lifebuiltpoems

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

BEYOND STUFF-LOVE (Part 4): On Wabi-Sabi

Fri, 22 May 2020 19:39:52 GMT

As a Perfectionist in remission, I am here to tell you that wabi-sabi — a Japanese way of seeing the world — works as an antidote to the never-good-enough, shiny-new-thing madness induced by the classical hyper-focus on perfection and the kind of seamless orderliness that arises from the mathematical, mechanical precision that evolved in the super-industrialized Occidental West where more is always better.

I grew up in a pineapple plantation camp on Molokai. Many of my neighbors were Issei, first-generation immigrants from Japan, who brought it with them from their homeland. I was marinated in wabi-sabi.

“Tofu Warm Night” by Mo Riza via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

We called it “making do” and “getting by” and “using up stuff.” (We weren’t rich so waste was not an option.)

The place was small and choices were limited and perhaps that is why we were often able to see and appreciate how the passage of time allowed the things, people, and places in our lives to more fully become what they intrinsically were.

“As Time Goes By” by Madjag via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Losses, decay and death were juxtaposed willy-nilly with new and flourishing growth and life. It all was there to experience in wonderment at the fullness of a life lived small.

Joys and sorrows, laughter and tears mingled and they were…well, messy.

OLD-STYLE GETTING REFURBISHED

I’ve been wading through various opinion and think pieces by designers and wanna-be arbiters of taste and various modes of self-improvement that tout wabi-sabi as the latest flavor of minimalism – this one with a sushi sort of flavor or something.

The postures adopted by the most earnest of the listicle post blog writers are sprinkled with a mystical sort of umami flavoring as they try to explain how we can bend our Stuff-Love towards an appreciation of the beauty of the imperfections and flaws of Life-Its-Own-Self that evolved in the Oriental East.

It’s the latest way to get to happy, they say. Wabi-sabi is “living the perfect imperfect life,” several of them said.

All we have to do, of course, is buy (or keep) the Right Stuff.

“Rural Wabi-Sabi” by Peter Prehin via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

YEAH, RIGHT….

This emphasis on copying the outer forms of the wabi-sabi mindset reminds me of a journey I watched a young relative make during her first few years on-island.

Rosie relocated to Hawaii after spending most of her childhood in the Mainland USA. Upon her arrival on the island she was able to indulge in immersing herself into one of the root cultures of this place that held great meaning for her.

Her spare time was taken up with learning how to paddle a canoe and what it was to really dance the hula. The transformation was lovely to see.

“Ocean That Way” by Christopher Paquette via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

We met, a few years before her big move, at a family lū’au (party) celebrating the marriage of one of her young cousins. Rosie and her sisters danced a simple hula as part of the home-grown entertainment.

The dance the sisters and their mom did was painfully correct, a novice effort done with great enthusiasm and a focus on getting all the moves just right. They did the moves well, but the kaona, the metaphors and references to the hidden meanings behind the words of the song, were missing somehow.

They did get points for trying, but when a real hula dancer took the stage, the movements she made evoked emotions that transported the audience to a different place.

The dancer showed Rosie where the dance could be taken and it inspired her, I think.

She was accepted into one of the best of the more traditional hula halau (schools) on the island and quickly immersed herself into that world of dance.

The next time I saw Rosie dancing on the stage I could see the difference in the way she moved. The stiffness and rigidity was gone.

Her body was beginning to flow with the rhythm of the music and her understanding of the words of the song and of life in the islands had deepened enough to show in her movements.

Rosie was not Miss Aloha Hula material by any means, but she had taken the understanding and knowledge she had gained down into her bones and it came out in her dance. It was most beautiful to see.

“Wabi Sabi” by Erich Ferdinand via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

FORM AND FEELING

“Form” is one of the big deals of designer-maker mindset. The word has two meanings.

One refers to the physicality of an object – what it looks like and how your body’s senses react to it — the way an object physically looks and feels and tastes and smells and so on.

The Artful Dodger meaning is more esoteric. It refers to “the shape among the various elements” that make up the construct. The various elements of an art piece build up a framework for meaningfulness that can morph, depending on the context into which these elements are placed.

All of that blather just means that the “meaning” of a construct, like its beauty, is in the eye (or ear or nose or tongue or skin) of the beholder. You have to add body English to it.

This is why some pieces of art, music, dance, literature, fashion, cooking, gardening and all the other bits of possible human expression speak to you and others just don’t.

Your enjoyment of the various kinds of human expression you encounter really does arise out of what you bring to the experience — your values and your mindsets — and that enjoyment doesn’t really depend on the work itself.

This is probably one of the reasons why designers tend to expound on their truth that your mindsets can be affected by the stuff with which you surround yourself.

It’s also why wise guys and deep-thinkers all through history keep on telling us that how we see the things that surround us depends on the quality and strength of our own hearts.

All of that is true.

However, adopting wabi-sabi thingy-ness and wabi-sabi stylings won’t actually get you to your happy place without the application of your attention and mindfulness, your body-wisdom, and your heart.

“Stone Tiles” by Chris Jackson via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

WABI-SABI LIFE ACTION

This 2018 YouTube video, “Heart and Mind” was published by Green Renaissance. It provides, perhaps, an understanding of the kaona (inner meaning) that underlies the wabi-sabi way of walking.

The video features Eduardo Shimahara, a Brazilian micro urban farmer and former mechanical engineer, who is also the founder of the Sustainability Institute, an international living and learning center connected with the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.

“Green Renaissance” is a collective of four young South African filmmakers who put together video stories of “real people doing amazing things.” The films are their “passion projects” created between their paying gigs and are partially funded by donations from people who join their Patreon campaign.

They are doing some amazing work.

My own feeling is that Shimahara and the Green Renaissance makers are living wabi-sabi, patching together the bits and pieces of their lives that resonate with their hearts and making contributions to the world that are uniquely their own.

It feels like a good thing.

ONE MORE TAKE

Wabi-sabi is not really just a quintessentially Japanese cultural thing. It is, perhaps, a universal human truth…one we may have lost sight of in our race towards wherever we’re going.

One fascinating YouTube video, “Heart Mind Coherence,” published by Ancient Explorers in 2016, features best-selling author, scientist, scholar and human potential maven Gregg Braden.

In it he explains a little bit about how our brains and our hearts are intrinsically connected and how we can affect the world because of it.

Basically, in the video, Braden reiterates the old wise-guy wisdom that what we feel and believe about the world is what we will see in it. It is one of Braden’s most consistent messages – in his talks, in his best-selling books, and in his consultancy practice with many international corporations.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I bet, after all that (if you don’t already know), you’re scratching your head and asking “So…what IS wabi-sabi, Netta?”

Click on the button below for one of the most right-on explanations of it that I’ve seen – an updated version of a 2018 post by BBC contributor and travel writer Lily Crossley Baxter. It explains it a lot better than I can.

I started this post with the confession that I suffer from PPS (Perfectly Perfect Syndrome) that has been the bane of my life. I am addicted, it seems, to trying to reach new heights of Perfectness and taking everybody else along with me.

This led to all kinds of interesting lessons for me and, for a time, also led to my being widely known as a Perfect Bitch.

It took me years to re-learn wabi-sabi’s basic precepts, as delineated by Richard Powell in his book, WABI SABI SIMPLE: Create Beauty. Value Imperfection. Live Deeply:

Nothing lasts.
Nothing is finished.
Nothing is perfect.

As they say, I am still learning.

Here’s a poem:

MELANCHOLY

Melancholy feels like an empty space.

I feel melancholy when I am alone,

Saddened by an absence…

The empty space where you used to be,

Sitting there smiling,

Cracking another silly,

Waiting with your strength

To cradle me in my weak times,

Waiting with your weakness

To fill my arms in my strong times.

I feel melancholy when I hear

The echoes of your stories,

The telling of your days

That ring through my heart

And fills my head

With yet another realm I never knew

Except when your words

Took me flying through them.

I feel melancholy even though

I’ve learned how to be happy

With just me

Because, you know,

Leaning always feels better

When there’s somebody leaning back.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “Enter by the Narrow Gate” by Sharon Tate Soberon via Flickr [CC BY-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 BEAUTY REBELLION (Guerilla Gardening)

Thu, 14 May 2020 19:15:51 GMT

It is heartening for me to see the world-wide burgeoning of another sort of rebellion against the very real effects of the post-modern aftermath of our narcissistic phase of dominion and domination over nature, where we humans felt entitled to willy-nilly pave over the world and dump our stuff all over the place to make yet another ugly.

They call it “guerilla gardening” and it continues to expand all over the globe.

“Sidewalk Garden” by Kellan via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

For decades now, Nature Freaks have been striking back more and more with seed-bombs, surreptitious collusions and work-parties, and outright celebrations as well as assorted forms of serious protest.

“Guerilla Guardeners Are We!” by Lee Davenport via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Legend has it that bands of joyful rebels make illicit forays into areas where people live amid the stern lines of heavy concrete and slickety glass and callous bean-counting and old-fashioned not-so-benign neglect. Their mission is to make these urban deserts bloom.

It’s a “movement,” they say.

“Hygieaplein Amsterdam” by 24oranges.nl via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

For a number of varied reasons, those who are serious, deeply committed “guerilla gardeners” work on creating pockets of beauty that uplift the spirits of those who must live amid the results of a separatist human mindset that has held sway since we humans figured out how to make the wheel work.

Individual Green insurgents add their bits as well. Mostly, it seems to me, they giggle a lot.

“An ode to my stolen bike….” by the potholegardener via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

WHAT’S A GUERILLA GARDENER?

The best definition for the term I found was in life-coach Chris Baréz-Brown’s book, WAKE UP: A Handbook for Living in the Here and Now (54 Playful Strategies to Help You Snap Out of Autopilot).

He says that guerilla gardening is “provoking change by bringing nature to spaces where it doesn’t exist, such as an inner-city abandoned plot.” The key, he says is not asking for permission to plant.

“Median Strip Tulips” by J. Biochemist via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

(The book, by the way, is a lovely foray and introduction into taking back control of your mind from that hardworking but dumb autopilot of yours that keeps you doing the same-old over and over again every day.)

The phrase, “guerilla gardening,” originated in the 1970s. Most people credit the first recorded use of the term to Liz Christy and her Green Guerilla group who transformed a derelict private lot in the Bowery Houston area of New York into a garden.

The garden’s still cared for by volunteers but now enjoys the protection of the city’s park department.

“Liz Christy Garden” by edenpictures via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY 2.0]

However, the ubiquitousness of the idea of it now – both the term and the practice – might be due to the efforts of my favorite guerilla gardener, a Brit named Richard Reynolds.

Supposedly the guy is “Britain’s 24^th most influential gardener” — which is saying something in a country that is teeming with plant-lovers and People of the Garden.

In the following 2008 video, “Guerilla Gardening, Richard Reynolds” published by Bloomsbury Publishing, Reynolds and his crew are stopped by police officers from completing their mission of beautifying yet another neglected urban spot.

They leave the scene, but then, in true guerilla fashion, they come back to finish the job.

Reynolds’ website, Guerilla Gardening.Org, which he began in 2004 as a logbook of what he calls his “illicit cultivation” around London has gone global.

The website provides a wealth of information about what Reynolds calls “gardening without boundaries.” It has become a gathering place, a hub for information exchange among the global community of those who follow the many ways of ninja-gardening.

Reynold’s book, ON GUERILLA GARDENING: The Why, What, and How of Cultivating Neglected Public Space, has been translated into several languages and is the default go-to manual and manifesto, it seems.

WHY DO THEY DO IT?

Reynolds gave a talk at TEDxItaewon in Seoul, Korea in 2012 that apparently inspired a whole slew of gardening efforts outside boundaries in South Korea. (You can click the button below to hear the full talk.)

In his talk Reynolds highlights three reasons gardeners go guerilla:

for the sheer joy of gardening
for the social aspects of the activity
for public expression (either aesthetic or in protest of public policies)

Reynolds started out in it because he was a country-bred gardener stuck in a city apartment and he missed being able to indulge his need to play with plants and grub around in the mud.

He quickly gathered helpers and followers as his gardens grew and grew, tapping into the social potential of the thing.

In the course of things, he also began using the guerilla gardening for the third mission of the true guerilla gardener — for protest, for advocacy and so on.

“Guerilla Gardening” by sebastiankauer via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

As Reynolds is careful to point out in the TEDx talk, guerilla gardening is still a criminal activity. He also warns that gardening in public spaces may mean that because your efforts are out there in the open, they may be subjected to theft, vandalism, and critter action.

THE GARDEN OF EDEN GOES DOWN

And while Reynolds does not point it out, gardening on land you don’t own means your access to the gardens you create can be taken away by the people who do own the land.

For real, these gardens without boundaries can only exist as long as they do not impinge on or interfere with somebody else’s objectives, purposes, development plans or divergent visions. Sometimes they are destroyed.

One of the most spectacular falls from grace involved the world-famous New York landmark, Adam Purple’s Garden of Eden, which existed from 1975 to 1986 behind the tenement building where he lived at 184 Forsyth Street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Purple was born David Lloyd Wilkie. Among his many eccentricities was his penchant for always wearing purple. He did like to garden.

The site where he made his garden had been buried under the debris and rubble from the demolition of two neighboring tenement buildings. He was determined to make a garden where the children could play.

As he cleared away nearly 5,000 cubic feet of debris using only raw muscle power and the simplest tools, Purple also created topsoil from materials he found at the site and around the city.

Almost every day while he was working on preparing the garden, he would make a seven-mile round trip to Central Park on his bicycle to pick up 60 pounds of carriage-horse manure. He added it to his compost pile.

He repurposed the bricks and building materials from the demolished buildings around the site, using them to make garden paths and create planting beds.

Purple’s Garden of Eden was a series of rings of plant beds that expanded further and further outward as more buildings around the site were torn down. At the center of the garden he placed a double Yin-Yang symbol.

The design was full of mathematical and magical mana that Purple was convinced would help the garden keep on expanding outward as the ugly buildings around it came tumbling down.

By the early 1980s, the garden had grown to a whopping 15,000 square feet. It became a safe haven for the community and produced food as well.

“Adam Purple tending his urban garden in 1984” by Tony Yaris via Wikimedia Commons [CC BY-SA]

Crops of asparagus, corn, berries, tomatoes, and cucumbers were part of the Garden’s bounty. There were 100 rose bushes and 75 fruit and nut trees dotted throughout the Garden as well.

People flocked to the Garden to help maintain it and to enjoy the beauty of what had become a beloved landmark in the Lower East Side.

The city of New York never officially recognized Purple’s garden. Other local parks were clearly marked on official city maps. The Garden of Eden space was always labeled as “vacant”.

On January 8, 1986, the Garden was demolished by bulldozers in just 75 minutes to make way for a federally funded housing project, despite protests, pleas and support from the community and from prominent New Yorkers.

The housing project did not include space for the Garden. It did not include an apartment for Purple and his family.

A remarkable short film, “Adam Purple and the Garden of Eden” was put together by Amy Brost and Harvey Wang in 2011. It was published on YouTube by travelinglight 56. The film features Purple narrating his story and film and photographs taken by Wang, a photographer who documented Purple’s efforts.

SPEAKING OF CABBAGES, KINGS, AND COMMUNITY

In 2012 Te Papa Tongarewa – Museum of New Zealand, the county’s foremost cultural institution, acquired the photographs and documentation of a unique community art project in Wellington, New Zealand that in 1978 was part protest, part urban guerilla garden, part conceptual sculpture, and part community participation project.

It was formally known as “A Vacant Lot of Cabbages.” The neighbors just called it the cabbage patch.

The museum’s curator Sarah Farrar called it “an important moment in New Zealand’s art and social history.”

To view some of the pictures of the work, click on the button below.

The garden was put together by artist Barry Thomas with help from his friends (most of whom were members of an art co-op in the city) on the demolished Duke of Edinburgh/Roxy Theatre site in downtown Wellington that had sat empty for two and a half years.

The neighborhood was disgusted that the owners of the lot apparently couldn’t manage to care for their land. It looked very bad.

Barry was not happy that in all probability the site would be used for just another mundane commercial building. He wanted to point out to the people-in-charge that Wellington has few public parks.

Together, Barry and his friends — guerilla gardeners all — cut the fence to gain access into the privately owned vacant site and trucked in topsoil. They constructed a planter bed and planted 180 cabbages to spell out the word “CABBAGE”.

“More Cabbages?” by PT Murphus via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Surprisingly, the Powers-That-Were did not demolish the garden. Perhaps it was because the media picked up the story and ran with it.

The artist, when interviewed, invited the neighborhood to do whatever they wanted with the cabbages in the cabbage patch. “Leave them, steal them, run them over with motorbikes” were his suggestions.

He told them that whatever the community did, it would be “part of the art because it’s a reflection of our culture…lt’s a unification of nature with the culture of our society.”

The community responded. The local butcher loaned a hose so that neighbors could water the cabbages and keep them growing.

Over the next few six weeks, as the cabbages grew, the patch was augmented with couches, a gravestone, a toilet, a bed, and a television. One guy plugged a mainframe computer into the cabbage. Somebody else spent over two hours perched on a ladder and bolting a monocycle onto an adjacent wall.

The site became known locally as “the soapbox art corner” and many people used the opportunity to voice or present their own protests. Informal meetings, pop-up performances, events and arts activities happened there every day. It quickly became a gathering place for the neighborhood.

Among the many acts of public expression was a massive papier-mâché pink pig emblazoned with the words, “Media, media expose the pig” that was put together by a Wellington women’s group and targeted the right wing Prime Minister Robert Muldoon.

Graffiti around the site promoted concerns about the (then current) occupation of Maori land in Auckland at Bastion Point.

Meanwhile, two chemists from Victoria University tested the growing cabbages for lead content and pronounced them fit to eat.

When the City Council and the site’s owner decided to clear the site (for public safety, they said), they left the monocycle on the wall and the original cabbage patch. This kept the people coming back to see what would happen next.

While all of this was going on, the artist partnered with a landscape architect to obtain funding from the Commission for the Environment to help pay for a last, week-long festival on the site. They invited the city to share free coleslaw during a week of art activities and all kinds of oddball creative moments.

Called “The Last Roxy Show” the event included poetry readings, performances, and art installations by other artists as well. High school and college art students, guided by a couple of artists, painted large murals, most of them attesting to the value of indigenous forests.

Actor Sam Neill put together a documentary of the festival that included a scene with Barry Thomas dressed in a cassock with his face painted half black and half white as he ceremoniously harvested the cabbages and burned them in a “phoenix gesture.”

“A Vacant Lot of Cabbages” has also been recognized in the country’s online encyclopedia, Te Ara and in an edited art book WELLINGTON: A City for Sculpture from Victoria University Press. They say that no other New Zealand art project has resulted in such a large body of media documentation being collected by the Te Papa Museum.

According to one analysis, the work highlighted the value of the creative use by artists of vacant space and that had a number of subtle side-effects that flavors life in Wellington.

Because of the guerilla-made cabbage patch, there is now a special government-run liaison program in Wellington that helps artists cheaply use otherwise un-rentable vacant space to stimulate economic and cultural activity.

The patch also inspired a long chain of projects by the Wellington City Council that started with the Wellington City Council’s Summer of ’79.

The summertime celebration grew into the “People in the Parks” program which employs hundreds of artists. Thousands of Wellingtonians enjoy activities with artists each summer as a result.

“Waterfountain Swimming, Wellington Botanical Parks” by S. Raynes (Archives New Zealand) [CC BY-2.0]

ONE MORE TAKE

And then there is this YouTube video: “Vigilante Gardener” published by Todd Bieber in 2011. It chronicles the first-time efforts of a wanna-be guerilla gardener in Brooklyn, New York.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to find out the rest of the story. Enquiring minds probably want to know what happened with that garden. I wasn’t successful in tracking it down.

Ah, well. After all the hoo-hah and hoorah of the previous examples, it seemed like a good reality check.

A SEED BOMB RECIPE

People who’d like to start smaller than taking on a full-blown gardening project, might want to consider putting together seed bombs, suitable for tossing into vacant lots that need a little flower power.

“Seed bombs” by Kevan via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

There are several dozens of recipes for the things floating around on the Internet. Most of them are made of clay and seeds and sometimes have compost in there too, all bound by adding water.

This one says to use:

5 parts of some sort of dry clay (usually potters clay or clay powder),
3 parts compost
1 part seed for plants that are native or noninvasive to your area

You mix all of the dry ingredients together until well-mixed and then add 2 parts of water poured into the dry mix in small increments.

You keep mixing the water into the dry ingredients and then you squish it with your hands until it reaches a doughy consistency that isn’t sticky or wet to the touch.

You roll a small amount of the clay mix into marble-sized balls between your palms, making sure the sphere is smooth and unbroken. (You don’t want any cracks in the thing.

You set the bombs in the sun to dry for at least 24 hours.

After that, they are ready to throw around. Try to avoid jettisoning them when there is a drought. They do need water to grow.

I also found one unusual kid-craft project that’s detailed in this YouTube video: “How to Make Seed Bombs | Seed Balls | Craft Idea DIY” published in 2014 by Emilie Lefler.

I like that it just uses paper. (As a former paper artist, I am fond of that material.) Another plus is that the paper bombs do break down more quickly than their clay cousins.

“Growing Seedbombs” by Michael Savina via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

Here’s a poem:

WHAT UGLY IS FOR

Rainbows only last

as long as rain

and sunshine mingle…

Dawns and sunsets

are the sweetest notes

between day and night.

Butterflies flitter and

are gone in a twinkle,

a flash of color….

The sweetest flowers

fade away to sludge,

a scent of glory.

The heartbreaking curve

of a beautiful face is marred

by traces of inexorable age,

And “new” just lasts

until you use it…

(after that, it’s used).

Beauty, they say, is ephemeral,

which is a fancy way

of saying it doesn’t last.

The heart can only stand

so much uplift before it

tries to find the ground again.

Hmmm…

Maybe that’s what ugly’s for.

Created by Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: Guerilla jardinière & Télevision by solylunafamilia 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.

MISSING FEATHERS

Wed, 06 May 2020 20:56:14 GMT

James Ray is a Google+ poet buddy who came looking for me. It was grand getting connected with him again. The demise of Google+ was a sad day for the poets who were having fun playing around with each other in it.

I asked James to share a poem with us. He sent this heartful free-form poem as well as the back story.

James says, “I have written my whole life, but never as much and never as public. Yet I am still mostly unread. LOL”

He invites everyone to check out his poetry blog. Click on the button below and it’ll take you there.

I was told not long after I was born that upon my first crawling I made my way to my father’s chamber. I stole from his ceremonial headdress six feathers. So that is what they named me Six feathers.

Decades later I grew strong with the other warriors of the tribe. Upon a successful raid of our neighbors one of the captured women was found to be unstable. They treated her badly even among the other survivors of her village. They called her Missing feathers.

Warring between the tribes was natural, it was the way. But I had no will to be cruel. I protected Missing feathers for that is my way. From that day on she seemed to be more focused when ever we we’re together. In time my village took to calling me her missing feathers.

How long has it been now? How many sunsets have we shared together? She sleeps now and even now I can tell the trouble of her mind. I know her. I know her mind. Through the many years now accepted by The village, my mate, my Missing feathers.

She will wake any minute now, as she has done many times before. And the unrest behind her eyes will fade to the background as it always does upon seeing me. And I will once again be for her the feathers that make her whole.

The joke unknown by the villagers is that I didn’t take enough feathers from my father’s headdress years ago. She was the feathers that I needed. The wisdom that I did not have. The strength to unite all the neighboring tribes. To end the ceaseless raiding and taking of prisoners. Now our children boys and girls grow strong in the united tribes! And none know but me to give thanks to my Missing feathers.

But uncertain is our time together. For I have noticed some of the spirits that plague her lead her out away from me. How much longer do we have? How much longer before she wakes without it being her behind her eyes? What will I do then when I am truly missing my feathers?

The Medicine Woman and the Elders of the village make no promises to me. They can do nothing to exercise her demons. They say it is only I who have held them at bay all these years. The great spirits have gifted me. But our time together. I do not seek to waste any moments that I have left.

I am transfixed by her sleeping beauty. I am broken-hearted by her restless slumber. I am guardian to the feathers which I cannot keep. She stirs. So slowly her eyes open. Who shall greet me this day?

Husband? Why do you greet me this way every morning? Why do you look so troubled? Have I done something?

No, my beloved feathers. I just worried that I would have to start my day without you. I have but only the six feathers, I need you for the rest.

Such silliness from one who is Chief. But yes, if you give me your six I will give you all that you are missing.

I hug her and in our embrace I thank the great spirit for giving me one more day with my Missing feathers…
~~~~~

I may never get to tell the story behind this story. Because I know I’ll never finish it. I seem to be missing my feathers….

Despite the final lines of the poem, James did share the back-story for this poem. He says, “I came across a letter to her brother that my ex-wife had shared with me some time ago. In it she told him of what finding me did for her life, the meaning and sanity it gave her. As I did then, I told her it meant as much to me.

“Sadly the day came where she did not wake to return to me and the one who woke took her from me. Now I’m left with only the six feathers….”

Header photo credit: “Feathered Fury” by GollyGForce via Flickr. [CC BY 2.0]

Beautiful, James! Thank 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.)

MULTIPLY THE FUN (An Un-Seeing Exercise)

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 18:43:49 GMT

Consistently over the years, assorted research has shown that job dissatisfaction is a problem for about two-thirds of the people in America.

This “disengagement” has wide-ranging effects. Gallup tells us that this job irritant issue has cost as much as $350 billion a year in “lost productivity.”

(It can also suck a soul dry, and turn your life into a desert, but nobody scientific ever mentions that.)

“life imitating art” by Christine Jackowski via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

It is caused, the guys in the lab coats say, by well-documented reasons. Among these are:

a worker’s perceived lack of recognition and acknowledgement for work well-done,
unsatisfactory working conditions that are not necessarily dangerous or particularly life-threatening, but decidedly upsetting — like an unfair or nasty boss or fellow workers who are not allies,
work that does not match or stretch and grow the skills a worker brings to the job,
a worker’s feeling of being trapped in the situation by circumstances he or she feels powerless to change.

Employers are often admonished to be on the lookout for the deadly dudliness induced by dissatisfied minions and apathetic anti-team players.

Leaders and head-dudes get handy-dandy hacks, techniques, and tips at meetings, seminars and workshops that attempt to stem the tide of this unproductive discontent.

“Angst” by nate bolt via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

As youngsters, we regular sorts may have been subjected (at one time or another) to warnings, admonitions and advice about this particular way of walking from parents and other authority figures.

The Greek chorus continued as we grew older and morphed into employees, minions and plain old serfs who often spend a bunch of time trying to figure out how we ended up on some dead-end cul-de-sac or stuck in some hell-realm or other.

“#5: Connection” by Giulia via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Assorted “human resource” people, career coaches and counselors and other self-improvement experts in all of our known universes took up the cause of “fixing” our discontent as a part of their own missions.

Mostly, these advisors tend to tell us, it’s all about attitude. Ours.

These fine folks tell us our attitude sucks and that’s why we’re experiencing all this angst, aggravation, and agita. And, really, if we just did things using their tried-and-true methods, we would be just FINE.

“Connections (2)” by carla arena via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

SORRY, DUDES. THAT ONE DOESN’T WORK FOR ME.

It did occur to me, at some point, that it really did take a good long while for me to “get” the thing about how your “job” and where you work is supposed to define who and what you are.

It’s apparently a deeply ingrained Industrial Revolutionary sort of thing, I guess.

Somewhere along the way to greater efficiency and more and better productivity, humans were supposed to figure out how they could become the best cogs and gears in the big old machine-world of industry and commerce and all that.

“Connections” by M.G.N. – Marcel via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

I confess that I was not so great at being a good little cog. I have a strong objection to being interchangeable and eminently replaceable, I think.

I was at a party one time and the hostess, an old friend, introduced me to a bunch of new people with these words: “This is Netta,” she said, and after a bit of a pause, “She does Netta-things.”

I had to laugh. That was just perfect, I thought.

But, I do have to admit that, for many years as I made my way through the world, I was never quite sure what I was supposed to put on my durned business cards.

Trying to design one of those things always felt to me like I was trying to mount a dead butterfly with pins on some stupid piece of foam. ACK!

“Pinned 3” by Richard Yuan via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

I got to thinking about it all one day and sort of figured out that, probably, at least some of this seemingly ubiquitous general sense of uneasiness and malaise surrounding jobs or careers or whatever we call our work might be the result of a misguided (maybe cultural) attempt to shape a for-real, alive person to fit into some ill-fitting little box.

Stuffing yourself into a teeny-weeny box that is designed to meet somebody else’s specifications is bound to get a lot crampy and not happy-making, it seems to me.

“Fear in Seclusion” by Willy Verhulst via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

MAYBE I’M JUST WEIRD?

I have to admit that I probably had a peculiar upbringing. The Industrial Revolution sort of missed Molokai.

Those of us who grew up there did end up with all the modern conveniences (or reasonable facsimiles), but our lives were shaped by agriculture, big and small.

We didn’t have any factories or mines or things like that on the island — just pineapple plantations, ranches, farms and some ancient ocean-side fishponds that still worked.

It seems to me that throughout my younger days I was surrounded by people who took it for granted that they were supposed to be able to turn their hands and their minds to a multiplicity of things.

“holding hands” by aaron gilson via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

The willingness to try was paramount. It worked better if you were competent as well, but your lack of expertise wasn’t held against you.

It came down, I think, to being able to kokua, to help the people around you get things done and make things happen, and to have some fun along the way.

Service was just the standard operating procedure for the lot of us.

In my growing-up world, people helped each other. When they, in turn, needed help then they could expect the ones around them to lend them a hand as well.

(If a person consistently needed help but never helped anyone else, eventually there wouldn’t be a helping hand available for them, but that’s another story.)

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

It made sense that the more things that you were willing to attempt and the more things you knew how to do well (after trying to get it right time and time again), the more valued you would become.

Who wouldn’t want to hang around with someone who can do cool stuff? Who wouldn’t want to BE that person?

When I was growing up, I don’t think there was much of a division between “work” and “play” among my heart-people.

The things they did were just things they could do – different sets of skills that might come in handy at some point or other to get a project done.

Maybe there wasn’t such a big deal made back then about your “work” being a big part of your self-definition.

You were not a brand. You were just a person — somebody who could maybe do or help with something.

LIVING HUMAN-SIZED

My uncle Alfred, for instance, drove a huge tractor trailer truck transporting large crates of harvested pineapples to the dock at Kaunakakai town from a plantation in the Maunaloa hill country as his day job. It was not the world’s best-paying job.

He had a lot of kids so he was also a master gardener who grew cabbages bigger than your head, prize tomatoes, and pumpkins. He shared his produce with all the neighbors who, in turn, shared their harvests with him.

There was always at least one pig in a pen (getting fattened up for the inevitable sometime-lū’au, party) and a flock of chickens as well.

As a weekend off-shore fisherman, he was the one who always came back with his hand-built sampan full of fish, which he also shared or traded.

As a hunter, he was not a great tracker and he was a lousy shot, but he was good at packing out the meat.

He was also pretty good at playing his banjo and guitar and ukulele, and, boy, could he dance!

Uncle Alfred was just his own self. There were many others who were as skilled in as wide a variety of other things.

I had relatives, neighbors and family friends who were master mechanics, professional people of assorted stripes, builders and maintenance people, artists, cooks of all sorts, seamstresses and needle-workers, hula and other fancy dancers, organizers of family celebrations and community events, salespeople, musicians, gardeners and gatherers, fishermen and hunters, sports coaches and players, and on and on.

They all did more than just one thing. Some of them did many things well as a matter of course. Others had a well-developed specialty or two and pretty much sucked at the other stuff.

Then there were the ones who were mediocre at everything but could be counted on to show up to help with needed grunt work. They were always welcomed too.

What was work? What was play? Sometimes the lines blurred and it all sort of ran together, but you did know who to call when you needed help or just wanted to have fun.

Somebody in that bunch would either know what to do or know who else to tap. The important thing was connection and doing for each other.

“Big Bluet” by Judy Gallagher via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

That way of doing things was what we called “the real old-style.” I liked it.

After I left that little world, it seemed to me that everybody around me kept urging me (and each other) to find the one “mission,” the thing that would make our lives meaningful and worthy and all that good stuff.

Apparently, somebody or other told us there was this paramount need to specialize, focus on, and emphasize just one facet of our naturally multiplicitous selves and learn more and more about less and less.

It made me sad, that.

“Welcome to Angst” by Dawn Endico via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

I never did think it made much sense.

POST-MODERN MULTIPLICITY AND THE ECHOES OF OLD-STYLE

Recently, I stumbled over this 2015 Brendon Burchard You Tube video, “Finding Your Life’s Mission.” It resonated with me.

Burchard is one of the most followed personal development trainers in the world. Some say he’s the best there is.

His top tip in the video for finding your “life mission” (after you’ve explored all the possibilities that spark your interest and still haven’t found your “calling”) is this:

Look around and ask yourself, “How can I help?” Then go do that.

That one takes me right back to the real old-style and to kokua and appreciating the value of being able to help one another get things done. (I still like it.)

Burchard’s video did get me thinking that maybe we are in a transition time again.

We’ve gone past the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution and have made it through the dawn of the Information Age and beyond.

Now our stiffest competition for employment and money-making opportunities are the super-smart machines all around us who are really, really good at doing just the one, stuck-in-the-little-box thing.

Maybe continuing to try to be linear and singularly focused on one vocation might not be the best strategy for fashioning meaningful life-work for a human.

Trying to be ever-more machine-like pretty much guarantees that the striving human is eventually going to be beaten out of a job by a machine who just does it better, it seems to me.

A PORTFOLIO LIFE

One alternative to trying to shape yourself into a good little cog is to get back to being a full-blown human who can turn your hands to many things. Perhaps then you will be better able to fashion your life around the skills and interests you enjoy best.

Maybe, like every other creative Maker, you can start building yourself your own portfolio that you can share with other folks.

Business guru Charles Handy, the Irish author, philosopher and educator, injected deep and elegant thoughts into the world of the guys who study organizational behavior and business strategy during his long career.

He has been rated among the Thinkers 50, a prestigious, private list of the most influential living management thinkers.

Among his many seminal theories and ideas, Handy coined the phrase “portfolio life” in 1989.

The concept was taken up by American writer, blogger and idea guy Jeff Goins. As he gnawed on the thing and shared his findings with other folks, living the portfolio life has come to mean pursuing “a portfolio of activities – some we do for money, some for interest, some for pleasure and some for a cause.”

When you live the portfolio life, the results you create and the impact you make grow out of how you’re choosing to live your human life. That one feels good to my na’au, my gut.

The following TEDx Talk was published in 2017. It features marketing consultant, public speaker, author and educator Dorie Clark talking about “How to Future-Proof Your Career” at the TEDx Lugano event.

To illustrate her points in the video, Clark tells stories of how other entrepreneurs, employees and creatives were able to take control of their professional lives and build their own portfolio careers:

TAKE THE INITIATIVE. It is a given, Clark points out, that you will need to be self-motivated and self-reliant if you are going to go for the portfolio life. It’ll be up to you to explore your areas of interest and see where those interests take you.
APPLY WHAT YOU’VE LEARNED. You’ll make mistakes – sometimes big ones – and you’ll learn about your strengths and weaknesses when you do the portfolio life. You can leverage this knowledge into successfully building another component of your portfolio that produces results you like.
ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT. You need to be able to envision where you want your life to go. It’s the only way you can ask for the keys to the gate you need to get through to get there.
FOCUS ON THE SMALL WINS. Even when a project is huge and overwhelming, focusing on the small wins and appreciating them helps you to persevere until you get through to the other side of all the challenges.
RETHINK THE IMPOSSIBLE. Sometimes you only need to change or reframe and make one or two adjustments to your basic premises and assumptions to erase the “im-” from that word.

It’s noteworthy that Clark is also rated among the Thinkers 50.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The portfolio life is probably not for everybody. It isn’t straightforward. You will blow yourself up if you try to do it all in one go rather than doing one thing and making it work good before trying another add-on and fitting it in.

Until you figure out your own particular style of synergy and fitting together all of those moving parts, you will have to develop a certain nimbleness and adaptability. You have to pay attention and know when to duck.

The people around you – those who love you and those who don’t care – probably won’t understand what you’re doing sometimes.

Still, building a portfolio life might be a better fit for at least some of the disengaged ones who are trying to get around the Triple-A threats to their own peace of mind – aggravation, angst, and agita.

Here’s a poem:

HEY, LISTEN!

There are as many whys

As there are stars in the skies.

It isn’t worth the work

Asking why that one’s a jerk.

The best you can do

Is take a look at you:

How you move and how you prance

That makes it all some goofy dance.

The seasons turn and turn.

You’d think that you would learn:

It’s not some god above

Who grows you into love.

Your job on earth is to see

The best that it could be

And your god depends on you

To make that best come true.

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo credit: “Turning On” by Iwtt93 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

ISLAND-STYLE VIRUS FIGHTING

Wed, 08 Apr 2020 15:40:34 GMT

We are walking through interesting times, we humans. The world is going through a time of rapid change on a scope that is a mind-boggle.

It’s all coming at us at a furious pace as we try to get some kind of handle on it.

When our only effective weapons of defense are washing our hands with soap and water, avoiding sneezing and coughing at each other, and stepping far away from one another as the complex constructs we’ve built for ourselves come to a screeching halt and our dreams evaporate, we do get the idea that it’s gotten all whack-a-doodle.

Local pidgin calls it the “hemajang,” all discordant and in disarray, jarring us with strident ambivalence and the worry engendered by the clashing doubts and fears banging around inside our heads as we try to keep the rising panic at bay.

Be calm, we are told. We cannot make good decisions and life-moves in the middle of a full-blown panic attack.

The story continues, we are reminded, and the challenge now is finding ways to center ourselves up so we do not add to the dissonance running wild.

Trying to be mindful of one another and kind during all of this turmoil is the other challenge we are being called to address.

“Staying at Home” by Simon Brass via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

LOOKING FOR THE BEST STORY

As a property manager, it is one of my kuleana, responsibilities, to try to give the owners of the properties in my care updated reports of the situation here as it unfolds.

Many of them live in other places on the planet and are facing the same kinds of challenges which are as severely limiting.

As I answer their questions and concerns, I am working on cobbling together a story that will give them some idea of how things are going here and what we are doing in the place where many of them have chosen to build good memories and dreams.

I do try to put the best face on it that I can. I figure there’s enough negativity and pessimism to go around already.

I am also working my way toward finding new and creative solutions to the problems my tenants are encountering during this time. Many have seen their jobs declared “non-essential” (or even non-existent).

They are either trying to maintain some facsimile of their former productivity while waiting for better times, or are now unemployed and trying to do that scrabbling hard-rub scramble without leaving the house.

The ones with “essential” jobs are often over-worked and have a hard time seeing straight.

They, too, need a story they can hold on to, one that helps them light a candle against the overwhelming darkness that threatens to engulf us.

It’s how we humans go on, I say. The very best of what we can do for one another is to remind ourselves that as long as there is life, together we can find the strength we need to keep on going.

Anyway, here’s the story I’ve come up with so far….

HOW MY STORY’S SHAPING UP

When two-thirds of the people on an island are transients and visitors and, all of a sudden, they all go away or they stop coming, things get really, really quiet we are finding.

“Did I miss my flight?” by Warren Antiola via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Old-timers tell each other, “Wow. It’s kinda like Before, when it was REALLY boring!”

Nobody gets stuck in traffic and there are few heavy-duty traffic-related tussles any more. There is time now to graciously let the other guy pull out in front of you into the much-smaller stream of cars on the roads.

Soon, I bet, there may be friends passing each other in their cars or trucks on some quiet side-road and stopping in the road for a few minutes to catch up with each other, “talking story” out of their open windows.

The lines in front of the doors at the entrances of the banks and grocery and hardware stores are long as people practice “social distancing,” but these folks have time to “talk story” now.

Old friends can natter on and catch up on each other’s lives. The pace has certainly slowed down considerably.

“Feet Prints” by Russ Allison Loar via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

I have made a game of collecting “virtual hug” gestures as I endure the lines. Sometimes I can get some of the people in line to play along. Some of the gestures are pretty cool.

The folks who raise a fuss about how others are breaking the virus-protocol “rules” of the day often cause eye-rollings and heavy sighs, but they are tolerated. Maybe they’re having a really hard day.

Many of the distractions that kept us running around madly from one meeting to another or putting together or attending some festival or fundraiser or sports event or workshop or some choice other than spending a quiet time at home have been cancelled.

The Makers and Creatives for whom these events were linchpin venues for selling their wares and their works are left with nowhere to go and (if they are prolific sorts) they have a pile of inventory that languishes and performances that have died a-borning.

Some of them are trying to figure out how to use that Internet thing to share their works with new prospective buyers. The learning curve may be steep, but it is likely to prove interesting during the down-time.

Parks and beaches and other access to the natural world that are controlled by the Feds and the state and the county governments are no longer open. We are forced back onto our own resources as we look for ways to get our fix of wind and wave and loveliness.

“Caught in the web” by Bennilover via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

For many, it comes down to taking a walk around the neighborhood, either alone or with some cherished companion, child, or pet.

I had to smile when I saw one young girl walking along a neighborhood sidewalk, talking to a friend on her cellphone as her arms and hands waved all around her emphatically. It was just so Makawao!

Maybe, soon, there will be horses and their riders again, making their way through the countryside on the roads that have seen a great reduction in the number of vehicles tooling around.

The food places that remain open are ones that are supported by local traffic. One enterprising local fast food place has even revived the old drive-in paradigm, having their servers run out to the cars in the parking lot bearing orders of boxed meals. They are doing well.

A couple of distilleries and a number of volunteer seamstresses have, respectively, made a project of making hand-sanitizers or masks for others in need.

“Face mask in the rain” by Robert S via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Many regular people have found ways to help their elderly neighbors during these times, doing shopping trips for them or helping to liven up their days with an ersatz version of Meals on Wheels.

Neighbors are noticing each other again.

A local grocery store collaborated with their produce suppliers, County officials and others to put together a free-food giveaway in the parking lot of one community facility.

For the give-away a neighbor who had an over-abundance of avocados showed up with her harvest to add to the piles of pre-bagged food.

These folks tell us, “We give when we can.” It is another graceful reminder of our island way of life.

“in chalk with love” by Robert Couse-Baker via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

Some of us are taking the time to rethink our life-strategies, looking at what we’ve done and how, perhaps, we can refine it down to the things that are effective for us and important to us.

Some of us have begun taking steps to help facilitate those changes, most of which center around things like strengthening important relationships in our lives and rethinking past choices that really have not been working out well.

“Bored for working at home” by Finland Lakeland via Flickr [CC BY-ND 2.0]

HISTORY SHOWS THAT CHANGE IS REALLY THE ONLY CONSTANT

I tell my property owners that I think that maybe local people are a pretty flexible bunch. We have always been used to making do, lending a helping hand, doing what we can, sharing what we have. These are our strengths in this anxious time.

And the real is, for us, the times have always been disquieting. We are not unfamiliar with hard times and for us who had ancestors living in the world before all those sailing ships came ‘round, change has never stopped happening.

As a grandchild of immigrants I remember the stories of the old ones who left their old home-countries for a better life in a new place. Hard as it was for them, it was still better than what they had left behind.

As a grandchild of the ones who had always been here, I remember the stories about how these immigrants were welcomed and enfolded by their new neighbors into the fabric of island life.

The legacy they left to me was the one about learning from each other and finding ways to work together.

The Light of My Life came to the island more than fifty years ago and has used this place as his home base though all the years of world travel and scratching his very itchy feet and even more itchy curiosity bump.

He says that when he drives through the places where the old plantation villages are now just names on some old map, it’s like he is driving through “ghost” towns.

He can see the old places – now only marked by a line of trees along some old cane field road or by an old landmark that no longer means anything to the current inhabitants of the place — where his old friends and neighbors once lived and worked and played.

It’s like the older living places shimmer behind the more modern structures that have taken their places. They don’t go away, those old places. They are still there in his mind’s eye.

Behind them the places where the ancients lived are also still there. Others, perhaps more sensitive than he, might be able to glimpse them as well.

It really doesn’t matter whether they do or not. The places remain still, a testament to the resiliency and the sheer perseverance of us humans.

One of my heart-people is an older woman who belongs to the generation born during the first decades of the 20^th century. Hers was the first generation not born in the Kingdom of Hawaii (or in the several island chiefdoms that preceded that Kingdom.)

Her generation was among the people living in the American Territory of Hawaii, which was created in 1900.

Their great-grandparents remembered that King David Kalakaua (1874 to 1891) admonished them: “Remember who you are. Be gracious, but never forget from whence you came, for this is where your heart is. This is the cradle of life.”

“Kamaole Dawn” by Priya Saighal via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

It reminds me of a quote from a kumu hula, a dance instructor, Olana Kaipo Ai, who said, “Aloha is the intelligence with which we meet life.”

For people new to the island, and for the ones prone to dwelling on possible catastrophes, the changing paradigms and the unmasking of our variously held delusions can be truly upsetting. Their reactions do vary widely.

“Compliant Easter Eggs” by Ivan Radic via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]

“Social distancing” is problematic then. There’s no way to hug them back to themselves, to let them feel deep in their na’au, gut, that they are seen and they matter. Auwe!

LIVING IN THE REAL OLD-STYLE

Back in the 1970s the Queen Lili’uokalani Trust asked our beloved elder, the late Mary Kawena Puku’i, who was a repository for much of the old wisdoms and mindsets that were a part of the cultural legacy of Hawaiians, to work with the agency’s psychiatric consultant, E. W. Haertig, MD.

Their mission was to produce a work that attempted to bridge the gap between Western ways and native ways of thinking and walking that promoted health and a sense of well-being.

They were helped in this by Haertig’s wife Marian who was also a psychological consultant. Marian died before the work could be completed.

It took their committee seven years to compile the reams of notes that eventually became a set of two volumes titled, NANA I KE KUMU: Look to the Source.

Writer Catherine A. Lee undertook the task of culling out and condensing the massive pile of notes, and adding more clarifying material as well.

The first volume has been through at least five printings; the second has been reprinted twice.

Both books are treasured resources for anyone who wants to understand more about Hawaiian mindsets and have been used to help clients of the agency who have a hard time integrating the old ways with the new ones.

In one of the entries in their first book, Puku’i and her team explore the concept of kūkulu kumuhana, the almost-instinctive collective pooling of strengths – emotional, psychological and spiritual – for a shared purpose that is a very real part of being Hawaiian.

According to them, it is a group dynamic that’s directed toward a positive goal. A unified and unifying force that is constructive and helpful, its elements include solidarity, mutual concern, sincerity, sensitivity, and a ready responsiveness to others’ feelings.

It is countered and blocked, they say, by selfishness, by boredom and calculated indifference or emotional coldness, and disagreement with the group’s needs or purposes.

“Dolls of Defiance” by scrappy annie via Flickr [CC BY-NC 2.0]

Moves that are self-aggrandizing are particularly frowned upon. Pettiness and a lack of generosity are seen as counterproductive and condemned.

When the emotional and spiritual efforts in a common cause are successfully fused together, it is understood that our human will to live will counterbalance the equally human exhausted desire to just give up against odds that seem overwhelming enough to trigger echoes of the abyss that calls up a wish to die.

For Hawaiians (and I suppose for every other human), it is the knowledge that one is loved and wanted and being urged to live on despite whatever is happening that can swing the always-delicate balance over to a vote for life.

We do need that now, all of us.

MATHEW PAINTS A PRAYER

The Light of My Life is an artist. For the past couple of weeks, starting a short time after the beginning of the island “stay-at-home, work-at-home” response to the pandemic, he has been working on a painting.

Mathew rarely paints. He usually fashions extraordinarily complex landscapes using fibrous plant materials that he grows and gathers and dries before folding them into bas-relief depictions of mountains, valleys, streams, waterfalls, and sea shores that provide, others tell me, a gateway into a mind-place of peaceful contemplation.

(He mostly sells his work at the Hana Coast Gallery.)

It seems, however, that whenever there is some crisis or turmoil in our world, Mathew feels moved to pick up his pencil. He begins sketching out a design that becomes an evocation of some animal that very often happens to be a guardian-spirit out of Hawaiian legend.

His focus when he is doing this is intense and very sharp as he strives to get the lines just right.

It remains one-pointed as he transfers the lines onto the handmade amate bark paper that he favors for these things and then picks up his brushes to color in the drawings.

Until he is finished with the work, he maintains this laser-sharp pointedness.

He often paints birds during these sessions, but they are never Audubon-style renditions. Instead, each one is a rendering of what our human hearts hope will respond to our call for help.

Several times, in the past years, the guy has done this. He is self-taught, an autodidact to the max. That doesn’t seem to matter.

The result is always a painting that somehow echoes those of the American Indian artists from his native Pacific Northwest, and yet they are not exactly of that tradition either.

Other people who have seen them feel comforted and uplifted by them. I’d like to share the one he did for this crazy-making time with you.

“Wo! Unko’ Pue’o, He Stay Stay”, painting by Mathew Westcott

The bird in this painting is a Hawaiian short-eared owl – a pue’o.

The pue’o, according to Puku’i, is a message of warning and guidance in the most literal sense.

She says, “Its appearance tells you to turn back or to take a safe route instead of a dangerous one, to go where help lies.”

The pue’o is one of the oldest known Hawaiian guardian spirits. In the mid-1800s Isaac Kihe, a kahuna, priest, from North Kona said Pue’o was “the most famous of all ‘aumākua to help.”

In early legends, the goddess Hina, mother of the kupua hero Maui, bore another child in the form of the pue’o. When Maui was taken prisoner and held for sacrifice, his brother owl rescued him and led him to safety.

Other legends say that the great god Kāne, a Hawaiian symbol of life and nature whose kuleana include fresh water, sunlight, growth and sustenance, often took the form of an owl to shield and to protect his people.

Pue’o hid prisoners, freed fugitives, and led whole armies to safety. Warriors watched the owl’s flight for signs of a warning and for indications of a safe passage.

There are many historic accounts of indispensable aid given to worshippers, including early stories of the mighty owl rescuing lost souls on the plain from the dark reality of Pō, the underworld, bringing them back to their bodies and to life.

The great eyes of the bird watched over the peace of families, guiding them in times of trouble, and comforting them in grief. Relaying messages from the spirit world, Pue’o connected the past and the future.

FINAL THOUGHTS

When I think of the paradigm shifts and the multiplicities of ramifications and the scary possibilities of the end-times scenarios inherent in this thing they are calling a response to a pandemic, my resultant thoughts have the power to affect me to my bones.

I shiver; I quake. I can get paralyzed by the fear of it all.

“Pandemic Protection Suit” by Russ Allison Loar via Flickr [CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

When I list the strengths of our island peoples, and I ponder how we can choose to walk and the skillful means and heartful moves that are inherent in our way of being here together, and when I remember that we really are not alone in this old world of ours, my bones begin to settle back down. They rest easier.

And then there’s this thing: another sign of the times….

“Sign of the Times: Let’s not screw this up” by QuesterMark via Flickr [CC BY-SA 2.0]

Eh, wow! I tellin’ you, you gotta laugh!

Here’s a poem:

KUNG FLU THOUGHTS

Does it seem to you

(As it does to me)

That this kung flu thing

Is a message from the Universe?

[Wait, wait…

This is not just more

Of my woo-woo drivel.

Honest.]

Consider this:

Many of us in the human horde

Have been sent to our rooms.

We have been told most firmly,

“Now, you stay in there….

Think on what you’re doing,

Ponder what you’ve done.”

And the consequences of not-thinking

Are no less dire than they have ever been.

They’re just in our faces more.

Then there are those ones deemed “essential”

By the powers-that-be.

For them the world has turned

Into a cosmic grindstone –

Spinning, spinning, spinning –

Honing them down

Into perpetual motion machines.

Their Busy has gone into quantum overdrive

But they are giving it their best effort,

And, for them, there is no time to think at all, at all.

All these changes swirling ‘round us,

Oh, me!

Paradigm-shifting at hyper-speed.

Oh, my!

And yet, and yet, and yet…

Have you noticed?

For those whose Busy disappeared

Into an unnerving quietude

Cancelled out by looming, imminent death,

Time is getting deeper again;

Space has gotten wider

Between all of the silenced gotta-do’s

That no longer seem quite so imperative.

The ones who bear the Atlas-burden

Of holding up this tired old world

While others are taking a time-out

Have lost all sense of time.

There is no space between their doing.

There is only one other thing to be done,

Waiting in the never-ending line.

We are told by assorted experts,

By the people-in-the-know

(Who seem to spend

At least half their time

Telling us how much

They do not know)

That we will be saved by this

Thing called “social distancing.”

All we have to do, these ones say,

Is keep away and stay apart,

Sovereign and inviolate,

Untouchable and untouching.

That, they say, is the thing to do.

Hmmm….

That’s got me thinking thoughts

‘Bout little sticks.

Try this.

Grab a twig.

Bend it hard.

Oops! It broke, right?

Okay.

Now, grab a large handful of twigs.

Make a nice, packed bundle of them.

Try bending that bundle…

Harder, harder, harder.

Stays a bundle, right?

The bundle doesn’t break.

Hmmm….

Wise guys say,

It ain’t what happens to you that matters.

The important part is how you respond.

And maybe, just maybe,

That is the message.

What do you think?

By Netta Kanoho

Header photo-credit: “How are YOU social distancing?” by James Garcia 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.