Evocateur

Harvesting the Power of Fortuitous Encounters

We have all had the experience of experiencing an event, one that was not planned, that just happened, and when you look back on it, that experience was the beginning event of a big learning process for you. You turned a corner on your reality, starting with that event, and you have never been the same. What are a few of your fortuitous encounters? What lesson and life saga did they begin for you, now that you[…]

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Food present, food past.

Do you have a favorite food from your childhood? What memories are connected to it? One of mine is a Hostess Twinkie® in my grade school lunch, which meant mom was giving me a rare treat (a good thing, since it has negative food value). Another is homemade tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for Friday night dinners. This meal is charged with happy thoughts of the family being together. And it is loaded with[…]

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Discover Your Weaknesses

We all have the message that we’d better utilize our gifts and strengths well, and build our work and lives around those original parts of us that constitute our gifts. Thank you Gallup and Marcus B. There is an annoying paradox here though, one that the sunny-sider strength-finders are missing:  There is beauty and growth, lots of it, in your weaknesses.

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The Biggest Gainer

There is a popular show about the biggest weight loser—a psycho-drama of will and exercise, in which the viewer participates in the participants’ struggles and efforts. It concerns repairing our lives through a new attitude toward, not just food and our bodies, but our lives and our purpose and our worth. If I created a reality show it would be “The Biggest Gainer.” It would follow the real-life dilemmas of people, not fighting their weight,[…]

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I am in charge—NOT!

At times, we need to be in charge and be decisive. At other times, and just as often, we need to ride it out and surrender. Life is a series of lessons on discerning which strategy to employ at any particular time, for any particular dilemma. Our culture favors being in charge, of course. And this works for about half the time, and especially in the ascendant part of adulthood. Then, there is the other[…]

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Question for the day

Question for the day: have you said too many yeses or too many nos in your life? Have you bought-in too much to our commercial culture, or have you gone too far the other way? And it may depend on what issue, of course. Carl Jung said it this way: Man can suffer only a certain amount of culture without injury. By “too much culture” he doesn’t mean too much Beethoven or Picasso. Jung is[…]

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“How have I contributed?” vs blame and denial

When the gunman in Arizona took lives and attacked Gabby Giffords, it was inevitable that the political arguments would ensue. Imagine if a union member had shot an elected Tea Party official; the right would likely have blamed the left. We all know what the argument is now, with use of cross hairs and the atmosphere of contempt being questioned, and individual blamelessness being declared. No matter the issue these days, when a wrong happens,[…]

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