All humans "are created equal".
All are endowed with "unalienable Rights" such as "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".
What declarations! For sure, "The Declaration of the thirteen united States of America" was for the birth of a nation. But those words are all about individual human beings! They are really declarations of independence of individuals! Whether one is from an emperor's family or from a family of plain Joe Sixpack or Old-Hundred Surnames, should matter not!
Putting individual parts ahead of the collective whole, of course, is the left-brain thinking, along with a batch of other thinking characteristics such as being logical, rational, analytical, objective. Those are relative to the right-brain thinking--looking at the whole first and being random, intuitive, holistic, subjective.
Where is the world's left brain? If you look at the globe, if you take the Pacific Ocean as more like a face, then, you may say, the Declaration of Independence was indeed from the left brain! And it follows that the other side is the right brain. That is one Feng-Shui or Wind-n-Water reading!
Enjoy the fireworks!
Showing posts with label moral: personal drive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moral: personal drive. Show all posts
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Personal Drive Story II
This is a story of a libertine pulling off a 180.
M is from a family of generations of Protestant Pastors. The family root, however, is no guarantee of a smooth development of his spiritual temperament.
M was very experimental with life's gray sides, to put it gingerly. College? I'm going there to get drunk everyday, M pronounced, to his own satisfaction. Books? I haven't seen a single book worth reading, he declared, to everyone else's chagrin.
Then, one day he found himself stepping hard on his brake, literally and metaphorically. He was caught by highway patrol drinking while driving. His driver's license was suspended. Hefty fines, humiliations and despair ensued. He hit a bottom.
At a bottom, as the saying goes, there is no way but up. Up he did, by sheer personal determination, or to believers, due to Higher Power's answer to prayers.
M is a different man now. He loves to read. He vows to follow his forebearers' footsteps to become a Pastor.
M is from a family of generations of Protestant Pastors. The family root, however, is no guarantee of a smooth development of his spiritual temperament.
M was very experimental with life's gray sides, to put it gingerly. College? I'm going there to get drunk everyday, M pronounced, to his own satisfaction. Books? I haven't seen a single book worth reading, he declared, to everyone else's chagrin.
Then, one day he found himself stepping hard on his brake, literally and metaphorically. He was caught by highway patrol drinking while driving. His driver's license was suspended. Hefty fines, humiliations and despair ensued. He hit a bottom.
At a bottom, as the saying goes, there is no way but up. Up he did, by sheer personal determination, or to believers, due to Higher Power's answer to prayers.
M is a different man now. He loves to read. He vows to follow his forebearers' footsteps to become a Pastor.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Personal Drive Story I
This is a true story.
W recently relocated from Place P to World W.
Like any man who raised a family and then found his nest gone empty, W had a lot of stuff. Worse, he was a keeper. He was apparently proud to be so, as he rattled off a long list of his collection of kids' items. An infant's bath tub, a baby's crib, a toddler's stroller, a terrible-two's tricycle, a kindergartner's bike equipped with training wheels, a tween's 5-speed bicycle... Well, perhaps now you can imagine how big a mountain of stuff W faced.
W thought himself as a young fellow, in spirit anyway. He was determined to move the mountain on his own, with a rental U-Haul truck as his only helper.
On that personal D-Day of his, W got up at 6:00 a.m. He made an online reservation for the truck. Reply came back just minutes later: A truck would be forthcoming, but not until 6:45 p.m.
He spent the interim 12 hours, among other things, sorting, dumping, packing, loading and then unloading two car loads.
Then, W did the same for another 12 hours with the truck until 7 a.m.
After less than two hours of sleep and after having returned the truck, he was at the routine again, with his car, except for a two-hour afternoon nap, until 4 a.m.
By then, the mountain was essentially reduced to a molehill in Place P and established its subdued version in World W.
Four hours later, W was seen again out and about, as if his 42-hr mountain-transferring labor, interrupted by merely a couple of 2-hr naps, had not just happened.
That is the true story. It is true as it so happened. But it was probably not as interesting while it happened as when you read it now. In that sense, like all stories, it is not a carbon copy of the original event.
W recently relocated from Place P to World W.
Like any man who raised a family and then found his nest gone empty, W had a lot of stuff. Worse, he was a keeper. He was apparently proud to be so, as he rattled off a long list of his collection of kids' items. An infant's bath tub, a baby's crib, a toddler's stroller, a terrible-two's tricycle, a kindergartner's bike equipped with training wheels, a tween's 5-speed bicycle... Well, perhaps now you can imagine how big a mountain of stuff W faced.
W thought himself as a young fellow, in spirit anyway. He was determined to move the mountain on his own, with a rental U-Haul truck as his only helper.
On that personal D-Day of his, W got up at 6:00 a.m. He made an online reservation for the truck. Reply came back just minutes later: A truck would be forthcoming, but not until 6:45 p.m.
He spent the interim 12 hours, among other things, sorting, dumping, packing, loading and then unloading two car loads.
Then, W did the same for another 12 hours with the truck until 7 a.m.
After less than two hours of sleep and after having returned the truck, he was at the routine again, with his car, except for a two-hour afternoon nap, until 4 a.m.
By then, the mountain was essentially reduced to a molehill in Place P and established its subdued version in World W.
Four hours later, W was seen again out and about, as if his 42-hr mountain-transferring labor, interrupted by merely a couple of 2-hr naps, had not just happened.
That is the true story. It is true as it so happened. But it was probably not as interesting while it happened as when you read it now. In that sense, like all stories, it is not a carbon copy of the original event.
Personal Drive: Life's Motor
What is the motor of life?
Physically, it is the heart, which literally pumps blood, a bit more than once per second. At that rate, blood circulates the body, carrying with it oxygen, nourishment, wast or whatever happen to be therein. Brain cells die off when blood supply is blocked off. Such is what happens in strokes (ischemic type). When the heart stops, the life stops.
As interesting as it may be, beyond medical awareness, the heart as the motor of life carries essentially no morals for one to tap into.
Life is more than the somatic body. There is the mind, and more abstractly, the spirit, or the soul.
Why do some people seem to be more pumped up than others?
It is hormones, one may say, or as the Greek word ὁρμή from which the word hormone is derived means, impetus. Impetus can be due to fear, inspiration, determination, or any number of things, things that the mind understands or the instinct or the soul calls for, and that drive one into action. In short, it is personal drive.
The story described in the next post inspired me to the above thought. I call it Personal-Drive-as-the-Motor-of-Life Story, or Personal Drive Story for short.
I will add more of such stories as time goes by. I encourage you the reader to do the same.
Physically, it is the heart, which literally pumps blood, a bit more than once per second. At that rate, blood circulates the body, carrying with it oxygen, nourishment, wast or whatever happen to be therein. Brain cells die off when blood supply is blocked off. Such is what happens in strokes (ischemic type). When the heart stops, the life stops.
As interesting as it may be, beyond medical awareness, the heart as the motor of life carries essentially no morals for one to tap into.
Life is more than the somatic body. There is the mind, and more abstractly, the spirit, or the soul.
Why do some people seem to be more pumped up than others?
It is hormones, one may say, or as the Greek word ὁρμή from which the word hormone is derived means, impetus. Impetus can be due to fear, inspiration, determination, or any number of things, things that the mind understands or the instinct or the soul calls for, and that drive one into action. In short, it is personal drive.
The story described in the next post inspired me to the above thought. I call it Personal-Drive-as-the-Motor-of-Life Story, or Personal Drive Story for short.
I will add more of such stories as time goes by. I encourage you the reader to do the same.
Monday, February 16, 2009
A Happy Day to Everyone
And a Happy Birthday to you, Mr. Washington. Everyone owes you a gratitude. You decided to return to private life, right after having led the American Revolutionary War to victory, and then again after having served as the first President of the United States for eight years. Imagine how much better a place the world would be, if all victorious revolutionaries had followed your exemplary foot steps and walked away from power.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Responses to Sale Ads
Put up a sale item on Craigslist.org the other day. Some observations are noteworthy.
1. Responses came in within minutes the ad was posted. They came in fast and furious, slowing down to trickles only after the work hours. The response torrent was reminiscent to me of the foot steps in Yimou Zhang's movies of huge armies battling, dense and chaotic. Now the questions. Do people work in full concentration anymore? Does multitasking/partial concentration just cancel out the margin of productivity potential supposedly gained from e-revolution?
2. Price was inevitably among the first two questions asked in inquiry. The brand, quality, or condition of the item for sale was seldom asked about. Is that why low-priced box stores like Wal-Mart so popular? And why high-volume junk foods rule the day?
3. The inquirers felt lost when told to name a price. They inevitably offered a price next to nothing. In contrast, if given an asking price, they tended to play along and make a counter offer, lower but more or less within the ballpark of the asking price. Is this the moral here: you let others take charge and you will be abused, but you take charge and be a leader and others will follow?
1. Responses came in within minutes the ad was posted. They came in fast and furious, slowing down to trickles only after the work hours. The response torrent was reminiscent to me of the foot steps in Yimou Zhang's movies of huge armies battling, dense and chaotic. Now the questions. Do people work in full concentration anymore? Does multitasking/partial concentration just cancel out the margin of productivity potential supposedly gained from e-revolution?
2. Price was inevitably among the first two questions asked in inquiry. The brand, quality, or condition of the item for sale was seldom asked about. Is that why low-priced box stores like Wal-Mart so popular? And why high-volume junk foods rule the day?
3. The inquirers felt lost when told to name a price. They inevitably offered a price next to nothing. In contrast, if given an asking price, they tended to play along and make a counter offer, lower but more or less within the ballpark of the asking price. Is this the moral here: you let others take charge and you will be abused, but you take charge and be a leader and others will follow?
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