If You’re Out There

As the race for the Presidential campaign continues -  keep in mind that work needs doing - don’t pass it off to someone else.

Dedication to Life (Resilience: Faith, Focus, Triumph)

The simple feeling of love does not mean that you stop there - Alonzo takes the next step - giving.

Love is not the enemy - Resilience

Poet-performer Jessica Care Moore’s “Love is Not the Enemy: Manifesto for 28″, Moore conveys a tough-minded resilience and a mature return to self in the face of disappointment. She isn’t sure what’s ahead of her, but there’s no doubt about how she’ll face it:

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All my new boyfriends
are scheduled for 2009
No more lions in my bedroom
King is the most important thing in my life
I’m married to my art, my life, my work.
Grownups are over-rated.
My wonder woman cape never needs to be ironed, even in Detroit.
Skinny is the new thick.
Jessica worship required
(Insecure niggas need not apply)…
I have dream catchers for arms
We need to talk about mental illness in
The black community.
Am I crazy because I don’t expect my son to be forgotten
Just because it “happens all the time?”
My name is jessica Care moore
I’ve been a Simmons.
I’ve been a Poole.
(legally, still am today)
I will die a Moore.
Ain’t giving my name away no more.

Yeah, moore’s back. She’s evolved. She’s matured. She’s become a mentor, a mother, a publisher and a leader. Having come full circle from home out to the world and back again, she’s completed a sort of heroine’s journey that seems both inspiring and mythical.

In the title poem from her forthcoming book, Moore moves from the gritty rebellion of “Black Girl Juice” to a piercing kind of universal truth:

God is not an American
No, God is not an American.
But she could be a woman
That would explain why we have sugarcane,
Little red corvettes and chocolate.
And why she so graciously spared us an external sex organ
That would constantly get in the way of our brains
But maybe if women had penises
They wouldn’t know how to cook, or wash or fix or kiss or blend,
Or fold in all those special ingredients
that women bury inside the earth
And where do you think a woman would put her penis
During a time of war?
In the mouth of an intern?
Deep into their fathers history…
Pushing the same buttons
A decade later

Metro Times - Arts: Love is not the enemy

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: resilience, poetry

In Memphis 40 Years Ago - Bending The Arc!!

Are you living the Dream

Democracy is not just a system of governance, as we tend to think of it, but a cultural way of being

Happiness May Be in the Genes

March 5, 2008 — People tend to be hardwired for happiness, and new genetic research may help explain why.

Past studies suggest that while 50% of happiness is due to situational factors like health, relationships, and career, the other 50% is due to genes.

The new research identified largely inherited personality traits that researchers say are responsible for much of the genetic influence on happiness.

Having the right mix of these inherited traits leads to a “reserve” of happiness that can be called on in times of stress, they say.

“Traits like being active, sociable, conscientious, and not being overly anxious are related to happiness — and these are also traits that are inherited,” researcher Timothy Bates, PhD, tells WebMD.

Happiness May Be in the Genes

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: happiness, research

My New Networks

I’ve blogged on this site for coming up to a year now. I’ve personally gone through some interesting experiences - learning about what I like to write about; enduring the failure of one of business ventures - Changed Life Ltd; moving a couple of times, returning to my mothballed consulting practice - Phronesis, and finally deciding to open up a space on facebook.

I resisted taking up space on the most popular social networks because I thought they where not business like enough plus I have 3 or 4 of my children that hang out on them. My three youngest on Facebook and two of three older ones on Myspace.

I tried Myspace for about a week - too noisy. People popping up wanting to tell me about bands that I never heard of and really did not like because of their sound - being into jazz and avant garde type stuff myself - maybe a little socially relevant hip hop - like Common or Mos Def. The dumb stuff I have no patience with. So I set up and as quickly deleted my profile.

I found several new spaces that fit my interest - TeeBeeDee, Marzar and the one that I have the highest hopes for is Zude. TeeBeeDee is a site for the over 40 crowd - a real smart mix of people. The conversation in varied and challenging. Unlike Marzar or even Facebook I don’t see TeeBeeDee as a place where I need to make or bring business contacts. I might even acquire a friend or two.

It has some what of a feel like a dating site - only because there are lots of discussions about relationships, sex, dating, all from a Boomer stand point. On the other hand, there is conversation about cooking, illness, spirituality and lots of other subjects.

Marzar is a pretty vanilla business social network - the user interface is clumsy, but I have built up a sizable network and formed a group on Coaching. It’s small enough that having 333 “contacts” puts me on the second page ahead of the Marzar’s CEO. The Coaching Group that I’ve started is one of the top 4. So it’s OK.

Zude on the other hand is a new concept for me completely. It claims that you can consolidate all of your Internet sites on it and you have unlimited space to work with. The first thing I liked about it is off-the-hook flexible - everything is drag and drop. You grab a site and drag onto your Zude page. Don’t let me fool you - it’s still early and so if you need perfect - Zude’s not there yet But I like a challenge - I see enough, to go for it.

Then there’s Facebook. I’m writing this post in an ap that is suppose to post this into my blog. Facebook has all these mini apps that do all kinds of stuff very easily. I wish every social network was as easily configured. Because it works so well and I’ve found so many of my business (LinkedIn and Mazar) folks here it looks like I going to have take my shot here, too.

I even let my three youngest kids know that I’m here and that they should not bother me for I’m going to stay out of their way. If you happen to see Oldude59 anywhere - that’s me. Say hello - link to me - add me to your friends list - cause I’m an open networker that believes in the “law of weak connections” - you know, that the most potential for outrageous fortune is most likely to come from the most unexpected relationship.

There is another space that I’ve signed up for - projectstars - not sure how it works - I can only say this - they claim that each quarter that the most “active”, whatever that mean contributors with be given some of the stock in the site. Not sure how that happens or what means - maybe I’ll tell you next time.

Stormy Day !! Continue to search for resilience

It’s been six weeks now, day after day it piles on!! At first it was the bureaucracy of the federal and state licensing process. Then it was my partners that filled my head with trouble. The stuff that was happening to me was not life threatening - I lived with a kind woman - my oldest daughter and grandson came by often, and my youngest children and my X only lived 3 blocks away. So socially I was comforted.

So what was making me shutter, nonetheless. I’ll admit it, I’m a Alpha dog kind-of-guy. I tend to view my act as hot stuff. So when I’m shook - it is a shaking!

Therefore, the question for me on this stormy day six weeks into my torment - how do I maintain some sense of happiness and what techniques of Flow bring about what I need - resilience? How is resilience shown through flow to demonstrate happiness? In this case, happiness is shown in an ability to cheat chaos. We all know what that means, when stuff goes so terribly “wrong” - if the trauma is severe enough, a person with dependencies loses the capacity to concentrate on necessary goals. If that impairment is very severe, consciousness flutters randomly, and the person “loses his mind” and sobriety -then the various symptoms of mental disease take over.

Dissipate (somehow to take advantage of the energy that would otherwise be lost), in my case fears of destitution - a “stormy day”, into one of two different actions: neurotic defense or mature defense.

You know the neurotic defense means hunkering down into the blame game -someone or something did this terrible thing to you - denial of what has happened, and avoidance.

The mature defense after a period is buoyed by your hipness - feeling the hit but not the moral conviction - redefine - analyzing the problem logically and collaboration/facilitation.

Why this second tactic is so much more productive is because it engages the external support systems available

1. - friends
2. - family and
3. - community
4. - social networks
5. - personal psychological resources
6. - intelligence,
7. - education,
8. - relevant personality factors and
9. - coping strategies

If you see yourself more in the defensive mode, don’t worry - be happy

As said by a stoic philosopher, “The good things which belong to prosperity are to be wished, but the good things that that belong to adversity are to be admired”. Let’s develop your admiration skills.

Flowing West

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s basic argument is that flow needs special attention because of the difficulty with achieving happiness over the long haul, contrary to the myths mankind has developed to reassure itself against the fact the universe was not and is not created to answer our needs. Flow answers the constant frustration that is so deeply woven into the fabric of life - is there some way for me to be in harmony with life. Flow puts to good use the burden of dissatisfaction with our own paradoxical nature with its flaws and limitless aspirations - by invoking resilience.

As someone that likes the language games of philosophy the above argument’s formulation makes a lot of sense to me.

Now I’ll tell about my own encounter with the reality of a belief in the universe that is fruitful to some people but not others. My variation was developed in 1983 when I was pondering the “American dream” - “the hard work myth”. I was a Branch Manager for Xerox who had survived the third rif (reduction in force layoffs) in four years. I was caught by the strangeness of it all being the only black manager left in my office, where there use to be five of us. I witness several break downs of both staff and manager - these where tense times. In this state I began to question lots of what I had kept clear of in the past. As I look, all the questions led me back to just one: “What had Black people done to be treated so miserly throughout the world”, but especially Black Americans like myself.

At the time I had never thought of myself as religious nor spiritual but it wasn’t like I didn’t believe either. I studied the question from many angles - economics and philosophical. I became consumed with the question.

There had to be a reason and I was bound and determine to find the answer.

You might call my timing a mid-life crisis away of acting out, but this question forced me to quit Xerox, get my BA in economics from De Paul, graduate from Yale’s Divinity and Management schools and end up at Cornell’ University’s City and Regional planning department.

The flow like question for me was primarily answered at Yale. Going to Divinity school was intoxicating - terrifying. I was lucky enough to take 4 classes with Cornel West. The discussions in those small 8 or 9 person settings were like having Aristotle or Foucault in the room week after week. All the fundamental questions were discussed, researched, explained, written about and presented. We had the full plate of ideas to fill our fancy. One of the real joys of the classes I took from Cornell was how dedicated and informal he was with his students - each week we would have a dinner discussion at a local soul-food restaurant . The most exotic of these was when we discussed god as demon.

It was not these setting where I finally came to grips with my question. It was in the three individual research classes I had with Cornel that took me through the process to my answer. Cornel is an amazing teacher!

In those session I began to see the world in terms of “mystery - where I could finally let God be God. I see the world as ambivalent to our needs, but there are at least two other forces at work.

• The first is the world’s ambivalence does not have be malevolent.
• The second is that how I encounter that ambivalence is to large measure all made up in my head in a conspiracy with and against other people that are making stuff up as well.

The development of Flow is to provide skills and tactics in managing living happily - given the world’s ambivalence.