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“When I speak with someone, I like to get past his persona and speak to the person behind it.” ~ a friend of mine said this this week

ps This is becoming quote week!

This site, that I think of as “zen stories,” has been a wonderful site that I come back to again and again. I also like the comments of people below the stories. Look around, see which stories here you like. Here’s one of them:

The Gift of Insults

There once lived a great warrior. Though quite old, he still was able to defeat any challenger. His reputation extended far and wide throughout the land and many students gathered to study under him.

One day an infamous young warrior arrived at the village. He was determined to be the first man to defeat the great master. Along with his strength, he had an uncanny ability to spot and exploit any weakness in an opponent. He would wait for his opponent to make the first move, thus revealing a weakness, and then would strike with merciless force and lightning speed. No one had ever lasted with him in a match beyond the first move.

Much against the advice of his concerned students, the old master gladly accepted the young warrior’s challenge. As the two squared off for battle, the young warrior began to hurl insults at the old master. He threw dirt and spit in his face. For hours he verbally assaulted him with every curse and insult known to mankind. But the old warrior merely stood there motionless and calm. Finally, the young warrior exhausted himself. Knowing he was defeated, he left feeling shamed.

Somewhat disappointed that he did not fight the insolent youth, the students gathered around the old master and questioned him. “How could you endure such an indignity? How did you drive him away?”

“If someone comes to give you a gift and you do not receive it,” the master replied, “to whom does the gift belong?”

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. ~ Douglas Horton

Potentially Quote Thursdays may be moving to Mondays. We’ll see.

Q: What’s your favorite flower?

• Daisy.
• Today, gladiolus!

And why?

• Daisies are so bright, they totally make me happy. Life is simple. Daisies are simple. They are proponents of the idea that life is good. Sunflowers are awesome too!
• Gladiolus is a neat, neat flower - tall, majestic, and lively - many blossoms on its stem.

Today is Question Friday, please add your answers! :)

All men whilst they are awake are in one common world: but each of them, when he is asleep, is in a world of his own.
~ Plutarch

Without enough sleep, we all become tall two-year-olds.
~ JoJo Jensen, Dirt Farmer Wisdom, 2002

Sleep - those little slices of death, how I loathe them.
~ Edgar Allen Poe

If people were meant to pop out of bed, we’d all sleep in toasters.
~ Author unknown, attributed to Jim Davis

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don’t have one.
~ Leo J. Burke

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.
~ Irish Proverb

Alvaro Fernandez has started a wonderful blog: the Sharpbrains blog, all about brain fitness! I posted once about the company that Alvaro runs, Sharpbrains, and the interesting articles on that website.

Here are some of my favorites from his posts so far:

1) The “It” in “Use It or Lose It”: what are the different parts of the brain that people should think about exercising? 2) Physical Fitness and Brain Fitness: this post includes the super-interesting quote: “rats that get regular exercise literally grow bigger brains than sedentary rats.” 3) The Brain and Mind Fitness Revolution is here with us: how do you improve brain fitness and waht in terms of neuromarketing affects decision-making?

And today’s Sharpbrains post relates to both #2 mind-body and #3 decision-making: Mind/Body and the Role of Emotions in Decision-Making.

My favorite section of the sharpbrains blog is the brain exercises section. This section, which is updated with a new brain puzzles every few days, has you shuffle around different parts of your brain - sometime doing estimates and calculations, sometimes interesting word exercises, and my favorite is that Alvaro puts up many visual puzzles, such as the penny question, the Stroop test, and the classic old-lady/young-lady (see the post for an explanation of the below image):

So enjoy Alvaro’s blog! And he says that any questions you have on the brain to email him or to post comments on the blog.

In closing, here is the New Yorker’s recent update of the Old Lady / Young Lady discussion. :)

A little girl liked a little boy very much because he was round and smiley and he crawled everywhere. This little boy was much smaller than the little girl.

He always came to the park with his mother when the little girl came to the park with her mother. But while the little girl walked to the park like a big person, like her mother and like the other mother, the little boy sat in his carriage and he smiled a lot, but he never walked because he was still too small to walk. In fact, he was too small to walk, and too small to talk, but the little girl liked to talk to him anyway.

Sometimes the little boy’s mother would take him out of the carriage and put him on the grass and the little boy would crawl and fall onto his stomach, then lift himself up, smile, crawl some more, and fall onto his stomach again. And all this time the little girl’s mother and the little boy’s mother would be speaking to each other. And at the same time, the little girl would be speaking to the little boy.

The little girl told the little boy while he was crawling about how one day he would be big like her, and he would be able to walk like her, and he would be able to eat food with his hands, and even with a spoon and a fork, and he would be able to sit with the big people at the big table. And the little boy crawled.

The little girl told him how one day he would be able to look at her with his eyes and say something to her and how she would understand him and she would say something back to him. And the little boy crawled.

One day, the little girl told him how in the future when he grew up very big that she would be very big also and that then they could be married because he would be a daddy and she would be a mommy and they could have little boys and little girls who would crawl all the time and the girls could wear pink dresses and the boys could wear blue overalls. But while she was telling him this, the little boy fell onto his stomach, and he said “agg! garrr!” And the little girl smiled and said to him again, in case he didn’t hear, “That’s right, blue overalls.” Then she went back to her mother, and she took her mother’s hand and they walked home.

Another day, she came to the park with her mother, and the little boy was there with his mother. The little boy was sitting in his carriage. The little boy’s mother said to the little girl, “It rained last night, so I don’t want to put him on the wet grass.” So the little girl knew why the boy was still sitting in the carriage. The little boy smiled when he saw the little girl, and he moved his arms, and he looked like he wanted to crawl on the ground. And the little girl came up close to him, and she said to him in a whispering tone, “But you can’t go on the ground today. Remember what I told you when I am very big and you are very big and we are married and we have a little boy who wears blue overalls – remember the blue overalls? Well, you wouldn’t want our little boy to get his blue overalls wet because it rained last night, would you? Well that’s why,” she whispered, “that’s why you shouldn’t crawl on the grass today.”

I don’t exactly know why it is that I sometimes miss Mondays in terms of posting. You would think that I’d have plenty of time on the weekend to write up my brilliantness for the coming week. You would think that during the weekend, I’d have at least one hour of quiet driving somewhere during which I would think through one blog post storyline. You would think that I’d write up the details of the ideas from the previous week.

For all you bloggers out there, how many posts do you have in your drafts version? I have about 120 versions in draft form. Yaow! I start one, write a title (sometimes that comes last), type up, “S, find this reference, combine it with this amazing study, and post that.” And then I have new ideas when I come back to the writing screen again and want to write up new things and don’t always go back to those thing.

And for non-bloggers, how many emails do you have in your drafts folder? :)

In any case, I am psyched to combine the two aspects, my draft versions and my Mondays… I like the two goals of shrinking the number of draft versions, and of having something preplanned for Mondays. Ok, see how it goes in a week. :)

Have a great week. Short story coming at you tomorrow. S.

Question: What have you done today to make someone else happy?

This question comes from Lila. It was really good to see Lila a few days ago. Ok, the first things I can think of are the ways that people have made me happy this week:

* Saw two super friends… what they did was that they were available on short notice (so great!)… what I did was get all three of us together.. that was so mellow and casual and great. My friends made me so happy by being around then! * Took my younger brother to dinner. He liked that. * I made a friend of mine happy by discussing her business ideas with her… it was a role somewhat like being on the imaginary baord of a company and looking at the company’s future. I did it because it was interesting and fun, and I think it probably made her quite happier that I did! That’s cool to think about. * I took good steps towards connecting two friends to possible future jobs… I made introductory emails between them and people closer on their trail of getting jobs at the places where they want to get jobs.

That was - all in all - a really good week. Cool!

On Fridays, I post questions. If you feel like answering them, that would be wonderful! Have a great weekend.

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” ~ Annie Dillard

“How you do anything is how you do everything.” ~ Tonya Pinkins (earlier on this blog)

“…for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.” ~ Steve Jobs (in this speech)

“Today is everyday.” ~ Senia