A Brief Rant On Religiosity And Ego
The trigger that fired this diatribe was Brit Hume’s assertion that Tiger Woods must, “Turn to the Christian faith,” rather than to his own Buddhist practice. I have little doubt that Hume is sincere in his own beliefs, and no doubt that Christianity has worked and can work wonders for those who are drawn to embrace it wholeheartedly. But I am thoroughly put off by those who profess to religious wisdom (of any brand) on the one hand, while at the same time remaining oblivious to how their beliefs have become hostage to their egos.
Nothing To Prove
On a birthday with a zero in its number, in an unexpected flash of clarity, I understood that I have nothing to prove to anyone. The catalog of things I had tried to prove before that moment is long: that I am smart, clever and creative, that I am competent and capable, that I am successful, sexy, and insightful, that I am one of the guys during happy hour, that I belong almost anywhere I go, that I understand both the outer and inner game of baseball, that I see what is wrong with the world and what is needed, that I see what is wrong with an organization and what is needed, that I see what is wrong with you and what is needed, that I am quick-witted and funny, that I have taste and style, that I can write, and probably lots of other things that I can’t recall at the moment.
A Wonderful Thing Someone Said About You
Listen carefully and you may hear the sound that I make when I read the words below from Geetali Tare. It is a whooshing sound, a strong but gentle out-breath that begins deep inside me. I can’t seem to stop doing it right now.
Geetali, who lives in and writes about the town of Shimla, India, at her blog, Shimla Gallimaufry, offered the words in her latest post, Spreading The Love:
When Procrastination Is Arguing With God
I was scrolling through some 250 comments posted in Liz Strauss’s recent “open mic” forum about procrastination. Many comments are about the roots of procrastination, and they cover all of what I have in the past told myself about the roots of my own procrastination: fear of failure, perfectionism, monotonous tasks, etc. All of those reasons once rang true for me but do no longer.
The Value of Playin’ Around
Want to write a blog post, an article, or maybe a book? Or tile the bathroom floor? In many and diverse enterprises it is often a good idea to try things out without preconceiving where it might lead; to just start playin’ around.
I was playin’ around with the images I captured at Dale Chihuly’s glass installation in the Desert Botanical Garden (see previous post), looking for a new computer desktop background. My first temptation was to skip over images that I didn’t like, but I didn’t do that because…well, who knows why I didn’t. This is one of the images that I was tempted to skip:
