Posts by Pat:
The tide does come in!
No matter how bad our current situation appears to be now, nature guarantees a turn for the better. Change is always happening. Nature’s cycles are dependable.
- We can’t rush a seedling; pulling on it to make it grow faster will cause it to die.
- We can’t rush a baby; whevever possible, we have to let it have 9 months to develop.
- We can’t rush the tide; it must go all the way out before it will begin to come all the way back in.
The tide in our lives…
Our lives have their ups and downs. It’s the natural rhythm of life. To succeed, we must learn to accept the tide and its ebb and flow. When we are on a “down,” we need to remember that the up is on its way! We just need to look for evidence that things are turning around. And if we look carefully, we’ll find that reminder.
If the tide doesn’t seem to turn around as quickly as we hope, we remember that nature takes time so we might as well relax and go with the flow. ( We do, however, need to be willing to let the tide retract completely before expecting it to return again!)
Let’s think about the seed analogy…
- We plant the seed,
- do what is ours to do, and
- trust that something is happening beneath the soil.
One aspect of the natural law (whether tide or seed or life), is that we should maintain our peace of mind during the process. We can calm down and allow nature to run its course. Let’s…
A child’s story…
A little girl in second grade underwent chemotherapy for leukemia. When she returned to school, she wore a scarf to hide the fact that she had lost all her hair. But some of the children pulled it off, and in their nervousness laughed and made fun of her. The little girl was mortified and that […]
No pun intended?
The pun (also known as paranomania) is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term for an intended humorous effect. You can decide if you think these are funny or just punny! Writing my name is cursive is my signature move. I lost my job as a stage designer. I left […]
Which will you choose?
Before Thomas Jefferson said it, Epictetus (the Greek Stoic philospher) said that every situation has two handles-one that is an effective way to bear it and the other a way that is unsustainable. We choose, he said, which handle to grab. We choose whether we will try to see the best in people or the […]
Rule Number 6
Rule #6 is one of the fundamental rules of life…Do you know what it is? Have you read The Art of Possibility by Benjamin Zander? If not, you should! Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man burst in, apoplectic with fury, shouting and stamping and banging his […]
The map is not the territory
We often confuse our map with the territory. But there is a difference between the actual world and our perception of the world, just like between the roadmap and what it intends to represent. As Alfred Korzbybski (scientist and philosopher who introduced this concept in a paper in 1931) pointed out, maps always come with […]
The Gap or the Gain?
Setting goals and moving towards them can either cause us happiness or unhappiness, depending on our perspective. (And our perspective is our choice!) The goals we aim toward are always somewhere between us and the horizon. The concept of the horizon is useful to figure out a direction and to plan a destination, but we […]
Was the story wrong?
The real-life retelling inspired by actual events loosely based on the alleged true story previously dramatized… So…what is true? Back in 1964, Kitty Genovese was stabbed in New York in the middle of the night. What I remember from my college psychology class was that the New York Times newspaper story reported that none of […]
Drop by drop…
When a project seems too big, it’s easy for me to get discouraged from even starting it. Buddha’s wisdom is a good reminder to me to start with tiny steps, with what seem to be just drops. Back in my younger days, I used to get all fired up and want to get everything done […]
Remember Burma Shave signs?
To my Old-As-Dirt friends and relatives! (and for those who never saw any of the Burma Shave signs… Those of us whose parents took us on road trips before the interstate system will appreciate this little bit of history. I used to love seeing these Burma Shave sayings. The company was sold in 1963 and […]