Monday, January 28, 2013
The Tyranny of Reaction
When you aren’t run by reactions, you see things more clearly, and there is usually only one, possibly two courses of action that are actually viable. Freedom from the tyranny of reaction leads to a way of experiencing life that leaves you with little else to do but take the direction that life offers you in each moment.
- Ken McLeod, “Freedom and Choice”
Each morning I go seeking some guidance. The source can be the Bible, a tract or an e-mail delivered right to me. Sometimes, just sometimes, the piece hits the mark.
Tonight I am going to a very challenging meeting. I will have a copy of Robert’s Rules under my arm. My hope is that I can stay taciturn and aware. My additional hope is that the options are clear.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Why Worry?
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
Matthew 6:25-27
As I sat on my mat today I thought this very thought, can I add a day to my life by worry? Can I change anything by worry? The answer is no. I can be aware. I can be rational. I can observe the reality. Then I can opt for the path that is appropriate. However anxiety will not bring me health nor will it put money in my pocket.
I do not know what time is allotted to me. I do not know what fate is allotted to me. What I do know is that I have to live in the present and to make this moment one that counts. Clear my mind old man. Get focused and get moving. Live today. Live this moment and be of this moment.
I am sorry I have not written in a couple of days. Meetings, health, anxiety, all these things impact on what time I have to set things down on paper. Last night the school board meeting went late. Yesterday I was fielding phone calls about the meeting from the time I got up until I went to the meeting. The day before I just felt like crap. What does this all mean in the greater context? Probably nothing. It is time today to just live.
Matthew 6:25-27
As I sat on my mat today I thought this very thought, can I add a day to my life by worry? Can I change anything by worry? The answer is no. I can be aware. I can be rational. I can observe the reality. Then I can opt for the path that is appropriate. However anxiety will not bring me health nor will it put money in my pocket.
I do not know what time is allotted to me. I do not know what fate is allotted to me. What I do know is that I have to live in the present and to make this moment one that counts. Clear my mind old man. Get focused and get moving. Live today. Live this moment and be of this moment.
I am sorry I have not written in a couple of days. Meetings, health, anxiety, all these things impact on what time I have to set things down on paper. Last night the school board meeting went late. Yesterday I was fielding phone calls about the meeting from the time I got up until I went to the meeting. The day before I just felt like crap. What does this all mean in the greater context? Probably nothing. It is time today to just live.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Tell Me a Story Please
My early life was spent surrounded by a large family. Every week we gathered at my grandmother’s
home and had a meal with 30 or so people present. The older people and some of the younger ones
had a gift for storytelling. It was not
the kind of storytelling you get from standup where after a slight build up the
comedian inserts a four letter word and everyone with their glazed looks laugh.
It was the kind of story telling where the person relating
the tale showed something of what they were.
The tale might be true or a damn lie or confabulation but it was like
listening to a tale that Gabriel Garcia Marquez might write. I loved it and it became part of me. Methinks that if you actually have read some
of the tales on this blog you get that I was touched by the story telling bug.
There are some places left out there where this kind of
story telling still exists. Two that
stand out for me are the Moth Radio Hour on NPR and the Vinyl Café on CBC. I only discovered the Vinyl Café this
morning. I heard the narrator tell a
long story about breaking friend out of hospital for a cup of coffee. I was laughing heartily before the narrative
was over. If you want to hear that one,
go to this link and start it at about the half way mark.
If you just want to explore the real treasure that is the
Vinyl Café go here.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Roadway
http://youtu.be/8Bm2yBf1tfA
I heard the song from this link listening to a Canadian program on the radio. It needed a place to be on the blog. The image the image of the moon rising over the highway as we are returning from the hockey game couldn't stand just by itself. I therefore decided to tie the link to the image. Enjoy
I heard the song from this link listening to a Canadian program on the radio. It needed a place to be on the blog. The image the image of the moon rising over the highway as we are returning from the hockey game couldn't stand just by itself. I therefore decided to tie the link to the image. Enjoy
Friday, January 25, 2013
The Cold Waiting Night
Mortality is a tricky issue to address intellectually. Me, I was raised a Baptist and after life’s end there is either reward or punishment. Fred Armisen in Easy A kind of nailed it down well with his presentation.
Thinking about mortality, with religion telling you that there will be winners and losers in the afterlife, is really kind of off-putting. And I was told about hell from such a young age. A lake of burning fire awaits those who don’t personally accept Jesus Christ into their lives as their personal savior. And you know what burns most in hell it is the part you sin with. (Open pant’s fly and fan widely at this point).
At the end of high school I was so afraid of death and the chance that my parents would die unexpectedly that I became kind of dysfunctional. Okay the wake and bake regimen might have played a part but I mean I would be lying awake at night thinking, “There is no fucking way out of this. I AM GOING TO DIE!!!!” I would be sweating widely if I was sober.
When I was 17 one of my childhood friends died at his own hand. It wasn’t what started this focus but it was kindling that stoked the fire. He left this world at 17 without experiencing much of anything. WTF?
I remember asking my father if he believed in what that taught at church. He didn’t give me what you would call a straight answer. He told me that there was a great deal of good that you would learn in listening to Sunday sermons. He told me it was important to be in that pew. What he said next was curious. I can’t remember the exact phrase but the crux was that did he believe everything was exactly the way they said it was well to that the answer was no.
What I did to address my fear was I thought very proactive. My first term at university I took a course in metaphysics and epistemology. I knew I was in the right place when one of the varied text books was entitled “Writings on Death and Dying”. Professor Wilkinson who had some form of palsy and who wore a beret would smoke as he lectured. With his good hand he would make notes about the Greeks and Heidegger and each eighty minute session would spin off into the kind of thing Pinto did looking at his fingernail in Animal House.
The hours surrounded by my peers talking about life and knowledge and meaning really helped. It calmed me. In a way it was like attending a tent meeting. What do I mean by that? I mean we all had come seeking some answers and the fact that we all had those questions was in a way a comforting answer in itself.
In the end I came to a conclusion. Because death was a universal something none of us escapes we must therefore approach it just like so many things we have no choice about and we must face subject to grudging acceptance. It was something that by heredity we were bound to like each one of forebears. I put the fear away into a box for a long, long time.
At 56 I am at a point of considering outcomes as opposed to future possibilities. The box I put away that philosophy class is still sitting on my shelf. It looms larger now than it did at 30, 40 and even 50. While the concept of hell still bothers me the question of meaning bothers me more.
In a universe that is billions upon billions of years old and comprised of billions and billions of stars and planets and even more dark matter that we can’t even measure right what has it all meant for me, for any of us. I think I have to come back to Iris to explain it all to me and send me off to bed tonight.
Thinking about mortality, with religion telling you that there will be winners and losers in the afterlife, is really kind of off-putting. And I was told about hell from such a young age. A lake of burning fire awaits those who don’t personally accept Jesus Christ into their lives as their personal savior. And you know what burns most in hell it is the part you sin with. (Open pant’s fly and fan widely at this point).
At the end of high school I was so afraid of death and the chance that my parents would die unexpectedly that I became kind of dysfunctional. Okay the wake and bake regimen might have played a part but I mean I would be lying awake at night thinking, “There is no fucking way out of this. I AM GOING TO DIE!!!!” I would be sweating widely if I was sober.
When I was 17 one of my childhood friends died at his own hand. It wasn’t what started this focus but it was kindling that stoked the fire. He left this world at 17 without experiencing much of anything. WTF?
I remember asking my father if he believed in what that taught at church. He didn’t give me what you would call a straight answer. He told me that there was a great deal of good that you would learn in listening to Sunday sermons. He told me it was important to be in that pew. What he said next was curious. I can’t remember the exact phrase but the crux was that did he believe everything was exactly the way they said it was well to that the answer was no.
What I did to address my fear was I thought very proactive. My first term at university I took a course in metaphysics and epistemology. I knew I was in the right place when one of the varied text books was entitled “Writings on Death and Dying”. Professor Wilkinson who had some form of palsy and who wore a beret would smoke as he lectured. With his good hand he would make notes about the Greeks and Heidegger and each eighty minute session would spin off into the kind of thing Pinto did looking at his fingernail in Animal House.
The hours surrounded by my peers talking about life and knowledge and meaning really helped. It calmed me. In a way it was like attending a tent meeting. What do I mean by that? I mean we all had come seeking some answers and the fact that we all had those questions was in a way a comforting answer in itself.
In the end I came to a conclusion. Because death was a universal something none of us escapes we must therefore approach it just like so many things we have no choice about and we must face subject to grudging acceptance. It was something that by heredity we were bound to like each one of forebears. I put the fear away into a box for a long, long time.
At 56 I am at a point of considering outcomes as opposed to future possibilities. The box I put away that philosophy class is still sitting on my shelf. It looms larger now than it did at 30, 40 and even 50. While the concept of hell still bothers me the question of meaning bothers me more.
In a universe that is billions upon billions of years old and comprised of billions and billions of stars and planets and even more dark matter that we can’t even measure right what has it all meant for me, for any of us. I think I have to come back to Iris to explain it all to me and send me off to bed tonight.
Please Get Real and Face Your Addiction, Really.
Alcohol leaves human bodies at a relatively standard rate. For a normal man (I know that is an oxymoron) the rate is about .015 an hour. For women the rate is slightly higher nearing .020 per hour. A person with serious alcohol dependency issue may have a rate approaching .030 per hour.
While not immutable these rates are pretty damn on the mark. Studies have shown that even using a 95% solution of alcohol will not produce positive breath alcohol readings past 19 minutes duration if the solution is an oral only contact. Cheese sandwiches and pizza don’t give readings that start at .033 BAC and drop to .006 over and hour and a thirty three. With woman’s expulsion rate of .020 these readings are the textbook demonstration of alcohol leaving the body.
Still the people I see swear the breath testing machine is wrong and that they aren’t drinking alcohol despite this reading coming at the start of a day following a holiday. As I challenge them about this set of facts they get louder. It is as if they think yelling is somehow going to make the empiric evidence somehow less real. Arggh.
You can lie to me about what you believe, about what is in your heart, about your motivations and about anything subjective. Bottom line I am relatively soft on challenging these lies. I am willing to give you the benefit of a doubt But you cannot lie about what science is telling me you did six times over 11 months when you tried to start your car because the data is clear you had alcohol in your system. At some point you have to get honest and deal with your addiction.
While not immutable these rates are pretty damn on the mark. Studies have shown that even using a 95% solution of alcohol will not produce positive breath alcohol readings past 19 minutes duration if the solution is an oral only contact. Cheese sandwiches and pizza don’t give readings that start at .033 BAC and drop to .006 over and hour and a thirty three. With woman’s expulsion rate of .020 these readings are the textbook demonstration of alcohol leaving the body.
Still the people I see swear the breath testing machine is wrong and that they aren’t drinking alcohol despite this reading coming at the start of a day following a holiday. As I challenge them about this set of facts they get louder. It is as if they think yelling is somehow going to make the empiric evidence somehow less real. Arggh.
You can lie to me about what you believe, about what is in your heart, about your motivations and about anything subjective. Bottom line I am relatively soft on challenging these lies. I am willing to give you the benefit of a doubt But you cannot lie about what science is telling me you did six times over 11 months when you tried to start your car because the data is clear you had alcohol in your system. At some point you have to get honest and deal with your addiction.
Really, that is what you remember?
Last night after much urging Primus brought home his hockey team’s program. As I sat and read it so many things ran through my mind. A great deal of what I saw there showed me how far he had come and how far he has to go.
He is a true hockey player however. His favorite memory of all the hockey he has played was this, “The fight at the end of spring league two years ago when the team got into a brawl in the tunnel after I was ejected.” No wonder his favorite player was listed as Gordie Howe.
He is a true hockey player however. His favorite memory of all the hockey he has played was this, “The fight at the end of spring league two years ago when the team got into a brawl in the tunnel after I was ejected.” No wonder his favorite player was listed as Gordie Howe.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)