Two boats and a helicopter

You can find that story on Google.

It has been in my thoughts lately as I realize that you can't save a person in danger of drowning (metaphorically, that is), if they don't realize what they are getting themselves into, or if they misinterpret your attempt to throw them a lifeline as something else. Sometimes, after giving it a few good tries, you just have to stop trying to save them and watch them drown. It's not the first time.

It doesn't help that there is a certain level of excitement in doing the wrong thing and in gathering an audience to watch you drown, and even to support you while you do it!

It's pore over books, by the way, not "pour over."

And a friend you know only through the Internet is not a friend, but a person onto whom you can project your fantasies and fill in the blanks the way you want them to be filled in. The real person on the other end is not the one you imagine him or her to be, and will probably get you into some real trouble in between the time you meet them for real and the time you realize who they really are.

Signed, the voice (and victim) of more than one such experience.

Pay more attention to the real people in your real life. Beware of the virtual world and virtual relationships. And when you go on and on about being miserable and broken and not understanding life, and some pitying stranger is kind enough to offer you a resource that will teach you what you don't already know and will allow you to not only understand life, but have it make sense and have meaning, at least give it a look. As hard as it is for you to go through what you are going through, it is almost harder to watch, knowing just how fixable it is if you would just read and understand what is taught here:

Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves

Conversions for unusual units of time

Once in a blue moon = once every 2.71 years, on average

Once every death of a Pope = once every 12.75 years, on average, considering only the period from 1903 to 2005, given that all previous times occurred before 1900, which is about when being seen by a doctor started becoming more likely to help you than to hurt you.

Once every resignation of a Pope (or "abdication of a Pope") = once every 247.875 years to 495.75 years, on average, not counting Pope Benedict XVI's resignation, and depending on whether it was only four other Popes that have resigned or eight that have. Alternatively, if you want to consider only Pope Benedict XVI and the previous Pope to resign (Pope Gregory XII, in 1415), then you could say "once every 698 years."

This world needs help

Nearly every day I see new evidence that the world has the wrong priorities. The headlong rush into greater and greater techno-narcissism and techno-isolationism only twists those priorities even more out of whack.

I could sit here and write a detailed blog post about it...

...but I would rather go out into the real world, do something good and productive, and find ways to be kind to real people.

The rest of the world would do well--hopefully even better for a change--to get up, go out, and do the same.

I will say that when it starts becoming all about you, that is a sign you are headed in the opposite direction from where you need to be going.

Stop it. Drop it. And roll yourself 180 degrees around (now facing the world and the other people in it). Now go out, be kind, be helpful, and to the best of your ability leave your self and your preoccupation with yourself behind and go serve noble purposes and others and no longer serve, prop up, nourish, and defend your ego. There's no need to do that last part anyway. You are already fine. Already worthy of love. Already have nothing you must prove, to others or even to yourself. You're good. Now get out there and make the world better for everyone else.

The world needs help.

The world needs your help.

Love knows no limits. Kindness is free.

So glad to be done

When promised a chance to see a report before it is published, and then to have it published without ever getting that chance. To have my private e-mails published without permission, but only those parts that favor the other side. To have the other side present their side, quoting themselves in spots that are acceptable and describing the other, very unacceptable, things they said obliquely as "among other things." To be unsubscribed from all possibilities of discussion with the group barely one hour after the one-sided report is sent to the group.

Let's just say it at once presents a one-sided view of the story and, by their actions, sums up the real story better than anything I could say.

Existen aves que cruzan el pantano y no se manchan...

So glad to be done.

Moving on...

It should be simple really

I'm hoping someday to find someone who:

• Really likes kids, probably comes from a big family, has always wanted kids, and can still have them (ideally 2 or 4, or more?)
• Can appreciate me: that I am cheerful, take good care of myself, can cook, play the piano well, go to church (Unitarian), and am, as a friend of a friend described me, "nerdy and sweet" (it hurts a little, but it is the truth, after all)
• Also values love, family, and marriage, and maybe even also has suffered being married to someone who didn't
• Is not self-centered or even a complete narcissist who thinks only of her own feelings and no one else's (see previous point)
• Is intelligent, curious, spiritual, loving, and looking to continue growing in all of those areas
• Takes good care of herself
• Is a girlie-girl, enjoys being a girl and being feminine, and thinks that is a wonderful and natural thing for a woman to be, and to want to be (and understands what a gift that is, and a joy, for her husband)
• Values complete honesty in her relationship with her life partner and being able to love each other fully as we really are, while also helping, inspiring, and motivating each other to become even better human beings

Extra bonus points for knowing some Spanish (and wanting to learn more), being kind (even to bugs and spiders), and enjoying gardening, camping, and occasionally living abroad (probably in a Spanish-speaking country).

The tough part is finding someone like this who is already local (Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater). Although I have looked farther away in the past, and even given it a good try, it's very difficult to build a real relationship unless you are close to each other.

It is also difficult to find a real relationship in online dating sites, where 85% of the women in their late 30s are "never married" and for about half of those, in my experience, narcissism is the main reason why.

Obviously, not everyone will match my wish list above, but I am hopeful that someday someone will.

There is no "other world." I only know what I have experienced.

...Think how it is to have a conversation with an embryo.
You might say, "The world outside is vast and intricate.
There are wheatfields and mountain passes,
and orchards in bloom.

At night there are millions of galaxies, and in sunlight
the beauty of friends dancing at a wedding."

You ask the embryo why he, or she, stays cooped up
in the dark with eyes closed.

                              Listen to the answer.

There is no "other world."
I only know what I've experienced.
You must be hallucinating.

— Rumi (1207-1273)
From the poem "Wean Yourself," in The Essential Rumi, as translated by Coleman Barks

Kindness, part 2

"Of the sweets of adversity, and let me say that these are not numerous, I have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the lesson I learnt on the value of kindness. Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in our world. To be kind is to respond with sensitivity and human warmth to the hopes and needs of others. Even the briefest touch of kindness can lighten a heavy heart. Kindness can change the lives of people." --Aung San Suu Kyi