Wrong or Less Wrong

 

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

Aristotle

Five hundred years ago, most people thought the sun revolved around the earth, doctors thought bleeding a patient would cure him, and women thought spreading dog urine on their faces had anti-aging effects.

We look back in horror at many of the actions and beliefs of our ancestors, yet in five hundred years, what will people think of us?

We are injecting substances into our bodies to change their structure, hacking off parts, and pumping up others. We are defined by our money and jobs, the car we drive, and the house we live in. We, like starving kittens, follow famous people around. We tend to withhold support from the people close to us while lavishing it on folks we think “made it” without knowing them. We’re struggling.

Yet, from every culture comes a spark of something that advances the human experience. While we may think we are correct in our beliefs, we may find that we are less wrong. Each step up needs to be corrected. There probably isn’t that shining moment when the celestial choir sings, which means we have reached the pinnacle. No, we are just less wrong.

We get things stuck in our brains that do not serve us, and then we must defend that belief because, heaven forbid, we mustn’t be wrong. Most people are wrong  ¾ of the time, like the airplane that needs constant adjustment, yet it hits the tarmac on a dime if someone dropped one there. We believed our thoughts at the time. Now, we think of something else. We are less wrong. It’s called growth.

For the most part, school has taught us to give the “correct” answer. It has taught us not to be wrong. If we are wrong, it’s embarrassing. Sometimes, multiple choices are so close you could debate them for the day. Okay, which one is less wrong? Kids laugh at other kids who get the wrong answer because usually beneath that is a sigh of relief, “Whew, it wasn’t me.”

I’ve run into this story a couple of places: Pablo Picasso, then an old man, was sitting in a café’ doodling on a used napkin. He was nonchalantly drawing whatever his pen drew him to.

A woman had been looking on in awe.

After Picasso had finished his coffee, he crumbled up his napkin to throw away when he left the shop. 

“Wait, the woman cried. “Can I have your napkin? I’ll pay you for it.”

“Sure,” replied Picasso. “Twenty thousand dollars.”

“What? It only took you two minutes to draw that.”

“No, replied Picasso. “It took me over sixty years to draw this.’

 He stuffed the napkin in his pocket and left the café’.

 

Is Our Society Cuckoo?

First:

Wish on White Horses is back! 

 

I missed the memo that my domain was about to expire. Of all the auto-pay sites I get and don't want, it would have been wise to turn this one on.

 

The white horses stampeded over the hills and through the woods and found a hidden valley where no human put ropes on them or hampered their slumber.

 

After feeling I had walked across the Sahara to fix my blog, I found it in my own backyard, uh, computer, plus a hefty fee to get it back. It was like when my dad tore apart the water heater only to find the fuse was burnt out. See why I need two blogs with the same content?

 

Which brings me back to the age-old question: Why am I here? Why am I writing this? Remember what Ray Bradbury said, "You don't have to burn books, you just can stop just reading them." The same with this.

 

Crap-po-la!

 

I'm tired of the junk we're hearing. I'm tired of people bowing to the ones with riches, thinking they have the answers. Like, yeah, they know how to make money. Do they know how to live, love, laugh, and be happy? Those are the ones we need to follow. And why are we followers anyway? When did we lose our internal guidance system?

 

Do we want a savior? Well, the savior I choose isn't a despot, narcissist, liar or cheat. 

 

My mind is boggled. I'm frustrated, disenchanted, disappointed, and when I tell my daughter of this, she says that others feel the same way. 

 

 

The above picture struck me. It's of our yard, a Japanese maple, a fig tree, a St John's wort. (The one with red berries.) Yet where did our eyes go? To that one little dead leaf up high in the fig tree. That's the way of people. We can't help it, we are built to find the broken, the moving, the different. It has had survival value.  

 

The earth is some 6 billion years old. Billions folks. I can't fathom a billion years. Our lifespan is 100 years if we're lucky. And then we came as humanoids upon this planet maybe 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. When I was a kid, folks through humans came about 5,000 years ago. And we fought to defend the lineage of humans as specified in the Bible. See how far we've come? Now, we are studying consciousness, our soul, our spark of life. That's what we should have been studying all along, but we didn't have the tools. 

 

After all my grumbling, complaining, and ineptitude, I couldn't stand the News. I was tired of reading novels where I had to trudge through pain, anguish, and grief to get to the happy ending. I was tired of movies that made me sad and publishers that wanted tension between lovers and angst because we have no story without it. I remembered a time when we were proud to be Americans, and when GI Joe was a good guy.

 

 

Divine guidance said, "Enough Joyce," and pushed my Kindle to Louise Hay's book You Can Heal Your Life.

 

She speaks of Affirmations. Well, Affirmations and I have a long history. I remember getting assignments to write an affirmation 100 times before bed. That really made me love them. No, that was penance. 

 

Think of an affirmation this way: Every thought is an affirmation. 

 

(Come on, I know we have unwanted thoughts; don't beat yourself up. Be kind to yourself. We have a screwy brain. Notice the dead leaf, for heaven's sake, and climb up there and pluck it out, or wait, it will fall. It's doing its cycle like everything else—making the way for the new.)

 

And remember, every moment is new.

 

"If we choose to believe we are helpless victims and that it's all hopeless, then the Universe will support us in that belief."

 

“Every cell in our body responds to every single thought we think and every word we speak. Continuous modes of thinking and speaking produce body behaviors, postures, and eases or dis-eases. (Mental causes run 90 to 95 % true.)” 

 

"Being relaxed and centered and peaceful is really being strong and secure. 

 

Many of us think money is the most essential thing in our lives. It is not.

 

OUR BREATH IS.

 

Our breath represents our ability to take in and breathe out life. "If the power that created us has given us enough breath to last as long as we live, shall we not trust that everything we need will also be supplied?

 

"If you wonder if your mission on earth is over, and we're alive it isn't."

–Richard Bach (Illusions)