“There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
― Ronald Reagan
One-Liner Wednesday 5/31/23- Humility
Tag: humility
SoCS 10-29-22- Elemental Humility
Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “element.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!
The term “element” means a basic building block that more complicated principles, things, or beings, are built upon. Elements cannot be changed or created. They just ‘are’. You may call them ‘truths’ which are unchanging and undeniable.
Human beings are extremely complicated. There are layers of ‘inborn’ traits and then there are experiences which nudge them in multiple directions. In other words, every one of us is unique. When it comes to the current ‘diversity’ mania, it sadly overlooks this ‘truth’.
So why all the anxiety over instituting ‘diversity’ everywhere? Well, human beings love to simplify and make conclusions about everything. Actually, the search for the quintessential human ‘elements’ probably is an inborn purpose. Our curious nature drives us to explain everything and to truly explain anything means we need to start at the ‘roots’. There’s a problem though. First, human beings are not meant to nor have the capacity to understand, or even explain, everything. Secondly, many human beings don’t know (or refuse to believe) this.
All human beings have what I call “the oops factor”. I don’t care how educated or expert you may believe you are, ALL people make mistakes. Some are small, like forgetting your grocery list, and some are large, like the oft seen headline, “Scientists Baffled”.
So why the nearly ‘religious’ reliance on what ‘experts’ say these days? Furthermore, why the vitriolic movement to quell any questioning of ‘experts’?
There are likely more reasons than I can ‘see’ but taking my human limitations into consideration, I still think it’s good to offer my viewpoint to the discussion.
The ‘elephant in the room’ at the elemental level of human hubris is the arrogance that accompanies the lack of belief in a Creator. You don’t have to ‘buy’ any specific religious dogma to realize there are unexplainable forces at work. Such forces which human beings are not the commanders of even if they care to label them.
Socrates- a fulltime thinker- believed he actually knew ‘nothing’. That realization of his own limitation of full understanding made everything else he said all the more valuable, IMHO. Humility is key. You cannot have humility when you believe YOU are all powerful and all knowing, aka God.
(The concept of ‘perfect‘ as something attainable in ANY human life has also done more harm to human happiness (and many marriages 😉 ) than any other concept, IMHO. I purposefully refrain from using that term… especially around children.)
Those who can repeat the term ‘settled science’ with a straight face certainly need a humility ‘injection’ along with their Covid shot.
In our current oversimplified, secular, celebrity ‘worshipping’, culture there’s a tragically low level of humility and an even more tragic reverence for “expert” opinion. Add to that a few generations who had their ‘self-esteem’ artificially inflated and were told that THEY can (and are entitled to) do anything they choose, you get a hopelessly incurious and compliant population. They’re even easier to turn against each other with this empirical mindset. This makes Marxists salivate with glorious expectations.
There’s one ‘truth’ when it comes to Communism, the central element of which is the capture of the minds of people in order to dominate them… Religion must be eliminated. The religious, and or, the ‘thinkers’ who cannot worship the government as “all knowing” because of their own humility, are dangerous to the effort of creating a ‘collective’ of unquestioning serfs.
IMHO- Any society’s measurable freedom is unequivocally linked to the amount of leadership humility and human humility is undeniably linked to the belief in a Creator. That’s why Freedom of Speech and Freedom to Worship are elemental to our country’s prosperity and survival. I’ll defend those two elements any way I can.
Happy Saturday everyone! Embrace your beautiful uniqueness today!
One-liner Wednesday- 8-17-22- Sorry Situation
This one line keeps echoing through my brain. Particularly when I consider what’s been going on the past 2 and a half years with government overreach and ‘cancel culture’. A sorry situation, for sure.
Life Advice: You have Superpower
In 1984, a wonderful TV series debuted. It was Punky Brewster and I enjoyed the message that it portrayed.
No matter what the troubles the main character faced, she remained hopeful, confident, and empowered to prevail by staying true to her own instincts.
Punky often met challenges with her “Punky Power” attitude.
I was happy that my young kids watched the show because that had been my life motto and hoped they would absorb the message.
We often hear “you cannot control others but you can control your reaction to them”.
This is one of the soundest bits of advice.
I witness people frequently frustrated and angered by the behavior of others. I adopted a reliable philosophy somewhere along my journey. I try extremely hard never to give others, especially strangers, the “power” to make me angry or bitter. I don’t believe everyone realizes that they have that power.
The first step in the development of one’s personal power for calm and self-preservation is to understand how differently individuals ‘see the world’.
Our personalities are, by far, our most diverse assets.
The second step, is to study people a bit and understand when you are not being understood. Don’t dwell once you know this.
Thirdly, the best realization is that you do not control anyone else and there may be a point when talking, complaining, and explaining, just won’t work. It’s okay and it doesn’t have a thing to do with anyone’s ‘goodness’.
From there, learning not to accept anyone’s critique of you as an ‘expert’ level guideline. You are not made up of the opinions of others! You define who you are and must live your ‘good’ life.
Humility and honesty are a must when you maintain a critique of yourself. It is an evolution that will lead to wisdom and contentment when you question yourself along the way. When how you behave feels wrong, you can work on it. Also, pay close attention to people who impress you and seem decent. You can learn much about their motivations and character strengths and use those things for improving yourself.
Finally, always remember NOBODY’S PERFECT so forgive yourself and others generously. Don’t forget to laugh at yourself. Everyone is a goober now and then. Every day starts anew. You’ve got this.
When all else fails, fall back on these powerful and wise childhood sayings and you’ll be fine:
YOU HAVE THE POWER!
One-liner Wednesday- 6-1-22 -Humility
“One ought to examine himself for a very long time before thinking of condemning others.”
― Moliere
https://lindaghill.com/2022/06/01/one-liner-wednesday-electronics-screwing-up/
First Line Friday: May 21, 2021
Your line for this week is:
“A perfectly brewed cup of tea can’t fix everything.” Fanny retorted.
Nan had done all she could do and threw up her hands. She’d waited on Fanny ‘hand and foot’ since her ‘accident’ without one ounce of gratitude.
If you asked Fanny, the world was about to end! But, her prognosis for a full recovery was solid and her needs were being met by her lifelong friend, Nan.
Nan decided to clip out a series of tragic stories and obituaries from the newspaper. Her friend’s gloomy attitude needed a dose of reality!
The next day, Fanny wasn’t treated to her tea and croissant precisely at 8:00 am. Instead, she was handed a folder and told to read its content before Nancy would do a ‘darn thing’ for her.
Forty-five minutes later, Nan found a red faced Fanny in the kitchen preparing her own breakfast. She’d been crying. Fanny motioned to Nan to sit and hobbled to the counter. After a brief pause, she gathered enough strength to present Nan with a cup of tea and croissant on a tray then, a bit unsteadily, retrieved her own.
Nan started to get up to help but Fanny waved her off.
“A perfectly brewed tea can’t fix everything but a loving friend certainly comes close. Thank-you Nan, for everything.”
First Line Friday: May 21, 2021 | Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie (wordpress.com)
Questioning People Without Answers
There’s a scary lack of humility plaguing posts about the “evils of not wearing masks” including claims of fellow citizens ‘murdering’ others or having a nonchalant intention to ‘murder’ others.
First, most authors claiming that ‘anti-maskers’ (cute label) are primary spreaders and therefore primary ‘killers’ aren’t scientists or even paying attention, IMO. They’re borderline hysterical. No courtroom trial could prove what they’re charging others with, yet, they deem themselves judges and juries at a time we ought to be united.
Try answering these questions, then decide whether the charge of murder holds up beyond a reasonable doubt. [That is still the standard for such a vile charge, isn’t it?]
1. Did the scientists first encountering this virus wear masks? Was it still able to spread?
2. Did nursing home staff, where the majority of lethal cases centered, wear masks?
3. Can the small size of this virus pass through the ‘everyday’ masks of ‘maskers’? (Hint: Yes.)
4. Are masks universally expected to stop the spread? How about people who keep adjusting their masks with bare hands or ones wearing bandanas? Are bandanas anti-masks or masks?
5. Does the virus infect people through the eyes or in ways yet to be detected? (some totally house bound people have gotten it and many unmasked people haven’t, in documented cases)
6. Are frequent hand washing and ‘social distancing’ more or less effective than masks? If more, then does a frequently hand washing, socially distant, person serve as less of a risk than a masked person not observing those measures? Who really knows how careful others are about exposure, cleanliness, or the reusing of dirty masks? Might masks just be visible signals not foolproof protections?
7. Are these ‘anti-masker spreaders’ helping expedite herd immunity which will keep everyone safer? Far more people, who have gotten the virus, have lived than died.
8. Once vaccinated, people are asked to still wear masks. Why? Who are they protecting in that case?
I don’t directly know the answers to any of those questions and could ask dozens more without reaching a guilty verdict of murder for anyone.
Two choices available…
We can take precautions that we deem best for ourselves and leave others to the freedom of choosing theirs. We can stop the constant labeling of our fellow citizens as stupid, or worse, evil, when we don’t agree and have some humility about what we don’t actual know,
Or, we can keep posting about ‘murders’ in our midst who are not wearing masks thus exposing more about the lack of humility of those accusers than any credible evidence to convict those accused.
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