Enjoying trails of foorptints

I caught up with a friend last week that I had gone to school with starting in 6th grade.  We have known each other for a very long time, but we haven't kept in touch through the years.  We were on the same football team when we were 11 years old, in school together during junior high and on the football team there too.  When we went to high school we began to travel in different circles, and we branched out from our junior high spheres, becoming involved in different activities and with the friends of those activities.  But certainly we still passed in the halls and had a few classes together.

After high school I didn't see him again.  Many years passed and our lives took us to places very far from our hometowns, so the intersection of our paths didn't happen again until last week.  We spent about an hour rehashing our journeys.  I never would have guessed where his journey took him.  I was really surprised he had landed in the banking business and eventually training bank managers for one of the largest banks in the country.  Coming out of high school I would never have figured that for him because he was a rather reserved guy with good grades, slightly better than average, and had very conservative values.  He mentioned that he would never have guessed my journey either.

We had a calm, interesting conversation because that's what old friends do.  The two of you go so far back, you knew the other before he was impressive to everyone else.  You don't tell your journey to impress, he knew you back at your roots.  So, you might not want to exaggerate your story in any way.  When you have one of these conversations, there are two trademarks for them.  A sense of calm or ease pervades your words, and an element of genuine interest in the other person's events lightens the spirit.  I had a conversation with a high school friend and teammate earlier this month, and the same two trademarks surfaced.

Old friends do a heart good in this world of deceit, ambition, and ego-centrism.

Trailblazing

The thing about a supermoon is that it is enlarged enough for a person to imagine what it would be like to live there.  That's about to be a reality since NASA has decided to tell the world that they have found water on Mars.  They have known this for quite some time, but I am glad that they have decided to release the news.

Of course there is the group that believes the secret military of this country already has colonized both the moon and Mars, but for the rest of us who don't get to see much evidence of living on an extraterrestrial body, the supermoon represents the awe and wonder of space travel and space living.  It's a good thing that the possibilities are opening up since our world will be at 7 million occupants in the not-so-distant future.  Food and water will be at a premium.

I will probably not live long enough to do any space living or traveling, but I wish I could sit in a spaceship soaking in the splendor of looking back at Earth, anticipating the trip to the new planet, and gazing at the majesty of its first glimpse as it would draw closer to our landing.  I would love the feeling of being some of the first to ever do this and that a crowd would probably follow.  I am just a trailblazer at heart.

(Un)real things

I am always amazed at how people respond to symbols and traditions.  They are two sides of the same coin.  They both represent the values people have.  People forget the two are not the values themselves.  Flags and flowers are the usual examples given.  A flag is not the same as the country.  It stands for the country.  Flowers are not the same as a person's loving actions.  They stand for loving actions.

A really good other example is the language people speak.  When that first happened, there was no writing.  That was invented later.  Language was just language in the beginning.  But, at some point people invented symbols for language so that they could store the language and transmit it to others.  Thus, people in civilization centers around the globe invented symbols for the languages they spoke.  Some invented letters for separate sounds, such as t and d and n to show where the tip of the tongue is placed and whether one wanted to use the vocal cords, use air only, or use the nasal passage.  Others made symbols for ideas.  Still others would put sounds together and show a word by circling it with an oval.  These inventions were not the languages themselves, but representations of the language.

I have a friend who puts pictures from a website called Traces of Texas on his Facebook.  The site contains many, many pictures of Texas during the period of the 1930s and 1940s.  He is a nostalgic friend and muses about the good values of the early days of his life.  So, he puts symbols up for the values he cherished that are different from today.  Since the values today are so different, he gets stuck in a time warp and responds to symbols from the past.

I have another friend who is really caught up in the idea of family.  It's really a facade, however, because the family she came from and the family she raised are dysfunctional, more than average.  So, she has adopted the symbols for family - pictures of everyone, singly and in groups, on walls all around her house - to help her realize the ideals that family represent.

Don't get me wrong.  I like the occasional symbol.  They can be very meaningful.  But, as a way of life, I want to deal in the real events, real values, real relationships, and real jobs.

Revising the base

I grew up in a humble little home many years ago.  I was taught that religion and education made the world a better place.  I supposedly needed copious amounts of both in my life to be successful and moral.

Now I find myself in a world where religious people fight among themselves and denigrate those outside their beliefs. I hear people who go to church saying the most awful things about the people they work with and religion and democracy often get confused.  I look around at the successful people and see truck drivers with little education making $150,000 a year, plumbers charging $80 an hour and earning $40 of that for themselves.  I get my hair done by a stylist who brings home more than most people with college degrees.  A felon I know makes 80K running a landscape business, and an illegal immigrant I know runs his own pool service business that employs others and provides for the families of the two brothers who own it.

It's a little hard to believe anymore in what I needed copious amounts of to be successful and moral.  So, I have retreated into a different view of things in lieu of the puzzle that life presents for making sense of one's experience.  This new world consists of doing good for the ones who need it, loving the events that each moment presents, and following my heart in matters of sharing love.  I find this yields a much, much more satisfying life.  Val's art diary is a good visual for my current state of affairs.

Being handed lemons

Recently ? has been in the news.  Here is a case of one of my favorite principles in life.  "When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade."  Watch below.

So, Ahmed spent a little time in jail.  I would like to have recorded what went through his mind those first 30 minutes in jail.  Maybe he thought about prejudice against his nationality.  His father certainly did in an interview about the arrest.  Maybe he thought about how life was tougher than he bargained for and he would give up making things.  Maybe he was bitter at the school, especially his English teacher who turned  him in, and thought that he wouldn't be able to finish school and accomplish his dreams.  Maybe.

All of us are handed such circumstances in life.  And we can't see past the dimension of momentary time walls to the next move in Life's game called "our lives."  But we can make lemonade from the lemons if we will have patience to let things develop on their own.  If left to his own and his family's logic, a discrimination lawsuit would have been filed, publicity about national bias against Islam would have ensued.  Ahmed would have served a suspension from the Irving school district.  People would have taken sides.  All of that was in the works.  Instead, what happened was that the white house offered him to visit the president.  MIT offered him a scholarship.  Twitter and Microsoft both reached out to him.  And soon he will enroll in a technology-oriented school where he can further his interests.

That's beautiful, isn't it?  With a little patience and time, our paths turn from being sprinkled with lemon juice to being mixed with a little sugar and water.  The transformation is amazing.

From thin air

I used to hear the expression, "You can't just make something out of thin air."  I knew that saying would disappear once holographics came on the scene.  Already it is a saying that young people don't use because they're the virtual generation.  Air is not a dimension of separation for them.  Their world is seamless between reality and virtual reality.

But, I'm not going to have to wait for the holographic realm.  Something else has been invented.  It's in the real world, not the virtual, but it allows you to make something from thin air.  Watch the video below.

I know a really artistic girl who would enjoy this invention.  It would help her go to the next level that paper can't take her to.  It would allow her and her generation to imagine things AND draw them to make them come alive.  I look forward to the time when she and others become adults and put their ideas into place in a society where reality can come from thin air.

More in the tea leaves

I saw a Facebook post of a photograph of a someone's second grader's homework.  On the line for the name the child had written her name "Alyssa."  The name was in cursive handwriting.  The teacher had written a comment by the child's name, "Do not write in cursive.  I have already warned you twice about this."

This is really unusual, but it illustrates where literacy is headed.  Reading and writing are definitely on their way out the door.  Even in traditional circles at least one person is thinking that printing is the only legitimate kind of handwriting.  That could just be the effect of the computer on a generation of young people, but I see it as a signal that even the traditionalists are moving toward a different definition of literacy.  Cursive handwriting has effectively been greatly diminished in use for a decade now.  One teacher is waging a campaign to keep it that way.

But in the larger picture, printing is on the way out too.  A recent Reuters News Agency ad in a Google banner read, "Read less, know more."  Included in the ad was a video of a news story.  The dots have been put in place over the last 9 years since the advent of the iphone.  Now the dots are being connected.  It's amazing to me that people continue to want literacy to be writing/reading-based rather than opting to embrace what is on the horizon now and soon to be mainstream.

I promised myself I would chart this change from 2007 to 2017.  I have, but it's hard to see so many unbelievers.  Well, one day...

A horrid selfishness

I would have thought that one of the parts of given to Meryl Streep in Ricki and the Flash was an error on the part of the script writer if I hadn't seen it for myself.  Streep's character is one of a divorcee who has not lived with her children.  Apparently, the children had sided with their father in the divorce.  Nothing was ever explicitly stated, but one gets the idea that Ricki (Streep) had not been stable or present enough in the kids' lives for them to respect her.

During the course of the movie her adult children definitely didn't want her to be a part of their lives.  The script writer here doesn't show a callousness in Ricki's character but a willingness to support her children with the awareness that they didn't want her around.  That's reality in the case of many broken marriages.  That part of the story is plausible.

But, without reason, there is a scene in which Ricki's boyfriend from the band she plays in tries to encourage her to go to her grown son's wedding.  She had actually been invited.  But she was going to miss it since she was aware of the son's animosity toward her.  So her boyfriend goads her to go, saying, "It doesn't matter if they don't love you.  It's not their job to love you.  It's your job to love them,"  (1:44-1:48).

My first reaction to that line was one of artificiality.  What parent doesn't know that?  Children are fickle.  Anyone who has raised teenagers knows this.  Anyone who has raised a child to age 25 knows how egocentric he or she is.  It's no mystery you have to love your kids through certain stages before they achieve an adult understanding of life.  I thought the script writer had  made a glaring error in his writing.

But, I have seen this first hand in at least three different women.  They bore resentments toward their daughters in their cases.  They castigated them, put them off, and treated them horridly saying that their children didn't show them the proper love and respect.  They didn't know it was their job to love their children, rather than waiting for their adult children to show them the respect they thought they deserved.  It's not pretty, but it is reality.  I appreciated the script writer for showing how real the situation was and for having a character try to coax a selfish mother into a better way of thinking.  Kudos for the psychological fight for good this writer built into his movie.  He was trying to rid his viewers of an evil among us.

Gracious, but true to herself

Meryl Streep puts in another very good performance.  The movie is not a complex movie of weaving the lives of many characters to form a mosaic like her movie August: Osage County, nor does she depict a character that spans a number of years to show dynamic change in a person's life like Sophie's Choice and The Devil Wears Prada.  However, she delivers in a movie that shows the strength of a static character, a mom who is needed to help her daughter in a particular situation.

She depicts a divorcee who has found her own truth in life apart from what her wealthy husband could live with.  Her interaction with each of the story's characters, mainly her biological children, shows the trials she has to face as an "outsider" to her own children.  Her children have had a hard time accepting their mother's life and dreams, so they portray their disdain for her during the entire movie except at the very end.

It is this part of the story that carries the clear and poingnant message of the movie.  In the trailer above,that message is found at 2:12-2:18.  She is at her son's wedding in the midst of a very wealthy crowd.  She lives a rather hand to mouth lifestyle, so she knows she can't participate to any monetary level worthy of this crowd.  So, she takes her participation in the wedding to an arena the others can't participate in.  She gracefully says, "I have never been a traditional mother.  But I am a musician. And I'd like to give all I have to you."

It is that last comment, "And I'd like to give all I have to you," that moves me.  I am motivated to be that gracious and giving to those I have in my circle of contact every day.  Years of practicing music made Meryl Streep very good at music.  That is what she had to offer, so she offered it.  I hope those around me see me constantly doing the same.

Just a little thought about literacy

An acquaintance put a post on her Facebook today encouraging teachers to "fight the good fight."  By that she meant to keep fighting for literacy.  She included a link to a Mississippi newspaper article talking about a literacy program that had helped literacy test scores in that state.

I'm all for literacy, but my definition of that term is very different from anything that would show up on a test score.  The acquaintance went on to say that she knew that cursive writing, sentence structure, and diagramming "had gone by the wayside."   It's good she noticed that they've been gone for a while now.

Newsflash!  Those three things are not returning.  They're gone into infinity.  Fight that fight all you want to.  Literacy has changed direction and meaning.  It's just one more sign for those who want to remain in denial that even the die-hards like my acquaintance are noticing that reading and writing are about to hit a hiatus.  I'm serious.  They will be pretty much gone by the end of 2017.

The commercial on the radio today pretty much sums up where young people's heads are these days.  There's a new app out for your phone.  It connects everything you do on your phone to a screen in your car so that you can do everything "hands-free".  Texting is done by voice command.  Touching icons for app activation is a thing of the past. Icons are voice activated too.  Search is by voice command.  Call directory is by voice command.  And more.  All via bluetooth to a screen in your car.

Yep.  Writing is pretty much out the window, down the toilet, and otherwise gone with the wind with this new app.  Mississippi better start preparing students in a different way or it will really be a sinkhole of a state to grow up in.  That would be true for any state that tests reading and writing literacy skills.  I'm thinking that video and voice presentation has more than adequately shown it is the new literacy.  It's past time to swallow that pill.

Words as a glimpse

It's hard to say sometimes how much of a person's behavior is due to personality given by genetics, and to conditioning of our training given by others, and to experience given to us through life's situations.  From observing people I have known a long time, I can see the merit of the saying, "You can't change the stripes on a zebra."  Genetics play a large part of our behavior.  But the idea that "clothes make the man" lends itself to the environment and its influence on our behavior.  And, Janet Fitch's words, "The phoenix must burn to emerge," cannot be counted out of any formula for dealing with people.

Psychologists have been working for years on what shapes a person's behavior.  Studies include changes in behavior due to hormones and medication, changes in one's environment, manipulating routines, and changes to one's preferences in established routines.  Still there are no definitive answers.Since the science of the mind can't really produce the ultimate answer on why people act the way the do, I don't mull that question too much.

Personality to me drives behavior, so understanding personality is the path to enlightenment on this issue.  But personality is a tricky thing.  It has facets to it.  It seems to be related to genetic makeup more than any other factor.  In a lot of cases, knowing the pattern of the stripes on one side of the zebra allows for one to predict what the other sides of the zebra look like.  Personality is not divided into four quadrants showing primary and secondary traits as major companies have presented this idea.  Personality has a blend of traits that react to all kinds of circumstances, even to elements in a circumstance that may seem minor to an onlooker.  The trigger that activates anger in one setting is allowed to pass without reaction in a different setting by the same person.  Why?

One way to find out is by analyzing the words people use.  Words can serve as the windows to see into the mind.  Patterns develop with words that indicate the patterns developing in the mind.  That allows one to see behaviors such as lying, risk, preoccupation, depression, nurturing, and love.  To a great extent, patterning the words of someone, reveals the patterning of a person's mind.  So, knowing how to listen is a real virtue these days.