The Unseen Sea

The Unseen Sea from Simon Christen on Vimeo.

Ocean Sky

This is so amazing and inspiring. Worth the couple of minutes to sit back, relax, and enjoy the experience.

Ocean Sky from Alex Cherney on Vimeo.

Everything Goes Black: Then Comes Hope

Happiness, Revealed

If you watch anything today, make it this.

"And so I wish  you will open your heart to all these blessings, and let them flow through you. Then everyone who you meet on this day will be blessed by you. Just by your eyes, by your smile, by your touch. Just by your presence. Let the gratefulness overflow into blessing all around you. And then, it will really be, a good day."

Even in the Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt

After a exceedingly long winter, I've eagerly awaited my gardens to wake up from their long nap, push threw the earth, and brighten my mood. This morning I woke to an April Fools day surprise: my gardens are covered with snow.

I'm likely not to see my early spring plants again until next year: their tender fleeting beauty will be hidden again until next spring. However, baring some sort of environmental calamity, my plants will persevere: they will grow, bloom, flourish, and eventually die. I'm not so sure they even notice the snow. If they do, they don't tell me. They just do what they do.

Can the same be said for people? Can we live our lives in such a way where we don't notice the weather? Can we just do what we do?

Several years ago I worked with a college student from the West coast. Outside my office window I had a view of an area that was densely populated with old trees. She frequently comment on those trees. At first it would be about the fall colors of the trees. As the first tinge of color would appear she talked about how excited she was to see her first autumn.

As the autumn of her first year of college progressed, so did her first experience with depression. Rather than excitement about the oranges, yellows, and reds, her mind became consumed by fear. Do the trees die in the winter? Do they every forget how to grow leaves?

As the long winter progressed we kept looking out the window. "I know you said the trees are still alive," she said. "What happens if winter is too long?" We kept looking and kept talking. Sure enough, the tender spring buds appeared. As the trees just started showing signs of life my client asked, "what if it snows in the spring and the tender buds all die? Can the tree grow more buds?"

The trees of course did come back to life. My client did too. Right before she left for a new school she presented me with beautiful handmade card. She fashioned a replica of a particular gnarled old Magnolia tree out of construction paper. The tree was alive with a mass of tender pink blossoms. She was alive too, fully in the spring of a new life.

I'm glad she came back to life and that spring came so quickly. For some, however, spring comes slowly--if it comes at all. David K. Reynolds writes:

Feelings shouldn't be ignored--how could we ignore a snowstorm, anyway? But when you have to go out in a blizzard, you go out. That is the way it is to be human. The feelings are there, but we do what we have to do. Even in the summer, when the ice hasn't melted, shivering, we do what we have to do.

What is certain is that I am sometimes this, sometimes that. Sometimes pleased, sometimes not; sometimes confident, sometimes not; sometimes compassionate, sometimes not. the ice doesn't melt at my whim. It doesn't melt no matter how well I understand its origins or believe I understand its origins. It may not  melt despite my persistent efforts to change the circumstances that I believe to be maintaining it. In such cases what else is there to do but shiver and go on about living?

 What do you think?

A Single Drop of Rain

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. the whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water.

Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky - Dōgen (1200-1253)

Every dew drop and rain drop had a whole heaven within it - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

On Pottery, Perfection, Perseverance, and Tiger Mothers

The red earth is cold and wet when I open the bag. The smell--that's a different story. It's always what I notice first. As soon as I open up the rubber band that holds the plastic bag shut my nose is filled with the earthy smell of the wet forest floor.

There really is not another feeling in the world like clay warming up under my palms as I press it against a wedging table. The clay transforms into a warm supple material on the wedging table. This is a place of such potential. It also is a place where many battles have begun. Some days at the wedging table I stand before the clay and become demanding. I work the clay and want it to become a mug, platter, or perhaps a teapot. 

This is never good. When I forget my way at the wedging table and start demanding a form appear out of the clay I can always anticipate a disaster (yet strangely, I do this with amazing frequency). Without fail, this pound or two or five of clay that I demand into a particular shape will return back to the wedging table. Rather than becoming what I ask of it, this blobs of earth have been known to fly off the wheel, explode in the kiln, or break in two while I'm glazing after a bisque fire. 

When I go into battle with the clay, trying to form it into something that it is not, it simply will not yield to my fingers and imagination.

There is something else that can happen at the wedging table. I can listen to the earth. I can let the clay listen to me. A certain kind of magic can happen when we both listen to each other. The earth can yield to my imagination when I can yield to the conditions of the blob of dirt and water that is in my hands. The ambient temperature, humidity, and day-to-day changes of the  viscosity of the earth all influence what form it might take. Even the wedging table has its own influence--an eager student potter washing the dry surface with a gallon of water will influence what my little slab of cold red earth can become.

A few days ago was one of those times when the dance worked well. I did have a vision of what I wanted, and they clay wanted to become something similar. The two of us had a shared vision. We worked together and made something more than either could have made on it's own (admittedly, clay has a hard time being something other than clay without human intervention). The studio was warm and the clay rapidly became smooth and supple in my hands. It flattened right out on the wedging table--almost like it was encouraging me to create what my vision was. The clay yielded to the slab roller and flattened out into a supple disk. It easily accepted the imprint from a textured wooden roller and a piece of coral. The now textured and yet still supple round disk of earth were easily peeled off  the surface it rested on and draped right over the surface of the balloon I inflated to serve as a mold for  my clay.

When I listen to the clay, it will listen to me. Together we can create something unique. 

Now draped over the balloons there was one final step before I left the clay to try. Around the edge of the three disks of now inverted clay, I wanted to pierce a series of holes. Armed with a very small ruler and a bamboo carving tool, I measured and pierced my way around the the smallest of the three disks of clay. When I  moved to the second disk of clay a minor disaster struck. As I  moved around the inverted disk piercing the disk the clay body had trouble maintaining it's structural integrity. This is a fancy way to say that the clay started to tear.

Rats. My perfectly round disk, formed into a irregular yet symmetrical vessel, was damaged. Several tears opened up creating jagged edges. I considered for a moment rolling it up into a ball and heading over the the wedging table. Clay is forgiving like that--you can always start over (until the final firing, where clay is permanently altered to stone). I looked a little closer at the material in my hand. I liked how the inside of the holes I pierced were jagged--like a bullet had torn through the clay leaving a jagged wound. I liked the irregular edges of the tear--another reminder of the inevitableness of damage and decay. I  kept the clay as is. Rather than demanding it be something it wasn't, I listed to what it was becoming. I also learned from my mistake and pierced the holes on the final--and largest--piece prior to inverting it over the balloon.

Mistakes and imperfections aren't failures--they are opportunities to discover something new.

The earth, transformed into a supple warm clay, worked in a process of mutual discovery, now sits on a shelf drying. When it is leather hard I will take it off the balloon. Hopefully at some point before it becomes leather hard I will be able to coax the bottom to flatten a bit without the rim of the vessel collapsing (or breaking). It will sit on the shelf again until it's bone dry. Then the three vessels will go into the kiln and be bisque fired. It will be heated until it is about 1835 degrees Fahrenheit. The resulting heat will remove every last bit of water that is chemically bonded in the clay body. 

I'll dip the clay in a glaze, let it dry. It will again enter the kiln and be heated to 2165 degrees Fahrenheit. The clay will melt and become viscous and the glaze will also melt and oxidize. Parts of the clay will be transformed into silica. When the kiln cycles down and cools off, the resulting object will no longer be wet dirt: it will have been transformed to stone (take that, Medusa!). 

My vessels might crack and disintegrate on the drying rack. They might explode in the bisque firing. I might break them when glazing, or the glaze might malfunction in the final firing, drip onto the kiln shelf. This is particularly distressing because if it happens, my vessel will become fused to the surface it rested on while being fired and thus be destroyed. 

If these three vessels make it this far, there will be more work. I'm planning on applying some metal leaf along the edge and perhaps some bead work across the opening. That is the plan, at least, unless the process moves me in another direction.

Art isn't a battle, it's a dance of mutuality and dialogue between artist and their medium.

One last thought. Have you heard about tiger mothers? Law professor and memoir writing Amy Chua has been making the rounds in the media about her story of raising her children. In a Wall Street Journal essay she writes that here children were never allowed to: attend a sleepover, have a play-date, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games, choose their own extracurricular activities, get any grade less than an A, not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama, play any instrument other than the piano or violin, not play the piano or violin.

I thought about Chua a bit while I was working the clay. Chua made her daughter do 2,000 math problems a night when she was number two in a math competition. She had to do 2,000 math problems every night until she became number one again. What might the results be if I had a Tiger mother hovering over me demanding I made an additional 2,000 clay vessels until I perfected them? I'd probably be able to form a perfect bowl. that's for sure. The excitement and life would be taken out of my pottery. That's for sure, too. 

It's important to master technique. I learned that in high school when a band director stopped the music, pointed to me, and told me the wrong note I just played was like poking my finger through the Mona Lisa's eyes. He had me play the passage a few times until I got I got it right and we moved on. 

There was more than having perfect fidelity to the score. I learned that from my piano professor. When I had trouble playing something he'd take the music way, close the cover on the piano, and put his CD player on. He would ask me to close my eyes and pretend to play the song. He'd open up the keyboard and ask me to pretend to play the song again--regardless of what the right or wrong notes were. 

"Feel the music," he'd say. "Don't worry about getting it right." I was usually too embarrassed to listen to him. I was too busy trying to get it right and be perfect. One those rare occasions that I actually did listen to him, I did get it right. I felt the music and then figured out how to coax the music out of the piano.

By freeing myself up and playing, I would be able to both offer fidelity to the score while being true to my heart. 

It is this same balance that I find when working with earth. Of course I need to practice and develop  my technique. I also need to spend an equal amount of time listening to my heart. This whole Tiger Mother controversy is silly: it misses the magic that happens when skill and imagination unite. 

It is in the space between perfection of talent and expression of the heart that something is formed that cannot be created by either alone.

How Far is Far Away?

NASAs Hubble telescope recently captured an image that really got me thinking. The object is rather unceremoniously called UDFj-39546284.

While this image isn't nearly as exciting as many of the others that the Hubble has offered up...I mean really. Look at it. In the larger scheme of things it is insignificant. In the larger image, I can't even see it. When we zoom in on the image it is just a little fuzzy blob. Not nearly as interesting, for example, as seeing a pale blue dot.

Or maybe it actually is a little more interesting.

This is the most distant object humankind has ever seen in the universe. The light traveled for 13.2 billion years to reach the sensors inside the Hubble Space Telescope. For comparison, in case you didn't know, we only think the universe is 13.7 billion years old. That makes you pretty old, UDFj!

So for formalities sake, it's nice to meet you, UDFj. It took you a long time to get here. I'm glad you did.

So why is this old light important to me? It humbles me. It reminds me that in the larger scheme of things, I'm smaller and even more insignificant than this little blob of old light we call UDFj. This isn't a sad thought for me. This isn't a thought that feels nihilistic. We all are prone to getting lost in our own perspectives and viewpoints. We all are prone, at times, to thinking we know what is true--what is right. From the inside, from our own vantage point, this is important. Our thoughts are valid thoughts. Yet at the same time, from the vantage point of UDFj, our viewpoint is totally insignificant. While our thoughts still are valid thoughts, they are totally lost within the context of the vastness of the universe.

There is a big universe out there. Look up, look down. Look far into the past (hello there, UDFj) or far out into the future. Move back and forth from our own narrow vantage point and into something that is larger than our comprehension allows.

What do you find? What do you see? Can we even begin to understand this large perspective--this larger gestalt?

Weir Hill: Autumn's Last Stand

The weather was unusually warm for November. With temperatures in the 60s, it was an ideal time to head out and enjoy some of the last sunbeams of Autumn. These views are from Weir Hill Reservation in North Andover Massachusetts. Check out Maggie's Facebook page if you want to see what she was up to during the trip.

Pale Blue Dot

During a brief interlude between patients this afternoon, I took Maggie on a walk along the river in Cambridge. I stumbled across a podcast that made mention of Carl Sagan's book "A Pale Blue Dot." Memories that had long since been crowded deep into the storage spaces of my mind came rushing back.

When I was just a little dot I fashioned myself as a future astronomer. I remember how excited I was to watch PBS and catch each and every hour of the 13 part series Cosmos. My tiny little world got so much bigger with Dr. Sagan's deep voice delivering information about the vastness and wonder of the universe around us. I was hooked. Sadly I was not a child that was particularly gifted in math. Addition and subtraction was a stretch for me--the math I would need to be able to do this sort of work seemed out of reach. I moved on to study other things. Still, my imagination was captured by that initial curiosity about "countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time." 

Fast forward a decade. I had graduated from college when I was 19. Knowing everything there was to know any about anything, I promptly picked a sensible course of action: I moved to New York City for graduate school. After a year of study I learned two things: I wasn't ready for graduate school and I was definitely not interested in studying Industrial/Organizational psychology. My grad school and I had an amicable separation. I moved upstate to Ithaca New York. 

I spent a year living in a basement apartment figuring myself out. Spring finally arrived after a long and brutal winter that involved two snow storms that were so intensely cold I froze in my own apartment. I was walking around the campus of Cornell and nearly fainted when I heard Dr. Sagan's very distinctive voice. I searched him out and introduced myself. He was kind enough to interrupt the conversation he was having to exchange a few words with me. I told him he helped to inspire my curiosity as a young child and taught me a few things about honoring the very unique and rare life we each share. He said something kind to me. I wish I could remember but those memories are now lost. You have to remember I was practically swooning with excitement. Dr. Sagan was my own personal rock star. If every I had to pick someone who is my hero, it would be Dr. Sagan.

Though we had only met in person for a few short moments, through his work and presence in this world, he helped to inspire what I consider to be my best quality: curiosity about the world around me. From an early age, he showed me that while in the larger scheme of things I am a relatively unimportant little speck in a vast universe, the choices I make are important and the rarity of uniqueness of human life requires me to be kind and thoughtful with those choices. 

So what's with this pale blue dot? That's us. When the Voyager spacecraft turned it's camera back toward the Earth right past Saturn for one last image of Earth.

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." -- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

Is Your Life Folding or Unfolding?

The other day I became fascinated by a comment that someone made in passing. They were talking about how a particular situation was unfolding. What fascinated me wasn't really about the content about what was unfolding (though, that was interesting too). I became transfixed by the image that appeared in my mind of a life unfolding and reveling itself from birth to death.

A nice image. Not anything particularly life-altering. This notion of a something unfolding is a pretty common figure of speech. A Google search of "unfolding experience" results in about 11,800 items. The first three search results:

• A blog entitled "The Unfolding Experience" that opens with this Kahil Gibran quote: "The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed. The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals. 

• A book for sale entitled Homeopathic Education: The Unfolding of Experience

• A sample of the book "Becoming a Reflexive Practitioner" that says that "The narrative intends to capture the unfolding experience of working or journeying alongside a patient through their health-wellness experience. 

This still isn't what caught my interest. What really distracted me that hour--and for the last couple of weeks--is that generally we don't have lives that unfold. Overtime our lives become folded and compressed. Possibilities of what might be shrink. Our emotional ranges are limited. We become smaller rather than expansive. The world of opportunity that youth and innocence offer us becomes replaced by cynicism and regret.

Whoops.

This might not be the right direction to be moving in, no? I'm becoming much  more aware of how we use language that limits the possibility of what might be--and inviting those I work with to find ways to open their language up more and unfold into something larger. 

Try it out.

365 Days of Mindfulness

This summer I've been thinking about travel. Vacations are a wonderful opportunity to travel together with family and friends, share an experience, create common experiences that can last a lifetime, and deepen and nourish relationships. Vacations can be about learning something new (traveling to historic spots, visiting museums, or learning a new hobby) or about play (getting away from it all at the beach, unplugging from the electronic devices and sleeping under the open sky, or sitting under in a comfortable chair reading a good book).

Vacations can be long or short. They can be far or close to home. Sometimes a vacation might even take the form of a mini-mental vacation. In DBT, one set of skills that are taught are those that IMPROVE the  moment. Improve is an acronym, and the v is for a mini vacation.

Overwhelmed by feelings? At the end of your rope? Try taking a mini-vacation. Close your eyes, use your imagination to fantasize what an ideal peaceful place would be. Perhaps it's a beach, a mountain top, or your favorite comfortable chair. Whatever the case is, a few moments spent on a mini-vacation there helps us slow down and think before we react rather than reacting without thinking.

There is a place near where I live which is an ideal place for me to think about when I take a mini-mental vacation. The local reservoir is a generally peaceful place. Neighbors walk their dogs there. A group of dedicated men and women tend to an ever-growing butterfly garden. Despite being in the middle of an urban environment, birds flock, deer roam, and I can let the natural environment nourish and recharge me when I'm tired, crabby, or down.

I've decided a few days ago that I'm going to start a little project for myself. It's a cross between a mini-vacation, a mindfulness practice, and a photography project. Maggie and I generally go for a walk every morning. Rain or shine, cold or hot, we'll start our day with a few trips around the local reservoir. We've done this for a year now. It's been enjoyable for both of us. I've met lots of neighbors, learned all the local gossip, watched flowers blossom and wither, and seen the seasons change.

I got to thinking that it would be interesting to spend a moment in the same spot every day for a year. What would it be to stand and watch the seasons change? What would I learn from taking a moment to observe every day?

Off to the right I'm adding a slide show widget where I'll upload the pictures as I go along. It's apparently going to take awhile for the slideshow to work: I'm having a few technical difficulties here on Blogger. The images will all be as I see them: no photoshopping, cropping, or editing. In the meantime, while we are waiting for my difficulties to be solved, here is day one of the 365 Days of Mindfulness project. I took the image on July 12, 2010.

What do you notice as the images change? Perhaps you are inspired to do something similar. If you are, make a comment here or send me an e-mail and share what you discover.

Grover Always Gets it Right

I still have my Grover from when I was young. I believe him to be hiding in a box somewhere in storage. He remains as wise now as he was when I was young.

What's the measure of the life of a woman or a man?

Those who work with me know that among other things, I am prone to having some rather zany loose associations. I've talked with people about what the Broadway version of their life would be; ask why they think particular songs, movies, or television shows are stuck in my mind; and otherwise find ways to let our creative minds roam free to find ways to connect powerful metaphors with the very real and serious process of therapeutic growth and change.

With that said I've spent the last several weeks distracted by a particular song from a Broadway musical. I've randomly been humming along to Seasons of Love from the musical Rent. It's led me to spend an awful lot of time thinking about how we go about valuing (or not valuing) ourselves. I've also gotten more than a few strange looks from people when I randomly start humming on the street or in the gym.



I'm no stranger to thinking about this. In various contexts, I've thought about how we value ourselves for more than a quarter century. Years ago I learned something about value from a band director. This one time at summer band camp we were playing a John Phillip Sousa march. The director of the band just happened to have been in John Philip Sousa's band. The director stopped rehearsal one day when I had played a wrong note. "You, Horn," he bellowed. "When you play that note incorrectly it as if you have walked up to the Mona Lisa and poked your finger through her eye."

Whoops.

I was no stranger to being pointed at by directors when I played a wrong note. My high school orchestra directly repeatedly made me play a note over and over again when we were playing Bedrich Smenta's overture from The Bartered Bride. In a fit, the director threw his baton at me and came storming through the orchestra knocking over stands. This time I wasn't poking my finger through the eye's of the Mona Lisa on purpose. The score I was playing off of had the wrong note. Another director, with exceedingly long fingers, tapped his baton on his music stand and pointed at me (I was sure that his finger was going to make it all the way into the back of the orchestra and poke me). "You," he said. "You have no passion. You young people today know no passion." This one concerned me to no end. A note I could figure out how to play correctly (even on a horn that is notorious for being impossibly difficult to play in tune). But passion? How on Earth am I supposed to figure that one out?

Had Dwight only explained himself I might have learned something very important--the goal here wasn't spending hours in a practice room learning to perfect every note and phrase. The goal was to bring the music alive and create an experience. Music as a process, not a goal.

Anyway, I found innumerable ways to scurry about trying to be perfect. Years later in my second masters program I had a complete melt down at the copy shop. I was having my thesis printed out and it was printed out incorrectly. You see, the paper I used had a watermark on it. I was very specific with the copy shop people that I wanted the watermark positioned so it was forward on the paper, not backward. I got my thesis back with the watermark backward. No holes through Mona Lisa for me. I made them reprint the whole thing. Twice.

After telling my advisor this he asked me if I knew much about the quilts that Amish women make. Among the things they are known for is their quality. Yet, as my advisor said, the last stitch that is made is always made incorrectly because only God can make things perfect. He then pointed out a typo in my bound thesis.

Of course I'd have none of this and later snuck into the library to correct my error.

Once I finally got over that bout of crazy perfectionism I thought it was a good time to go for a doctorate. When I was first accepted into my program at Antioch University New England I was provided with a bookmark (this was a step up from the pencil they sent me home with when I interviewed at the program). The bookmark haunted me for a long time. Written on it was one motto the school frequently used:

Be afraid to die until you have won some small victory for humanity -- Horace Mann

"Oh great," I thought. I was already neurotic enough about trying to do things perfectly. Now not only did I have to make sure I didn't poke my fingers through the eyes of Mona Lisa: I needed to make sure I won a victory for humanity. Was one enough? Would two or three be better? How about four?

No sleep for Jason. I'll spare you the tales of being taught the finer points of the use of dashes (did you know there are three different kinds, the hyphen, the em dash, and the en dash?). This was a particularly crazed chapter of crazy dissertation writing.

My error here has been in interpretation. I spent a long time (and at times, still do) conflating the process achieving with the end result of achievement. I measured the value of my live (sorry about the eye Mona, that should have been life) by a result rather than a process. It's ironic, because had I paid attention to a different motto from my education (Goddard College often talks about learning being about the journey, not the destination) I might have saved myself from some needless stress.

Focusing on the end result of achievement rather than the process of achievement creates a rather horrific hall of mirrors. It's not very pretty. The end goal is never achieved, thus value can never really be attained. There is always another paper to write, task to do, or goal to achieve. Life can quickly pass by, unvalued, unappreciated, and filled with long days of neurotic achievement (think about the watermark and dashes, people).

It is easy (and it many ways natural) to value our children and our friends for their achievement. We marvel in a child's first steps and are proud. We hang report cards on the refrigerator and give rewards when our children get all As. We celebrate graduations form grade school, high school, and beyond with parties, gifts and accolades.

These are all valuable accomplishments. They deserve recognition and accolades. However, is this how we measure the value of a woman or a man? We do measure value in accomplishments? That makes value something conditional. We have to accomplish something in order to be valuable--and if we don't accumulate accomplishments we have less value.

In-and-of-itself, valuing achievement is a good thing. As a society we value movement toward something. An investment in education represents movement toward a better life. Investment in a job represents movement toward increased wealth (and hopefully the idea of shared wealth, too), productivity, and the betterment of humanity. I don't really take issue with any of this at a very basic level. Yet, I also take great issue with it.

When we transform valuing achievement into valuing people for their achievement, we start to lose little bits of our souls. When we base the total value of a person on the end result of what they have achieved rather than the process of achievement we poison a person and begin a life long process of killing off their essential intrinsic value of the process of being alive.

What do you think?

Quote of the Day

One of the things I enjoy most about keeping this blog is having the opportunity to interact with people that I wouldn't ordinarily know. Here is a quote sent in from a visitor:

A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive. -- Albert Einstein, 1954

Charter for Compassion

Make a Wish

Free Hugs

Quote of the Day:

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering. ~St. Augustine


This quote was found on a someone's blog and was accompanied by a great photo. Check it out.

Photo of the Day: Blue Sky Edition