Open Thread – Optimism
Ain’t it the truth?
*************************
(On a side note, check back tomorrow for the second post “From the Cutting Room Floor”, the must read material that didn’t make it into Blind Allegiance)
December 18, 2024
Thursday, August 3, 2023
The Quitter Returns! -Monday, March 21, 2022
Putting the goober in gubernatorial -Friday, January 28, 2022
Ain’t it the truth?
*************************
(On a side note, check back tomorrow for the second post “From the Cutting Room Floor”, the must read material that didn’t make it into Blind Allegiance)
I have mentioned this before on this site, but times like today, I think back to what the priest in my little village in Honduras told me, that despair is a sin because it removes us from the face of God. (This must’ve been a life lesson indeed, as I invoke Father Rene and his wisdom all the time.) I no longer believe in God, but I still believe in the truth of what Rene said: despair removes you from the hope that things can get better, it removes you from being part of any possible change for the better. I remember once reading an account of a woman who survived the death camps in Europe in World War Two. She was ready to throw herself on the electric wire that surrounded her compound and end it all, but another woman pulled her back with the words “Wait – don’t you want to know what happens next?”
It’s really hard to stick around sometimes and to witness the hell this country has come to, butwe have no choice – we have to not only wait and see what happens next, but somehow be a part of it. That Crowwoman can identify the source of this quote, better than I, but it’s something like:
“I am only one person, yet I am one person.
I can’t do anything, yet I can do something.
If not now, then when? If not me, then who else?”
Rabbi Hillel, of blessed memory.
Jews, like any group, do not all speak with one voice, but I am of the house of Hillel.
Here’s more about him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbi_Hillel
L’Shalom,
thatcrowwoman
Glad I am spared all the whoopdedo about 9/11…. It happened on Shrub’s watch, which our Republican friends all too easily forget… OT. less than 24 hrs from reaching Alaska, pretty excited.. clear weather , so have tannong oil ,Hawaiin shirt and shorts to go with raingear, gloves , hooded coat and gloves… OH ! forgot to pack snow shoes … Alaska will never be the same after ben gets thru with her !! 🙂 🙂
And I’m sure Alaska’s looking forward to your arrival! Have a marvelous time (ditto Mrs. benlomond2), and tell us all about it. Health and peace.
Hope you and the ‘lovely blossom’ have a simply wonderful trip and maybe even get the chance to commune with a Brian or two along the way.
I’ll read the other comments shortly. This found its way to me via my trusty inbox, and I felt it good enough to share. It’s about how Apple products light up the same areas of the brain that religion does!
http://www.care2.com/causes/the-religion-of-apple.html
“I’m speaking metaphorically. But a BBC documentary called Secrets of the Superbands says that, when a team of neuroscientists took MRI scans of the brain of an Apple fanatic, they found that “Apple was actually stimulating the same parts of the brain as religious imagery does in people of faith.” As the BBC’s Alex Riley notes, the Bishop of Buckingham, who himself read his Bible on an iPad, compares Apple to a religion.”
On this day of remembrance and sadness for so many, I am speechless that the NY GOP would use the pain of this day and blatant lies to promote a candidate for local office.
They sent out a mailer to people in the Queens district where a special election is being held to replace Anthony Weiner. On the mailer is an image of a mosque superimposed over Ground Zero and another picture of the Democratic candidate, David Weprin, next to the President. It claims that Weprin supports the construction of the Park 51 mosque which it implies will be built right ON the WTC site.
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/09/11/316339/new-york-gop-exploits-911-anniversary-sends-islamophobic-mailer-to-voters-in-ny-special-election/#comment_link
This is simply despicable.
It was interesting to hear so many Middle Eastern names being read out today at New York City’s memorial for those who died on 9/11. Not all of those victims were white or middle-class or Christian. Those Republicans who have co-opted patriotism and 9/11 for their own political purposes are beyond despicable.
Optimistic people work to make the world better for everybody. It’s something worth working toward.
In my younger days, I thought I was rather pessimistic, but now I think I’m actually more optimistic than not. At times of crisis, I find that holding out hope for better days is the only way I can get from that moment to the next one. So, I guess, over time, I’ve come to believe that I’m actually an optimistic person. The glass just HAS to be half-full. I couldn’t get to the next day if I always thought the glass was half-empty.
But, since Obama’s been president, that negative feeling gets harder and harder to shake, in the midst of a Congress that would rather ruin the nation than support the president.
Ack.
Frontline’s , “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero” is re-running on PBS. ( it was done in 2002 ) It’s a really good piece of work and well worth watching. If it’s not showing in your neck of the woods, here’s the website:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/faith/
” What was it we saw on Sept. 11? Was it the true face of evil? Was it the face of religion? And where, if one is a believer, was God? Indeed, if one is not a believer, did Sept. 11 make the idea of God that much more of an impossibility? Or was there something in the human response to the tragedy that suggested transcendence?
In “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero,” FRONTLINE producer Helen Whitney sets out to discover how the religious beliefs — and unbelief — of Americans have been challenged since the events of Sept. 11. Through interviews with priests, rabbis, and Islamic scholars, victims’ families and World Trade Center survivors, writers and thinkers, atheists and agnostics, this two-hour documentary explores whether, and in what ways, Americans’ spiritual lives may have changed on that day. “
“Like” and “Ditto” all the comments up-thread.
And marvelling at how perfectly, for me, the photo captures another aspect of my optimistic-by-nature, self: Curiosity.
I don’t think I could be nearly as optimistic as I am if I weren’t so continuously curious. Curious about what comes next. And about the various paths I can take to get to what I deem is a ‘good’ outcome. There is always at least one other way to get to where I want to go, there are always options, to my way of thinking. The blue car is just one option to get somewhere — I could take a red car, instead. Or a bike. Or a plane. Or…
IOW: curiosity fuels my optimism. No, wait! Optimism fuels my curiosity. No, wait!
Aw, heck; I don’t know which fuels which, but I do know I’m curious enough to keep searching for the answer to it and other ponderables, and optimistic enough to know I’ll surely find those answers. beth.
The best gift my Mom gave me was raising me and my brother & sisters with a sunny outlook.
It makes a world of difference.
Sometimes you do have to plan for/anticipate the worst, and try to survive it.
You can always hope for the best.
Most people are good, the bad ones are mainly just louder….
I am usually a “glass in half empty” kind of person but, this morning, as I listened to the reading of the names of those who died on 9/11 in New York City, I was most impressed by the ethnicities and nationalities represented by the names. All kinds of people. That’s what this country is made up of – all kinds of people. And today I am hopeful that we will one day all remember that and come to cherish our diversity. Our families all come from different places, we have different roles in society, we have different traditions and food preferences, we have different beliefs about religion but we all live here in this place on this small planet in this vast universe – together.
We can hope, and I do …
Some stats on income distribution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
http://www.visualeconomics.com/income-distribution-by-country/
Kaddish prayer may be found here:
http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer/kaddish.htm
Steven Isserlis plays Ravel’s Kaddish for cello and strings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8KIUXxz7Ys
hauntingly poignantly lovely
Hauntingly, poignantly lovely, and one of my favorites. Here’s another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3USptpfcZc&feature=related
No major media outlets allowed into my head today. I did call my friend whose birthday falls on the 11th of September (I do so every year), to wish her happy birthday and many more, find out how she’s been, and let her know not everyone is “re-wallowing,” to quote Dick Cavett.
and another for our choir
Peace Train by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)
Out on the edge of darkness
there rides the peace train…
some day it’s going to come…
why must we go on hating?
Why can’t we live in bliss?
…come take home again…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7wEctHyuc0
L’Shalom,
thatcrowwoman
This prayer, attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi, is one of my favorites. I’ve shared it here before, but it is always fitting.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen
Yes, I am a Jewess, but I collect prayers from everywhere.
One World. One Heart. Let’s get together and feel all right
*the mudflats choir joins in harmonies*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xjPODksI08
with love,
thatcrowwoman
Thanks for posting this prayer. True prayers transcend all faiths (and atheism).
Optimism only gets you so far to my way of thinking. I look around at all the collateral damage inflicted by rwnj and their visions of how America should belong to the wealthy. Then I wonder how so many people can vote for pundits who favor the wealthy and no one else. An enormous number of citizens must feel the urge to be abused every step of the way to vote for rethuglicans. For nyself,I would prefer voting myself a billion bucks and Shania Twain(with or without her Fred). That’s just me.Maybe I am optimistic.
You’re our cock-eyed optimist, mikey, and we love you for it.
You brighten my day every time I see you here, my brother.
xoxoxoxo
tcw
With Mike’s optimism, he’ll make Iowa a downhill skiing Mecca yet!
I hear you, Mike. The 9/11 endless mourning & war machine support is on tv. The past 10 years have been a nightmare. I’m encouraging my young adult to quit this country. When looking at wealth distribution, the US is a banana republic. When looking at health care, we are neck and neck with Cuba and below Estonia. Our kids aren’t learning basic science, union are losing the battle, and the middle class is gone. Sorry this is a downer, but I think it is accurate. Wish it wasn’t. I hope for a better future, but I don’t plan for it.
,,, Will try to find optimism… and will fight for Obama’s re-election….
{{{{{LaniN}}}}}
DH Happy’s granddaddy, of blessed memory, said,
“Pray for a good harvest,
but keep on hoeing.”
and I think it was Ringo who exclaimed,
“I’ve got blisters on me fingers!” 🙂
As my elders said, hope for the best, plan for the worst. 😉
All these things are true,
All are a terrible blight on the horizon
However, the constant crummy news
and creepy crowing of the dismantlers
serves to knock morale down as much as
the facts do.
Over and over the talk is about a gloomy economic picture,
a gloomy political picture.
I’m close to worn out too.
I see unnecessary suffering , unnecessary turmoil, and useless damage everytime I read the news.
But there’s something, whatever it is, in hope and optimism that lifts morale to meet challenges which cannot be underestimated. A balance between a wary eye, optimism, and better morale seems like the place to aspire to even on the days when I just have to sit and practice deep breathing to calm myself.
And quite frankly, the creeps win if we lose hope.
The largest stumbling block to getting things going economocally is fear and low morale, the not wanting to invest -unless-its-safe routine. Wanting to be safe is human , good or bad, we want to be safe before we vest energy on things. We’ll hold onto the dumbest ideas when we don’t feel safe. Agh.
When I am optimistic, I see all I have is my future, shorter by the day but all I really have. I have to invest in it to live it.
You are so right on Pi, “the creeps win if we lose hope.” The “creeps” manipulate those with fear and low morale. They work on the poor and illiterate. In a small community, we know who “they” are because they stand out – greedy bullies.
AKM has truly created an optimistic oasis for everyone here at the mudflats. I feel so privileged to be a part of this caring and sharing community. So many blessings flow to me and through me here, and expand like those quiet ripples when we toss a stone into a pond.
Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been avoiding all the “anniversary” coverage. I don’t need constant reminders of images seared in my brain a decade ago. I have said Kaddish, the Jewish memorial prayer for the dead, and now I turn my prayers to peace.
My life should be a constant prayer.
Just last week I got a wake up call at school. We have 2 new students from Saudi Arabia; neither speak a bit of English, and my high school is the designated ESOL/ELL (English as a second language/English language learners) school. Students with little or no English are mainstreamed in regular classes with ESOL support. As the young woman was introduced to her new classmates, one blurted out, “We’re all going to die!” and then laughed. Our ESOL teacher knelt by his desk and spoke quietly with the young man for several minutes, after which he made what seemed to be a genuine apology. Time will tell. It breaks my heart. My school used to be the most inclusive school in the district, maybe the whole panhandle, but that inclusive-welcoming spirit is badly eroded and I don’t know how to fix that…except to set a good example… and to keep saying my prayers for peace.
Let there be Peace on Earth
PS 22 chorus (and a little child shall lead them…feel free to sing along)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4ubAh9TLko
L’Shalom,
thatcrowwmoan
Well said, Crow Woman, well said.
thatcrowwoman, that young man apparently falls into the “You have to be carefully taught…” category.
If you remember the musical/film “South Pacific”, you may not remember a songwith that title. It never made it to the airwaves in its day, and that in itself is telling. There is a mindset in this (and any society) that is tribal and xenophobic, and too many do not understand that this will be the undoing of altruism and ultimately of humanity itself.
I am glad his spontaneous comment, which he probably thought of as witty, was caught as it was made. It was not only directed at those it targeted, but unchecked, it would have immediately poisoned the group dynamics by categorizing the newcomers at “the evil others”.
An optimist by nature, I do my best not to be taken down by the endless barrage of negativity of what constitutes the daily news cycle. I firmly hold to the old adage of “On the one hand… and on the other” examinations. This is a daily effort for the Realist I have become over the course of a rather long and interesting lifespan, and I hope my reasoning capabilities will remain for whatever time I may have left.
That said, have a good day, and know that you and your profession have my admiration.
Mandy Patinkin – South Pacific – Carefully Taught
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHKzn8aHyXg
{{{{{fromthediagonal}}}}}
Some of us (Me! Me!) had parents who were Broadway show devotees. They brought home original cast recordings of all the songs from the shows they attended (and a few they did not), played them till the grooves wore out, and by osmosis, we learned all the words to all the songs.
I had a little test today on this very subject. Guys and Dolls was on TCM, and I know every word to every song.
Similarly aware of/familiar with Carefully Taught. Health and peace.
LOVE G&D!!! Guys and Dolls was the very first show I was ever worked on in high school. I ran props and was also in the singing chorus. I’ve done three other productions of it in community theater and it remains one of my absolute favorite shows.
I hadn’t seen it in many years until this past spring. The theater department at NTID (National Technical Institute for the Deaf) did a performance of it that just blew me away. Being in Rochester, NY, which has one of the largest deaf populations in the country, I’ve seen numerous interpreted performances and interpreted a few myself. However, this was a completely different way of staging it that I’d heard of but never seen before….and was SO cool!
Instead of having voice actors or interpreters at the corner of the stage, interpreting the performance, each of the major characters had TWO performers – one deaf who did the entire show in sign and one hearing who said the lines and sang the songs – shadowing each other. It should have been complete chaos on the stage with all the action in that show, but it was directed by a woman with many years experience in working with that kind of cast. It was just amazing and I drove my friends sitting next to me absolutely crazy because I was practically bouncing from excitement the entire time!
Ohhh, it brought back so many good memories AND gave me a whole new appreciation for innovation and creativity at the same time. What a night!
I now have snippets of the songs running willy-nilly through my head. Thanks, Zyxomma, for helping me end a sad day on a very happy note.
Here’s a video about working with shadow interpreting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq20y9ho7dM
Here’s one of a song from Pippin with Ty Giordano, a wonderful deaf actor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuRgaiVnzV8&feature=related
I love G&D also, too. My daughter played Big Jule (Julie) in the high school production. She makes a good heavy, though she barely weighed 100 lbs.
And, yes, one must be carefully taught to be that insensitive, though it may not have been his parents. I’ve known parents that have cringed in embarrassment at the bigoted stunts their kids have pulled, saying, “We never taught him THAT!” and I believe them.
.i am with you Crowwomwn. thank you. it is to be a quiet day here in the lower east side. it always is every year on this day. later on the young ones may come out to play. i hope so.
as for us elders we will greet each other tenderly. we will touch each; perhaps a hug or a kiss. a soft word for those who are still suffering the loss of a loved one or those who responded and who are now dying by inches.
Jimzmum is working to help those first responders and so i declare Jimzmum my hero and the reason i feel optimism for the future of mankind.
https://themudflats.net/2011/09/09/open-thread-threefer-of-brians/#comments
I, too, have been avoiding the coverage of the memorial today. Strange how it seems more painful to watch this year than in the last few…perhaps because it is the anniversary and because our country seems so terribly divided right now.
A dear friend lost his son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law that day when they switched flights with other flight attendants to get home a few hours earlier. They were both in the second plane to hit the WTC. They left behind his 9-yr-old daughter who was anxiously awaiting the wedding where she was to be a flower girl. I wanted to post a message on Facebook this morning and was looking for an image to include. I wasn’t satisfied with any that I could find online and then remembered a beautiful shot I had taken on a visit to the WTC back in the 90s with some people from England. It was a close-up view of the side of one of the towers, looking up at the sun peeking over the top. It seemed to be just the image I was looking for, and made all the more meaningful because I had taken it myself.
I try to be optimistic, but sometimes it is quite a struggle. However, each day I walk into work and encounter 300 small faces that represent our future. We can give up and sink into despair, knowing that the forces of hate and anger that challenge us are very strong and all around us. Or we can do our best to give the next generation the tools to make the right choices. To teach them tolerance, compassion, forgiveness, hope and love. We may not always succeed, but we WILL have an impact. We may not be able to heal the world, but we can help a child learn to embrace instead of strike.
This afternoon, I will go outside, pull out my old lettuce plants and clean the weeds in the garden. Then I will plant some new seeds for a fall crop. Every day is an opportunity for a new beginning.
May you all find peace on this day that brings so many memories…some terrible and others inspiring. And may we always remember the courage, compassion and sense of unity that brought the world together ten years ago today.
My daughter-in-law’s baby shower was today. When we set the date, I said that it is time to celebrate life. I did watch a bit of the service this morning. I wanted to get a better look at the fountains and an idea of how big they were in relationship to people so I had some understanding of how big the site was. Peace to you all on this day. For me, I look forward to new life and a new member of our family.
Oh, I so agree that optimism is the best choice – always.
But I gotta warn you that, some days (especially when you reach my age) after you’ve read the news and realize we’re back to fighting for causes we thought we’d already won, it gets hard to raise those spirits. That’s why it helps to have places like the Mudflats to visit to rekindle the sparks that keep the candles burning. The light keeps shining through. 🙂
Keep up the good work, AKM!!
I could not agree more. We must be about the same age.
oh that cup is forever half full!
and as Michael Fox says to his kids each day, “Chose to have a good day.”
oh that cup is forever half full!