Have you got your plan for the week ahead sorted?

 

Love, Fear and Words

 “I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always … so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.” - Yann Martel, Life of Pi

In order for ugliness and evil to conquer beauty, first beauty must be made
to seem ugly and evil. If beauty is feared, if it is portrayed as a threat to
life, then an intentional manipulation of the human mind and psyche can
cause a flight from beauty so as to gain protection from concocted harm. - 
Gary D. Barnett

The Transience of Concrete Concepts

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

The illusion that we live in a world where you can touch things and 'here' and 'there' are separate places.

These two long cherished assumptions of how the world was 'thought' to work was overturned in the early 1900's when Quantum mechanics was reified.

• First was realism. Unlike classical physics, which says the world exists independently of observers and observations, quantum theory strongly implies that reality does not exist, or at least has no meaning, until it is observed. [Schrödinger's Cat]
• The second problem was “non-locality”.  Quantum Entanglement – what Einstein termed “spooky action at a distance” – in which events in one region of space-time can seemingly instantaneously affect events elsewhere, even light years away. This goes against Einstein’s relativity, in which no influence can travel faster than the speed of light.

Definition of reify

transitive verb

: to consider or represent (something abstract) as a material or concrete thing : to give definite content and form to (a concept or idea)

… the diversity rationale also insultingly assumes that black students bring a black "point of view," Asians an Asian one and so on, thus reifying the very barriers of race and ethnicity that affirmative action is meant to erase.

— James Traub

Reify is a word that attempts to provide a bridge between what is abstract and what is real.

In general use, it refers to the act of considering or presenting an abstract idea in real or material terms, or of judging something imagined (conceived in the mind) by a concrete example.

Love is who you are

“Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state. Being in love shows a person who he should be.”
— Anton Chekhov

Heart Beat Down

“There have been so many times I have seen a man wanting to weep but instead beat his heart until it was unconscious.”
— Nayyirah Waheed

Do Unto Others...

Don's Personal Platinum Principle:
'Wherever and whenever you can safely do it, treat others as they would wish to be treated.'

I wish for you ALL the GOOD things you wish for yourself AND sincerely hope I can, without harming myself, help you to achieve them.

'The golden rule'
The Bible's original Greek: Καθώς θέλετε ίνα ποιώσιν υμίν οι άνθρωποι και υμείς ποιείτε αυτοίς ομοίως. (Luke 6:31)

It is commonly translated as:  “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.”

The Mosaic law contains a parallel commandment: “Whatever is hurtful to you, do not do to any other person.”

Both are flawed when examined in reality!

The Platinum Rule

"It turns out, though, that the Golden Rule has an inherent flaw in it. It presumes that others are just like us, that they would be satisfied with exactly the same treatment we would enjoy.

People just aren’t that simple.

When you’ve done a great job on a work project, you might really appreciate a gift card from Starbucks as a token of appreciation for your efforts. Since that is something you’d enjoy, you might consider giving me a Starbucks card if I, too, had worked hard on a project for you. But since I don’t drink coffee and I don’t care much for pastries, maybe a Starbucks gift card isn’t right for me. In this example, doing unto others what you would have others do unto you falls short of expressing your genuine appreciation in a way that uplifts me and makes me feel special.

A different standard may be in order. I’ve heard it called The Platinum Rule (since it is worth more than gold). The Platinum Rule says we should do unto others the way they want us to do unto them. In other words, you have to treat people the way they want to be treated, not the way you want to be treated. That requires a little more effort.

When it comes to rewarding me, for example, you’d have to find out that a handwritten note of appreciation is something I will treasure for years to come. An expression of your sincere gratitude and the thoughtfulness of a card would be worth so much more to me than any gift card. That personalization is my definition of platinum.

But every individual is different. So rewarding, recognizing or simply treating others the way they would choose does require more thought. It involves being observant, actively listening, caring enough to ask about preferences. When we over-rely on our preferences, we often miss giving others what they want, need or deserve.

Think about relationships and you’ll probably be able to see this more clearly. When you have two people in a relationship, they can both feel minimized even when they are both trying to apply The Golden Rule. He loves to hear compliments and so he showers praise on her. But she feels it is insincere because she just wants to be listened to and isn’t getting that need met. And the reverse is happening simultaneously – she is trying with all her might to give her full attention and listen to him, but he’s just saying the same things over and over again in an attempt to get a much-needed compliment. If this couple knew and used The Platinum Rule, they could both be less stressed, both could get their needs met, and both would feel more satisfied in the relationship.

It all starts with setting a new standard. Try it with just one person. Make it a point to find out how they would like to be treated. Adjust and treat them differently, even if you do not understand or would not find what they’ve described to be personally appealing.

Watch what happens when you apply The Platinum Rule. You may see a rise in your own value as you apply this higher value standard." - This blog post was originally published on February 23, 2013, and was selected for the CONNECT! Community’s series on Connecting by Caring.https://blog.peoplefirstps.com/connect2lead/the-platinum-rule-2 

Dominican Parsley Peril

Parsley
BY RITA DOVE

1. The Cane Fields

There is a parrot imitating spring
in the palace, its feathers parsley green.   
Out of the swamp, the cane appears

to haunt us, and we cut it down. El General   
searches for a word; he is all the world   
there is. Like a parrot imitating spring,

we lie down screaming as rain punches through   
and we come up green. We cannot speak an R—
out of the swamp, the cane appears

and then the mountain we call in whispers Katalina.
The children gnaw their teeth to arrowheads.   
There is a parrot imitating spring.

El General has found his word: perejil.
Who says it, lives. He laughs, teeth shining   
out of the swamp. The cane appears

in our dreams, lashed by wind and streaming.   
And we lie down. For every drop of blood   
there is a parrot imitating spring.
Out of the swamp the cane appears.


2. The Palace

The word the general’s chosen is parsley.   
It is fall, when thoughts turn
to love and death; the general thinks
of his mother, how she died in the fall
and he planted her walking cane at the grave   
and it flowered, each spring stolidly forming   
four-star blossoms. The general

pulls on his boots, he stomps to
her room in the palace, the one without   
curtains, the one with a parrot
in a brass ring. As he paces he wonders   
Who can I kill today. And for a moment   
the little knot of screams
is still. The parrot, who has traveled

all the way from Australia in an ivory   
cage, is, coy as a widow, practising   
spring. Ever since the morning   
his mother collapsed in the kitchen   
while baking skull-shaped candies   
for the Day of the Dead, the general   
has hated sweets. He orders pastries   
brought up for the bird; they arrive

dusted with sugar on a bed of lace.   
The knot in his throat starts to twitch;   
he sees his boots the first day in battle   
splashed with mud and urine
as a soldier falls at his feet amazed—
how stupid he looked!— at the sound
of artillery. I never thought it would sing   
the soldier said, and died. Now

the general sees the fields of sugar   
cane, lashed by rain and streaming.   
He sees his mother’s smile, the teeth   
gnawed to arrowheads. He hears   
the Haitians sing without R’s
as they swing the great machetes:   
Katalina, they sing, Katalina,

mi madle, mi amol en muelte. God knows   
his mother was no stupid woman; she   
could roll an R like a queen. Even   
a parrot can roll an R! In the bare room   
the bright feathers arch in a parody   
of greenery, as the last pale crumbs
disappear under the blackened tongue. Someone

calls out his name in a voice
so like his mother’s, a startled tear
splashes the tip of his right boot.
My mother, my love in death.
The general remembers the tiny green sprigs   
men of his village wore in their capes   
to honor the birth of a son. He will
order many, this time, to be killed

for a single, beautiful word.

Notes:
On October 2, 1937, Rafael Trujillo (1891-1961), dictator of the Dominican Republic, ordered 20,000 blacks killed because they could not pronounce the letter “r” in perejil, the Spanish word for parsley.