Facts are facts and theories are theories. It's important to understand the difference because many promoters of theories want you to believe that they are fact.
Facts are reality; they are what is, and what happened. They are absolute and the same for everybody. There cannot be more than one correct version of the facts. There are no "alternative facts".
One of my personal gripes nowadays is e-mail. Not, I hasten to add, my own use of it, but other peoples'. Use, or perhaps I should say, misuse.
E-mail today seems to be something that is uniquely capable of laying bare all the personal foibles and failings of the American public. Carelessness, inattention, confusion, disorganization, and inability to follow simple directions; not to mention ignorance of English grammar and spelling.
There’s nothing like doing nothing.
I feel liberated, carefree, as if all responsibility is paused, and I am placed in a state of open wonder, able to just be.
Some may find it totally boring, perhaps a waste of time – not me!
My imagination is piqued, and ideas appear, as if clearing away everything that was blocking them. My senses are more, well, “sensitive,” magnified. So, I see and hear beauty around me more easily.
Diversity is an asset that benefits organizations just as surely as money in the bank. To many people, that's intuitively obvious, but you don't have to take it on faith. Scientific research has clearly demonstrated that diversity has measurable value.
Why is diversity controversial? Because our basic instincts are at war with our intelligence.
Come to the lake of calm. It sits there open to you.
You will not find it in travel books, nor upon any map ever made.
Because you do not “go there,” but rather “tune-in,” like dialing a radio station.
Many of us keep this place ready for you. Holding a space of pure peace.
Thousands, if not tens of thousands, if not far more, offer this collective vision. We pour out thought-power, our peaceful energy, our imagination into this “place,” this little realm, if you want to call it that.
We combine our thought focus to offer this.
Think for a moment about the meaning of the word.
Literally it means: "things that happen at the same time".
But there's a little more to it than that. Things happen together all the time, but we don't call every simultaneous happening a coincidence.
Two things happening together form a coincidence when cause and effect appear to be at work, but in fact are not.
One of our favorite summer days was blueberry day.
We’d put on old clothes, our straw hats, then gather our baskets and make our way to the Jones’ Family Farm in Shelton. We’d hitch a ride on the “berry ferry”, and be driven out to the blueberry bushes.
Blueberries are easy to pick and practically popped into our small baskets. When our small baskets were filled, we’d dump them all into the big basket and fill that up. The camera was always on hand.
After the picking, we’d drive to Huntington Center and have lunch and dessert at Sassafras Restaurant.
During my working career, most of the time I worked with people similar to myself: left-brain dominant, detail-oriented technicians, aka "nerds". Most of us took pride in being nerdy.
Every now and again, I came across someone different: a "big picture" guy. You probably know the type - they usually are in management, arrogant as hell in many cases, claiming to be focused on the important stuff, with no time for insignificant matters such as the details that nerds wallow in. Numbers people they are NOT.
Two four year old girls in my nursery school class were the best of friends. When one entered the room, the other would run to give her a big, welcoming hug. They managed to sit side-by-side throughout all activities and held hands when they walked around the room.
These girls were bright, creative and mature beyond their years. Every so often, something of interest would happen at home and they would turn this idea into a little two girl play.
These plays delighted me so much I’d stop what I was supposed to be doing and watch (from afar, of course).
It is popular among many people of my generation (that is, people in their 60's and 70's) to speak of their "spirituality". People like to claim that they are spiritual. I have even been described as spiritual myself, by a handful of my acquaintances, even though I espouse a strictly rational, science-based world view. I can accept this attribution only on the basis of a definition that I read somewhere recently: "religious people do as they are told to do, no matter what is right; spiritual people do what is right, no matter what they are told".