A Seeker of Wisdom to Life's Mysteries

Forgiveness & Healing
I have a good friend who got mad at someone at church. The person unintentionally said some hurtful things. My friend hasn’t forgiven them after three years. They have also stopped going to church. What is my friend accomplishing by holding a grudge, by harboring the hurt?

The person who said the hurtful thing has gone on with their life and probably has forgotten the incident. No, it is my friend who is hurt.

I believe that is the way of many vengeful grudges. “I’ll show you! I’ll never come into your store again!” or “so that’s the way you want it? Well, I’ll never speak to you again!” So they don’t and for the person holding the grudge they live life hurt and bruised. For the person or institution they harbor the grudge against…life goes on. It may be that the loss isn’t even felt, except in an abstract sense.

Estrangement does separate people one from another. It does hurt when someone offends you or cheats you or lies to you or steals from you. You can wish all sorts of fire from Hell on them and maybe that will come some day, but will that bring you healing of your hurt? I don’t think so.

I had an incident where I was hurt by some one close to me. I was bitter and angry at them. I stayed that way. It ate at me all the time until I started to pray for them. To abbreviate this some, I didn’t see them change at all, but I changed. I received emotional and spiritual healing, because I let go of the grudge I had for them and some of the anger dissipated.

I’ve learned that I can’t change others. People won’t change unless they want to. I can only be responsible for myself. As I grow older, I find that’s a full time job.

Are you holding a grudge against someone or something? Let go of it in whatever way you can and get on with your life. You’ll be amazed at the weight that fall from your shoulders.

Fuzzy Logic & Ice Cubes

I was in a convenience store this morning and bought a 44oz. cup of Pepsi. I poured ice in to about 2/3 full. I looked down into the cup, poured out 6-8 cubes then pour in 2-3 more cubes and decided that that was the right level of ice. I filled the cup with Pepsi and left.

Later in the afternoon I was in the grocery store with my wife and in the produce department, I watched a man fill a plastic bag with pecans. He hefted the bag for weight in his hand, dribbled out about 4-6 pecans, then tied the bag off and walked away.

Both of these events were within the domain of a field of science and mathematics known as “fuzzy logic”. It was a brand new field in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s

Standard logic (Euclidian) is linear. That is, that standard logic says that A will be followed by B which will be followed by C, etc. It is the logic developed by the ancient Greeks and is the foundation of modern scientific thought. It works great for machines and computer programming.

Fuzzy logic is non-linear. It’s the way humans really think in day to day situations. In common language, it’s what happened when I filled that cup with ice. The un-vocalized thinking goes something like this:
*2/3s is about right. I’ll fill it to there.
*No. That’s a little too much. I’ll pour a little out.
*No, now it looks like not quite enough.
*I poured out just a little too much. Better put some back in.
*There. That’s just right.

What made that last amount of ice look like just the right amount to me? I honestly don’t know, but it did. It’s intuitive rather than linearly logical.

The folks that are exploring artificial intelligence are looking into fuzzy logic, because once again, that’s how humans think. It enables us to deal with unforeseen circumstances and with situations that don’t exactly meet fixed expectations.

What does this have to do with anything? I can’t say. This was just a thread that passed through my mind as I put the lid on my soda this morning. It came back to me in the grocery. Why do we think like this?

Why is it that we fill something up, pour a little out and then pour just a little more in, that was just less than what we poured out? See? Even to describe it in words (linear) makes it sound like nonsense. Yet it isn’t. How much is enough? How much is too much?

It’s like learning to drive a car. It’s easy to over steer if you try to drive in a conscious manner, not unlike a beginning driver. Yet, as a driver becomes more experienced, they learn how much is just enough and it becomes more intuitive and much smoother ride. The decision loop becomes curvilinear. Fuzzy logic.

I’m thinking aloud here, formulating my thoughts as I type them out. I don’t know where I’m heading with this yet. As I said, it’s the beginning of a thread. I’ll have to read more and bring myself up to date with what’s happened in the last few years.

One step at a time.

I wanted to come back to this theme. I received an email todaythat has been circulating for a while. this wasn't the first time I've seen it. It was " The Daffodil Principle". I'd like to put this in a side bar, but I haven't learned how to yet, so bear with me.

I'm inserting it here. If you've already read it, feel free to scroll on down.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Daffodil Principle

Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, "Mother, you must come
see the daffodils before they are over."

I wanted to go, but it was a two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead.
"I will come next Tuesday," I promised, a little reluctantly, on her third call.

Next Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and so drove
there. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house and hugged and greeted
my grandchildren, I said, "Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is
invisible in the clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world except you and
these children that I want to see bad enough to drive another inch!"

My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this all the time, Mother."

"Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears, and then I'm
heading for home!" I assured her.

"I was hoping you'd take me over to the garage to pick up my car."

"How far will we have to drive?"

"Just a few blocks," Carolyn said. "I'll drive. I'm used to this."

After several minutes, I had to ask, "Where are we going? This isn't the way
to the garage!"

"We're going to my garage the long way," Carolyn smiled, "by way of the
daffodils."

"Carolyn," I said sternly, "Please turn around."

"You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."

After about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a
small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand-lettered sign
that read, "Daffodil Garden." We got out of the car and each took a child's
hand.

I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, we turned a corner of the path,
and I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most glorious sight. It looked
as though someone had taken a great vat of gold and poured it down over the
mountain peak and slopes. The flowers were planted in majestic, swirling
patterns: great ribbons and swaths of deep orange, white, lemon yellow,
salmon pink, saffron, and butter yellow. Each different colored variety
was planted as a group so that it swirled and flowed like its own river with
its own unique hue. There were five acres of flowers!

"But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn.

"It's just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property.
That's her home." Carolyn pointed to a well-kept A-frame house that looked small
and modest in the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house. On
the patio, we saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking"
was the headline.

The first answer was a simple one. "50,000 bulbs," it read.

The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands, two feet,
and very little brain."

The third answer was, "Began in 1958."

There it was, The Daffodil Principle. For me, that moment was a
life-changing experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met,
who, more than forty years before, had begun one bulb at a time. Still, just
planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world. This
unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. She had
created something of ineffable magnificence, beauty, and inspiration.

The principle her daffodil garden taught is one of the greatest principles
of celebration. That is, learning to move toward our goals and desires
one step at a time--often just one baby step at a time--and learning to love the
doing, ! learning to use the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny
pieces of time with small increments of daily effort, we, too, will find
we can accomplish magnificent things. We can change the world.

"It makes me sad in a way," I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have
accomplished if I had thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty
years ago and had worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those
years. Just think what I might have been able to achieve!"
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I haven't been good about documenting my sources for ideas to date. I'll try to do better.

First, I wanted to see if this was a hoax. It's not. for a discussion of the background of this story see:
http://www.themediadesk.com/files/urban.htm#daffodil

It incluedes a discussion of the copyright issues of the story.

For a story of the woman that started the planting, go to:
http://doityourself.com/flowers/paintingwithflowers.htm

Now, I bring this up only as a demonstration of the power of short bursts of work over a long period of time. I want to give an actual example, not some "it's possible" premis.

Again, it generally takes some grand vision to give you the spirit of committment to sustain you over the length of time required to see something like this through.

What dream would you like to see accomplished for your legacy?

One bulb at a time. As Gene Bauer says: "The work is done by two hands, two feet and a body minus a brain."

Excellence

Why do something to the best of your ability? Why not just do it “good enough?”

Pride. When you do something to the very best of your ability, you feel proud, and there’s not emotion that quite comes close to it as a good feeling. It’s a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. It’s like climbing a mountain. There’s exertion and fear that you might not succeed. There’s doubt and grit. Then you reach the summit and all of the effort and danger and fear and doubt were worth it. Excellence. The pinnacle.

It earns respect from within yourself and from others. You become the person people go to to get things done right. You earn a reputation. Your word and your work are respected and admired.

That’s why you go all the way.

Doing things over time

Doing things right the first time takes time. We have more time over our life times if we regard time differently.

When I took a class in art, I thought that everything I did had to be finished in one sitting. It slowly dawned on me that I didn’t have to do everything at once. I could take my time and draw or sketch for a while, or sit back and think of how I would do a certain technique. I could practice that technique before I had to apply it to my work.

I know that that seems an obvious thing. All the great artists do that, the great writers too, but it hadn’t really occurred to me.

This concept may be applied to any work that you treasure or believe should be well done. A few minutes a day here and there is like water on stone. It will fashion it as surely as a chisel and probably with more subtly because each step was thought out and you didn’t barge ahead. If it’s important to you personally, if its part of your legacy if you will, then when it is finished isn’t as important as that it gets done.

Things take more time than I think they will, for example digital photography. Taking the photo is instant as is viewing the photo on the camera display screen. That is much faster than standard photographs. The next steps take time.

To do it right, you have to edit the photo. That means you might have to do “red eye” reduction. Then you have to crop the picture and save it. If you want to print it you have to do that. If you want to publish it to the web, you have to reduce the file size and then up load it. If you want to email it to a friend you must reduce the file size again and again up load it.

All of this takes time, and if you have a set of pictures, it takes that much more time. To do all of the things listed in the second paragraph to one photo probably takes about fifteen minutes. Multiply that by, say a regular shoot of twenty-four pictures, and you’ve expended a lot of time, 6 hours!

I don’t usually think of how much time such simple tasks will take. Get these pictures out? No problem! And yet, it does take that time.

Every thing takes time like that, a few minutes here and there. I’m the kind of person that thinks, “get the big things done and I’ll come back and straighten up later.” Later never comes unless I set aside time for that. If I’d set the time aside in the first place I wouldn’t have to go back later and my life spaces wouldn’t look so cluttered.

Doing things fright the first time takes time. We have more time over the our life times if we regard time differently.