“Are You Playing in Your Playground?"

 

You never know where you will find your tiger.

 

I don't know where my tiger is, but I found an opossum in my hen house two nights ago. He's gone now—and my four hens are alive, with fewer feathers, one without a tail, but traumatized. I let the chickens out during the day, and they put themselves into bed at night. I go out after dark and shut the pen. Well, I waited too long that night.

One hen was wandering around lost. The other three had found a safe spot. The opossum was hugging the back wall of the second story of my little chicken house, and no matter how much I poked him with a 4-foot long 2 x 2-inch board, he would not budge. He would snarl and bare his teeth, though. I caught the hens and secured them in the other little house within the pen (it came with the property), and all's well. The opossum sneaked away while I set up a live trap for him. He must be home now, tending his bruises or visiting the neighbor's chickens.

 

That's on the home front. On the book front, I once stated in my little book "Where Tiger's Belch," that my protagonist decided she would find her purpose where tiger's belch," and thus she set off to find that spot. 

This week, I stumbled upon two books: John Strelecky's The Café on the Edge of the World and Return to the Why Café.

I loved them both. A third, The Safari, I just ordered. It was described as when your heart, soul, and story link up in perfect harmony. That's what I want for myself and my writing. I recently decided to write a series of short books and continue Jo's journey after she heard a tiger belch.

Strelecky asked the same questions I had asked, Why are we here? What's my purpose? I was enheartened because he is a best seller—that tells me that people are hungry for his sort of books, ones that inspire and ask the hard questions in a simple story. I aspire to write that sort. This came as a conformation to me that people do read those sorts of books, people do want to read of good things not bad.

We've been jerked around for some time now. I do not want to play in that playground anymore.  One of Strelecky's players asked a lady customer in the Café, "Are you playing in your playground yet?"

She wasn't. She was unhappily playing in someone else's playground—the corporate world's playground, where she was unappreciated and overworked.

As I walked through life, I passed many gates to playgrounds, peeked inside and said "Nope," not for me, and continued on my way.

I heard of a new playground last night; the "kids" of that playground found that the vilest thing they could write on Social Media got the most hits. And getting the most hits was the name of the game.

Pass on that one.

We are all travelers in this life—we are all together on the journey – although walking in different directions, not speaking the same language, nor following the same philosophy, religion, or mojo. The Jo of my Tiger book is traveling, something she feels drawn to do; she trusts her intuition that this will work out for her. She is playing in her own playground.

She is traveling the world.

I changed the final chapter a bit to make it clearer. 

 

It’s Tuesday, Put on Your Rose-Colored Glasses

Usually, the term “Looking through Rose-Colored glasses” is meant as an insult, meaning that you are avoiding looking at reality.

I’m using it to say let’s see hope for the future.

“You wear your heart on your sleeve.” “You are too sensitive. “Wake up and smell the coffee.” “Famous last words.”

 (Famous last words came from John Sedgwick, a Civil War general, who sarcastically said: “They couldn’t hit an elephant from this distance.”

That was right before he was shot and killed by a sniper.

 “Our beliefs are like colored glasses through which we view the world.”

My grandson asked me the other day if I thought he was cynical.”

I asked him his definition of cynical. He said, “It is seeing the negative, thinking that things will not change and that there is no hope for the future.” Great definition. I should keep him in my office for reference.

"According to your definition,” I said, “No, you are not cynical. You like to find the negative, but you believe in hope for the future.”

I like his definition better than the one in the dictionary:

“a: contemptuously distrustful of human nature and motives.”

… those cynical men who say that democracy cannot be honest and efficient.—

Franklin D. Roosevelt

b: based on or reflecting a belief that human conduct is motivated primarily by self-interest.”

This time of our lives has given us an excellent opportunity to look into human nature and to ask questions about why we believe, think, and behave a certain way. And how self-serving individuals like wielding power.

Why are we so polarized? Why do many see either/or black/white?

Have we always been this way?

Tricia Ross Stone, a Life Coach, wrote about Rose Colored Glasses and said that Deepak Chopra said we receive our view of the world at about 7 or 8 years old.

Would that mean that our life optometrist writes a prescription for our lenses at that age? Does he also give us colored lenses?

Yet, we also know that we add layers to our lenses throughout our lives. Those layers are placed by the energy of our thoughts, insecurities, doubts, fears, excitements, and views of the future.

So, does that explain the positive and negative, the half-full/half-empty people? Do the lenses determine conservative or liberal tendencies?

Or are those traits genetic or learned?

One side might say, “Holy cow, I could have been born to a red-necked, holy roller person who carries a shotgun or an assault weapon, who believes might makes right, and who believes in lynching or somehow annihilating the opponent.

Others: “There is no way I could have been born to a granola-eating, tree-hugging liberal who thinks that negotiating is good policy, spirituality is a form of worship, and doesn’t believe in a hell.

“People are distressed not by events, but by their opinion of events.”

--Epictetus

(Modern-day Psychological research has confirmed that our beliefs shape our emotions more than we usually think.)

For example, if we like someone, we believe the good said about them, and the bad has little or no effect.

 If we don’t like the person, we enjoy the bad, and virtually no amount of good changes our view.

“You become what you put your attention to.”

 –Epictetus.

Epictetus was a Greek philosopher from c50-c150 AD. He was born in slavery, had a leg broken by his master a freedman named Eaphroditus, and thus became a cripple. His master allowed him to study philosophy and later freed him. 

 

Epictetus with a crutch:

 

Toward the end of the first century, when the Emperor banished philosophers from Rome, Epictetus moved to Nicopolis, founded a school of philosophy, and taught that philosophy is a way of life and not simply a theoretical discipline.

Later in life, he adopted a boy from a friend who would have died without his care, and with the help of a woman, the two raised the child.

As a Stoic philosopher, Epictetus argued that while external events are beyond our control, how we respond to them is within our control, which can be learned through discipline.

One could see that Epictetus’ life events, slavery, being crippled, and banished, would place layers on his lenses. there were events out of his control. However, HOW he responded to events was within his power.

We usually use the word stoic as a passive teeth-gritting acceptance of life.

The dictionary defines Stoicism as a noun

    1. a person who can endure pain or hardship without showing feelings or complaining.

     2. a member of the ancient philosophical school of Stoicism.

The ancient school of Stoicism was a Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in Ancient Greece. Ancient Rome believed that virtue was enough to achieve eudaimonia: a well-lived life. The Stoics identified the path to achieving it by practicing the four cardinal virtues in everyday life — prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice — and living according to nature.

 

A foal is God’s way of saying the Universe should continue.