Wisdom

Poets: The Craft of Rhyming Words

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Last night I picked up an old book of poetry that I have had for many years.  The small red book was published in 1933 has the odd title of “Additional Poems to the Golden Treasury”.  There are at least a dozen small little pieces of torn paper that bookmark pages where some of my favorites are.  I thumbed through the book and absorbed again some old favorites which lead me to pick up two other poetry books in my library and thumb through their bookmarked pages.  From a little less than an hour last night I have typed here this morning parts of some favorites I wanted to share.  I feel a little like I am cheating in putting up this blog today as it will be mostly filled with the work of others.  Yet, I am doing so with great respect and gratitude for these famous writers whose even meter and rhyme sprinkle my spirit with joy each time I read their work.  

From When You are Old by W. B. Yeats
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; 

From I Love You by Sara Teasdale
When April bends above me
and finds me fast asleep,
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.
 
From The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

From Two In The Campagna by Robert Browning
For me, I touched a thought, I know,
Has tantalized me many times,
Like turns of thread the spiders throw
Mocking across our path for rhymes.
 
From A Word to Husbands by Ogden Nash
To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.

From A Poison Tree by William Blake
I was angry with my friend;
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe:
I told it not, my wrath did grow.

From Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

From If by Rudyard Kipling
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!

Last lines of The Star-Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

From A Match by Algernon Charles Swinburne
If love were what the words are,
And love were like the tune
With double sound and single
Delight our lips would mingle
With kisses glad as birds are
That get sweet rain at noon.

From A Birthday by Christina Georgina Rossetti
My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

From A Man’s Requirements by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Love me Sweet, with all thou art,
Feeling, thinking, seeing;
Love me in the lightest part,
Love me in full being.

Well written poetry that is smooth and even in the way it is crafted can move me deeply.  I know from trying to write poems myself how difficult it is to mold words in this manner.  Also, I realize the talent needed to write poetry I either do not possess or else have never brought it forth in a satisfactory way.  This makes me all the more grateful to those who paint  beautiful portraits with words.

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.  George Sand

Who Am I?

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Memory tells me the first time I did it I was around 12 or 13 and found the experience startling.  It was then I looked into the bathroom mirror with pointed focus and truly saw myself.  For the first time I was not simply acknowledging my reflection as I had previously done.  I was really seeing “me”.  The thoughts at that moment were fairly alarming as through my mind ran related thoughts like:  “Is this really me?  Am I am really here?  Do I really look to others like what I see?”  For a while I would look away whenever it was me in the mirror I began to “see” because of the uncomfortable feeling it I got from the experience.  Over time I have become more able to let “me see me”, but the process and I are tenuous friends at best.  

In retrospect I think the first experience as a kid of seeing my self could be a natural part of the self-discovery of growing up.  However, I have never tried confirming that with anyone else.  The thought I have kept is mentioning the experience to another person could get me labeled as “weird” even though I have continued to try to notice myself in this manner since childhood.  Only now writing at a time when I have better acceptance of my uniqueness do I wonder publically if others ever have similar experiences.  

Previously I wrote about seeing beyond looking a few weeks ago:   https://goodmorninggratitude.com/2011/05/25/seeing-beyond-just-looking/

 “…My discovery has been mostly I just acknowledged what came into my view.  Sometimes I walked by not seeing at all what was right before me.  Mine was a bad habit of hardly ever really “truly seeing” much of anything.  My mind seemed to always be racing forward thinking about where I was going, what I had to do and what issues I needed to deal with.  Or else, I was looking backwards trying to solve some past emotional riddle or find some meaning in an episode of life I wanted an explanation for….”  

That certainly describes well what was going on in my young teen years.  Until more recent times I just did not realize that the ability to actually see began trying to make its self known to me when I was quite young.  

In De Bello Civili Julius Caesar wrote “Experience is the teacher of all things”.  What Caesar wrote I believe is the first step where gaining wisdom begins, but experiencing is not enough.  I believe one must experience and then be  AWARE of what is being experienced to learn the lesson.    

On the website falcoblanco.com (white falcon) I found:  The BEST teacher is the conscious observing and relating to daily circumstances, then responding to it out of one’s own experience, being aware that this comes out of an old programming, which happened in one’s past. So also observing these reactions, one is able to decide to follow this track or to try a new way, what might guide to a new experience and triggering new unknown reactions to be observed and so allowing one to get to know oneself.  The best and most efficient teacher without doubt is one’s own awareness….    

This morning I intentionally tried the true seeing of myself in the mirror.  Even after all the time since I initially discovered the activity in my early teens and the many times trying it since, it still makes me uncomfortable.  In part I tell myself now it is because I see age, gray hair, wrinkles and the loss of youth.  That is a portion of it, but I do not think the majority.  The process remains an enigmatic mystery to me and one I will keep trying until I can allow the experience to become full awareness and thereby learn the lesson being taught.  

“Is that really me?  Who am I?  Why am I here?  What is my purpose?  What do I consciously think of myself?  Unconsciously?”  Such questions gnaw at the boundaries I have placed around the core of who I am.  What do I fear I might find there?  Why is there any fear at all? 

The only explanation I have come up with is contained in the thought “if I let you see who I really and truly am you may not like me”.  However, in my personal context it is “me” who has yet to let “me” see myself fully just as I am.  Each time I take up this subject there is a little more light that finds way into the inner circle of my self.  This blog is my best exploration of self I have discovered to date.  Through pulling back the curtains and letting others see deeply into me, I am seeing myself more clearly.  Each day I write here is like staring in the mirror and saying “who am I” then finding a little of the answer on the screen when I am done. 

With every experience of seeing a glimpse of the core of my being I find a little more comfort in being as I am.  This process brings me wisdom and insight in tiny pieces through a sort of delicious torture.  Stepping into the unknown can be for me everything from humbling to down right frightening.  Yet, I am grateful for every humble moment of unease that teaches me and brings my living to be more parallel with my true and real self.    

I am very grateful you are reading this.  Each who does is my appreciated ally and supporter who lends me encouragement to keep writing and mining my inner depths for truth.  Thank you.

We don’t see things as they are.  We see them as we are.  Anais Nin

Davy Crockett, Albert Einstein and my Grandfather

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

One of my earliest memories comes from somewhere in my third year when I received a pair of Davy Crockett gloves with fringe on the cuffs.  When I had them on I thought I was almost as cool as my hero of the moment, Davy himself, who wore gloves like mine on the Walt Disney show.  I loved those gloves and would walk around with my arms out front so people could see tassels move as I moved. 

Most every boy has sports figures in his hero lineup.  My football hero was Johnny Unitas of the Baltimore Colts (I have never gotten completely comfortable to this day putting Indianapolis in the name even though the team was moved there in 1984).  When it came to baseball my hero was Willie Mays.  The reasons I remember looking up to Mr. Mays was his home was less than a hundred miles from where I grew up in Alabama, he hit lots of homeruns and had a great warm and inviting smile.  

By the time I hit High School it was Albert Einstein and James Bond I looked up to.  As for the Bond thing, all I can say is I read all the books, saw all the movies (even had a family member end up with a bit part in one of them) and thought James was the ultimate in cool.  Good ole Albert died when I was a toddler, but as my interest in the sciences grew he became my “poster god” for science.  At 14 years of age I was convinced I was going to be a physicist just like Albert.  

Starting somewhere around the age of ten, Paul McCartney of the Beatles was elected to my internal realm of hero.  He always seemed to be enjoying himself and I loved his singing voice.  The respect I have for McCartney has grown over the years as I have come to believe he was the most talented of the Beatles. 

Constant from my days of looking up to Davy Crockett until today there is another hero who I have never wavered in my love for.  He was my grandfather, my mother’s father, who I called “Paw Paw”.  His given name was Huel and his friends often called him “H.T.” (short for Huel Thomas).  Those outside out family usually called him Uncle Huel as he was the unofficial caretaker of the entire rural valley where he lived. 

Paw-Paw never learned to read.  Early in the 1st grade he had to stay home and help my great-grandmother with the garden and the younger kids.  My great-grandfather had accidently knocked a shotgun over causing a leg wound that resulted in the loss of his leg.  The recovery and learning to get around again took years during which time my grandfather shouldered responsibility as the oldest healthy male in the house. 

While my grandfather could sign his name, my grandmother had to read him legal documents and other important things.  However, when it came to numbers and math he was a self taught wiz and could figure any sort of weight and measure.  I imagine the lack of reading ability must have been difficult for Paw-Paw at times, but I can’t remember a single instance of it ever getting in the way.  He somehow learned how to “get by”.  

I even recall his frustration with jacking a pickup one day when he just lifted the back vehicle off the ground with his bare hands so a guy who worked for him could mount a tire.  I thought Paw-Paw had a little Superman in him!  The fact that he made a living his entire life on his farm says “superman” to me just as well.   

What made my grandfather an even more real hero to me than most others was I knew he had faults and one or two were not small ones.  One was he liked to drink and on holidays was usually “happy as a hootey owl” as folks down south used to say.  Another was he had a wandering eye and at least once was caught with another woman when I was eight.  At that time I recall he and my grandmother went into their bedroom for about 8 hours and did not come out.  I heard voices, loud at times but could not understand what was being said.  All I know is when they came out the matter was settled and was not talked about again. 

What I did know was how my grandfather treated people in general.  He was soft spoken, quite and polite usually only speaking when spoken to.  He had an easy going manner and would help anyone at any time unless you had wronged him.  Someone could knock on his door at 3am, say they were stuck in a ditch up the road and he’d go get one of his tractors and pull them out. Even when offered he’d refuse money for the kindness.  It was just his way to help people and when someone helped him his verbal expression of thanks was almost always the phrase “much obliged”.  

Oh, I forgot to mention that I was the oldest grandson within a bunch of grandkids.  I forgot until now to write that he had me on a tractor riding with him between his legs on that big John Deere when I was two years old.  I don’t recall Paw-Paw ever telling me he loved me, but I knew he did.  It was the way he held me and played with me when I was little.  It was how he’d put his big hand on my shoulder when I was a boy as he introduced me to a stranger.  And it was that he always let me go with him to town and to go “see a man about a horse” as he always called it.  

There is no doubt in my mind I have embellished and improved beyond fact my memory of my grandfather.  That’s OK.  He left me with some basic ideals and a standard for treating people that are innate within me.  Paw-Paw looked a little like John Wayne I always thought and even had that kind of sideways gait when he walked just like Mr. Wayne.  Paw-Paw, you are my hero and even today you live within me and in the stories I am proud tell about you.  I love you and am grateful to be your grandson.

How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our he-roes and our she-roes!  Maya Angelou 

Hanging Out with Thoreau at Walden

/ James Browning

I was in the 11th grade when I first came in contact with “Walden or Life in the Woods” by Henry David Thoreau.  I recall little about the book from then except reading it was an assignment and I had to do a report on it.  At that age my mind was a swirling mass of girls, cars, grades, dreams and hopes seasoned with a screwy home life.  Absorbing what Thoreau was saying and the depth of his message were wasted on the teenage version of me.  I re-discovered “Walden” about a decade ago and it is now one of my top ten books and one I have read cover to cover three times.  I often pick up a well worn copy I have and randomly open it to read a page.  Wisdom usually finds me each time I do.

“Walden” is today considered to contain some of the first American writing about transcendental thinking.  One of Thoreau thought’s about his two years living in the woods in a self built cabin was to find out just how much a man needed to work to supply the basic essentials of life.  I recall that his conclusion was an estimate of about six to eight weeks of labor each year.

Thoreau said his intention was to  “live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”  There in the 1850’s on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s property at Walden Pond, he lived in a one room cabin furnished with castoffs.  Thoreau found his food in the woods around him, in the lake beside him and in the field near him where his garden was.  He scavanged for lumber and nails and worked barter fashion with farmers for supplies, seed, food, and other things he needed.

Thoreau told time by the train whistle from the nearby tracks which he thought often disrupted his contented existence.  He preferred the sounds of whip-poor-wills, owls, loons, frogs, chattering squirrels and distant crowing roosters.  Thoreau spent much of his time observing everything from the seasonal changes of trees and plants to the activity of the animals around him.  He spent hours with self-assignments such as with a rock and string ascertaining the depth of Walden Pond to a degree that he could map the entire bottom of the lake.

Some of my favorite passages I have underlined in my most worn copy of “Walden” are:

“I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.” 

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”  

“However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names.”  

“A simple and independent mind does not toil at the bidding of any prince”. 

“As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs”. 

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life… When we are unhurried and wise, we perceive that only great and worthy things have any permanent and absolute existence, that petty fears and petty pleasures are but the shadow of the reality”. 

“Every man is the builder of a temple called his body…We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones”. 

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment”.  

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is”. 

“Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, how ever measured or far away”. 

Today I eagerly express my thanks for the work that Henry David Thoreau left behind for me to discover.  It served a large role in my “awakening” starting around ten years back.  It was then that I began to uncover the real meaning and purpose of my life.  While a difficult journey, I am deeply grateful for the discoveries I have made since that initial inspiration.  Further, there is much thankfulness within for the 14 years of life I have already had beyond that of  Thoreau’s time on Earth.

My writing is far below the caliber of his work.  My thoughts are not as original and deep.  However, I do hope in a small way I am showing my deep gratefulness to Mr. Thoreau for his impact on my life by playing forward his original thoughts of 160 years ago.

A good book has no ending.  R.D. Cumming

Benefits from a Golden Rule

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

Today finds me at LaGuardia Airport in New York waiting at the gate for a flight to another major hub that hopefully will connect me to a second flight to home.  We have been told there are storms in the Midwest that is affecting flights in and out of Chicago where my connection is, but so far my flight is listed as only leaving a few minutes late.  The second leg of my travels currently is showing it will depart 25 minutes late.  With a little luck I will get home fairly close to when scheduled.

As I sit here close by people in line at the counter are grumbling at the gate agents as they try to re-route some people whose flight delay will cause them to miss a connection.  Two have been down right rude.  Once upon a time I might have been one of those people, but something that happened about 20 years ago taught me better.

I had flown from Denver to Los Angeles for the day concerning a job interview.  Upon arrival I got a rental car and drove to my appointment which went well, but long.  Traffic in LA is always a variable and driving to the airport I was concerned that I might not make the flight home.  I hustled through the rental car return and security then ran to my gate.

Upon arriving all sweaty from running to the gate I saw five angry people unloading on the gate agent.  He saw me and asked if I was on the flight to Denver which I confirmed.  He said “Sorry Sir, the flight is overbooked.  I’ll get you rebooked as soon as I can”.  I responded with something like “that’s OK.  Not your fault.  It’s been a hectic day.  I am gonna sit down, cool off and read for a while.  Motion to me when you’re ready to work on getting me on a different flight”.

With that I sat down, got a book out of my bag and began reading.  Over about 10 minutes the gate agent either got people on different flights or else sent the rudest ones to the main desk for rebooking.  As the gate cleared out the gate agent came over to me and said “Sir, come with me quickly!”  We trotted to the jetway door; the agent input a code to open it as he said “There’s one seat in the very back of the plane.  You have a safe journey home.”  I smiled at him and said “I am really grateful.  Thank you”.  The seat was in the very back of the Continental flight in one of those seats that did not recline.  I did not care though.  I was headed home on time.  I only got the gate agent’s first name and wrote a letter to the airlines thanking him for his good service to me.  I hope at the least he got a pat of the back.

Had I not been so tired that day in LA I could easily have been one of those being abrupt and terse with the gate agent.  By not acting that way I benefited from my treatment of the gate agent.  He could have selected any of the other people bumped from the flight in that seat toDenver, but he put me there.  The moral of the story:  Gate agents have no control on flight schedules and being mean to them gets you no where.  If you are cordial and patient many, if not most, gate agents will do their best to help you.

At least a half dozen times since the first episode I have benefited from treating airline workers as I would like to be treated.  A year ago I had three gate agents working to reroute me at one o’clock in the morning.  In spite of being exhausted I smiled, told a joke and socially interacted positively with the agents.  They ended up calling a supervisor over who bumped someone from a sold out flight.  I regret someone got bumped but grateful I made my destination in time the next day for a critical business meeting.  The airline employees did not have to help me as they did.  At the end the agents told me the only reason they did what they did was that I was an exceptionally patient and understanding passenger.

Rarely is being unkind, angry or mean to anyone a benefit.  I read once that being angry at someone is akin to taking poison and expecting the other person to die.  To me that explains it all.

Being nice does not always work and there are times where stating your piece pointedly will help.  I consider it a last resort.  I am convinced that nice guys (and girls) finish ahead more often than not by simply treating others the way he or she would like to be treated.  I am grateful for that lesson I learned long ago at LAX.  That wisdom has served me well.

Life is mostly froth and bubble,

Two things stand like stone,

Kindness in another’s trouble,

And courage in your own.

Adam Lindsay Gordon

High School Memories Revised

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

“I can’t believe that!” said Alice.  “Can’t you?” the Queen said in a pitying tone.  “Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”  Alice laughed.  “There’s no use trying,” she said.  “One can’t believe impossible things.”  “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen.  “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day.  Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Real life can sometimes be akin to the experiences of the Queen in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.   I am in the process of discovering and overturning some personally fabricated untruths from my growing up years.  While the initial realization is a little disconcerting, the newly realized truth is freeing.

My home life was troubled growing up (father left when I was 7, a young and preoccupied with herself Mother, a nasty stepfather who arrived in my 10th year, verbal, mental and some physical abuse at home, etc).  Further, I have carried the belief that my junior and high school life was troubled also.  Now I realize I took with me to class what was at home and painted my school experience with it.

I did remember previously that academically I always did well and had no issues with classes or teachers.  I recalled being picked on some here and there.  The memory of being left out of the “in” group at times was clear.  I recalled feeling “not good enough” because I did not have the cool clothes many did.  However, there is nothing unique about me having those type memories of my school years.  Most all have those feelings growing up, at least at times.

Two nights ago I did an on-line search for an old classmate and ran across a listing of people in my hometown who were buried in a particular cemetery. A few were people I went to school with. I dug out four high school annuals I have paid almost no attention to in 40 years to try and connect name to face for two people.  Doing so caused a strong bit of a nostalgic feeling and I began to slowly read through two of the yearbooks.  I ended up reading  how people had signed my yearbooks for the first time in probably 40 years.  What I found was almost a perfect conflict with the memory I had planted in my head about school.

 To one of the cutest, sweetest and most charming boys I have ever known.  You are a good friend I will always remember with pleasure.  May God provide you with the best life has to offer.  Beth 

To a good friend who was the only one at the first of school.  A friend.  Mike 

To one of the cutest, sweetest boys I know.  You have a lot of class. May we always be friends.  Kaye 

Best of luck to a real nice boy!  Stay the same and you’ll really go places.  Will 

To one of the nicest boys and cutest I know.  May we be best of friends.  I will always remember you.  Love Linda 

To a good boy and a very good friend. May God be with you.  David 

You are one of the best looking boys I have ever known.  May you always be as sweet as you are now.  Love ya, Joan

To a real nice friend.  I hope you really have the best in everything you ever do.  Good luck.  Jon 

To a good looking guy with a great personality.  May we have some fun some time.  Love and kisses.  Loretta (I hope your girl don’t crown me!) 

On and on the written comments went.  Between the two yearbooks comments of somewhere around 100 people were there.  All were positive, caring, encouraging and friendly.  There was not a single negative hinted at.  A little of what was written may have been the tendency of people to just say something nice.  However, even considering that, what I read was overwhelming.

After all these years, my made up memories about school faded away.  I suddenly recalled that school was one of the good things about my growing up.  I had many friends, was accepted in all “groups” and popular in most.  Girls liked me and reading the comments now I realize I missed the chance for several girlfriends.  Even the boys thought I was a good guy.

While this is a difficult lesson, I am grateful through the emotions of the moment to know that some of my memory is untrue.  Somehow I mixed up some of this and some of that to create “impossible things” like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland.  Now I know I have denied myself the knowing of some wonderful things about my life.

What a relief!  What a gift!  To suddenly find wonderful memories that I had locked away behind a door of other grief and pain is both humbling and astonishing.  What I was feeling inside at the time did not allow me to accurately experience and remember the school part of my youth.  I suppose it is human nature to diminish the good and amplify the bad, but from this day forward it is my intention to reverse that tendency as much as possible.

With great gratitude for what has happened,  I am suddenly refreshed and renewed at a soulful level.

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.  Richard Wright

T E D

/ James Browning

Good morning.  About three years ago my son turned me on to a video from a website that one of his professors used in a class.  At the time I watched the first video I had no idea who much I would come to enjoy the website.  It has taught me, broadened my insight and stretched my brain in many ways.  I am very grateful!

The website is called “TED” (Technology, Entertainment and Design) and is a global effort owned by a private non-profit group called the Sapling Foundation.  Its stated mission is to “disseminate ideas worth spreading” and the conference has been held annually since 1990.  The events take place in the U.S. as well as in Europe and Asia and address an increasingly wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture.

Speakers at these conferences are given a maximum time of 20 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can.  Each presentation is recorded and presented on the website for free soon after each conference.  What is amazing about access to the videos being free is that it costs $6,000 to attend a conference and $500 to watch them streamed live!  Those who wish to attend always out number those chosen.  Basically one has to “apply” for consideration to attend.  On the TED website is this explanation:  “We’re looking for people who are likely, in our judgment, to be a strong contributor to the TED community and/or the ideas discussed at TED and/or the projects that come out of the conference”.  So again I say, free access to this material is amazing.

Most of the time when I finish watching one of the TED videos, I feel like I have learned something really worthwhile.  At times I have been deeply moved.  I will say I don’t enjoy everything on the TED website and this is especially true of a good bit of the “Entertainment” material.  Much of that content is just “too far out there” for me but occasionally I have found a jewel.

I remember well the first TED video my son sent me in 2008 that began my use of the site.  The presenter was Jill Bolte Taylor who got the research opportunity few brain scientists would wish for:  She had a massive stroke, and as an expert watched her brain functions (motor, speech, self-awareness) shut down one by one and lived to tell about the experience.  Her story and insights are astonishing, but the video is a little on the “deep” side.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

A much better starting TED video would be one that is only about five minutes long and done by Ric Elias.  He had a front-row seat on Flight 1549, the plane that crash-landed in the Hudson River in New York in January 2009.  He talks about what went through his mind as the plane went down, including his near certainty  he was about to die.  His talk is compelling and touching.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ric_elias.html

Another favorite video on the TED website is called “Stumbling on Happiness” by Dan Gilbert, a Harvard psychologist.  I believe he successfully challenges the idea that we need to get what we want to be happy.  Good stuff!

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html

Then there’s the video by Barry Schwartz that takes aim at freedom of choice.  In this presentation on TED he states his belief that too many choices have made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied.  This presentation certainly made me stop and think.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

And last, but certainly not least, is my most recent discovery (and favorite) of Brene’ Brown’s video titled “The Power of Vulnerability”.   In the presentation I believe she makes the point successfully that often our inability to show feelings keeps us from a great deal of possible happiness and contentment.  I have shared this video with more people than any other on the TED website.

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

I guess some will be wondering why the sales pitch for TED here in this blog.  I honestly don’t intend what I write here to come across as selling something. Instead it is my intention to let other people know about a storehouse of material that has been very meaningful to me.  Rarely a week goes by that I don’t go the the website and watch a video.

I am very grateful for the TED website, the people behind it and the speakers who share so openly.   I have learned a lot, had my fixed way of looking at things challenged frequently and found reinforcement for some intuitive things I believed but had no backup for.  Yes, most of the videos are 15-20 minutes long.  But I guarantee that spending time with a TED video will be a lot more useful to your life than a “Two and a Half Men” rerun or the latest edition of “The Office”.

       Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.         Chinese Proverb

 

Digesting Never’s

/ James Browning

The profession I am in is one I often say picked me and I did not pick it.  In my teens there was no other thought besides being a scientist (except wishing I could sign up somewhere to be James Bond).  Having entered and won several of science fairs and breezing through chemistry, physics I & II and even calculus I thought for sure my future was in the sciences.  Then purely by chance through a high school friend I ended up with a part time job in the profession I am still in decades later.

With parents who divorced when I was seven, I promised myself when my age was still single digits that I would get married only one time, period!  That was one of the agreements with my self that kept me in a first marriage a decade longer than I should have been.  Then I married a second time which ended in divorce which when younger I could not have imagined.

In my late teens and early 20’s I did what a good percentage of my male peers did:  I grew my hair long.  At one point my mane was 2/3’s of the way down my back.  In the days when I thought of all in my age group as either “straight” (meaning square, un-cool, not-hip, straight laced) or a “freak” (long hair, liberal, cool, groovy) I swore I would never cut my hair.  By 25 my hair was a business acceptable length.

Being an idealist is one of the reasons I left the Deep South.  There was a restaurant in Jackson,MS next door to where I worked when I was 18.  The owners did not like us long-haired folks and refused to serve us.   Once they knew your voice, they would even hang up on you if you called for a take out order.  That treatment was one of the primary reasons I left Mississippi for Colorado when I was 19 swearing I would never live “south” again.  Now for over a decade I have lived in Oklahoma which definitely has a “southern” flavor even it if it more thought of as being west.  What I know now is discrimination is everywhere.  It is more overt in some places and covert in others.  But it is everywhere.

In my “hippie freak” years I made the commitment to my self to never join the corporate world.  I believed a person should be accepted openly no matter what they wore or how they looked.  I still believe that today but also accept the reality that in business judgment of competence is made to a point by the clothing one wears to work.  I made the compromise in my late 20’s when I realized the jobs I wanted were not held by people who dressed and looked like me.  That was the year that for Christmas I wished for and got blazers, ties, and dress shirts and pants.

Once upon a time I dreamed of having several children, but today am grateful for the one son I do have.  In another time I thought I would be living happily ever after in a foreign country but that seems like a pipe dream today.  I promised myself I’d get in and stay in killer physical shape at some point in my life and got there around 40, but within a year it slipped away. 

Promises, promises…..

Making promises to my self was a good and necessary thing.  And I know breaking them should not be taken lightly.  On the other hand, few things work out the way they were planned, especially from the vantage point of youth.  In my teens and even 20’s I saw the world in a very narrow way based largely on opinion and little on experience.  I had to learn as John Lennon wrote in his song Beautiful Boy:  “… life’s what happens while you’re busy making other plans”.

Today I am grateful for all the promises I made my self and all the lessons experience taught me.  The ones I have kept taught me values and ideals.  It seems the more ingrained the self-guarantee was that was broken, the greater the knowledge gained was.  Being adaptable and living in the present is something I had to learn to do.  Saying “never” has become a more rare personal expression for I have eaten far too many of them.  Yet, swallowing those erroneous “never’s” were some of the greatest teachers of my life.  I will always be grateful for the lessons learned the hard way.

The promise given was a necessity of the past:  the word broken is a necessity of the present.  Niccolo Machiavelli

“Mornin’ Mack. How you doing?”

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Frequently I say “Mornin’ Mack.  How you doing?” when I walk by the photo above that hangs in my office.  At other times I have been known to say “I know Mack, I shouldn’t have done that” or simply “I miss you man”.

Mack Jones Pettigrew was one of the best friends of my life.  He died in 1994.  We met when we both worked at the same place in 1975 and for the next 19 years we became closer and closer friends.     The time we became the closest was during his illness.  In typical Mack J. style he made that time uniquely memorable.

The time is clear in my mind when in 1988 I met Mack for lunch on a workday as I frequently did.  He was quieter and less animated than usual and mentioned he did not feel well.  Close to the end of lunch Mack looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said something like “I’m really sick man.  I gonna to die and I haven’t told anyone until now.  Not even my Mama.  I’m scared”.  I was dumbfounded and did not know what to say but asked “what’s going on”.  He proceeded to explain that it had all started with sickle cell anemia and now had turned into full blown leukemia of an incurable type.  I wanted to know if there was treatment that could help and Mack said there were only things that could buy him time.  Nothing else.

To know the man that Mack had been prior to his illness would be to describe a good man with some bad habits.  Frequently cash flow challenged he cut corners that were not always legal but never of the sort that gets a person in serious trouble.  His life was also a constant flow of women.  He had been married for a few years to someone he truly loved and the union produced a child that was dear to him.  His bad habits caused the downfall of the marriage and at the time he became ill he had been single for close to 10 years.  I knew his faults and I knew his heart too.

Over lunch the day he told me he was sick, he explained that the Doctors told him he had 12 to 18 months to live.  But, if he would clean his act up, stay on a strict diet and get serious daily exercise he could buy himself time.  And buy himself time is what Mack did.  He became extraordinarily picky with his diet and he committed even more to working out.

Three years passed and it was hard to know Mack was ill.  He seemed so healthy and normal except when his pancreas would be hurting and he’d put his hand over that spot.  He became a serious body builder and as you can see from the photo above he was handsome with his rippling muscles and killer smile.  Mack went on to take every state of Ohio title for body building for 40+ men.  I remember sitting in the audience watching him flex and show off on stage looking so vibrant and filled with vigor.  I knew what others in the audience did not know:  My friend was dying.

Mack became one of the most loving, caring and gentle souls I have ever known during the seven years he lived from the onset of his illness.  That’s almost 4 times what the doctors originally predicted!  During those years he always hugged me when he first saw me and again when we parted.  Mack also always told me he loved me each time just before we went our separate ways.  It was with him that I adopted that habit where today I hug those men and women dear to me before leaving.  It is an enduring legacy of my friend who taught me it’s OK to show how I felt.

During those years of his illness we had some long and deep conversations that I learned so much from.  Once he said to me something similar to “You will never know what it’s like to be black.  Every day I am reminded what color I am and it’s been going on since I was little.  Some days it’s how people look at me or how they treat me.  Other days I remind myself when I look in the mirror and notice the color of my skin”.  He gave me that perspective and much more I would never have acquired had Mack not been my friend.

The last year of his life he took a job down south and I only saw him once.  We talked on the phone every 2 or 3 weeks and he always told me he was doing well. Even though I knew he was ill, it just seemed like Mack was going to just keep going and going.

That’s what I thought until I got a call on Wednesday March 16, 1994 from his ex-wife who said he had been in the hospital for over two weeks and had come home to die.  I learned she was breaking her word to call me as Mack had made her promise not to until he was gone.  He did not want me to worry and be upset. She said she knew how close we were and just couldn’t keep what was going on from me any longer.  I broke every speed limit getting to the hospital and when I got there my old friend was no longer conscious.  But when his wife called his name and told him I was in the room he moved and tried to raise his head even though he was unconscious.  He knew I was there.

So for the next few hours I sat on one side of the bed and his wife on the other (he remarried her in the hospital so she could receive benefits).  I held Mack’s right hand and she was held his left as he struggled for breathe.  To glance at the man who lay there all rippling with muscles it was difficult to grasp what was going on.  Over about three hours the breaths became slower and slower until there were no more.

Mack was as an MP in the army when he was young and was always proud of his service.  It came as no surprise that he had told his wife that he wanted to be buried in a Veteran’s Cemetery.  And so he was on Monday, March 21, 1994.  Rest in peace my dear friend. The tears I have shed writing this are for the joy of having known you and for what you taught me with your courage and caring.  I will love you always and be grateful for the gift you were to my life.  Happy Memorial Day Mack.  “Ciao, ciao”

Pettigrew, Mack Jones, b. 06/20/1951, d. 03/16/1994, US Army, PVT, Res: Fairborn, OH, Dayton National Cemetery- Plot: 25 0 862, bur. 03/21/1994

Behind the Secret

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

Close to ten years ago I was at my favorite used book store looking through a box of “new arrivals” and came across a book with a dark blue textured cover titled “The Secret of the Ages” by Robert Collier.  This book turned out to be and today remains in my top 20 preferred books.  I am very grateful for the chance discovery.

Collier wrote about the practical psychology of abundance, desire, faith, visualization, confident action, and becoming your best.  After overcoming an illness he became fascinated with the power of the mind and how to use it to create success in every area.

Originally in 1925 Collier published his most famous book in seven brown hardback volumes under the title “The Secret of Life”.  He autographed the first volume of each set.  A year later there was a second release of the exact same material in a red seven book set under the name “The Secret of the Ages” which became the permanent title.  Within a few years the multiple volumes were combined into one hardback book and it was in-print into the 60’s.

Only in the last few years since the success in 2006 of Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret” has Collier’s book become available again.  Collier is given a little credit in Byrne’s book, but not nearly what I believe he is due.  The new book seems to be a reworking of Colliers concepts and ideas.  However, I am certain that he would be pleased that the material continues to be meaningful and contemporary even without ample credit to him.

As a way of expressing my gratitude to Mr. Collier for this work originally done 85 years ago, I am including a few passages here:

“…We make the world without but a reflection of the world within…Thoughts are the causes.  Conditions are merely effects…”

“…No matter if you seem to be in the clutch of misfortune, no matter if the future looks black and dreary – FORGET YOUR FEARS!  Realize that the future is of your own making.  There is no power that can keep you down but yourself.  Set your goal.  Forget the obstacles between.  Forget the difficulties in the way.  Keep only the goal before your mind’s eye – and you’ll win it…”

“…Just as the first law of gain is desire, so the formula of success is faith.  Believe that you have it – see it as an existent fact – and anything you rightly wish for is yours.  Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen…”

“…If you want more of the universal supply, you must use that which you have in such a way as to make yourself of greater service to those around you.  If you want to make more money, see how you can make more for others.  In the process you will inevitably make more for yourself too.  We get as we give – but first we must give…”

In the “Secret of Life” Collier also included a poem without credit that my research indicates anyone from Anon to Napoleon Hill may have written it along with C.W. Longnecker or Walter Wintle.

If you think you are beaten, you are;
If you think you dare not, you don’t;
If you’d like to win, but think you can’t
It’s almost a cinch you won’t;
If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost;
For out in the world you’ll find
Success begins with a person’s mind –
It’s all in the state of mind.

Typing Collier’s thoughts here only make me more grateful for “The Secret of the Ages” coming into my life.  Somehow it crystallized what I needed to know at the time I needed to know it.  I have read the book cover to cover three times and am now on my fourth time through.  As before I am benefiting from your wisdom Mr. Collier.  Thank you Sir!

When the student is ready, the master appears.  Buddhist Proverb