November 11th, 2009
It may sound like a cliché. We attach “happy” to whatever holiday or special day it is, often without much thought. While no holiday is guaranteed to be happy, Veterans Day has a special burden of mixed emotions attached to it. After all, we are honoring our Veterans—and a veteran is by definition someone who returned from combat. Many others did not return. Others did return, but with scars of many kinds.
A lot of people are just happy because they get the day off work or school.
Let me offer you three very good reasons to be happy:
1. You are alive, and you’re well enough to read this blog.
2. You can read. In countless times and places throughout history, people haven’t had the chance to learn to read. If they are female, they may live in a country that doesn’t believe in educating females; if they have a learning disorder, they may have fallen through the cracks of the educational system.
3. You are free to get news from the Internet. Many places in the world, news is filtered, censored, and edited.
I would also add that you are presumably reading this in English. So, while you may not be thrilled about having to learn the most complicated and wordy language on the planet, the fact is that someone fought and died for you to speak English. More than once, English-speaking people groups were threatened by conquerors speaking other languages.
So be thankful that someone was willing to fight and die for you. I am. Happy Veterans Day!
Tags: gratitude
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November 9th, 2009
As the weather gets cooler, it’s interesting to watch how people adjust their mode of dress.
Some people habitually wear as little clothing as possible, and continue to wear shorts and tank tops well into fall. Personally, I like to wear as much clothing as possible, because a) I like cooler weather, and b) I like the aesthetically pleasing effect of layers, with all the different color, pattern, and texture combinations.
So on any given fall day, you might see the whole range, from shorts and tank tops to jackets and furry boots. The other thing I notice, however, is that people tend to respond more to clouds vs. sun than to high vs. low temperature. It could be cold and sunny, and you see a tendency toward less clothing. Warm and overcast, however, and you see more clothing.
I have a feeling that this is more psychological than an actual sensation of being hot or cold.
Just an interesting observation.
Tags: Add new tag, life, psychological profile
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November 6th, 2009
I saw the young homeless guy again. I’m sure it was the same guy, although I was on the far southern end of town, whereas I was on the far northern end when I saw him two days ago. (It’s a small town.) This time I was able to make a couple right turns and get back to where he was.
I still had the ten-dollar bill. I gave it to him and said “God bless you.” It sounded so lame, under the circumstances. We exchanged names and I offered to pray for him. What else can you do? I wish I had a job or a home for him, or both…but I don’t. Maybe I’ll continue to see him and will eventually learn what happened—how he got to be homeless.
I can’t help wondering, doesn’t this kid have parents? Who knows…maybe they live far away, maybe they’re dysfunctional, maybe they’re deceased, maybe they’re just jerks. Maybe the kid screwed up and got kicked out—a prodigal son sort of thing.
Who knows. But one of my goals is to carry a stack of gift cards to Subway, Starbucks, the grocery store…places where a person could go and get something nice and feel normal. And where he couldn’t spend it on a “substance,” if he were so inclined. It might make being homeless feel a tiny bit less horrible.
Tags: bad luck, dysfunctional, good luck
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November 4th, 2009
Today I stopped at my local Grocery Outlet to pick up a few things. I usually go there once a week to see what bargains I can bag, then get the remainder of my list at the regular grocery store.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a guy standing in one of the planted areas holding a sign, which I slowed down to read. I may not have seen the entire message, but I did catch the word “homeless.”
I used to not pay too much attention to homeless people, thinking that a lot of them are probably substance abusers and too scary to approach. But these days, it seems there are so many of them. This young man looked about the age of my kids; in fact, I thought for a moment that I recognized him. I think I was mistaken about that.
After finding a space, I looked in my wallet. I had only a single ten-dollar bill. Not wanting to give him everything I had, I figured I’d come up with a plan while in the store. In the end, I came up with the simple solution of getting another ten-dollar bill at checkout.
When I came out, the young man was gone. Sadly, with the ten-dollar bill on the passenger seat, I drove around the parking lot; perhaps he’d relocated to another corner. No luck—he was simply gone. I drove home, wanting to cry. This guy could’ve eaten some decent food for ten dollars, especially if he shopped at Grocery Outlet!
Then I realized my stupidity. I could have simply given him the original ten-dollar bill, and gotten a new one for myself. I can only hope he found something better. Or that I’ll see him again. Or, best of all, that his fortune changes.
Tags: bad luck, good luck, life
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November 2nd, 2009
I wanted to post one of my favorite quotes and went to search for the exact wording. On a site called geonius[dot]com, I found this:
“The following quote is widely attributed to George Eliot, but it was actually written by Dinah Maria (Mulock) Craik (1826-1887).”
All of these variations are listed there:
“It is never too late to be the person you could have been.
It is never too late to be what you might have become.
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
It is never too late to be what we might have been.
It is never too late to be who you might have been.
It is never too late to become what you might have been.
It is never too late to become who you might have been.
It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”
Aren’t they all equally inspiring?
Tags: encouragement, goals
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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.
Tags: positive thinking
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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.
Tags: emotions, feelings, language
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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.
Tags: childhood emotional abuse, psychological profile, social mirrors
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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.
Tags: emotions
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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…
Tags: reality
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