Good Morning Thinkers!

Are You Happy?

Before you read any further, stop and answer the question:  "How happy are you?" and answer it with a number from 1 - 10 (10 being the highest level of happiness).

While that question seems an arbitrary, non-scientific way to determine a person's level of happiness, some scientists are saying that the answers produced are valid and predict things about the rest of our lives ... for instance, how long we'll live and how effective we will be in our lives.  BBC produced a six-part series on happiness which you can see here.

So, what was your answer?

Becoming What You Might Have Been

"It is never too late to become what you might have been." -- George Eliot

You probably know that Grandma Moses started painting at 80, but did you also know that Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Guggenheim Museumat 91, Gandhi successfully completed  egotiations for India's independence from Britain at age 77, Helen Keller was 75 when she  published her book honoring her teacher Anne Sullivan and Dame Agatha Christie was 84 when she oversaw the production of the movie “Murder on the Orient Express” based on her novel.  The moral, of course, is that age is what we make it and life isn’t over till it’s over. 

I have reached “a certain age” where some options have dropped away … I will never be the opera singer that I fantasized about being as a child (of course, age has little to do with that untaken path) and I will never have the thirteen children that I thought would be fun after reading “Cheaper by the Dozen” and deciding to one-up them.  But there is still time left to follow my curiosities, to become a more compassionate citizen of the world, to write a novel and observe my world through photography.

Perhaps the sweetest thing about exploring alternative paths at mid-life is the freedom from world-determined expectations of success.  Mid-life artists don’t have to cater to the whims of critics or the public, mid-life novelists can joyfully experience an imaginary world without worrying about publication, and mid-life compassion can be shared with one child without feeling responsible for changing the world.  We can learn things for the sheer joy of learning, make stuff for the joy of creation and become whatever we want to be without worrying about getting a grade, passing muster or winning an award.

I have recently discovered that I can incorporate my photography into my work in a way that makes me very happy and seems to connect with others.  Is there better photography in the world?  By far!  Could I find stock photos that would be far better than mine?  Absolutely.  But, using my own creative expression in my work feels more real, more connected, more like a gift to the world.  While I would never be able to sell my photography, I can find great pleasure in giving it away.

So, if it’s never too late to become what you might have been, what is that you wanted to be but haven’t yet become?  What did you dream of being as a child?  What other path still calls to you?  And, more importantly what are you doing to allow it into your life today?

We’d love to hear your stories about how you’re exploring your alternative paths and nurturing the self that might have been. Please comment below.

The World Isn't Always Right

The WORLD isn't always right ...

"If you stay committed,
your dreams can come true.
I'm living proof of it.
I left home at 17 and had nothing but rejections for 25 years.
I wrote more than 20 screenplays, but I never gave up."
-- Michael Blake, author of "Dances with Wolves"

"Sensible and responsible women
do not want to vote."
-- Grover Cleveland, 1905

Butterfly Moments

"I think the one lesson I have learned
is that there is no substitute for paying attention."
-- Diane Sawyer

Do you ever think about moments that change your life? I’ve started calling them Butterfly Moments, from the chaos theory metaphor that states that when a butterfly flaps its wings in Chile, it causes a tornado in Chicago. In the same fashion, some small, seemingly meaningless moments change the entire trajectory of our lives.

Querencia

Information changes
Skills obsolesce
Technology morphs
People move
And the world turns.

What is bedrock?
What merely shifting sand?
Where is our querencia,
Our home place of safety?

Every year I pick a word to be my touchstone for the year. This year an unfamiliar word entered my consciousness and snuggled into that place of focus. Querencia, unfamiliar to me (but which yields 57,000 google hits), comes from the Spanish bullring. When the bull stops for a moment and finds querencia -- his place of safety -- he becomes truly powerful and dangerous. This is the moment he gives
up fear.

This morning as I was thinking about our ever-changing world, I thought about our own querencia. What is that place of safety for each of us, that place that gives us power in the face of adversity, that place that takes away fear? I thought this might be an interesting question for the week. What is your place of querencia? Please add your comments below.

More on Querencia -- a song by John Flynn

Blog Survey Results

Thanks to everyone who responded to the blog survey. Here are the highlights of the results:

Responses: 44
People currently blogging – 25%
Why are they blogging:

1. As a way of expressing opinions and connecting to others who share opinions or have interesting perspectives.
2. Learning
3. Community building

Reasons for not blogging:

1. No time
2. No reason to.

People reading blogs – 63%, most reading 3-5 blogs sporadically
Future of Blogging: Over half of the responders indicated that they would start a blog if they had a reason and it was easy.
Blog recommendations:
Good Morning Thinkers
Heads-Up!
IdeaFlow
Innovation Tools
How to Save the World – lots of stuff on business innovation
Pure Content
MetaFilter – an example of an open blog
BoingBoing – outrageous opinions and other “wonderful” things
The Occupational Adventure – food for thought about your job
Horizons Unlimited – want to ride a motorcycle around the world? Read this blog first.
Bisnow on Business – a ton of business related info

Blogs are more than blogs

Chances are good that by now you are either a blogger yourself or a reader of blogs.

I was suprised to find out that blogs started showing up in 1998. By 1999 there were 23 known blogs; today estimates run in the 4-5 million range. In 2002 Wired stated that blogging was to words what napster was to music. Fortunately there wasn’t an icy hand of restraint to staunch the flow of blogging words and they continue to proliferate like tribbles. Blogs tend to live in the fuzzy world somewhere between journalism, talk radio and a voyeuristic webcam. They have an immediacy and personal touch that makes them engaging and many bloggers also invite comments which leads to a community atmosphere.

Read more about why and how to blog ...

A New World

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." -- Alan Kay, Apple Computer

Greetings! It is a Sunday morning pregnant with spring here in Atlanta where I am spending the next several weeks. To write this column, I am accessing my home computer in the California eastern Sierra after reading a thought-stimulating piece focused on India by a New York Times columnist. These are fascinating times we live in ... a time approaching what Ray Kurzweil calls "the singularity" when human intelligence merges with machine intelligence. But, the issue isn’t new technology or even understanding how to use all the new gadgets that surround us, it’s really about knowing that there is a new game going on. And, the prime requisite of the game is innovative thinking.

Are you reinventing yourself?

The Right Choice Either Way

Sometimes the path of life splits or, as Frost says, “the road diverges in a yellow wood.” Both paths lead to results that are good and true, but taking the left means losing the possibilities of the right. And, choosing to go right means letting go forever of the joys of the left. Wanting both, I’m frozen in a place that has neither.

Some possibilities cannot co-exist … the life of an orthopedic surgeon does not leave space for life as a dancer with the Bolshoi Ballet. I cannot be healthy, energetic and slim and at the same time experience the numbing bliss of reckless and endless eating. Nor can I live in the peaceful solitude of the mountains while simultaneously enjoying the convivial convenience of the city. The wealth of having two golden choices leaves me overwhelmed with grief for the one that must be abandoned. A rent tears through my center and I am lost in the pain.

What if I make a mistake? What if I go right and years later find that left was my true self, my true path of joy and fulfillment? What if around one corner there is unseen pain and suffering? What if I wait just a little longer hoping the decision becomes just a little clearer?

But, the path demands a decision now. Life is finite and I cannot be all things. I must choose one life, or in my indecision, live none. Whichever path I choose, one life will fall out of the bell jar. It will become my path with all of its complexities and meanderings. I will live that life and never know of the other. Yet in the wild darkness of my dreams, I wonder if the scenes I see are from that other way not taken.

This delicate dance of wanting two things that cannot co-exist at the same time is the stuff of life. It is knowing we cannot have it all that forces us to examine our choices. In every life there will be many stones left unturned. We can love and value the stones we choose or we can weep and wail about the ones left behind. Perhaps the purpose of life has little to do with which choices we make but rather with how we live and value each decision that makes up the warp and weft of our lives.

A different To Do list

Happy New Year to all ...

Here's a different way to begin the year ... instead of making impossible resolutions, try this "To Do" list for the year.

Wishing you a wonderful and loving 2004 ...
and may peace come to all of us everywhere.

Joyce Wycoff

To Do List:
by Rev. Lee Reid

Mend a quarrel.
Seek out a forgotten friend.
Dismiss suspicion, and replace it with trust.
Write a love letter.
Share some treasure.
Give a soft answer.
Offer encouragement.
Manifest your loyalty in word and deed.
Keep a promise.
Find the time.
Forgive an enemy.
Listen.
Apologize if you are wrong.
Try to understand.
Flout envy.
Examine your demands on others.
Think first of someone else.
Appreciate.
Be kind; be gentle.
Laugh a little.
Laugh a little more.
Deserve confidence.
Take up arms against malice.
Decry complacency.
Express your gratitude.
Welcome a stranger.
Gladden the heart of a child.
Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth.
Speak your love.
Speak it again.
Speak it still once again.

by Reverend Lee Reid
Nov-Dec 1996 Newsletter
Unitarian Universalist Society of the Palisades

Thanks to Amy Taylor who tells us:

Rev. Lee Reid was a Unitarian Universalist minister from Paramus, New Jersey. She was a woman who lived peace. She died unexpectedly in a car accident several years ago, and a collection of her writings was published posthumously in her honor - 'Saints and Souls'. This list is from that book. Thank you for the work you do in this world. Amy Taylor

If we could remember nothing else in the year 2004, perhaps it should be to --

Speak our love.
Speak it again.
Speak it still once again.

joyce