Opinions Are Like Belly-Buttons, Everyone's Got One

My opinions are strongly held and expressed (not so much on my blog, I try to keep it neutral). I've come to realize that when I am being forthright with my beliefs, I am often perceived as being opinionated or divisive. I like to debate. Some people take that to mean argumentative. I had to learn who I could get into that kind of conversation with and who I couldn't. People like me don't mean to step on toes. We like to throw around ideas and to hear new ideas.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes on the topic of opinions and ideas:

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. -Arthur Schopenhauer

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. -Aristotle

To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it requires brains. -Mary Pettibone Poole

Personally I'm always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. -Sir Winston Churchill

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject. -Sir Winston Churchill

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity. -Cicero

Great discoveries and achievements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. -Alexander Graham Bell

Ideas are like children; your own are always wonderful. -Anonymous

I don't think everyone has to think like me...but I am surprised sometimes by what people believe.

Imagination

Remember when you used to lie on your back and watch images in the clouds float overhead? Remember pretending you were a giant surrounded by a world of miniatures? Remember thinking 'what if you were a time traveler' and pretending to see cars for the first time or riding in the back of the car pretending to be kidnapped?

pretend clubhouse-bare spot in the center of forsythia

When there's snow on the ground, I like to pretend I'm walking on clouds.

Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata

give me your opinion, please

I bought curtains for my bedroom. But, I haven't taken them out of the package because I'm not sure I love them.

see a better view of the curtains here in a World Market advertisement

I had an orange floral pattern on a white or cream background in mind. I saw something like it in a movie or television show. I can't find anything remotely like that. Anyway my budget is limited. I don't think I could afford them if I could find them, since there is nothing like what's in my mind in any of the discount or chain stores.

What do you think? Keep or return?

Everyone Has A Story

My drive to work takes about 35 or 40 minutes. I usually listen to books on CD or NPR. Yesterday morning it was NPR. Storycorps:Recording America came on. For those of you not familiar with it, Storycorps is a oral history project whose purpose and goal is to honor one anther's lives through listening. Each conversation is recorded on a CD that the participants are given to take home. Their conversation is also archived at the Library of Congress for future generations to hear. For example, friends or relatives might interview one another, grandmothers and grandfathers might tell their stories, etc. Every Friday morning NPR airs one of these interviews. This is a portion of one I listened to yesterday morning. E J Miller interviews his father, Ed Miller Jr about his own father, Edward Miller. Click on the following exerpt to read or listen to the whole interview.

Asked what kind of advice his father had given him, Ed, 57, admitted he thought most of it was "corny" at the time.

"Do a good job and work hard, and you'll get noticed" was one bit of advice. "And not necessarily to get noticed, but because it was the right thing to do," he said.

"The most important thing I learned from Pop," Ed said, "was to be gentle — not a gentleman, just gentle, you know?"

EJ said he had learned that same lesson from Ed. Then he asked his father what it felt like when he became a dad.

"If I had advice for people now who are young, having babies," Ed said, it would be this: "Try to remember every single minute of that time when your son or your daughter thinks that Daddy is the greatest thing in the world — when you walk in the door, that the sun is shining because Daddy walks in."

It's the memories of those times, Ed said, that he still cherishes, especially when he sees parents out with their young children, walking hand in hand.

"And I'll tell you, my heart aches for the days I used to do that," Ed said. "It's heartaching sometimes."

But he added that he feels lucky because "I'm blessed with a woman that I'm still in love with. And you three guys."

"There's no doubt about it," EJ said. "You are my hero. You're what I think of as a good man. I thank you and Mom for just being such great examples."

"That's pretty cool, J," Ed said.

I love you," his son said.

"I love you too, man."

It was a gently told story and it touched me deeply.

Resolve to Reflect In 2009

The act or process of thinking:

• thought
• brainwork
• cerebration
• cogitation
• contemplation
• mental activity
• musing
• pondering
• rumination
• wondering
• meditation
• speculation
Careful consideration of a matter:
• deliberation
• advisement
• calculation
• contemplation
• debate
• evaluation
• examination
• meditation
• pondering
• rumination
• speculation
• study

Memory

I've always been amazed at people who say they remember being a baby or a toddler. I thought my memory started around five, except for the tropical bark cloth curtains that hung in our first home. I've never known if I really remember those curtains or if I just remember them from pictures.

Tonight, while browsing an old photo album I recently borrowed from my mother, I came across some pictures from a Florida vacation we took with family friends. My mother had written 1958 at the top of the picture. That means I had just turned four. And I clearly remember that vacation. I remember the big old car all eight of us drove in to Sarasota. I remember staying in a tall hotel on the beach. I remember a long bridge. I remember getting all dressed up one day. I don't remember why though.

Isn't memory funny? It's so selective. Why do we remember some things and forget others? Perhaps I remember that vacation because the dad of the family we traveled with kidded me for years. Apparently, I had asked for water repeatedly the whole 10 or 12 hour trip. But, I don't remember that.

Here I am looking like a happy chubby boy. My mom liked to keep my hair short and easy to care for.

So how about you? What are some of your early recollections? What triggers memory for you? Is it a smell, a song, a special food or a old vacation photo?

Perception and Memory

Memory and our senses seem inextricably linked. Why else does a gray windy day make me think that it's cold outside even though the temperature might be hot? Why do I think of my grandmother's bedroom when I hear the metallic plink of venetian blinds? How is it that listening to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vita takes me straight back to my high school boyfriend's Rambler? Why are mashed potatoes, meatloaf and macaroni and cheese the quintessential American comfort food?

While there are many mysteries our basic senses can not prove, they do provide us with a pretty clear picture of the physical world. I hear, I see, I touch, I taste, I smell, therefore I am. Each of us uses our senses to help us make decisions, to formulate opinions and to navigate through our day to day affairs. We have likes and dislikes, things that make us happy and sad. We laugh when we hear certain things and we remember events that took place long ago when we smell certain aromas. Seeing pictures of loved ones can invoke feelings of warmth, security and love.

What sorts of things appeal to your senses? What are some of your cherished memories? Here are a few of mine.

• the satiny smooth feel of good paper and soft leather
  
• clean crisp air-bleached sheets
• the dirty smell of rain in the air
• the ring of church bells on a quiet Sunday morning
  
• the Saturday morning sound and smell of grass being mown
• the earthy taste of mushrooms
  
• the fresh apple smell of a baby's breathe
• golden rays of sunshine stabbing the earth in the early morning
• the head prickling nose snorting rush you get from egg rolls dipped in horseradish sauce
• cicada songs on hot summer nights
• thumb sucking babies
• the soft enveloping feel of air before rain
  
• leaves rustling in the wind
• a train whistle's lonesome cry in the darkness of night
  
• the sky and its many moods
• the gentle eyes of a kind man
• a child's smile of understanding and wonder
• the soft sleeping inhalation and exhalation of a loved one
  
• the soul stirring realization of the unknowable immensity of the God of the Universe

photo courtesy of Flickr

Now it's your turn. What appeals to your senses?