and Collect $200” in your real-life Monopoly board game.

“Maybe,” however, is an “UMMMM….” (NOT an “OMMMM…”).

Crossroads” by dotpolka via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

There is a pause in your journey as you consider (and re-consider again and again) which way to go. As long as you remain at a standstill, the Maybes start stacking up. After a while that pile of Maybes form a wall that can hold back or block your mental energy.

“Ancient Walls” by Geoff Whalan via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

You dither. So-called “analysis-paralysis” sets in.

Instead of getting on with doing what you’re supposed to be doing, you spend all your time and energy analyzing the endless whys-and-wherefores about taking this step, that step, or another step entirely. ARGH!

Imagine if the atoms and cells that make up your body held meetings to argue about “maybe” holding you together. Scary, huh?

That’s the anti-power of “Maybe.” The Real is that “maybe” sucks up as much energy as you give it.

“Maybe” is probably one of the leading causes of procrastination in the world. You can get all caught up in tracking down the possible outcomes to each and every maybe you make up.

You can build grandiose castles in the sky that incorporate every shiny doo-dad and widget you can imagine. You can play out every variation and iteration of every possibility over and over again in your mind.

If this, then that…BUT, if that, then this….and so on.

Mostly, though, you just end up sitting on your duff, thinking, thinking, thinking. You’re reaching for certainty. You want to be very sure you’re not going to mess it all up. So, you sit.

“Crossroads” by Aftab Uzzaman via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Sitting there running through possibilities means your eyes are not seeing what is out there in the world. You have stopped listening to what the world has to say. You get so dizzy doing the internal Maybe-Dance that you miss the subtle little cues the world throws at you.

If you really get into it, you don’t even hear the great big whooping alarms going off all around you.

“Crossroads” by Richard Saxon [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Your feet are not moving, your hands are slack, and your body is not making the moves it needs to make to get you where you want to go. The journey stops.

Meanwhile, time passes. Windows of opportunity close. People move on. Doors slam shut. It all sort of melts into a bland nothing. (Either that or a big old rampaging elephant comes along and steps on you or something.)

That good ol’ boy, Will Rogers once said, “Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.” He was not wrong.

“sigiriya crossroads” by John T via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

GETTING AROUND ALL THE “MAYBES” IN YOUR MIND

So, what if you’re stuck in the Maybe-Dance? Do you actually know HOW to make a decision?

Here’s a video from internationally known motivational speaker Bob Proctor about that very thing, “Making Decisions.” It was published by the Proctor Gallagher Institute in 2018.

For more than 40 years Bob Proctor has focused on helping other people move towards their own prosperity and success. Proctor’s life-work has been an expansion on the thoughts of the “grandfather” of the human potential movement, American self-help author Napoleon Hill.

Hill wrote one of the ten bestselling self-help books of all time, THINK AND GROW RICH, in 1937. The book was commissioned by American industrialist Andrew Carnegie who tasked Hill with finding out what makes a successful person succeed.

Hill spent 20 years researching and interviewing the leading lights of the day – people like Henry Ford, Frank Winfield Woolworth and Thomas Edison – as well as people who didn’t prosper. This book was the result of that work.

Some people say the book is dated and more than a little “classist”. Others swear by it and call the information it contains “timeless.”

Procter co-founded the Proctor Gallagher Institute with Sandy Gallagher, a successful banking attorney who was an adviser and consultant to major Fortune 500 companies before she attended a Proctor seminar that was a life-changing experience for her.

Gallagher ended up collaborating with Proctor to put together the Institute whose mission is to educate people about how to use self-development skills and techniques to reach for their potential for prosperity.

This next video, “Decision-Making: 4 Simple Tests to Help You Make the Right Decision,” is an episode from life-coach, author and marketer Marie Forleo’s award-winning weekly show MarieTV. It was published in 2017.

As Marie explains, the episode is her response to a question from a viewer, Kouros Alaee, about how to make a decision that feels right.

Forleo’s tests include the following:

Physical Test (which asks the question, “How does my body feel about this?)
Worse Case Scenario Test (which asks the question, “If everything goes very wrong, how will I deal with it?)
Best Case Scenario Test (which asks the question, “What if it all goes right?”)
The Work It Test (which asks the question, “How can I test out this Maybe in a small, real way?)

This last video, “The ANCIENT Technique to Making Tough Decisions,” was published in 2020 by The Outcome and features the scientist-turned-mystic Gregg Braden, who always has interesting information that never seems to make it into mainstream thinking.

Braden talks about the discovery in 1991 of “heart intelligence” by the guys in the white lab coats.

Apparently, according to Braden, they discovered that in every human heart 40,000 or so specialized cells are configured in a way that creates “a neural network in the heart.” (They are brain-like cells, but they’re in the heart and not the brain.)

Our brain thinks. So does our heart. It seems there’s even physical proof of that.

I’m including it here because it resonates with my own experiences of the heart-thinking that is a traditional Hawaiian concept I tend to use my own self when I’m trying to make sense out of my own ambiguities and uncertainties.

There are, of course, all kinds of advice, exercises, techniques, and resources out there to help you come to a decision. The videos are just a small sampling of a multitude of ways to counter the anti-power of Maybe.

My own favorite hacks come from Martha Beck. In her Martha’s Blog in 2013, she wrote a post, “Yes? No? Maybe? How to Make Decisions”. In it she lays out three options and plans, complete with how-to’s. She says you can:

Do nothing.
Do anything.
Do something completely different.

Click on the button below to get to the post. (I like option 3 the best.)

Here’s a poem:

CROSSROADS AS HABITAT

Crossroads seem to be my natural habitat,

The fate of one who provides shelter

For travelers following trails of their own choosing.

Like an innkeeper, I watch as they come and they go,

All of them moving through their days in slo-mo

Down highways and byways and offshoot trails

That are constructed out of the consequences of

Past actions taken and promises left undone,

Abandoned dreams and desires,

And wishes unfulfilled.

The travelers move through mindscapes I often cannot see,

Past ghost towns and old ruins left behind by other folks

Who have been swallowed up in the ubiquitous mist we call “Time.”

The accommodations I can offer are a temporary stopping-place

And I am just one more feature in a chaotic mix built by other people’s dreams.

The travelers notice me in passing

And they are always, ever, passing on through.

For my sanity’s sake

I keep trying to impose a semblance of structure and order

On the flow of elemental forces so old that their myriad names

Have long been forgotten

As their multiple aspects keep morphing one into another.

I keep trying to cultivate an oasis,

An ephemeral soap bubble, easily broken by the custom-made chaos

Each traveler carries along as baggage…

A temporary haven that implodes when touched by the inevitable clash

As one strange world bumps into another one.

“Permanence” is a joke, I am thinking,

And “peace” is just one more name for a temporary détente,

A breathing space before the next leg

Of the journey each traveler began with such high hopes.

An innkeeper watches as the World goes past,

Accepting what comes,

Seeing to the needs of the ones who stop,

Watching them go and blessing them on their way.

It is not boring.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit:“Crossroads” (8) by Michael Vallejo [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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

BEND THAT CODE YOUR WAY

Wed, 08 Jul 2020 20:34:53 GMT

It’s a survival thing. When a person is an Outsider — someone who doesn’t “belong” to a group of one sort or another for whatever reason — there is a kind of invisible barrier that rises up between them and the people who do belong to that group.

It’s a very real divide.

“Same” is good, the prevailing culture code says; “different” not so much. It’s a built-in herd thing, I suppose.

Every group has a culture code. Every group will say that there is Right and True and Real and then there is not-right and not-true and not-real.

Everybody who identifies with a particular group (or wants to) is likely to act and at least pretend to think the same way. They all do the same sorts of things.

“Chickens With No Heads” by Alfred Shun via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

“Different” means “other.” “Other” is strange (and possibly dangerous) to what is Right and True and Real for whatever culture one happens to be living in at any given moment.

“Other” may feel like a threat and the group closes ranks.

It reminds me of the scab-chicken game. Sometimes there is one bird in a chicken flock that has some injury or some weakness or flaw that the other birds in the flock notice.

Chickens are mean birds. The designated scab-chicken invariably gets picked on and shoved around until it is driven away out of the flock, and, in the wild, that’s a death sentence for the bird.

It takes a stubborn bird (or one with few options) to hang in there.

“Naked Chicken Neck” by Perry Quan via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

If you are an Outsider, you’re automatically the scab-chicken. It’s a real possibility that you will suffer the same fate as the benighted bird – not being allowed to eat in peace, not being allowed to hang with the other birds — a target for pecking beaks and feather-pulling, bullying shoves and chivvying squawks.

If you cannot find a way to at least look like you’re able and willing to navigate and walk the way the people around you expect of a fine and upstanding member of the group, then, obviously, you will not be considered a part of that group and you won’t get the bennies that come from belonging.

If you want to be a part of any group, you will probably be advised by “people-in-the-know” to do what you must to suss out the code of the culture you’re trying to break into.

If they’re your mentors and guides, they’ll teach you the moves they say you have to make to adapt to the parts of the culture codes that the group finds valuable — the ones that will convince a particular group that you, too, are one of the “right” ones.

“Strange yellow chicken thing” by Amro via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

These people are not wrong.

If the tolerance level for difference is not high in a culture you’d like to join, then you are likely to be tripped up or held apart by other people in the group if you insist on walking your own kind of walk. Some of these people may actively work to do you dirty.

Socio-linguistics experts call the chameleon-like Outsider adaptation to a particular culture code that is not their own “code-switching.” Every professional success or life coach around has some technique or system or method that is supposed to help you fit in with whatever your favored culture happens to be.

Because language and communication are such a large part of how we relate to other people, it makes sense that the people who study how languages work would have a word for it.

But communication between people is more than just language and words. It’s also about non-verbal communication. The way you talk is just one facet.

How you dress, the way you wear your hair, what you eat, even the way you smell and the way you move are all non-verbal ways of communicating.

The choices you make when you entertain yourself and how you spend your days can be bonding things that meld you into some group or other. They can also keep you separate.

Codes are mostly well-defined mash-ups of all the different signals we humans make. In order to fit in, we want to send out the “right” signals.

But then, there are the guys who study Happiness Science and the ones whose practice is to coach you in going for Happy.

These experts point to all kinds of studies and such and tell you that in order to reach true happiness and peace of mind you have to be your own, true Authentic Self.

I love the work of internationally known motivational speaker and author Iyanla Vanzant. She uploaded a series of “Slice of Life” videos that sound like spoken poems. This one, “Who Are You,” was published in 2011.

Ummm….

Right!

Now comes the big question: How are you supposed to be this “authentic” person walking your own walk if all you’re doing is emulating and echoing the actions of the people who belong to some group or other to which you want to belong?

An interesting conundrum, that.

BEING THE OTHER CHICKEN

Okay, so you’re one of the “different” ones.

“The…Other Chicken” by Blaise Alleyne via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

(Allow me to let you in on an open secret: EVERY ONE OF US HUMANS ARE ONE OF THE “DIFFERENT” ONES. Mostly that’s because each one of us makes choices that are not identical to choices made by the other people around us. All of us are funny that way. Shhh….Don’t pass it on.)

First thing to remember: You do need to know who you are or you will not be able to get to the place where you want to be.
Second thing to remember: You can choose how much of your authentic self you will share with the people around you.

The first thing is just the basic, one-size-fits-all ground rule. KNOW THYSELF. The ancients tell us that, over and over again in every culture.

There is a reason for that. You have to be your own self because if you look around you, you will notice that every other self is already taken.

The second thing is something we tend to forget: FULL DISCLOSURE CAN BE DETRIMENTAL TO THE QUALITY OF YOUR LIFE. Only you can decide how uncomfortable you can stand to feel.

Masks serve many useful functions. As many of us have learned during the worldwide Corvid-19 virus pandemic response, face masks can help keep us and the people around us safe.

“Mask” by Mike T via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The problem with masks, though, is that you do have to remember that they are masks. They do come off.

“Masks” by Dean Shareski via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

It’s always a balance, isn’t it?

You are always going to need to balance the drive to fulfill your own needs and wants and the expectations and aspirations of the society (all of it made up of other people) that surrounds you and that enfolds you.

“Masks” by Franzisko Hauser via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

I came across two YouTube videos that present intriguing glimpses at ways we can use our awareness of code-shifting to further our own purposes.

The first was published in 2020 by Diverse City LLC and is titled, “RACISM: The Code Switch.”

Diverse City LLC, it says here, is a consulting firm based in Los Angeles and Seattle that helps corporations “assess, and solve issues of growth and development in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).”

In the video, a young black man answers a colleague’s unsolicited advice about how the young man could fit into their group “better.” It models a graceful response in an awkward situation.

In the second YouTube video, published in 2016 by the Stanford Graduate Business School, the school’s Business Lecturer, Richard Cox, explains and models the social cues and gestures we can use to signal people about how they can interact with us.

In the video, it is fascinating to watch the way Cox uses his body language to signal that he is giving the other person permission to approach him and, alternatively, to signal a request that the other person back off.

These videos and others like them can help you navigate through the Bog-Lands of Code-Shifting.

One fascinating website you can explore is “SOCIALINGUISTIC ARTIFACTS,” a collection of audio and video pieces, images, news articles, and blog posts as well as links to other websites that were submitted by followers and curated by the Reed Institute guys who put up and maintain the site.

Click on this button to go there:

IT’S REALLY ALL ABOUT MAKING CONNECTIONS…..

All of this code-switching stuff reminds me of my own experiences, wandering through various mind-scapes built by people who came from very different cultures and who were all needing to make adjustments to living in a new world that they were building together.

Hawaii remains a social laboratory of sorts. Those of us who live here cannot help but explore all of the ways we can connect with each other.

We live in a place that has a cultural code built around a diverse collection of minority races from many parts of the world. In such a place there are many opportunities for an individual to be included (or excluded) from a wide assortment of different groups.

It is also a place which has recently been demonstrably easy to isolate from the rest of the world. When the planes carrying visitors stopped coming, we were left once again with Just Us, and the Us we have living here is still very diverse.

“Spiral of Hands” by lostinthewoods via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

I have a friend who used to work as a bailiff in one of the highest courts in the state of Hawaii. One of his talents is being able to speak a multitude of different flavors and dialects of Hawaiian Pidgin, the “creole” language developed by the immigrants who came here and the natives who lived here.

One of his jobs was to make sure that the people who were not able to speak or understand Standard English well could communicate their thoughts and feelings in the intimidating and new-to-them world of the justice system.

Watching him deal with the confused and often frightened plaintiffs and defendants, flipping through the different dialects with ease and smoothing out the process for them, was a wonderment to see.

Hawaiian Pidgin continues to evolve as a language in modern times as the young people carry it forward (despite continued discouragement from the state’s Department of Education, among others).

Some people say that modern-day pidgin is a way to help the young and the rebellious to establish a self-identity. I know that speaking my own brand of it often feels like coming home.

This final YouTube video is a TEDxTalk published in 2014, featuring hip-hop artist and public speaker Poet Ali at the TEDxOrangeCoast talk. It is a beaut!

Here’s a poem:

CANCELLING MY SUBSCRIPTION

Braddah-man,

Why you gotta make ’em hard?

You thrash around like a maddened bull,

All wild-eyed and snorting because

I will not bend your way,

Will not agree your say is the only true

And your “should” is the one that’s real.

And…everybody ELSE agrees, you say,

So why not me?

Uh-huh.

Mostly that’s just ’cause those others are

Tired of talking already.

They are walking away before

They turn into screaming meemies.

They do not care enough for that.

You just don’t get it.

And me, I’m getting really tired

My own self.

I’m starting to feel like that mean warden

In the “Cool Hand Luke” movie.

“What we have here…is a failure to communicate.”

And, Braddah-man,

Your name ain’t Luke,

And you sure ain’t cool!

So…here’s my notice:

I am cancelling my subscription to your issues….

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit:. “Does the Lily Weep?” by smilla4 via Flickr –CD BY-NC 2.0]

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

UN-SEEING: Mastering Surrender

Thu, 11 Jun 2020 18:40:37 GMT

So, I’m sitting there grousing about how dizzy I’m making myself trying to get a handle on the paradoxical concept of “Surrender”.

The Light of My Life does his Mysterious Mystic grin and tells me, “Surrender is the seed of beginning to see that you are the source of your world. IF YOU ARE FIGHTING AGAINST YOURSELF, YOU LOSE.”

My jaw dropped.

He retells one of my favorite stories, about the time when he was a youngster living in a palapa on the beach for a few months at Playa de los Muertos in Puerto Vallarta before it became a tourist destination.

Every morning he would wade out waist-deep into the surf and pretend that he was a conductor “directing” the waves of an ocean-turned-orchestra. He spent a lot of time getting his moves right.

He watched the way the water moved and began to see how the waves would form. He watched the way the winds and the currents pushed them this way and that. He assiduously worked at matching his arm-waving movements and hand signals to the wave action.

I imagine that if someone was on the beach watching him when he got good at predicting how the waves would form and the way they would move, it would look like he was a baby Leonard Bernstein out there playing with the ocean.

It occurred to me then that, in his later life when he became an artist many years after this episode, the skill he developed during his play-time came in handy.

Mat Westcott, the Light of My Life, is an artist/artisan, working in an art-form that he developed himself. Here’s a lousy snapshot of a work in progress….

“Work in Progress” by Netta

He uses natural fibers – in this case, banana “bark” cut away from the trunks of banana trees, then dried and manipulated to make the water and the sky bits of the collage as well as dried stems of ‘ape (elephant ear) to make the land masses and rocks.

Mat’s surfer and sailor fans love his ocean pieces. They say the things immediately carry them away, back to the sea.

You can see why he talks about building worlds. It’s what he does in his life.

THE NO-SURRENDER THING

When I was poem-mining, going through my digitized archives of more than 20 years of poems looking for more poems to feature in this thing, I was struck by the thought that trying to figure out how to “surrender” (and why and when and to what) is a major thread of a theme running through my work.

I have always been an attack-the-problem, full-speed ahead sort of person. I figure you can’t deal with something if you don’t face it, right?

It won’t go away if you don’t DO something, right?

“No Surrender” is my go-to mantra. (I used to have the t-shirt, even.)

Most of the time it works. If I am dogged-y enough, I can usually gnaw the thing down to a nubbin. Then, it’s one more chomp and GONE.

However, there are times when that one just doesn’t work

“Never Surrender” by Julian Fernandes via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

So, what do you do when you cannot DO anything any more? What if you are brain-dead from trying to deal with some irascible, chronic problem that just won’t get smaller and won’t go away?

“Little Jhonny wants to play” by Rajesh Pamnani via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Some of my Dude and Dudette friends say, “Chill out, babe. It’s all good.”

Their idea of “letting go” is something along the line of that “52-Pickup” prank of our youth. You throw a deck of cards up in. the air, and let them fall where they may.

Somebody else has to pick them up.

“Surrender” by Seth Mazow via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

That’s good for a recharge. It’s good for a breather. It’s lousy as a lifestyle.

New-Agers and other Spirit-enthusiasts in all their different flavors say, “Surrender to the Cosmos and/or the Oneness,” or “Let go and let God,” and all that.

“Surrender” by Alice Popkorn via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

And THAT is just plain…SCARY – especially for a recovering Control Freak like me.

Mathew’s take on the whole thing is making a lot of sense to me.

“Life Renewed” by Guy Courtemache via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

SURRENDER AS A WAY OF SEEING

Surrender can be the first step to making something new. Surrender can be a way to see underlying patterns of behavior and can serve as a strategy for learning how a situation or a person moves.

Surrender is a different way of seeing.

Those things work for me.

The following video, “Strength in surrender – onstage and in life” was published in 2014 by TEDxTalks and features improv actor John Lewis Lambert giving a speech at the TEDxSanAntonio.

The six-minute video breaks open your heart.

When he gave the talk, Lambert was an active improvisation performer since 2006. He was the father of twin boys, aged eleven then.

In the video he tells us, “Uncertainty makes us human,” and “Life is improv.” He tells us that there are times when we have to accept that “Life will not always work out on our behalf.”

He tells us, “All that we have in life can be summed up in two ways: We have each other and then we have the darkness and insecurity of the Void.”

And the guy is right.

The coolest thing to hear during the times when your nose is pressed up against the hard wall of “not-going-to-happen” is the best assurance that we can give to each other: “I’ve got your back.”

It lets us get on with using Surrender in a way that turns it into a Sun Tzu move — another martial arts technique to add to your repertoire of problem-solving life-hacks as you work your way through whatever problem you are facing.

AND, OF COURSE, THERE’S A BOOK

Cheri Huber is an American meditation teacher in the Sōtō school of the Zen Buddhism tradition. In 1987 she founded the Zen Monastery Peace Center near Murphys, California where she’s conducted many retreats and workshops.

In 1997 she founded Living Compassion, a nonprofit organization dedicated to peace and service.

Huber has also written more than twenty books.

One of my favorites is her book, WHEN YOU’RE FALLING DIVE: Acceptance, Freedom and Possibility, which was published in 2003.

To my mind, at least, Huber’s concept of “acceptance” is a close match to Mathew’s concept of “surrender”. She says that acceptance means embracing, owning and expanding beyond one’s closely held and defended personal limitations.

She says the attitude to adopt when taking this stance is one of, “If it exists in my world, it is mine.”

That, too, resonates with Mathew’s own thoughts. If all the world you see is yours, then when you fight against what-is, you are fighting your own self. Hmmm….

If you can move into the present with the willingness to see and embrace everything that arises, Huber tells us, you can figure out how to make the changes that you want and need to make. You can figure out how to move to match the way the flow is going.

If things are not as you would like them to be, then allowing them to be what they are means you let go of resisting what-is.

And that, she says, is the first step to changing things.

“When you let go of resisting your world,” Huber assures you, “you no longer suffer.”

All the tensions and stresses fall away. The anger and the frustration evaporates. You are no longer in panic mode. And you can see again.

“It’s not that we gain the power to change circumstances,” Huber admonishes. “We develop the skills to determine our experiences of those circumstances.”

“Touch” by brando via Flickr [CC BY-2.0]

And there it is, yet again.

[Note to Control-Freak Me: What happens to you is not what matters; you cannot control that. What you CAN control are your responses to whatever happens.]

GRATITUDE AND A GIFT

Thanks for putting up with my spazzing.

As a special treat, I’d like to share this YouTube video, “The Paradox of Awakening,” published by SAND (Science and Nonduality) from their 2018 conference. Thousands of people from around the world have attended these annual conferences that bring together scientists, mystics and seekers.

In the video, best-selling author, international speaker and life coach David Ellzey gives a (non-verbal) performance that pretty much delineates what life is like for a Seeker. It has its funny moments.

Enjoy!

Here’s a poem:

EASY IS NOTHING

The way is easy, they tell me,

But there’s a lot they do not say:

How easy is mostly an empty feeling

That will sit inside of you and stay.

You see a thing and you start walking.

That’s easy, don’t you know?

But easy can feel like lonely:

A small, small boat in a very big flow.

There is no need to rush-rush-rush

And nothing you have to do.

There’s nothing here to push you,

Just the nothing inside of you…

And the nothing is hard to grasp sometimes.

It is bigger than you can hold.

And to wait for the how to ripen

Can mean shivering in the cold.

Easy can be hard to take

When you don’t know how.

Easy’s always hard to fake

‘Cause easy is only now.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “rain catchment” by Tim Szlachetka via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

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

SOUL QUESTION

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 18:31:01 GMT

Here’s another free-form poem by guest poet James Ray. It was posted on his site, WAR INC, in July, 2019. He says he wrote it while he was having his Semi repaired on a very quiet and clear night.

“I looked up at the stars, as I’ve been known to do, and wished (not for the first time) that I did it with someone who could answer this question for me. All the easy questions of why and where here, but that one slips away time and time again.

“My soul, why is it here? What now? I dream to meet someone to dream and answer it with….
Souls are eternal but not all knowing.”

What of my soul?

For the love of a tree. For the love of a branch. For the affection of the air. For the warmth of the ocean. For the touch of Terra firma.

I live for none of these things. I live because biology fills my lungs, oxygenates my blood. The electricity of my body chemistry powers my heart. The seemingly random flashes of my synapses activate my brain.

What of my soul? What does my soul live for? Why would anyone care? I can live without it. Many do. I can run from one thing to another in a never-ending attempt of validation. Many have. I can curse my existence and snuff out those who have found their souls. Many will.

What of my soul? What purpose should it have? Who should give it to me? What do I do if I choose the wrong? How shall I heal it if injured? How shall I grow it, for it to gain strength?

Stand with me on this warm summer night, as i gaze up at the stars and sky. Leave me not alone to ponder this quest on my own. I cannot love man for man does not love me. I cannot be affectionate with Earth because Earth precedes me. I cannot be comfort to the creatures of the wild. For they are not of my kind. I can not love me for I am man.

Sit with me as I gaze of the Stars. The birthplace for which I yearn to return. Speak for me on my behalf to all the creators. Besiege on my behalf, “Hear him for he has pondered long.” Creators! Cosmic occurrence! Singularity! Give to me the answer that I watch for. Or give to me proper question to ask. For a thing as small as mercy, surely do not leave me here alone with my question.

Travel with me part ways on my Odyssey. Only the final Journey should be journeyed alone. Break bread with me, make every morsel meaningful. Witness the scent with me, enhance my senses. And in the end comfort me and be an anchor from this world to the next.

What of my soul? What is enough? What must I do. On this warm summer night gazing the stars and moon. Sing me a song of few words. Hum me a melody of few notes. Give me a friendship of love, more than I deserve.

For the love of a tree for the love of me. For as far as I can see. For as much as I can be. Sit with me on warm grass, twinkling sky, half shone Moon, on warm summer’s night. And tell me what of my soul.

Header Photo credit: “Starry Night Scene Looking West” by Russ Seidel via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Cool, James….

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

(And if you would like to share a poem of your making that has meaning and mana for you, please go to the “Guest Poet Portal” in the header menu and submit it. We will all be happy you did.)

TO YOURSELF BE KIND (Another IPS)

Fri, 29 May 2020 17:53:18 GMT

One day I happened to overhear a good friend of mine – one of the most generous and selflessly giving people I know – beating up on herself unmercifully.

She was spazzing about how she had fallen down off her (very high) standards-of-conduct bar because she had not stopped to listen (yet again) to a high-maintenance friend’s continuing saga about how everybody was picking on her and how not-right everything in her life was.

“[why is everybody always pickin’ on me?]” by Jessica via Flickr [CC-BY-NC 2.0]

I grabbed my friend by the shoulders and gave her a shake. I told her, “Hey, you can’t talk to my friend that way! Stop it!”

She stopped in mid-imprecation and stared at me.

I told her, “What? Do ya want me to beat you up? Pfui! Nobody talks to my sistah like that!”

She was surprised at my intervention.

We talked some and I think, maybe, she went away feeling better. I do hope so.

“a friend in need” by Ani-Bee via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

WHY ARE THE GOOD ONES ALWAYS SO HARD ON THEMSELVES?

Does it seem to you (as it does to me) that very often good people who are exceptionally accepting and tolerant of other people’s foibles and flaws are really, really hard on themselves?

They wear themselves out being generous and overflowing with human kindness for other people, but they are absolutely rigid in their intolerance of their own fallible selves.

They seem to forget that they, too, are human and they, too, need to be tolerated, accepted and loved even when they don’t do things exactly “right,” and even when they’ve made some egregious mistake or other.

Sometimes it feels like they’re bucking for sainthood or something. Self-flagellation, anyone?

I don’t know.

Maybe it’s because they think that if they do let up on themselves and give themselves a break, they’ll swoosh down some monstrous slippery slide into chronic, gross negligence and turn into massive, unworthy slobs who zombie out and never do ANYTHING in their lives.

“Slippery Slide” by agnellina via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Maybe they think it’s the height of selfishness to admit that you want to do your own stuff NOW and not when it’s convenient for the other people in your life. (Maybe they don’t notice that usually whatever you want to do is probably not going to be convenient for somebody else.)

Maybe it’s just that they don’t know HOW to be caring and kind to themselves. It’s not something we’re taught as youngsters.

As a kid, it did seem to me that the Bigs in my life were bent on toning down my admittedly emphatic desire-body. I was really sure I knew, knew, KNEW what I wanted as a kid…well, at least in five-minute stretches I did, anyway.

The Bigs in my life did harp on that and I got a lot of “instruction” (also known as spankings) for being such an extravagantly sure desire-demon.

However, the Bigs in my life also showed me that they loved me to pieces and that they appreciated me as the PITA (Pain In The Anatomy) that I was. Sometimes I even managed to do them proud.

“Nurture” by Summer Skies 11 via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

THE POWER OF SELF-COMPASSION

Human behavior researcher Kristin Neff is an associate professor in Human Development and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin.

When she was at graduate school in 1997 she began practicing meditation in the Buddhist Insight Meditation tradition. Because of her practice she decided to conduct research on the Buddhist concept of “self-compassion” during her doctoral work.

One result of that work was a best-selling, seminal book, SELF-COMPASSION: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself.

Personally, I enjoyed her taking the time to unpack the concept of self-compassion, and pointing out how it differs from the better-known “self-esteem” concept with which those of us who are into the whole self-improvement project get bombarded.

Neff says that in the long run, self-compassion is more effective than self-esteem as a means for motivating yourself to do stuff because self-compassion is based on our “scientifically proven” human need for acceptance and affection while self-esteem is a more conditional sort of stance that’s based on a fear of failure and a fear of other people’s possible disappointment in you.

When you are compassionate toward yourself you are like a solid friend. You back yourself up 100% — even during the times you screw up. And because you’re a good friend to yourself, it’s way more likely that when you fall down you’ll be willing and able to stand up and try again.

“Thank You For Being a Friend” by Rick Stegeman [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

On the other hand, you have to earn your self-esteem, Neff says. Think of a drill sergeant or a street-fighter martial arts teacher who is sort of contemptuous of you. If you screw up you’re going to get beat up.

How many times does that have to happen before you lose the desire to stand back up and take it on the chin again?

“Drill instructor corrects an error” via Wikimedia [Public Domain – United States Marine Corps]

One YouTube video that was really helpful for understanding the effects of self-compassion (versus good old fashioned self-beatings) is this one, published by the Greater Good Science Center in 2014, “Kristin Neff: Overcoming Objections to Self-Compassion.”

The Greater Good Science Center is located at the University of California, Berkeley. Founded in 2001, the guys in white lab coats study the psychology, sociology and neuroscience of well-being there.

AND THEN THERE ARE THESE COURSES

This next YouTube video, “The Power of Self-Compassion | Kristin Neff and Chris Germer” was published in 2017 by Sounds True, a multi-media company that grew out of a project by one woman, Tami Simon, using her tape recorder.

Simon’s dream to “disseminate spiritual wisdom” grew into a company with more than 80 employees and a wide range of projects.

The video is a moving piece that documents the answers from various Sounds True workers to a series of questions designed to introduce the idea of self-compassion.

It is also an introduction to an ongoing online course, The Power of Self-Compassion, put together by Sounds True in partnership with Neff and clinical psychologist Christopher Germer, a leading clinical psychologist specializing in integrating meditation techniques and principles with psychotherapy.

For more information about the Mindful Self-Compassion Center that the two scientists founded as well as the array of the online courses it offers, click on the button below:

-click-

Another IPS (Inner Peace Symptom): a disinclination to continue flogging yourself for not measuring up to some high-flying standard or other. [It really HURTS! Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!]

A COUPLE OF SELF-COMPASSION LIFE-HACKS

Even if you’re not a dyed-in-wool dedicated self-improvement addict, you too can benefit from a little self-compassion in your everyday ordinary life.

You probably already know a bit about how to be a good friend to others. So, maybe you can use that knowledge to start developing a more loving and accepting relationship with your own self.

Ask yourself how you talk to a friend who is down. Remember how you helped them start to stand up again. Could you maybe do that for your own self?
Ask yourself how you treat a friend who is beside themselves and upset. Remember how you calmed them down? Remember how you offered your support if they needed it? Could you do that one for your own self?
Ask yourself what you did to defend your friend against detractors or other not-friends. Could you do that for yourself?
Ask yourself how you have helped your friend celebrate one of their successes – big or small. Could you do that for yourself?

I bet you can think of many different ways to be a better friend to yourself.

“Ry made a friend” by madaise via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

You do need to know, though, that whether you choose to do a course or you choose the DIY route, the journey will probably be a long one.

In his later years, the Stoic philosopher and wise guy Seneca the Younger worked for the Roman Emperor Nero for more than 10 years. He lived to retire.

During his retirement, Seneca wrote a series of “Moral Epistles and Letters” to Lucilius, who was then the Procurator of Sicily, a high official in ancient Rome.

Lucilius was famous because when he was a young officer in the Roman army he was the decoy that succeeded in helping his general Brutus escape capture by Antony’s army. Shakespeare made him a minor character in his play Julius Ceasar.

Lucilius went on to become a philosopher and a politician in his own right after his army stint. He was also a very prolific writer.

In one of his many letters to his fellow philosopher, the retired Seneca talked about how he was still working, even then, on how to be a friend to himself. The guy made a major point of practicing harsh disciplines – embracing poverty and asceticisms of all sorts including diving into freezing rivers and stuff like that – and he was still working on learning how to be kind to himself.

Obviously, this thing is a lifetime project.

“Seneca” by I, Calidius via Wikimedia [CC BY-SA 3.0]

One other intriguing idea is the notion of turning the Golden Rule on its head.

We all know the Golden Rule. It tells us to “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

To turn the Golden Rule on its head, think about the kindnesses and heartful moves others have done for you. How did they make you feel? Pretty good, huh?

Sometimes a simple kindness can turn our whole day around.

So, whenever somebody does something that makes you feel good, think about how you can use that move to bring your spirits up when you need it.

When you are feeling down, offer up one of these simple kindnesses to yourself. I bet it’ll make you feel good.

“Tea With a Friend” by tuyddatygl via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

When I was working as a property manager in my office in Makawao, a lovely old man, David Cup Choy, would sometimes stop by to drop off a lei he and his wife had made for me using my favorite pua kenikeni flowers that grew on the bushes around his house.

Every time, the fragrance and beauty of those flowers lifted me up.

David and his wife are gone now. But, whenever I need an uplift, I still make myself a lei pua kenikeni from the flowers that bloom on the bush that is in my yard. It reminds me of that beautiful couple and their kind regard for me.

The lei helps remind me that I am worthy of goodwill…and that is a good thing.

“Pua Kenikeni” by Forest and Kim Starr [CC BY 2.0]

Here’s a poem:

JUST FOR A LITTLE WHILE

Maybe just for a little while

I’ve gone past fright.

Maybe just for a little while

I’m feeling just right.

Maybe just for a little while

I can sit and let it be.

Maybe just for a little while

I can enjoy me.

Maybe just for a little while

I can leave the world alone.

Maybe just for a little while,

I’ll just sit at home.

Maybe just for a little while,

I can stop the dreams and schemes.

Maybe just for a little while

I won’t rant and scream.

Maybe just for a little while

I can be strong.

Maybe just for a little while

I can think it won’t be long.

Maybe…

Just for a little while.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “West Maui Mountain Sunrise” by BirdsEye Pix via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

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