Twin Cities, here I come!

Ah, but which pair of Twin Cities? That's the question. There's more than one, you know...

I was in one over the weekend, and will be in a different one Friday. And what it looks like is that one or the other will be a new primary address, soon! I just don't know which, yet.

More to come on that.

But the weekend was great. Managed to survive the storms, mostly unaffected except for my return flight which got delayed. Such fun with J1 & J2, though! And with the dog. He remembered me, aww.. and so fluffy. Needs a haircut. ;) The kids are doing well, and are excited about the prospect of the lead topic above.

Me, too. :)

Stay Tuned!

Things are going to happen fast the next couple of weeks.

Today I'm flying from one snowstorm to another. I slogged my way back from class last night, driving an hour-fifteen in driving snow. You know the kind that, at night, when you flip your brights on, you immediately flip them back off because it was white-out? That kind.

And by tonight in Chicagoland it sounds like it will be the same thing. It will be great fun to have an evening out with J1 and J2, though, and sleep in on Saturday, before I head to my business further south. The extra sleep will come in handy. I need to shake this head cold by Sunday night dinner!

More news next week. Job-related, all.

Motivations

This morning I was thinking about what in life motivates me. Not necessarily the things I value highly and enjoy, like music and beauty and symmetry and philosophy and meaning, but the things that I have consistently found myself striving to have present in my personal life.

I first started thinking about it in terms of what I want in a job, since I'm not crazy about this one, but then I thought "Oh, there's more to this than just the workplace. These things motivate my personal life, too." So, I'll start with the general application and then move to work.

This is a short list, but it hits the big motivations that have been around my whole life:

Freedom of Movement
Privacy
Individuality
Creativity
Self-expression
Being Wanted/Loved



The first two I suppose are variations on the idea of having a high degree of independence and autonomy (setting my own agenda, not having to answer closely to others, being able to pick up and go when and if I want.) It's been a driving force in my choices my whole life long. I've just suppressed it - a lot, for relationship reasons. And it's definitely been a source of either tension or lack of depth in most of my relationships. But if I ever feel like I have a real choice - I'll opt for autonomy every time.

Now bring in the notion of individuality, and you get the idea that I do NOT want to be what others expect me to be, to fit into a mold, play a role. I bristle at that. So much so, that I've found myself sometimes doing crazy and oddball things that I might not otherwise do, if for no other reason than to break a mold, step outside a pattern, do the unexpected, improvise, startle, get around the slowpoke in front of me, shake off the chafing yoke around my neck.

Part of this is related, I guess, to the artistic bent that I come wired with. Creativity is constantly bubbling inside and often boils over uncontrollably. The ideas just come, unbidden. I can't stop them. So I am driven to find situations where I can let it out "safely" and not scare people. ;) But if I have to be scary to vent the creativity, then darn it, I will be! Too bad. And, like the fiercely independent artist, they need to be *my* ideas, not someone else's who is simply paying my bills. I want my "patron" to allow me artistic freedom! :)

And this spills over into self-expression. I have a need to say what's on my mind, pour out what's on my heart, sing what's in my soul, whether people like it or not. Of course I hope they do, but - if they don't - I still need to get it out. Thank God for weblogs, community theatre, clubs and cabarets for singing and acting, and classrooms for teaching. I'd go crazy if I couldn't do these things, and have been miserable whenever those opportunities haven't been there.

Finally, the last item - being loved, being wanted. This is pretty universal, granted. But notice - it's *not* being needed! No, I have no real desire to be needed, because that implies a lack of autonomy, less freedom of movement. I'd much rather be *wanted* than needed. And I really don't want someone else dependent on me, any more than I want to be dependent on someone else. I admire autonomy and independence in others, too.

But! to be wanted, and loved... oh my yes! When I create, and express myself, and people enjoy it and want more... life is good. When someone knows who I am inside and loves me because of (or maybe *despite*) what they find inside, life is great! Sometimes I find a situation which is so good that way, that I never want it to stop, never want the show to close, the audience to tire, the words to stop flowing, the loving to take a break, the intimacy to need space.

Yet these things *have* to happen, don't they, at least occasionally, or those who want me and/or love me would be, in effect, prisoners, no? And rather than perform for a captive audience, or be loved by someone who's duty-bound to it, who wouldn't rather have people come back to you of their own accord because they enjoy who you are and what you do for them? Of course!

Yes, it takes more courage and self-confidence to let people be free of you if they choose to be, but then if they *do* stay, whether as fans or as friends or as lovers, their devotion to you is all the more sweet! Does even God prefer to be loved out of a sense of obligation? Or is His desire rather for a love and devotion from us which results from His kindness toward us, and our response to who He is?

So, okay, this is the personal life application, but what about work?

I think what this means for a job is that I want one where I:

am in charge, in the lead
have competent, independent staff
am not micro-managed, but trusted
implement my own ideas, not someone else's
can travel as I see need
get opportunities to teach and train
am valued by the company, my boss, my staff

So, let's see now... one out of seven isn't bad. Well - yes, it is. :(

I actually remember having one where all seven were in place. Believe it or not, I actually had the chance to write song lyrics and wear funny costumes and sing, and it was job-related! It was the most fun I've had in my 30+ years of working. At this point, I'd like very much one where I can hit on 5 or so of the above. Compared to where I am now, that would sure be sweet.

Strange week behind and ahead

Well, this is a different stretch. My otherwise very pleasant travels earlier in the week to Wisconsin and then to Florida got artificially extended by the snowstorm, which cancelled my flight back to New England, and forced me to spend an extra day in Miami Beach. :( I was so bummed. Really! Who needs 80 sunny degrees anyway? Give me Great Lakes weather any day. :)

Yeah, I can tell you're all sympathetic.

So I got back to a solid 6" sheet of snow/ice in the drive, and sub-freezing temps, so it will no doubt sit there now until Spring. Plus, non-stop study since I've been back, to get caught up. Serves me right, I suppose.

Then, starting tomorrow I have the house to myself for several days. Hope I can discipline myself to hit the books and not the clubs! Ha. Not to worry. I found out a while back that they don't even *open* until after I've gone to bed! ;)

And next weekend... I'm off to the Midwest again for a long weekend, quasi-business excursion and a chance to visit J1 & J2. Yay!

After that... who knows? I could be anywhere.

What is Love Like?

I've always loved numbers, loved to look for patterns in them, loved random number generators or coin flipping or dice rolling to see if they *really* distributed randomly or not. :) Geek boy...

Later, it was fun in math classes to learn about all different kinds of numbers: rational and irrational, real and imaginary, etc., because with categories like those, *now* we start crossing over into the realm of philosophy, another favorite subject, as faithful readers of this blog already know. ;)

So, with the coming of Valentine's Day once again, I happened to be browsing through a little collection I have of sayings about love, and this one struck me:

"Love is like pi", it said, "natural, irrational, and very important." Well!, I thought. It's way more than that!

Like pi, love is:

natural,

but

irrational

never-changing,

but

non-repeating

infinite,

but

limiting

constraining,

but

scaleable

and

a fundamental constant

that helps the world hang together.



But one thing it's not.

It's not:

imaginary.

:) It's very real. :)

Happy Valentine's Day!



And oh, yeah... if you were to try to describe it fully, just like describing pi, describing love would take all the pages of all the books that all the paper in the world could make, and you would not exhaust the subject.

The Book of Pi

Hip Gnosis

Secret knowledge. Hidden wisdom. Keys to enlightenment.

From the first century to the 21st, there's been a stream of these ideas bubbling underneath popular culture and mainstream religion. Rarely with big box-office popularity ("Rocky"), but with more of a devoted cult following ("Rocky Horror").

And, if you run with a certain crowd that values the esoteric and obscure just because they are esoteric and obscure, a good working knowledge of Gnostic literature adds to one's hipness quotient. If you can quote from the Gospel of Thomas or Judas and converse about it for a few minutes, your literati coolness factor goes way up. (I've read them, by the way. Not in the original Coptic, but still - I'm hip.)

I want to talk about the ancient Gnostics and where they are alive and well today in mainstream America, but you might not recognize them right away. But before I get there (maybe in part 2 of this post, as I think about it...), let's consider just for a bit the concept of Gnosticism and how it actually works out in real life situations.

First, gnosis is just the Greek word for knowledge.

Gnosticism is the notion that knowledge leads one to ... oh, pick one: self-fulfillment, higher consciousness, connection with the divine spark within, the next stage in evolution, transcendence... and so the pursuit of knowledge becomes the highest purpose for humankind. The more knowledge, the more advancement, etc.

Secret or hidden knowledge is more highly prized in this arena because it isn't as easily accessed or understood as is mainstream "popular" wisdom. And obviously if what *everyone* knows was good enough, we wouldn't have all the problems we have today, right? So... there must be other wisdom that less people know, and the less people that know it, the further from the mainstream and therefore the more valuable it probably is.

Okay, with that as backdrop, let me shift gears a minute and talk about the way our personalities work. I'll start by using another Greek word, psuche, most often translated as "soul" in the New Testament. We know almost instinctively that body and soul are separate, that the body stops at death, but the soul doesn't necessarily stop, depending on your view of the afterlife.

I'll show later (I think) that one's soul and one's spirit are not synonymous either. For now, let's say that the spirit is that part of us that is innately searching for some kind of meaning in life, some connection with eternity or with something greater than us.

So I think of a person as being in three parts, body, soul and spirit. I'll leave out the body and spirit parts of this discussion for now. For simplicity's sake let me equate the soul to that part of us that goes on into the next life, however you want to think of that, as well as what makes us who we are in this life - our personality.

It seems that the personality or soul is also made up of three parts: reason, emotion and volition. Said in other words: mind, heart and will. We sometimes refer to the will as "drive" or "strength of character" or "inner strength". The collective operation of those parts makes us who we are as human beings. It reminds me of the Great Commandment: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, strength. In other words, with all of who you are.

Life is lived experientially, not theoretically. So, when we go through our days, we gather information and encounter stimuli. The information and stimuli come in through a sort of experience funnel where they interact with our emotions and our reason. We think about some of the stuff and have emotional reactions to some of the stuff. Both our mind and our heart then inform our will. Our reason and our emotions move upon the will until we make a volitional choice to act or not act in some way.

Once we make a choice to act (or not), it comes out the bottom of the funnel, and then we begin to experience the outcome of that decision as it ripples into our daily life. The consequences go back into the top of the funnel as information to think about or stimuli to react to, and the process continues. It's a feedback loop of sorts, supplemented by additional experiences (related or unrelated) that happen continuously to us or around us.

Sometimes this feedback happens instantaneously, as in getting involved a parking lot fender-bender, deciding to jump out and holler at the other person, and then deciding NOT to retaliate after they've just hit you, but apologize instead. Or... any one of a dozen other permutations of that incident.

Other times the feedback loop is loooooong. Like reluctantly moving to take a new job and then finding after a year that it's not a good fit for you, and then deciding to return the recruiter's phone call this time when she calls, which several months later leads to a better job than you could have ever imagined would come your way 2 years earlier. It even moves you back sort of where you came from. Or something like that. Maybe. If you're lucky.

Now, I don't think that reason ever informs the emotions very much, or vice versa. I don't think they communicate much at all, except through the consequence feedback loop described above. They are like Mars and Venus, Cats and Dogs, Spaghetti and Waffles, Men and... well, you get my meaning. When's the last time your anger or lust or grief helped you slow down and think straight? When's the last time that thinking sensibly about the quality of your presentation in front of the Board of Directors made your palms stop sweating? They don't really help each other much.

So, if we get more knowledge, are we really any better off on a day to day basis, if we don't also give equal time to expanding our emotional capacity and range of emotional experience? *Some* people think we are. They are the modern-day Gnostics. More on who they are in the next part.

Oh, they have counterparts, too - people who think that getting in touch with and working out our feelings is the most important thing we can do to be better human beings. I'll identify them in the next part, too. Maybe you already know who these folks are. :) Hint: they're all certified and credentialed in their various fields. Or... they're wanna-bes who have cocktail-party theories (or blog posts!) to share with whomever will listen. ;)

You get what you pay for

And since I paid nothing for the flu shot this season... that's about what I got for it!

Since the wee hours of Thursday morning until mid-day Saturday I've been useless because of this nasty flu thing that's making it's way around. Finally today I feel like I can think, and so am back at the books again. 1&2 Corinthians this week. Not exactly simple reading.

Hm. It must be air travel that allows it to sprout almost simultaneously in the Midwest and in New England.

I've always thought, though, that the flu shot doesn't really *prevent* the flu, but it makes it harder to catch, and if you do catch it, the severity of the illness is less. Boy, if this was less severe than normal.. I really feel bad for all of you who got this thing without benefit of the shot. Yikes!

So, while I still feel like I lost in a bar fight, I only missed one evening of study, and by the end of Sunday should be caught up, I hope. In the meantime, as Paul says, I press on toward the prize...