All my life I always wanted to be somebody. Now I see that I should have been more specific.
Jane Wagner (1935- )
A sobering thought: what if, at this very moment, I am living up to my full potential?
Jane Wagner (1935- )
I’m an idealist. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.
Carl Sandburg, Incidentals (1907)
US biographer & poet (1878 – 1967)
My canary jumped around in its cage following a well-established pattern. It had tried and true footholds. It moved around all day long and sang sweet tunes.
I wanted my canary to be free. I thought “Wouldn’t it be nice if it can fly around in my room, instead of living in that small cage?”
I closed the windows and I opened the cage door and let my canary out.
Out of its cage, my canary flew fast, straight towards the light, like a missile, hit the window and fell down. Dead.
Sudden changes in conditions of life can be treacherous.
I never wanted to have another pet animal since.
The only pet animal I ever had was a canary. I was about 10 years old.
My canary took its time every day to clean itself. It jumped into the water container, got wet thoroughly and then cleaned its feathers one by one with careful and patient moves.
I imagine that my canary didn’t think about anything else when getting clean. It didn’t review the day’s activities or the appointments it had later in the day.
When my canary took its bath, it took its bath. Nothing else.
I wish I could be like my canary and do every single thing in life with total presence of mind.
I keep trying. Living is a daily practice.
Today, the part of me that controls me with rigor, so that I do everything I am supposed to do, is facing a rebellion form the other part of me who doesn’t give a damn what I do, how and when.
I am all for the rebellious me. Enough of this control freak me.
Give me a break! I need a vacation from the discipline. No more self-flagellation. Not today.
Tomorrow I will get back to pushing the earth with all my strength so that it keeps turning the right way and the universe is saved.
Until tomorrow, I sign off.
You take care.
My brother’s funeral was in August 1999, in Dearborn Michigan, at the Armenian Church.
That day, for whatever the reason, I was not able to cry.
My body got tense, my legs were stiff, my head buzzed from unreleased emotion. I clutched my sweaty hands together, clutched and clutched harder.
I was wearing a wristwatch. My emotions affected the watch. It lost its balance. It started going much faster. It never worked properly since.
I wonder what else becomes unsteady when our emotions go wild?
I mean internal to our body, like liver or kidneys, or external to our body, like computers and cameras…
I also wonder if with proper emotions things can become steadier?
Finally, I wonder, if my emotions can have an effect on a watch, can a watch (or some other object) have an effect on my emotions?
I imagine this stuff is not new or original. It’s just mysterious.
Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today.
Gandhi
Two prisoners, chained together, are standing at the edge of a precipice.
The stronger one pushes the weak one off.
The weak one pulls the stronger one down.
On their way to the bottom they argue about who’s to blame.
They keep fighting until they crash.
Individually we’re all on our way down towards decay and perishing.
If we’re lucky our fall will be gradual and graceful.
As species, our free fall is not a done deal. We reproduce and rejuvenate the population.
If we learn how not to push each other down the precipice, we may go on existing as chained prisoners of life.
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… But I am too busy thinking about myself.
Edith Sitwell, As quoted in The Observer (30 April 1950)
English biographer, critic, novelist, & poet (1887 – 1964)
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How can one cultivate modesty?
Can a self-centered person be modest?
Why should one be modest anyway?
I’ve observed that we sometimes confuse modesty with self-abasement.
Self-abasement is often fake modesty.
The self-abasing person is either fishing for compliments or has a mal-d’être.
I guess the “lack of modesty” is in the attitude not in the act.
Tasks done with an attitude to impress others can’t be modest.
When you perform a task, you concentrate on the task, not how the task will impress others.
My writing is not modest in its essence because it’s seeking acceptance. It’s seeking to be considered wise.
On the other hand, when I write, I clarify my ideas and my intent. So, through writing I accomplish a task for its own sake.
Posting it on this blog is the questionable part.
Sharing with modesty is a possibility.
Learning how not to claim ownership is another possibility.
A task is a task. It’s not what you wish/think it is.
From wikipedia:
The term random in statistics means “lack of bias or corrolation”.
Random is different from arbitrary, because to say that a variable is random means that the variable follows a probability distribution.
Arbitrary on the other hand implies that there is no such determinable probability distribution for the variable.
Randomness is an objective property.
Nevertheless, what appears random to one observer may not appear random to another observer.
Consider two observers of a sequence of bits, only one of which who has the cryptographic key needed to turn the sequence of bits into a readable message.
The message is not random, but is for one of the observers unpredictable.
One of the intriguing aspects of random processes is that it is hard to know whether the process is truly random.
The observer can always suspect that there is some “key” that unlocks the message.
This is one of the foundations of superstition.
***
Choices and actions are considered to be arbitrary when they are done not by means of any underlying principle or logic, but by whim or some decidedly illogical formula.
Arbitrary comes from the Latin arbitrarius, the source of arbiter; someone who is tasked to judge some matter. An arbitrary legal judgment is a decision made at the discretion of the judge, not the law.
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I keep going back and forth; is life on earth random or arbitrary?