Transcription of a wonderful narration by an old Dutch man

I listen to this frequently to remind myself of the privilege of walking around in this world:

Do you think this is just another day in your life?

It’s not just another day, it’s the one day that is given to you today.  It’s given to you, it’s a gift.  It’s the only gift that you have right now and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.

If you do nothing else but to cultivate that response to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond as if it were the first day in your life and the very last day, then you will have spent this day very well.

Begin by opening your eyes and be surprised that you have eyes you can open, that incredible array of colors that is constantly offered to us, for pure enjoyment.

Look at the sky.  We so rarely look at the sky.  We so rarely note how different it is from moment to moment, with clouds coming and going.   We just think of the weather, and even of the weather we don’t think of all the many nuances of weather.   We just think of good weather and bad weather.   This day, right now, is unique weather, maybe a kind that will never, exactly in that form, come again.  The formation of clouds in the sky would never be the same as it is right now.   Open your eyes, look at that.

Look at the faces of people whom you meet, each one has a incredible story behind their face, a story that you could never fully fathom.  Not only their own story, but the story of their ancestors.   We all go back so far.  And in this present moment, on this day, all the people that you meet, all that life from generations and from so many places all over the world, flows together and meets you here like a life giving water, if you only open your heart and drink.

Open your heart to the incredible gifts that civilization gives to us.   You flip a switch and there is electric light, you turn a faucet and there is warm water, and cold water, and drinkable water.   It’s a gift that millions and millions  in the world will never experience.    And these are just a few of an enormous number of gifts to which we can open your heart.  

And so I wish you that you will open your heart to all these blessings, and let them flow through you– that everyone whom you will meet on this day will be blessed by you.  Just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch, just by your presence.

Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you.   And then it will really be a good day.

Hypertension

I went to bed by three last night, so as to have eight hours’ sleep before the workshop today.   It’s always best to be well rested when I walk into that humming beehive where I have to be alert and present for two hours to oversee the magic.
I was exhausted and ready for the sleep, but my eyes popped open at 5:46 and pretty much stayed that way.  I’d have thought it would be easy to catch up on my sleep, since I was up early the day before, sucked down a coffee and dashed up to the Allen Pavilion to get a flu shot and have my high blood pressure checked.  The last time I’d been there my blood pressure had been high (though my cholesterol was 160).  The doctor’s face turned into a tarsier’s, his eyes like two saucers, as he read the monitor.  He told me not to worry, his eyes still not back to their normal size, to take a couple of deep breaths, and my blood pressure remained very close to stroke range.
The Nurse Practitioner who gives the shots is a woman I don’t recall ever meeting.  She’d been extremely snippy to me on the phone when I called with an increasingly uncomfortable pus filled thumbnail in August.  In the old days I’d have been growling at her over what an asshole she’d been when I’d called with a medical emergency and she gave me attitude when I called back a third time in four hours of increasing discomfort.   She’d lectured me, instead of apologizing for acting like a jerk, and not having the receptionist pass on the information she finally gave me about where to have it lanced.  
At the time it really burned me up.  But, nowadays, being fucking Ahimsa Man, I was mild and pleasant with her. Had a most pleasant chat, and I told her about the constant stress I am under trying to scale a great idea that works into a business that can sustain itself and the people who work for it.  As she put the cuff on she said– “oh, off the record….” and told me about a group at Columbia Business School that offers free help to start-up businesses.  My blood pressure?  108/70, twice.
 
No matter that the deadline for getting help from these MBA students turns out to have been 9/6.  I’ll fill out the application for the highly competitive freebie, they review them on a rolling basis.
 
But now, if you will excuse me, I’m going to be late for the workshop– on 4 1/2 hours’ sleep.

Poison

A man who dreams of fame when he is young, and gets no fame, does not always recover the joy he once had in doing the thing he dreamt would make him famous.  Painful memories of failure creep in, thoughts of brave ventures undertaken with élan, come to bad ends.

 In a moment of spirit he may turn up his amplifier too loud and blast a scream to drown out everything else.   That there can be little music in this moment is of no import, the thing is to wail.

 2

Winners come up with winning plans, they dream practical, profitable dreams.  They get someone to produce a product they can sell.  They build profit into each transaction and make a healthy profit on the work of everyone who works for them.

Losers come up with idealistic plans that are difficult to explain and harder to monetize.  They imagine that a good heart, patience, a nonhierarchical program with great creative potential, and generosity of spirit will lead to good things.  They are set up to fail, because without a product people want to buy, and profit built into the selling of that product, they will never do more than dream of what might have been.  A recipe for bitterness, if you ask me (though I know you didn’t).

Dialogue is, sadly, not always possible

I got the following email, from an old friend who has become decidedly right-leaning since 9/11, with this subject line:

Increasing Clouds and hunderstorms for Climate Alarmists, by Paul Driessen from Townhall

Excerpt:  “In short, our Earth’s climate may well changing, as it has repeatedly throughout history. But the changes are natural, and they are thus far hardly catastrophic – nothing like the wooly mammoth ice ages or Little Ice Age, and little different from any of the 20th century. Moreover, the changes are natural in origin. They are not due to humans, and they are not occurring in ways the alarmists and their models predicted

We truly need hydrocarbon energy: to lift more people out of poverty, maintain our living standards, and ensure the wealth and technology to adapt to any climate changes that nature may visit upon us (with or without some contribution from human carbon dioxide). Climate alarmism undermines all of this.”  

http://townhall.com/columnists/pauldriessen/2013/10/20/increasing-clouds-and-thunderstorms-for-climate-alarmists-n1728001/page/full

And, because we’d agreed many times, as recently as last week, to avoid partisan political discourse, I wrote back with this bark of anguish:

Don’t send me this kind of thing, OK?  The visible and toxic shroud of man-made pollution over much of the world has nothing to do with climate, fine, let’s pretend we agree the only problem here is those goddamned agitating, lying commies who want to end capitalism.
 
Her reply:
Jeez Eliot, I sent you a scholarly piece which showed how more and more scientists are coming together (across the previous divide)!
My reply:
“Climate Alarmists” is a term developed by the fossil fuel industry and their public relations machine to dismiss the science behind human activity’s role in global warming (there was an excellent Frontline piece on this branding of “alarmists” a couple of years ago).  The term is deliberately dismissive, these scientists are hysterical, alarmists.   It would be like me sending you a scholarly article from Al Gore headlined “sun sets on climate change deniers”, no matter how scholarly the article might be.
 
Oh darn, in popping on to google to get the link to the Frontline piece, I had to scroll through a full screen of posts debunking the “hooey” — by those who believe Global Warming to be a commie hoax– of Frontline’s ham-fisted hatchet job on Climate Change Skeptics.  
Note–  alarmists vs. skeptics. Who are you going to believe?   We are not deniers, dear, we’re simply informed skeptics seeking to allay the damage done by biased alarmists with a political agenda.  
Sheesh.

Sending a Severed Head by email

Honestly (not really), I wonder what’s wrong with me sometimes.  

I ponder the lack of response I often get and never stop to consider that what I think of as a delightful six second animated snapshot of true friendship and whimsy may actually be a grisly severed head.  

Errors in judgment and misguided thinking happen all the time.  Look at the otherwise highly intelligent people who believe barbaric, destructive things and spend millions to convince others of these repugnant beliefs.  

So I suppose I should be philosophical at the virtually unanimous aghast silence that met this latest emailed monstrosity.  One brings it on oneself when one appoints oneself a spokesman for friendship and creativity in a world that commodifies everything, most especially time.

You be the judge:  http://vinebox.co/u/wsEcbPUF5lE/wdsh1bQVTUo

Maren's monster

 

Three Minute Drill– Gratefulness Journal

I pop open the little black gratefulness journal I’ve been carrying to make notes in while I ride the subway.  I wonder if my friend is using his to record the many daily opportunities to feel grateful.  Some of the entries may seem weak, but I’m grateful not to worry about that.

F 10-18 

Friday– running late, as so often I run, grateful that bitter silence does not manage to drown a dream I’ve dreamed since I started dreaming.

Th 10-17

Vulnerability is an ambiguous gift, it makes you worry about accepting it.  There are other great gifts like that, for sure.  If I didn’t have fear, I couldn’t be brave.

M 10-14

gratefulness is its own reward

Sat 10-12

gratefulness for excitement over ideas

gratefulness for ideas

gratefulness for being grateful

I know you are, but what am I?

Image

It’s not about the interest rate comfortable people pay

It’s one thing to nonchalantly pay your 3.85% mortgage on something that you live in, a comfortable home that appreciates in value, is an asset you can eventually sell to recoup your investment, if not also a profit.

It’s another thing entirely to pay mortgage interest four times what the banks are paying, on a house you will never live in, a house full of vermin and every kind of expensive vexation, a house of plague you avoid.  And the repayment amount exceeds your combined income for a decade.

But I’m not here to whine about interest rates on unwisely taken student loans.  There is more important business, like getting you to reading this again, with focus and attention.  To imbibe its truth, and to taste the truth of it, and to think on it a moment.

WENDELL BERRY:  But that’s the problem we’re in to start with, we’ve tried to impose the answers.

The answers will come not from walking up to your farm and saying this is what I want and this is what I expect from you.

You walk up and you say what do you need. And you commit yourself to say all right, I’m not going to do any extensive damage here until I know what it is that you are asking of me.

And this can’t be hurried.  This is the dreadful situation that young people are in.

I think of them and I say well, the situation you’re in now is a situation that’s going to call for a lot of patience.

And to be patient in an emergency is a terrible trial.

source: http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-wendell-berry-poet-prophet/