A Conversation w/ Myself: Smiling Kids

Do you notice that people who are alone hardly ever smile?

From the woman who has a vice-like grip on her smoldering cup of java to the tense-jawed craw of a man sitting on a bus, no one is ever smiling when they are by themselves.

Well, duh. The woman is freezing and needs caffeine and the other guy is riding on a smelly bus likely going to work in the morning. Of course they aren’t smiling!

You can be such a smart-ass! You know what I mean. Whenever you see people walking through the park or on the street or sitting on a bench alone, they are never smiling. Next time you venture out, I want you to see if I’m right.

Will do.

Do you want to know why I think that is?

I figured you’d have a theory.

Although our entire culture has been about mobility, we don’t like to travel alone. Europeans traveled across the sea to be here and then traveled across the country to find opportunity. We learn to drive before we learn how to drink. We despise hospitals because they keep us wired to a bed and won’t even let us walk out under our own power once we're healed. We love doctors and nurses because they are the heroes and mothers that make us mobile again (but that's a totally different story). When we age, life might as well me be over when we can no longer drive.

So true, isn’t it!

Basically, for Americans, being stationary is pretty much like being dead. We have to constantly be on the move. We have to constantly try to improve things in our world. Everything is constantly changing. We learn from our mistakes and improve ourselves.

What does this have to do with being alone?

If we’re always trying to get somewhere, then we’re never there.

Ahhhh, I see where you are going with this.

If we’re going to make our entire lives about the journey and not the destination, then we want to share the journey with someone because we never stop to do anything else.

So true.

However, there is one thing that always make us stop for a moment and smile whether we are alone or in company.

What might that be?

The smile of a child. Children make us stop the journey for a few minutes. In the grocery store, we’ll go out of our way to wave to the child in line in front of us. We always try hard to make a child smile whenever we see one.

We totally do this, don’t we?

Yes, we do, but why? Personally, I think it’s because making a child smile gives a rest stop and refresher on the long journey.

Really? What if the children are the ones that do the evaluation?

What do you mean?

I mean, what if children are the ones that validate your journey. If they give you a smile, then you can keep on truckin’ on. No smile from a child and you’re on the wrong path.

And here I was thinking that I was the outlandish theory freak.

I don’t know the answer, but it would be an interesting twist, wouldn’t it?

Feeding Chocolate to Angels

Einstein said,

Image by brylyn via Flickr

"A human being is a part of a whole, called by us 'universe,' a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

I like what Einstein said and I thank my Emergent Thought Group for sharing this little nugget of wisdom. What I really like about it is that Mother Nature is a real nasty mofo. "The whole of nature in its beauty" isn't all about sitting around in the golden sunshine and feeding chocolate to angels, nature's theme is survival, is it not? A mighty oak is mighty because it survived, it earned its mighty nature. The Grand Canyon is grand because of persistence over time. The Bald Eagle is bald because it mates for life... oh, wait... never mind (oh, you all know I'm a HUGE fan of true love)... the Great Plains are great because they're the plainest of the plain.

I think you get my drift. Though you might first see Einstein's quote as peace, love and granola, I see it as something entirely different--something real.

And so, I conclude by leaving you with another great quote, this one by Jody Watley,

"Real love. I know I wanna have one. Real love. Gonna try and get some."

Who wants to join me in the fight for survival of the lovest?

The "Being IN LOVE" Fan Club

Hey hey hey... good morning my favorite peeps and tweeps! I've a lot of work to do this morning, but I've been trying to do the morning writing thing, either with a blog post or with something offline (like this big ol' book I always refer to) because it helps to wake up my brain.

But this morning, I want to tell you about the Facebook FanBox that I added to this blog (see it, over to the right, down, down, there, yes, there!). I started this fan page on for "Being IN LOVE" many moons ago simply to see what the functionality was like (you know, I do that marketing thing in my other life) and when I came back a few months later, there were THOUSANDS of fans!

Well, I've decided that I should start to participate more on the fan page and we've already had some great conversations there.

7920 fans are already there, so come be a fan of BEING IN LOVE.

I look forward to seeing you as a fan and to your participation in the club!

Much love!

A World Where Every Vote Counts

I just had a great conversation with my great friend, Lori Steele, who is the CEO of a company called Everyone Counts. During our conversation, she reminded me of my time in DC at Unity08, where we really believed in this saying, "In times of great need, ordinary people come together to do extraordinary things." You can find a billion versions of this quote, so I'm sure it originated from a great mind, I just don't know (nor do I have the time this morning) who it might have been.

[Sorry Doug Bailey, I'm sure you know off the top of your head.]

Did you know... more than half of the absentee ballots cast by US military personnel never make it to their home district on time? The process is so cumbersome that many never attempt to request the ballot, wait for it to find them and mail it home because the whole process is dependent on using snail mail service.

I asked Lori, "What are the greatest accomplishments for Everyone Counts since you brought this technology to the world?"

• Our team of extraordinary people together, for one mission, because they believe that every person in every democracy should be able to vote and be confident that their vote will be counted with reliability. It's incredible to see their daily passion.
  
• Using our technology to enable soldiers on the front lines of a war to have their votes counted for the first time in history and for allowing the blind to vote independently with our phone voting technology.
• Finding that government officials will take a risk to push for what's right when they begin to see examples of the security, reliability and transparency that our system presents.
  

I encourage you to become a fan of Everyone Counts on Facebook... feel free to ask me any questions that you have. I've been following them for quite some time!

Oops, thought Panera opened at 530

Wandering Plaza backways...

3 Steps to True Love

In talking to a Twitter friend last week about true love, I asked if she'd ever found it. Her answer, "Yes, but it didn't last." Didn't last? Is it possible that you can find true love, but that it won't last?

Image via Wikipedia

Is that really true love?

I probed a bit deeper, it seems that it was true love for her, but not for the other party. Hmmm. Here's an angle that we don't discuss often, true love for one and not the other. So, I thought to myself, what is true love?

This 3-step plan formed in my head...

1. Wanting to make promises to your partner.
2. Making promises that you can keep.
   
3. Keeping those promises, at least trying like hell to do so.
   

First of all, I want to make promises to you and with you. My desire to do so means that I want to make you happy; I want to improve and survive the things in life, together, hand-in-hand. Words can be so empty these days... how can young adults getting married not have in the back of their heads, "Well, it if doesn't take, we can always get divorced." It's a cynical view, but it's too prevalent not to wonder. Thick and thin, sickness and health, 'til death do us part... those are some serious things to say to each other. Yet, nearly half of marriages in the US dissolve. I'll say what I keep saying, we need to teach our kids how to look for love; understand who they are and what they need before choosing a partner.

Second, I want to make promises that I can fulfill. If I promise to lasso the moon, can I actually deliver? It's one thing to make poetic gestures, they always have a time and place, but in the real world, you must make promises that you can deliver. Be realistic, but challenge yourself. Some hurdles look high when you're alone, but with the right partner, you can give each other a leg up to best them.

Third, do whatever it takes to deliver on your promises. Don't give up. I promised to do something for us and I will find a way to do so. If you are making the right promises, you'll never be able to deliver on them all, but as long as you try like hell, failure is a normal course of events. But, you have to try like hell. More often than not, you can find an alternative, a work-around, another way, put your heads together and make use of that two-heads-are-better-than-one thing. How many times in the movies do we see a main character who wants to do something for their loved one, only to be frustrated by not being able to do so? But then, their partner says that everything will be okay, all I really want is you; none of that other stuff matters as much as you being here for me.

Make promises that you want to make; promises that you will try like hell to keep.