Cool Mind Warm Heart

I Am All The People I Ever Met

 

“Who am I, you ask?  I don’t know, my friend.  I am all the languages I ever spoke, I am all the places I ever lived, I am all the people I ever met, I am all the women I ever loved, I am all the writers I ever read; I am all my ancestors – but at least they had the decency of never thinking of themselves as writers.  Who am I, you ask?  I don’t know, my friend; I don’t even know who is writing this page.”

— Jorge Luis Borges

SINGING MEANINGFUL SONGS

Although I would prefer that a two-ton potato not fall on my head, I’m grateful to be reasonably unattached to whether I’m alive or not.  It makes it easier to decline to participate in our nation’s wacky and profoundly harmful approach to health care. 

It is my intention never to agree to pay out-of-pocket for any essential medical service.   If that means I’m refused care, so be it.  Maybe I’ll change my mind if I’m in excruciating pain, and if I do, I’ll learn something about myself.  But it won’t alter my commitment to resist a way of thinking about so-called human health that is at odds with human dignity.  I’m speaking of the view that medical treatment is not a right but a privilege, and that it’s okay for someone to become financially devastated because of his or her health.  As George Carlin said about America, we’re a great country but a strange culture.

Corky Burr and the Keepers of Awe

[a story for thanksgiving]

Thirteen words that shape the world.

His name is Corky Burr, age mid-sixties by my calculations.  He and I were high school classmates.  I don’t believe our paths have crossed since, and we really didn’t know each other well then.  I have no memories of him, just a single impression: a small sparkle of kindness.  By “small” I mean his physical size, not quality of light.  Recently we became Facebook friends, which, as millions of us know, means mostly we get to glimpse at whatever sliver of a person’s life they wish to share with their Facebook companions.  The very first statement of Corky’s I was privileged to read was this: “I have 16 more days before I marry the love of my life.”

The Spirit of You

Here’s a rewarding way to spend every minute, whether as an individual or an institution.  Be on the lookout for the “spirit of you,” the spirit of who you really are, whenever and however it may appear.  A joke, a song, a photograph, a pizza, the caress of a shirt on your skin, a gracious memo, the way someone rakes the lawn or walks their dog––every smidgen of existence is a potential expression of that distinct vibration of beauty that is you. 

Maybe all there is to creating a healthy life or a healthy enterprise is identifying the spirit of our true self, and doing our best to make choices hand-in-hand with that spirit.  And the more open we are to discovering (or tripping over) that spirit in the world around us, the easier it is to spot when we look within.

...Vermont sunlight in September, Cirque du Soleil’s collaboration with the Beatles, the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, the part of a clam shell that forms a heart with wings, offerings by crazy quilt artist Allison Aller....

My heart smiles, “Hey, that’s me.”

NONE OF US IS WHO WE THINK WE ARE

It was such a sad thing to feel the despair in Michael Jordan as he said in conjunction with his induction to the Basketball Hall of Fame that nothing in his life would fulfill him as much as playing basketball.  Think about it.  How would he know?  Is he so visionary, so mystical, so in tune with the ultimate nature of things that he grasps the limitless possibility of the universe to surprise and challenge––and finds it wanting? 

What he’s saying without realizing it, my guess is, is that he can’t conceive of anything providing him the rapture he has experienced playing basketball––and since he can’t conceive it, it must not be possible.  And there Mr. Jordan demonstrates the great delusion common to us all until we choose to look at things differently.  The delusion that the boundaries of our understanding are the boundaries of understanding itself. 

Ted, Michael and the Price of Joy

No doubt by now Ted Kennedy and Michael Jackson have shared a little fist bump in the great beyond.  They had so much in common in their most recent incarnation.  They were born under the star named “Go Big or Stay Home.”  They were dramatic reminders to millions that we are all multi-dimensional beings––animated by nobility and ignorance: able to heal and inspire, as well as harm and confuse.