Elian Gonzalez speaks out. He's not mad at his Miami relatives, ten years after being seized at gunpoint by federal agents, and he is happy living with his father in Cuba. Terri Horman is not talking to anyone, and she's hired Oregon's top defense lawyer. Car designer Gordon Murray has created a tiny car weighs just over 1200 lbs and gets over 70 miles to the gallon. The driver gets into the thing by hinging open the whole front, and the steering wheel is mounted in the center. It's smaller than a golf cart but can reach 90 miles an hour. I wonder if they could rig the thing to fly, shape it like the George Jetson mobile. A supertanker has been refitted and dispatched to the gulf. The Dodgers swept the Giants. The Ducks got verbal commitments from two speedy quarterbacks and two others are interested. A new study shows American lags behind in happiness. The Gaza Strip got a shipment of chocolate but were denied cement. CNN is suffering declining ratings; competing news stations garner larger audiences with loud, angry, polemic hosts. No one wants just the facts, calmly delivered. They want their commentators to take sides. Go right or go left, and don't let your hair grow gray. Jon Stewart wants to quit The Daily Show. He has a running battle with Fox News. Some rumors have him as the likely replacement for David Letterman. In life you're either a Lettermen or a Leno fan, a Bill O'Reilly, a Michael Savage or a Keith Olbermann. The calm voices are lost in the din. Larry King is retiring. He and his suspenders have long been irrelevant. Oprah's ratings are declining. Is Ryan Seacrest the least interesting least talented successful person in history? He gets paid a LOT of money for being able to look into the camera and pretend something or someone is important. New Moon/True Blood vampire werewolf supernatural fever is gripping the country. Every other movie and TV show has this escapist hyperviolent edge-of-evil element. It's a sign of boredom and decay, the ultimate attempt to distract and anesthetize the masses. In an age when we are feeling powerless and overwhelmed by the forces of mayhem and misery, create elaborate fantasies of hypersexuality and superhuman power. Imagine being able to leap twenty times the length of your body and feast on human flesh. For the oldsters there's a hot tub time machine, tame by comparison and infinitely more ridiculous. The Al Gore investigation is being reopened by the Portland Police. His credibility is destroyed. He'll retire to the Hall of Shame for ambitious, ruined men, in a suite down the hall from John Edwards and Elliot Spitzer. Spitzer's getting a new show on CNN. How far and how quickly they fall. Elin Woods gets $750 million in the divorce decree, the largest settlement ever in a celebrity divorce. Tiger Woods is expressly prohibited from introducing the children to any of his future bimbos, porno stars or coffee shop waitresses, unless he becomes married to one of them.
The news is a tumult. The news is frenzied hum and buzz. It flows unabated. It casts down like acid rain. It washes and thaws and gushes. It confuses. It titillates. It overwhelms. In the end it makes no sense, and one scandal is forgotten in the tropical storm created by another. Each new administration blames the last one for the mess we're in. And Al Gore must be thinking, "Somebody else please screw up, and get me off the front page."
Thursday, July 1, 2010
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This is the Way the Transformation Begins
"Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say "Why not?"
George Bernard Shaw, Robert F. Kennedy
This is the way the transformation begins.
It begins in me.
It begins now.
It begins with small incremental changes and shifts in attitude
it begins with positive action
failing forward
and suddenly I start looking at the world and my place in it in a new way. I speak differently and dress differently and project a different energy, and the world opens up like a glorious pink azalea bush, eight feet tall and blooming like mad.
photo by Kajo123 from the website flickr.com
Good morning!
An engineer builds a bridge and every bolt and weld has to be exactly right; every measure has to be perfect, or the bridge collapses or fails to take its place. Fantastically detailed blueprints have to be laid out. Impact statements have to be filed, sediment has to be studied, years of effort, months of planning, and a man-made marvel rises in the sky. Park somewhere and take a good look at a bridge, and think of all the skill and knowledge and hard honest work it took to create it. Consider how a few thousand years ago we were living in caves.
It is not so with a dream. Some people are remarkable dreamers and dreams spring whole from them, or they can leap up from bed and pages of creative genius flow out of their pen, intricate and perfect. Most of us though are baby dreamers, new at it and tentative to the trust the power of what we wish for.
Start the dream! Whether you want to go to nursing school or college or learn to play the guitar, take a first step, now, even in the wrong direction. Don't wait for the blueprint to come to you, the environmental impact statement, the permits and the 200-page budget and legislative dream approval. Rough it out, sketch it on a napkin, tell a friend, and take action. Your dream begins the moment you step out in first moment of believing, and the result can touch a thousand souls. Listen to Jim Valvano: never give up, never surrender. Believe in the audacity of action and your fantastic potential for change and new opportunity.
It is not so with a dream. Some people are remarkable dreamers and dreams spring whole from them, or they can leap up from bed and pages of creative genius flow out of their pen, intricate and perfect. Most of us though are baby dreamers, new at it and tentative to the trust the power of what we wish for.
Start the dream! Whether you want to go to nursing school or college or learn to play the guitar, take a first step, now, even in the wrong direction. Don't wait for the blueprint to come to you, the environmental impact statement, the permits and the 200-page budget and legislative dream approval. Rough it out, sketch it on a napkin, tell a friend, and take action. Your dream begins the moment you step out in first moment of believing, and the result can touch a thousand souls. Listen to Jim Valvano: never give up, never surrender. Believe in the audacity of action and your fantastic potential for change and new opportunity.
The Hawthorne Bridge at sunrise, Portland Oregon. Photo by Joe Collver, from flickr.com
Genuine happiness and success start with an attitude of abundance
Make it a daily practice to begin your day with five minutes of thankfulness. You can even do it in your car on the way to work. Do it in your own way, whether it's thoughtful reflection or a prayer or singing out loud, but focus on your rich, amazing, abundant life.
Feeling grumpy or resentful or worried instead of thankful? Change direction! Consider the incredible gifts you have--mind, body, spirit, senses, your family, your friends, your clothes, your car, and the breakfast you enjoyed this morning. By the standards of 99% of the world, Americans are incredibly, amazingly rich. You truly have no idea how richly blessed you are until you start thinking about it. Even the heart that beats within you and the lungs that breathe your air are an intricate and amazing miracle.
Some of my favorite movies are ones that feature a once-defeated character waking up to an absolutely new day: "It's A Wonderful Life," the various versions of Dicken's "Christmas Carol" and "Groundhog Day." How exhilarating it is for George Bailey to wake up and realize his life isn't over, it's just beginning, and that today truly is a brand new day.
"It's a Wonderful Life"
George returns home to everything he ever wanted.
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