It’s poetry day on the blog. The finalists for the National Book awards were announced early this past week. John Lee Clark, a deafblind poet is one of the finalists for his book, How to Communicate. John Lee Clark says this:
“Slateku is a form I invented. It’s simple: It is a poem that is written, or could have been written, with the classic Braille slate and stylus. The slate has four rows of twenty-eight cells each. Some think of it as writing backward, pressing down right to left to make dots stand up on the other side, but I think of it as writing forward in a different direction.“
How wonderful to not only write poetry, but to have created a whole new style of poetry! This is inspirational and challenging. Why do all of your stitching in only classic stitches? Is there a dance you could create that wouldn’t fall in the traditional dance categories (hip-hop dancing only came about in the late 1960s)? What about art? Is it possible to do an acrylic-watercolor fusion? What would that look like? What would it be called? The fusion restaurants are everywhere these days, mixing all kinds of traditional food recipes, with other completely unique cultures and traditions. So today, don’t just write a poem, think about creating a whole unique form of poetry. Here are two of John Lee Clark’s slatekus:
What is the point of travel
For a DeafBlind person
Other than the food the people the shops
And all that
And here’s another kind of cheeky one:
The mutant four-fingered carrot
Is in the pot and growing
Sweeter as it relaxes
Its grip
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.
Happy Friday!! Yay!! Friday is here. On Fridays, I keep it on the surface and I discuss stuff that I like. Today’s favorite comes from living in Florida long enough to realize that the hot Florida sun is tough and intense on everybody and everything that it shines upon. When we first moved here from North Carolina, twelve years ago, I brought with me this adorable little white decorative wooden rabbit who had sat and adorned our North Carolina yard for several years. In less than a year in Florida, the white paint on the rabbit completely disappeared (seemingly vaporized), and the rabbit looked more like a misshapen brownish gray blob. Through trial and error, we figured out that our best bet for outdoor furniture in Florida is made out of Polywood – my favorite for today. Polywood is a hard, durable, heavy plastic that dares the Florida sun to “Bring it!” We recently bought some more Polywood outdoor furniture, and it is so well-made and solid and comfortable and attractive. A man at my husband’s work also recently bought a Polywood table and chair set because when he was at his friend’s house, he complimented his friend’s bright white outdoor furniture and asked if it was brand new. “No!” his friend laughed. “We’ve had that furniture for over a decade.” We started with Polywood adirondack chairs and they still look as good as the day that we purchased them a few years ago. Polywood has a plethora of styles to choose from and they deliver your order quickly.
Enjoy your weekend, friends!!! See you tomorrow.
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.
Good morning. I became a big fan of Jane Marczewski, also known as “Nightbirde” when a friend shared a video of Nightbirde’s performance on America’s Got Talent. Nightbirde was an extremely talented singer and songwriter who performed so movingly and remarkably well on the show, that she got “the golden buzzer” from Simon Cowell. (no small feat for anyone who knows the show). Nightbirde bravely and beautifully performed her own song, “It’s OK” while she was dying of breast cancer. She passed away from cancer in February of 2022. It turns out that Nightbirde’s family found that Nightbirde had written notebooks full of poems during her fight with cancer and they are publishing some of these poems as a book of poetry this fall. Simon Cowell has written the introduction of the book and all of the proceeds from the book sales will go to Nightbirde’s foundation which is dedicated to helping women with cancer. Poems for the Dark by Nightbirde can be pre-ordered here: https://nightbirdefoundation.shop/products/poemsforthedark
I don’t have a poem of my own to share today, but I do want to share this famous poem, “Metaphors”, by Sylvia Plath. (Read the poem now before reading the rest of my explanation. See if you understand its meaning.) Plath wrote this poem about being pregnant. What is particularly clever and amazing about this poem is that it contains 9 lines, 9 syllables each and even the title has 9 letters. She did these formats as a “metaphor” for the traditional 9 months of pregnancy. Poetry is often cryptic, clever, and full of riddle. Try your own hand at cryptic, clever, and riddling. Surprise yourself with your mysterious, sly side.
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.
So, if you clicked on the Google Doodle this morning, like I did, you will see they are celebrating the posthumous birthday of this man, Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi. Dr. Csikszentmihalyi is the professor and the psychologist who coined the term “flow” which is that state of being we get into when we are completely focused and immersed and creative and productive. When we are in our “flow” it is almost like we leave our bodies and become one with our projects. The first thing that I notice when I looked at pictures of Dr. Csikszentmihalyi are his beautiful, soulful eyes (Robin Williams had these same kind of “kind eyes”). His eyes seem to come out from something deep and soulful within himself and then they penetrate something deep and soulful into whomever he is looking at with a soft, knowing intensity. When glancing over his Wikipedia, this information intrigued my interest:
“One state that Csikszentmihalyi researched was that of the autotelic personality.[19] The autotelic personality is one in which a person performs acts because they are intrinsically rewarding, rather than to achieve external goals.[21] Csikszentmihalyi described the autotelic personality as a trait possessed by people who can learn to enjoy situations that most others would find miserable.[22] Research has shown that aspects associated with the autotelic personality include curiosity, persistence, and humility.”
I honestly believe that if you can live your life with an autotelic personality, you will achieve true peace. Live in the moment, and notice everything. The process of living is its own reward. That’s really all there is to it.
Okay, I know that this is a little deep for my Favorite Things Friday blog tradition. Sometimes my “inner deep” just keeps seeping in. On Fridays, I usually keep things light and I talk about the tactile, sensory stuff in life that makes “the process of living” wonderful. So without further ado, my favorite for today is a device I purchased from my acupuncturist to help with pain and discomfort in my neck. My favorite for today is called the CranioCradle. You can buy a CranioCradle on Amazon. It seems pricey for a firm piece of foam, but so far, I’m finding my CranioCradle worth its price. I’ve used it for about a week now in various positions on my back and my neck, mostly at bedtime, and I do find it helpful and enjoyable and relaxing when using it. My acupuncturist also recommends using the CranioCradle in the car.
I hope that you have a wonderful weekend – one that is full of flow, friends. May the eyes of life look upon you kindly and may you seep it all in. See you tomorrow!
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
