Saturday, February 05, 2005
The Cube Game: The Questions
This weekend, I thought I'd take a break from rants and ramblings and toss out something like those endless quizzes we see everywhere. This game has been alleged to be many centuries old, and to have been used as a tool for deep personal analysis all that time; I don't know about any of that, but I've used it a bunch of times with wildly divergent groups of people, and the general consensus is that it DOES provide a great deal of insight... I've come out with analyses of total strangers' answers that they thought pegged them exactly, so it's not just people twisting their answers to fit their perceptions of themselves or doing this for their friends. In any case, it's FUN, so give it a shot; if you're brave, post your answers on your blog (and include a link to this post for people to see the questions for themselves, of course). Here goes:
Get a pen and paper ready to write down your responses as they come up, because at the end you'll have forgotten half of it if it wasn't written down. Picture a flat, featureless landscape; plain dirt or sand, and a clear sky-no distractions or embellishments. Then, somewhere in the landscape, picture a cube, a ladder, and a horse. See them clearly before reading further.
.
.
.
.
.
Got it all in your mind? OK, now get ready to write:
For the cube: What exactly does it look like? What's it made out of? How big is it? What color(s) is it? What position is it in? How does it make you feel? Write down every detail, no matter how seemingly trivial.
For the ladder: Answer the same questions for this one, and also describe how it's positioned in relation to the cube.
For the horse: Answer all the previous questions, and add: How is it positioned relative to the ladder (as well as to the cube)? What, if anything, is it doing? Are there any items such as a saddle or a wagon there with the horse?
Hang onto your answers; I'll post the analysis "rules" tomorrow, along with my own answers and analysis (which I'm leaving out for now so as to not influence anyone or give anything away). Apologies for making you wait; it'll be more interesting, as well as accurate, this way, honest.
Get a pen and paper ready to write down your responses as they come up, because at the end you'll have forgotten half of it if it wasn't written down. Picture a flat, featureless landscape; plain dirt or sand, and a clear sky-no distractions or embellishments. Then, somewhere in the landscape, picture a cube, a ladder, and a horse. See them clearly before reading further.
.
.
.
.
.
Got it all in your mind? OK, now get ready to write:
For the cube: What exactly does it look like? What's it made out of? How big is it? What color(s) is it? What position is it in? How does it make you feel? Write down every detail, no matter how seemingly trivial.
For the ladder: Answer the same questions for this one, and also describe how it's positioned in relation to the cube.
For the horse: Answer all the previous questions, and add: How is it positioned relative to the ladder (as well as to the cube)? What, if anything, is it doing? Are there any items such as a saddle or a wagon there with the horse?
Hang onto your answers; I'll post the analysis "rules" tomorrow, along with my own answers and analysis (which I'm leaving out for now so as to not influence anyone or give anything away). Apologies for making you wait; it'll be more interesting, as well as accurate, this way, honest.
Friday, February 04, 2005
The thrill of spontaneity
I was tempted to leave this post blank... because, as far as I'm concerned, there IS no thrill. All being "spontaneous" means is that you didn't take the time to plan... and how is NOT planning, NOT thinking things through, NOT pondering all the options, NOT preparing for all eventualities, going to make something BETTER? Oh, I know that some people are just too lazy to work things out in advance, and cover for their irresponsibility by calling themselves "spontaneous," but people who ARE capable of looking before they leap ALSO sing the praises of spontaneity... in fact, nearly everyone I've ever heard comment on the subject has praised it, and to me that's just CRAZY.
Say there's a movie you'd like to see; the pro-spontaneity crowd claims that just dropping everything and running out the door to see it would somehow make the movie BETTER than if you planned a trip to the theater... but how can it, when it's the identical movie either way? The same thing goes for dinner at a restaurant, a weekend out of town, sex... it's the same activity in the same place whether it's planned or not, so how does spontaneity make any of it better?
I've asked people, and the answer is always, "It's something I can't really explain..." Yeah, that's a BIG help... well, actually, it IS in a way, because when someone claims to not be able to explain a feeling that makes no sense, it's a sure sign that on some level they KNOW they're being illogical, but don't want to admit it.
I also wonder how it's POSSIBLE for people to be spontaneous; don't we all have work to do, phone calls to return, kids and pets to feed? Don't we all have busy lives, with stuff that needs doing every minute? What happens to all that stuff when people are being spontaneous? "Sure, let's let the dog go hungry a few extra hours so that we can spontaneously go out tonight; so what if he eats all our shoes and barfs them up on the bedspread?" "Sure, let's let mom think we're dead in a ditch because we didn't return her phonecall within 24 hours; let's spontaneously go away fro the weekend." If you're only being "spontaneous" at days and times when nothing is going on, you're in fact NOT being spontaneous, and if you actually HAVE days and times with absolutely nothing going on... I can't even IMAGINE that, so I can't comment.
When people say that they want to find a spontaneous romantic partner, what exactly does that mean they're looking for? Someone who doesn't care about their responsibilities, and will therefore blow things off to go do something frivolous with them? Someone with no LIFE, who can thus do anything at any time with no harm done? Someone unwilling, or unable, to think ahead, to plan, to organize? What about any of that would be desirable in a mate?
When people say that they themselves are spontaneous, what are they saying about themselves, and why do they think it's praiseworthy?
I understand that this must be one of those things that's programmed into everyone that I'm lacking, that for everyone to love spontaneity there HAS to be something about it that fires off the adrenaline in a "normal" person; despite that, I'm gonna make my pitch for the REAL thrill... PLANNING. There's absolutely no activity you can imagine that couldn't be made better if it was thought through and planned out, so that every element is optimal. An activity where everything goes perfectly has GOT to be better than one where there are problems, not to mention the worry about problems that a reasonable person would be expected to have, both about the activity itself and because they dropped everything from their busy life and left it all hanging to be spontaneous.
Last but far from least is perhaps the greatest benefit of planning; anticipation. Any desirable activity will naturally generate anticipation, and the longer in advance you plan, within reasonable limits, the more anticipation you can have; since anticipation is a strongly pleasurable feeling, why give it up just to be able to say "I was spontaneous"?
Life's too short to make less than the most of any chance to have fun; I'd take having the best out of any situation over having the "thrill" of spontaneity any day.
Say there's a movie you'd like to see; the pro-spontaneity crowd claims that just dropping everything and running out the door to see it would somehow make the movie BETTER than if you planned a trip to the theater... but how can it, when it's the identical movie either way? The same thing goes for dinner at a restaurant, a weekend out of town, sex... it's the same activity in the same place whether it's planned or not, so how does spontaneity make any of it better?
I've asked people, and the answer is always, "It's something I can't really explain..." Yeah, that's a BIG help... well, actually, it IS in a way, because when someone claims to not be able to explain a feeling that makes no sense, it's a sure sign that on some level they KNOW they're being illogical, but don't want to admit it.
I also wonder how it's POSSIBLE for people to be spontaneous; don't we all have work to do, phone calls to return, kids and pets to feed? Don't we all have busy lives, with stuff that needs doing every minute? What happens to all that stuff when people are being spontaneous? "Sure, let's let the dog go hungry a few extra hours so that we can spontaneously go out tonight; so what if he eats all our shoes and barfs them up on the bedspread?" "Sure, let's let mom think we're dead in a ditch because we didn't return her phonecall within 24 hours; let's spontaneously go away fro the weekend." If you're only being "spontaneous" at days and times when nothing is going on, you're in fact NOT being spontaneous, and if you actually HAVE days and times with absolutely nothing going on... I can't even IMAGINE that, so I can't comment.
When people say that they want to find a spontaneous romantic partner, what exactly does that mean they're looking for? Someone who doesn't care about their responsibilities, and will therefore blow things off to go do something frivolous with them? Someone with no LIFE, who can thus do anything at any time with no harm done? Someone unwilling, or unable, to think ahead, to plan, to organize? What about any of that would be desirable in a mate?
When people say that they themselves are spontaneous, what are they saying about themselves, and why do they think it's praiseworthy?
I understand that this must be one of those things that's programmed into everyone that I'm lacking, that for everyone to love spontaneity there HAS to be something about it that fires off the adrenaline in a "normal" person; despite that, I'm gonna make my pitch for the REAL thrill... PLANNING. There's absolutely no activity you can imagine that couldn't be made better if it was thought through and planned out, so that every element is optimal. An activity where everything goes perfectly has GOT to be better than one where there are problems, not to mention the worry about problems that a reasonable person would be expected to have, both about the activity itself and because they dropped everything from their busy life and left it all hanging to be spontaneous.
Last but far from least is perhaps the greatest benefit of planning; anticipation. Any desirable activity will naturally generate anticipation, and the longer in advance you plan, within reasonable limits, the more anticipation you can have; since anticipation is a strongly pleasurable feeling, why give it up just to be able to say "I was spontaneous"?
Life's too short to make less than the most of any chance to have fun; I'd take having the best out of any situation over having the "thrill" of spontaneity any day.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
The birth of a lurker
Just imagine; you come online, and you have your choice of places to go where lots of people who share your interests are posting away, and everyone in each "place" considers everyone else a friend, and treats them accordingly. You'd HAVE to imagine it, because the psychology of online life is such that it just doesn't EXIST; I've gone through more clubs, forums, groups, and message boards in my years online than you'd believe if I told you, and have come to the sad realization that, although oftentimes forum members put up posts patting themselves on the back for what a "family" they have, the reality always ends up being very, VERY different:
A tiny % of forums do NOT have ugliness raging across them at regular intervals; these forums are heavily and properly moderated, and they generally circle around something technical or intellectual. They're mostly pleasant enough places, but they're NOT friendship groups, and the atmosphere is a little snobby, with those who are seen as "experts" setting the tone and people either following, or opposing with terse politeness until they get tired of not being able to debate strenuously (aka FIGHT) and leave.
There are certainly "clubs" (such as Yahoo and MSN have) I've seen that had a central core of seemingly chummy people and lots of posting... but, over time, and I mean less than a year in each case, the core always "broke up," and what was left was the sort of nearly-dead place that most online clubs become.
Then, there are those forums where a group of hateful no-life types have taken hold; they form a clique based on their mutual desire to be able to exclude others as they are excluded in real life, and circle their lives (they always have thousands of posts, and new ones popping up at all hours) around coming to that forum and attacking viciously anyone who isn't EXACTLY to their liking, ie one of the clique or someone who grovels to them (how sad are THOSE people, who are so desperate for acceptance that they'll do ANYTHING to be allowed to participate in a group?). There are always newbies showing up that they can lord over and abuse, so this sort of forum can stay active forever, and, sadly, it's a common "format."
And lastly, there's the sort of forum that seems nice at first; there's alot of personal stuff being posted, supportive replies, everyone has alot in common... if you like whatever it is that THEY like that the forum is based on, you'll feel happy to have found them. Sooner or later, though, usually sooner, you'll begin to notice the undercurrents of tension, and, given a month or so at most, you'll see it; someone says something to someone else, and suddenly the entire place erupts in name-calling, personal insults, ugly language, threats, ganging up, snide comments about how the admin staff and/or elder members "rule" everything unfairly, demands that certain people leave or be kicked out, melodramatic pronouncements by some of the main troublemakers that they're thinking of leaving (in an attempt to sway people's sympathies), and often references to some other, usually newer, forum, chatroom, or whatever that's "better" that people are told they can come to to get away from the awfulness of the original board. It doesn't matter what the forum is about, if it doesn't fall into the previous categories it ALWAYS ends up this way; I've even seen this sort of thing on the medical discussion boards on WebMD (which tend to evolve into communities of a sort). The mods on that site are PAID, and so will usually stop it within a few hours, but until then people act like rabid dogs... with other people who are SICK!!
I never thought to consciously sum up all of my observations, and those by many other people I've gotten to know online over the years who've also cruised lots of forums, with the realization that there simply is NOT, in the long term, such a thing as a forum that is a TRUE friendship group, until my buddy Gary made a post on his excellent blog about the behavior on a WEATHER forum; aside from my dismay that such a thing even exists (as discussing weather seems only slightly more exciting than watching paint dry), I was amazed to see quotes of recent posting there that were EXACTLY like what I've been writing about:
http://bibbsrevenge.com/index.php?p=564
The posts he quotes could have been lifted nearly word for word from every forum I've ever seen; even with something you wouldn't expect people to get hysterical about, weather, WEATHER, people still congregate there to talk about it and act precisely as the folks on other forums do. Reading about it was almost eerie; it MUST say something about human nature that we are clearly utterly incapable of having an active forum where people GET ALONG... something about how we'll act without the usual social restraints, when we can hide behind a screen name and there's no actual penalty for bad behavior... something grim.
What's also grim is that now I have to consciously accept that, no matter how cool a forum and its members seem when I first get there, I KNOW that it will end up turning ugly (unless it's too heavily moderated to allow real personal interaction), and so I have to keep in mind that if I decide to become involved, I need to NOT waste time and energy trying to get chummy with people, because long before the relationships become meaningful I'll have to depart the forum to keep their in-fighting from stressing me out... so why get involved at all? Forums that are of the intellectual/technical type are useful to get some quick answers, but debating things with strangers isn't a productive use of my time, and always gets tense if not outright nasty (and what's the point in investing so much time with people that you aren't moving towards friendship with, in any case?), so there's no reason for me to establish myself in that sort of place, either. Hmmmmmmmmmm...
The people I know and respect in real life do NOT "do" forums; until now, it never occurred to me that this should have been a red flag. Granted, without having TRIED forums, they can't be acting from actual knowledge of them, but they seem to have understood instinctively that focusing "social energy" on them would be a bad idea; I'm going to be asking some questions and seeing what they have to say, because there are clearly some lessons to be learned from how "normal" people have analyzed the situation.
Why did *I* get into forums when none of my friends did? In my previous post, I referred to my love of novelty things... and to me, being able to be in a whole GROUP of people who loved the same obscure band or old TV show or offbeat entertainer or whatever that I did was a BIG novelty. It still is, to a degree, but my way of dealing with it is going to have to change:
We all know what a "lurker" is; maybe they register on the forum, maybe they even occasionally post, but for the most part they just treat it like it was a magazine... read what they want and move along. I never until this moment understood WHY a person would EVER choose to lurk rather than join in; now, I see that this is actually the smartest way to deal with a forum. I'd never have believed it, but... I'm going to start being a lurker. I'm going to resist the urge to jump in and exchange "hi, welcome, thank you, I like that, yeah me too" with people whose names I won't remember in a couple of months; I'll absorb whatever information is available, feel the warm glow of not being totally alone in liking weird stuff, and surf on to something else.
Gary's post, the one that started this cascade of thoughts, was posted on the 5 year "anniversary" of the day I stumbled into my first online club (remember Excite clubs?); I kid you not, the EXACT DAY. Coincidence? Nope. :-)
A tiny % of forums do NOT have ugliness raging across them at regular intervals; these forums are heavily and properly moderated, and they generally circle around something technical or intellectual. They're mostly pleasant enough places, but they're NOT friendship groups, and the atmosphere is a little snobby, with those who are seen as "experts" setting the tone and people either following, or opposing with terse politeness until they get tired of not being able to debate strenuously (aka FIGHT) and leave.
There are certainly "clubs" (such as Yahoo and MSN have) I've seen that had a central core of seemingly chummy people and lots of posting... but, over time, and I mean less than a year in each case, the core always "broke up," and what was left was the sort of nearly-dead place that most online clubs become.
Then, there are those forums where a group of hateful no-life types have taken hold; they form a clique based on their mutual desire to be able to exclude others as they are excluded in real life, and circle their lives (they always have thousands of posts, and new ones popping up at all hours) around coming to that forum and attacking viciously anyone who isn't EXACTLY to their liking, ie one of the clique or someone who grovels to them (how sad are THOSE people, who are so desperate for acceptance that they'll do ANYTHING to be allowed to participate in a group?). There are always newbies showing up that they can lord over and abuse, so this sort of forum can stay active forever, and, sadly, it's a common "format."
And lastly, there's the sort of forum that seems nice at first; there's alot of personal stuff being posted, supportive replies, everyone has alot in common... if you like whatever it is that THEY like that the forum is based on, you'll feel happy to have found them. Sooner or later, though, usually sooner, you'll begin to notice the undercurrents of tension, and, given a month or so at most, you'll see it; someone says something to someone else, and suddenly the entire place erupts in name-calling, personal insults, ugly language, threats, ganging up, snide comments about how the admin staff and/or elder members "rule" everything unfairly, demands that certain people leave or be kicked out, melodramatic pronouncements by some of the main troublemakers that they're thinking of leaving (in an attempt to sway people's sympathies), and often references to some other, usually newer, forum, chatroom, or whatever that's "better" that people are told they can come to to get away from the awfulness of the original board. It doesn't matter what the forum is about, if it doesn't fall into the previous categories it ALWAYS ends up this way; I've even seen this sort of thing on the medical discussion boards on WebMD (which tend to evolve into communities of a sort). The mods on that site are PAID, and so will usually stop it within a few hours, but until then people act like rabid dogs... with other people who are SICK!!
I never thought to consciously sum up all of my observations, and those by many other people I've gotten to know online over the years who've also cruised lots of forums, with the realization that there simply is NOT, in the long term, such a thing as a forum that is a TRUE friendship group, until my buddy Gary made a post on his excellent blog about the behavior on a WEATHER forum; aside from my dismay that such a thing even exists (as discussing weather seems only slightly more exciting than watching paint dry), I was amazed to see quotes of recent posting there that were EXACTLY like what I've been writing about:
http://bibbsrevenge.com/index.php?p=564
The posts he quotes could have been lifted nearly word for word from every forum I've ever seen; even with something you wouldn't expect people to get hysterical about, weather, WEATHER, people still congregate there to talk about it and act precisely as the folks on other forums do. Reading about it was almost eerie; it MUST say something about human nature that we are clearly utterly incapable of having an active forum where people GET ALONG... something about how we'll act without the usual social restraints, when we can hide behind a screen name and there's no actual penalty for bad behavior... something grim.
What's also grim is that now I have to consciously accept that, no matter how cool a forum and its members seem when I first get there, I KNOW that it will end up turning ugly (unless it's too heavily moderated to allow real personal interaction), and so I have to keep in mind that if I decide to become involved, I need to NOT waste time and energy trying to get chummy with people, because long before the relationships become meaningful I'll have to depart the forum to keep their in-fighting from stressing me out... so why get involved at all? Forums that are of the intellectual/technical type are useful to get some quick answers, but debating things with strangers isn't a productive use of my time, and always gets tense if not outright nasty (and what's the point in investing so much time with people that you aren't moving towards friendship with, in any case?), so there's no reason for me to establish myself in that sort of place, either. Hmmmmmmmmmm...
The people I know and respect in real life do NOT "do" forums; until now, it never occurred to me that this should have been a red flag. Granted, without having TRIED forums, they can't be acting from actual knowledge of them, but they seem to have understood instinctively that focusing "social energy" on them would be a bad idea; I'm going to be asking some questions and seeing what they have to say, because there are clearly some lessons to be learned from how "normal" people have analyzed the situation.
Why did *I* get into forums when none of my friends did? In my previous post, I referred to my love of novelty things... and to me, being able to be in a whole GROUP of people who loved the same obscure band or old TV show or offbeat entertainer or whatever that I did was a BIG novelty. It still is, to a degree, but my way of dealing with it is going to have to change:
We all know what a "lurker" is; maybe they register on the forum, maybe they even occasionally post, but for the most part they just treat it like it was a magazine... read what they want and move along. I never until this moment understood WHY a person would EVER choose to lurk rather than join in; now, I see that this is actually the smartest way to deal with a forum. I'd never have believed it, but... I'm going to start being a lurker. I'm going to resist the urge to jump in and exchange "hi, welcome, thank you, I like that, yeah me too" with people whose names I won't remember in a couple of months; I'll absorb whatever information is available, feel the warm glow of not being totally alone in liking weird stuff, and surf on to something else.
Gary's post, the one that started this cascade of thoughts, was posted on the 5 year "anniversary" of the day I stumbled into my first online club (remember Excite clubs?); I kid you not, the EXACT DAY. Coincidence? Nope. :-)
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
A romantic day
My husband and I had one of the various anniversaries that we celebrate (don't ask, lol) today; he came home with a special gift that he'd meant to get me for my birthday last year, forgotten about, and redeemed himself by surprising me with it today. I didn't buy him anything, as he prefers things that I create, and I had a couple of ideas:
I love novelty items, so when I saw an ad for pens that were meant to draw on glass, I had to have 'em; a few days ago, I drew something on the bathroom mirror that I knew my husband would really get a kick out of, which he did... and then did NOT put the fan on when he showered the next day, and the condensation washed it all away, sigh. He wasn't expecting me to make the effort again so soon, but I DID, and it made him very happy; I hope he doesn't stop taking showers in order to protect it this time, unless he's got a gas mask for me, or at least a clothespin for my nose. ;-)
That wasn't the only thing I made for him, though. Knowing my love for novelty stuff, he'd gotten me an even odder kind of pens a few months ago; they contain food coloring, and are thus safe to write on FOOD with... you can still eat it afterwards. Today, I got out a bag of plantain chips, fished out a bunch of the unbroken ones, and began writing out a message for him, one letter per chip (they're round and about an inch across); because the surface of the chips is rough, salty and a little greasy, the ink did NOT want to transfer, and it ended up taking almost half an hour... but eventually I had it all laid out and ready for him. As I admired my handiwork, I thought of a Zits cartoon from some years ago in which the teenage girl laboriously chooses from a package of those tiny candy hearts with messages on them to make a heart on the teenage boy's desk with a collective message that seems right to her; when the boy shows up, he shouts, "Hey! Candy!" and sweeps it all into his mouth without noticing the heart-shaped arrangement or reading the messages... and she bonks her head on her desk in frustration. When my husband saw MY creation, he said, "Imagine if I just tossed them all in my mouth like in that cartoon." I replied, "I thought of that cartoon when I made this," and we both laughed.
We may fight like cats and dogs, but we never doubt that we belong together. :-)
I love novelty items, so when I saw an ad for pens that were meant to draw on glass, I had to have 'em; a few days ago, I drew something on the bathroom mirror that I knew my husband would really get a kick out of, which he did... and then did NOT put the fan on when he showered the next day, and the condensation washed it all away, sigh. He wasn't expecting me to make the effort again so soon, but I DID, and it made him very happy; I hope he doesn't stop taking showers in order to protect it this time, unless he's got a gas mask for me, or at least a clothespin for my nose. ;-)
That wasn't the only thing I made for him, though. Knowing my love for novelty stuff, he'd gotten me an even odder kind of pens a few months ago; they contain food coloring, and are thus safe to write on FOOD with... you can still eat it afterwards. Today, I got out a bag of plantain chips, fished out a bunch of the unbroken ones, and began writing out a message for him, one letter per chip (they're round and about an inch across); because the surface of the chips is rough, salty and a little greasy, the ink did NOT want to transfer, and it ended up taking almost half an hour... but eventually I had it all laid out and ready for him. As I admired my handiwork, I thought of a Zits cartoon from some years ago in which the teenage girl laboriously chooses from a package of those tiny candy hearts with messages on them to make a heart on the teenage boy's desk with a collective message that seems right to her; when the boy shows up, he shouts, "Hey! Candy!" and sweeps it all into his mouth without noticing the heart-shaped arrangement or reading the messages... and she bonks her head on her desk in frustration. When my husband saw MY creation, he said, "Imagine if I just tossed them all in my mouth like in that cartoon." I replied, "I thought of that cartoon when I made this," and we both laughed.
We may fight like cats and dogs, but we never doubt that we belong together. :-)
Tuesday, February 01, 2005
Some odds and ends
I finally got around to reading the Sunday funnies from the weekend before last, and I was really impressed by, of all things, "Family Circus"; their website doesn't seem to have a way to access strips from the recent past, so I'll try to explain what it looks like. First, there's a yellow box that says, "Last November a 'Family Circus' Sunday cartoon showed Dolly viewing a firefighter on TV advising homeowners to know in advance which possessions they would take with them in case of fire." Then, there's a drawing of a pile of toys by a door, with the caption "It resulted in Dolly placing her 'choice possessions' inside the front door." Next, there's "Bil" at the drawing board, saying "Cute, but wrong! A flood of e-mails and letters from concerned firefighters and other readers pointed out my error. Here's the correct message." In the next pic, Dolly is watching a firefighter on TV, who's saying "All members of a family should immediately evacuate any premises upon discovery of a fire," and the caption adds, "Children need to know the only possession they should remove from a burning home is THEMSELVES." In the final "scene," "Bil" is sitting in the corner on a little stool; Jeff says "Daddy's sittin' in the corner!" and Dolly replies "I think Mommy sent him there."
I've gotta say, this was as beautifully-handled as any retraction I've ever seen; he explained the problem, admitted he was wrong, showed the proper message, and then rounded up with a little self-deprecating humor... and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better way to handle it the next time YOU have to apologize for inadvertent wrongdoing.
If you've read through my links list recently (and you SHOULD, because they're all top-quality blogs), you've noticed that at the bottom I've put in a quote of the day thingie; what makes this worth a mention is that the darned thing is set up to use ALL of the width of the space you put it in, and so was sticking out WAY beyond the other things in my sidebar... and this problem led to me learning something new. I studied my template, trying to figure out how the commands there formatted the page, and, after a few false starts that SEEMED to be solving the problem but were destroying the ability of the blog to "scale itself" for different screen sizes, I made what for me was a huge leap; I did a little research, figured out how "the h's," the specifications called h1, h2, etc, were pre-defining formatting "rules" that were used later in the template, and... I mimicked the way the other h's were set up, selected the commands I'd need from other parts of the template (they're largely self-explanatory, luckily), and defined h7, which limits the width of the element and gives it an easily-readable font size. It WORKED!! My husband, who's made some websites from scratch but was at a loss as to what to do to fix this situation, was duly impressed... especially when I did the victory dance. ;-)
Let's see, what else... oh, right; I FINALLY saw "The Village" today. I can see why some folks loved it, and why some folks hated it; I don't want to spoil the surprises for any readers who still haven't seen it, as no one spoiled them for ME and it made a big difference, so I'll just say that it's very unusual, and well worth watching.
Last, but far from least; I passed 30,000 hits today!! :-)
I've gotta say, this was as beautifully-handled as any retraction I've ever seen; he explained the problem, admitted he was wrong, showed the proper message, and then rounded up with a little self-deprecating humor... and you'd be hard-pressed to find a better way to handle it the next time YOU have to apologize for inadvertent wrongdoing.
If you've read through my links list recently (and you SHOULD, because they're all top-quality blogs), you've noticed that at the bottom I've put in a quote of the day thingie; what makes this worth a mention is that the darned thing is set up to use ALL of the width of the space you put it in, and so was sticking out WAY beyond the other things in my sidebar... and this problem led to me learning something new. I studied my template, trying to figure out how the commands there formatted the page, and, after a few false starts that SEEMED to be solving the problem but were destroying the ability of the blog to "scale itself" for different screen sizes, I made what for me was a huge leap; I did a little research, figured out how "the h's," the specifications called h1, h2, etc, were pre-defining formatting "rules" that were used later in the template, and... I mimicked the way the other h's were set up, selected the commands I'd need from other parts of the template (they're largely self-explanatory, luckily), and defined h7, which limits the width of the element and gives it an easily-readable font size. It WORKED!! My husband, who's made some websites from scratch but was at a loss as to what to do to fix this situation, was duly impressed... especially when I did the victory dance. ;-)
Let's see, what else... oh, right; I FINALLY saw "The Village" today. I can see why some folks loved it, and why some folks hated it; I don't want to spoil the surprises for any readers who still haven't seen it, as no one spoiled them for ME and it made a big difference, so I'll just say that it's very unusual, and well worth watching.
Last, but far from least; I passed 30,000 hits today!! :-)
Monday, January 31, 2005
Does practice make perfect?
No, of course not. Surprised?
How many times in your childhood were you goaded into continuing to grind away at something by an adult telling you that it WAS so? Heck, you've probably heard it dozens of times as an adult, too... but did you ever stop and think about it, ask yourself if it was true, if it COULD be true?
Most people "practice" the things they do all throughout their lives; with the obvious exception of very simple, trivial tasks, have you ever seen anyone become PERFECT at ANYTHING? The finest cook has the occasional meal that doesn't turn out. The most experienced gardener sometimes plants their bulbs at the wrong time. The most skilled mechanic can miss an easy fix and waste hours pursuing fruitless avenues. The idea that we can ever become perfect at any of our skills is a LIE, and the background messages, that we can and should keep pushing forever if we haven't achieved perfection, and that maybe we haven't tried hard enough if we're NOT perfect at those things, are AWFUL burdens to lay on our children... and ourselves.
What about the idea that if we practice we'll keep getting better? If that were true, we'd have to eventually become perfect, which isn't possible, so the cold hard truth is that no matter how long you practice, or how much you want to achieve a certain level of skill, if, as is nearly always the case, you set your sights on an exceptional degree of competence, you're doomed to be disappointed... unless you have the REAL key to success, which is TALENT.
You can pound away at your piano for the rest of your life, but without talent you'll NEVER achieve greatness; people who ARE greats in the field of music all talk about trying an instrument as kids and showing amazing skill right away... yes, they HAVE practiced like maniacs since then, but their starting point was already beyond where you'll ever get if you don't have their talent. You can take art classes for 50 years and never be more than a marginally competent illustrator, but a 6 year old with talent will pick up a pencil and draw something better than you could ever dream of; again, practice WILL greatly enhance their abilities, but the practice is IMPROVING their skills, not creating them out of thin air.
This train of thought got started when I was watching Joel Osteen's sermon tonight; he said something truly earth-shattering... that if you're trying to do something, and it's always a struggle, it's not meant for you to excel in that area, and you should give it up. When have you EVER heard anyone say that you should GIVE UP trying to gain a skill? What people USUALLY say is, you guessed it, "practice makes perfect"; no one ever even HINTS that we should just accept that we've gotten as far as we're ever going to with that skill, that we're wasting time and effort that could be better spent working on something we CAN excel in, or at least in learning something new... but why DON'T we say that, when more often than not it's the TRUTH?
I'm NOT saying that you should be a quitter, or not strive to be the best you can be in areas that matter to you, or that you should even consider giving up on anything that's bringing you joy; I'm just making the revolutionary suggestion, that, religious implications aside, Osteen is RIGHT... that sometimes, you need to accept that you're never going to get any better at something, and let it go in favor of new horizons. There's no failure in understanding that it's time to give up; as Osteen also said, the only failure would be to live out your life so caught up in the things you DON'T do well that you never discover those things that you WOULD have done well.
How many times in your childhood were you goaded into continuing to grind away at something by an adult telling you that it WAS so? Heck, you've probably heard it dozens of times as an adult, too... but did you ever stop and think about it, ask yourself if it was true, if it COULD be true?
Most people "practice" the things they do all throughout their lives; with the obvious exception of very simple, trivial tasks, have you ever seen anyone become PERFECT at ANYTHING? The finest cook has the occasional meal that doesn't turn out. The most experienced gardener sometimes plants their bulbs at the wrong time. The most skilled mechanic can miss an easy fix and waste hours pursuing fruitless avenues. The idea that we can ever become perfect at any of our skills is a LIE, and the background messages, that we can and should keep pushing forever if we haven't achieved perfection, and that maybe we haven't tried hard enough if we're NOT perfect at those things, are AWFUL burdens to lay on our children... and ourselves.
What about the idea that if we practice we'll keep getting better? If that were true, we'd have to eventually become perfect, which isn't possible, so the cold hard truth is that no matter how long you practice, or how much you want to achieve a certain level of skill, if, as is nearly always the case, you set your sights on an exceptional degree of competence, you're doomed to be disappointed... unless you have the REAL key to success, which is TALENT.
You can pound away at your piano for the rest of your life, but without talent you'll NEVER achieve greatness; people who ARE greats in the field of music all talk about trying an instrument as kids and showing amazing skill right away... yes, they HAVE practiced like maniacs since then, but their starting point was already beyond where you'll ever get if you don't have their talent. You can take art classes for 50 years and never be more than a marginally competent illustrator, but a 6 year old with talent will pick up a pencil and draw something better than you could ever dream of; again, practice WILL greatly enhance their abilities, but the practice is IMPROVING their skills, not creating them out of thin air.
This train of thought got started when I was watching Joel Osteen's sermon tonight; he said something truly earth-shattering... that if you're trying to do something, and it's always a struggle, it's not meant for you to excel in that area, and you should give it up. When have you EVER heard anyone say that you should GIVE UP trying to gain a skill? What people USUALLY say is, you guessed it, "practice makes perfect"; no one ever even HINTS that we should just accept that we've gotten as far as we're ever going to with that skill, that we're wasting time and effort that could be better spent working on something we CAN excel in, or at least in learning something new... but why DON'T we say that, when more often than not it's the TRUTH?
I'm NOT saying that you should be a quitter, or not strive to be the best you can be in areas that matter to you, or that you should even consider giving up on anything that's bringing you joy; I'm just making the revolutionary suggestion, that, religious implications aside, Osteen is RIGHT... that sometimes, you need to accept that you're never going to get any better at something, and let it go in favor of new horizons. There's no failure in understanding that it's time to give up; as Osteen also said, the only failure would be to live out your life so caught up in the things you DON'T do well that you never discover those things that you WOULD have done well.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
"Magnificent Obsession"
I saw this Rock Hudson classic for the first time tonight; I wasn't paying much attention at the beginning, but then it took a totally unexpected turn... it got METAPHYSICAL. An unhappy rich man meets a man who creates lovely art, and that man tells him that the ability to make the art came from something he was taught by a friend... something that "turned on" his talent in the way that turning on a lamp creates light.
He describes it as working as if our potential was the power plant, and all we had to do was decide to tap into it in the way we tap into electricity by switching a lamp on; the way to do THAT, he goes on, is to start doing good deeds for people, doing them for no gain, in secret, and NEVER allowing payback... and that this causes good things of all sorts to come to you. Doesn't that sound like my descriptions of how radiating positive karma brings good things to you? And isn't doing selfless good deeds the most powerful way to generate positive karma? This hit so close to home, and was so unexpected, that it gave me CHILLS.
Why would secrecy be necessary? He explained that, just as the insulation around the copper wires coming from the power plant keep the electricity from dissipating, the secrecy kept the power that they were trying to access from dissipating. This makes sense, as various religions teach the importance of giving help or charity privately, so as not to gain glory for yourself or shame the recipient; this keeps the giving real, and insures that one is giving from the heart rather than for ulterior motives... and this would also keep the karma positive.
The artist, who appears throughout the movie to nudge the unhappy rich guy into following the best path (as soon as you become willing to learn, a teacher will usually appear), cautions his new friend that this can't be done halfway; you have to be willing to totally give yourself to it, and once that happens you'll get so caught up that you'll never leave the path, that you'll become obsessed by it... hence the title of the movie.
He also warned that, although the path could give you great power, it also carried risks... and that one of the first people to follow it died on the cross at age 33.
WOW!!
You totally open yourself up, learn to give in the purest sense, seek chances to do good, and the resulting spiritual and karmic rewards... actually, the spirituality itself seems to generally become the greatest reward-I've been seeing that myself.
No, I don't usually seek enlightenment in 50 year old movies, and it seems unlikely that the writers were trying to provide it... or were they? In any case, I've needed a jump-start, I asked for one, and this was it; I still have goosebumps on my arms, I kid you not. Many deeply religious folks feel like they're drawing power/strength/courage from their deity; dodging the deity issue, could they in fact BE drawing power BECAUSE they believe? Can belief itself be the pipeline to our deeper power, or to power all around us, or both? Is the selflessness and submission involved in circling one's life around a deity conceptually similar to the idea of doing good, putting the emphasis on others and not yourself, and giving up the glory, in the same way that prayer is conceptually similar to meditation and other sorts of focused thought? Is dedicating yourself to a greater power or to a greater good the same thing on a karmic level, or a biological level, or both? Is it really that simple?
My first new spiritual epiphany of the year-YES!! :-)
He describes it as working as if our potential was the power plant, and all we had to do was decide to tap into it in the way we tap into electricity by switching a lamp on; the way to do THAT, he goes on, is to start doing good deeds for people, doing them for no gain, in secret, and NEVER allowing payback... and that this causes good things of all sorts to come to you. Doesn't that sound like my descriptions of how radiating positive karma brings good things to you? And isn't doing selfless good deeds the most powerful way to generate positive karma? This hit so close to home, and was so unexpected, that it gave me CHILLS.
Why would secrecy be necessary? He explained that, just as the insulation around the copper wires coming from the power plant keep the electricity from dissipating, the secrecy kept the power that they were trying to access from dissipating. This makes sense, as various religions teach the importance of giving help or charity privately, so as not to gain glory for yourself or shame the recipient; this keeps the giving real, and insures that one is giving from the heart rather than for ulterior motives... and this would also keep the karma positive.
The artist, who appears throughout the movie to nudge the unhappy rich guy into following the best path (as soon as you become willing to learn, a teacher will usually appear), cautions his new friend that this can't be done halfway; you have to be willing to totally give yourself to it, and once that happens you'll get so caught up that you'll never leave the path, that you'll become obsessed by it... hence the title of the movie.
He also warned that, although the path could give you great power, it also carried risks... and that one of the first people to follow it died on the cross at age 33.
WOW!!
You totally open yourself up, learn to give in the purest sense, seek chances to do good, and the resulting spiritual and karmic rewards... actually, the spirituality itself seems to generally become the greatest reward-I've been seeing that myself.
No, I don't usually seek enlightenment in 50 year old movies, and it seems unlikely that the writers were trying to provide it... or were they? In any case, I've needed a jump-start, I asked for one, and this was it; I still have goosebumps on my arms, I kid you not. Many deeply religious folks feel like they're drawing power/strength/courage from their deity; dodging the deity issue, could they in fact BE drawing power BECAUSE they believe? Can belief itself be the pipeline to our deeper power, or to power all around us, or both? Is the selflessness and submission involved in circling one's life around a deity conceptually similar to the idea of doing good, putting the emphasis on others and not yourself, and giving up the glory, in the same way that prayer is conceptually similar to meditation and other sorts of focused thought? Is dedicating yourself to a greater power or to a greater good the same thing on a karmic level, or a biological level, or both? Is it really that simple?
My first new spiritual epiphany of the year-YES!! :-)
