Th'Muse

Jason Wright says that a life can be changed in about seventeen seconds. He calls them miracles. There is even a book and a website and a facebook application to record those that happen to you, and those that you engage in and perform. I know Jason personally, and can say easily that his life definitely reflects the sense of fun and service an d the joy of existing that a little bit of extra effort produces. My thoughts today surround my own little seventeen second miracles. I call it Feedback. It is something that often takes just about seventeen seconds (or a minute or two, depending on how verbose you are!). It is the little moments we take to respond to someone. It can be about a service, a little ‘Thank you for. . . ‘ or a birthday. . . I had almost a hundred people wish me a great day. It absolutely surrounded me with awe to think that that many people thought about me, and took the seconds required to tell me so. I’m still walking around in the glow of it. Yet I doubt that ...

We just had the wonderful experience of hosting a Japanese student for a couple of weeks. We had a wonderful time showing him our world. He was delightful and curious, loved everything about America. (Except oatmeal and tomatoes!). Many tastes were new experiences for him. He loved RootBeer, though his friends said it tasted like medicine. He took a six-pack home. While we were taking him around and listening to ‘Oooo, it’s gootd, so goodt’ a lot, it occurred to me that perhaps I was missing much of the ‘soo, soooo goodt’  things in my life. Diane Ackerman, a sensual (as in the five senses) writer who describes things in succulent language filled with imagry, talks about the dulling of the senses in the modern world. So many times we forget to just stop, take a long look at something with new eyes. Having Kakeru here did that for me. I often wondered what he thought about things. How we appeared to him and what sorts of ideas he was getting with the ‘too much English!’ all...

Frankly, neither does ‘won’t’ power. Let’s face it. Strong-arm muscling goals gets us mostly just frustrated, down on ourselves and shoved into helplessness. Ever tried to ‘push a river’? Going against the natural flow of things makes life rougher, not easier. Struggle wasn’t meant for an every-day lifestyle. So, how do we improve? How do we get out of bad habits and into good ones? The trouble is, bad habits are EASY to start, and HARD to break. Good habits are HARD to start and EASY to break. I know, not fair! But it is what it is. You have spent years learning how to do things a certain way. Think a certain way, act and respond a certain way. You have all these wonderful desires, and want to do things a NEW way, so you sit down, make some ‘goals’ and then expect change to happen quickly! Guess what. . . it doesn’t. You usually fail, then berate yourself, give up, become depressed and decide it wasn’t possible anyway. What if you are just going about it in the wrong way? A riv...