Thomas Paine Lives!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeYscnFpEyA
This guy is hugely funny and makes a really great point that crosses all party lines to take us back to a totally different kind of party: The Boston Tea Party.
Yes, I actually punned. I’d really like to think it was amusing.
So that’s Sue’s favorite link of the month. Sue’s favorite flavor seems to be Chinese Deliverey. We’ve been getting a lot of that lately. The delivery guy had to come back each time, because something about the original order was lost in translation each time…………..literally.
It’s reminiscent of something that the re-incarnated Paine mentions in his well thought out speech/diatribe. We really need to do a better job of teaching English to those to whom it’s a 2nd language, if they’re going to be living and working here, legally.
Other favorites of my present day: Sky Hill Institute. I’m taking classes there, these days. Right now it’s Sports Massage. Soon to come: Mayo-facial and Pregnancy.
I’d love to take Deep Tissue, too, but there’s only so much I can handle at any given time. There’s still the family to look after. I keep having to steal my kid’s toys back from our puppy, feed the kid and pup snacks, and keep them reasonably clean.
When I’m not doing any of the above, dishes, or laundry, I’m looking for educational places to take my kid, as we’ve begun the homeschooling journey in earnest, now. All tips on that are welcome. I’ve found SCHA of Sonoma and Petaluma. I think it’s going to help.
Then there are my dance lessons. ………………Thank G-d for my dance lessons. I think that they’re keeping me sane. Yes, I get counseling too, but dancing is often even better as a therapy. My teacher is very flexible, in more than one way.
On days when I feel I need to exercise, we dance. On days when I just can’t get my head into it, we may watch videos of dance or simply talk or break down the music.
Everyone should have a teacher like this at least once in their lives, and preferably all thru their lives.
So far in this edition of Sue’s Tips and Figurative Travels, I’ve seen to your mental enrichment with a fun and provocative link, and to your fitness needs, by advising you to find a good teacher of some form of exercise that you love.
Also, I’m not ashamed to mention that we’re getting outside help for other issues. Counseling is not shameful. What is shameful is the arrogant assumption that anyone is perfect and has no need at some point in their lives of counseling.
Many are counseled without realizing it. Everyone we talk to changes our life somehow. If we can let our guard down in order to really listen, without assuming that we’re going to be criticized or told how to run our lives, and without planning a response while the other person is talking, that’s when we have the greatest potential for actual growth.
Easy advice to give. Difficult advice to take.
You’re reading the words of a person who has spent over 30 yrs. beginning to listen by preparing a defensive response, or preparing to discard off- hand what I was about to hear, because I was too much in love with my own way of doing things, and too sure that I was more right, or more in the right than the person talking to me, and I had to be eloquent in telling them about the error of their ways.
I was constantly preparing to explain to the other person why their way of disciplining my child or living my life wouldn’t work for me. I was always secretly offended that other people thought that they knew so much better than I, when they hadn’t spent days at a time in my shoes.
The truth is that some of them actually had. No matter how much I profess that I’m changing or want to change, it is going to be a conscious and almost painful effort for me to listen with my guard down, probably for the rest of my life.
At the same time, I know that my most life changing epiphanies have happened, just in these past few months that I began this journey toward Humble Pie Land. Well, that’s how the journey feels, anyway.
I’ll keep you updated on how it feels and how things change as time goes on, here in Grand Central Station.
I think I may just go back and read some of my own advice with my guard down. Mainly the stuff about how to keep life simple, by not over-programming.
Ciao Dear Reader.
As always IYS (In Your Service)
Sue Hirsch, CMT.