The Caring Catalyst

Who Cares - What Matters

KNOWING (LIVING) YOUR WHY

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ATHENS, March 8 (Reuters) – In her tiny Athens apartment, 93-year-old Ioanna Matsouka has knit thousands of brightly coloured scarves for children in need from Greece to Ukraine – and she has no plans to quit just yet.

“Until I die, I will be knitting,” Matsouka said. Her knitting needles clicked through her expert fingers, her nails painted red. “It brings me joy to share them.”  Since she took up knitting in the 1990s, Matsouka has easily made over 3,000 scarves, her daughters estimate.

In the hallway by the door, shopping bags filled with her latest creations await their new home. A knitted patchwork blanket is thrown over the sofa where she spends her days.In the beginning, the scarves were gifted to friends. As stock grew, they were donated to children’s shelters across Greece. Then, through acquaintances, they reached children in Bosnia and Ukraine. The latest batch of 70 went to a refugee camp near Athens this winter, via the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

“The fact that we give them away gives her strength,” said her daughter Angeliki.

She recounted drawings and mail her mother received over the years: “Thank you, be well, keep going. You gave joy to children, you gave joy to people… That’s her only reward: a letter, a few words.”

Matsouka knits one scarf a day, now with small imperfections. Her vision is impaired and she suffers from bouts of severe facial pain, a condition known as trigeminal neuralgia.

Angeliki says her mother is an example of resilience and optimism.
Matsouka wakes up every morning, drinks a glass of milk, puts on her pearl earrings and gets to work. She takes a break for lunch and a nap, then painstakingly knits into the night.She may have even found the secret to a long life in it, she says.

“It’s the happiness I get from giving,” she said, sitting beside a big blue bag brimming with yarn.

HOW’S THAT FOR SOME KNITTED UP LOVE.         .         .

KNOWING YOUR

 W                  H                  Y

AT ANY AGE
IS THE GREATEST SECRET
TO NOT JUST GROWING OLD
BUT GROWING FOREVER
…just sayin’

Brrrrrrrrr(ing) The CHANGE

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I start my mornings with a cold plunge. For three minutes I immerse myself in approximately 44 degree water for three minutes.  

The health benefits are manifold and it’s worth looking up.

However, health is just the way I rationalize it. You see, at 5:45 AM, 25° outside, the last thing I want to do is step naked into my cold garage and subject myself to freezing water. Therefore, making the choice to do the difficult, dreaded, extremely uncomfortable thing, and DOING IT, is a metaphor. I’m proving myself to myself. I am creating a habit of doing the hard stuff so it becomes muscle memory. I want my natural inclination to be that I just automatically do the difficult stuff first.

I am showing myself that I WILL make the tough choices, have the difficult conversation, stand up in the face of hate and adversity, embrace discomfort, and push my own limits.

It’s my daily reminder that the best things in life rarely come from my comfort zone.

I’m wondering if I’m the odd-man-out in choosing to doing something difficult every day as a personal challenge and metaphor, or if you do that in some way… set your pace, affirm your standard of excellence, prove yourself to yourself?
So.            .             .
Up for taking the
P L U N G E
to change
to be different
to brrrrrr(EAK)
out of your
COMFORT ZONE.            .            .
I don’t know my Mike Rayburn personally, but only know him through the National Speakers Association globally. When I read his post, it made me start thinking how much I do in my comfort zone and rarely what I do out of my comfort zone and taking a plunge in cold water at 5:15 in the morning would definitely be out of my comfort zone, but not comparably to the things that every day I have a chance to do out of my comfort zone that would take much more courage than a cold morning plunge; How about you?
Where’s your comfort zone and how much time do you spend in it and what kind of caring catalyst things do you think you could do and would even be possible if just for three minutes a day you took the plunge and did something out of your comfort zone?
I guess there’s only one way to find out and it ain’t to dip your toe into the cold water
like without hesitation,
jumping in head first.          .          .
R  E  A  D  Y
S  E  T
GO

JUST A MOMENT. . .DO YOU EVER WONDER?

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Ahhhhhhhh the wonder of WONDERING.          .          .






Now that you have been thoroughly
WONDER BOMBED
just what are you
 W          O          N          D          E          R          I          N        G
Pssssssssssssssssssssst:
How about some
EXTRA CREDIT
for WONDERING
ABOUT
H A P P I N E S S

Ahhhhhhhhhh.            .            .JUST A MOMENT.            .            .
THE WONDER OF WONDER

ANGRY SILENCE

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I have blogged this video at least a couple of times before and I love how it pops up for me willy-nilly out of nowhere to remind me about SILENCE.  When Paul Simon wrote this in 1965 it was a song that had a different but very much the same meaning as it does now YES, some nearly 60 years later: NOBODY LISTENS and even fewer actually HEAR which THEN and NOW make for an ANGRY SILENCE


ANGRY SILENCE

Have you heard
what I didn’t say

It’s a silence
that uses no words
needs no catch phrases
or lengthy paragraphs
and often gets misunderstood as
Angry Silence

Harsh as it seems
it delivers a soft message
with a strong meaning
of not to be well known
but to be worth knowing
always not in a way
to be served
but to serve
without angrily being denied
Wordlessly

THESE WORDS

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Guilty I have piles and piles of books that I have not read even even at the moment that I’m ordering other ones that will make a part of yet other piles.

I lie to myself and say oh I’ll get to that or wow this really looks good and I’ll read it immediately and of course it ends up in another pile. Sometimes the nearer the pile the closer I will get to reading it but this past week, my friend Beth told me that I needed to take this book out of a pile and put it on top of the next one to read and I’m glad she did.             .               .

Rarely do, I read the authors note before I write in a story or a book but this time I did and once again, I’m really glad that I did, because on the second page was an excerpt from the Hippocratic oath.

One of the reasons why I like, holding a physical book in my hand is because I can dog ear all the pages; I can write in the margins, I can underline, and I can write what I want to write at that time when I read a passage.            .         .

This excerpt from the Hippocratic oath literally has grabbed me around the throat where I can’t get past too many other pages before I come back to that and oh yes, it is dog eared and oh yes, it has been underlined and exaggerated on the side because even though I’m not a physician, I like to think that I’m a caregiver who tries to offer some kind of comfort to every person that I meet whether I know them or not; whether they are in hospice or in a hospital setting or not. This passage, kind of brings mirror to face and lets me see, allows me to understand and removes some protective buffers I insulate myself with so that I can fully, unabashedly experience my WHY.     .    .it has nothing to do with a vocation or a paycheck so much as a lifestyle.


H            E            R            E

As a mere human just BEING
sit with this again
and this time don’t let it wash over you
so much as
SINK
throughly
INTO YOUR
Y      O      U      E      S      T
OF  YOU

JUST A MOMENT

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H          E          Y
JUST
A 
MOMENT

Seriously.          .           .
t  a  k  e
J    U     S     T
A 
M  O  M  E  N  T.            .              .
or at least

8.25 seconds
Average Human Attention Span Statistics.    .   .The average human attention span is 8.25 seconds. Attention spans can range from 2 seconds to over 20 minutes. The average human attention span decreased by almost 25% from 2000 to 2015. Humans have shorter attention spans than goldfish (9 seconds).

Pssssssssssssssssssssssssst:
That was 9 years ago; it’s even shorter now
So I’m going to switch things up.  On my Wednesday Blog, I usually do an educational piece that usually reads anywhere from 3 to 8 minutes
and given the information ahead
THAT’S
WAY
TOO
L                    o                       N                g
so beginning with this blog post
on Wednesday’s I’ll be doing a quick
(less than 2 minutes)
video that’ll take you,
(you’ve got it)
JUST
A
MOMENT

If you wouldn’t mind,
I’d like your feedback or your feelings on this
new format
but only if it’s
JUST A MOMENT
otherwise my attention span of a gnat
might not be around to
get the message
Just sayin’

 

ONE LIGHT, MANY CANDLES

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Are you a LIGHT
that are a part of many Candles.          .          .             ?

ARE YOU A LIGHT THAT IS A PART OF MANY CANDLES
may not be the right question.          .             .
DO 
YOU
WANT 
TO
BE
Pssssssssssssssst:
JOIN ME
There’s songs to be sung
Candles to be lit
Lights
to
be
shared.      .       .

 

WINTERINGS

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iceberg near mountain during day
Photo by Derek Oyen on Unsplash
[UNTITLED]
Yasuhara Teishitsu
Translated from the Japanese by R. H Blyth

Ice and water,
Their difference resolved,
Are friends again.


(My thanks to Yasuhara Teishitsu and the translator. 
Unfortunately I can't remember the source of the poem.)
In Northeast Ohio we can often have four seasons in one day
and worse, we can experience all four seasons inside us, too.    .    .
It's up to each of us to bring Sun Shine to each day
.      .      .but will we.           .        .       ?
Now that would be a great (never-ending Season)
WINTERINGS
We need no crumpled calendar pages
to announce the comings and goings
of the Seasons
No synchronized Apps
through an un-weathered Cloud
to Announce our Events
Our seemingly important moments
or lacksadaisical 'To-Do's'
No. . .it all settles down wobblingly
to our eventual Winterings
with one guaranteed Promise:
'There is no Winter that's never not been
Obliterated by the Spring'
. . .Especially when it feels like our
Final One

SHE MAKES THINGS GROW (BETTER)

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Mark Twain
once said,
“The two most important days in your life are
THE DAY YOU ARE BORN
a n d
THE DAY YOU FIND OUT WHY”

We celebrate a person’s Birthday

Not because of the Day that they were born

But because of what they have born

Because of what they have given Birth in us. . .

I’ve celebrated well over 38
of my wife,
Erin’s Birthday’s
with her
And not one of them
has ever been without the over apparent
R E C O G N I T I O N
that I,
that many
are far more better
no so much
because she’s been Born
but because of what she has BIRTHED
in us.   .   .
Erin
creates
CARING CATALYSTS
in everyone she meets
or those who come across
her paths

which means that the best
Birthday Gift of all
Is what you cause to be born in others.      .      .
Your are the next Rung
on all of our Ladder’s
that take us Higher
.      .     .Always Higher
There’s no Candle on a Cake
that could ever illuminate more
and it’s
u n e x t i n g u i s h a b l e
Some actually powerfully prove
their Flicker
never compares to the
F L A M E
they ignite
and spread to others
.   .   .talk about a
fortunate inextinguishable inferno.      .       .

SHE MAKES THINGS GROW

All ground is fertile
and she proved it
by taking what had no life
L I V E
She makes my soul her soil
when she rakes deeply
and prunes, sharply
The ache is more of a yearning
Ahhhhhhhh
than a moaning Owwwwwwl
She makes things grow
out of nothingness
an Everythingness
hardly without notice
but never unnotable
BIRTHDAYS
MARK YEARS;
M  O  M  E  N  T  S
make
L I F E T I M E S
and I just can’t stop smiling
for all of the things
SHE MAKES GROW
in everyone she knows
and meets

A BILLION REASONS

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HERE’S A BILLION REASONS
I HAVE MORE HOPE
ON THIS MONDAY MORNING BLOG POST.          .          .

Watch this. It is beautiful. This is THE moment when students of Albert Einstein College of Medicine got to know that they no longer have to pay any fees. Ruth Gottesman, a former professor at the college announced that she is donating USD 1 billion to the school. The college followed up and made themselves tution free rather than shoring up its reserves. With no student debt overhang, many students will now be able to pursue medicine as a public service.

Now here’s the thing, I may not have $1 billion to donate but I have a billion other ways which I can contribute to make the world a better place and make lives around me easier. As a Caring Catalyst, so do you.  Let’s do what we can to make this more than just a nice Monday morning blog post in a billion other different ways!

Professional Speaker, Author, Assurance Man