Life is What Happens While You Are Making Other Plans

The week has been filled with other events besides my writing. Thanks for hanging in there with me until I get back on track.

Today is Tuesday—yes, I know, I’m blogging late, but I had things in mind to write, just not time to tell them.

I wanted to talk about the takeaways I got from this past week.

Number One, The Buddhist’s Peace Walk:

 

 

I’m so impressed with the monks who make no political statements, no religious judgements, just walk to awaken Peace. And many people are responding. It is a great attention getter and people need a leader, so they rally. And so am I, for they have touched my heart.

They made me rethink the search for happiness everyone talks about. “Search for Peace.” That sounds more doable. We can’t be happy all the time, but we could be peaceful in our bodies, in thought and deed, and let happiness come as a surprise, a gift, a blessing.

The monks just walk, and Aloka, the Peace Dog, trots along, although now he is in recovery from surgery, and I’m glad they are taking good care of him.

And their walk added perspective to the hours I needed for a Continuing Education Real Estate Course I didn’t want to take.

Thirty hours were easy compared to walking 2,300 miles in 120 days.

Takeaway from my Course:

“Let’s sell the Tiny House on April 11, 2026 ,” I tell my daughter, “in honor of the Fair Housing Act of April 11, 1968.

That act was a Humongous TURNING POINT for the country and for human rights.

In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through the Fair Housing Act. This was when riots were happening, and America was in the midst of unrest. President Johnson called Congress and said, “Pass that Bill!”

The bill, which had been debated to the nth degree with strong opposition, passed the following day.

Now, no person can be denied the purchase of a house based on color, race, Natural Origin, familial rights (children), disabilities, or sex. Elder rights came next. And the Disability and sex (it didn’t make sex illegal, it allowed a single woman to buy a house) came a couple of years later.

Here’s our Tiny House on day one:

 

Today, the Tiny House is not complete, but it is close.

Daughter Dear has no time to complete it, although it was dear to her heart when she began renovating it, and she’s good at bashing out walls, tiling, and adding exquisite features.

A buyer with a few hours could complete it.

She worked her fingers to the bone, and we found that a small house needs the same as a big house, just everything scrunched into a small space. The plumbing is in, the electricity was professionally installed, it’s piped for water, has a wall heater, kitchen cabinets, and an under-the-counter refrigerator. No countertop. We have the sink and bamboo flooring that need completion. DD tiled a complete wall in the kitchen and a complete bathroom with a tiled shower large enough for two people, or maybe a Great Dane dog.

The wall between the bathroom and the “living room,” which will be a bedroom at night, is still studs only. A mirrored wall there would give the illusion of a larger space, if an owner could stand to look at themselves that much.

Well, this sounds like a sales pitch. I wanted you to know what we are dealing with. And that my Real Estate course made me want to honor the FHA.

Three: Surprise,

The course mentioned the vagus nerve, and that it takes up more space in our bodies than our skin. It is there to connect to the amygdala of the brain, the seat of our feelings of unease and for telegraphing danger. It has kept us alive for millennia, though not in a fail-safe way, for we have developed so much logic that we talk ourselves out of intuitive feelings, sometimes saying it is only our imagination.

Real Estate Agents go into dangerous places sometimes, empty houses, warehouses, lofts, at night sometimes. The idea is to be focused and aware.

I was struck this week by a lecture on the Native Nations of  North America—how long they have been here, and that they had some of the same social issues we have—like fighting each other, and territorial disputes.

Sometimes you know something, but then later you really get it. That was the way I was with society and culture. I wondered how people like Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, and Jesus could be so wise in times of barbarism.

Like, suddenly brilliance pops up.

It’s that we have cultures within our society. We have skin heads, KKK members living alongside Priests and Saints, and monks who do not proselytize, yet get verbally attacked for not being Christian. We have Southern, Northern, Midwest, Rural, and Urban inhabitants.

We have people who want to bomb entire areas back to the Stone Age, while others say, “Don’t do it.” “Your decision effects the rest of us.”

See how anger gets attention, and a soft voice hardly raises an eyebrow? Yet silence--it seems that the monks are on to something, walk, meditate, be in relaxed focus, make a statement, push yourself for a cause. 

We have progressive personalities and Conservative personalities of varying degrees, some are genetically predetermined, some are taught.

And then we try to have a Democracy where the majority rules.

It’s tricky.

 

Here is the Tiny House now, we had it pushed in under a high overhead to keep it out of the weather, and to allow DD easy access to materials in the garage a few feet away. The trouble is, our wonderful creative House mover, moved himself to Eastern Oregon, and now we must find a way to get the house back out. 

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• "Life is pretty simple:
  You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works.
  You do more of what works."

  --Leonardo da Vinci

 

 

Once Upon a Time

Once upon a time, there was a land where people had a precious device sitting in their homes, on the table, in their study, their office, in their kid's rooms, out on the porch—wherever they were.

They called it a computer. Once it computed. Now, not only can it compute, it can help people write, read, research, play music, watch movies, and about whatever the minds of men could conger. And their device is growing in information and changing daily, like the people.

A group of six people left their devices at home alone one day to gather outside and sit under a maple tree. Ollie, the tree's supporter and waterer, popped the cork on a bottle of Vino, "Time to switch from coffee," she said and filled six glasses on the tray atop the round coffee table before them."To truth," she said. The rest of the group chose a glass and clicked each other's. "To truth."

"But, how do we find the truth?" said Tweekie, "hold on one minute, I'll be right back," and disappeared into the house.

Shortly after, she appeared with a platter of cheese, crackers, and grapes. "Okay, guys, no feet on the table, food's here."

"We were on hold until you returned, Tweekie. Thanks for the snacks." Sally picked up a cracker and slice of cheese and, while waving about, said, "Here we are drinking to something I have no clue about."

"Well," says Shal, "You know some things to be true, your dog here, us as friends, the weather, the kindness of people."

"Do you think people are kind?"

"Most are. Most want to assist their fellow man. Really, you see how boundaries drop in a crisis, or if someone has an accident, how they rush to help?"

"But we don't want a crisis to bring out the good in people."

"No, but we see it there. And most people want a better world; we just disagree on ways to do that.

"Finding the good is an admirable goal. That may be our first step.

"I believe Mr. X is accurate," says Harvey.

"Really? I don't think so," says Tweekie, "He says the world is flat."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," chimes in Sally, "hasn't he ever traveled in an airplane--you can see the curvature of the Earth. And what about objects in space? Planets are round. Our sun is round. The moon is round. Why would the Earth not follow the pattern of round objects traveling in a circle around a round sun?

"It is illogical," says Shal, but Mr. X wants to be unique."

"Well, he's got that, and people listen to him, but what he is spouting is nonsense."

"I guess it's true for him," says Shal.

"So, what do we do with people who have influence and are spouting garbage."

"Some people like to ingest garbage."

"Oh, Shal, that's disgusting."

"Well, you know that 'What is one man's meat is another man's poison.'"

"That goes way back to the 1500s, so I guess they had the same problem then, but, whoa, do we just let people believe whatever they want?'

"Won't they?"

Sally laughs, "I guess we have no control over that. But we should try to have factual information."

Shal refills her glass and offers to top off the others. "People don't want the facts. The facts are dry. They want sensationalism. It makes them feel."

"Then the problem lies in people's feelings?" says Ollie pulling over a foot stool and propping her feet on it. 

"I guess so. That's why headlines are so alluring—Their writers want them read. And you know the old adage, "If it bleeds, it leads." Sensationalism works. So does fear."

"Yeah, fear is built into us. But, we've had fear up to our eyeballs," said Ollie. "Our reptilian brain has become a raging crocodile. Hells bells, we don't even know if what sets off the reptilian brain was written by a person or a robot."

"You're right; it's funny when you really look at it."

"Like Forrest Gump's run and his followers not knowing what to do when he stops?"

"Yeah, like that."

"I don't think it's funny at all," says Sally, "we're being deceived, lied to, facts are distorted, and many are ignored."

"Yeah, I know. But look at it this way, we are adventuring beings. We like the unusual, the absurd, the outrageous. The blow-hard gets attention."

Ollie laughed. "Ain't that the truth."

Hey, we found a truth," says Sally.

"Only Shal, "What do you think? Do we throw out all Mr. X says because he has some cuckoo ideas?"

"Well, it does make me question his judgment."

"What evidence does he have that makes him believe that way?"

"Maybe he lives on a flat planet."

 "I get it," said the quiet one, Simad, "He's living by a different set of rules. If you don't throw in some absurdities, you're boring."

"You think it's hype? Could he have information he's withholding from us, or is he speaking allegorically? Maybe ‘plains of existence,’ or something like that.”

"I don't know. You will have to ask him. If aliens abducted you and you are here to tell of it, you might get some attention. If you've visited Mars, you might be listened to. If you have a brain anomaly and see everything as flat, we might cut you some slack."

“Some would. Others would think you should be put out of your misery."

"If you got rid of all the people who disagreed with you. You'd be alone on a lonely planet."

"I will let you disagree with me. I want you here."

"Thanks, kiddo."

"We all know that fear gets attention. More medical ads first ask if your toenails ache. And you think, yeah, my toenails are aching; what shall I take?"

"Your toenails are aching?"

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do. But our initial goal was to search for truth."

"Good luck with that. There are some universal truths, like gravity, which we can't explain, and some "truths" we agree to, like E = mc2, matter is neither made nor destroyed. But is that really true? I don't know. But it's accepted until proven wrong. We trusted Einstein."

"So, we believe people we trust?"

 "Pretty much."

Many people didn't trust Darwin.

"No. His theory of evolution threatened the established view of a Creator being. Like Copernicus telling people, the Earth isn't the center of our solar system. The sun is."

"Then they were thinking too small. Instead of understanding that species change over time, they went to the bottom line. Darwin threatened my idea of Creation. Instead of saying that information from the pantry of life is not going into my pie, you try to keep everyone else from putting it into their pie."

"Well said, Shal."

"I do get a little testy when someone challenges my thinking," Sally said.

"Don't we all."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"…we can't even agree to honor that."

"A lofty goal, though."

"Yeah, maybe goals should be it, instead of searching for truths, for it seems that people have their own 'truths" of which there are many."

"I'll drink to that." Ollie holds up her glass to be filled.

"How about, instead of frustrating ourselves, such as, if we say gravity is real, someone will counter it with, 'There are places where it isn't.' If we say your dog is real, some will say, 'He is an illusion, as is all life.'"

You must choose what feels right and then be open to changing your opinion if data presents itself. Life is a smorgasbord, and we can choose what to put on our plate."

"You're right, you like anchovies, I don't. You take them. I'll leave them."

"Wise choice."

"But I don't want anyone to give me smelt under the guise that it's an anchovy. I want true anchovies."

"I guess that's for us to dig through the pile and see what rings true.

"That is all well and good, Shal," but I want help finding the truth," Sally sighs.

"Well, we can't find it all in one day. Let's meet next week, same time, same station."

"Here, here."

Shal throws back the remainder of his wine and says, "Did you hear the one about two old couples walking down the street? The two ladies are in front with their husbands trailing behind them. "So," says one man to the other, "what have you done this week?

"We went to a new restaurant. The food was great, the prices good."

"What was the name of the restaurant?"

It was, uh, oh, like a flower."

"A rose?"

"Oh, Rose," he calls to his wife, "What was the name of that restaurant we went to last night?"

 

 

 P.S. Listen to Dolly Parton sing Let It Be. It will move you to new realms. Paul McCartney is on the piano, and Ringo Starr on drums.  

https://people.com/dolly-parton-covers-beatles-classic-let-it-be-7692894 

 

And if you would be so kind as to check this out and how about a Subscribe--It's FREE, no obligation, and it would help me reach 100 subscribers, a goal according to Substack.

 https://joycedavis.substack.com/

Ah ha. I finally got the link to work. It only took me about 50 tries. Let's see if it will work for you. There is not much there for you guys for I repeat, however, my booklet Take The Leap is there. Some folks from my Travelswithjo blog wanted more on that subject. and I got  over 4.000 comments on that post.  Of late I seem to have lost a lot or readers from that blog, either I screwed it up or they didn't like what I was saying and didn't put it in their pie.

Supposidly joycedavis.subtack should work, but I must have a firewall of some such. I am so frazzled, I think I'll ask Neil to go out for ice cream to keep me from blowing a fuse.

Take a breather with me.

I breathed, and am back Monday August 21, 2023 OMG, Google did it to me. 

I just looked on https://travelswithjo.com site, and saw a comment I had passed over because it was in Japanese. I translated it and found if you have a drop in readers Google lowers your SEO. I had let my site drop from paid to free, and lost readers. I thought they didn't like me. It was google that didn't like me.