Quote of the Day - 12/31/2011

“Why” is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it. - Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time.

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Why? Why? Why? Why?

It is the question young children ask again and again….the question that helps us to discover the root cause of an event. It is the essence of curiosity and our question to find reason.

It is such an easy question to ask. There is not much thinking in the formulation of the question and a lot of information to be gleaned from the answer…even if we are answering it for ourselves rather than relying on someone else.

In 2012 --- let’s ask it often and really listen to the answer.

Quote of the Day - 12/30/2011

The barren soul seems like a kaleidoscope, changing its relations at each experience, whether of joy or sorrow. How beautiful is life, when we learn how much we can be to each other, and how varied may be the relations we bear to our friends. - Harriet A. Adams in Dawn (1868)

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With all the new ways to communicate that have been developed since 1868, we still are challenged to learn how much we can be to each other. All those new forms - telephone, email, texting, video conferencing - have made is possible to have a larger circle of acquaintances but not necessarily enhanced the depth of relationships. It takes effort and the value we place on relationships may drive us toward the shallow type.

Networking is a hot topic relative to career development and it promotes the idea that a large number of professional acquaintances enhances the progress of your career…they help you/you help them. The relationship may be limited to career topics (i.e. one dimensional) but useful and valuable for what you want to accomplish in your life.

The inner circle of your relationships should be deeper. These are the relationships that last over the longer term. For me, the majority are family members and the relationships existed for my whole life (for those older than me) and for their whole life (for those younger than me). Sustaining the depth of these long term relationships is something important to me; I am willing to spend time - and utilize whatever communication mechanisms work - because I want all of these relationships to evolve into the future.

Establishing new and deep relationships are the hardest of all. The extreme effort required seems daunting. If your soul’s kaleidoscope is already beautiful, do you continue to pursue more deep relationships? For most of us - the answer may be ‘no.’

Quote of the Day - 12/29/2011

Beauty is the universal seen. - Alfred Stieglitz (quoted in Beauty in Photography by Robert Adams)

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Each of us may not know exactly how to describe beauty but we know it when we see it. The gist of what Stieglitz seems to say is that there is a universal aspect to beauty. Do you agree? How similar is our perception of beauty to that of others?

I would be more comfortable with the notion that there is a ‘universal seen’ aspect of beauty…but it is not all encompassing (i.e. there may be some perception of beauty that we all share - the universal seen - but it seems that there are obvious variations forged by culture and experience that can tweak our perception and enlarge what we as an individual perceive as beauty.

Take an example of a face of a 90 year old woman. Some of us would not see beauty in that face. Others would easily see a beloved grandmother or mother….and beauty.

Another example: the face of a model with perfect skin and proportioned features. Many people would see beauty in that face. A few would find it too prefect and, while acknowledging that many saw beauty, would not find the face all that interesting or even beautiful.

Quote of the Day - 12/28/2011

Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. – Dr. Lewis Thomas (quoted in Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures  by Noah Adams)

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There are so many ways to listen to music today. It can be with us every moment of our day. But is it really playing the same role Dr. Thomas described?

There are times it seems that music is the way we build a wall around ourselves to block out the parts of the world we don’t particularly want to be in rather than making any effort at all. It can be like ingesting something that modifies our biology to numb or heighten…somehow change…our perception of the world.

Making our own music may be closer to what Dr. Thomas was thinking about. Doesn’t everyone sometimes hear their own personal music in their head? I’ve often wondered if it is the summation of our auditory history being rearranged and uniquely played back - sometimes as recognizable scores and sometimes totally new music. The composers among us are the ones that succeed in writing it down in a form others can read.

Does the history of music reflect the cultures of history (i.e. the way our brains have been changed by culture)?

Quote of the Day - 12/27/2011

Trust is to society what oil is to machinery. - Margo Adair in Working Inside Out.

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Trust seems to be in such short supply in public forums recently. The problems we face are being addressed with grating gears….that may be stripped in some places already (to continue the machinery analogy). To what extent is the lack of trust responsible for the failure to resolve problems? Sadly - it may be the root cause.

As individuals, we can observe the impact of trust on the people we interact with frequently. If trust is there, the interactions are easier and, seemingly, less complex. We can make assumptions about the relationship and usually be right. If there is a misunderstanding, it can be quickly resolved and the relationship is not damaged. If trust is not present, relationships are hard. We tend to eventually end a relationship or association if we cannot develop some elements of trust.

On the macro scale, the complexity of trust between groups of people, cultures, organizations, etc. can be overwhelming. It is hard to develop a path to increase trust unless it begins to occur spontaneously. Worse - the option to ‘end the relationship’ is often not possible. News about what is happening in our government and other governments around the world often includes indicators that trust is in very short supply and the individuals that may want to change the scenario to begin developing (or redevelop) trust are strangely silent. Trust requires more thought than a sound bite; the trend in society is not to value, or even acknowledge, deeper thinking.

As a representative democracy, the electorate must trust the people they elect to represent them. If we do not, then our responsibility is to participate in the system sufficiently to elect people we can trust.

Somehow the ‘oil’ for the society machinery must be replenished. 

Quote of the Day - 12/26/2011

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. - John Muir

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Imagining a plant or an animal as a totally independent entity is an easy model but not very useful because it does not approach reality. We need to think in terms of systems and relationships. It is complicated and can sometimes become too hard to comprehend. The simplifying assumptions we make can lead to decisions that result in consequences no one anticipated.

Some examples:

• We kill off predators because they are a danger to us and kill livestock but then we have an overpopulation of deer in urban areas. Their major ‘predator’ becomes the automobile.
• We use fertilizers to increase yields of agricultural crops but then the incidence of algal blooms that kill fish occur more frequently.

The natural thread we ‘tug’ connects it all and our understanding is often not deep enough to anticipate the consequence of the decisions we are making. The key is to realize this…not be paralyzed by it. Decisions will have to be made but they should not be made with a point objective always overriding the knowledge - however incomplete - of the thread that links that change to ‘the rest of the world.’

Quote of the Day - 12/25/2011

Because the gods are baking winter cakes

Powered sugar sifts over the yard

In slow motion, hushed as thought.

Bare trees resemble sticks of cinnamon.

-        Diane Ackerman in I Praise My Destroyer: Poems (Vintage)

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The quote of the day is a snippet from a poem - a word picture of an idealized Christmas morning.

Not many of us actually achieve that ideal but it is nice to think about all the same. Powered sugar snows never cause traffic problems so their beauty on the grass and bushes can be easily appreciated as an essential of the season. Of course the bare trees that resemble cinnamon sticks may happen almost every year. Thinking about them that way reminds me how much a associate the smell of cinnamon with winter holiday cooking.

What if you don’t live in a place that any of this is in the scene from your window today? Just imagine….or embrace the beauty of the scene you have. This is a day to enjoy…be present for it.

Quote of the Day - 12/24/2011

Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. - Edward Abbey in Desert Solitaire.

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Where is your ‘one true home’?

Is it a desert…mountains…plain…forest…shore? Or does your ideal have more to do with the people that happen to be in a place?

The ideal place for me would be rolling hills or low mountains with some mixed deciduous and pine forest and some more open areas. There would be small streams that bubbled rapidly during rains and froze several times in the winter. However, my ideal home has more to do with people than place; if my family were not in the place with me it would not be home at all no matter how ideal the place itself happened to be. Meaningful work is also a requirement to form ‘home’ so the place needs to accommodate that either nearby or within.

What if you had the opportunity to live in a place for a year --- to witness all the seasons in a place very different from where you live today? Where would you choose? Do you think of any of those places as more ‘ideal’ or ‘right’ than where you live now?