Salve plus

I saw the word salve the other day. I hadn't seen that word in a long time. It always strikes a chord with me when I see it because it has a certain connotation with me. I know that it means any lotion or lubricant a person puts on skin, but to me it means that it is put on the skin if the skin needs healing in some way. Salve=healing is the first thought for me when I see or hear this word.

I can think of a number of things from the past that have made me well. I have been made well by pills, by liquids, by jobs, and by good will from others. I am grateful for them all. But, there is a category above what salve can do. It's the salve plus category. It can only be experienced when a person is made better by another. It's not something that makes one well, it's someone who makes well being an everyday matter... like smiling, laughing, enjoying, living fully, seeing new horizons, and feeling fully satisfied.

Salve plus might just be Nirvana! It most certainly is heaven on earth!

Life in the brain

The survival of the fittest idea from 180 years ago has undergone some scrutiny by the last 4 generations. Many just dismiss the idea out of hand. But, science seems to meet in coming and going, so it has to be given some credence. The latest brain book I have read uses it as its basis in order to arrive at some of the conclusions it draws.

One of the principles of this book is that humans have lived in a changing environment over time. The brain organizes itself according to what is needed in a human's environment. In that way, we become strong and dominant in our environment. It also means that our brains reorganize neural networks as we put ourselves in different environments. We can remain fit enough to see what is needed at every turn and remain strong and dominant. That means that change is natural, which goes against an adage in our society, "change comes hard." What is natural doesn't come hard. The adage, then, is not accurate according to science.

I know from experience over the last 8 years that change comes pretty naturally. Having a son, not having a son, jolts the emotions and changes the environment. The brain reorganized itself. From that point, the environment around me changed because it unraveled. But the brain kept up. It reorganized. Then my life encountered something bright, brilliant, vibrant, and joyous. It reorganized again. Change did not come hard. Change came naturally. And, I will vouch that because my needs changed, my brain reorganized. I am a joyous person, a better person as a result.

Dimensions illuminating us

Our lives have dimensions to them. We grow over time in different areas that add to our beings. We try to develop some interest of ours into something large and productive, so we pursue it as far as we can. We want to hone a skill we have, so we spend time making it better and better. We want to be the best in our jobs, so we learn all there is about it to enhance our performance of it. Our children force us to see life again from a really young perspective, through the eyes of someone we really love and cherish, so we don't forget the world we left behind. We love others, so we learn about the give and take of experiencing the world in an unselfish manner. We make it a point to place people in our lives who are head and shoulders above all others who surround us, who make us better. We have all kinds of dimensions to us.

All those dimensions work together to help us look forward to getting up every morning. They act as one to give us a reason for living. They strengthen us to do what we would otherwise not be inspired to do. They work as rays from the sun to illuminate our otherwise mundane lives. Heaven forbid that we should take the dimensions of our lives for granted. It would greatly weaken us.

He's got my full attention

There are just some things that shouldn't happen. A couple who has infant twins and loves them dearly shouldn't have an impersonal institution take the children from them in the name of protection. What will the institution do? Love the children? Hardly.

Somebody with credentials has to be behind such a move. Child Protective Services doesn't just act alone unless a very severe case presents itself. But, most of their cases are not severe requiring immediate attention. So, when the "somebody" decides to make a travesty of justice with the system in place, he needs to have to face a little travesty of his own.

The case of taking infants from their parents with bogus evidence to do so, should deserve misery in return. Some would say people should be better than to render an eye for an eye. The difference is that the "somebody" in this case has had time to reconsider his own position with evidence contrary to his own opinion. Still he is unchanging. But arrogance is a blinding disease. And it is a disease that allows me to do my work more effectively because the person can't see the lies he tells himself and spreads to others. But, I can see those lies. And, there are some things that just shouldn't happen.

Charades

I was listening to a teacher talk tonight. She was mentioning that she had had some kids "tested." That's code for getting an official designation to label the kids with so that everybody knows they are behind. The kids had come to her without any records of tests, and she thought they were low in skills for the grade level. The teacher went on to say that over 50% of the kids qualified for an intervention program. That speaks volumes. Not about the teacher necessarily, but about the educational system.

For one, what is being tested is not IQ (and there is not such thing as intelligence) because who really knows how to define and measure intelligence. It is not ability because the test was not an achievement test. It is not innate ability because the test was not an aptitude test. What is being tested is the average performance level a child is supposed to perform at given a certain grade level. And how is that average performance level determined? It's not the statistical part that is in question here, but the arbitrary performance level assigned to grade levels. Given that kids cognitively mature at different rates, it fails me that any grade level assignation could be made and called "average."

For two, what kind of system needs to have labels for some group of kids who are cognitively maturing at different rates according to the dictates of nature. Who is really in charge of some set of skills (call it curriculum) well enough to set parameters around something even nature has not settled on?

The educational system may be beyond repair in this country. I firmly believe the people in the year 2200 will refer to the way we do things presently as the failed educational experiment for the masses. It boils down to one thing. Education, which touted the scientific method as a way to discover knowledge, failed to heed its own advice. It pays very little attention to what science has to offer it, giving it lip service, offering bogus tests as a charade for deceiving the communites that have entrusted their kids to it. I implore the leaders and those who will lead in the future to pay attention to the science that really would inform the system on how to give kids something to help them with their futures.

Notional, flawed education

From time to time I get to have a theoretical discussion about critical learning windows regarding education. I usually find myself in a minority when such a discussion happens. I recently read a book about the brain that also addressed this idea although the authors called it sensitive learning windows (time-sensitive, that is). The authors of the book hesitated to completely agree with the idea, but they did give a couple of instances where the best explanation was the disappearance of the window. A critical learning window is the time period that exists during which learning takes place or some programmed events happens, such as puberty. Before the window, proper cognition is not in place to understand a concept fully, and after the window, the optimal conditions for learning a concept no longer exist and learning that concept becomes virtually impossible to enhance but more than a little.

The American school system ignores the idea of a critical learning window altogether. In second language acquisition, for example, nearly all offerings for language learning appear in high school a good 5-8 years after the critical window has closed. I guess it's no wonder that America remains mostly a monolingual country. Reading by teaching it phonetically also rejects the idea of a critical learning window. The child of 2-4 years of age learns that way, but not afterward much (only about 25% of children learn phonetically after that point). It's no wonder that many children grow into adulthood reading slowly and painfully. They were forced to "learn" reading through a method that yields limited results. And, horrendously, math from the time of kindergarten through 2nd grade gets roughly half the time dedicated to it that reading does. Mistakenly, the educational establishment thinks reading improves math skills. It's no wonder at all that children come away from the critical learning window during which math logic can best be instilled with only half or less of the time they need to do well. That certainly shows up in older children and young adults.

Surely, at some point, science will prevail and educating by notion will give way. When that happens, education will take a great leap forward. Learning will take place in more natural ways, according to natural rhythms, yielding naturally higher results. Knowledge will take a quantum leap. And, performance of individuals will correspondingly increase.

Beautiful script

One of my favorite TV shows is Flashpoint. Tonight was a particularly well written script. The episode contained a main plot and four subplots. All five fit together perfectly. Two of the plots dealt with children learning to trust in people they had been conditioned to distrust. One of the plots showed the vulnerability of parents in trying to work in the best interests of their child. One subplot depicted a woman who had lost a 3-year-old daughter getting to work through her grief by saving another small girl. The four parts were woven together in a seamless, delicate manner. By the end of the time slot, all the subplots had come to a noble resolution. It was simply beautiful - a good reminder of how life is orchestated sometimes in piecing together people's lives for happiness and satisfaction.

Some of life either doesn't work out or it works against you. But, sometimes it works together seamlessly, delicately. And for the portions that are still in the making, a person can work to make them turn out well or put them in the hope category. I look at the last three jobs I have had as an example of life working together in the same way as the Flashpoint episode I watched tonight. They worked together seamlessly, one building to the other, one being incorporated into parts of the other.

It's a good feeling when some of the important things in life, like a job, fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. My greatest hope and dream, however, has not yet been fit into that seamless, delicate puzzle of life. Should the script of life incorporate this episode into my experience, life would not have just been pieced together happily and satisfactorily, but ecstatically and totally enjoyably.

In the center

The downtown areas of major cities are distinctive. They have defining shapes in size of area, height and slope of skycrapers, and geographical features like harbors, lakes, plains, or mountains. They are considered the hub of the city because they have the meaningful activities going on in them, such as finiancial districts, business, industial, and government provenances, restaurant regions, and shopping stretches. They many times are the pulse of the suburbs around them, pumping life into those smaller towns. Show me the downtown areas of the top 10 US cities, and I would bet you money that I could recognize them because they have their particular characteristics.

We need the people in our lives that sit in the downtown of our hearts. The people that are distinctive. The ones that rise head and shoulders above anyone else because of their personalities and accomplishments. The special ones among us who thrive and provide others much of life's pleasure, cheer, and enjoyment. The ones who sit dead-center in our psyches. Our thoughts wander onto them so many of the minutes during a day.

I don't know that everyone has such people. Perhaps I am fortunate. I can easily draw the skyline in the center of my heart and thoughts.

Coming in handy

One of the forensic methods I learned in my formal training in sociolinguistics was how to chart the strength of social networks. I didn't think anything about it at the time, but it has really proved to be useful in the line of work that I have been in, including my current position. It helps in particular to know what to say to whom.

I think because of having this information, I have been able to say the right words at the right time to the right people. It may have just saved my bacon. I remember when I was in my 20s that I didn't always know what to say or who to say something to or what to keep silent until just the right person was available. While some of what to say at the right time to the right people is a matter of maturity over time, some of it is correctly judging the strength of a social network. Some people in the network will spread your words to many people, sometimes in a twisted form or in a twisted context, and some will not.

But, over the last 9 months, I had to make sure that I protected myself in my work with words that followed particular channels of networking with the right information reaching the right people at the right time in order for the result to turn out in my favor. It took some work, but last Saturday I had it verified to me that I had judged the social network just right. Whew!

There but not here

The other night I was watching dark clouds move into the area from the north. I could see a flash or two of lightning, hear thunder rumbling, and feel the rush of wind that often precedes a rain storm. I checked my phone for the radar on whether the storm would hit my house directly. I was not in the main path of the storm, but on the fringe. The brunt of the storm was headed a little west of my house, headed toward a place that I care a great deal about. That place did receive quite a bit of rain. My house? Only a trace. I had to laugh. Rain usually does elude my house. I could see all the signs of a storm, but it was virtually a dry run with all the visual, audio, and tactile effects of the real thing. If I compare the number of rain storms that happen to the place just to the west to the number I receive at my place, a pattern emerges. It nearly always gets the measurable amounts, and I nearly always get the trace amount. I have to laugh at the irony of that. I don't know why that happens.

Life is intermittent in what it brings. There is no doubt about that. Trying to understand why things happen the way they do drives me crazy. A pattern emerges there too. I don't understand why things happen. My way of dealing with things I don't understand is to shake my head, and laugh at my little understanding of the grand scheme of things. But I am really glad that things happen well or right just to the west of me.

The pool effect

Having a back yard pool does not add value to your house according to realtors. I guess that's right. At least, if you sell your house, realtors don't want you to depend on added value from having a pool. But, to me, a pool adds value, aesthetic value if nothing else. The water surface shimmers when the sun glints off of it. It ripples when the wind blows. It makes small little splashes all over when it rains. It adds blue to the color of the green yard surrounding it. It invites you to jump in and refresh your day!

A pool is a symbol of the quality certain people add to our lives. We need that person who makes our lives shimmer, ripple, make little splashes all over, add color, and invite us to refresh our day. A pool and the person it represents are sheer enjoyment. Life could be lived without that person, but what a hole that would leave!