Monday, January 1, 2018

Coloring Outside the Lines





(Photograph of the Epigraph to Suzanne Somer's book, Two's Company.A Fifty-Year Romance with Lessons Learned in Love, Life & Business.)

Rob Brezsy writes “Free Will Astrology” for the Eugene Weekly.

Now don’t go running off because I mentioned Astrology—I have a point to make here.

Rob writes that when he began writing Astrology copy, his editor told him to “Always go for the big three, Romance, Money and Power.”

After a few months, his editor noticed that Rob wasn’t following his advice. The editor would have fired him, but he couldn’t find a replacement whose spelling and grammar were as good as Robs.

Rob was writing about how to cultivate psychological health and nourish spiritual aspirations more than the big three.

Imagine.

And it worked.

Just think, perhaps psychological health and spiritual aspirations could just possibly bring the results we are craving, or else we would be so happy it wouldn’t matter.

Don’t you just love it when somebody colors outside the lines?

This question was on an #IQ test given to an eight-year-old-girl: “Which plant needs the less water? There was a picture of a flowering plant, a cactus, and ahead of lettuce. The girl chose the lettuce.

Her answer was marked wrong.

When asked why she chose the lettuce she said, “Well, the two plants are growing in a pot, and need water. The lettuce is cut. It isn’t growing. It doesn’t need water.”

I love it.

Yesterday I was reading how to write a bio for a blog. The first example was a bio that went something like this:

Hi, I’m Jane and I have a passion for bird watching, calligraphy and long walks in the forest…

It doesn’t say what she is offering, but it makes her personable.

The writing guru suggested something more like this:

Jane Doe’s books on beating social anxiety have won her international acclaim. She has been featured as an expert on Psychology TodayThe Oprah Winfrey Show, and Good Morning America.

NO-OO-O.  Not another one!

For me this is a case of liking the before bio better than the after. The bio is about Jane . She wrote it; she was describing herself. I like Jane.

Writing in third person doesn’ t fool anyone. They know she wrote it.

Do you think, though, maybe, just maybe, I am listening to a different drummer?

Oh yes, and the other day my daughter came home and said, “People have lost their common sense.” She was working with mentally challenged people, and said, that they couldn’t even apply chapstick to a person’s lips without a doctor’s consent.

Auggh!

Don’t you sometimes wonder how we humans manage to get along with each other?

While most peoples agree on certain issues regarding society, in that they want a crime-free neighborhood, to feel safe in the streets, have their children to grow up sane and sober, those sorts of things, people have different views on how those things should be carried out.

For example, Some people see things as they are, while others see things as they SHOULD be. It is good to hold positive views,  but this is what I mean:

Harder prison terms SHOULD deter criminals, but they don’t.
Making drugs illegal SHOULD stop drug use. But it doesn’t.
Killing terrorists SHOULD stop terrorists. But it doesn’t.
Teaching kids to stay abstinent until marriage SHOULD reduce unwanted pregnancies. But it doesn’t.
Some people believe that people should take care of themselves. But some don’t or can’t. And never will.
“Well,”says the SHOULD person, “why should I have to pay for them?!”
It doesn’t matter. You will anyway.
(This information was motivated by a Quara question answered by Mike Rightmire, a Molecular Biotechnologist specializing in molecular models and scientific computing. Look him up; he’s brilliant.)

Remember old Copernicus who said the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system?
Noted scientists of the day made loopy orbits trying to place a scientific fact (the sun is the center of the solar system) into a personal model. (The earth is the center.)
And sometimes our society too, draws loopy orbits, as did Copernicus’s opponents, trying to fit scientific fact into their model.