...there has to be...

good smile at the end, tom.

☀

“Hope and optimism are different.

Optimism tends to be based on the notion

that there's enough evidence out there to

believe things are gonna be better,

much more rational, deeply secular,

whereas hope looks at the evidence and says,

'It doesn't look good at all. Doesn't look good at all. Gonna go beyond the evidence to create new possibilities based on visions that become contagious to allow people to engage in heroic actions always against the odds,

no guarantee whatsoever.'

That's hope.

I'm a prisoner of hope, though.

Gonna die a prisoner of hope.”
― Cornel West 

one of the richest sharings of gratitude, humanity,
and wisdom in this interview, imo.
it's funny too, they have a good rapport.

some gems from Brother West, who considers himself 'blessed to have been invited to the banquet of life'

(much more enjoyable to listen to him,

he has a great laugh and spirit):

Blessed assurance, making a leap of faith,

stepping out on nothing

and landing on something...

He who has never despaired has never lived.

I make despair and catastrophe constant companions,

but I just don't allow despair to have the last word...

Ancestral appreciation,

feeling the love at your back...

 Persevering is the best we do,

just gonna love my way through the darkness...

Ritual has a role to play,

it's nice to stop everyday life

and have moments of deep meaning...

great reminders about cash,

an instrument for some greater cause, not an end...

and the legacy of Martin Luther King,

who also spoke of a religion based on being

maladjusted to greed, concerned about fairness,

maladjusted to indifference,
concerned about compassion,

and maladjusted to fear.
Instead it's courageous and tries to be hopeful...

☀

ours is in the trying, the rest is not our business.

-T.S. Eliot

magnifique!

“Many of Danielle Richard’s paintings feature a vista, a clearing,

a door, or a window through which a feminine gaze appears to flee,

but what it truly seeks is to delve into its most intimate being.”

♥

even though I don't understand French, I love listening to it.

this looks like a lovely presentation in Danielle's honour...

A bit of history about the origin of the word 'empathy' in Art that doesn't seem to be commonly known: In 1873, the art historian and philosopher Robert Vischer was the first person credited with using the German term Einfühlung to explain how we  'feel into' or the 'in-feeling of' works of arts and nature. His father, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, had previously used a similar term Einfühlen in explorations of Idealism relative to architectural form.

In the late 1800s the Father of Experimental Psychology William Wundt used empathy in terms of human relationships but still from an art-based position, saying 'when empathizing with a work of art, the beholder physically imitates the object and imaginatively projects himself into the object.'

A student of Wundt's, Theodor Lipps, transfered empathy to psychology in an attempt to explain how we discover that other people have selves, though he presented many examples from the visual arts, including 'when I observe a circus performer on a hanging wire, I feel I am inside him'.

Freud got in there then with 'putting oneself in another person's position', and in 1909, a psychologist named Edward Titchener translated Einfühlung into the adjective 'empathic' which he defined as the appreciation of another person's feelings, or the process of humanizing objects,

of reading or feeling ourselves into them.

From then on it seems like the art/aesthetic origin was no longer referred to, and around 1929 it started to get confusing when philosophers began arguing that empathy was more cognitive than emotional, and ever since then the lines between empathy and sympathy have been blurred, empathy commonly referring to cognitive function and sympathy to feeling, though they are often used interchangeably in today's society (this confusion clearly illustrated especially in the comments here). It also became a political tool; it can be very politically incorrect to be non-empathetic, and to be sympathetic has its own weakness/negative connotations as well.

I would like to see the downfalls of this confusion around

the word empathy and how it is being used as a distraction illustrated more clearly and spoken of more often,

as Edwin Friedman does in the fascinating book

A Failure of Nerve, where he says that the increased popularity of empathy is largely a symptom of the 'herding/togetherness forced characteristic of an

anxious society'.

I personally align with the earlier meaning of empathy in which I see the roots being represented aesthetically

('the science of feelings') through the arts as early (and likely even earlier) as the mid-1700's when Johann Georg Sulzer said that 'art is the expression of a psychological state of man; it imitates human nature in that it expresses nature through the representation of an object.'

Going with this version of empathy and distinguishing it from sympathy by defining it simply as having loyalty, support, or favor with, ultimately paves the way for less semantic confusion and more opportunity to...

throw all of this out the window!

and just be compassionate.

that is, recognize our shared humanity.

♥

Feel life.

Be life.

Accept life.

whoa.man

'There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you.
Keep the channel open...'
~Martha Graham

◊

On a Women's Circle site I read that in South Africa, you might hear local people greeting each other with

"Sawu bono"

equivalent to "Hi" or "Namaste"

which literally means

"I see you".

If you were from the same tribe you would respond with

"Shikona"

which means "I am here".

The essence of the exchange:

It is only when you see me that I exist.

◊

One woman I have been seen by is Marion Rosen.
I had the blessed opportunity to receive a bodywork session from her during an Intensive (photo below was taken shortly after) and it was one of the most powerful experiences of my life. Marion recently passed after living fully for 97 years. When I grow up if I may be a fraction as good as her... well, she was just one of those amazing conduits for transformation. Not that she was trying to be, she simply showed up in her own life, and her light shone so brightly from a place of goodness, gentleness, and genuine humanity that she made the world a better place. A more worthwhile place.

Berkeley, CA 2008

◊

Yesterday was International Womens Day, and in gratitude of so many beautiful sister-women-friends I have crossed paths with in my life,

Sawu bono.

◊

If you want to go quickly, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.
  ~African proverb

tribal

I'm happy that Susan Cain has written a book (currently a nytimes bestseller) about the unique challenge many of us intrinsically 'Quiet' people face in our society...
(her talk on TED.com recently about the book is delightful. she makes a great comment about the irony of an introvert's job being to go out and speak to large groups about it (!) so it is inspiring how she approached it and labeled this her 'year of speaking dangerously'.)

I personally don't think of all quieter people as introverts, and thus all louder people as extroverts, but rather at our core, we all fall somewhere along a spectrum. And I feel it is beneficial to have the awareness of where we ourselves generally are on that spectrum, and to also be aware that about one-third of those among us are much more on the higher sensitivity end of the spectrum (the bulk of whom are also introverts but many are also extroverts as Elaine Aron brilliantly speaks to here). Included in my Living in Possibility quest is an individual path toward self-acceptance that leads to self-celebration (of course I don't mean this in an egoic/outward achievement sense but in an inward, Divine knowing way), at whatever volume works.

please be careful with me

I'm sensitive

and I'd like to stay that way

~Jewel

One way of getting along with it all is allowing

more space around each situation. 

these days, I try to give myself

the freedom to be

situationally:

*extroverted ~ sometimes this is necessary and I do enjoy stretching in this way on occasion.
*quiet ~ this one comes naturally, while claiming it as a rejuvenative and creative necessity does not.
*vegetarian ~ all about balance and striving toward inner and outer harmonization. as my body, as well as my understanding of its nutritional needs combined with the broader impact of our individual and collective choices evolves, so have my eating choices.
*and tribal ~ it seems the further I travel along life's highway the more I engage with the concept/cost of contending with the proverbial square peg/round hole. And I am truly blessed to feel connected with several tribes along the spectrum, though this hsp/quiet/introvert/extrovert stuff is largely unspoken. I intend to dance more with my perceived danger of speaking to this...

☀

Always remember that you are absolutely unique.

Just like everyone else.

~anthropologist Margaret Mead

☀