I have some early morning appointments so I won’t be writing much on the blog today. I do have a plan, though. Today, let’s all of us, let our souls come out of their hiding places, in a big, big way. Clearly, the the world needs a whole lot more love to flow, in order to let the light of our souls shine through all of the darkness. Give some love to whomever you come across today. Let your soul meet their soul. You both will be so much better off for it. This is often a tough world to comprehend for our timeless, peaceful, light-filled souls. But all souls, even the most hidden, “locked up, and chained up, and stuck in a dark basement” kinds of souls, all have the power to recognize the deep and powerful energy of love. Love is kind. Love has empathy. Love notices and focuses on what we have in common, not our differences. Love has mercy. Love is generous. Love is peaceful and harmonious. Love delights in the miracles of our natural world. As Zora Neale Hurston stated, love is the force that brings your beautiful soul to the surface. Let your soul shine today. The world needs your light. The world needs more light.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Isn’t the cooler weather wonderful?! After such a hot summer, it’s like diving into a cool, refreshing, clear pool of water.
How’s everyone doing? This was a tough weekend. I’m feeling that universal, low-lying, but seeping in kind of stress in the air, like we had when the pandemic first started. And when you have that kind of permeance of uneasiness, swirling all around you, it sort of punctuates your own individual stresses, doesn’t it? Whatever helps you with stress and concern in your mind and in your body and in your spirit, is your own “toolbox.” Don’t forget to open your toolbox, and to use and to utilize your own helpful “tools.” (exercise, prayer, meditation, music, friendships, nature, healthy, wholesome meals, crying, release, easy chores, funny shows etc.) Also, use this as a time to find and to test new, healthy tools to help ease your stress during eventful times.
“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” – Carl Sagan
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” – Mother Teresa
“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”– bell hooks
“Humanity is good. Some people are terrible and broken, but humanity is good. I believe that.” – Hank Green
“We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.” – Albert Einstein
“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.” – Mahatma Ghandi
“During bad circumstances, which is the human inheritance, you must decide not to be reduced. You have your humanity, and you must not allow anything to reduce that. We are obliged to know we are global citizens. Disasters remind us we are world citizens, whether we like it or not.” – Maya Angelou
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
The beauty of getting older is being able to look back at decades of being “yourself.” You become more curious about yourself. You become your own mystery to solve. You have experienced enough time at being alive that you start to notice patterns about yourself. What interests, intrigues, and attractions have been a part of you, in one form or another, since you were a child? Why do you have these inherent passions? Is this something that is in your heritage? I find myself getting more and more curious about my ancestors, not necessarily about the relations that are just a couple of generations away, but my lineage from hundreds of years ago. I have the sense that my ancestors are wanting me to explore these connections more fully, now that I am older and less distracted. Do you ever get this sense? The ultimate question and mystery to solve in our lives, for any of us, just may be “Why are you, “you”?” Follow your inclinations, intuitions, and your proclivities. Notice what has remained in your life, in one form or another, throughout your decades of living. Get interested in yourself. You are a fascinating enigma. With a puzzle like yourself to try and solve, you can never be bored.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
As a person who has a marketing degree from college (which was way before the internet and social media marketing – I might as well say that I have a degree in Latin which would probably be more useful at this point), I should have known all about the word “puffery”, but the official legal term, “puffery” is honestly something that I just learned about last week. I suppose that most of marketing is puffery, so a marketing degree might as well be a degree in puffery. I have a B.B.A. in puffery.
Puffery is what advertisers/salespeople do to play on our emotions to get us really excited about something. Puffery walks delicately upon the fine line of truth and fiction. Puffery is the largest amount of vague (usually subjective) exaggeration which marketers can get away with, before they are dragged into court under accusations of fraud. Puffery uses words like best, better, always. Here’s my favorite example of puffery:
Examples of puffery in slogans:
“Open a Coke, open happiness.”
“Nothing outlasts an Eveready battery.”
“Made from the best stuff on Earth – Snapple.”
“Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes – They’re Grrreat!”
Another example of puffery is the giant, perfectly curated burger on the enormous billboard that looks nothing like the flattened, smashed, much smaller version which we get from our local fast food chain. Or the car or alcohol commercials and advertisements, where the implication seems to be that only stunningly beautiful and wealthy, healthy looking people, with a gazillion friends and family surrounding them, who are seemingly as equally amazing and cool, are seen to be utilizing these particular products happily together. But this is nothing new. We all know this. The Federal Trade Commission is very generous in what it allows to be legally stated. Unless you can prove that there is an out-and-out lie in a statement, the puffery stands. In other words, I can say, “Extremely accomplished and talented people like Taylor Swift read my blog.” I just can’t say, “Taylor Swift reads my blog.”
Since we all know that we live in a pile of puffery, coming at us from everywhere that we look, now more than ever – from our phones, our TVs, our computers, our radios, billboards, magazine and newspaper ads, paid reviews on websites, politicians, social media influencers, etc. no wonder why we feel so much collective anxiety and mistrust. If there was one thing that was drilled into us as marketing majors in college that I will never forget, it was this statement: “Perception is reality.” The marketing game is to figure out what people want as their own reality, and then to imply the perception that if you use this particular product, it will get you to your desired reality.
The funny thing is, while different people want many different types of physical realities, the reason why anyone wants any particular reality, is all the same. They believe that if they get their desired reality, this reality will give them the feelings that people universally seem to want: love, happiness, peace, excitement, prestige, comfort, respect, etc. But if we rely on the things outside of us that we buy and that we use, in order to try to get us to the feelings that we want to possess, doesn’t that put us in a vulnerable position? When we do this, we put our own feelings in the control of products outside of ourselves, and the salespeople who liberally use puffery to sell us these products, and get away with it all of the time. And to make matters worse, marketers love when we feel vulnerability and fear. They’ve got all sorts of products that you can buy to help relieve you of those terrible feelings: insurance, alarm systems, drugs, doorbell cameras, bear spray, self-help systems, etc.
This is why it is so important to be able to study ourselves and our own emotional reactions to things and to people, in a rational, detached, observant sort of way. This is why it is so important to be able to question and to differentiate as to what is factual and what is actually puffery in our own lives? When we get emotional, we often play the puffery game on our own selves, using extreme absolutes when we talk to ourselves: “I always break my diets. She never listens to me. No one cares about me. I’m doomed. The world’s going to hell in a handbasket.” We say that we can’t stand drama queens, but the queeniest one, is usually smugly propped on a golden throne, inside of our own heads.
The answer to being teflon to puffery is to learn to trust yourself. Get to know yourself and what your core values are, and put strong boundaries around your core values. Learn to hear your intuition (time alone with mediation, prayer, breathing exercises, journaling, etc. helps immensely with this) and put more faith into your own inner voice than any outside influences. Know how resilient you are, and that no matter what happens, you will be able to deal with consequences of any situation. (if you are middle-aged, you’ve got a lot of factual proof of this already, from your many life experiences) Learn to notice and to laugh at all of the puffery all around you. Like a little bird who puffs up its feathers in order to scare off its predators, or to impress would-be mates, in the end, puffery is just a little harmless bird that you can control in the palm of your hand. Don’t let a puffy little bird, nest up in your head, perched on the shoulder of your inner drama queen. Let the puffy little bird fly free, as you calmly, steadily, and faithfully continue to walk your one, unique path.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“I think we’re losing something. One hundred years ago, everybody wrote. Everybody wrote letters. Lots of people kept journals. People wrote down the events of the day. Today if you say to somebody you meet, “That’s an interesting story. You should write it down,” their first response is, “I’m not a writer” — and by that they mean that writing now belongs to those of us who do it for a living. I think that’s wrong. I think writing should belong to everybody and I think everybody should write because it’s good for our history and it’s good for our psyche.” – Anna Quindlen
“Being a reporter taught me how to write even when I didn’t feel like writing. People ask me all the time about writer’s block. Can you imagine saying to the city editor, “I’m blocked today”? Being in a newsroom also taught me to write tight, look for telling details, and write dialogue that sounds the way real people talk.” – Anna Quindlen
I didn’t realize that Anna Quindlen wrote a book called Write For Your Life in 2022. I haven’t read it yet, but I will now. Anna Quindlen has always been one of my favorite writers. The quotes above are from an interview that she did last summer, with the The Saturday Evening Post, about the book.
Write. You have a story. It’s a good one. Writing will help you make sense of your story and it will help your friends and your family make sense of you (maybe even after you are long gone). Make yourself write every single day. Sometimes I come to this computer with that ho/hum feeling that I truly have nothing to write about it, but I make myself do it, because I am committed to writing a daily blog, for myself, and for you, my dear readers. It is important to me to strive to be a person of my word. In this way, you help me stay accountable and I am forever grateful for your presence. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Everyone has a story. And it’s a better story than you want to believe. Yesterday, right before dinner, I decided to get a quick nail polish change on my toenails (not a full pedicure, I didn’t want to spend the time or the money – just a quick polish change). The manager of the nail salon sat down and she took only about ten minutes to do my polish change. In this time, she matter-of-factly told me that she had just returned to work after her father-in-law’s funeral. He was of Laotian descent, and he was a Buddhist and she said that Buddhists tend to have long drawn out funeral ceremonies, so she had been to different parts of the service for four and a half days. “I’ve been doing a lot of eating and sitting,” she said. Her father-in-law was a sweet, quiet man, who wanted to please those he loved so when he was diagnosed with cancer, he agreed to do the chemotherapy process, even though he didn’t want to do it. Late this summer, he finally told his family he that was done with partaking in chemo. He wanted to enjoy his last days. Her father-in-law died peacefully about a week ago, after small stay in hospice after refusing a feeding tube. During his funeral planning and service, the manager told me that it was so interesting to see what grief brought out in the different people in her family. The so-called “most responsible” eldest daughter fell apart and wasn’t able to do much of anything. At times they couldn’t even locate her. On the other hand, one of the granddaughters, a busy woman in her early 20s, who hasn’t had much to do with her family at all, became everyone’s rock, particularly for her grandmother, the heartsick wife. The salon manager’s son is in middle school. He considered his grandfather to be “his best friend.” In their Buddhist tradition, as a sign of mourning, the men in the family shave their heads. The manager’s son has a big head with big ears which makes him feel self conscious. Her son is in that emotionally volatile and often mired in insecurities, middle school stage. He was torn as to what to do. Thankfully, the elders in his family, and the elders in his tradition decided that enough men had shaved their heads to honor his grandfather, and they reassured the young man that his job was to honor his grandfather/best friend, in his heart.
In ten minutes, I learned so much. I learned about this woman’s family, and things that I didn’t know about Buddhist traditions. I felt connected to this woman who has painted my toenails off and on throughout the years. I could relate to her heartsickness for being the wife and the mother of a grieving family.
It took me about ten minutes to write the paragraph above. Listen to others. Listen to yourself. Write it down. Write it down, because as Anna Quindlen says, “It’s good for our history and it’s good for our psyche.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Where are you spending your money? What do you put your money towards? Most of us would answer that we put our money towards food, clothing, shelter, health, taxes, education, our families, pets, retirement savings, charity (in no particular order) and then if there is any money left over it goes to luxuries like outings, trips and trinkets. We’re all pretty cognizant about where we spend our money and what we want our money to do for us. Most of us already have answers about what we would plan to do with our money if we came into a big windfall such as winning the lottery.
I read an interesting perspective the other day that asked the question: why don’t we put that same kind of consideration that we do about where we are spending our money, into where we are spending our everyday personal emotional energy? If you pretended that every thought of yours was a dollar, are you spending your thoughts in the right places? Are you spending your thoughts and feelings on people/places/things that truly matter to you? Are you wasting your thoughts and feelings? Are you bleeding your thoughts/feelings? I replaced “thoughts and feelings” with where the word money is often used in these common platitudes:
+ Thoughts and feelings don’t grow on trees. (We all only have about 16-18 waking hours in the day when we can consciously notice and change our thoughts and our feelings. And none of us know just how many days we will actually get on this Earth to think and to feel and to experience our perspectives which we create about life.)
+ Time is thoughts and feelings. (We are in a constant stream of thoughts/feelings throughout our time in the day.)
+ Thoughts and feelings can’t buy happiness. (Happiness is usually a by-product of a state of gratefulness and positivity created by the thoughts and feelings we are having about various situations in our lives. Thoughts and feelings mired in negativity will not buy happiness.)
+ Make your thoughts and feelings work for you.
Money is just another form of energy. “One of the ways Webster’s Dictionary defines energy is “the physical or mental strength that allows you to do things.” Money, like gasoline for your vehicle, allows you the ability to do the things you want to do in life.” (oreilly.com) Money is the symbol of the energy it took to earn it, and we trade this energy for some other form of energy (the things and the experiences that we value and we buy).
We tend to put a lot of consideration into where we spend our money and if we don’t do this, we often end up “broke”, with nothing to show for it. Is this any different than our everyday thoughts and feelings? Are you wasting your thoughts and feelings on things that really don’t matter or that are out of your control? Are the places where you are spending the propensity of your thoughts and feelings giving you a good return? Are you getting a lot of bang for your buck?
Just for today, pretend that your thoughts and feelings are your financial allotment for the day. Invest your thoughts and feelings wisely. Spend your thoughts and feelings on things that really matter to you, and on matters that will really make a difference in your own life and in the lives of others. Spiritually wealthy people are conscious and careful with their thoughts and their feelings. They are generous where it pays off to be so, for themselves and for others. They know that their focus of energy (thoughts, feelings, actions) will pay dividends, so they are careful to place this energy where it is best grown. Be good with your “money” and it will be good to you.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I read a good interview with Martha Stewart, age 81, in AARP magazine. These were some good quotes (takeaways) of hers from the article:
“Aging isn’t something I think about. How old I am, slowing down, retiring – I just don’t dwell on that. People talk about aging successfully, but I think of it as living gracefully and living to the absolute fullest.”
“And I continue to think that the most important part of aging well is to stay curious, to try new things every day.”
“In this life, you have to work at staying better. That’s really all you can do. You work at it.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
“The big question about how people behave is whether they’ve got an Inner Scorecard or an Outer Scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an Inner Scorecard.” – Warren Buffett
I read this quote the other day and I took a screenshot of it. (my picture roll on my phone has as many pages of words, as it has pictures) When I read it, I thought about how many times which I have repeated to my children, “Comparison is the thief of happiness (joy).” (Teddy Roosevelt) As humans, we love praise and adulation and admiration. And we also get a lot of our goals and aspirations by being inspired by what other people have achieved.
Personally, I think that it is healthy to have both kinds of scorecards – an Inner Scorecard and an Outer Scorecard. Ironically, our Outer Scorecard (which is the image you project, and what other people say about you) might often be the kinder, softer, easier grading scorecard. We tend to be our own worst critics. Still, your Inner Scorecard requires you to be honest and faithful to your own standards and beliefs without being concerned about what other people think. Your Outer Scorecard takes your picture. Your Inner Scorecard forces you to take a good, long, hard look in the mirror.
Outer Scorecards are fickle and change with the wind. Like fashion, they change as quickly as the seasons. Based on comparison and perspective, there will always be someone who is faster, more beautiful, richer, smarter, more interesting, more creative, more talented etc. On the other hand, Inner Scorecards rarely change. They have been imprinted on our souls. It’s just that we often don’t take time to examine them, as we get consumed in chasing the flashier Outer Scorecards, and thus getting the quick, but shallow fixes of a “like” or a “follow” or a “compliment” or any form of attention.
Have you examined your Inner Scorecard? Are you compromising things on this Inner Scorecard in order to maintain your Outer Scorecard? How does that make you feel? Another writer, Abhishek Chakraborty, also wrote about this famous quote of Warren Buffett’s. This is how he ends his thoughts on the subject (I couldn’t say it any better):
“The good thing is that if you start maintaining an inner scorecard, it will automatically translate into boosting your outer scorecard as well. And what better example to validate this idea than Buffett himself. He’s isn’t concerned if the world would look at him as the greatest investor or not. He doesn’t care what the world thinks of his decisions or ideas. He has openly said that there are a bunch of things he could do that would generate a lot more money for the company, but he chooses not to compromise his standards. . . . In conclusion, more than more happiness, more fame, and more wealth, we need less anxiety, less worry, and less regrets. And we’ll have that only when we’re successful by an inner scorecard. We can’t just earn praise, we must strive to bepraiseworthy as well. Similarly, we can’t just be loved without being loveable, and we should not be admired without being admirable. This simple shift in mindset makes all the difference in the world.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
+ Kelly Corrigan is an author and a podcaster for PBS. She sends emails of her overall takeaways from her latest podcasts. This week she had a conversation with a best selling author, ultramarathoner, podcaster, former addict, Stanford educated swimmer Rich Roll. (My eldest son is a big fan of Rich Roll. They are both vegans.) I haven’t heard this interview yet, but I loved Kelly’s number one takeaway from her conversation with him. Rich Roll said this: “Change is only grand in retrospect. Day by day, it’s small choices and tiny adjustments. Believe in the incremental.” I love this. It’s the truth. The only way I have made any lasting changes in my life is when I took my goal day-by-day. Today, I will limit my sugar. Today, I will go to bed by 9:30. Today, I will write a blog post (I have been blogging almost daily since 2018 and it has changed my life. But I honestly had no idea what exactly I was setting out to do, when I started it . . . .)
+ I got a lesson/reminder from the Universe taught to me yesterday in the most interesting of ways. I am currently taking a Zen meditation/Asian art class by a wonderful Japanese woman, who is passionate about teaching. I didn’t have any supplies, so I started loading up on paints, and brushes, and hanko stamps (those red marks which you often see in the corner of Asian artwork). I got most of my things from Oriental Art Supply in California and a few things from Amazon, but I also started perusing eBay for “extras.” One extra that I ended up purchasing had nothing to do with painting. Here is the description of it:
“This decorative Japanese coin features a striking combination of green and black with beautiful lettering. It is a unique piece that will add flair to any collection.”
Now I’ve mentioned before that I have piggy banks full of lucky pennies, more than one lucky three legged toads, and an adorable lucky money tree that my youngest son gave to me. So, yes! I figured that a giant green Japanese coin was a must-have for my lucky money collection. As the seller said, it would add “flair” to my collection. And I will never say no to luck and flair. My purchase arrived yesterday. Here it is:
It came with a description paper full of Japanese lettering, so my original plan was to ask my art teacher to translate it, but I’m not a patient person, so I went to Google Translate to see what I could figure out. Nothing fruitful came to any understanding for me, from trying to translate each of the symbols on the “coin” (my husband insisted it was really a bottle opener), but the translation of the paper mentioned “the most famous, tsukubai, Ryoan-ji.” During my research, I found out that a tsukubai is a small, stone, water basin usually found in temples and tea houses in Japan, to cleanse your hands and your mouth before entering these sacred spaces. Apparently, my “coin” is a representation of the top of the tsukubai, at the entrance of a famous zen temple in Kyoto, Japan called the Ryoanji Temple. The grounds of this temple house a mysterious rock garden that is supposedly so naturally peaceful, scientists have done studies to figure out if certain placements of rock and terrain, hold the “secret” to peace. Anyway, below you will find a picture of the actual tsukubai and a translation of what the face of the tsukubai is really conveying (credit: muzu-chan.net)
“it is that famous because of its Zen inscription: taken separately, the four kanji are meaningless, but if they are read including the middle square hole (口), they become 吾 唯 足 知 – “ware tada taru shiru”. A literal translation would be “I only know enough”, but a more accurate translation would be “I learn only to be satisfied”. The real meaning of the phrase is that what you have is all you need: if you learn to be satisfied with the things as they are, then you are spiritually rich, while if you’re not contented then you are spiritually poor (even if you’re materially wealthy)…”
In short, the secret of true wealth is not collecting coins (“lucky ones” or real ones), but with feeling content and satisfied right in every single moment of your life. “What you have is all you need.” Apparently my beautiful green coin/bottle opener is really a cool, ancient mystical reminder of what we all know from the depths of our souls, but in our everyday stresses, we often forget it: “You are enough.”
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I saw an advertisement today for embellished slip-on shoes. The description said that these slides were a little “extra”. That seems to be a common catch-phrase these days. “She’s a little extra . . .”
The thing is “extra” means different things to different people. The slides being advertised didn’t look “extra” at all to me. But they were being sold by a company that traditionally stays in the black to brown color wheel of traditional, plain, timeless ballerina flats. The “extra” slides being advertised were black ballerina flats, with a thin band of rhinestones.
It’s fun to be a little “extra” sometimes, right? And a little extra you, is different than a little extra me. Yes, someone who is “extra” all of the time can be exhausting to be around, but at least they always keep it interesting.
Today, do something a little extra. Get the extra hot sauce on your lunch. Some other ideas that I saw on websites when I looked up the urban dictionary’s version of “extra”: a lemon wedge on your dog’s water bowl, bright red fake nails with an extra set of bright red fake nails hanging off of them like charms, a grandfather with a computer screen bigger than our large screen TV in the family room.
The other day, when my husband and I were in line at Chipotle ordering our food, a conservative looking young lady was waiting on us. When she smiled, I noticed an unusual glint of color and gleam on the top right corner of her mouth. Upon closer inspection, I saw that she had decorated her teeth with crystals. It honestly looked really cool and intricate. I told her how impressed I was, and my husband said that after my compliment, the young lady and her glitzy teeth just continued to beam and beam. (on an aside, if you only do one extra thing today, give someone a genuine compliment. Notice something that they have taken the time to do for/on themselves or for others, and be extra extra with your compliments, such as on their fancy hair, or their great combination of clothes, or their patient kindness in helping an elderly person, etc. I can never understand why people are so dreadfully stingy with compliments. They cost you nothing, and they make another person feel so good and “seen.” And I promise that you, too, will feel extra good for making another person feel happy.)
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
