False Hollywood Culture!

This is, absolutely, a great quote by Ann Marlowe in BeE magazine (another new & interesting magazine I have discovered), she goes on to say;

" The real and fictional princesses Disney markets to young girls, from Pocohontas to Cinderella to Snow White, all showed some of what used to be called virtues. But princess play nowadays is only about surfaces. It may be hard to get a little girl out of a pink tutu, but it’s much harder to teach her how an honorable person behaves. And it is here that we are much poorer than the Victorians."

My blogger friend, Tori, has also questioned the wisdom of theme parks and "false" realities. She writes;

"I find anything Disney completely disturbing. Creepy, in fact. May I go as far as to say that Disney and it's whole world remind me a cult? Not trying to make many friends with this post am I? It is the over the top hype. It is the creation of something that doesn't even exist. It is escapism at a high cost. It elevates pleasure to an untouchable ideal. It makes entertainment seem like it should be a requirement to everyday life."

Many people think America is not loved by other countries anymore, because of the political situation we are in. I disagree. People around the world love true American ideals! What they hate is the Hollywood & Disney culture that is being imposed on our next generations. Nothing about Hollywood culture inspires, moves and touches!

The Most Important Person You’ve Never Heard Of

I hate it, hate it, hate it, when I don't hear this kind of news from our Media and instead we get bombarded by news about Hollywood's drunk, confused, and lost celebrities.

This news is about the last Congressional Gold Medal receiver - the highest civilian honor given by Congress ( The first one was awarded to George Washington in 1776). There has been only 139 times since. Last week, it was Norman Borlaug's turn, 93 years old, and I have never heard about him at all! Have you? Read about him and you will be inspired, moved and touched!

I happen to read about it in the American Magazine (its a great new magazine):

"He wasn’t broadly famous, so the well deserved award was a quiet event by modern standards. But it’s still a shame that the award ceremony didn’t get more publicity, because Norman Borlaug has saved more lives than any person currently living. Indeed, he may have saved more lives than anyone who has ever lived."

Apparently, he helped poor by not giving them money but by serving them with developing technology. His most famous project was the "wheat project" in Mexico. He is an agricultural scientist who started the Green revolution 3 decades ago and the Nobel Peace Prize winner in 1970!

"In the mid-'60s, doomsayers predicted that, because of war and overpopulation, millions of people in India and Pakistan would die of starvation – and nothing could be done to prevent it. Dr. Borlaug thought otherwise. He wanted to see if his new wheat seeds could help prevent the looming catastrophe in South Asia. Bureaucrats initially thwarted him. But as the famine grew worse, he was finally permitted to move forward.

Within a year, wheat yields more than doubled. Over the next eight years, the two countries became self-sufficient in wheat production. For his work, Dr. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. In his acceptance speech, Dr. Borlaug quoted the creator of the prize, Alfred Nobel: "I would rather take care of the stomachs of the living than the glory of the departed in the form of monuments."

Read more here & here
Read his interview with Reason magazine here 7 years ago.

FORGIVENESS TEST!

Do you want to test your forgiveness? Can you let go of hurt, and restore your faith in the essential goodness of life?

Click 'here to take the quiz.

This is a part of a book called, "Why good things happened to good people", written by Dr.Stephen Post & Jill Neimark. My score was 80, apparently I am a moderate "giver". What is yours?

Here is a quote from the Author:

"Love can be expressed in a great many ways. So, in the book there's a chapter on attentive listening. You know some people are really good at attentive listening and they do such beautiful job. Others express love through creativity, they are just able to create beautiful works of music – Beethoven's Ode to Joy – or literary people. Some people express love through forgiveness, or through the courage to confront self-destructive behaviors. Sometimes love is expressed through humor! For my father it was loyalty. He was the most loyal person I ever met."

– Stephen Post

Research on unlimited Love

Who Knew? There is actually an Institute for Research on Unlimited Love.

With support from the Templeton Foundation, the Institute has funded nearly 50 scientific research projects at universities including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and Case Western Reserve University. The questions being addressed are important to us all. How, for example, can we raise children who shape their lives around unselfish love and the service of humanity?

I have posted about John Templeton, the British billionaire, before and every time I visit their website, I get inspired by reading about their new research that they take on.

Link

Imagine your best!

We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves. The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.

–N.S. Momaday

Too many in the world today, imagine the worst for themselves. What would happen if everyone imagines the best for themselves, their community, and for their country?

Image source

I have been on a mini vacation, and vacations for me means free time to read while kids are playing with Dad!

So here is some food for pondering:

The General, speaking one felt with authority, always insisted that, if you bring off adequate preservation of your personal myth, nothing much else in life matters. It is not what happens to people that is significant, but what they think happens to them.

~Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room

Wild and Soft!

Isn't this an adorable site? please check out these inspiring pictures and see how, even, the wildest in the nature has the soft spot and loving moments!


Look at those eyes, so deep, full of stories to tell.....Ahhh! just absolutely lovable. Enjoy looking at them.

Happiness Map!

I saw this map in the latest issue of The Economist magazine. A new worldwide poll suggests that growth and income play a big part in boosting people's satisfaction with life and their attitude to the future. Did they really needed a poll to figure this out? However, I would have to add that countries with freedom of choice and basic democracy will also have higher level of life satisfaction, as the map can confirm. However, I was surprised to see the Saudi Arabia among the "happiest' campers. A country where half of its population have no civil rights. Hmmm! I don't get this one. Unless, each country defines happiness differently.

The article concludes the finding this way:

Happiness and optimism are not just different, they can be contradictory. The Chinese are dissatisfied but upbeat; Europeans are happy now but dread tomorrow. Many links between happiness, income and optimism have yet to be teased out. This new data—though not the last word on the subject—should help.

The search for happiness is not new phenomena. Remember, In 1776 the American Declaration of Independence argued for “certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”. I wish more countries will take on this subject more seriously.

Silence!

This silence, this moment, every moment, if it's genuinely inside you, brings what you need. There's nothing to believe. Only when I stopped believing in myself did I come into this beauty. Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, 'Be more silent.' Die and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign that you've died. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.

~Rumi


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Eternal Calm!

He asked me: What is the definition of success to you?
Me: Eternal calm
He: Oh! that's impossible unless you are a prophet...
Me: God would not have created Man to his own image and not giving them the ability to feel and be like a prophet.

I have accomplished many things in my life and achieved many goals, but I don't feel successful until I master my "being".

I love this quote from James Allen: " Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power. Say unto your heart, "Peace, be still!"


Image: here & here

Remembering A Role Model!

The Traveler
He has put on invisibility.
Dear Lord, I cannot see---
But this I know although the road ascends
And passes from my sight,
That there will be no night;
That You will take him gently by the hand
And lead him on Along the road of life that never ends,
And he will find it is not death but dawn.
I do not doubt that You are there as here,
And you will hold him dear.
Our life did not begin with birth,
It is not of the earth;
And this that we call death, it is no more
Than the opening and closing of a door---
And in Your house how many rooms must be
Beyond this one where we rest momently.
Dear Lord, I thank you for the faith that frees,
The love that knows it cannot lose its own;
The love that, looking through the shadows, sees
That You and he and I are ever one

James Dillet Freeman

I would like to dedicate this poem to the memory of William. I can't believe it's been 5 months that he has left us for another life. William, I think about you now and then.

Poem on the Moon

This is my favorite poem, and I often think about it, when I feel so much unrest inside me. I can not understand where it comes from, but I just feel that energy needs to be released somehow and this poem gives me hope for my future:

"How do I find what life's about
Unless I venture farther out?
Something in me is not content,
Something affirms that I am meant
For more, and so I have to try
And see if somehow I can fly.
Going beyond the edge of things,
I may find out that I have wings,
Though they are of a different kind
Than birds, being mainly in the mind.
Whatever now I seem to be,
Yet more is to be found in me.

This poem is written by James Dillet Freeman, one of my favorite poets. Some, call him "a modern day Ralph Waldo Emerson", however, I just found out that he is also called "Poet Laureate to the Moon". I had no idea! I am inspired to find out this fact about him:

He has had his work taken to the moon twice, a distinction he shares with no other author. His 1941 Prayer for Protection was taken aboard Apollo 11 in July 1969 by Lunar Module pilot Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. Aldrin had the poem with him when he made his historic moonwalk! Two years later, Jim's 1947 poem, I Am There, went to the moon with Colonel James B. Irwin on Apollo 15. Irwin left a microfilm copy of the poem on the moon.

Wow! a poem on the moon.


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SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURS

You probably have heard the saying that goes like, "Give a person a fish and you will feed them for a day: Teach them to fish and you feed them for a lifetime."

This special site features the stories of people whose ideas and organizations create new and sustainable markets and services that benefit underserved communities everywhere in the developing world. In a nutshell, these are stories about individuals whose ideas leap beyond charity to find systemic solutions to poverty, education, health and social justice.

I particularly loved this story of Sabina and ex-microsoft employee. Sabina's benefactor is an American named John Wood, who started a literacy program called Room to Read.

"My first trip to Nepal was in 1998, when I had been working for Microsoft for seven years," Wood tells Cunningham. "I was burned out. I was working the 24/7, full-on commando lifestyle. Always being on call. Always being on email. And I wanted to get away."Like a lot of well-heeled, footloose Americans, he went on a trek in the mountains of Nepal, which he discovered was "not only a country of absolutely spectacular beauty but also a place of crushing poverty." Visiting a school, he noticed the rundown library was virtually empty. The headmaster proposed a solution: "Perhaps sir, you will someday come back with books."
Those words changed his life. Wood returned the following year with eight donkeys loaded with books, and when he saw how thrilled the children were, he vowed to quit Microsoft and become the Andrew Carnegie of Nepal.

Reading all these stories truly inspired, moved and touched me; I hope it will have a similar effect on you.

Read more

License to Wed !

Don't you think it's strange that we need license to do many things in this society but no license requires to marry or to be a parent? No wonder 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce - So why not require a mandatory license to wed? I have thought about it, since I have been married and specially when I became a mom. I realized how much I did not know about raising a child and here I was, a parent, in charge of raising a human being.

I have not yet seen the movie "license to Wed", but I am glad it is a movie about this same issue and I am excited that Robin Williams is playing in it. He picks the best, thought provoking, themes to play.

Then, I read an article in WSJ today covering this subject again and apparently pre-marriage counseling in the Catholic church is mandatory and many other denominations are offering similar services now. How wonderful! Even Muslim community in America is looking into this issue. Christian Whelan, has this to say in her WSJ article:

"Within the Muslim community, formal marriage preparation is practically nonexistent, according to Munira Ezzeldine, author of "Before the Wedding: 150 Questions for Muslims to Ask Before Getting Married." Traditionally, a marriage was arranged by the parents, and while the young couple would get to know each other well only after the fact, close family ties and community networks held most couples together for life. Today, as those networks loosen and second- and third-generation American Muslims become culturally assimilated, divorce rates are on the rise. Ms. Ezzeldine is working with imams nationwide to encourage premarital investigations. "Marriage is not always easy and it's OK to talk about it in advance."

It's great to see this subject being discussed, it's vitally important to have a healthy marriage in order to raise a "mentally healthy" generation!

Crystallize!

I am still into James Allen's writing and in a nut shell he says; Men imagine that thought can be kept secret, but it cannot ; it rapidly crystallizes into habit, and habit solidifies into and here is how in offers more explanations:

1) Thought of fear, doubt, and indecision crystallize into weak, unmanly, and irresolute habits, which solidify into circumstances of failure, indigence, and slavish dependence.

2) Hateful and condemnatory thoughts crystallize into habits of accusation and violence, which solidify into circumstances of injury and persecution.

3) Pure thoughts crystallize into habits of temperance and self-control, which solidify into circumstances of repose and peace.

4) Loving and unselfish thoughts crystallize into habits of self-forgetfulness for others, which solidify into circumstances of sure and abiding prosperity and true riches.


Photo source: Here & here

Weed out your mind!

Man's mind may be likened to a garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weed-seeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind.
Just as a gardner cultivates his plot, keeping it free from weeds, and growing the flowers and fruits which he requires, so may a man tend the garden of his mind, weeding out all the wrong, useless, and impure thoughts, and cultivating toward perfection the flowers and fruits of right, useful, and pure thoughts.

~James Allen (1864-1912)

By this quote, I would like to introduce James Allen to you. He was a great inspirational writer and a great inspiration to many intellectuals in the early 20th century. He penned more than 20 works before suddenly passing away at the age of 48. His famous quote is, "All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts".

You can read one of my favorite James Allen's book,As A Man Thinketh, on line. If you have read any of his book, send me your favorite quote.

Sorry for the light blogging and thank you for you emails wondering why have I not posted!
We finally moved to an apartment until we build our new home.

We celebrated our 4th of July this last weekend with great entertainment provided by my husband's talented cousins. I love listening to the sound of accordion specially when it is combined with classical guitar! Oh! it brought back many memories.

Where does the music come from
As you walk down memory's trail?
Each word, each phrase, the melody,
Comes clearly without fail.
Place yourself upon the path,
You'll know right from the start . . .
The music and the memories
Are found within your heart.

~ Sarah Hastings