When Do You Become Old?

Is being old an age, a feeling, or both?

Some people seem to get old before their time.

They go about echting and kretzching–at 40 and 50, they are saying this hurts and I feel crummy about that!  Nu, I’m not 18 anymore!

Other people never, literally almost never seem to get old.

One lady I know is going to be 94 this month and she is going strong mentally, emotionally, and physically.  It almost seems impossible.  

This guy in the photo has a funny shirt on that says:

“I thought growing old would take longer.”

Yeah, it does sort of creep up on you, but really, really fast.  Like where the heck did that come from!

I know inside for me, I always still feel like a kid. 

I have the same funny side, playful side, and curious side; the desire to be productive and accomplish something meaningful with my life and time, and to love and be loved. 

Yeah, things hurt a little more than they did years ago–can’t believe the things I used to be able to do–Yes, at one time, I use to break cinder blocks with my bare hands, true!

But now, I can do other things like swim and hike and I love to write things that I am passionate about or to be a little creative too!

Maybe we do not get old…maybe we are just like caterpillars that morph into something else like butterflies during this life and into the life beyond. 

Age is experience, learning, growth–lots of mistakes–and then recovering and trying again and harder.  

Life is wonderment and excitement and appreciation for every amazing beautiful thing. 

No, life does not get old. 

Suffering and loss gets old quick and wish it never was. 

But we are physical bodies with eternal souls, so we go on and on into the wild blue yonder. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Improv, Let’s Do it

What an incredible experience today. 

We went to the Atlas Theater in Washington, D.C. and did Improv (no script). 

For a Jewish kid from the Bronx, this was not something I was used to, but I loved it. 

– Say your name and an animal with the same first letter and act it out.

– Say something you love or hate and everyone gravitates on the stage towards or from it based on whether they agree.

– Repeat a word and action from someone else and pass it on.

– Act out an action that someone else calls out after yelling “Let’s do it!” 

– As a group, answer a question from the audience, by each person adding a word to the aggregated answer. 

– Give your neighbor a pretend object and after they identify what they think it is and thank you for it, you explain why you gave it to them.

– Stand on an emotion (happy, sad, angry, scared) and act out a scene with someone else rotating through the feelings.

– Pretend you’re a hitchhiker and infest the emotion with everyone else in the car.

I was really amazed at how good so many people were with doing these exercises. 

And I felt it was so freeing to be doing it too. 

I feel like I really learned a lot about being comfortable with yourself and just letting your inhibitions go and even though it was scary and hard, I would like to do this again. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Failing Forward

There were 2 inspirational student speakers today at my daughter’s graduation from American University.

One spoke about how he got sick soon after starting college with a serious vascular disease, but despite numerous hopsitalizations, treatments, and falling behind his peers, he persevered and was graduating today and in very good spirits. 

Another women spoke about her many failures leading up to the success today of her graduation. She described how her father used to ask her: 

“What did you fail at this week?”

Why?

Because even though we don’t like to admit it, most people have many, many more failures in life than successes.  

Even Thomas Edison, the inventor of the light bulb is said to have failed 1,000 times before getting it right.

This women explained how failure is actually something to celebrate–does that sound crazy?.

But it’s really not, and here’s why?

“To fail is to learn.
To learn is to grow.
To fail is to grow forward.”

Now, I had heard about failing up, but never failing forward. 

Many who fail still manage to advance themselves in the process. 

But failing forward is different. 

It’s not taking advantage of the failure, but legitimately learning from the experience so that you can grow yourself, and advance yourself, by becoming a smarter, stronger, and more capable person from it. 

Sure, it hurts to fail. 

Who would normally want to celebrate failure?

But if we understand life as a journey and not a specific destination, then we enjoy every blessed moment that we have to become better today and tomorrow than we were yesterday. 

In this case, failure is not the opposite of success, but rather is part and parcel of achieving it. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

What Is Wisdom?

Some thoughts today on what is wisdom:

– Knowing you know nothing–and you can prove it (ah, humility)!

– Knowing when to ask–like the infamous directions when you’re lost or how to use the latest new technology.

– Learning from all others (everyone has something they can teach us).

– Wisdom = Knowledge + Experience (you’ve gotten an inkling about some truth out there, and you’ve had a chance to test it out). 

– Seeing that people’s outer bodies are just the superficial, material cover for their inner souls. 

– Realizing that doing for others is so much more rewarding than doing for ourselves. 

– Following the great truths of morality and responsibility.

– Keen awareness that we are not alone in the universe–G-d is everywhere.

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

The Voter Psychology Behind A Trump

Over and over again the left AND the right try to get a knockout on Donald Trump. 

But what happens?

He’s not knocked out.

He’s not even knocked down.

To the contrary, he is still standing and seems to become stronger!

What is going on with this phenomenon?

Some would like to call it perhaps a psychosis of the masses. 

Other like to belittle those that like him by dissing their intellectual status and calling them stupid. 

Many even seem to go to every extreme to to make him out as crazy, fascist, bigoted, hateful, and a con man. 

Yet, for the most part it’s doesn’t seem to be working–people are still flocking to him. 

It’s like the more they try to gang up on him, torment him, bash him, and zing him–and rather than buckle, he is still there standing and remains strong–perhaps, the more “proof” it is for people that he can and will stand up for America!

With dismal ratings for the President, Congress, and government overall, the outsider, the business man, the billionaire, the dealmaker, the one who isn’t afraid to speak his mind and to say to the people the non-politically correct thing is coming across refreshing to many who are seeking change from the the last 7 years, 15 years, or further. 

With many seeing the current politics of the U.S. as leading from behind, appeasement, weak, divisive, and disengaged, it is not surprising to see bands across America yearning for something more. 

Is Donald Trump strong and anti-establishment or truly bad and dangerous?

This is for America to seek the truth on and wisely decide. 

What’s riding on this?

Whether Trump OR another candidate to be determined –(someone/anyone) — can potentially get things positively and constructively done in our large and complex political machine that has in many ways become increasingly stymied by bureaucracy, obstructionism, defeatism, game-playing, selfishness, pork barrel politics, (corruption,) sequestration, government closures, and political fighting across the aisle/behind the aisle/and in the aisle.

Let’s hope for America and the world’s sake the voters get it right.

But keep bashing Trump and you are keeping his message of superior strength and hope very much alive. 😉

(Note: This is not an endorsement for any candidate or political party)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

 

Traits To Be Prez

The personality to be President:


1. Experience, Diplomacy


2. Direct, Honest, Strong, Results-oriented


3. Passionate, Dedication, Survival of the Nation


A short interview with Andy Blumenthal


(Source Video: Dannielle Blumenthal)

See The World Through The Eyes Of Others

It’s not only important what we think, but also what and how others see things. 

 

One the things, the folks that work with me frequently hear from me is “Let me put myself in the other person’s shoes for a moment, and give you feedback on that.”

 

We are what we are and not as our customers are, and while we may strive for excellence in customer service, our customers may have completely different notions of what that means.

 

For example, I may think a 24-hour turnaround on something is pretty good given everything on our plate, but when I imagine myself in the customer’s shoes for a moment, I may change that expectation to “We need to get this done by noon today (or sooner)!”

 

People are different, our experiences, our cultures, our context and the way we interpret things. 

 

So when it comes to work or family or even social issues, being compassionate often means seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. 

 

There was an interesting article in the New York Times called “Imaging The Lives Of Others” by psychologist, Paul Bloom. 

 

While he notes the importance to “behold the universe through the eyes of another,” he also says how difficult this really is. 

 

If you haven’t done something, how can you really imagine what it was like, let alone know what it was like for someone else to experience it?

 

Without the access to the particular significant life experience, the duration, the controls (so you can’t just say stop like in an experiment), perhaps a person can never fully know what it’s like. 

 

For example, if you haven’t been through a devastating war, can you truly know what it’s like to be in a foxhole and have the bullets whooshing by your head and the tanks rumbling over it?

 

Yes, we can imagine, but that is probably a far cry!

 

Yet, to really empathize with others, do right by them, and to make good leadership decisions, we most certainly need to at least try to see and experience the world the way others do. 

 

Thinking about the over 805 million hungry people in the world today, it is much more impactful to imagine myself hungry and starving, then just to say the mere fact that these poor people exist.

 

We can probably never know someone’s else pain and suffering the way they do, but through our own experiences, extrapolation from them, and our imagination, we can at least try to elevate ourselves for a purely self-centric universe of one that is of billions (under one G-d), and who need our understanding, compassion, support, and help. 😉

 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Wrong Way To Test

As educators are pushed to improve students’ test scores, sometimes they run afoul.

In Atlanta, 8 former public school educators were sentenced to prison–three were sentenced to as long as seven years–for a conspiracy inflating student scores by “changing answers” to the tests. 

Interestingly, in another article today, we see that not only are students put to the test, but so are job applicants. 

In fact, “Eight of the top 10 U.S. private employers now administrator pre-hire tests in their job applications.”

While testing can certainly show some things, they can also miss the point completely. 

I know some people that test wonderfully–straight A students, 100+ on all exams, 4.0 GPAs–and for the most part, they are wonderful at memorizing and prepping for the test…but sometimes, not much else. 

Some of them have no practical knowledge, little critical thinking or creativity, and are even sort of jerky. 

And others who test poorly may be well thought, articulate, hands-on, and good with people–I’d take a million of them. 

“Failing the test” is not necessarily getting it wrong…it may just be errant to the current prevailing educational and professional testing system that values memorization and spitting back over insight, innovation, and practical skills. 

The challenge is how do we compare and contrast students and professionals competing for schools and career advancement, if we don’t easily have something standardized like a test to rally around. 

Maybe there is no getting away from more holistic assessments–where we look at bona fide life and career experience, a wide range of recommendations from teachers, coaches, and supervisors, hard and soft skills (including communications and interpersonal), professional and personal ethics, genuine interest in the pursuit, and the motivation to work hard and contribute.  

Tests–students cheat, educators game the system, memorization and robotic answers are the name of the game to get the A, and boring homogeneity–but it’s often the easy way out to evaluating candidates for a phony success. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

The Power Of One, Many, And G-d

I took this photo at Broward College in Fort Lauderdale. 

I like how they took the pictures of the professors, administrators, and students and wallpapered it outside on the facade of the building. 

It says, “I am the voice of innovative education and civic engagement for the 21st century.”

It’s a cool idea showing the individuals and the power they have to make a difference as well as the aggregate of the photos, as a group, displaying that we are somehow all in it together. 

We can’t just rely on others, and we can’t take it all on ourselves…progress is a shared responsibility. 

We do our part and contribute to the greater group–it takes a variety of talents to get things done, so we leverage everyones strengths for the good of the team. 

– Education is one part.  

– Experience is another.  

– Engagement is a third

And all these ingredients only come together with divine providence and the good fortune from the Almighty.

This last one is the secret sauce as they say. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Catching A Shark

So it’s sort of become a tradition that when we go away, I try and take my daughter on a special activity of her choosing.

This time we went fishing in the beautiful Caribbean.

What I didn’t expect is that I would end up reeling in a 66-inch Spinner Shark.

This thing was massive and powerful.

The guide keeps telling me to pull up slowly and then drop forward while quickly reeling it in then stop and repeat.

But this shark wasn’t exactly cooperating and it kept pulling this way and that and hard.

In fact, about 15 minutes earlier another shark had jumped out of the water and actually broken the end of the line and got away.

This one was another real fighter, but we were determined.

We get to the point, where we had it on the side of the boat coming up and all the people are standing back and I am thinking to myself what am I crazy sitting up front here with this monster fish about to come over the side.

The guide says “Don’t worry, I am an expert.”

Expert my foot, I think to myself…what the heck am I doing?

Fortunately, since no one wanted to measure it to make into some sort of mantle piece trophy, we end up letting it go (apparently, it’s against the law to actually kill these in Florida).

My daughter was so brave with all the fish, and doing her job keeping the baitfish swimming around and alive with her bare hands in the water–she was awesome.

I don’t frequently let so loose, but I find that when I do, these really are special moments in time for me with my daughter that I end up remembering and cherishing the most.

Thank you G-d for this amazing experience; now to treating the sunburn. 😉

(Source Video: Rebecca Blumenthal)