"When the writing on the wall becomes too frightening, most people flee to the reassurance of day-to-day life with its unchanging, pressing demands. And this temptation today is all the stronger since any long-range view of history isn't very encouraging either..."

Hannah Arendt

“Putting yourself first is not selfish. Quite the opposite. You must put your happiness and health first before you can be of use to anyone else.” ~Simon Sinek

"Don't listen to the person who has the answers; listen to the person who has the questions." 

- Albert Einstein

 

So be sure when you step. Step with care and great tact. And remember that Life's a great balancing act.    - Dr Seuss

 

Mindfulness Moment 

Reflect on the image.

What do you feel?

How strong is it?

How long did it last?

 

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

George Bernard Shaw, Irish author, playwright, critic, and Nobel Laureate, 

"Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know." 

John Keats. Engraving by W.B. Scott after J. Severn, 1819.

Openminded

 

Being open-minded is generally considered a positive quality. It is a necessary ability in order to think critically and rationally. If you are not open to other ideas and perspectives, it is difficult to see all of the factors that contribute to problems or come up with effective solutions.

Don’t worry about getting old, worry about thinking old.  

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail  - Emerson

Listen to all, plucking a feather from every passing goose, but follow no one absolutely.

Blogging Your way through information overload

 Many blogs and  many Sites of mine have been lost in space by crashing computers and changing emails that were the addresses.  Frustrating.  My daily notes amounted to ten 2.5 inch binders of double sided foolscap paper.  The collection got tossed when we moved downstairs because it was clutter.  I'm sorry about that rash decision because the pen is greater than the best mind for remembering details.  C'est la vie.

My concept for creating blogs and sites was to compartmentalize various interests to put some order into my mental ramblings in the hopes of landing on a few topics to focus on.  My attention is scattered among many subjects so it is like being a juggler somedays.  But the thing is, there is some method to what I do and I synthesize ideas by bringing together diverse subjects  E.O. Wilson has a name for this:

con·​sil·​ience | \\ kən-ˈsil-yən(t)s \\. : the linking together of principles from different disciplines especially when forming a comprehensive theory.

Wilson wrote a book about how important it is for scientists to venture outside their disciplines... cross pollination so to speak.  The challenge is to make sense of it all.

Wilson is interesting.  He injured his eye as a child and was only able to see ants easily so he became an expert in ants. 

Edward Osborne Wilson, usually cited as E. O. Wilson is an American biologist, naturalist, and writer. en.wikipedia.org

• Born: June 10, 1929 (age 92), Birmingham, Alabama
• 
  E.O. Wilson of Ants and Men 

https://www.pbs.org/show/eo-wilson-ants-and-men/

Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman. Edward O. Wilson was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1929.

Edward O. Wilson, Pellegrino Research Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology at Harvard, presents the annual John M. Prather Lecture in Biology.

The boundary between science on one side and the humanities and humanistic social sciences on the other is not an intrinsic epistemological divide but a broad borderland of previously poorly understood causal relationships. The borderland is now being explored, and offers increasing opportunities for collaboration across three great branches of learning. A definition of human nature will be offered and examples from the borderland will be used to illustrate it. Organized by the departments of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology & Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard.

https://youtu.be/hHkejCL9AWw

Listen to all, plucking a feather from every passing goose, but follow no one absolutely.

Don’t worry about getting old, worry about thinking old.  

No matter how long it takes, it will get better.  Tough situations build strong people in the end. 

 5 stages in the emotional cycle of change:

It’s going to be great.

Wow! It’s not so great.

This is harder than it looks.

We can do this.

Yeah! We did it.

Kelley and Conner

https://bit.ly/3cPteyR

Raven 

Be content with your lot; one cannot be first in everything. ~ Aesop

“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

— John Keats

5 rules of success:

1. “Whenever you are offended, understand that you are complicit in taking offense.”

2. Think progress, not perfection

3. “Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’”

4. Relax, you’re probably taking it too seriously

5. Focus on what you can control

Discipline is remembering what you want.

 

Discipline is remembering what you want.

"A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others." 

| Confucius

"There are three classes of intellects: one which comprehends by itself; another which appreciates what others comprehend; and a third which neither comprehends by itself nor by the showing of others."

 Niccolò Machiavelli

The Prince

"If we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere."

La Rochefoucauld

Maximes

I believe with Jung that each of us is “modern man in search of a soul.” — James Hillman

"Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure."

Virginia Woolf

The Death of the Moth

"Man is only what he becomes — profound truth, but he becomes only what he is — truth still more profound."

Amiel

"All art intuitively apprehends coming changes in the collective unconsciousness."

Carl Jung

Civilization in transition“Seen from the viewpoint of politics, truth has a despotic character. It is therefore hated by tyrants, who rightly fear the competition of a coercive force they cannot monopolize..."

— Hannah Arendt

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.”

Friedrich Nietzsche

"With the growth of knowledge our ideas must from time to time be organized afresh."

J. W. von Goethe

“At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously…that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”  Keats

“The excellency of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.”

— John Keats

Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvellous. ~ Bill Moyers



Have more than you show, Speak less than you know. - Shakespeare

 

Keep your knives sharp and your wits sharper.

iptilian and much more.

Because of these achievements, Les was inducted into the BLADE Cutlery Hall of Fame in 2017. What follows is a portion of BLADE‘s write up from the event. Jon accepted the award on Les’s behalf.

Jon explained that his father visited his first custom gun and knife show in Glendale, California, in 1979 and met the craftsmen and marveled at the works they had made and offered for sale.

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“I liked that they were independent and developed their skills by improving their products over time,” Jon related his father’s sentiments. “I also appreciated that they were independent and plied their skills in their home workshops.”

At the beginning of his career Les indicated he met pioneer knifemakers like Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Bob Loveless, Barry Wood, Glen Hornby, Chuck Stapel and many more, talking knives and guns for hours at a time. Les visited their shops and learned how they worked, what their definition of quality was in regard to design, materials, fit and finish, walk and talk, and metallurgy.

“I have been constantly intrigued by all the personalities, processes, materials, artistry and innovation that are present in the custom knife world, and challenged in how to translate them into a unique, high-quality manufacturing environment able to serve an ever-growing customer base,” Jon shared his father’s words. “I confess, it wasn’t easy creating a world-class company, but the journey, one knife at a time, was worth the effort!”

Charlton Heston

 

There are no "good guns". There are no "bad guns." Any gun in the hands of a bad man is a bad thing. Any gun in the hands of a decent person is no threat to anybody — except bad people.

~Charlton Heston

 

Meditation is a fulcrum for tranquility.

"The human body experiences a powerful gravitational pull in the direction of hope. That is why the patient's hopes are the physician's secret weapon. They are the hidden ingredients in any prescription." Norman Cousins

Self-trust is not an endowment, but is the Second Birth of the mind, which cannot come without years of deep reading.

It is not enough to do your best. You must succeed at doing what is necessary. - Winston Churchill

Don’t write it right, just write it—and then make it right later.

Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do. ~ Lin Yutang

One of the happiest moments in life is when you find the #courage to let go of what you cannot change. 

Word of the day is ‘nidificate’: to build a warm, cosy nest and settle there for the foreseeable.

  Make a List: 

What you can control:

What is outside your control:

- American Politics

 

What others think of you is generally none of your business.  

Making the beginning is one third of the work.   - Irish Proverb

Constructive Criticism

 

Fail Forward

 

Greet responsible failure with kind inquiry. 

What did you learn?

What factors contributed to this failure?

What didn’t happen that should have?

What will you do differently next time?

What new skill would you like to develop?

The Role of Spiritual Practice in the Modern World

 ABSTRACT: 

For the past 50 years, people have begun to recognize that advanced technology and material abundance do not provide meaning in their lives. This talk discusses how spiritual practice provides the balance needed to live a life of understanding and harmony.
Before retiring from the corporate, high-tech world in 1990, Les Kaye worked at IBM for over 30 years, as an engineer, salesman, manager, and software developer. In the mid-sixties, while working and raising a family, he started to practice Zen Buddhism. He was ordained as a Zen monk in 1970 and was recognized as a Zen teacher in 1986. Today he is the abbot of the Kannon Do Zen Center in Mountain View....

  

https://youtu.be/dPhbUavjSKc