Archive for October, 2009

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What will this Halloween be like?

Friday, October 30th, 2009

I’m not much into celebrating Halloween. I think there are too many elements of bad behavior and downright creepiness incorporated into it to make it much fun. If it were just a “dress up and eat treats” day, I could get into that. I like to dress up, and any excuse to eat treats (good ones) will do. But Halloween, I’m just glad when it’s over.

Still, so many other people enjoy it that I don’t like to be a wet blanket.

Now, I live on a long driveway, and very, very seldom does anyone venture down in the dark to ring my doorbell on Halloween. In fact, the event was so rare, I stopped buying Halloween candy! That is, until a couple of neighbor girls showed up…and we had nothing to offer them.

They were gracious about it. But I realized I’d have to start buying Halloween candy—just in case. So, I buy something I like! Something I won’t mind eating if no one comes! Well, guess what…no one has ever come again. Those two girls are too old now for trick-or-treating now. And no one else has ever ventured to our door in the dark again.

Ah well. I get to eat whatever reasonably-good-but-inexpensive dark chocolate candy I have chosen. No guilt because I “have” to eat it! And no guilt if someone does come, because I do have candy to offer. Everyone is happy.

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So many options for expressing ourselves!

Wednesday, October 28th, 2009

I was just thinking about a unique feature of the English language. Because of the ways other languages have infiltrated ours over the centuries, combined with other cultural and historical factors, English has by far the most words of any language. Although it’s difficult to come up with an exact count, it has somewhere between 600,000 and 2 million words!

Compare that to French, with its paltry 60,000 words, each of which must pass a “gatekeeper” known as the Academie Francaise before it can be accepted into the language.

While this helps make learning English a daunting task for native speakers of other languages, it gives us an unmatched variety of ways in which to express ourselves. Consider the nuances between two similar words—feel and sense, for example, or help and assist, or ambition and aspiration. Perhaps it is simply the sound of a word that influences you to one over another!

Other cultures may rely more on other cues, such as tone of voice, facial expression, and body language to get a point across. Of course, those work only in spoken language, so perhaps those other people use other media, such as art or music, to express themselves. I don’t know. But it’s a reason to be thankful for those of us who speak English fluently.

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Chance encounter, moment of affirmation

Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

Yesterday as I was driving in town, I passed a young (college-age) family friend walking along the road. I rolled down the window and asked if she’d like a ride. Although she was only about half a mile from her destination, she happily accepted the ride—and an unexpected opportunity to chat.

From what I know of this young woman’s difficulties in life, I wasn’t surprised when she said she was considering getting a psychological evaluation. I told her I’d trained as a volunteer counselor with a particular organization, and that while I wasn’t actually doing any counseling with this group at this time, I could recommend them as a starting point.

She thanked me for the information and said I was a good counselor anyway—that she felt free to talk when she was at my home.

Now I’m going to take this opportunity to remind you, my reader, to check out my e-book Help! I Need a Hug, and/or sign up for the message series in the opt-in box.

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Taking Chance, Part III

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

The movie ends there, with Lt. Col. Mike Strobl returning home to his welcoming family. Because he is a real person, his life has gone on—somewhere—from there. Did he accomplish his greater goal, of making a “more significant” contribution to the military effort, as the movie script implies he wants to do? I don’t know.

But what I really appreciated about this movie is that it didn’t need to use gore and other shock tactics to make its point. We see the fallen Marine’s body being prepared for burial in Dover, the dirty and burned hands being washed, the bloody watch, the dog tags. We hear his fellow Marine tell what happened; we learn that the body isn’t recommended for viewing. We see Lt. Col. Strobl checking to make sure the uniform is perfect; we see PFC Phelps’s white-gloved hands neatly folded; we see Strobl’s face register the sight of Phelps’s face, but we are spared from what he must acknowledge. And we get the idea.

Emotions are powerful. Subtle emotions are usually the most powerful.

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Taking Chance, Part II

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

So we arrive in Dubois with Lt. Col. Strobl. He meets the family, the fellow Marine who was there when PFC Phelps died, and the close-knit community; he presents the flags to the parents and returns to them PFC Phelps’s possessions. He stays for the funeral, then begins the return trip home to VA—in civilian clothes.

In one of the final scenes, we see the casket standing alone in the cemetery, after the mourners have left but before interment. The camera angle is low, so we see the casket starkly juxtaposed against a wide-open, cloudy sky.

We hear Lt. Col. Strobl’s voice-over saying he felt that as long as PFC Phelps was moving, over that long journey home, he was still alive. Now, at the end of the journey, he was finally dead.

This is an illusion, of course. But it illustrates very poignantly how we create our reality, with both positive and negative effects. More on this tomorrow…

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Taking Chance, Part I

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

This past weekend I watched the movie Taking Chance, with Kevin Bacon as real-life U.S. Marine Lt. Col. Mike Strobl on a journey to escort a fallen Marine home. The movie is not your “typical” military movie; it has no violence or intrigue. In fact, it’s not your “typical” movie at all, in the sense of having tense moments of not knowing what will happen or plot twists or surprises. It’s really just an up-close-and-personal look at this highly emotional experience of a seasoned Marine.

The mission is an odd one for Lt. Col. Strobl; such a high-ranking officer doesn’t normally take on this duty for a PFC. The reason he volunteers for it is that he shares a hometown with Chance Phelps: Clifton, CO. Or at least he thinks so; it turns out that Phelps lived there when he joined up, but his hometown (and destination burial site) is actually Dubois, WY.

Yet we sense that Lt. Col. Strobl has a second motive: he feels that he should be “over there” instead of sitting in a cubicle by day and coming home to his family at night. He needs to do more…and this opportunity presents itself.

So we travel with him to Dover, DE, then to Minneapolis, then Billings, MT, and finally the 5-hour drive to Dubois. At each step of the way, he must perform certain rituals; at the Minneapolis layover, he opts to sleep in the warehouse in order not to leave Phelps alone. And along the way, most of the people he meets are sympathetic, respectful, and awed at his dedication to the job.

Because it renews our faith in humanity, it is a heartwarming story… albeit a heartbreaking one. More on this tomorrow…

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Fun theory

Friday, October 16th, 2009

My Facebook page showed a link to a video saying something about “fun theory.” So I watched it, and it seems a shopping center in Stockholm, Sweden remodeled a staircase to look like a piano keyboard. The staircase is positioned between the up and down escalators. It not only looks like a piano keyboard; when people walk on it, it plays!

They videotaped people using the piano key staircase—not merely walking up and down, but stopping to bounce on and “play” the steps! Compared to when the staircase was an “ordinary” staircase, two-thirds more people were choosing the piano stairs over the escalator!

Exercise, music, fun…all it took was someone’s innovative idea to add a big piece of brightness to everyone’s day.

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Watch where you’re going

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009

Seeing the Blue Angels on Saturday, amazed at their talents, I was reminded of a Blue Angels tragedy that occurred some years back. As I recall, the setup for this tragedy involved the fact that when the Blue Angels perform, only the lead pilot knows where they’re going at all times, and in some maneuvers, each of the other three pilots simply follows the one before him. This usually results in a perfect performance of all four planes executing the exact same moves, with stunning visual effect.

In this case, however, the lead pilot misjudged his position and flew too close to the ground. One after the other, all four planes slammed into the ground, destroying the jets and killing the pilots instantly. It probably all happened in a matter of seconds, with tragic loss of life and horror for all who observed it.

The Blue Angels know what they’re doing. They are extraordinarily skilled pilots as well as showmen. This method almost always works. In this one instance, however, a tiny mistake resulted in an enormous disaster.

Most of us will never be Blue Angels pilots, and most of our mistakes will never have as huge consequences or have as many observers as this. So for those of us who don’t have to rely 100% on the person in front of us to know where we’re going, it’s better if we have a good idea of where that is ourselves.

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What a wonderful world

Monday, October 12th, 2009

I went to San Francisco Saturday with my family. I had not been to SF just to “hang out” (although I’ve driven through it, and once attended a seminar at a hotel near the airport) in at least 25 years. That is pretty unbelievable, considering it is only about a three-hour drive away, even with a reasonable amount of traffic.

What an experience for the senses! It would require a large amount of space to describe even a little of what there was to see, hear, smell, etc., in the short time I was there. So I’ll focus on one small area: Ghirardelli Square. Ghirardelli’s claim to fame is, of course, chocolate. But the fascinating sight was the people!

Star Wars characters were there: Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and some storm troopers, in absolutely convincing costumes. There was a quartet of men in jackets and ties playing instrumental music; just out of earshot of them was a younger man singing and playing guitar. Little kids finger-painted at some tables set up for the purpose. People sat around drinking coffee drinks.

And most of the people there frequently stopped what they were doing to look up and watch the Blue Angels, who were doing maneuvers overhead—sometimes very close to the surface of the water. Everyone, I’m sure, was marveling at the skill possessed by the pilots of those jets, who were using their skill for no other obvious reason than to entertain us. And it cost us nothing at all beyond whatever it cost just to get there.

The world is full of amazing “stuff.” Sometimes we forget to notice!

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Role-playing the new you

Tuesday, October 6th, 2009

This past Saturday, I went to our local Celtic Festival. I’ve attended a few times before, but this time I went as a volunteer—that is, I worked in one of the vendor tents, but my wages went to benefit AnimalSave (an animal rescue group I volunteer for) rather than to benefit me!

It was great fun, because I love Celtic music, I love the lively, upbeat atmosphere, I love the cool stuff people sell there (including the food!), and not least, I love all the characters you see.

Some people come just as themselves, dressed in their regular clothing. But others assume new identities for a day: royalty, nobility, peasantry, elves and fairies, woods people, pirates, clansmen, etc. It’s interesting to see what different people enjoy “being” when they can be something other than their “regular selves”!

What would this role-playing do for us if we could role-play, say, a successful person, a thin person, a happy person, or whatever it is we strive to be? What if there was a New You Festival, or something like that, where we could just be what we want to be for a day?

Actually, this role-playing works well for helping us to become who and what we want to be—in real life. If you haven’t tried it, do! I discuss it in my e-book, Help! I Need a Hug.

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