Quote of the Day - 04/04/2012

We are not unlike a particularly hardy crustacean....With each passage from one stage of human growth to the next we, too, must shed a protective structure. We are left exposed and vulnerable, but also yeasty and embryonic again, capable of stretching in ways we hadn't known before. - Gail Sheehy in Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life

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What do you think about the analogy made in this quote…that the passage to the next stage of human growth requires shedding of our ‘shell’ like a crustacean?

For me - the most recent passages have been more gradual and not like the abrupt shedding of an entire ‘protective structure.’ I was able to anticipate the passage and do practice stretching before it happened. Instead of a single physical milestone there were more complex and multiple psychological milestones.

Still - I like the analogy of the crustacean in the sense that being aware of the protective structures we have and noticing when they restrict our growth is probably key to our continued development whether or not it is a ‘passage from one stage of human growth to the next.’  

How aware are you now of the components of your ‘protective structure?’

Quote of the Day - 04/03/2012

Usually we think of wisdom in terms of lofty abstractions, not survival skills, absolute truths, not tactful equivocations. - Mary Catherine Bateson in Composing a Life

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Today’s quote prompts some thinking about wisdom. I’ve diagramed the quote in green in the mindmap below.

'Lofty abstractions' and 'absolute truths' are on the right and somehow seem more commonly associated with wisdom than 'survival skills' and 'tactful equivocations' shown on the left. We think of wisdom as the highest level of knowing (i.e. the sequence being data --> information --> knowledge --> wisdom) but do we recognize it in all the forms it takes?

Quote of the Day - 04/02/2012

The value of goals is not in the future they describe, but the change in perception of reality they foster. - David Allen

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David Allen (“Getting Things Done (GTD)” guru) is very good at cutting through hoopla to the main point and this quote is a good example of his talent. His valuation of goals is tangible because our perception of reality is the basis for our actions. Look back at your goals or resolutions for the year. How are they fostering your perception of reality and actions? If they aren’t - are they really your goals?

Quote of the Day - 04/01/2012

Success is not final, failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts. —Winston Churchill

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What jumps into your mind when you read this quote?

My first thought was that this was another way of saying that the past - containing a mixture of successes and failures - is not as important as actions now…or planned for the future. Courage seems like too strong a word for what it takes to continue in a way that counts. Courage implies facing something dangerous or painful or very difficult. Does pushing toward goals to achieve the purpose of your life always require courage? Maybe. Maybe not. It also requires a lot of other attributes too....like preseverance, integrity, discipline.

Quote of the Day - 03/31/2012

Litter the world in which you live with opportunities to learn. - Chip R. Bell in Managers as Mentors: Building Partnerships for Learning

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This quote contains one of the few instances I’ve seen of ‘litter’ representing something positive. And maybe the negative aspects we sometimes associate with ‘litter’ carry into this context as exactly what we are after for ‘opportunities to learn’: 

• Ubiquitous
• Sometimes messy
• Spontaneous
• Varied
• Attention getting
• Recyclable/reusable
• Trash (maybe still a negative…but it’s hard to tell with learning opportunities)

Quote of the Day - 03/30/2012

Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do. - Goethe

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The quote above was used in the opening for a summary of a recent workshop on nutrition and healthy aging. It is a particularly good choice when it comes to the continuing challenge of nutrition and healthy choices we all make. Even when we know and are willing…somehow applying that knowledge to the actions we take doesn’t always happen. As the years go by, the not-so-good choices begin to take a toll on our overall health and quality of life.

The workshop was focused on the way communities can hone the services available to support the increasing number of older people within the same communities they have lived all along. With tight budgets in the years ahead, program streamlining and prioritization will become intense. The summary is in prepublication form but is an informative read.

 Nutrition and Healthy Aging in the Community: Workshop Summary (prepublication summary) is available free for online reading.

Quote of the Day - 03/29/2012

I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. - Thomas Jefferson

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This quote is on the wall of the Jefferson Memorial. It reminds that us the founding fathers - and Jefferson in particular - realized that ‘with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times’ and they built a system that included a balance of power across three branches of government to allow that to happen. Over the course of US history, there have been a lot of changes and the system has sometimes worked better than others. One thing we know in our government as well as our personal lives: we can’t ever turn back the clock to an earlier time and start over. Decisions to change - or not change - can only impact the present and future.

Today - note news items that document our continuing struggle to achieve ‘laws and institutions…hand in hand with progress of the human mind.’

Quote of the Day - 03/28/2012

Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe. – John Milton in Paradise Lost

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It’s hard to remember this when ‘overcoming by force’ is easy - which is the goal of most militaries throughout history. Somehow the expedient of exercising physical or military might is very alluring even if there is an understanding that there is more that will eventually have to be overcome. How the ‘other half’ is overcome may be more defining of us and our nation in the long term than the force applied.

Next time you are reading through headlines - note the ones about actions taken relative to ‘foes’ and categorize them as force or other…think about which actions will likely have the most significant positive impact over the long term.

Quote of the Day - 03/27/2012

The fuel of life is new information - novelty - ordered into new structures.  We need to have information coursing through systems, disturbing the peace, imbuing everything it touches with new life. - Margaret J. Wheatley as quoted in Michele Bechtell in The Management Compass (AMA Management Briefing)

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It is very easy to get a lot of new information and novelty these days. Our technology has removed many of the barriers to information dissemination so now we find ourselves honing skills to avoid being overwhelmed by the ‘fire hose’ of new information made available every day. The trick is to somehow recognize the misinformation (i.e. recognize information unsupported by data of any kind and/or intentional falsehoods), decide if ‘opinion’ is indeed information too, cull information that is relevant/actionable and then get the highest quality new information ‘ordered into new structures.’ We want the ‘imbuing everything it touches with new life’ not a frenzy of circular motion that produces no discernible outcomes!

The quote is from a management book but applies to our individual lives as well. What positive role does new information/novelty play in your life? Trace a new information/novelty to the change it caused you to make. Realize that learning something may be a step you take to order information so that it can be applied or may simply be a storing away of information is almost raw form.

A recent example for me: I was cooking a big pot of pinto beans to use for homemade refried beans when it occurred to me that maybe beans could be used in other things - like muffins. This is an example of seeking novelty. I did a quick search on the web, found several recipes, picked one, and baked it. I’ll share the results tomorrow!

Quote of the Day - 03/26/2012

We had no external limitations, no overriding authority, no imposed pattern of existence. We created our own links with the world, and freedom was the very essence of our existence. - Simone De Beauvoir in The Prime of Life: The Autobiography of Simone De Beauvoir

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Have you had a period of your life like the quote describes? The absolute of ‘no’ - ‘no external limitation, no overriding authority, no imposed pattern of existence’ - is what gives me pause. It is more interesting to think about a continuum:

Where are you right now on the continuum? Where have you been at other times in your life? Is there a correlation with age or financial security or relationships?

Often it is our interpretation of external limitations, overriding authority, and imposed pattern of existence that is more critical than anything that can be measured exactly. If the pattern of existence imposed is what we want to do anyway, is it counter to our concept of ‘freedom?’

Quote of the Day - 03/25/2012

The 18th century presents an anomaly, long recognized by historians. Rightly labeled the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment, it nevertheless came to an end with an act of national violence, the French Revolution, and the ascendancy in Europe of a ‘man on a white charger’ – Napoleon Bonaparte. - John L. Beatty and Oliver A. Johnson in Heritage of Western Civilization, Volume 2 (From Revolutions to Modernity) (9th Edition)

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Why do we seek to name periods of time with such glorious phrases? Calling a period ‘the Age of Reason or the Enlightenment’ implies that the whole period can be characterized in a sound bite when, obviously, there were a lot of other things happening during the time period that do not fit with the words at all. It is always a simplification and simplification is only good if we remember that it is just that.

It works for summation but presents a challenge when we want to dig deeper. In the example of the Age of Reason - Why did it end in the bloody violence of the French Revolution and ignore (or promote) the profiteering in human trafficking taking Africans to the Americas? There was darkness to the Age of Reason that runs counter to the words.

What about names for other historical periods of western history? What do they mean to you and how aware are you of elements of those time periods that are not represented by the names? (Note: I’ve intentionally sorted them rather than listing them in chronological order. They are all easily findable on Wikipedia. 

• Age of Discovery
• Age of Sail
• Between the Wars
• Classical antiquity
• Dark Ages
• Little Ice Age
• Medieval
• Modern Contemporary
• Neoclassicism
• Pre-Socratic
• Renaissance

Quote of the Day - 03/24/2012

A cat’s skin is a bigger envelope than is necessary to hold the flesh and bones inside it. - Muriel Beadle in The Cat: History, Biology, and Behavior

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Cats have a grace and fluidity to them all the time and part of it might be that their skin is not stretched so tightly over ‘the flesh and bones inside’ as our skin is. Even when they contort themselves, their skin does not seem stretched. My first cat was one that had longer hair which made this observation difficult but now I have a short haired cat - and it is pretty easy to see. The cat’s skin is like a baggy coat.

Now for  a positive thought of the day about what happens to us as we grow older - think of the wrinkles and sags of aging as our skin becoming more cat-like - ‘a bigger envelope than necessary to hold the flesh and bones inside it.’ Are there other ways you want to be like a cat? I want to 

• Walk at my own speed even though someone is trying to rush me
• Be totally comfortable when I still
• Focus intently on what is happening around me (even if I am stealthy about it)
• Go to sleep easily

Quote of the Day - 03/23/2012

One of the truest pleasures of marriage is solitude. Also the most deeply reassuring. I continued to do my own job…she hers. - John Bayley in Elegy for Iris

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I’ve been married for close to 40 years and I find that Bayley’s observation is true for me. It is the ‘alone but not too alone’ aspect of marriage. It is such a pleasure to have solitude without loneliness. These days my husband and I are often in the house together but doing separate activities. We come together periodically for meals or a project…or just because we need some interaction. Neither of us feels obligated to interact more or differently; we are well tuned to each other.

Is this true for all marriages that have been sustained over a long time? Does it make a difference if one or both people are introverts?

Quote of the Day - 03/22/2012

Lost cities, erased from living memory – for centuries even their names were forgotten.  After the splendors of their golden age, in the 9th century the Maya cities suffered the ravages of famine, war, and depopulation and then were finally abandoned.  The forest returned.  Roots wrapped themselves around the stelae, bringing them crashing to the ground.  Thrusting branches weakened the temple walls and forced their way through the roofs. - Claude Baudez and Sydney Picasso in Lost Cities of the Maya (Discoveries)

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We tend to think of the buildings and houses we inhabit having a kind of permanence that they really don’t have. If we walked away - even buildings of stone would not last long. Would what we leave behind be enlightening to someone finding the ruins 1,000 years from now? Probably - but would their understanding resemble the way we think about ourselves at all?

Consider the people that left the Mayan ruins behind. Maybe many died in an epidemic or civil war…or maybe they simply rejected what the buildings represented and reverted to the way they lived before the stone edifices were built. We are curious about everything that has gone before us and the pieces of a puzzle that we may be able to solve holds our attention. It is the seeker in us that is keen to discover the secrets of the ruins in the forest.

I find the image of the forest ‘bringing them crashing to the ground’ fascinating by itself. It’s a good reminder - what a difference there is in biologic time (plant life times/our lifetimes) and geologic time. Our creations have a lifetime closer in length to our own.

Quote of the Day - 03/21/2012

 Man likes to simplify things, to find single causes to find an order in nature that corresponds with an orderly arrangement of ideas in his own mind. This is surely one of the great drives of thought, leading to many of the great ideas of philosophy, religion, and science.  But nature is also frighteningly complex, perhaps too complex ever to be “understood” through the processes of our limited brains – and our fondness for single causes has probably got us in trouble more often than it has helped us. - Marston Bates in The Forest and the Sea: A Look at the Economy of Nature and the Ecology of Man

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The quote today is from a book written in 1960 by a zoologist.The book be read not only for its topic (rain forests and seas) but as a ‘history of scientific thinking.’ It answers the question - “What did we know about rain forests and seas in 1960?”

Interestingly enough - the aspect of the book that interested me the most was the realization that we haven’t made much progress over the past 50 years in our tendency to want to simplify - particularly about nature. If we analyze the political discourse that happens every day around the world, we may even notice that we’ve become even more extreme in our desire. If it can’t be communicated in a sound bite or tweet - we tend to get bored.

Another thought prompted by the book - Most of us spend much less time outdoors in direct contact with nature than people did 50 years ago. In 1960 - air conditioning was not as prevalent and houses were not so well insulated; even indoors, the noises of the outdoors were heard. We are losing whatever intuitive understanding we had of nature - even it if was a simplified understanding.

Finishing on a positive note - the development of computers over the past 50 years has enabled models that may help us overcome the obstacle that nature is ‘perhaps too complex to be “understood” through the processes of our limited brains.’ The question then becomes - will our penchant for simplification allow us to use the results of those models to guide our actions that impact our world.

Quote of the Day - 03/19/2012

The process of improvisation that goes into composing a life is compounded in the process of remembering a life, like a patchwork quilt in a watercolor painting, rumpled and evocative. - Mary Catherine Bateson in Composing a Life

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Are you satisfied with the way you are ‘composing’ our life? Is there enough ‘improvisation’ to be ‘compounded’? How vibrant is your ‘patchwork quilt’?

Mary Catherine Bateson has a gift for words that draw out positive associations. ‘Composing’ implies some amount of control and the application of our own creativity. It requires some planning for the future but is honed to action; the living of life always is in the present. But then there is the remembering that compounds everything; the older we are the more there is to remember. That doesn’t necessarily that we spend more time savoring the past than in living the present; it may be that we simply evoke everything we have been before into the way we are now and into our remaining days.

Springtime is a good time to make changes - to be like the opening blooms on spring flowers and ‘compose’ something new (or refreshed) aspect of our life.

Quote of the Day - 03/18/2012

Science is one of the great creative achievements of the human mind. The motivations, the satisfactions, the frustrations of the scientist are hardly different in kind from those of any other type of creative personality, however different the products of the creative act may be. - Marston Bates in Man in Nature (Foundations of Modern Biology)

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This quote is from a book written in the early 1960s but its idea is worth considering today.

It points out that we tend to put a narrow lens to our perception of creativity. We think of artists and writers immediately - not scientists and engineers and cooks and parents and….

Creativity is a big part of every profession. Let’s get over the idea that it’s something special that only a few need apply. It is an integral part of each of us.

Science and engineering are disciplines that enable the building up of creative achievements either through collaboration or organization of individual work. In that sense they diverge from the image we sometimes have of an individual artist painting a large canvas. That doesn’t mean that creativity is not involved.

Every one of us brings creativity to everything we do. It is our choice to apply it and we consciously or unconsciously make the decision many times every day of our lives. Creativity is involved when we think or do anything differently than we have before.

Creativity in all its forms needs to be appreciated by each of us and in our culture. It begins with us.

Quote of the Day - 03/17/2012

The best of life, what is it but white moments? - Katherine Lee Bates in The Retinue, And Other Poems

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What does ‘white moments’ mean to you?

My first thought was the time just on the brink of the present that is still full of potential…when it is still up to us to make the meaning of it. Seeing those moments clearly and delighting as we live them…yes - I could agree with Katherine Lee Bates that they are ‘the best of life.’

Katherine Lee Bates was the author of the words to the anthem “America the Beautiful.” She lived mostly on the east coast but the lyrics she is most known for were written in Colorado.

This book is available to be read online here.

Quote of the Day - 03/16/2012

Illusions are perhaps as countless as relationships between people, or between people and things. - Charles Baudelaire in The Parisian Prowler: Le spleen de Paris: petits poe`mes en prose

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The quote today is from a book about 1850s Paris…but applies far beyond that time and place…maybe it is a universal.

Our day to day assumption is that we thoroughly understand our reality but there are so many things that don’t neatly fit our understanding. The reality we understand is only our perspective and even that can change over time. There is no absolute reality. So - we need to internalize the idea from this quote - that ‘illusions are perhaps as countless as relationships’ and be resilient enough to accommodate even those dynamic illusions into our perception of reality.

Some people do this quite naturally. They are the ones we say have good ‘people sense’ or ‘people skills’ - somehow they see perspectives of others more keenly and the actions they take reflect it. Others have to make a conscious effort to seek the perspective of others. Some find it very difficult to the see another’s perspective at all.

Today - think about the relationships important to you and how you are responding to the ‘illusions’ in them.

Quote of the Day - 03/15/2012

The Mississippi never lies at rest. It rolls. It follows no set course. Its waters and currents are not uniform. Rather, it moves south in layers and whorls, like an uncoiling rope made of a multitude of discrete fibers, each one following an independent and unpredictable path, each one separately and together capable of snapping like a whip. - John M. Barry in Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

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John Barry’s imagery of the Mississippi River reminds us that it is ultimately untamable; our influence has limits and a high price (both for the creation of levees and channels…and for their occasional failure). Have you seen the model of the river at Mud Island in Memphis? The panorama of life and commerce along the length of the river is portrayed…and the enormity of this river ‘snapping like a whip.’

Notice that this quote focuses on the river alone rather than the natural systems that provide the context for the river. It’s a simplifying assumption we often make because the natural system (or system of systems) seems too complex to consider. Perhaps it is still impossible to understand those systems well enough to be 100% accurate in our predictions of what will happen when we seek to control some aspect as the Mississippi ‘moves south in layers and whorls.’ It is important to consider as much of the system as we can to avoid an unpleasant surprise like 

• Fish dying,
• Farmland not getting replenishment of soil nutrients or
• Proliferation of invasive plants/animals. 

Instead of starting from the perspective of ‘how do we control the river’ we should think instead of how we utilize the natural ‘system of systems’ (that includes the river) in a way that sustains the benefits for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren….and onward into the future.