Commitment is a duty, loyalty or obligation to someone or something outside of self. Examples of this are the rent or mortgage we pay, the marriage vows we make, the laws of the community or group we belong to, the contracts of any kind even though they may be sealed only by a handshake.
Discipline, however, is an inner process which defines the effort to meet those commitments. This could be physical or mental. This could be conditioning like the cycles that establish the Pavlonian response to certain keys or triggers. But, in any case, the strength of the commitment is only as much as the discipline to honor that commitment.
I knew a woman once who would only relate to guys who were alcoholic in nature. She married an alcoholic... divorced and then married another alcoholic although she herself was not alcoholic. It seemed that her relationships were always doomed to fail since alcoholics in a sense are only commited to alchol. Perhaps, in a way, she herself was the one who could not commit and entered into relationships that she could withdraw from without any onus on her part. It makes one think...'who is the real culprit sometimes?'.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Choices..."To Be or not To Be?"
Merry Christmas to Anyone & Everyone...
When we are born, we are born with two and only two things in common. We are all born naked and we are born with the ability to choose. Nakedness is also a choice since the climate, social mores and the like dictate whether we cover ourselves to any extent. Fashion later on also determines the nature, color and condition of our clothes. But these again are choices.
From our cellular beginnings, we have a hormone system which determines the choice of fight or flight. If it looks like it is big enough to eat us, we run. And if it looks like a tasty morsel much to our liking then we fight, attack and eat it. Our immune system works much the same way. When anything alien is encountered, it decides to absorb it into our being or to encapsulate it, destroy it and eject it through the trash disposal system that eliminates our waste.
At least in this universe.. God did not make a one-ended stick. So when we come to a fork in the road... we have a choice. We can go right, we can go left or we can stay put... but to stay put is not really a good choice. Once we decide to go right or left, we can't go back. We must go forward and examine the results which gives us experience, which molds our attitude and determines the outcome of whatever we were involved in. In a previous post I pointed out that our Attitude is the sum total of our Opinions and our experiences.(A=O+E) which means that in order to change the outcome we must change our Attitude by changing either our Opinion of the outcome or our Experience of the outcome.
The key here, I'm afraid, is the word experience. So far as I know, we cannot at least yet time travel. So going back to the last fork in the road and taking the other leg does not seem possible. But what we can do is to put the experience in our memory banks against the day that a similar fork is presented to us.
A lot of this is developed in the story of Alice in Wonderland which is illustrated by Marc E. Jones in his commentary at http://www.sabian.org/. It makes one wonder that these signposts were left for us by some previous personalities namely Charles Dodgson otherwise known as Lewis Carroll.
But then it is Christmas time which is a magical time of the year.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year...
When we are born, we are born with two and only two things in common. We are all born naked and we are born with the ability to choose. Nakedness is also a choice since the climate, social mores and the like dictate whether we cover ourselves to any extent. Fashion later on also determines the nature, color and condition of our clothes. But these again are choices.
From our cellular beginnings, we have a hormone system which determines the choice of fight or flight. If it looks like it is big enough to eat us, we run. And if it looks like a tasty morsel much to our liking then we fight, attack and eat it. Our immune system works much the same way. When anything alien is encountered, it decides to absorb it into our being or to encapsulate it, destroy it and eject it through the trash disposal system that eliminates our waste.
At least in this universe.. God did not make a one-ended stick. So when we come to a fork in the road... we have a choice. We can go right, we can go left or we can stay put... but to stay put is not really a good choice. Once we decide to go right or left, we can't go back. We must go forward and examine the results which gives us experience, which molds our attitude and determines the outcome of whatever we were involved in. In a previous post I pointed out that our Attitude is the sum total of our Opinions and our experiences.(A=O+E) which means that in order to change the outcome we must change our Attitude by changing either our Opinion of the outcome or our Experience of the outcome.
The key here, I'm afraid, is the word experience. So far as I know, we cannot at least yet time travel. So going back to the last fork in the road and taking the other leg does not seem possible. But what we can do is to put the experience in our memory banks against the day that a similar fork is presented to us.
A lot of this is developed in the story of Alice in Wonderland which is illustrated by Marc E. Jones in his commentary at http://www.sabian.org/. It makes one wonder that these signposts were left for us by some previous personalities namely Charles Dodgson otherwise known as Lewis Carroll.
But then it is Christmas time which is a magical time of the year.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year...
Friday, December 17, 2010
Death is Nature's Way of Telling You to Slow Down
The title of this Blog is from an old joke out of the depths of my childhood... it amused my first wife as I remember and of course I got a chuckle out of it too. But the implications are that there are cycles in life that we should perhaps pay attention to since after all.. we are a part of life.
The one that comes to mind quite readily is the one described by the planet mercury. Mercury as well as the earth orbits the sun. Both planets of course travel in different orbits at different speeds. Mercury has an annual travel of approximately 88 days while earth takes about 365 days to orbit the sun. This happens approximately three times during the earth year when Mercury appears to be traveling retrograde in its orbit with respect to us here on earth. This is like the phenomenon some of you might remember when looking out a train window as your train passes another on a parallel track. Due to the different speeds it appears that the train on the other track is actually going backwards relative to your point of view. And this is retrograde motion.
On the period that started on Dec. 10 and will last til Dec. 30, I decided to fix the garae door opener.
So I climbed up a step ladder and re-progammed one of the remote door openers. Fine .. no problem.
The second one proved to be a problem. It proved to be defective but it took about a half hour standing on that ladder, in a garage at about 40 degrees, in order for this stubborn old sicilian to give up on it. As I came off the ladder, I started shivering like it had gone out of style. I quickly went inside and put on a long-sleeved shirt and a wool sweater and kicked back in the La-z-boy in front of the heat vent. Both Barb and Luke were out of the house so I went to sleep to get warm. It didn't work. When Luke came in he found me shivering up a storm so he woke me up... when Barb came in she took my temperature... whoopee... 101. And my left calf and ankle wouldn't work. In the team huddle, I vetoed going to the emergency room at least until morning. And between the three of us I managed the climb to the second floor, took some Ibuprofen, and crawled into bed.
The next day, the fever broke and the leg didn't look too bad so I decided to wait some more treating it with Ibuprofen for the swelling and staying off the leg with long bouts in the La-z-boy. By Sunday, I knew that I had made a mistake. The calf was the size of a small football. It hurt. It was bright red and quite warm so now I was determined to charge the Doctor's office first thing on monday morning.
In the meantime Barb says that it was a cellulitus and with my artificial knee.. that was a baaaad thing.
So now this definitely was a loose end that needed tying up. The Doc said "this is a cellulitus" and I told him that nurse Barb had already worked that out. He prescribed Keflex and pronto... so now it is Friday and the swelling has gone done, the itching has stopped and the redness is now only a non-threatening pink. So then I continue the Keflex till the pills are all gone. There should be no repercussions from my procrastination and all is well with the world. Except....
Now I am not saying that because Mercury appeared retrograde that I got a very serious cellulitus. What I am saying is that Mercury retrograde and the cellulitus signaled the need to resolve a huge mound of paper big enough to lose a small dog in, some legal matters which could come back to haunt, some last minute shopping that hasn't been done with the big "C" day coming up fast and oh so many other things that might need tidying up in order to make life simpler.
So what I am suggesting is for the next couple of weeks or so, look around to see what loose ends you might have that got lost in the excitement of the Christmas season and tidy them up so you can ring in the New Year with a fresh clean slate and a spirit of 'Go getem Tiger'.
The one that comes to mind quite readily is the one described by the planet mercury. Mercury as well as the earth orbits the sun. Both planets of course travel in different orbits at different speeds. Mercury has an annual travel of approximately 88 days while earth takes about 365 days to orbit the sun. This happens approximately three times during the earth year when Mercury appears to be traveling retrograde in its orbit with respect to us here on earth. This is like the phenomenon some of you might remember when looking out a train window as your train passes another on a parallel track. Due to the different speeds it appears that the train on the other track is actually going backwards relative to your point of view. And this is retrograde motion.
On the period that started on Dec. 10 and will last til Dec. 30, I decided to fix the garae door opener.
So I climbed up a step ladder and re-progammed one of the remote door openers. Fine .. no problem.
The second one proved to be a problem. It proved to be defective but it took about a half hour standing on that ladder, in a garage at about 40 degrees, in order for this stubborn old sicilian to give up on it. As I came off the ladder, I started shivering like it had gone out of style. I quickly went inside and put on a long-sleeved shirt and a wool sweater and kicked back in the La-z-boy in front of the heat vent. Both Barb and Luke were out of the house so I went to sleep to get warm. It didn't work. When Luke came in he found me shivering up a storm so he woke me up... when Barb came in she took my temperature... whoopee... 101. And my left calf and ankle wouldn't work. In the team huddle, I vetoed going to the emergency room at least until morning. And between the three of us I managed the climb to the second floor, took some Ibuprofen, and crawled into bed.
The next day, the fever broke and the leg didn't look too bad so I decided to wait some more treating it with Ibuprofen for the swelling and staying off the leg with long bouts in the La-z-boy. By Sunday, I knew that I had made a mistake. The calf was the size of a small football. It hurt. It was bright red and quite warm so now I was determined to charge the Doctor's office first thing on monday morning.
In the meantime Barb says that it was a cellulitus and with my artificial knee.. that was a baaaad thing.
So now this definitely was a loose end that needed tying up. The Doc said "this is a cellulitus" and I told him that nurse Barb had already worked that out. He prescribed Keflex and pronto... so now it is Friday and the swelling has gone done, the itching has stopped and the redness is now only a non-threatening pink. So then I continue the Keflex till the pills are all gone. There should be no repercussions from my procrastination and all is well with the world. Except....
Now I am not saying that because Mercury appeared retrograde that I got a very serious cellulitus. What I am saying is that Mercury retrograde and the cellulitus signaled the need to resolve a huge mound of paper big enough to lose a small dog in, some legal matters which could come back to haunt, some last minute shopping that hasn't been done with the big "C" day coming up fast and oh so many other things that might need tidying up in order to make life simpler.
So what I am suggesting is for the next couple of weeks or so, look around to see what loose ends you might have that got lost in the excitement of the Christmas season and tidy them up so you can ring in the New Year with a fresh clean slate and a spirit of 'Go getem Tiger'.
Friday, December 10, 2010
WikiLeaks and our Personal World
Hi folks... I usually don't get on my soapbox but this issue with Wikileaks vs the World really rankles me down to my ankles. The internet is there for us all to enjoy in a spirit of connectedness and here we have a small group of "Hackers" who have developed the ability to intrude on our private lives with their techniques of snooping into emails and financial data bases and the like. Now they have the audacity to blackmail the world and extort from us the freedom of their leader who is spokesman for this concept. And yet they hide behind ficticieous names and go to all lengths to keep us from knowing who "they" are. The purpose of government is to protect the property of its citizens. As each of us know we do not reveal everything about ourselves but only that which we want the outside world to know. That is our private life, our private consciousness. We also have a social consciousness where we support government or society if you will for helping us protect our property. Like us as individuals, our government has a private side which it feels is necessary to go about their business of helping us protect our property.
Any of us who has had our identity stolen realizes not only the feeling of loss but the vulnerability to forces beyond our control. If you ever had your computer compromised by a virus or the like then this too is an invasion of your space, your privacy and from what I hear this can be a serious threat to not only your privacy but also to your property, your money and whatever.
I support the governments and the institutions of the World in their efforts to squash this threat and make the internet a safe place for our commerce, our communication with each other and the connectedness that we are heading for as a result of the internet.
As a great American once said, at the beginning of the War with Tripoli, "Millions for defense but not one penney for tribute".
If you agree with me.... write your comments by clicking on the little pencil below and do so even if you don't agree with me. Thank you all for your time.
Any of us who has had our identity stolen realizes not only the feeling of loss but the vulnerability to forces beyond our control. If you ever had your computer compromised by a virus or the like then this too is an invasion of your space, your privacy and from what I hear this can be a serious threat to not only your privacy but also to your property, your money and whatever.
I support the governments and the institutions of the World in their efforts to squash this threat and make the internet a safe place for our commerce, our communication with each other and the connectedness that we are heading for as a result of the internet.
As a great American once said, at the beginning of the War with Tripoli, "Millions for defense but not one penney for tribute".
If you agree with me.... write your comments by clicking on the little pencil below and do so even if you don't agree with me. Thank you all for your time.
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