Thursday, May 27, 2004
Devastating news
We'll be on our way to the airport in a couple of hours, and we'll be going with heavy hearts; I felt very strongly that we should call the elderly relative who's our primary reason for this trip and remind her that we were coming, so that she wouldn't forget and have her aide drive her off on a day trip and lose us one of the few days we have with her, and... the aide answered the phone, and told us that certain health issues had taken a drastic change for the worse, and that our loved one, who seemed so lively and able to last another decade or more, has between 2 weeks and 2 months left.
I don't have the words to express my grief over this.
We just lost another dear one in October, and she had died literally a few days after we left, as if she'd been hanging on just to see us again and then was ready to go; now we're looking at a possible instant replay of that when we haven't recovered from the first loss.
I have a present for her that she's really going to like. A couple of months ago, I picked out another present for her, and at the time the weirdest thing came out of my mouth; "We'll give the other thing to her first and save this one for a later trip, because, if she passes away, [friend] likes this same sort of thing and we'll give it to her." It seemed like a silly thing to think about at the time, given that this relative seemed strong enough to outlive US, but... now she'll never get this 2nd gift, and the friend WILL get it. I'd do anything for this not to be so, for my intuition to have been wrong this time.
Our dear one has a collection of family photos that go back over a century; we LOVE those photos, and have looked through them with her many times, and she has always said that no one else has ever expressed an interest in them and that she wanted us to have them. We'd prompted her as to had she "made sure" about this, and she said she had... but it turns out that she had NOT, as I discovered when my intuition led me to call her lawyer and talk to him about it right after I got the bad news and got myself mostly composed. He's been TRYING to get her to tell him what she wants to do with her personal effects for YEARS, but she's never been willing to accept her own eventual passing and the need to talk about it, so now.... now... this is so GHOULISH... the lawyer, who's also is a neighbor, is going to come by her house Monday morning, and we're supposed to be there and ask her in front of him what she wants to do with the photos, so that he can know her wishes. How REVOLTING, to have to maneuver her like that!! Yes, it will be making sure that her wishes are carried out, but the thought still makes me CRINGE.
If you're a repeat visitor to my little corner of cyberspace, you've deduced that I'm an intensely emotional person. I'm now faced with what will be the biggest emotional challenge of my life; to visit this loved one and make the visit one that will fill her with joy, as this will be our LAST time together, without letting her know that WE know that she's dying, without her seeing any signs of our grief... and I have to stay clear-headed enough to make sure that the photos that none of the other relatives care about go to US and don't get split up and mostly thrown away. I have to do all of this despite barely having slept the past few nights trying to get our project finished in time, despite being ready to EXPLODE from the stress of that and of the trip for the past couple of weeks, despite wanting to howl like a wounded animal at the thought of losing someone I love so much...
What I have to do now is look at this trip as a GIFT; if her heart had failed sooner, she would have died without ever seeing us again, and if it had happened later we wouldn't have seen her anywhere near the end, wouldn't have been able to fill her with our love to sustain her for the journey she's getting ready to make into the unknown.
If I can't pull this off, then I'm not WORTHY of the love she has always shown me; none of her other few remaining family members (none of whom we know) cares to be involved with her life, so as far as we know they aren't going to be there for her.... there's just US. I HAVE to come through for her. I HAVE to.
I'm going to try to pull myself together so I can finish packing and getting ready to go. I'll have my laptop with me on the trip, so I'll still be posting what I can every day; I hope with all my heart that I'll be able to report that each day I've added a little happiness to a sweet old lady's final days.
I don't have the words to express my grief over this.
We just lost another dear one in October, and she had died literally a few days after we left, as if she'd been hanging on just to see us again and then was ready to go; now we're looking at a possible instant replay of that when we haven't recovered from the first loss.
I have a present for her that she's really going to like. A couple of months ago, I picked out another present for her, and at the time the weirdest thing came out of my mouth; "We'll give the other thing to her first and save this one for a later trip, because, if she passes away, [friend] likes this same sort of thing and we'll give it to her." It seemed like a silly thing to think about at the time, given that this relative seemed strong enough to outlive US, but... now she'll never get this 2nd gift, and the friend WILL get it. I'd do anything for this not to be so, for my intuition to have been wrong this time.
Our dear one has a collection of family photos that go back over a century; we LOVE those photos, and have looked through them with her many times, and she has always said that no one else has ever expressed an interest in them and that she wanted us to have them. We'd prompted her as to had she "made sure" about this, and she said she had... but it turns out that she had NOT, as I discovered when my intuition led me to call her lawyer and talk to him about it right after I got the bad news and got myself mostly composed. He's been TRYING to get her to tell him what she wants to do with her personal effects for YEARS, but she's never been willing to accept her own eventual passing and the need to talk about it, so now.... now... this is so GHOULISH... the lawyer, who's also is a neighbor, is going to come by her house Monday morning, and we're supposed to be there and ask her in front of him what she wants to do with the photos, so that he can know her wishes. How REVOLTING, to have to maneuver her like that!! Yes, it will be making sure that her wishes are carried out, but the thought still makes me CRINGE.
If you're a repeat visitor to my little corner of cyberspace, you've deduced that I'm an intensely emotional person. I'm now faced with what will be the biggest emotional challenge of my life; to visit this loved one and make the visit one that will fill her with joy, as this will be our LAST time together, without letting her know that WE know that she's dying, without her seeing any signs of our grief... and I have to stay clear-headed enough to make sure that the photos that none of the other relatives care about go to US and don't get split up and mostly thrown away. I have to do all of this despite barely having slept the past few nights trying to get our project finished in time, despite being ready to EXPLODE from the stress of that and of the trip for the past couple of weeks, despite wanting to howl like a wounded animal at the thought of losing someone I love so much...
What I have to do now is look at this trip as a GIFT; if her heart had failed sooner, she would have died without ever seeing us again, and if it had happened later we wouldn't have seen her anywhere near the end, wouldn't have been able to fill her with our love to sustain her for the journey she's getting ready to make into the unknown.
If I can't pull this off, then I'm not WORTHY of the love she has always shown me; none of her other few remaining family members (none of whom we know) cares to be involved with her life, so as far as we know they aren't going to be there for her.... there's just US. I HAVE to come through for her. I HAVE to.
I'm going to try to pull myself together so I can finish packing and getting ready to go. I'll have my laptop with me on the trip, so I'll still be posting what I can every day; I hope with all my heart that I'll be able to report that each day I've added a little happiness to a sweet old lady's final days.
Indirect precognition
Most people think of precognition as just being the seeing of something specific that hasn't happened yet, but another "flavor" of it is becoming aware, through no perceptible means, that something is about to happen that requires us to alter what we're doing to deal with. I don't mean hearing a train whistle and "anticipating" the arrival of the train, and so moving off of the tracks, either, I mean going about your business and suddenly realizing that you "have to" change what you're doing because... well, you don't KNOW, and that's what makes it different than, but no less valid than, standard precognition. You can even make a case that it's MORE important, as it happens more often and is more frequently a warning that needs to be heeded (regular precognition is as often as not totally useless info); I think it's important enough to give it its own term, "indirect precognition," with the name being chosen because you're perceiving indirectly that something's up, or even just being indirectly influenced to alter your actions without knowing why, rather than actually visualizing the upcoming events and "seeing" what the problem is.
I had an episode of this in my life today, as you probably guessed. My husband and I are going out of state Thursday, and before we leave we needed to rent a piece of equipment to allow us to finish a project we're working on, one that must be handed in, stressfully enough, also on Thursday. There is exactly ONE place to rent this piece of equipment in my entire city, and they only have ONE; my husband had therefore reserved it in advance, and I never gave it a moment's thought after he told me about it. All I had in my mind today was packing and the other preparations for the trip, which I was doing according to a schedule that he and I had discussed; I had gotten to the point where I needed to get into the bathroom and color my hair, so as to be done and showered by the time he got home... and I found myself compelled to continue packing instead. I kept eyeing the clock, envisioning the schedule becoming more and more of a shambles because I wasn't getting started with my hair, but my feet kept moving between the closet and the suitcase.
Then, the phone rang.
I went out into the family room so that I could hear on the machine who it was (in case it was my husband with a problem), and the caller turned out to be the owner of the place where we had reserved the equipment, saying since he hadn't heard from us since the reservation had been made (THE PREVIOUS DAY, it's not like it had been weeks, and there was no agreement or REASON for us to have called him again!!), he had decided to rent it to someone else!! As soon as I understood what the call was about, I snatched up the phone and assured the man that my husband fully intended to be there to pick it up AS AGREED; the jerk actually tried to worm out of it, asking if there was a way to call my husband to verify that he was coming, and then trying to argue that he couldn't get there by the time they closed in an HOUR, all in his eagerness to hand the thing over to a customer who was right there rather than the one he'd RESERVED it for. I made it perfectly clear that my husband DID have time to get there, WOULD be there, and that we had arranged to have it because we NEEDED IT, and on an emergency basis at that. He reluctantly agreed to hold onto the frigging thing until my husband got there, which is what he should have automatically done, and which we would have never thought to question that he WOULD do, and I thanked him (through gritted teeth) and hung up the phone... and belatedly realized that if I'd colored my hair when I was "supposed to," I would have been in the shower when that call came, the owner of the shop would have handed something we desperately needed over to someone else, and my husband and I would have been very, VERY screwed.
My husband, as always, thinks that the way things worked out is a "coincidence"... LOL!!
I had an episode of this in my life today, as you probably guessed. My husband and I are going out of state Thursday, and before we leave we needed to rent a piece of equipment to allow us to finish a project we're working on, one that must be handed in, stressfully enough, also on Thursday. There is exactly ONE place to rent this piece of equipment in my entire city, and they only have ONE; my husband had therefore reserved it in advance, and I never gave it a moment's thought after he told me about it. All I had in my mind today was packing and the other preparations for the trip, which I was doing according to a schedule that he and I had discussed; I had gotten to the point where I needed to get into the bathroom and color my hair, so as to be done and showered by the time he got home... and I found myself compelled to continue packing instead. I kept eyeing the clock, envisioning the schedule becoming more and more of a shambles because I wasn't getting started with my hair, but my feet kept moving between the closet and the suitcase.
Then, the phone rang.
I went out into the family room so that I could hear on the machine who it was (in case it was my husband with a problem), and the caller turned out to be the owner of the place where we had reserved the equipment, saying since he hadn't heard from us since the reservation had been made (THE PREVIOUS DAY, it's not like it had been weeks, and there was no agreement or REASON for us to have called him again!!), he had decided to rent it to someone else!! As soon as I understood what the call was about, I snatched up the phone and assured the man that my husband fully intended to be there to pick it up AS AGREED; the jerk actually tried to worm out of it, asking if there was a way to call my husband to verify that he was coming, and then trying to argue that he couldn't get there by the time they closed in an HOUR, all in his eagerness to hand the thing over to a customer who was right there rather than the one he'd RESERVED it for. I made it perfectly clear that my husband DID have time to get there, WOULD be there, and that we had arranged to have it because we NEEDED IT, and on an emergency basis at that. He reluctantly agreed to hold onto the frigging thing until my husband got there, which is what he should have automatically done, and which we would have never thought to question that he WOULD do, and I thanked him (through gritted teeth) and hung up the phone... and belatedly realized that if I'd colored my hair when I was "supposed to," I would have been in the shower when that call came, the owner of the shop would have handed something we desperately needed over to someone else, and my husband and I would have been very, VERY screwed.
My husband, as always, thinks that the way things worked out is a "coincidence"... LOL!!
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Wealth and fame
Do you want them? Are you SURE?
You assume that the people in your life are reasonably honest with you; if you're rich or famous, people tell you what you want to hear.
You expect your private life to be private; if you're rich or famous, you don't HAVE a private life.
You have a fairly accurate sense of self; if you're rich or famous, people throw such constant, exaggerated compliments at you that, unless you're the super-rare person that totally tunes out what others say, you'll have wildly warped perceptions about yourself, which other people perceive as you being a jerk.
You have a variety of people that you feel safe in trusting; if you're rich or famous, you can't trust anyone, because people will stand in line to take advantage of you and then sell the story to the Enquirer.
You know who your friends are; if you're rich or famous, you can never be sure who's your friend and who's just using you.
You know that your romantic partner loves and desires you; if you're rich or famous, chances are that it's the wealth and fame they love, or at best your wealth and fame creates excitement that greatly enhances your actual appeal... and not being loved for yourself gets old, not to mention hard on the ego.
You'll spend your life pursuing your hopes and dreams, and that pursuit will bring you excitement and pleasure; if you're rich or famous, you've already gotten everything, and your boredom will force you into compulsively spending, or partying, or whatever you can think of to fill up your days.
There's no harm in having enough $ to get some of the finer things in life, but don't wish for wealth or fame; wish for health and comfortable lives for yourself and your loved ones instead, and you'll have a chance at the best goal-happiness.
You assume that the people in your life are reasonably honest with you; if you're rich or famous, people tell you what you want to hear.
You expect your private life to be private; if you're rich or famous, you don't HAVE a private life.
You have a fairly accurate sense of self; if you're rich or famous, people throw such constant, exaggerated compliments at you that, unless you're the super-rare person that totally tunes out what others say, you'll have wildly warped perceptions about yourself, which other people perceive as you being a jerk.
You have a variety of people that you feel safe in trusting; if you're rich or famous, you can't trust anyone, because people will stand in line to take advantage of you and then sell the story to the Enquirer.
You know who your friends are; if you're rich or famous, you can never be sure who's your friend and who's just using you.
You know that your romantic partner loves and desires you; if you're rich or famous, chances are that it's the wealth and fame they love, or at best your wealth and fame creates excitement that greatly enhances your actual appeal... and not being loved for yourself gets old, not to mention hard on the ego.
You'll spend your life pursuing your hopes and dreams, and that pursuit will bring you excitement and pleasure; if you're rich or famous, you've already gotten everything, and your boredom will force you into compulsively spending, or partying, or whatever you can think of to fill up your days.
There's no harm in having enough $ to get some of the finer things in life, but don't wish for wealth or fame; wish for health and comfortable lives for yourself and your loved ones instead, and you'll have a chance at the best goal-happiness.
Monday, May 24, 2004
Synchronicities abound
I had the urge to call someone I rarely talk to today; as soon as she realized it was me, she freaked... because she'd been walking to the phone to call ME when the phone rang. I told her that another woman I know always has the same thing happen with me... and guess who the next person to call me was? When you think about someone, it activates the connection you have with them and gets them thinking about YOU; it happens so consistently that I don't know why anyone is ever surprised.
A forum that I spend alot of time at has been down for several days, giving Error 404 and associated messages when I tried to access it; today, the thought popped into my head that I should go to a site that had a link to that forum and... I didn't know what, but I followed the instinct, found the link, clicked it, and ended up at a NEW site that the forum is being moved to. The first thread put up by a non-admin in the temporary posting area there had gone up just a few minutes before I got there, how's THAT for timing?
There was a item on eBay not long ago that I didn't get because I bid less than it was worth, which I do NOT normally do... and now I got a gimme letter from a charity telling me that, for a donation of FAR less than I'd valued the eBay item, I can get that EXACT thing, AND another gift, AND a tax deduction. My check is in the mail.
We all get odd whims and urges to do things; if you go along with them, rather than brushing them off and continuing on your preplanned way, the "coincidences" will come too frequently to ignore. Try it and see.
A forum that I spend alot of time at has been down for several days, giving Error 404 and associated messages when I tried to access it; today, the thought popped into my head that I should go to a site that had a link to that forum and... I didn't know what, but I followed the instinct, found the link, clicked it, and ended up at a NEW site that the forum is being moved to. The first thread put up by a non-admin in the temporary posting area there had gone up just a few minutes before I got there, how's THAT for timing?
There was a item on eBay not long ago that I didn't get because I bid less than it was worth, which I do NOT normally do... and now I got a gimme letter from a charity telling me that, for a donation of FAR less than I'd valued the eBay item, I can get that EXACT thing, AND another gift, AND a tax deduction. My check is in the mail.
We all get odd whims and urges to do things; if you go along with them, rather than brushing them off and continuing on your preplanned way, the "coincidences" will come too frequently to ignore. Try it and see.
Responsibility and morality
If you do something, are you responsible for the outcome created by your actions? ALWAYS? What if you're legally insane, either temporarily or overall? What if you're under the compulsion of addiction? What if, unbeknownst to you, you lacked information crucial to making the right decision, and/or had false info? What if you were ordered to do it by someone with valid authority over you? What if you were certain that you or someone you cared about would suffer dreadful consequences if you didn't take that action? What if everyone in your peer group is doing it, and you'll lose them if you don't join in? What if everyone else in your exact circumstances would be driven by basic human nature or other psychological factors to do it? I'D say that ALL of those thing are mitigating factors, and some of them completely cancel out responsibility; sadly, not everyone agrees.
How do you judge the morality of the things you do? In particular, how can you tell if what you do is wrong, and "how wrong" it is? (How GOOD your actions are is a whole other topic.) The results of the actions, and your degree of responsibility, are crucial, but so is one other concept that's widely ignored; you're just as morally accountable for what your actions cause indirectly, and what you allow to happen through inaction, as you are for the results of direct actions you take (subject, as always, to certain sorts of exceptions).
If you've ever had a lover become attracted to a friend who, although not interested in them, is the sort of person that struts their stuff all the time, and gotten mad at that friend, you already understand about the INdirect results of actions and the blameworthiness, and perceived moral laxity, of the perpetrators. Moral responsibility for bad results due to inaction (in other words, immorality because of actions you did NOT take) is just as real, but rarely considered; what if a terrorist planted a nuclear warhead in the middle of your city, and you were the one in charge of getting him to tell you where he put it, and how to disarm it, before it went off and killed many thousands of innocent people? What are you willing to do to him to make him talk? Question him politely? Threaten to slap him around? Follow through with the threat? What if he still won't talk? Do you shrug and give up, or do you escalate your "persuasion"? Do you beat him with a baseball bat? Do you wire him up to a car battery? Do you go to work on him with pliers and a blowtorch? If you fail to make him talk in time, if you're too squeamish to make him suffer intensely enough to talk, you, YOU, will be personally responsible for the deaths of all those thousands of innocent people. Which is the lesser evil, the suffering of a person who is attempting to become a mass murderer, or the deaths of thousands of innocents? If you're thinking that you would NOT be responsible for the potential deaths in this scenario, think again.
Studies show that people believe themselves to NOT be responsible for the consequences arising indirectly from their actions, or that arise from inaction... and it just ain't so. It's this sort of mindest that makes people so unwilling to come running when someone is screaming "HELP" that people in self-defense classes are instructed to yell "FIRE" instead; people pretend that they bear no moral responsibility if someone is beaten, raped or killed because they did nothing... and it just ain't so.
The next time you hear something in the news about some alleged wrongdoing, whether in Iraq, America or Timbuktu, before you leap to judge the perpetrator(s), take a moment and think about the possible extenuating circumstances... and what WORSE news you might have been hearing if those actions had NOT been taken.
How do you judge the morality of the things you do? In particular, how can you tell if what you do is wrong, and "how wrong" it is? (How GOOD your actions are is a whole other topic.) The results of the actions, and your degree of responsibility, are crucial, but so is one other concept that's widely ignored; you're just as morally accountable for what your actions cause indirectly, and what you allow to happen through inaction, as you are for the results of direct actions you take (subject, as always, to certain sorts of exceptions).
If you've ever had a lover become attracted to a friend who, although not interested in them, is the sort of person that struts their stuff all the time, and gotten mad at that friend, you already understand about the INdirect results of actions and the blameworthiness, and perceived moral laxity, of the perpetrators. Moral responsibility for bad results due to inaction (in other words, immorality because of actions you did NOT take) is just as real, but rarely considered; what if a terrorist planted a nuclear warhead in the middle of your city, and you were the one in charge of getting him to tell you where he put it, and how to disarm it, before it went off and killed many thousands of innocent people? What are you willing to do to him to make him talk? Question him politely? Threaten to slap him around? Follow through with the threat? What if he still won't talk? Do you shrug and give up, or do you escalate your "persuasion"? Do you beat him with a baseball bat? Do you wire him up to a car battery? Do you go to work on him with pliers and a blowtorch? If you fail to make him talk in time, if you're too squeamish to make him suffer intensely enough to talk, you, YOU, will be personally responsible for the deaths of all those thousands of innocent people. Which is the lesser evil, the suffering of a person who is attempting to become a mass murderer, or the deaths of thousands of innocents? If you're thinking that you would NOT be responsible for the potential deaths in this scenario, think again.
Studies show that people believe themselves to NOT be responsible for the consequences arising indirectly from their actions, or that arise from inaction... and it just ain't so. It's this sort of mindest that makes people so unwilling to come running when someone is screaming "HELP" that people in self-defense classes are instructed to yell "FIRE" instead; people pretend that they bear no moral responsibility if someone is beaten, raped or killed because they did nothing... and it just ain't so.
The next time you hear something in the news about some alleged wrongdoing, whether in Iraq, America or Timbuktu, before you leap to judge the perpetrator(s), take a moment and think about the possible extenuating circumstances... and what WORSE news you might have been hearing if those actions had NOT been taken.
Sunday, May 23, 2004
Karma leads you to what you want to know
The 2 major areas of interest and study in my life have been psychology aka human nature, which has been the primary focus of my studies since I was a kid, and what I call by the umbrella term "karma," by which I mean all the unknowns, the connections between them, and the patterns and rules that underlie reality, which has been the focus of my most intensive study in recent years. Yesterday, I was given information that lead/will lead to amazing insight in BOTH areas.
In a place where the realities of human nature are persistently denied, I read references to the following psychological experiments:
Milgram experiment:
http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm
Zimbardo experiment:
http://www.prisonexp.org/
I did searches to find info on them, and those URLs are the best I found... and what I read on those sites is mindboggling. The Milgram experiment demonstrates the willingness of people to blindly obey anyone they see as an authority figure, even if they believe that their actions will cause injury or DEATH to another person. The Zimbardo experiment is a blood-chilling demonstration of how people given power over others become savages within DAYS, and also a fascinating, if horrifying, look into how psychological manipulations can be carried out. My understanding of human nature has taken the biggest leap in a long time thanks to this information; my gratitude for this is boundless.
Then, on a site devoted to frivolous nonsense (I DO go for some of that to give myself a break), someone posted about a book that discusses various Eastern philosophies, science, and how it's all connected... and yes, karma and quantum physics are included!! I haven't read the book yet, obviously, but I'm going to, and it can't help but give me some food for thought, probably quite a bit... and it has gotten me thinking about other books that cover this sort of material-where one book exists on a topic, there are usually others. I'm VERY excited to see what other people have come up with in this area of thought.
The more you seek the truth, the more it will be revealed to you.
In a place where the realities of human nature are persistently denied, I read references to the following psychological experiments:
Milgram experiment:
http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm
Zimbardo experiment:
http://www.prisonexp.org/
I did searches to find info on them, and those URLs are the best I found... and what I read on those sites is mindboggling. The Milgram experiment demonstrates the willingness of people to blindly obey anyone they see as an authority figure, even if they believe that their actions will cause injury or DEATH to another person. The Zimbardo experiment is a blood-chilling demonstration of how people given power over others become savages within DAYS, and also a fascinating, if horrifying, look into how psychological manipulations can be carried out. My understanding of human nature has taken the biggest leap in a long time thanks to this information; my gratitude for this is boundless.
Then, on a site devoted to frivolous nonsense (I DO go for some of that to give myself a break), someone posted about a book that discusses various Eastern philosophies, science, and how it's all connected... and yes, karma and quantum physics are included!! I haven't read the book yet, obviously, but I'm going to, and it can't help but give me some food for thought, probably quite a bit... and it has gotten me thinking about other books that cover this sort of material-where one book exists on a topic, there are usually others. I'm VERY excited to see what other people have come up with in this area of thought.
The more you seek the truth, the more it will be revealed to you.
