We do not want to merely “see” beauty. We want to be united with it, to receive it into ourselves, to become part of it.
-C.S Lewis
Friday, March 29, 2013
Neighborday!!
Bake some bread. Write a note. Introduce yourself to your neighbor. What a gloriously simple idea.
http://www.good.is/neighboring
http://www.good.is/neighboring
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Sculptor Marion Perkins
Sculptor Marion Perkins | Chicago Tonight | WTTW
For beauty.....You have to go see the exhibit They Seek a City. It's a show of more than 80 works by southern-and foreign-born artists. There are so many incredible artisits I've never heard of. I loved Marion Perkins the most. What a story too! He was clearly brilliant.
paz.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Monday, March 25, 2013
Friday, March 22, 2013
Epidemic of the Invisible Children
I sometimes feel like I need out. I need to escape suburbia and the materialism and the television. I love Target. I love quiet in my house when my kids are watching a show. Life is short though. What am I doing? Is it just a fantasy to move to a farm and give this way of life up? I don't want to look back and regret. That's all. We are doing the best we can......or are we?
A friend sent me this letter. I don't know its origin. I'll give more info if I receive any. paz.
Here's to dreaming......
SUBJECT: Epidemic of the Invisible Children
When my kids were toddlers, we lived in a
town home right in the city. Every day we would go for a walk on the trails. We
just wanted to get outdoors.
One day it stunned me that there were no
children playing outside. <---- Dropping the pendulum from far point
Inside the homes I saw the flickering of
television through the windows.You knew children lived there because their toys were outside.
But you never saw the children.
I would talk to my friends who were moms and they would complain that they would park their kids in front of the TV so they could get something done.
I had to confess I did that too. I would turn on PBS Kids. My oldest son Dylan was obsessed with Buzz Lightyear. He watched Toy Story about 14 times.
I started to notice that my boys would only play games that they had SEEN ON TV.
Then something very interesting happened.
My husband got a special assignment in
South Africa. We went on an extended leave and lived in Pretoria for 2 months.
There, my boys had no TV. They began
using their imaginations again. They started using natural materials to build
forts and castles. Their play was completely self directed.
In just two months, the change in my boys
was profound. <------ Pendulum swung all the way across to opposite side
Then I remembered… I used to play that
way, I had a great life of imagination and wonder.
My friend Kim and I would build fairy
castles at the bases of trees - complete with tables, chairs, homes, using
everything we could find: acorns, bark, cotton, flower petals and pine straw.
When I was 22 I went around the world
sailing and working as a chef on yachts with my husband. We hit 40 different
countries in 8 years.
Only later did I realize that those
afternoons building fairy castles with Kim and given me the imagination it took
to sail around the world, instead of… I don't know, getting an MBA.
And I was depriving my boys of all those
gifts.
One video game at a time.
Dear parent, I truly know how hard it is
to spin 900 plates and raise kids and pay the mortgage and all that. I get it.
But it's damaging your kids.
You can't undo that damage.
You can't rewind the hands of time.
Your kids are only young once.
I wanted to find a way out - out of the
mechanized, computerized, artificial world. I wanted to give something back.
So I decided to create an event. We hold
it at our farm once a month. Parents from all over the metro drive their kids
out into the country, and as soon as they cross the threshold of our property
they are in a different world.
For 2+ hours parents play with their kids
petting llamas and bunnies, feeding the cows and chickens, and kids scampering
down a nature path through the forest.
And Donald takes the kids on a special
fishing trip at the pond with the kids, while I talk to moms and dads about the
challenges of growing up natural children in plastic suburbia.
Everyone goes home closer to nature and
closer to their children.
Our next Farm Family Getaway is on _____.
I'd love you to come. It's free, all you have to do is sign up here. We do have
limited space - only ___ people per outing are permitted. Beyond that number,
we put you on a waiting list.
I've love to re-introduce you to the
world God made that kids were intended to play in and grow up in. I can't wait
to shake your hand and meet your sons and daughters.
You put them in a coma with Disney DVD's.
I began to heal the rift by showing kids
where their food comes from.
QUESTIONS:
What life are you programming your child
to live?
What tracks will they be stuck on as an
adult that you laid this week? This month?
Are they going to roll down pre-made
industrialized tracks, or are they going to blaze their own trails?
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Meredith Andrews - Not For A Moment (After All) - Live
Just returned with some wonderful women from a Conference. We heard this woman sing this incredible song there! Hope it touches your heart!! paz.
Happiness from LifeEdited
The Difference Between Pleasure and Happiness
We at LifeEdited talk a lot about happiness. It’s in our tagline: Design your life to include more money, health and happiness with less stuff, space and energy. We see the word splattered across bestseller lists: “The Happiness Project,” “Stumbling on Happiness,” “Delivering Happiness” and so forth. People cannot seem to get enough happy. But what the heck is it? And what is the difference between pleasure and happiness? And why should we care?
To answer these questions, we looked to an expert: Buddhist monk, author of ’The Happiest Person In The World’ and former molecular biologist, Matthieu Ricard. In a Huffington Post article entitled “Why Happiness is Not Pleasure“, he said this of happiness:
Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things…genuine happiness may be influenced by circumstance, but it isn’t dependent on it. It actually gives us the inner resources to deal better with those circumstances.
Of the difference between pleasure and happiness, he says this:
Happiness is often equated with a maximization of pleasure, and some imagine that true happiness would consist of an interrupted succession of pleasurable experiences….There is no reason to deprive ourselves of the enjoyment of a magnificent landscape, of swimming in the sea or of the scent of a rose, but we must understand that the experience of pleasure is dependent upon circumstance, on a specific location or moment in time. It is unstable by nature, and the sensation it evokes can soon become neutral or even unpleasant.
In other words, pleasure is externally motivated and fleeting, while happiness is internally generated and constant.
Most of us know pleasure. It’s the sensation that drives us to eat a bag of chips even when we know it’s bad for our health; it’s the euphoric feeling of anticipation when waiting overnight to buy the new iPhone even though we know our current phone is perfectly adequate. Our pleasurable sensations are inextricable with the thing–the chips or the phone in this case. The things make us happy.
The trouble with equating pleasure with happiness is when the thing is gone, so too does our happiness. No chips, no happiness. Having last year’s phone can send us into a depression. Check out the movie “The Queen of Versailles” if you want to see the pleasure hunt play itself out to surreal proportions.
Conversely, happiness allows you to enjoy the chips, but not require them; use the phone, but realize it’s just a phone and a new one with slightly more power won’t make you happier in any meaningful way. Focusing on happiness is not better per se, but it’s more reliable.
One litmus test to distinguish pleasure from happiness is something a teacher once told me, “If something is a source of happiness, the more you do of it, the happier you will become.” Do more chips, phones, square feet or bacon (my personal fave) make us happier? Of course not. Sure, these things might be pleasurable, but after a while and in excess they lose their appeal and become “neutral or even unpleasant” as Ricard explains (any buffet-goer can testify to this).
If pleasure doesn’t make us happy, what does? One idea is that it’s experiences, not stuff that makes us happy–in other words internal states rather than objects. One theory promoted by Dr Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of “The How of Happiness“ asserts there are three main factors that comprise our happiness:
- Set-point. This is essentially our biological level of happiness–it’s our happiness default setting. Some people might be literally hardwired to be less happy than others–or vice versa. This is thought to comprise up to 50% of our overall sense of happiness.
- Circumstances. Our physical circumstances do affect our happiness, but to a much smaller extent than most think (10% or so). Circumstances that can thwart happiness are things like no access to clean water, unsafe homes, etc. Circumstances that probably don’t thwart your happiness are having too large a tablet computer and too wide lapels on your blazer.
- Voluntary Variables. This is our behavior and thoughts. This makes up 40% of our overall happiness and can actually offset the set-point and circumstances.
The voluntary variables are what my teacher would say are the things that, when increased, promote happiness. These are behaviors and actions like generosity, kindness, love, gratitude, etc. The more we live in these states, the more we act in line with them, the happier we become.
How can LifeEdited be so bold as to say that we can help design your life to include more happiness? Full disclosure: We can’t make you happy. Sorry. But our mission to “edit” the things that don’t promote our happiness–the extraneous stuff and space–might help. No, the best designed apartment, most awesome stacking bowl or greatest towel will never, ever make you happy, but this “less, but better” stuff might give you less to think about, affording you more mental space for the stuff–those experiences and voluntary variables–that do.