With his music he could literally move one’s soul to reach for G-d Almighty in the Heavens and on Earth.
Thank you Eitan Katz for bringing this alive again.
I hope you can feel it as I do.
Hashem lives!
This was sort of a funny sign:
“No Dumping”
Dumping can refer to at last 3 different types of things and none of them are any good:
1) Dogs – When people are inconsiderate with the animals and they take a “dump” and people don’t clean up after them (leaving the messy stink for you to step in).
2) Trash – When people throw their trash in the dump or what they consider to be a convenient dumping ground and they make a huge mess of the surroundings (like the used mattress on the side of the road).
3) Emotions – When people dump their emotions and problems on others; they just sort of let it all out and while they may feel better (i.e. a nice catharsis), now you feel like sh*t!
Overall, I can’t think of any good connotation to dumping, so maybe people should stop doing it–dogs, trash, and problems. 😉
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
We went to the art galleries in Rockville Town Center today.
They had this video called “Neighbor” by Kanat Akar.
It’s about the life of a 13-year old refugee boy from Alleppo, Syria who migrated to Anakara, Turkey.
The video is eerie and hypnotic as it walks you through the eyes of this little boy and the misery of his life.
While to me it represents the dark side of life, there is so much to be explored and felt from it.
You can’t watch this without feeling like you are there on this dirty, squalor of a road to nowhere, but wanting desperately to know where it ends. 😉
(Source Video: Andy Blumenthal)
Some people are so cold and emotionally distant.
They go around with a stone face.
No emotion seems to seep in or out.
The face doesn’t betray the heart in any way.
You say something or do something, and they just sort of stare at you.
No words, no outward response.
Just a stone face like a poker face.
You don’t know what’s behind it.
But worse yet is a heart of stone–nothing impacts the inside just like the outside.
Are some people this way because they have been so hurt in the past that they become hardened like a turtle’s shell to protect from the outside world.
…Ain’t gonna let nothing hurt me again.
Or are they great at using their poker face to fool, manipulate, and get what they are after.
Perhaps the worst possibility is that they are simply a real psychopath–someone without conscience or empathy.
Yes, that is scary because the unthinkable becomes thinkable.
For most of us, reading verbal and non-verbal cues is critical to understanding other people.
Hiding those cues can mean that the stone face is going to shatter someone’s world and that won’t be a pretty face at all. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So parenting is not always an easy job.
But it is one full of love and helping your kids.
Sometimes, I remember listening to my kids say that they feel this or that and seeing that it was holding them back from accomplishing their goals.
Often, I would tell them that the only people that really care about how they feel is your mother and father–but generally-speaking, it a tough world out there, and:
“No one [else] cares about how you feel.”
I tried to focus them–not on being cold and unfeeling–but rather on being strong inside and focusing on the tasks that need to get done.
Sure, feelings are important, but if you are getting held back from doing what you need to do–then there are times when you need to put the feelings in abeyance and go forward.
Overall, there is plenty of time to feel what you feel, but don’t let anger, fear, or anxiety get in the way of you accomplishing your dreams.
In a book that I am reading by Amos Oz, “A Tale of Love and Darkness,” he writes:
‘I want’ and ‘I don’t want’ aren’t reasons, they can only be defined as self-indulgence.
Yes, it’s a little tough love, but also it is out of true love to help the kids to be willing and determined to try their best and not get held back by anything in the pursuit of the destiny they choose to follow. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I liked this categorization of three types of tools of persuasion developed by Aristotle:
– Ethos: Appeals to a sense of ethics, morals, and character.
– Logos: Appeals to a sense of logic, reason, and rationality.
– Pathos: Appeals to a sense of emotion, empathy, and passion.
I don’t know about most people, but I don’t get convinced easily.
You need to show me, prove it to me, or convince me it’s right.
Some others, and I don’t know why–it’s like you can sell them the Brooklyn Bridge, as they say.
I think that’s dangerous!
Without critical thinking and evaluation, people can get led astray to do the wrong things…a perfect example is Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler (may his memory be forever cursed).
Hitler appealed to the Germans people at the time:
– Emotionally to bring them back from the loss, destruction, and destitution that World War I inflicted and of course, to scapegoat the Jews, Gypsies, and political opponents and send them to the death camps.
– Logically, that they were a strong and powerful people, the “Aryan nation,” and they therefore, deserved to conquer and rule Europe and the World.
– Ethically–let’s just say, this one didn’t really apply to Hitler, probably the most evil and destructive man this world has ever known, except that even Hitler tried to fool his people falsely proclaiming, “G-d is with us!”
It’s a war of good over evil out there, and we need to make our arguments to influence and persuade for the good, but we also have to be careful not to let others, who are not so good, manipulate us for their own selfish and depraved ends.
Ethos, Logos, and Pathos–potent tools or weapons in the direction of mankind and civilization. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So I learned this interesting thing about the Fight or Flight response.
Fight or flight is not just physically fighting or fleeing, but it has a much more diverse set of responses involved to perceived life-threatening events.
Fighting (turning towards the threat)
1. Physical fighting (Protect yourself with force)
2. Non-physical aggression
– Criticism (e.g. Attacking personality or character)
– Contempt (e.g. Attacking sense of self-worth with sarcasm, shaming, insults, eye-rolling, and sneering)
Flight (turning away from danger)
1. Physical fleeing (e.g. Run/hide)
2. Non-physical withdrawal
– Defensiveness (e.g. Deflecting the attack with excuses, disagreement, counter-arguments, or blaming)
– Stonewalling (e.g. Conveying disapproval or disconnection, stop participating, change the subject, or giving the cold shoulder or silent treatment)
When you recognize that not all issues are life-threatening, then you can lower the intensity of the “Amygdala Hijack” in terms of fight or flight and instead work towards developing mutual understanding, trust, respect, and shared goals and solutions.
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal and attribution of content to Dr. Britt Andreatta)
So you always hear about the techniques used when people are being tortured…one of them being have their nails ripped off.
Ouch!
So this week when I had a ingrown toenail removed, I said jokingly to the podiatrist:
“Do you do waterboarding also?”
Ok, funny, not-funny. Still got a chuckle!
But in removing the nail, the technique is really so amazing.
They inject the toe with a local anesthetic, but hey even the injections into a sensitive toe could be pretty uncomfortable.
So before the injection, they spray you toe with a freezing spray, so you don’t even feel the injections.
When he actually removed the nail and chemically destroyed the nailbed so it wouldn’t come back, I didn’t feel a thing.
I mean, I literally didn’t feel a thing!
It was a wonderful feeling–whatever he did, however much it would’ve hurt–it didn’t.
I thought to myself in a wave of anesthetic and freeze-numbed delight, this is absolutely wonderful.
No pain, not even a pinch.
I could sense everything going on around me, take it in, think about it, even mull it over again and again, and just smile.
In a way, I thought how wonderful life would be to have the ability to think in the head and feel from the heart, but have no pain or suffering in the body.
Yes, there are plenty of damning and painful thoughts, memories, and heartaches, but for the body to be numb (even momentarily) to all the bad stuff that actually felt pretty good.
How would it feel if the mind and heart also felt no pain and only bliss–I smiled even more. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Wow this was tough…
I was at a luncheon with some friends, including a couple we’re friendly with that’s been dating a while.
At one point, the young man gets up to get some more food, and the young lady all of a sudden asks me, “Do you still live around here?”
I said “Yes, not far from here,” and in turn asked whether she was still living in {blankty blank neighborhood}.
She said, “Yes, {and continues sort of out of the blue} and we’re not going to live together until we get married.”
I was sort of surprised at the turn that her answer took about their relationship, and innocently asked, “So does that mean you guys are planning on marriage then?”
Just then the man comes back and I must’ve been reading the tea leaves {and the ominous music for the laying of the trap starts playing in my head}…
Immediately, the young lady says to him before he even sits back down, “He’s asking if we’re getting married {and for some reason she’s literally pointing at me or am I imaging that finger like a dagger coming out}!”
At this point, I think my eyes started to bug out a little as I must’ve had this look on my face like what the heck is going on here.
But if this isn’t going bad enough {what in G-d’s name did I walk into with this?)…
This older lady across the table, starts blurting out loudly saying, “How would you like if she ends up with another guy?!!!”
Holy sh*t {where is that coming from now?)!
The guy next to me is obviously at the point of fury {I can’t say that I fully blame him}, and he packs up his stuff and sort of storms off from the table.
The young women is still there trying to make conversation as if this whole thing just somehow didn’t happen.
But it did and it was pretty ugly!
The older lady {not stopping–this is madness} then chimes in again and says, “Look at what he did, he stormed off–if I were you, I would just drop him!”
We’re all sort of sitting there in complete shock now.
Pulling for a straw to somehow make this scene go away, I ask the young lady, “Should I go out and see if I can speak with him?”
She’s shakes her head and says, “No. We’re almost done {done–in what way…?}!”
Within a couple of minutes, we excused ourselves and headed out–sort of not believing how this whole scene went down.
One thing I can tell you is do not get ANYWHERE near people and their relationships–there are a whirlwind of just under the surface feelings, agendas, and finger-pointing ready to take flight and eradicate everything in the vicinity of ground zero.
Anyway, I hope everything works out okay for this couple…they actually do seem really nice together. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Thought this was a really funny quote about getting your buttons pushed:
“Don’t push my buttons without reading the manual.”
– Gadgetmobile, Inspector Gadget
In terms of not pushing other people’s buttons:
“Remember, you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudice, and motivated by pride and vanity.”
– Dale Carnegie
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
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