Anything that happens, happens. Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen. Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again. It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though. ~ Douglas Adams
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Most people do not comprehend, [no matter how] they encounter such things, nor do they understand what they learn; they believe only themselves. ~ Heraclitus
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Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apple, don’t count on harvesting Golden Delicious. ~ Bill Meyer
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All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see stars.
“There is no future. There is no past. Do you see? Time is simultaneous, an intricately structured jewel that humans insist on viewing one edge at a time, when the whole design is visible in every facet.”
~ Watchmen
“I will do today what you won’t, so tomorrow I can do what you can’t.”
~ Anonymous
“I do not much care for that man… I must get to know him better.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
“If there is no enemy on the inside, the enemy on the outside can do us no harm.”
~ African Proverb
“Our greatest problems often yield our greatest breakthroughs… fierce frustration is a precondition for a tremendous triumph.”
Teach compassion…”If you see someone who is struggling to make friends or being bullied because they don’t have friends or because they are shy or not as good looking or not dressed in the best clothes PLEASE step up. Say hi or at least smile at them in the hallway. You never know what that person might be facing outside of school. Your kindness might just make a BIG difference in someone’s life! Pass this on and share with your kids!”
”If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.”
~ Dalai Lama
“Let your life be a testimony to your truth. Every day be an uncompromisingly true witness to your authentic self. The world needs no more dull carbon copies, folks shrinking from their truth. One stubborn soul, ignited from within, despite the crushing darkness of circumstance, can illuminate the world. We must illuminate the world. We must be brilliant.”
~ @CoryBooker (via @LiliBalfour)
“The man who views the world at fifty the same as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”
You don’t become great by trying to be great. You become great by wanting to do something, and then doing it so hard that you become great in the process. ~ xkcd 896
Interconnectedness takes me from that illustration, to a place that makes me want to watch a Tony Robbins video.
Tony says being great depends on tiny differences that put a person in a state of certainty, confidence, and flow.
To be excellent, we train ourselves emotionally. Get rituals.
Incantations, not affirmations, embody what we want.
11) “Greatness doesn’t take two months, or even a year. It takes years of focused practice to achieve even an ounce of it.” ~ Trizle
10) “Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole strength and soul can be a true master. For this reason mastery demands all of a person.” ~ Albert Einstein
9) “On the road to great achievement, the late bloomer will resemble a failure.” ~ Malcolm Gladwell
8) “Success is moving from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” ~ Winston Churchill
7) “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” ~ Will Durant, not Aristotle
5) “You do not possess a natural gift for a certain job, because targeted natural gifts don’t exist. (Sorry, Warren Buffett.) You are not a born CEO or investor or chess grandmaster. You will achieve greatness only through an enormous amount of hard work over many years. And not just any hard work, but work of a particular type that’s demanding and painful.” ~ Geoffrey Colvin
4) “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
3) “Put your heart, mind, intellect and soul even to your smallest acts. This is the secret of success.” ~ Swami Sivananda
2) “It’s not what you take but what you leave behind that defines greatness.” ~ Edward Gardner
1) “It’s not where you take things from; it’s where you take them to.” ~ Jim Jarmusch
Omar was a great optimist who made me think about possibility, and he made me want to do something great and live everything…
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the question now. Perhaps then, some day far in the future, you will gradually without even noticing it, live your way in to the answer. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Stephen Mitchell (via Kristen Collins)
I truly miss you, Omar. I truly do. And I still feel connected to you.
Thank you, Omar. You and Steve Jobs inspire me to do something great — to design something simple that brings great happiness to others with what is left of my life…
Almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
It’s worth repeating what Steve Jobs said. “There is no reason not to follow your heart.”
“Sorta feels good. Sorta stiff and that, but once I get going… then I, like, forget everything. And… sorta disappear. Like I feel a change in my whole body. And I’ve got this fire in my body. I’m just there.”
Oprah opined, “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.“
“Good morning,” the little prince responded politely, although when he turned around he saw nothing.
“I am right here,” the voice said, “under the apple tree.”
“Who are you?” asked the little prince, and added, “You are very pretty to look at.”
“I am a fox,” the fox said.
“Come and play with me,” proposed the little prince. “I am so unhappy.”
“I cannot play with you,” the fox said. “I am not tamed.”
“Ah! Please excuse me,” said the little prince.
But, after some thought, he added:
“What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“You do not live here,” said the fox. “What is it that you are looking for?”
“I am looking for men,” said the little prince. “What does that mean–‘tame’?”
“Men,” said the fox. “They have guns, and they hunt. It is very disturbing. They also raise chickens. These are their only interests. Are you looking for chickens?”
“No,” said the little prince. “I am looking for friends. What does that mean–‘tame’?“
“It is an act too often neglected,” said the fox. It means to establish ties.”
“‘To establish ties’?”
“Just that,” said the fox. “To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . .“
“I am beginning to understand,” said the little prince. “There is a flower . . . I think that she has tamed me . . .”
“It is possible,” said the fox. “On the Earth one sees all sorts of things.”
“Oh, but this is not on the Earth!” said the little prince.
The fox seemed perplexed, and very curious.
“On another planet?”
“Yes.”
“Are there hunters on that planet?”
“No.”
“Ah, that is interesting! Are there chickens?”
“No.”
“Nothing is perfect,” sighed the fox.
But he came back to his idea.
“My life is very monotonous,” the fox said. “I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . .”
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.
“Please–tame me!” he said.
“I want to, very much,” the little prince replied. “But I have not much time. I have friends to discover, and a great many things to understand.”
“One only understands the things that one tames,” said the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more. If you want a friend, tame me . . .”
“What must I do, to tame you?” asked the little prince.
“You must be very patient,” replied the fox. “First you will sit down at a little distance from me–like that–in the grass. I shall look at you out of the corner of my eye, and you will say nothing. Words are the source of misunderstandings. But you will sit a little closer to me, every day . . .”
The next day the little prince came back.
“It would have been better to come back at the same hour,” said the fox. “If, for example, you come at four o’clock in the afternoon, then at three o’clock I shall begin to be happy. I shall feel happier and happier as the hour advances. At four o’clock, I shall already be worrying and jumping about. I shall show you how happy I am! But if you come at just any time, I shall never know at what hour my heart is to be ready to greet you . . . One must observe the proper rites . . .”
“What is a rite?” asked the little prince.
“Those also are actions too often neglected,” said the fox. “They are what make one day different from other days, one hour from other hours. There is a rite, for example, among my hunters. Every Thursday they dance with the village girls. So Thursday is a wonderful day for me! I can take a walk as far as the vineyards. But if the hunters danced at just any time, every day would be like every other day, and I should never have any vacation at all.”
So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near–
“Ah,” said the fox, “I shall cry.”
“It is your own fault,” said the little prince. “I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you . . .”
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“But now you are going to cry!” said the little prince.
“Yes, that is so,” said the fox.
“Then it has done you no good at all!”
“It has done me good,” said the fox, “because of the color of the wheat fields.” And then he added:
“Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret.”
The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.
“You are not at all like my rose,” he said. “As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.“
And the roses were very much embarassed.
“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on. “One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or ever sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose. “
And he went back to meet the fox.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.“
“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”
“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
“M
en have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose . . .”
“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
“Life gives answers in three ways… It says Yes and gives you what you want; it says No and gives you something better; it says Wait and gives you the Best!” (via @IlzeSuna)
“If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everyt
hing is ready, we shall never begin.” ~ Ivan Turgenev (via Persia Pele)
“If everything seems under control — you’re just not going fast enough.” ~ Mario Andretti (via Marianne Borenstein)
“I am a professional guitar player. People pay me to stop.” ~ Bob Cleveland (via me)
“Sue Sylvester has hourly flare-ups of burning, itchy, highly contagious talent…” ~ GLEE (via @AmyKeefe)
“Twitter is really going through a detox right now, and it’s trying to get some of the toxins out of its system.” ~ Michael Abbott (via the Merc, still doing better than Yahoo)
“Violence is never the answer, unless the question is, ‘What is never the answer?'” ~ Cleveland Brown (via me)
“Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” ~ Mother Teresa (via @IlzeSuna)
“It is not difficult to love good people. It is difficult to love people as they are.” ~ Juris Rubenis (via @IlzeSuna)
“Death is not sad; the sad thing is that most people don’t really live at all.” ~ Peaceful Warrior (via Amie Valenzuela)
“Goodbyes are not forever. Goodbyes are not the end. They simply mean I’ll miss you Until we meet again!” (via @IlzeSuna)
And then we LOOK closer and more carefully. We could see that there was nothing. Which is a funny thing to say because sometimes words are inadequate, and sometimes words have two meanings.
And we added things. And the universe expanded. And we added more things. And the universe kept expanding to accommodate adding more things. And everything was awesome. Fundamentally.
It might seem like everything was added randomly. And perhaps that is the case. But that’s not what we believe.
We believe in the interconnectedness of all things.
This idea was kept in the dark for billions of years. Instead, the reigning belief was detachment: “I don’t really want to know how your garden grows, ’cause I just want to fly.” And so, we lived forever…
…and life was but a dream. Edgar Allan Poe waxed poetic, “All that we see or seem… is but a dream within a dream.” (Thanks Ankita!)
And we thought about the words of Rumi…
“We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust.“
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.“
“The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your
perception.“
“They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?“
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.“
And the Primitive Radio Gods whispered quietly in the corner…
Am I alive, or thoughts that drift away?
Does summer come for everyone?
Can humans do what prophets say?
If I die before I learn to speak,
can money pay for all the days
I lived awake but half-asleep?
Suddenly we woke up with a kick. And we were no longer detached when we woke up with the idea. Not to spoil Inception, but merely to praise Inception:
“What’s the most resilient parasite? An idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules.“
I’m very glad you asked me that, Mrs Rawlinson. The term `holistic’ refers to my conviction that what we are concerned with here is the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. I do not concern myself with such petty things as fingerprint powder, telltale pieces of pocket fluff and inane footprints. I see the solution to each problem as being detectable in the pattern and web of the whole. The connections between causes and effects are often much more subtle and complex than we with our rough and ready understanding of the physical world might naturally suppose, Mrs Rawlinson. Let me give you an example. If you go to an acupuncturist with toothache he sticks a needle instead into your thigh. Do you know why he does that, Mrs Rawlinson? No, neither do I, Mrs Rawlinson, but we intend to find out. A pleasure talking to you, Mrs Rawlinson. Goodbye.
— Douglas Adams, Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency
Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged — people keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t. Everything is deeply intertwingled.
I love The Little Prince. Whi
ch reminds me of some of my favorite words that Robbye Bentley has posted recently…
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.” ~ Og Mandino
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
“Life and Jah are one in the same. Jah is the gift of existence. I am in some way eternal, I will never be duplicated. The singularity of every man and woman is Jah’s gift. What we struggle to make of it is our sole gift to Jah. The process of what that struggle becomes, in time, the Truth.” ~ Bob Marley
“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” ~ Stephen Covey
Thank you, Robbye. I have some favorites of my own, too.
The words of Rumi echo in eternity, “The face of the unknown, hidden beyond the universe would appear on the mirror of your perception.”
“Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.” ~ Henry James
“Truth is, everybody is going to hurt you; you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for…” ~ Bob Marley
“I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you appreciate them when they’re right. You believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together.” ~ Marilyn Monroe
“If success or failure of the planet and of human beings depended on how I am and what I do… How would I be? What would I do?” ~ R. Buckminster Fuller
“We are all connected to each other, in a circle, in a hoop that never ends. How high can the sycamore grow? If you cut it down, then you’ll never know…” ~ Colors of the Wind
And are there things that cannot be taught? Richard Feynman refuses to explain how magnets work. Feynman concludes, I really can’t do a good job, any job, of explaining magnetic force in terms of something else you’re more familiar with, because I don’t understand it in terms of anything else you’re more familiar with.
Breathing is neither learned nor taught. It just is. And yet sometimes we must remember to breathe. And to be here now. And to be grateful for every breath.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have
to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.“
The past week I’ve been thinking a lot about Death — about missing those who’ve left us, about feeling the pain of their departures, about grieving and how to overcome grief, about why we die, about what we should do about the things we never had a chance to say or do.
Concurrent with my thinking about death, this past weekend Joyce trekked out to Death Valley to see the wildflowers. She drove five hours each way to spend one hour with the flowers. She has literally walked through the Valley of the shadow of Death.
Death used to be an abstract concept to me. The last two years of my life have made it ever-more concrete.
1. April 11, 2008. My 29-year-old brother Damon died. He was too young. (He’s actually my brother-in-law, but he’ll always be a brother to me.)
2. July 2008. My 94-year-old grandmother Tia Rifkin died in her home.
3. May 2009. Billy Hinton, one of Joyce’s best friends, died after a long period of ill health. He was too young.
4. June 2009. My friend and advisor Rajeev Motwani died. He was 47.
5. August 2009. My friend and business partner Joyce Park had a brain aneurysm. 60% of aneurysms are fatal; 35% result in brain damage. She rolled a 20 on that 20-sided die. She lives despite coming very, very close to death.
6. October 2009. My friend and advisor Craig Johnson also suffered a stroke. He was 62.
7. April 4, 2010. My friend for almost 16 years Bob died on Easter Sunday, April 4. The week between Bob’s death and now culminated in yesterday’s two-year anniversary of Damon’s passing. The last week has been long and sad.
Thinking about death made me think about what I want in life. Mid-week I composed a bucket list. One of the things that is missing from that list is that I’d like to not feel sad about death.
So I talked with Michelle about our sadness and I came to realize that sadness has two components: the loneliness that comes from losing someone close, and the regrets that come from not having spent as much time with that person as I now wish I did.
To assuage loneliness, give love. But how can a person lose regrets?
I thought about Death Bear, whose purpose in life is to remove the pain associated with memories attached to physical objects.
Then I wondered if there could be a variation on this theme — a Death Panda! — whose purpose in life is to remove the pain associated with memories attached to regrets.
If we could lose our regrets, we could get busy living the rest of our lives, and truly be here now for those who are still in our lives.
Not just regrets attached to commission and failure, but regrets attached to things we think we should have or could have done, but didn’t — regrets of omission.
I think regrets weigh very heavily on the brain, and I wonder if that kind of emotional baggage is correlated with brain diseases.
Joyce lived to answer questions about brain aneurysms, yet in the past month I’ve personally been reminded of aneurysms on three occasions — by an athlete/coach, by a screenwriter/producer, and by a businessman — all at different ages, all of whom died of stroke-related complications.
1. 37-year old Japanese baseball coach Takuya Kimura (not the actor) – who could play every position except pitcher – died of a brain hemorrhage.
2. David Mills, 48, screenwriter on Homicide, The Wire, and Treme died of brain aneurysm.
3. Jerry York, 71-year-old Apple Board member, died after being stricken with a brain aneurysm.
I wonder what else these three people had in common. I wonder what else they can teach us.
If nothing else, every aneurysm is a reminder of the five tenets of Death Panda.
1. Missing is a part of living. 2. Pain is proportional to the love you give. 3. To get over grief, be there for someone else’s grief. 4. Be here now, especially for those in your life who are here now. 5. Lose your regrets and carry on.
Rock on, Death Panda. Rock on.
I’ve had enough of death for now.
I want to get in a car, and drive and drive and drive. Two words: Road trip!!!
“[Death Bear] never presses clients for details. As a bear, his job is not to make conversation.“
You have to be ready to move on if you’re calling Death Bear….??
Source: Tina Susman, LA Times, “Can’t get rid of your memories? Call Death Bear”
A shadowy, masked New Yorker relieves people of painful remnants of their pasts: love letters, photos, even underwear. To the man under the giant bear head, it’s performance art.??
…
“I was trying to make something that deals with more serious subjects, like grief, pain and tragedy,” said Hill, 32. “I’m interested in making art that can help in some clear-cut way, that’s not just abstract.”
Hill decided that the identity of a bear would provide the right mix of comfort and mystery. It would conjure up images of a cuddly teddy bear but look fearsome enough to ensure that retrievals were solemn events. He bought the Fiberglas bear head online and painted it dark brown.??Snout in front, eye holes over his own, rounded ears pointed skyward.??
…
So far, no clients have asked for their items back, perhaps the ultimate sign of the project’s success.
“I take it back to my cave and it is absorbed,” Death Bear said.
…
Source: http://natehillisnuts.com/3/death-bear/Death Bear is here to assist you in your time of tragedy, heartbreak, and loss. Let Death Bear help you, and absorb your pain into his cave.
Serving all Brooklyn only,??Text 347-742-2293 for an appointment
ifindkarma. elegance is refusal. 