View From The Chicken House

 “They say motivation doesn’t last, neither does bathing, that's why we do it daily.”—Zig Zigler.

 

How many times have I used that quote? Many. It’s one of my favorites.

Have you ever watched a movie the second time, like maybe 20 years later, and you remember a little, but when the introduction rolls, you say, “I don’t remember ever seeing that.’ And maybe there are a whole bunch more scenes you don’t remember. I did that with the movie Children of a Lesser God last night.

 

And we do it with those wonderful cryptic sayings that are so meaningful at the time, quotes, and motivational sayings.

Peaches and I are in the truck parked by our once bare ground field, now ablaze with green spring goodness. We are basking in the glorious sunshine that is warming us from head to our toes. I’m recovering from a cold, the first in over 5 years. I declared I was never getting another, but alas, there is many a slip between cup and lip.

So, we sit here like two lizards on hot rocks, but the image of a crispy lizard flashed on my brain, and I quickly cooled my choice of words from hot rocks to warm ones.  Of course, if I were truly creative, I would come up with a better analogy than a lizard on hot rocks, but as I was reading The Poisonwood Bible, I was shocked to see that Barbara Kingsolver used clichés, and if a Pulitzer Prize-winning author can use a cliché, so can I.

Those cool word pictures, aka clichés, climb right to the top of our brains—“Cool as a cucumber,” hardly causes a pause in the reading. We all know what it means, we all understand a cliche'. I think they are like traveling to famous sites of the world, yes these sites are frequented, and advisors tell us to get off the beaten track, but the sites are frequented because they are the best.

(I admit cliche's are lazy writing, but hey, I'm giving my stuffed head a break. But isn't it refreshing when we run into a simile that gives us an explosive "Ha!"?) 

 

Earlier, I listened to a video of a monk advising us that when sadness visits, quickly replace it with a gentler thought. Joy opens doors.

Imagine this: we are in control of our thoughts, yet most of us think our thoughts are thinking us.

You know I had been following the Monks Walk for Peace and Aloka, their Peace dog, until the end of their journey—that 2,300-mile trek. I pray that the Peace and loving kindness they were spreading and receiving will continue.  

I should say it will continue, for once our eyes are opened to possibilities, it takes extreme effort to close them again.

I'm going to throw in something I gained from my Real Estate Continuing Education Course I took last month--don't be scared if I mention Real Estate, it wasn't all dry stuff. (And you guys know how I was dreading taking that course.) 

The course warned us about something they called “Implicit Bias.”

Implicit Bias as a subconscious bias that is difficult to detect and hard to overcome. It is our tendency to assign negative traits to people outside our group and positive traits to those within our group. 

But that’s not all to it.

 We know about discrimination—treating people, groups, animals, differently, thinking of them as inferior or not worthy of our attention. Sometimes we judge by stereotypes, which are oversimplifications of behaviors or characteristics.

Here are some examples of Implicit bias I just pulled out of the hat:

• Anchoring bias occurs when a person’s judgment is unduly influenced by the first piece of information they have on a subject.

• Beauty bias: That beautiful people have it easier. They are hired more often, promoted more often, and paid more. Yet, that can work against them. When a highly attractive woman applies for a physically demanding job, she is likely to be judged as incapable of doing the work. Being attractive can cause jealousy and lead to social isolation, sabotaging promotional opportunities.  Many are surprised when a beautiful woman is also smart. (I had a hard time accepting California’s governor, Gavin Newsom as a presidential candidate because he was so good-looking. But then I listened to him.)

We don’t want to admit some of those feelings sometimes.

• Affinity bias, which is the tendency for us to be attracted to people like ourselves. They like the same things we do, believe the way we do—boy howdy, isn’t that true? It can cause tunnel vision. It limits debate, can create a closed mind, and limits one’s education.

 

And then I came home to type up this information for I had my arrow pointed at the bull's eye that is my blog. I was ready to let go of the bow's string...when... 

I learned that my first boyfriend died. I feel sad and odd. We dated for four years. He greatly added to my self-esteem and self-confidence. I know as we matured we become polar opposites in many ways, but I was impressed at what he had accomplished over the years, and that in college on the east coast, and having no car, he bought a scooter (not a motorcycle) and drove it from the east coast to the west coast to visit his parents. That was awesome!

I didn't know the man he became, but I remember the boy.

 

It feels like the end of an era.

I decided to ignore the monk’s sage advice and be sad for a while.

And then I went outside to close the chickens in for the night and saw this:

 

Hope

 

The first egg is always a monumental event.

After a winter of rest, sleep, and using her energy to grow new feathers, one of my chickens laid her first spring egg. I could name her Hope, but I have three red hens, and I can't tell them apart, so I don't know who laid the egg. That egg was from yesterday. Today, I got another. Yea!

 

 ----Imagine strips of paper upon which you have written your insights. 

You throw them up into the wind. And other people, like children running through their first flurry of snow, arms outstretched, instead of catching snowflakes on their tongues, catch those paper strips in their tiny little fists. If they like what's written on the strip, they keep it. If not, they throw it back into the wind to be picked up by someone else.

 

On a day long ago, there were murmurings at the kitchen table that were not understandable to little ears, but I knew something was brewing. My father enlisted in the Navy because he knew the draft was coming and wanted to choose his area of service. The Navy was not to be, though, for they found he was color blind. Therefore, he ended up in the Army. I learned of my father's colorblindness from those murmurings and how that surprised him. Maybe that's why he sketched in pencil or charcoal, a.k.a. black and white. I learned that during the war, he drew portraits for the soldiers, and I remember he said, "You can't put too many lines on a face."

 

Once, he wrote, "You thought I would only be gone for a short time, didn't you?" I don't remember knowing he was going to be gone. If there were any goodbyes, I don't know them. If there were any tears, I didn't see any. He was just gone. He must have slipped out when I was sleeping.

He survived the war, but not his marriage or his fatherhood with me.

Which brings me to a question:

If the civilians on the home front could watch their brothers, husbands, and sons go off to a foreign land not knowing if they would ever see them again, if they were willing to offer their pots and pans as metal for the war effort, if they could have necessary items, like shoes and foodstuffs rationed, and purchase war bonds to help fund the war effort and still maintain HOPE for a liberated future, we can do it.  

 

Those folks back home believed that goodness would prevail and that evil would be vanquished.

Do we believe that now?

Without hope, if we feel that the future will not be better than the present and might even be worse, we will die spiritually.

We have it backward. The opposite of happiness is not sadness. It's hopelessness.

Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. So, why not shoot up a school, sleep with your boss's wife, take illicit drugs, or load up on pharmaceuticals by the bucketfuls?

 

 ----My strips of paper blowing in the wind will contain plain talk about magical things. I am gathering them into a book with the working title of YOUR STORY MATTERS, Living Your Life in the Most Awesome Way Possible.

 I metaphysically use the word magic. I know physics is at work. I also understand that something divine is swirling around that we find impossible to explain. 

 "I may not get there with you," said Martin Luther King Jr., "but I have been to the mountain. Mine eyes have seen the glory…I know that we will get to the promised land." 

He gave that speech on April 3, 1968. On April 4, 1968, he was shot and killed.

There was a man with a vision, a man who believed in non-violent resistance, and a man who had hope. He made a difference.

I know we are made of strong stuff. We must find our courage, integrity, and ingenuity and gather harmoniously. Remember, we are the ones to make a brighter day.

 Once, I watched a T.V. show where the presenter traveled the world looking for the happiest people. He found that the Taiwanese were among the happiest. The reason? 

They believed in hope.

 

 I was poking around in an old website that sat unpublished since 2015.

 

It was my old Blog, Where Tiger’s Belch and Monkey’s Howl.

Now when reading it it seemed happy.

 

Why did I let it go? When I read the  post,“What Makes You Happy?” and came across “Puppy Love,” I was hooked. It has a link to a Budweiser Clydesdale commercial that made me cry/laugh/smile. 

 

I am reopening the Where Tiger’s Belch Blog. I trust that the Universe is guiding me in the right direction.

 

When I read, “Have you noticed that it takes more effort these days to hold up your face?” I had to laugh.

 

Maybe you are much younger than me and haven’t discovered the face issue yet. Perhaps it’s just me. I look at myself in the mirror and don’t look too bad, but when I see a photo of myself, I wonder what happened.

 

Well, I discovered the truth. In the mirror, I inadvertently held up my face, and a photograph caught me slack jawed. 

 

One writer asked, “How does your writing look at its relaxed state? Do you let it drop like our face?”

 

See, someone else knew of this phenomenon. Oh, the pressure to hold up your face and your writing.

 

From Norm Papernick on Tigers:

 

 “Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.”

 

I was more light-hearted then—I’m returning to that blog.

 

Please give Where Tigers Belch a look- see. I would appreciate your thoughts on it. I will clean up some posts, delete some, and check my grammar and spelling. It could be like a high school play that is not perfect; it is not slick or professional, but it has the heart that professional Hollywood plays do not have.

 

It is fresh.

 

Here it is at https://wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.blogspot.com

 

Soon, it will be www.wheretigersbelchandmonkeyshowl.com. I wanted simply wheretigersbelch.com, but alas, someone else got it. It’s “coming soon.” Please don’t confuse it with mine.