The speck in your own eye

I see a certain arrogance from time to time from people who consider themselves better than most in the use of grammar, spelling, and punctuation.  These people usually memorize rules governing the three areas and then expect all people everywhere to do the same.  At least one website is dedicated to these rules so people can memorize them.  And, those who memorize the rules condescend or browbeat others who choose not to.  It's and its are the two spellings that I encounter the most as being misspelled, but according to a list put out by Dictionary.com, the words your and you're are misspelled more often.  Ever feel judged for using it's in place of its or your in place of you're?

When I was twenty-something, I played this arrogance game with language rules when it came to holding others to the notion of standard English, but then I found that people could challenge my own notions of language that I had no answer to.  So, I quit playing language games with others.  Making people feel inferior is far from the acceptance I desire to have for others.  Far beyond the games people play with spelling and punctuation, some syntactic constructions defy memorization and require a deeper knowledge of when something appears in language, and I was unprepared for that requirement.  Who was I to hold someone accountable when I couldn't do the same in the same language game just a different area?

Why would someone say, for instance, We were given tickets for the concert, rather than (Name of party) gave me the tickets for the concert?  I didn't know at that time.  Or, why would someone who had influence on teachers of English in schools want to perpetuate the idea that action verbs, such as A key lay on the table, make a "stronger" sentence construction than a verb form of BE with a "dummy" subject, like There was a key on the table?  I didn't know at the time how to discount this self glorified "writing guru's" arrogance.  Is there a definition for "strength" in sentence construction?  Does a graduated continuum exist for a "weak to strong" verb or sentence construction?  I understand "style" and "sentence variation," but "strength?" Never. Strength is a nebulous, immeasurable term in syntax.

Then there's my favorite, the "phrasal verb."  Coined by Quaker religious essayist Logan Smith in 1925, the term didn't catch on with linguists after Chomsky in the 1950s.  Grammarians who taught ESL used a variation of the phrase beginning in the 1960s, but the base term fell into disfavor because of its ambiguity.  However, some teachers of foreign languages still like to use this old term in verb phrases such as If you will put out the money for the venture, I will run the operation.  Not many people feel the need to analyze the phrase put out because of its complexity.  They just use it, as did I when I was twenty-something and arrogant.

Working with ideas in syntax and semantics, discourse and conversation analysis, and phonology have changed every smidgen of arrogance away from memorizing a few rules.  Memorizing rules is really, really easy comparatively.  Imposing a few rules on others who can outstrip my knowledge in many other areas of life, like writing software programs, negotiating business deals, and making money in the stock market seems ludicrous.  What is the real point to an education?  To make it work for you in your endeavors in life, or show how you memorized something important to yourself and not to most other people?

English grammarians need to get over feeling smug and superior for learning well one tiny speck of knowledge in the much more encompassing field of language use.  Someone might ask them to explain the literary term synecdoche or the phonological principle of obligatory countour principle someday and their arrogance will disappear with the embarrassment they should feel for only knowing one small corner of rules in a very broad, well established academic domain.

Caught in the middle

Last Friday I lived in a time warp.  I was alive, of course, in the present.  But, I went in the early afternoon to the show "Passengers."  It was a well done, well written movie, redeeming hope in people.  The whole movie was set in the future and both settings and characters' actions were appropriate for future happenings.  For 2 hours I soaked in the time many years beyond my present.

In the early evening, I sat down to watch another movie on television from 19 years ago, "Seven Years in Tibet."  It was set in the three-year period 1947-1950.  All the action and other props corresponded to that time period.  People wrote in longhand, for instance, in leather-bound journals.  Clothes were not made from lighter fabrics, but coarser, heavier ones.  Although motorized vehicles were present in the world, the setting of Tibet showed a world of walking everywhere across harsh terrain, giving a sense of 100 years earlier in time.

The day marked, I think, the microcosm of the brain.  We have hopes and dreams, so some of our actions are ones that are carried out in hopes of future outcomes and what they will yield for us.  We also realize we are trapped in the present moment.  We get to the future by steps, but the future is really just imagination and desire.  And then there's the memory track we reflect on from time to time.  It helps us see retroactively with 20/20 vision, or at least vision with more perspicuity.

Closing out the year, I hope for a clear and plausible glimpse of the future with the right steps in line to achieve it, satisfying moments of the present, and a lucid interpretation of past events with full enjoyment of the sacred moments that flash across our minds from time to time.

Transformative

On June 29, 2007, the world was transformed.  Onto a stage in California Steve Jobs walked out to introduce the world to a way to communicate not only with people, telephone-style, but with websites all over the planet.  Also a person could choose from an array of games to play.  A person would no longer have to use separate devices to talk, listen to music, or surf the net.

On July 15th, 2008, the iphone was discontinued.  But, the iphone had not failed.  The second edition of the phone was put out.  Thus, was born a transformative way of talking, using the web, playing games, taking pictures, listening to songs, and much, much more.  Apps began with about 25,000 to use, but soon proliferated.  At present, who could really live a quality life without a "smart" phone as they are now called.

It's time again.  It won't be Steve Jobs walking out on a stage, but someone with just as much drive and vision.  It won't be a development of a device to integrate tools, but something much more powerful and forward thinking.  The world of the hololens was introduced in March of 2015.  Its applications are only now being explored.  The one above is for education.  NASA already uses it in exploring and understanding Mars virtually.  Applications exist for taking virtual, holographic expeditions in Macchu Picchu, and the Roman Colliseum.  Archaeology and history have truly come alive, not in name only.  These applications will proliferate until babies born in this year will grow up knowing two worlds - virtual and real.  They will be seamless.  One will travel between the two without thinking twice about it.  They will enter one, leaving the other, as easily as a person taps on an app today to leave the real world for a moment with a screen.

I hope to live to see it.  It will be so exciting!  I am ready to be transformed.

A little understanding goes a long way

"Sheesh UPS AND USPS I know your busy but you could have rang the doorbell so I knew my stuff was here."          
(Written by a doctor of pharmocology working as a pharmacist, graduate of Oklahoma University, age 31)

The above was a caption written to a picture of boxes delivered and stacked next to this person's front door.

I learned in school that any generation could change the language to fit their needs and preferences.  There is no amount of cajoling (or grade punishment in school) that will change what a generation decides to do with the language they speak. 

I went to school in the 20th century.  My English is different from the people who learned their English in the 21st century in certain usages for pronouns and verbs (and a few other items) as exhibited in the quotation above.  I don't lament the differences.  I know what is inevitable.  The principle of language change is continuous and constant.  After all, I really wouldn't want to read Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in the English of that day.  (Line 1 - Whan that aprill with his shoures soote, 1387 C.E.).

If I live to see my great grandchildren, I know they will add some nuances of their generation to the language.  And, if I wake up in two hundred years from now, I would probably struggle to keep up with the conversation.

All of this is to say that we don't have to like or accept change in any facet of life.  But we do have to recognize differences and causes.  A lack of that makes us arrogant or bitter or both.  It seems a more satisfying principle to acknowledge or understand diversity.

Who's in the mirrror?

 I walked into a restaurant last week and looked up at the monitor near the table we were being seated at.  I couldn't hear the TV at all, but the deaf captioning was on, so I could follow what was being said.  The first thing I read was, "I knew the note was from him because there was grammatical mistakes in it."  I laughed out loud and couldn't help but comment on his statement.

I find this a real problem in the world I see everyday.  Not the grammatical error part, but the fact that someone wants to make an observation by criticizing the very thing they themselves are doing - sometimes in the very same way.  I am usually amazed at the blindness of the speaker.  I'm not perfect at doing this either, so I am criticizing myself.  I do, however, try to keep it to a minimum, and I try to rectify matters when I realize I did the very thing I don't like.

This Christmas season, my priority is to be a whole lot more accepting because when I talk about someone else's errors... there's grammatical mistakes in my own.

What does "time spent" give you?

Learning a language can be rather challenging at times.  When people learn English, for example, they, at some point in their intermediate path, encounter that words spelled the same have different grammatical categories in usage.  Program is one such example.  The word can be be used as a verb and a noun.  The question always arises, "How can you tell the difference?"  This allows for the discussion on whether an article or determiner precedes the word or whether it shows a verb suffix or verb auxiliary.  Of course, an article or determiner is not always present when used as a noun, and a suffix or auxiliary verb is not always used when used as a verb.  That, in turn allows for further discussion about the location in a sentence a noun can be placed or the location of a verb after a subject in a sentence.  Of course, counter-examples to that rule abound as well, such as the use of the verb as an imperative where no subject to the verb appears.

In my few years on Earth I have found living about the same as learning a language.  First we learn something like lying is bad, then we find that lying has degrees to it, like white lies and black ones.  Then we find ways not to state the truth exactly, but to "fudge" the truth or become silent about something so that the absence of the truth is evident, but it's not lying.  Then we find ways to say what happened in such a way as to hide the lie.  "Dancing around the truth" it's called.  Of course, there is the expression, "glossing the truth."

It takes time, but eventually, experience tells you both how to speak a language and how to filter out lies from truth.  Fluency in one gives fluency in the other,  I like being around people who have time both in language and living.  I trust them a little more.  They know how to tell the difference - in verbs and nouns and in living decently.  Viva "time spent."

Giving ourselves destiny

Who's writing history textbooks these days?  Not just these days, but in my lifetime too.  Abraham Lincoln gets treated incredibly well in the books I have ever been exposed to.  It's not easy to figure out why this is so.  The U.S. had a slavery issue at the time.  Lincoln's solution was a decisive one and the fastest solution to accomplish.  The political establishment after the war campaigned long and hard (and rather brutally) to ensure that the issue of slavery would not reappear.  Part of doing this meant that they needed to treat the leader of the war to free slaves in the best light possible.  So they did.  Lincoln was a hero, a decisive man who pushed for right to be done.  He was wise and led the country out of a dark chapter in its history.

The other side of the coin is not bright and shiny like history books tell it.  Lincoln was an on again, off again politician, losing in as many races as he gained office.  He was elected with less than 40% of the popular vote.  He wasn't even on the ballot in 10 of the 15 states that formed the southern slave states.  In his own Republican convention before the election, Lincoln obtained the Republican party nomination on the third round of balloting.  In the main election, Lincoln's position on slavery was the most divisive, stating that if war was necessary to end slavery, then he would wage it.  The other three candidates had more diplomatic stances, such as allowing each new state in the Union decide its status of slave or free, having an alternating pattern of free-slave-free-slave status as they entered the Union, or trying to bring pressure on the South through economic modifications.  When Lincoln won, the Southern states wasted no time in seceding, nine of them before Lincoln was inaugurated.

The most divisive president in U.S. history is remembered kindly.  He has books published about him touting how he lingered long on his decision for war, concerned about the great lines of division that would be caused.  He has movies made of how he labored with Congress to win their support for getting Black Americans to have the right of citizenship.  Modern books contain the wit and wisdom of Lincoln.  It's one of the greatest sell jobs ever.

We all have a choice on which voices we choose to hear.  We all decide how we want to interpret the world around us.  We all select which details to remember and drop from memory.  And we all elect to act and react in ways we deem consistent with all the details.  That's what gives us individuality.  Even those we love choose, decide, select, and act according to a little different line of thinking than we have.  It's what gives us our destinies.

Hanging around

I hear NFL commentators use a phrase nearly every Sunday as they narrate a game that is close.  The phrase is used when a team is ahead most of the game and in the fourth quarter, the other team is still within striking distance to win.  That's when I hear, "if you let someone hang around long enough, they will beat you."

I have seen that principle happen in life more times than not.  That has made me adopt the philosophy of hanging around.  Even if I didn't think I could actually get a job or get a job I wanted, I would try to hang around to see what would happen.  That philosophy has not worked for me in the two things in life I wanted the most, but it has worked out in many other arenas of life.

The NFL has other philosophies of life worth adopting.  Another one I have adopted is that from time to time, you will lose even if you are winning more than losing or if you have a winning streak going.  Losing is part of the game, but it doesn't have to keep you from having a winning record.  But the main thing to remember in every game that is played is that if you can hang around long enough, you can beat the opposition.  I love that that is true.

Dying satisfied

I watched a number of Science channel episodes on the universe yesterday.  They were all quite enlightening.  Not all the information was new.  However, the information turned my mind to how majestic the universe is all over again.  Several of the pictures delivered to us from the Hubble telescope amaze with their clarity of many of the nearby galaxies and galaxy networks.  The number of stars represented in the skies outside the Milky Way is boggling.  The number of planets circling those stars make the mind spin with calculations.

So, when I look up at night from my humble home on Earth and peer through a haze of an atmosphere, my mind goes wild with imagination.  What life is peering back at us outside our galaxy?  Where is that life?  What form does it have?  Have they been around longer than humans?  Are religions the same on all planets?  Does intelligent life have governments like Earth's?  Is there love and marriage and sex on those planets?  Can others exist outside of the three dimensions humans exist in?  What do they know that we don't know?

I feel a little trapped, being here on Earth.  But one day, before I die, I hope to see at least the planets up close and personal in our solar system in all of their holographic beauty.  I would love to simulate walking on Neptune or flying past Pluto.  I can die satisfied whenever that happens.

Flags we see

Life many times unfurls like a flag.  We have been told by those older than we are what the flag looks like, but we are only able to see the flag for the first time as it unfurls.  We make our plans based on what we have been told that the flag looks like, but really, we shouldn't.  The flags are sometimes similar, but at least half of the time, the flags are unique.  And, we don't know during which unfurling the flag will be the same or different.

I say this because I had counted on the flag being the same as I was told when I embarked on adulthood.  As it stands now, my flag has only been similar in some instances as my former generation's flags.  It also has been true that the older I get, or the more the flag unfurls, the more different it appears from what was told to me or what I had expected.

I have noticed that some people hate their flags as they see it for the first time, seeing what they expected.  They were hoping to see something they didn't expect.  I also have noticed that many think they can predict accurately what they will see as the flags new portions appear to them.  Satisfaction in life is based on reactions to the flags they see.  I am working on my reactions.  I have been sorely mistaken at times.  I know I can't predict accurately, so I am left with molding an attitude of satisfaction as I learn to react with a beautiful spirit.

Spending money

I'm one of those that doesn't spend my leisure moments performing manual labor if I have made the money to pay for a service.  I would rather spend leisure time doing hobbies I like or going places that give me pleasure.  One of those jobs I freely entrust to other hands is mowing my lawn.

Each Saturday I count out the money for my lawn mowing person and put it into an envelope with his name on it.  My granddaughter, who spends most Saturdays with me,  either watches or helps me fill the envelope.  When it comes time to pay the person, I let her hand the envelope to him.  She takes great pride in helping to pay for the lawn.

A week ago, I was about to go for groceries at the store.  I was rounding up my money from wallet and the place I empty my pockets.  My granddaughter saw me and wanted to help pay for the groceries.  she went to the place we had envelopes, then to her little money box that she keeps because she is learning how to save and how to count money.  She put a fair amount of change of different denominations, which she thought was a lot of money, and handed it to me.  "Use this."

I smiled really big, told her thanks.  It took me a couple of minutes more to round up my keys and get ready to go, and as I was leaving, she said, "Don't forget to spend my money."  I thanked her prolifically.

My granddaughter is 4 years old.  I was humbled at what a child works hard at contributing to a larger cause.  Somewhere up the path of life that principle gets reversed.  I love her purity of heart, singleness of purpose, and all-for-one attitude.   Life taints I know.  But what a crystal clear memory I have of a time when her heart was pure beyond belief!

Options

I spoke with a young man from Nepal today.  He received his education there, and was in the U.S. to try to start studying at a university here.  My job was to ask him a question to help him practice his English.  So, I asked him, "Do you believe there is life on other planets?"

The answer was simply an opinion question.  Mainly I was listening for grammatical structure of his utterances to check for his understanding of ideas from the question.  In the course of his answer, he said that the sun was the only light in the universe, and that other stars were not suns with light and heat of their own, but reflections from the Earth's sun.  Therefore, there was no life elsewhere, only here with our sun.

Grammatically speaking, everything was fine.  Semantically speaking, there was a great amount of entanglement with his answer.  I didn't question what he was saying.  I listened only, which was my job.

However, if the young man learned this kind of science in his country, I know he is not ready for an education in the U.S.  I did ask as my last question to him if it would matter to him that other explanations of the universe existed.  He said, "No."

Education is a wonderful thing in that it expands one's horizons.  This young man will find that is true if he really does continue with his education.  I'm not overly concerned with his answer.  People either opt in or out of an education.  He will get to choose if he will allow evidence to develop his future thought.  If he opts out, of course, he will fit in better with the world he left behind, and will probably rejoin them.  If he opts in, he will love what enlightenment has to offer in this and a thousand other matters.  He will be in for the trip of his life.  I hope he opts in.

On the canvas of darkness

Night has fallen.  It's a little earlier than it has been falling because summer is in its death throes.  The readout on the clock is still approaching 8:00.  It's a sign that my time of day, the cover of dark, is kicking in for 6 months.  The night soothes my mind, allowing it clarity to see my path clearly, and invites me to imagine what lies ahead so I can save steps during the day.  Darkness is the canvas on which I can produce pictures of possible outcomes given certain scenarios.  Night is my close friend.

Life's colors

Our kitchen is filled with pictures drawn by our little granddaughter.  She colors everything, always trying to color a picture in rainbow colors.  I think she has a robust enough personality that she herself will have a colorful life when she learns how to start coloring life.

And it is that principle that allows me to admire people who know how to turn their environments into bursts of their colorful personalities.  There aren't many who can do this, but I know a few.  They fill the room around them with rainbow colors, no matter what is happening in their worlds.

This is not a standard personality type with standard types of jobs.  It is any job with people who want to add a touch of laughter, a talent of art, a background of music, a picture of serenity, a record of steadiness, or a well of knowledge to their other amenable habits.  These kind of people usually don't flag in their energy or their gift to the setting.  It's a pleasure to work with people like this.  I tip my hat to the color-filled people who have touched my life.

Seriously different advice

Life is funny like that.

A woman I have known a long time got married right out of high school.  Her marriage lasted 2 years and ended.  She didn't waste too much time getting a second husband.  She married again within 6 months.  She had two children, then when they were 2 and 3 respectively, her husband walked away and divorced her.  She spent a 3 year period of time wandering, so to speak.  In this time, she lived with one man, left him, went to bars every Thursday for a year carousing.  Finally she moved to a different city, found a man to marry and raise her children with, and 28 years later she is still married to him.

Now my daughter is dealing with single mom issues.  Who wanted to enter the picture as advisor?  You guessed it.  The above mentioned woman.  Even if the woman finally settled down, I can't imagine the type of advice she will give.  I would bet my life that it will be different from mine - seriously!

An even older path

I was raised in a way very different from the ways that I have adopted now.  I didn't know how I would exactly react when  I went this weekend to a place that I knew had kept those time-honored ways of the all the restricted forms of discipline I had kept in my very young years.  I anticipated that I would have some nostalgia, and then be appreciative of my current lifestyle and move on.

But my mind couldn't really comprehend what I saw.  It was so far removed from my current ways that I had no nostalgia whatsoever.  I  actually found myself pitying the ones who were still engaging in these retroactive habits.  I felt nothing for myself because I had escaped the slavery of such a lifestyle.

It was dream-like.  I could see what was happening, but could not engage.  I found myself as a spectator only.  At the end of two timeless hours, I was finally able to get in my host's vehicle and leave the scene.  When asked what I thought about the experience, I used the word that normally I use for thoughts that have to be masked.  "It was nice," I said.  But nice and numb have the same feeling to them (really a lack of feeling).

I am writing from a comfortable distance from the scene of that window to the remote past place in my life.  I am only thinking thoughts like that of the old Pink Floyd song.

Jump right in

I have learned both in classes and in experience that for every collapse of some business, there is a golden opportunity waiting in the wings for someone to discover what it is and turn a golden opportunity into gold.

I have just encountered such conditions.  A particular business that had been operating for a decade or so has collapsed through gross mismanagement.  The golden opportunity hasn't appeared yet, but it is there waiting to be discovered. 

It always takes time to develop something, but the currency at this point is ideas.  That's my longsuit.  The second part, negotiating the deal, I'm not quite as efficient in, but it is the last part, turning the idea into a lucrative business, that I don't do well in at all.  I am hoping this turns out different.   But, I have to try it.  It's entrepreneurship 101.  Get in on a groundfloor opportunity, build it, reap the benefits.  I will be working diligently this time to make it as easy as entrepreneurship 101 makes it sound.

An old path

I had been acquainted with the town for a really, really long time.  Today, I had an occasion to visit it.  I stayed in a modern hotel, but when I stepped out its doors, the town's old, old way of conducting business hit me in the face.

I went to watch a movie.  I drove into the parking lot to park, and the cars were jammed into parking spots that had been striped for cars of the 1950s.  They were not wide and the slant of the lines reminded me of the way striping had been done in small towns right after WWII.  But, I found one of those narrow spaces and parked.

I got out and joined a line in front of a ticket office, box-office style.  The line had about 50-60 people in it.  Only one person was issuing tickets at the box office window, so it was going to take about 15 minutes before I was going to be served.  I had not seen that arrangement since I went on a date in my high school years.

After the line to get tickets, I went inside.  Yep, another single-file line.  I snaked by the popcorn counter, the drink counter (where a person took my order and filled my drinks for me - now how many years ago was self-service phased in?).  It went by the candy stand and finally ended up at the cash register.  I paid, went in to the show.  At least it had stadium seating.  But the seats were the two-piece kind where the seat part was separate from the back part and folded down by sitting on its edge to get it to move.

The show I was seeing fit the decor.  It was a movie set in the 1970s but many of the buildings were in the architectural style of the 1950s.  On the way out, I stopped into the bathrooms.   I flushed my own toilet used a push button soap dispenser and crank down towels from a front loaded lever.

I had experienced a time trap.  I really had not been ready for it.  I certainly didn't appreciate it.  And it reminded me of times that were not some of my best days.  I guess I needed that reminder.  Life is still not easy, but it is so much better now than it had been then, that I actually felt kicked and bruised from having visited the theater.  I made note that I didn't need such a visit to appreciate what I have now.  The visit had certainly been a stark reminder of some rugged days passed and to which I hope never to return.

Strong vision

The moment had a solemnity to it.  I was visiting one of the places where my life had been rooted.  I spent about an hour there.  But, I found myself looking around the place, and unpleasant memories filled my mind.  So much so that tears welled up in my eyes, then trickled onto my cheeks.  I wiped them away only to have second round of the same.

After those moments, tears came and went in the bottom lids of my eyes but did not leave my eyelids to stain my cheeks.  The strong vision of my son in a place that couldn't help him, that should have helped him, flooded my mind and triggered the sad wetness.  Imagining the procession to his casket caused me to short-circuit at that point.  What remained was just the feeling of sadness.

Moments like that don't happen, but then again, I was visiting one of the places where my life had been rooted.  I should have left, but I would have to have brought attention to myself by excusing myself and climbing over 4 others seated next to me.  So, I brought out my phone and begin reading from it something that I had been concentrating on earlier that day.  It helped and soon returned me to normalcy.

I didn't think I was vulnerable to that train of thinking anymore.  But, I found that I was.  I don't like working through the depths of death again.  But for a moment in time, I felt again the same chilling, hopeless feeling that I had had 13 years ago.  I'm good to go now.  My flashback moments have taught me something about myself.  I'm ready to move forward now.

In a moment's notice

Recently, I observed a man about 35 in a role playing game who didn't like the way the game went.  The value of his cards changed from one round to the next and he went from successful to struggling in one fell swoop.  He argued how unlike life that was.

Well... maybe his life hasn't had that experience yet... but I doubt it.  Life has more than a few twists in it where it is different from before in the flash of a moment.  This weekend I received just such an email.  Life was rocking along like I wanted it to, but now, I am going to have to make some adjustments.  And it happened in the length of time it took me to read a short email.

When I play the currency market, money is lost or gained in a one second time span.  About two years ago, I had to completely rearrange my life for a two-month time period because my mother fell, broke her kneecap, and had to have 'round-the-clock care.  Her fall happened in less than a second.

I have had people people decide things for me that I didn't like and wouldn't have done.  I have had friends to tell me things or not tell me things in a short conversation or email that affected where I lived and worked and what my productivity level would be.

Yes, all the above and many, many other very important occurrences have happened to me in one fell swoop, without notice, without my approval, with indifference and insensitivity, with not a second thought about what would change for me.  In one fell swoop!

So, to the man who made the statement about life and immediate changes, "Hang on because one day the floor below your feet will disappear in a moment's notice and you won't be ready."