By comparison

Recently, I was in a place where the people were homeless and dirt poor. I didn't know any of their stories, but I am sure they were very interesting. The road that brings someone to a certain place in life is always interesting.

I saw a man in a wheelchair on the corner of an intersection, legless, with hand out for one car, cap out for another. I saw another lady sitting in front of a hospital, wild-haired, smoking, just passing the time of day. I had another lady hit me up for "gas money" as I was waiting in line to check out myself in a 7-11. She had come in at the same time with me into the store, waited till I got my Dr. Pepper and Zingers. Then asked for money so she could buy whatever she was checking out.


There were many more people that would have had interesting stories. I guess by comparison, my life is one of a king.

A measure for phenomenal

Max Anderson put out an inspirational book and Power Point once about the boiling point. I don't remember the name of either writing, but it was something about 1 degree of difference. The one degree between high heat and the boiling point is one degree. Then he went on to talk about what a difference it makes in one's life (for accomplishing goals) to ratchet up just one degree more of determination or passion or effort. Reaching the metaphoric boiling point is magical in accomplishing one's dreams.

Without the hoopla of the inspirational part, it is true that small increments are all around us that make a difference. The difference between two degrees of temperature from 99 to 101 is small. But, it makes a difference in whether the fever needs to be treated or not. If the normal or average temperature is 98.6 (or 99), then just a short two degrees of temperature make a difference.

The freezing point serves the same purpose as the boiling point in the original inspirational writing. One degree from 33 to 32 degrees turns water from a fluid to a solid. It makes a difference in the type of lifestyle preparations one needs to take, such as wrapping pipes for pump houses, covering or draining water from pools, procuring salt for bridges and roadways, planning trips, etc.

And in my line of work, just one standard deviation is the difference between honest, casual speech and contrived, rehearsed, dishonest speech. The range of type-token ratios between 0 and 1 is far less noticed than the range from 1-2. And the ratios above 2 are infrequent and highly significant when they occur. Small increments these numbers are, but increments that matter.

The list could contain many, many more examples of the difference small increments make. The point of the original boiling point illustration was to say that the extra, small amount of difference yields great results in life. It's true for the most part. Valedictorians and salutatorians are sometimes .001 apart in GPA. 1 degree of angle in a trajectory makes a difference between glancing off the atmosphere into deep space or piercing the shield for a safe landing. 1 inch of snow between one's foot and a crevasse on Mt. Everest determines life or death.

Mediocrity is unacceptable. Average is expected. What stands out I'm thankful for. But what is phenomenal is desired and immensely satisfying when achieved. And the difference between outstanding and phenomenal is probably just one infinitesimal unit apart.

What am I missing?

I understand most things in life. If I have an interest in them, I usually study them until I understand them very well. A couple of things in life, I have pursued formal training to know the nth degree about. So, when I hit something I have really tried to understand and can't, it bothers me severly.

I was told early on in life, "Everything has a shelf life." I understand this concept. But, I don't like how it has played out in life since I left my 30s. I know that we were "born to die." That will come in due time. I comprehend that there are cycles to life, so that many things resurface; they come and go, leave and return. I get it. What I don't understand is why the important matters/people have been plucked from me one at a time. Even formal training for acceptance of this principle I know about and can quote the steps for. However, I am not a whole individual as much as I could be because what I considered to be the #1 priority at different times in my life has been taken one priority at a time in a methodical, successive fashion. This I don't get.

At one time I thought that religion would help... of course, it didn't. I thought that discipline would help... that's not the trick. I thought maybe there were religious "disciplines" I was remiss in... of course not. I thought pursuing ideas to the nth degree would give me insight... yes, but not in this matter. If I have had a #1 priority, I have been stripped of it.

All I have to say about matters and people I have priorities about is that I wish it had worked out differently. I don't understand it for sure, so I am forced to settle for wishes. I wish that J.W. Roberts had mentored me a little longer before dying in mid-semester of my second year with him . I wish that choices from the 20s had been different. I wish consulting for attorneys had played a larger part in my life. I wish that I had not gone through raising teenagers alone. I wish for my son's cancer to have had a cure. I wish that 2009 could have lasted the rest of my life. I wish 2011 had not included the path I am bound to go down.



I still need the understanding of the bigger picture. Without it, I am blind. I have never liked being blind and have fought against it with every ounce of my energy. It defies what I am about. But...

Most people

Outrageous and outraged are certainly from the same family if one were to write the related words, such as outrage (noun form), outrage (verb form), outrageous (adjective form), outrageously (adverb form). But there are subtle differences in the forms, one from the other. The noun and verb forms are pretty similar although there is the difference in which the verb form shows a burst of emotion and the noun form removes that from the meaning. The adjective and adverb forms share most of the same meaning except that the adjective still refers to anger where the adverb does not. However, the adjective form and the past participle form [a member of the verb family] (the two words starting this blog) are not very close even though they belong to the same family. One deals with rage, the other mainly with something far from the norm. It's a mirror image of the human family with members having different personalities or defining characteristics.

So it is with people. If we think of a class of people, women for instance, we find that they have shared characteristics like the outrage family. However, the members of the class are not the same. In the same way the mind chooses words for expressing the right meaning, people can see the differences in the individual members of the class and choose to pass or accept. And just as there are major distinctions between noun/verb and adjective/adverb, there are some fine-tuned distinctions between close members of a class as between noun and verb and between adjective and adverb. So even if we choose to accept the members of a larger class, there are even smaller distinctions that set the members apart for further scrutiny dictating how much we want to accept that member.

Where I would use the word outrageous, I could also use unbelievable (most people's first choice) or incredible (many people's second choice). But my choice is outrageous. Focusing on just the right word choice follows the same routine as choosing members of a class, then narrowing to focus on a preference. Language and life choices have a number of parallels. I used to think that I could not change my life choice preferences. But that's like saying I am stuck with outrageous as a preference and could not change to incredible, unbelievable, unique, over-the-top, way beyond, or any number of words that might be equivalent. It's just that I have a preference after closely examining the possibilities. My criteria might change for how I select preferences. If so, then I might change preferences. That's more a reality.

I would say, though, that most people stick with the language they learned as young people and it marks them for life. It gives them their recognizable characteristics. Well, that's most people.

UNspoken

Meanings of thoughts uttered definitely show up in a number of ways. Meaning is carried through tone used, voice pitch, gestures made, and facial expressions. But none of these means are quite as potent as the words uttered. And sometimes the most potent of all meanings is in the words that have been left unsaid.

Tomorrow I am going to hear a doctor's report of his surgery. He will utter words that will be accompanied by all the above means. He will use calm tones, normal pitch, neutral gestures if any are made, and quite ordinary facial expressions. I am certain he will use very precise wording to say very clinically and precisely what he did.

But the entire story of the degree of his success will be in the words unspoken. I will hear those words anyway... and that hidden story is the whole story.

The substance box

Magazines adopted the practice for a while of capturing the substance of an a page in an inset box, bolding the print, and increasing the font so that everyone would know the heart or central thought of what was on that page. Soon religious and self-help books, pamphlets, and technical articles began doing that as well. That style of capturing the heart of the matter being read lasted for a decade and a half before it began tapering off. But, a number of magazines still do that.

I find myself being silent these days in conversations when I am among those who don't share any common interests or I am not among friends. I wish that I had a set of boxes that had the substance of what I am about in them. Then all I would have to do is pull one out and let people read it. If they wanted to stay around and talk about that, they would be welcome to do so. Otherwise, they would save themselves a lot of breath by reading the box, then deciding to converse with someone else who might share their common interests.

Music of our lives

I remember the era of the Chicago Bulls winning NBA championships. They had the best player in basketball, Michael Jordan, without a doubt. And the best coach, Phil Jackson, hands down. And the best supporting cast with Dennis Rodman and Scottie Pippin. But they also had the best song. Right before the introduction of the team, the lights were killed in the arena. A bull herd was shown running down one of the main streets leading to the arena, then entering it to the shouts of the thousands gathered there for the event. That short, wordless song became the icon of the Bulls and all they stood for.

Music can do that. Some songs represent a particular time or event in our lives. I heard the love songon TV the other day that served as the theme to the original Romeo and Juliet movie from years past. My thoughts immediately jumped to the time period. If I ever hear Won't Get Fooled Again by the Who, I always see the Tarrant County Colliseum with a huge ball revolving and sending chutes of light all over the ceiling and with smoke coming from the stage as the song is being sung.

I suppose we can chart our events with music. It's important to us. What was the number one song when we graduated? What song marked the passing of a loved one? What song is from your favorite movie? What song represents your chosen career field? What song inspires us to sing along with it every time it's played? What song can we never let go because it represents the heartstrings attached to it?... it's one of those forever songs.

Shifting Scenes

Once in a while, something comes along to let you know that the world you live in is not yours. You can't control it or predict it. You are left to react to it and adjust to a new schema. So be it.

The people living 70,000 years ago endured a decade of winter and darkness when Mount Toba blew its top in the worst volcano eruption in the known history of the Earth. Most humans didn't make it, and the few that lived to share the earth with their posterity lived in a very different place than before.

The people in the Sahara Desert understand about reaction to change. The Sahara was lush 20,000 years ago. Those in the transition from lush to desert knew they would have to adjust to live.

People in Nazi Germany had to make about a 15 year adjustment to a regime that changed the way a government treated the citizens of its nation. Some citizens were favored while others were hunted down and murdered.

So it's not new that in our personal lives, life might just radically take a twist. Bring it on. Survivors adapt to a new environment and learn its new ways.

Malleability

At a garden park I recently visited, there were several sculpted metal figurines placed in a circle on the lawn. The figures showed a variety of positions a person could take in defending oneself in one of the martial arts, perhaps Jujitsu. I don't really know if there was symbolism with the figures being placed in a circle or with the positions of the figures, but I saw some parallelism with the figures and the way life is.

Life happens to a person in such a way so as to force him or her to develop a rhythm of positions to take while trying to figure life out, defending against some of its developments, or making plans to be more assertive to overcome some of the holes it puts one in. The shape helps one see how (s)he has mapped out the circular nature of her or his added or repeated responses. And the sculptures being metal show how rigid those responses become.

While this is psychologically protective, I think our responses to life should show a certain malleability. We do have to form a view of life and place our experiences within that view, but the view does not have to be narrow. It should broaden horizons and aid us in following what we deem best for ourselves.

Product of sheer natural beauty

Today was beautiful in a garden park behind the hotel where I have stayed for a week. On the hotel property is a park that contains about 3 acres. In the center of it is a sundial pedastal decorated with beautiful yellow flowers radiating from it for about 10 feet. The path I walk on takes about 5 minutes to walk around (my walk is 4 times around), but it has a bridge with ponds on either side of it, one of which holds about 20 large goldfish, the other a sculpture of a father and son fishing out of the pond. Flowers are also planted around a number of trees. Some of the trees are exotic looking like the cyprus trees whose roots come up like splotches all around them. The grass is absolutely green, verdent green. Fountains refresh the one walking the path. The product of walking along this path is the clear thinking that occurs. I need that. And, I have never had clearer thinking than I do now.

Running rivers

One of the best movies from the last quarter of 20th century was A River Runs through It. Its theme of life just happening for good or ill next to a river pulsing through the territory still stands out to me. The picture above reminds me so much of the land from the movie, and its universal symbols for the lives of those who watched it.

Snow blizzard fences have been constructed to block blowing, blinding snow from covering the meadow where cattle or buffalo graze. Mountains form a ridge in the background to make their presence known without being too imposing on the landscape. The sky is partly clouded with some gray, some white, shielding the sun from the scorching the grass in the meadow. Sage brush clumps have grown in pockets around the land in the picture. And, although the sun is veiled, its rays still bathe the mountainside and the land at the foot of this tall terrain as if it is defiant in announcing that no one can truly hide the sun. All of this along the river running through the land.

Comparing the theme of the movie that life happens along the river, and the picture that represents it here, I find a number of parallels. I have certainly had mountains to climb (who hasn't!). I have fortunately had snow blizzard fences to keep the white blanket from completely covering my landscape, freezing the meadows I operate in or blinding me from seeing its worth. Skies in my world have been cloudy at times and shielded the sun. I have smelled the musty, rather colorless sage of life, but at least it shows that there is life going on.

Oh, and did I leave out the sun rays spilling down the mountainside filling the valley below? Oh no, not a chance! I saved it to single out the source of my living as the river runs through my life. I have one in a place within whose cheer allows me to press forward, whose spirit rains warm rays on my thoughts, and whose brilliance cannot ever be completely shielded from lighting the lay of the land in my life. It's the main feature in a life with a river running through it!