Is it
T H A T
s i m p l e:
CHANGE YOUR WORDS
CHANGE YOUR WORLD
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm of the Day :
F I N D O U T
(say it differently)
USE FRESH WORDS
not to be heard
but experienced. . .
Contrary to popular belief, not all good things come from above. I can attest to that from not only doing countless outside graveside services but take a look at my car and that was in a church parking lot where you think I would have some form of protection. . .
But is if that’s not audacious enough what do you do with a car that looks like that or worse a car that looks like you feel? I mean the obvious answer is go get it washed, right?
But here’s the real stumper. . . when that happens to us,
when we literally get dumped on for no apparent reason, or even just because we happen to be in the wrong place at the right time, what do we do about that? Well, often we don’t do what is so obvious; we don’t get washed off; we don’t remove it. . . in fact, we kind a carry it like a badge of honor, as if to say to everyone, “Hey, look what happened to me! Look who did this to me!” And we hold onto it like it’s a long-lost-never-gonna-lose-the-the-precious-gift-again-kind-of-treasure. Let’s let’s face it, who wants to hold onto to something that’s icky/sticky/stanky/yucky? And yet most often THAT IS EXACTLY what we do. . .
So even when we can’t predict the next INCOMING DUMPING what we might be able to predict is how we RESPOND, not REACT but how we respond TO IT. The reacting part is what we do as a knee-jerk response. It’s what we want to show everybody. It is what we want to take the full page Sunday addition New York Times ad out and say, “LOOK WHAT HAPPENED TO ME; LOOK WHAT THEY DID TO ME!” But, RESPONDING is just merely WASHING/Getting rid of the not so nice OBVIOUS MESS and literally moving on. . .Difficult, huh? No seriously, REAL DIFFICULT STUFF because we just can’t ever really seem to do not just the obvious, but the actual SIMPLY obvious. . . .
Wait. What? With NO JUSTICE or punishment to THE DUMPER?
Yeah, wow. With no apparent punishment. . . especially from the one that’ll further bog you down by assuming the roles of jury, judge, and executioner: Y O U
Now here’s the real problem we know this. WE KNOW that we know this. WE WILL BET OUT LIVES that we know this. But, but the next time we get the dumped on from something not-so-good-from-above we will act like we don’t know it all. . .
Hmmmmmmm. Who’s making the bigger MESS HERE?
(a g a i n)
Kill’s with kindness
That cliche won’t buy you a cup of soup on a cold day
or a glass of iced-tea on a hot one
but it doesn’t keep
U S
from saying it over and over again
with any situation that brings us to
the gutters
of what to do
when someone
W R O N G S
US. . .
or does it
Have you ever once
felt threatened for doing an
ACT OF KINDNESS
E V E R ?
Friends and family are paying tribute to Lori Kaye, who was killed Saturday after a gunman opened fire at the Chabad of Poway synagogue north of San Diego, also injuring three others.
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who was injured in the attack, described Kaye, 60, as “the example of kindness to the fullest extent.”
Here’s what to know about Kaye:
Who was Lori Kaye?
Kaye, a San Diego native, is survived by her husband, a doctor, and a 22-year-old daughter, her friend and fellow congregation member Roneet Lev told CNN.
Another friend, Audrey Jacobs, posted a tribute to Kaye on Facebook: “You were always running to do a mitzvah (good deed) and gave tzedaka (charity) to everyone. Your final good deed was taking the bullets for Rabbi Mendel Goldstein to save his life.”
CNN reports that at a Sunday night vigil for Kaye, Rabbi Goldstein — a longtime friend — said Kaye had been a kind and generous member of the congregation, giving the example of how she had accompanied a woman with breast cancer to her doctor appointments. “She went out of her way until the moment that that woman passed away,” the rabbi said.
Why was Kaye in the synagogue?
Kaye was at the service on Saturday — the last day of Passover — to honor her mother, who had recently died, Lev said. Kaye’s husband and daughter were also at the service.
Rabbi Goldstein told reporters the gunman shot Kaye in the lobby of the synagogue, before turning the gun on him and opening fire. The Rabbi lost a finger, but the shooter’s gun “miraculously jammed,” he said. The gunman fled the scene and later surrendered to police.
In the moments after the shooting, Kaye’s husband was called to help a wounded congregant and fainted when he realized it was his wife, Rabbi Goldstein added.
Lori Kaye was taken to a local hospital, but died shortly thereafter.
Who are the rest of the wounded?
Authorities said 8-year-old Noya Dahan and her 34-year-old uncle, Almog Peretz, sustained shrapnel injuries. Both have been released from the hospital.
Dahan was wounded in the face and leg. Her father Israel Dahan told ABC news that his family moved to California after facing rocket attacks in their former home near the Gaza Strip.
Peretz, who was visiting California from Israel, was hit in the leg and helped children escape through a side door, ABC reports.
Who knew that simple
RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS
would become an actual deadly act?
Does it change things now?
Dare we literally give our lives
to save another
without a moment to decide
what not to do
OR TO DO
in blink-of-the-eye-click-of-trigger quickness. . .
Lori Kaye, who was in the Temple on the last day of Passover to honor the recent death of her mother, just didn’t jump in front of the Rabbi and took bullets meant for him; she jumped into our hearts and began a tsunami that has washed upon shores to ever change the very geography of them; as Caring Catalyst’s we can’t reduce that to a mere ripple, a wave come and gone. . .
or
W E D O
. . .in that sad case
THEY WIN
Lori Kaye, 60, was killed in a shooting at the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California on April 27. Audrey JacobsBY CIARA NUGENT 8:22 AM EDT
T H E Y
L I F E
is what you
M A K E
T H E Y
just may be wrong. . .
It just might be
L I F E
is what you
R E A D
When I accepted the challenge to just post 7 books that I love with no explanations, no reviews; just one picture of a cover each day for a week the problem wasn’t the ‘no explanations, no review’ part; it as trying to figure out
THE SEVEN
FULL DISCLOSURE:
I could take up the challenge for the next 52 weeks or the next 30, 52 weeks and I’m still not so sure that I’d
GET IT
right
but
I T
wouldn’t matter. . .
only the reading would!
How does this rate to fit into a video Monday Caring Catalyst blog post?
R E A D I N G
is the number one thing that’s
cleared my land
plowed my field
planted seeds
watered them
cultivated
nurtured
and finally
H A R V E S T E D
a most magnificent crop
of goodness
I could ever hope to
receive
to
GIVE
So. . .
what do you read when you read. . .
The best books I’ve ever read
have ever read me
and that’s not only made all of the difference;
it’s truly made me
DIFFERENT
(f o r e v e r)
Now. . .
for THAT
n e x t
book. . .
We probably all did it. . .
not only played in mud. . .
but actually
A T E I T
. . .No
it wasn’t probably one of my brightest thoughts
or better days
but then again
sometimes the
l e s s o n s
we learn aren’t the most
tastiest
but they do cause an
unforgettable memory. . .
I remember the day
I remember playing by myself in the side yard
with a spoon
that doubled as a
shovel
or a food digger. . .
What I don’t remember
is when I wrote the poem
or obviously where I put
the scrap of paper
I scribbled it on. . .
M U D P I E S
I re-member
the first mud pie
I ever ate
Tasted like none other
Made it myself
playing in
side yard
dirt pile
looked like
Nestle’s Quick
Stirred in
Dribbled hose water
mixed oh so messily
t h i c k
no stones for
supposed crunches
big soup spoon
didn’t daintily taste
boldly gulped
too proud
to spit out
too embarrassed to admit
for many calendar pages later
yet still knowing
it wasn’t the worst
thing I ever
m o u t h e d
or
t a s t e d
even now
the smile has never
ceased
or begun
to wane
intoxicatingly
d e l i c i o u s
May I have
A N O T H E R
It’s been a long time. . .
running through a mud puddle
or eating a horrible mud pie
thought to be the richest
most indulgent of chocolates. . .
uhhhhhhh. . .
maybe too long. . .
but there’s always another mud puddle
that awaits
calls
taunts
Even now
it continues to teach:
JUST BECAUSE
THE WATER SETTLES
DOESN’T MEAN
I HAVE TO. . .
You?
Come on. . .
I hear the water is fine
. . .and the taste. . .
s e c o n d t o n o n e
ARE YOU T H A T ARTIST
in your life. . .
In Another’s. . .
Are you The Christoper Columbus in Search of the lost Continent in you. . . ?
7 lessons about finding the work you were meant to do. . .
I love articles like this
because they imply something magical could happen to you
if you just followed
THE STEPS
THE GUIDELINES
THE MAP
THE PERSONAL GPS
THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .THE. . .
Emily Pidgeon
You don’t “find your calling,” you fight for it — and other lessons from people who found their passion (sometimes late in life).
Whether it was during a career aptitude test or in a heart-to-heart chat after getting laid off, chances are someone has talked to you about how to “find your calling.” It’s one of those phrases people toss about. But StoryCorps founder Dave Isay takes issue with it … specifically, the verb.
“Finding your calling — it’s not passive,” he says. “When people have found their calling, they’ve made tough decisions and sacrifices in order to do the work they were meant to do.”
In other words, you don’t just “find” your calling — you have to fight for it. And it’s worth the fight. “People who’ve found their calling have a fire about them,” says Isay, the winner of the 2015 TED Prize. “They’re the people who are dying to get up in the morning and go do their work.”
Over a decade of listening to StoryCorps interviews, Isay noticed that people often share the story of how they discovered their calling — and now, he’s collected dozens of great stories on the subject into a new book, Callings: The Purpose and Passion of Work. Below, he shares 7 takeaways from the hard-won fight to find the work you love.
1. Your calling is at the intersection of a Venn diagram of three things: doing something you’re good at, feeling appreciated, and believing your work is making people’s lives better. “When those three things line up, it’s like lightning,” Isay says. He doesn’t suggest that a person has to be a surgeon saving lives to feel like they have a calling; think of the diner waitress who talks to customers and makes them feel loved. How do you find this overlap? “You have to shut out all the chatter of what your friends are telling you to do, what your parents are telling you to do, what society is telling you to do,” Isay says, “and just go to that quiet place inside you that knows the truth.”
2. Your calling often comes out of difficult experiences. What lurks in that quiet place will be a defining experience — quite possibly a painful one. Isay points to an interview in Callings with 24-year-old teacher Ayodeji Ogunniyi. “He was studying to be a doctor when his father was murdered. He realized that what he was really meant to do was be a teacher,” says Isay. “He says that every time he walks into a classroom, his father is walking in with him.” This theme of people turning their hardest experiences into a new path runs throughout the book. “Having an experience that really shakes you and reminds you of your mortality can be a very clarifying event in people’s lives. Oftentimes, it leads to changes,” he says. “We spend a lot of time working, so it can really change your priorities in terms of work life.”
3. Calling often takes courage and ruffles feathers. Elsewhere in Callings, we hear about Wendell Scott, who became the first African-American NASCAR driver in 1952, and kept on driving despite threats against his life. From scientist Dorothy Warburton who dealt with extreme sexism as she conducted research to break the stigma around miscarriage. From Burnell Cotlon, who opened the first grocery store in the Lower 9th Ward after Hurricane Katrina because he wasn’t about to let his old neighborhood’s spirit fade. Calling, says Isay, very often starts with taking a stand against a status quo that simply isn’t acceptable, and then dedicating your work to changing it: “It’s work ignited by hope, love, or defiance — and stoked by purpose and persistence.”
4. Other people often nudge you toward calling. Sharon Long had worked odd jobs most of her life. As Isay tells it, “Her daughter was going to college, and as the bursar was helping them with financial aid forms, she said quietly to herself, ‘I wish I could’ve gone to college.’ The bursar responded, ‘It’s not too late.’” Sharon enrolled in an art program, and on her advisor’s suggestion, took forensic anthropology as her science. “The advisor suggested it for no other reason than he thought it was the easiest science course for the science requirement,” says Isay. “But the minute she sat in that class, it was boom — this is what she was meant to do.” Isay tells this story to illustrate how calling, while very personal, is also relational. “People bump you this way and that way,” he says, often without realizing it. “When people find their callings, they want to honor those people who helped them get there.”
5. What comes after identifying your calling is what really matters. The old ‘finding your calling’ phraseology makes it sound like a calling is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow — you find it, and the story’s over. But Isay stresses that your calling is an ongoing process. “Understanding what your calling is — that’s very different than the blood, sweat and tears of actually doing it,” he says. Pursuing a calling may require going back to school or apprenticing; it may require starting a business. Often, notes Isay, it leads a person into a line of work that’s in service of others. “This book is basically a love letter to nurses, teachers, social workers — the people who don’t often get celebrated for the work they do,” he says.
6. Age is irrelevant. Isay found his calling when he was 21 and interviewed a man who’d been part of the Stonewall riots. “The minute I hit record, I knew that being a journalist and interviewing people was what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” he says. “I feel very lucky that lightning struck when I was very young.” But collecting stories for the book reminded him that a calling can be discovered at any age. The book includes an interview with someone who knew they wanted to be an NBA referee at age 15, and another who worked as an accountant for 30 years before discovering his passion for slicing lox. “Doing the work you’re meant to do is one of the most satisfying, remarkable experiences that a person can have,” says Isay, “so never give up.”
7. Calling often doesn’t come with a big paycheck. Another trend Isay sees in stories of people who find their calling: they often involve leaving a high-paying job for one that’s lower-paying but more satisfying. “The message we send to young people is that you want to do as little work as you can to make as much money as you can — that’s the dream,” says Isay. “But the wisdom in the StoryCorps archive is that there’s another, much more rewarding dream of taking risks and working very hard to live with integrity.” In the end, that’s the lesson he took away from writing this book. “There are no millionaires, no billionaires, no celebrities, nobody with a big Twitter following,” he says. “Just stories can teach us a lot about lives fully lived.”
Even more powerful is this one single, revelation:
The DEBUNKING of one of the worst lies ever told to you,
made even more devastating because it’s told to you by people you love;
People you admire; look up to; respect. . .
YOU HAVE A PURPOSE. . .
(NO YOU DON’T)
YOU HAVE A MEANING. . .
(THAT’S A LIE)
YOU HAVE A DESTINY. . .
(THAT’S A BUNCH OF BUNK)
YOU HAVE A REASON. . .
(THAT’S A CROCK OF SOMETHING STANKY YOU DON’T WANT IN YOUR PANTRY)
T R U T H :
You don’t have a Purpose
You don’t have a Meaning
You don’t have a Destiny
You don’t have a Reason. . .
THEY ARE PLURAL. . .
Not SINGULAR
The Purpose
The Meaning
The Destiny
The Reason
Y O U
had as a infant wasn’t the one you had as a toddler or a pre-schooler or in junior high or when you graduated from high school, college, with your first full time job, when you got married, had kids, got divorced, remarried, more kids, another career, moved, had grandkids, retired. . .
F A C T :
You’ve had more Purposes,
You’ve had more Meanings,
You’ve had more Destinies,
You’ve had more Reasons
slip through your hands than you’ve ever taken advantage;
THEY ARE ENDLESS
and FOREVER CHURNING IN YOU
WHAT’S THE USE(S)
what indeed for
N O W
Kind of makes you wonder, huh. . .
D E A T H
Billy Collins has long been one of my favorite contemporary poets and he ponders
D E A T H
this way in his poem entitled,
M Y N U M B E R
Is Death miles away from this house,
reaching for a window in Cinncinati
or breathing down the neck of a lost hiker
in British Columbia?
Is he too busy making arrangements,
tampering with air brakes,
scattering cancer cells like seeds,
loosening the wooden beams of roller coasters
to bother with my hidden cottage
that visitors find so hard to find?
Or is he stepping from a black car
parked at the dark end of the lane,
shaking open the familiar cloak,
its hood raised like the head of a crow,
and removing the scythe from the trunk?
Did you have any trouble with the directions?
I will ask, as I start talking my way out of this.
I remember at a very young age welcoming d e a t h; walking with it; talking to it; trying to understand what it all meant. I don’t know if I’ve ever come to heads or tails of that but I know doing some 26 funerals a month for the past 10 years has brought me closer to it than I’ve ever had in my entire life. The Buddhist tell us that attachment is the form of all suffering and detachment helps us not suffer as much. I, like Many, am a poor Buddhist. . .
I remember as a five or six year old kid, sitting in the backseat one Friday night as we were making our way to my grandparents, which was more of a weekly event than not. . .I told my parents matter of factly that I hope I would die before them because I would be too sad if they died first; there was a palpable silence I can remember and that nervous look between parents that wasn’t all that secret before they both, in machine gun like fashion began sputtering off all kinds of reasons why that’s “not the way it’s suppose to be.”
There was the death of my grandfather when I was six and then the death of my other grandfather right before my 14th birthday that I believed I was directly responsible and then aunts, uncles, great grandmother and grandmothers and friends in high-school. . .
In a strange way I have learned to not just open the door to death but actually unhinge it. And by just unhinging it, it’s let it come and go in places in my life like a undamable flood waters that seep in spots you didn’t even know exists and before it drys all of the way it leaves an unmistakable odor that never quiet evaporates or gets tamed. . .
I’ve long ago filled out my own DNRCC and written letters to be read ‘at that appropriate time. . .I’ve taped parts of my own Celebration of Life so I can have the “LAST WORD” and intend to attend it if I get a glimpse or a longer than usual ‘heads-up’ that it’s looming before me in my most immediate future;
I’ve even gone further as to actually imagine trying to envision what it would be like to not only lose my parents today, this year, but also losing my sister and brothers to the SHADOW that knows no Light. . .
And yes, I’ve dared hugging the Porcupine-full-barbed-quails-exposed and plunging deep, what it would be like to have Erin, my wife die or any one of my four daughters, my son, my five granddaughters or my
grandson. . .
O U C H
That seems to go little bit further than what we would call
mindfulness. . .
It’s way less than mindlessness, too. . .
Try it go ahead and finish these two sentences:
BEFORE I DIE I WOULD LIKE TO_________________________________
THIS IS WHAT IT WOULD FEEL LIKE IF ONE OF MY LOVED ONE DIED______________
Write out your own Obituary. . .
G O T H E R E
TASTE IT
SNIFF IT
HEAR IT
SEE IT
TOUCH IT
Recall the Laughters. . .all of them
It certainly doesn’t matter if a Tree gets hit by lightning and no longer can bear fruit or sprout leaves compared to if my wife or my children, grandchildren or even my dog Molly died; and it’s even much different then if somebody that is the same age as my wife or my child or my parents die. . .this mindfulness, this acceptance of death; this detachment, is it somehow making me live better; making me love deeper; making me feel and experience more freshly and more deeply?
I’m not sure, but I do know that it’s not any L E S S. And by taking this door and unhinging it, it allows these thoughts, these feelings to sort of come and go without stopping them or judging them or disallowing them. And it is in that very act that it disarms them; Renders them less potent; Makes them, DARE I SAY, more
n e i g h b o r l y. . . ?
It seems, these things are the very seeds once planted we don’t fully ever get to see the plants but know that they grow just the same, and that we are not just tenders of those plants, but also harvesters. It’s growing season always and in ALL PLACES because it never is not THAT season among the Seasons. . .
So exactly what is the Takeaway?
Simply that it is not the same for each person or any person in your way of dealing with anything good and bad; Life or Death is not exactly a RIGHT or WRONG WAY so much as YOUR WAY and most likely it’ll be different than Another’s WAY or Experience. . .
SO EACTLY WHAT IS THE TAKEAWAY?
Teach me your way; let me learn of it and don’t judge me too harshly if I don’t follow it to every detail but take from it lessons that I need to learn at the very moment that I need to learn even again, and let that be enough for the both of us. . .
After all what makes us Caring Catalysts. . .
What makes us Anything
What makes us Everything
is not the fear we are nothing. . .
It’s the Fear that we
WE CEASE TO BE
CARING CATALYSTS
ANYTHING
EVERYTHING
ANYONE’S
EVERYONE’S. . .
Excuse me now. . .
it’s time to do a little dying
and place my head on the pillow;
close my eyes and be asleep
before the next song on my playlist comes up. . .
And even as I die in this way,
A G A I N
(as we each do every night with even a not-so-good-sleep)
I am confident that I will RESURRECT
either to a new day
or to the One that is never ending. . .
For there indeed is a TIME
tick-ticking away. . .
a time for both
and yes. . .
indeed a time for all
In the 1990s, some researchers observed that French people—despite eating lots of saturated fat—tended to have low rates of heart disease. Dubbing this phenomenon the “French paradox,” the researchers speculated that regular wine consumption may be protecting their hearts from disease.
A little later, in the early-2000s, evidence began to pile up tying Mediterranean-style eating and drinking patterns with longer lifespans. One component of these diets that got a lot of attention was the consumption of wine—red wine, in particular.
Even among people who ate healthy Mediterranean diets, those who also drank wine regularly and in moderate amounts—a glass or two a day, usually red and usually with meals—lived longer than heavier or lighter drinkers, some of the research concluded. One study found that middle-aged Italian men who drank up to five glasses of wine a day—almost all of it red—tended to live longer than men who drank more or less alcohol.
Almost 30 years have passed since those early “red wine is good for you” studies came to light. While some newer research on saturated fat makes the French paradox seem a little less paradoxical—that is, there’s some disagreement about whether saturated is truly unhealthy—public and scientific interest in red wine’s longevity benefits is still strong.
Unfortunately, the evidence supporting those benefits is mixed.
For example, a 2017 review in the journal Circulation found that the bulk of evidence suggests that low-to-moderate red wine consumption is good for the heart. And there’s a lot of research linking light, regular drinking—not just of red wine, but of any alcohol—to longer lifespans. On the other hand, a studypublished last year in The Lancet concluded that even very small amounts of alcohol raise a drinker’s risk for cancer and early death.
Findings are inconsistent, but researchers are searching for explanations. “It’s been hard to tease out why small amounts of alcohol seem to be linked with decreases in various diseases,” says Aaron White, a senior scientific advisor with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. While red wine has gotten a lot of attention, he says there’s evidence that any type of alcohol, as long as it’s consumed in moderation, may confer longevity benefits.
“Alcohol could be beneficial through biological mechanisms like increasing [healthy] HDL cholesterol, affecting clotting mechanisms and blood platelets, or [having] effects on the vascular system,” says Dr. Claudia Kawas, a professor of neurology at the University of California, Irvine whose research has found that some of the oldest-living adults tend to drink alcohol in moderation.
But one of the challenges in assessing the health effects of red wine (or any other type of alcohol) is the fact that other lifestyle variables can muddy the evidence. For example, a 2006 study published in the BMJ examined people’s grocery purchases and found that wine drinkers tended to buy healthier foods than beer drinkers. If the average wine drinker eats more healthfully than most, that could explain away some of the longevity benefits linked to vino.
“It may be that the association has nothing to do with alcohol consumption, but rather with things that may travel along with alcohol consumption,” Kawas says. People who drink alcohol may simply socialize more, she offers, which comes with health benefits, and they may not have illnesses that would discourage drinking. These are all possible explanations for the link between longevity and alcohol consumption.
But there are some unique components of red wine—which are not found in other types of alcohol—that may be especially healthy.
Red wine is packed with bioactive compounds, including a number of flavonoids and phenols that research has independently tied to various health benefits. In particular, a lot of the red wine studies have focused on the effects of resveratrol, a compound found in the skin of grapes. “The concentration of polyphenols, and more specifically resveratrol, is 10-fold higher in red wine than in other alcoholic drinks,” says Dr. Adrian Baranchuk, a professor of medicine at Queen’s University in Canada and coauthor of the 2017 Circulationstudy on red wine.
Studies have tied resveratrol to improved heart health and longevity, and there’s evidence that resveratrol may combat inflammation and help improve blood health. But a lot of this evidence has come from animal or lab models, and some research on humans has failed to find any effects from resveratrol.
Still, focusing on specific red wine compounds may be missing the forest for the trees. “There are hundreds of different chemicals in alcoholic drinks, and it may well be the net effect of these chemicals as much as the alcohol itself [that provides a benefit],” says Dr. Paul Gow, a liver transplant physician with Australia’s Austin Health who has examined the research on red wine and health. Gow says red wine seems to be associated with “the most benefits.” But again, the findings are conflicting.
“It’s entirely possible that wine consumption has some added benefits,” White says. “But it’s a complicated issue, and it’s been hard to tease out answers.” At this point, he says there’s not enough data to recommend that drinkers switch to red wine—or that non-drinkers take up alcohol in order to extend their life.
“Despite hundreds of studies,” he adds, “there are things we just don’t know.”
B U T
There are things we do Know
There are things we are most certain
That no matter what we eat
That no matter what we drink
That no matter what meds we take
That no matter what Doctors we see
That no matter what therapies we try
That no matter what Medical Communities we visit
That no matter what interventions we attempt
One out of One of US
D I E S
Do you want to Live Longer?
Get Remembered?
Be a wave that becomes an everlasting-never-ending Ripple that becomes an eternal Tsunami rearranging shores and changing landscapes. . .
Be A Caring Catalyst
Be more than a pulse
Be more than an inhaled/exhaled breath
Be more than just another quickend heartbeat
Be A Caring Catalyst
Change yourself
Changes others and the World
. . .that’ll go a very long way
past the etched dates/dash
on your tombstone. . .
BE THE DIFFERENCE
Be the Difference
between
STAYING ALIVE
and
BEING ALIVE
T O A S T
to
THAT
C H E E R S
WHAT’S YOUR WORD. . .
I’m not asking you to give your Word
I’m asking for something much more valuable. . .
YOUR WORD
Dictionary of Obscure SorrowsPublished on Apr 30, 2015SUBSCRIBE 296KWhile you’re in it, life seems epic. Fiery, tenuous, and unpredictable. But once you have some distance from it, everything seems to shrink, until it’s almost out of focus. So you begin scanning your life looking for something interesting or beautiful. But all you see is ordinary people assembled in their tiny classrooms and workspaces, each of us moving around in little steps, like tokens on a game board. ETYMOLOGY From Greek koinos, “common, ordinary, stripped of specialness” + phobia, “fear”. THE DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE SORROWS http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows… The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows is a compendium of invented words written by John Koenig. Each original definition aims to fill a hole in the language-to give a name to emotions we all might experience but don’t yet have a word for. Follow the project, give feedback, suggest an emotion you need a word for, or just tell me about your day.
What is it?
If you could make up a new one like John Koenig did in his
THE DICTIONARY OF OBSCURE SORROWS
What is THAT Word
WHAT IS YOUR WORD
Puts just
GIVING YOUR WORD
into a who other universe,
h u h. . .
K O I N O P H O B I A
may be the word
that spells the universal fear
that maybe LIFE has been meaningless. . .
A FEAR
I’ve heard expressed at the bedsides of many of many a dying patient
which in essence
is more false
than the Sun
being a bright candle
with an inextinguishable wick
in a snow globe
that cannot any longer be shaken. . .
Pssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
G E T S H A K E N
Forget about
Giving your Word
or
Finding your Word
BE
Be your Word
Explode the Dictionary
BE
undefinably
awesome
l i v i n g
YOUR
Purpose(S)
Reason(S)
Destiny(S)
M E A N I N G ( S )
I wanted to Disappear
To get so lost
To go so very Un-GPS’s
To go so very off Grid’ed
To go so very Un-mapped
To go so very Un-charted
To go so very Un-detected
To go so very Un-abracadabra
v a n i s h e d
That a happen chance NoBody
Or a wandering SomeBody
Or a searching AnyBody
could ever find me
only to Christopher Columbus
d i s c o v e r
THAT
road is not a
Street
not an
Avenue
not a
Boulevard
not a
2/4/6/8 lane highway
but a Road
always
highly
occupied
Traffic Jammed
DAMN
This is a poem I wrote after a day that felt like a month that can’t be found on a calendar; a day that makes you want to become a skilled magician so you can slight-of-the-hand-blink-of-the-eye-quick-vanish without so much as reflection from a dirty mirror or a wisp of lingering smoke. . .
But here’s the best thing about day’s that feel like months not found on any calendars:
THEY END
and what they take from you
compares not what they gift you:
S T R E N G T H
A detour
sometimes masks itself as a
short cut
and always something more than just another
Way
The detour?
Compassion
The Short cut?
Giving it
The Way?
More often than you have. . .
Talk about a wild ride on a dark night
(on a road that seemingly doesn’t exist)
Giddy Up
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