Posts in the “personal” category

A couple of stories are bouncing around in my head, so I thought I’d write them down to get them out of there.

In story #1, I was meditating a few nights ago when “Boom!” I was standing in the house I grew up in. I always wanted to go back there to see what it was like with an older set of eyes, so I took my time in walking around, looking at and touching everything. Eventually I walked downstairs, and when I got there a young version of my mom came out of her bedroom and seem concerned about something. Then she looked at me and said, “Money is important, isn’t it?” I replied, “I suppose so,” and then she kept walking around with that concerned look, and then the scene ended just as fast as it began and I was back in the darkness of meditation.

In story #2, my family was at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, and I probably wasn’t a teenager yet, maybe thirteen years old at the most. I think I went to get a drink of water, and when I turned around an older hippie girl was standing there. She leaned down and pinned a little fake red flower on my shirt and said something spiritual, which I thought was cool. Then she asked if could give her some money. I didn’t have any money, and when I told her that, she ripped the flower off my shirt and stomped away much less peacefully. I remember thinking that her behavior wasn’t correct, and I suspect that incident made me mistrust religious people for quite some time.

(From a Facebook post from May, 2018.)

I can’t sleep tonight, so I’ll tell a story. I think I was 18 when this happened, maybe 19.

I ask my dad to let me borrow his car, he says yes, and I drive to a party with a friend of mine. The party is fun until my friend gets in a fight, punches his hand through a window, and cuts a big gash in his forearm. At one point I see his forearm and there’s a chunk of it that’s completely gone, and I can see the bone in his arm; it’s pretty bad.

A series of recent emails has me thinking about “life-changing events.” These are events where your life is clearly headed down one path, and then perhaps in an instant it’s no longer on that same path.

For me there is just one “major” event, which happened when I was a teenager. I’ll call this a Level 1 event. After that there are a series of other important events that are all at a similar level of importance (Level 2), but they are not as direction-altering as the Level 1 event(s).

It's been an interesting thought process. There are at least two moments that didn’t seem too important at the time, but when I look back at those events years later I can see how they changed my direction.

I call this one, “Up With the Sun, Gone With the Wind.”

(April 13, 2017)

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”

~ Albert Einstein

“The mind can proceed only so far upon what it knows and can prove. There comes a point where the mind takes a higher plane of knowledge, but can never prove how it got there. All great discoveries have involved such a leap.”

~ Albert Einstein

Five years ago today the best dog ever passed away.

~ August 21, 2015

In gratitude,
You have watered seeds of love in me.

In gratitude,
I will water seeds of love in someone too.

~ from a song by Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village,
dedicated to all who have helped me, especially Zeus

I’ll confess this
You’re my tragedy
I paid you to rest
Just as fast as you turned on me
Gone forever
Vanish the memories
This face of pleasure
Is masked by your misery

Straight out of line
I can’t find a reason
Why I should justify my ways
Straight out of line
I don’t need a reason
You don’t need to lie to me
Lie to me

~ some Straight Out of Line lyrics, by Godsmack

I don’t even know who the My Pillow guy is, but when I saw this image I thought, the United States picked a horrible time to elect people who don’t believe in science.

That the entire nation isn’t under lockdown at the same time is one of the dumbest things I can imagine at a time like this. Not locking everyone down means the coronavirus is going to go on longer, and more people will get sick and die.

“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.

“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Under Your Scars by Godsmack is today’s song of the day:

And everything feels broken
When you’re not next to me
Would you still be you
If we weren’t we

While this photo looks like a sunset, it was actually a sunrise. I took it in Virginia Beach on April 17, 2017.

This image makes me think of the angst of many American voters in this election. They’re angry at “politics as usual,” so they think, “I’m angry, let’s just blow it up.” But it also makes me think of the young people, and the future.

(the image text comes from this tweet)

I heard the words “funeral pyre” in the Pink Floyd song One Slip (from their Momentary Lapse of Reason album), and wondered what that was. From Wikipedia I learned that a funeral pyre is “a structure, usually made of wood, for burning a body as part of a funeral rite or execution. As a form of cremation, a body is placed upon or under the pyre, which is then set on fire.”

As the Coronavirus gets worse across the United States, remember that Mitch McConnell thought it was more important to have a long, relaxing weekend to attend a party rather than help the Coronavirus fight.

“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

We don’t see things like a computer sensor sees them. We see everything through our own rose-colored glasses.

(Sorry, I don’t know the original source of this image.)

In a couple of weeks the architecture behind this blog will change significantly. I just started working on the new approach today, and this is what the “front page” of this website currently looks like in my development environment. It needs a little work, lol.

I still get a chuckle out of things that are designed poorly. In the example shown in the image, when you turn the top handle to lock this door, nothing visible happens. You hear a little sound, but when you look at the crack in the door there is no bolt; nothing moves. The feeling is disconcerting, because you have no idea if this door — a bathroom door in a hospital — is locked. The situation is so bad that the people at the hospital made this little sign to assure you that the door is locked.

This is a case where technology helps to create a problem. Some engineer or designer figured out how to make a lock without any visible moving parts, but they didn’t take the human factor into account with their design.

Thought of the evening: People go through tremendous personal stress (distress!) when the way their life is turning out doesn’t jive with the mental model of who they think they are (i.e., the “little ego”).

As just one example, my father always talked about opening up a hot dog restaurant. “Hot dog joints” were a big thing in northern Illinois, and they still are. He was a social person who ran projects, and I thought that was a great idea for him.

But he had a mental model that he was an engineer, so even after he was laid off from an engineering job he didn’t like, he kept trying to pursue engineering jobs rather than his dream. He never could break through that, “I was trained as an engineer so I’m supposed to be an engineer” mental model. As a result he became angry, and his life didn’t end well as a result.

In my own case, for many years all I wanted was to be a professional baseball player, and it took several injuries and many years before I finally had to accept that it wasn’t going to happen. Sadly, those were lost years in many ways, and all because I couldn’t let go of the old mental model I had of who I thought I was supposed to be. And because I couldn’t let go of the old model, I couldn’t see the new opportunities that were staring me in the face.

But finally I reached a breaking point. Everything literally came to a head and I said, “F*** this. This is not how I want to spend my life.” To this day I remember that moment.

Some time later I would look back and think, “OMG, why did I waste all those years?” But I understand, even when everyone around you can clearly see what needs to happen, when it’s happening to you — when you’re in the middle of it — it’s a big, ugly, emotional mess. Something is trying to crack your cosmic egg, and when anything tries to destroy the little ego you’ve spent all your life building up ... well, it’s insanely stressful. You’ve spent XX years building up this mental model of who you are, and now something is trying to destroy that model. (A model which I should add exists only in your brain.)

All I can say is that in my case I found a new way to live, and indeed, many of the happiest years of my life.