Lift Up Your Hearts!

It's a pretty random collection of tidbits this time.  Enjoy them or ignore them as you like.

• Eat your heart out, Imelda Marcos.  People will collect anything, but I have to wonder if even Otto C. Lightner (the “collector of collections”) would pay $2000 for a pair of sneakers.

• Each man under his own vine and fig tree—in a neighborhood.  How Germany Made Us “Conservative” is a Front Porch Republic post that presents several glimpses into much that is wonderful about European life.  There’s plenty to argue with, but I offer it because it reminds me of a lifestyle that many I know in the U.S. are attempting to (re)gain.  Realization of what Europe lacks (and justifiable fear that we are losing it in this country) should not blind us to what they have of real value.  If there is any hope that we might recover that value without losing our own particular treasures, it lies in such understanding.  Mutual understanding.

  [O]utside every town are breathtaking vistas of rolling landscape with miles and miles of forests and farmland, all oriented toward local food production, hunting and forestry. Nearly every household seems involved with the land in some way or another, whether through a small garden and wood stand or a larger farm. In the backyard of many homes one still finds chickens that roam free, fruit trees that are now bearing apples, pears and cherries that will be made into jam, water barrels that catch rainfall with which families water their plants. Nearly every yard has an enormous pile of wood, stacked carefully and in perfect symmetry, already today in use as the temperatures dip into the 50s here. Also, in every backyard one sees a compost heap….

  Towns are towns: houses are generally not permitted outside the town limits due to strict zoning laws….This makes for greater population density…and hence also makes feasible vibrant regional and national public transportation systems. One enters a town defined by visible town limits, and nearly every town has at least a local baker and a local Metzger (butcher)....Store closing hours have traditionally favored small business owners who hire few or no employees, and who thus must be home to care for schoolchildren during the afternoons and in the early evening. Most businesses still close for several hours at lunch and at 6:30 in the evening.

  [O]ne family we got to know well through our church there, a family with three children, were desperate to move to America—they wanted to buy a house of their own, with a yard the kids could play in, rather than just trucking them to the local (though admittedly, very nice) park and contributing to the community garden for the next twenty years of their lives while they saved up for something that was prohibitively expensive for young people at that stage of their careers. They looked at our living experience in America, and they envied us, and the genuine and virtuous desires behind that envy are worth contemplating.



• How long could you last without saying something negative?  I tried that as a Lenten discipline once, and it’s hard.  Tim Ferriss signed on to the 21-Day No-Complaint Experiment and reports the results are life-changing.

  Will Bowen, a Kansas City minister…recognized…that word choice determines thought choice, which determines emotions and actions. It’s not enough to just decide you’ll stop using certain words, though. It requires conditioning.  Will designed a solution in the form of a simple purple bracelet, which he offered to his congregation with a challenge: go 21 days without complaining. Each time one of them complained, they had to switch the bracelet to their other wrist and start again from day 0.

  I made it 11 days on the first attempt, then I slipped. Back to zero. Then it was two or three days at a time for about a month. Once I cleared 21 days at around month 3, I no longer needed the bracelet.

  Ferriss changed Bowen’s rules a bit, to fit his own needs:

  I defined “complaining” for myself as follows: describing an event or person negatively without indicating next steps to fix the problem. I later added the usual 4-letter words and other common profanity as complaint qualifiers, which forced me to reword, thus forcing awareness and more precise thinking.

  Thus “Man, I went into the post office and had to stand behind this rude jerk for 30 minutes. What a waste of time,” would require him to switch the bracelet and restart, but “Man, I went into the post office and had to stand behind this rude guy for 30 minutes. It was a waste of time. From now on, I’ll go in the mornings before 10am to avoid the crowd” was acceptable.

  The benefits?

  • My lazier thinking evolved from counterproductive commiserating to reflexive systems thinking. Each description of a problem forced me to ask and answer: What policy can I create to avoid this in the future?
  • I was able to turn off negative events because the tentative solution had be offered instead of giving them indefinite mental shelf-life…resulting in better sleep and more pleasant conversations with both friends and business partners.
  • People want to be around action-oriented problem solvers. Training yourself to offer solutions on-the-spot attracts people and resources.