A Penny for Your Thoughts

      "A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. …
      Else tomorrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another."      -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Bits and bytes of information bombard every one of us every day. Each single seed can also be deposited in the minds of millions of other people. Everyone’s thinking is influenced by what is seen, felt, read and observed. We process most information on a subconscious level. It becomes a Dagwood sandwich, wrapped and stowed for later consumption.

In sleep, some of those random thoughts gel into dreams; recent impressions form the scenarios. If aware of it, we can even smell and feel in our dream state which always startles me when I experience it. The devil of it is that when the curtain comes up in the morning, another good dream is obliterated. Poof!

Its impression, most likely, remains in our subconscious. Hence, the reoccurring dream. All these thoughts swirl, lay claim to lockers in our storehouse of a mind. The combination is lost, found, lost again. The bits gather with other bits, form communities of thought.

There is a lot of simmering going on under the surface. And simmering is also going on in the minds of others, too. Even those we have never met may have the same thoughts we do. It explains the scientists on two different continents coming up with the same premise or similar research results. Happens all the time.

"Gee, I thought of that years ago,” a young man laments when he reads of a new discovery. “If only I had acted on it, I would be the one in the newspapers. I would be the one who made millions.”

“He stole my idea.” Ah, no. No, he didn’t. He just was more intrigued than you were about the idea batting around in his head and did something about it. A missed opportunity for one, growth and satisfaction for another.

A penny for your thoughts?

Perspective Requires Much Consideration

"The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it."  

Marcus Aurelius

    I picked up a neighbor to give him a ride part of the way to work this morning. I often do this and we mostly talk about the weather, or he does and I listen because I think each day's weather is interesting. Today he talked about a job posting and that it only paid $10 hour. He griped about it and the sad state of affairs in America and had told the interviewer that times were changing and soon it would be $15. Perhaps so, but I imagine it didn't further his cause.

    It got me to thinking of my recent experiences in Hungary where I was surprised that the American dollar bought so much more than the Hungarian populace could afford. They would, perhaps, be excited about $10 an hour instead of looking for more from the get-go.

    We all want to live a good life, a prosperous one. Most do their best to achieve it. Some complain endlessly and get nowhere.

    Personal perspective forms from your own particular point of view and your thoughts are, of course, its basis. Others may sway your thinking. Nasty little inroads of doubt may creep in. But just as often, fresh air may flow through your thoughts when the stars align and things are going well. Life is like swaying on a swing. Sometimes you reach the sky and sometimes your feet get muddy as you hop off.

    "Our life is what our thoughts make it." Yes, it certainly is.

The Rocky Path of Progress

My writing corner

Living so close to historical touch-points as I do here in New England, I find myself intrigued by the minds of people who lived here before me.  I have been reading Henry David Thoreau’s book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, and I have a new appreciation for the portion of the Concord River which passes under the freeway close to my work in Billerica, MA. His boat journeyed along this spot in 1839 on his way upstream and I can imagine his oars dipping in the serene water, dripping with sun-glistened droplets with each upswing of the paddle, his eyes scanning the shore for signs of life to think upon. Looking either way as I head for my exit, I see uninhabited shorelines thick with trees and underbrush, a stone bridge the only manmade element in sight – much as he would have seen the river 175 years ago.

So much can change in the course of a single man’s life and a multitude of changes are wrought in a century…or two. Even as Thoreau bemoaned the dams that blocked the alewives and salmon from their spawning beds and changed the pattern of river flooding that had reached far into fertile fields each spring, he melded his observations with historical facts to better grasp the dangerous road man was taking in the name of progress. What once could be fished or grown with moderate toil now could not and village people downstream from the mill towns suffered from the loss caused by demands of the industrial revolution. Fruitful soil reverted to sand.

It is impossible that everything in life changes at once and all that is familiar disappear. There is an ebb and flow to our journey. There are touchstones that keep the thread of our experiences alive and growing. We have history, our own and that of others, to ground us and we can compartmentalize what we learn. We have evidence of prior efforts, their causes and effect.

That we repeat mistakes, or refrain from anticipating how our actions will affect others, is a product of our hurried (and harried) lives. Thoreau felt his era was no less active but his considered thoughts ran along a grand scale and he saw the effects created by the dams, for instance, built to harness water’s power for the mills. He grasped that each action has a complete and opposite reaction in a way that Newton may not have intended but that was apt for his time. Man’s forward motion will, by nature, change something that went before. If Thoreau had not traversed mountains on foot and sailed rivers under his own physical power, he might not have fully understood the effect man was having on his environment and its inhabitants. That his words are apropos today illustrates the importance of considered knowledge.

We stumble along, making plans, building pipe-dreams and skyscrapers without regard to maintaining a balance within our natural lives. Fish go extinct, plants become invasive in new environs, manmade chemicals do dire damage to ecosystems, seas rise and threaten our shores, and we lose sight of what is important in the grand scheme of things. Like Thoreau, we need to simplify and consider our impact on, not only nature, but on those around us and them on us. We need to walk along our path at a slower pace in order to fully consider our purpose in the scheme of things.

It is not enough that we strive to correct the mistakes of the past but that we not perpetuate them in our present in order to save our future.

Coming to Terms

Like everyone in the world, I have been trying to come to terms with the horrific deaths of children and teachers in Newtown, CT.  It would have hit home no matter where it happened but I grew up in Bethel, have friends in Newtown and have myriad memories of beautiful days spent there.

This does not tarnish my memories but grief ravages my heart to know that these lives were taken and innocence lost. It is mostly the innocence of children which comes to mind but I know it also encompasses the innocence of adults, too.

I responded to Barrie's post on Bloom this morning and found myself writing probably much more than she bargained for. Since I could not articulate my words and the path they took any better than I already have (nor do I want to delve back into the pain again to do so), I hope she will excuse my repeating them here. Be sure to go to her blog to read her thoughts, too.

There is no need to know why he did this unspeakable thing. It is totally inexcusable. For me, it is about the vulnerability of our minds and our children's minds and the effects of what we experience in this country where trauma is foisted on us by multiple 24-7 news feeds which turn tragedy into entertainment.

Over the past few decades, the United States has developed a fascination for violence that does not exist in other countries. Only here do we raise the criminals who shoot our innocents to an elevated status. We do not just report the news, we force feed it to the public over and over and over, flashing images of the perpetrator until his face is burned into our brains and his actions are graphically discussed or, worse, exhibited. Without realizing it, we also condone opinion in the guise of news. To fill air time, the topic is discussed ad nauseum until the reporter's opinions have crept into the story which then extrapolates it into fact in our minds.

Stores sell violent video games and the players get points for 'kills'. Children play these games. Played mostly in isolation, some can spend hours in front of the screen. Is there any wonder that they might become desensitized to the value of human life? Look at the television lineup. Our TV and much of our movie entertainment are comprised of crime and mayhem. A number of the reality shows do nothing to portray healthy family participation or competition with honor. Some TV shows resort to lewdness, ridicule and injury for entertainment. Even 'America's Funniest Home Videos' runs a laugh track when someone gets hurt. It is supposed to be funny. How awful.

Is it any wonder that we can list the mass murders by name easier than we can list the last ten presidents? That we know what Charles Manson did in detail but we may not know what Mother Teresa did for her country's people? Our country's values have morphed over time and are influenced by our environment and our society and what we accept as the norm in the media and play. We all have the means to follow our own special path. If we do so with creativity and compassion, we will be better for it. If we understand the importance of love and support for those around us, we will be better for it. I agree with you there.

There is no placating our psyches, though. It is not just about us healing from the damage wrought by this event. It is about what we choose to accept into our lives, to embrace wholeheartedly and what we do for others in our sphere. We need to face the things that have contributed to our society's unrest and its morbid fascination for violence. Until we move towards more healthful entertainment, this will happen again. Another person will grow angry and his anger will fester and he may see his shot at fame rests in violence. To make concrete changes, we must assess our own role in it in order to promote change within our families and our society as a whole. In order for us, our children and our society to grow with grace and compassion, we need to practice it ourselves and show, by example, that there is another way to live.

I know that I have been ranting a bit but it stems from me trying to come to terms with my own grief. I want to discover how I have contributed to this horrible phenomena by accepting the things which have become commonplace in our lives. My travels overseas have shown me that we have, indeed, become a nation onto its own in this matter. I feel sorry for that. No one action will turn it around. My challenge is to find more creativity in my life and welcome others into it through sharing my joy. If we create, we are not destroying. The two cannot coexist in the same action.

PS These are my opinions and I am still working everything out in my mind. One personal note I will share with you...on Saturday, I went to the memorial service of a close friend's mother. Sitting in the church with them, hearing stories about her life was uplifting and comforting. When they tolled the church bells 91 times, one for each year she lived, I lost it. Newtown's children only get six bells. I could not stop crying.