So, there’s this episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (stay with me on this) wherein Data is working with a scientist (Dr. Marr) to communicate to this giant crystalline entity that killed her son when Data’s brother Lore aided the entity in wiping out an entire colony. Dr. Marr hates Data because she thinks he’s in with the entity, too, since his brother was before. She makes her hatred no secret, insulting and threatening him and being quite cruel – all of which does not affect Data in the slightest, he being an emotionless android and all.

After a while, Dr. Marr realizes that Data is innocent and has the best of intentions to help her, and she comes to him to apologize for being so cruel. She apologizes, but Data reassures her that she didn’t hurt him because he has no feelings to be hurt.

Even knowing that, Dr. Marr apologizes many times. The pain on her face as she recalls her cruelty is obvious – and struck a deep chord within me.

She’s not apologizing to Data, not after the first time. She’s apologizing to herself.

We hurt ourselves when we hurt others.

Even though Dr. Marr couldn’t actually hurt Data, she tried – and in the trying, hurt herself.

We’re not meant for cruelty. We’re not meant for spite. Hatred is really fear, bubbling up and driving us to do and say things our hearts don’t resonate with, if we could hear our hearts over our racing screaming fears.

Deep down, we know we’re all connected – and we feel that connection in our emotions. Emotions are often shared; sadness passes around, joy can brighten others, misery is contagious. And when we’re hurtful to someone, we share in that hurt.

Deep down, we’re all connected. More than that, we’re all bits of the same stuff. Stardust. Spirit. Universal Oneness.

It is all the more important, then, to be kind to ourselves and kind to others.

It’s true. I’m a terrible entrepreneur.

I am terrible at doing things I’m not good at or don’t enjoy, like marketing.

I am terrible at not taking things personally.

I am terrible at working really hard for very long hours.

I’m terrible at working when I don’t want to work.

And I’m terrible, utterly utterly terrible, at pushing through.

All these things are good qualities to have when you’re an entrepreneur. It’s useful to be able to work when you don’t feel like it. It’s important to be able to let things people say roll off you – particularly when you become more successful and/or famous. It’s vital to be able to do things you don’t enjoy – like marketing. When you work for yourself, there’s no one else to do the things you don’t. If you don’t do ‘em, they don’t get done.

This is why I am the luckiest girl in the world, because I have Pace.

But that’s not my point today. Today, I’m talking about being a terrible entrepreneur.

Lots of things put me down for the count. Uterus acting up? No work. Friendship troubles? No work. Heartache? No work.

I’m incredibly bad at working when I’m not doing well.

The good side is, I’m good at doing well. I’m doing well a huge percentage of the time! That’s awesome – both for me and for work.

The bad side is, when I’m not doing well, neither is my blog. We’ll sit in silence and stare at each other for long periods of time (the cursor always blinks first). When my emotions are tangled, so are my fingers, and I can’t write. I get knotted up. I get tongue- and finger-tied.

My heart is too sensitive for such things.

I started out trying to learn how to toughen up. I wanted to desensitize so I could push myself harder, be more hardcore, so I could knock things off my to-do lists, so I could squeeze creativity out of myself regardless of how I’m feeling.

But how violent! How untrue to myself I was being! I’m sensitive. The more I learn about myself, the more true to my heart I am, the more sensitive I become.

And you know what? I love the way I am.

I’m still learning how to be effective and sensitive. There are ways, and I will find them. I don’t have to box myself or whip myself to be successful – quite the contrary. The more I box myself, the worse I feel, and the less I am able to get done!

Being true to myself is, by far, the most important part of my path.

In his new book Linchpin, Seth Godin convinces you to become a linchpin — someone who’s indispensible. How do you do that? By being a freak and a revolutionary.

I’m not even kidding.

Seth doesn’t use those exact words, but this book is about the Freak Revolution. It’s about how we can revolutionize the job culture and thereby the world.

Be a freak (what Seth would call a heretic) because the old way of doing things is broken. The freaks are the only ones who are willing to break the rules and step outside the box.

Be a revolutionary (what Seth would call a leader) because no one is going to tell you what to do. There is no map. It’s up to you to step up and change the world.

Like we’ve been saying. (:

p.20

There’s a revolution going on, baby, and things ain’t never gonna be the same. It used to be that you could make a good living being told what to do (control paradigm), but in the new world of work, it’s all about creativity and authentic human interactions (connection paradigm).

It reminds me of all those sci-fi stories about the future economies that arise after all our basic and comfort needs are trivially met by a workforce of robot drones. What do those sci-fi economies value? Art. Delivering unique creativity. The future is closer than you might have thought.

It also reminds me of Atlas Shrugged 2: One Hour Later. (:

p.46

Public school teaches you to conform and obey. Seth doesn’t talk explicitly about homeschooling or unschooling, but we’re on the same page when it comes to our opinions of public school.

p.158

Gifts build connection. Gifts build tribes. A gift freely given is rooted in connection. A “gift” with expectation of reciprocation is rooted in control.

p.138

Mark Silver says that everything is going to be okay.

Seth Godin says that “No, everything is not going to be okay.”

I completely and wholeheartedly agree with both of them.

As with most things, it depends on what you mean by “okay”.

Seth is right that you can’t depend on physical or material safety. Seth is also right that you can’t depend on emotional safety, unless you’re perfectly armored or perfectly enlightened.

But Mark is right that you can depend on spiritual safety. If you know that you are Loved, if you know that your Self is far more than your circumstances, if you know that there is love available even here… then you know, deep in your heart, that everything will be okay, no matter what.

Yes, you might face hardship. Yes, your project might fail. Yes, people might be cruel to you.

Yes, there is love available even here.

p.106

Well, I’ll be! Seth Godin is talking about the triple soul! He labels Higher Self daemon, and Fetch lizard brain. He only mentions Talking Self implicitly (as the part of us that strives to bridge the two other parts) but it’s fascinating to see it from a different perspective.

pp.32,175-178

I’m always amazed by Seth’s talent for brevity with impact. He summarizes four entire chapters of The Usual Error in four pages. The usual error, it’s not all about me, the lollipop, and part of rephrasing things positively — the part that talks about how “I can’t” is a cop-out. We can always come up with excuses to limit ourselves and make ourselves feel comfortable and safe, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s anything but your own choice.

pp.31,105,116,129

Real art requires imperfectionism. Delegate wholeheartedly. Always have exactly one mid-boss. Seek out discomfort. No one actually knows what to do. “I’ll do what I love later” never works. Accept that you might step on a snake.

We tell ourselves stories in which we play the part of the hero: the iPhone effect. This particularly amuses me because I thought the iPhone effect was inspired by a post Seth wrote, but it wasn’t. And now he finally writes about it in Linchpin.

Growth can be painful. You may lose friends and loved ones. But you will gain new ones. (This, on page 31, was the first point in the book when I cried. The way Seth talks about this is so kind and compassionate.)

p.236

“The result of getting back in touch with our pre-commercial selves will actually create a post-commercial world that feeds us, enriches us, and gives us the stability we’ve been seeking for so long.”

Yes, that quote is from Linchpin. Doesn’t it remind you of something that could have been written by Daniel Quinn in Beyond Civilization?

pp.59,71,108,234-236

The control-based job culture sucks your soul.

People are starving for authentic connection.

It all comes down to fear and love.

Be an edgewalker. Break the rules.

Change the world.

Shift the paradigm.

Despite the fact that it’s only January, I hereby give Linchpin my Best Book of 2010 Award.

Go.

Read it.

Then live it.

Zappos understands what their customers want. They get it.

I’ve bought several things from them. They offer free shipping on everything, both to you and return shipping if you need to return something. They have 24/7 customer service, via email or phones. They let you keep things up to 365 days before returning them (they do have to be in brand-new condition, but still!).

But all that is just window dressing, the frosting on the cake.

Yesterday, I bought a purse from them. They upgraded my shipping to overnight – for free – so it got here today. I tried it out, decided it’s too tall (I’m insanely picky), and started the return process. They said if I opted to take store credit, they’d give me free overnight shipping on my next purchase as well. Since my next purchase was to be immediate (my second choice of purse), I went for that. The site said that once UPS informed them that the package was on its way back, they’d credit my account.

But then I checked on my second choice purse, and found that there were only three left. Not wanting it to go away before getting my credit, I decided to give them a call and see what we could do – expecting them to politely tell me there wasn’t anything they could do, so sorry, good luck!

Not only did I get the nicest customer service rep ever, and not only did he talk to me about silly movies and music and how much we both love Austin, he immediately switched my credit around, ordered the second purse, had it overnighted, and credited my card the $5 difference, with only one very polite request for me to drop the first purse in the mail at my earliest convenience. Wham, bam, done in three minutes.

Holy shit.

This is excellent customer service. Above and beyond. They’ve always been good to me via email, and this was the first time I’ve talked to a rep on the phone. He was so nice to me, I actually felt a little sad that I never had to call them before.

Not your typical feeling after dealing with customer service.

So what have I done? I’ve talked up the company to all my friends. I gush about them constantly. I’ve bought from them multiple times. And now I’ve written a post in my public blog, singing their praises.

And when I discovered that their prices are a little higher than other sites? I didn’t even care. I’m willing to pay a lot more for the guarantee of excellent, dependable customer service. And I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one who feels that way.

Yeah, I’d say Zappos gets it.

In Ireland, the “I don’t drink” issue comes up more often than in America. Drinking is part of the Irish national culture. In fact, Ireland ranks #4 in the world for alcohol consumption per capita. (America ranks 43rd. The top three are Uganda (!), Luxembourg, and the Czech Republic.)

Usually, I say “No thanks, I don’t drink,” and that’s that. But this time, I was met with a curious and interested “How come?” from two friends, and the answer turned out to be far more interesting than I expected.

Here’s how the conversation went.

(Notice how my friends mostly played the roles of cardboard cutout dogs.)

I stopped drinking 4 years ago because it felt like a Good Thing To Do.

If that’s the case, then my image of a spiritual role model isn’t really my image at all — it’s hers.

How about I completely ditch that old stale guru image that wasn’t really mine at all. How about I think about my own spiritual path, Pace’s path, the Pace of the present, and see what I feel called to?

And that’s what I did. I threw away my old envisioning of “The Right Way” to do spirituality. I threw away my guru-based “shoulds”. I meditated on what spiritual path I feel called to. I listened to my heart.

This is what my heart said.

“Yo, rest-of-Pace. Here’s the skinny. Our spiritual path is to seek reunion with Source. As for alcohol, it’s kind of a crutch, but at least it gets you out of your head and into me. It’s totally fine for practice, but it isn’t a long-term solution or anything. Also, I love you.”

The next day, I drank a pint of Guinness in an Irish pub and thoroughly enjoyed it. I got surprisingly tipsy; apparently 4 years of no drinking lowers one’s tolerance!

So I guess a more accurate title would have been “A teetotaler changes her mind and drinks a pint of Guinness”, but hey, Irish Guinness is pretty darn good, so I don’t mind the implication. (:

The moral of the story

The simplest way to personal growth is to Ask yourself why.

Don’t count on your two curious friends to ask you why. Ask yourself. Write down your answer, if it helps you to work it out. Question. Examine. Journal.

Simply asking yourself why can get you out of a years-long rut.

Think of one thing you might be doing because of someone else’s reasons, or because of old stale reasons.

Ask yourself why.

As a young girl, I had a garden.

There were flowers and weeds, but that’s okay because I liked weeds, and birds and worms and probably some bugs, the nice, non-freaky ones, like butterflies and lady bugs and rolly pollies, definitely a unicorn and a dragon and lots of faeries, and there was a well that the garden drew water from, and everything grew all nice and happy.

But then, as a young adult, I accidentally and ignorantly broke ground and shared the well that watered my garden with a poisoned water supply. My flowers started dying, the weeds choking to death, the creatures leaving. It suffered serious neglect. I didn’t know that I could fix it, much less how, so I abandoned the garden and watched it die and mourned my loss.

A few years ago, I suddenly figured out that I had the power to heal the garden. I went crazy, pulling weeds (the non-okay ones), tilling the soil, planting seeds, hanging bird feeders, the works. But I didn’t clean the water; I didn’t stop the poison.

I repaired the garden, but it was still drawing on a poisoned well.

This resulted in a slow-growing garden with dim, weak flowers and frightened, hesitant creatures. Lots of set-backs and frustrations, to no avail.

After some time and many, many sessions of trial and error, I repaired the ground and stopped the flow of poison into my well. Suddenly, my flowers were growing fast and bright, creatures returned, the soil darkened, my roots thickened!

I built a thick brick wall, some twenty feet high and twenty feet deep, to protect the new and fragile garden. I pulled all the weeds, even the ones that were probably harmless, because the garden is new and fresh and fragile, and who knows what might damage it? So much damage was done in the past to this tiny octagon of land, I have to take drastic measures to keep it safe. No well-water here, only water I test first and make sure is safe. The garden flourished, but only within the confines of my wall, and only a small few can see the growth for fear of more poison.

After all, it was my fault the poison killed my garden in the first place, and I can’t protect the garden without being on constant vigil for future attacks.

But wait.

It’s not my fault. The water was poisoned. Though I suspected it, I was young and afraid – and for a long time, ignorant of how to cure it. I certainly blamed myself and hated myself for enduring the poison, lost faith in myself and stopped trusting myself, and I became so afraid of poison that I built a wall so high all I could see was the blue sky above.

But what if I took down the wall? What if I trusted the land to guide me? What if, instead of blame, I thank the old worn tired land for all the hard work and suffering, and let it grow as it wishes? What if I simply move on and let go? After all, I know the land nearby is drawing on poisoned water, and as long as I stay here, the threat of poison is high.

Somewhere along the way, I lost faith in myself, in Spirit, in the universe, and took up the task of directing myself and protecting myself. I stopped letting go, stopped trusting, stopped listening. I built walls to protect myself because I didn’t trust Spirit to protect me. I didn’t trust the messages I was receiving because I didn’t trust myself.

When I found trust in myself, I was able to take the walls down. I could trust that I would be led to either heal the poisoned well or to move to new land – and if I trusted myself, I could trust Spirit, I could trust my intuition, and I would know what to do.

But only if the walls came down.

What walls can you take down?

This post is about science. (Science isn’t what you think it is.)

This post is about society. (Society isn’t what you think it is, either.)

This post is about revolution.

Science

What is science? We’re taught that science is an accumulation of knowledge about the world. Scientific theories evolve over time to account for new knowledge gained by observation and experiment. We’re taught that scientific progress looks kind of like this:

This is a complete and total lie.

You know the old adage that the winners write the history books? In science, the winners write the science textbooks.

What scientific “progress” actually looks like is more like this:

It’s not a straight line at all, it’s a complex tree of theories. Revolutions spatter it all over the place — each crisis point where a theory splits into many — and scientists in opposing camps attack each other vehemently until one theory wins out over the others. Sure, we hear about a couple of scientific revolutionaries, like Galileo and Einstein, but what the science textbooks don’t tell you is that the entire history of science is painted red by crisis and revolution.

Theories that don’t fit into the current scientific paradigm meet one of two fates. One, they’re whitewashed from next year’s science textbooks due to irrelevance. The dead-end branches are pruned.

Two, they’re reframed and “translated” into the current scientific paradigm so that it looks like the people in the past were really doing modern science all along, just in an uninformed way. The bendy-wendy arrow is retroactively straightened out so it looks like it was going that direction the whole time.

Paradigm

There’s got to be a pretty powerful force out there to do all this whitewashing, dead-end pruning, and arrow-straightening, right? There sure is, and its name is paradigm.

A scientific paradigm is the set of unwritten rules that determine what is and is not acceptable scientific research. For example, in the current Western scientific paradigm, research into physics or biology gets a thumbs-up, but research into chi or telepathy gets a thumbs-down.

The scientific paradigm is demanding and unforgiving. To practice science at all, you must practice it under the dominant scientific paradigm or be shunned and ridiculed.

If you find something that doesn’t fit into the scientific paradigm, your duty is to either ignore it, discredit it, or somehow force it to fit into the paradigm.

But sometimes, stubborn facts persist and demand to be accounted for. If enough scientists care, you get a scientific crisis.

Crisis

A crisis is when counterexamples call the scientific paradigm into question. Scientists respond to crisis in one of three ways.

1. They come up with desperate exceptions, trying to cram the facts into the box of the current paradigm. (epicycles within epicycles)
2. They hang up their lab coats and quit science altogether.
3. They start a revolution.

Revolution

There are four steps to a scientific revolution:

First, a group of scientists acknowledge that anomalies exist and cannot be accounted for within the current paradigm.

Second, they blur the paradigm and loosen the rules for research.

Third, people pick sides and paradigms compete. The people advocating the new paradigm(s) are young or new to the field. The paradigm that gets the most adherents wins.

Fourth, the old people die off. Some people will never switch paradigms, so you just have to wait for them to kick the bucket to shut them up.

Step 3 is especially interesting, because very few people will ever abandon a paradigm unless they have a concrete alternative. It takes a special kind of person to go against the current paradigm before it becomes acceptable. It takes a leader. A heretic. A revolutionary.

Shifting to a new paradigm is like moving to a new world. You can no longer relate to the people in the old paradigm, because you now see the world differently in a fundamental way. You can’t communicate with them clearly anymore because your assumptions have changed. The usual error kicks you in the face every time you try to explain your point of view.

Your perceptions are your only window onto the world. Your paradigm (your assumptions) filters your perceptions. In a very real way, shifting your personal paradigm shifts you into another world.

Society

Everything above this line is my interpretation of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas Kuhn. When I read it, I was amazed by the parallels between scientific revolutions and social revolutions — in particular, the Freak Revolution.

Paradigm

The whitewashing, dead-end pruning, and arrow-straightening that Thomas Kuhn talks about in a scientific context is the exact same thing Daniel Quinn talks about in a societal context. It’s The Great Forgetting.

The dominant scientific paradigm that Kuhn talks about is directly analogous to the control paradigm that we talk about in the Freak Revolution Manifesto. The control paradigm is rigid and unforgiving. Those who dare to suggest that there could be another way to live are ostracized and demeaned. Crackpots. Outcasts. Freaks.

Crisis

People’s responses to a societal crisis is just like scientists’ responses to a scientific crisis. They respond in one of three ways:

1. They come up with desperate excuses, trying to explain why the world has to be this way, and why anyone saying anything to the contrary must be crazy. (the iPhone effect)
2. They quit society altogether and live in the woods or become homeless.
3. They start a revolution.

Revolution

And just like a scientific revolution, there are four steps to a societal revolution:

First, a group of people acknowledge that there are problems with the current systems that cannot be solved within the current paradigm.

Second, they blur the paradigm and loosen the bounds of what is societally acceptable. (Freaks, anyone?)

Third, people pick sides and paradigms compete.

Fourth, the old people die off. Some people will never switch paradigms, so you just have to wait for them to kick the bucket to shut them up.

It takes a special kind of person to go against the current paradigm before it becomes acceptable. It takes a leader. A heretic. A revolutionary.

E pur si muove, y’all.

In Ireland, we rented a car. Her name was Reilly, she was a little blue Ford, and I absolutely adored her.

I did not, however, adore driving in Ireland.

The roads are tiny and windy. They’re usually one lane roads – but whereas in America, that means one way each direction, in Ireland, it means one lane. One lane, period, for both cars going in opposite directions. When you encounter another car, you have to pull off onto the shoulder to pass each other. This usually meant I’d pull off and slow way down, while the other driver would pull slightly off and speed up. Exciting, especially when you take into account the shoulders. The “shoulders” were usually comprised of bushes, small cliffs, the occasional big cliff, stone walls, and moats. Very rarely was there an actual shoulder one could actually pull off onto. At one point, Pace said, “That sound you hear? Those are the BUSHES hitting the MY WINDOW!”

Fun times.

And that doesn’t even take into account the occasional sheep, donkey, horse, or human you might find hanging out in the road.

The general speed limit is 100kph (60mph). Friends, let me tell you, I never went above 80kph – and usually, I averaged about 40kph. I have no idea how anyone in their right minds can drive 100kph on the roads I was on – but I think the answer is: most Irish drivers are completely insane.

Most American drivers are completely insane, but at least we have bigger lanes and divided highways on which to flaunt our insanity.

All this insanity on these itty bitty twisty windy roads – and I was driving on the left side of the road on the right side of the car, shifting with my left hand.

Funny thing about that. 18 years of driving really impresses upon you the importance of leaving room on your passenger side, because half of the car is on that side.

And it’s nigh impossible to suddenly switch that in your brain when the passenger side suddenly switches to the other side of the car.

This produced a lot of frantic yelps and pleas for me to move to the right from Pace, poor girl. “Too far left! Too far left!” became her mantra.

After three days of driving like this, I was finally getting the hang of it and Pace’s cries were becoming less frequent.

And then the ice came.

I knew we were only two hours, at most, from home in Galway. I wanted to go home badly. I wanted to spend New Year’s Eve with our friend and her friends in a safe warm pub drinking Guinness. I was incredibly attached to these plans, and equally attached to not spending the night trapped in Lisdoonvarna. So, I tried to drive us out despite my fear. But the main road was closed! I hit two icy patches before I could turn down the alternate route, and it was so dark I could barely see 50 feet in front of the car. I pulled off the road and started sobbing, hysterical. I can’t drive on the ice.

I’m from Texas, ya’ll. And while I don’t act like a Texan or look like a Texan or own a horse or even a pair of cowboy boots, I learned to drive on our always warm, never icy roads. If it ices here, the whole state shuts down. One flake of snow and people stay home from work for weeks. And here I was in Ireland, surrounded by serious ice, not the little piddly ice slicks we may occasionally have in Texas.

I lost my shit, I am not ashamed to say. I wept and shook and begged Pace to let us stay in Lisdoonvarna and pleaded with the universe to save me and probably made a whole lot of immediately-forgotten promises to a God I never talk to anyway before Pace nearly slapped me and we turned around. (Pace couldn’t take over – she can’t drive a stick.) I kept saying, “I cannot do this!”

I have twice ever driven on ice – and twice I’ve slid and gotten into an accident. I was so tense on the way back into town, I could barely breathe. I was terrified and barely made it to a parking spot, and as soon as I turned the car off, I was in hysterics again.

I was utterly terrified.

So, we spent the night iced in a tiny town in very rural Ireland. We met every resident in Lisdoonvarna, and only two of them liked us. We were Strangers here (and stranger than their usual brand of strangers, to boot!). One pub lied to us about not having food, another lied about not having a room. We went from place to place, seeking food and shelter, and were turned away multiple times. Finally, we found a lovely place with a lovely pub that gave us a lovely room and fed us lovely food and gave us lovely Guinness, and we went back to our room and Pace was asleep before midnight.

Yeah, happy new year. Ha!

The next morning, I woke after a delightfully restful sleep to a bright sunny day. Cold and icy, yes, but sunny with clear blue sky as far as I could see. We had a big healthy breakfast. We packed our things and got back in the car.

I took a deep breath and hit the road.

I drove through the most treacherous ice I’ve ever seen. I slid all over the road many times. I had to pull off to let someone pass me, twice – and I had to back up 100 feet once to let a tractor get by! I was tense, barely breathing, but I drove in the ice for two hours.

Finally, the roads cleared, and I was able to breathe and go faster than 10kph.

But I’d done it. I did it, I drove on the ice.

I faced my fear and got through it.

The key was doing it on my terms. I knew it was too dangerous to try in the dark. I got triggered when I slid the first time, so I was nearly panicking – another reason to stop. But the next day, in the bright sun, well-rested and fed and feeling adventurous, I did it.

And that’s the key to facing fears: do it on your own terms. Make sure your bottom-level needs are met so they don’t distract or make things worse. Breathe a lot. Bring a friend, someone to support (or slap) you, someone to get your back so you can take care of the rest. Turn back if you feel like that’s the right thing to do in the moment.

And, most importantly, follow your heart.

Pace and I are home sweet home. We had an amazing whirlwind honeymoon-turned-adventure romp through the Emerald Isle, 14 days of fun in the… cold wet wind. We loved nearly every moment of it, even the times with mortal peril and grueling physical challenge.

There were far more times with mortal peril and grueling physical challenge than we expected, and that’s no mistake.

I have several posts brewing on the lessons I learned and the ways I changed. There’s a lot. More than I imagined – after all, this was a honeymoon, not a vacation or a work trip! Funny how life decides and we think we get to pick, but really we’re just along for the ride.

I’m taking advantage of this moment, this calm before the storm, to again rain thanks and gratitude upon our incredibly awesome guest posters. You guys kept our blog alive while we were doing good to keep ourselves alive, and we really appreciate it. I was able to sleep far better knowing the blog was being enriched by the likes of you.

Megan Morris with Sink the Boat!

Marissa Bracke with An Ode to My Creative Spark: A Love Letter in Five Parts.

Nathalie Lussier with How to Live the Life of an Outsider and Enjoy It!

Victoria Brouhard with On Picking Your Friends.

Johnny B. Truant with How I’m learning to break the rules.

Bob Poole with Happy New Year!

Hayden Tompkins with Here There Be Awesome.

Leah Shapiro with Where the Juicy Goodness Lies.

And last but not least, Rudi Whitmore with Kindness goes to the dogs.

My heart glows with warmth and connection, knowing that these people are more than just my peers and co-workers (of a sort), but also my friends.

I hope you all enjoyed their posts – I sure did! – and we’re back in town and back on the blog. Woo!

Once, rather idealistically, I rescued a dog. I didn’t have dog food, or a dog carrier, or a place to put him, or even a home for myself. I was living in the residence halls of my college, and I was never, under pain of enormous amounts of complaining, to bring another stray animal home.

For about a week or so, I fed him, watered him, petted him – and refused to let him shower with me. All the kennels around us were full, but eventually, a friend’s sister adopted him and renamed him Goliath (I’d been calling him Padfoot; yes, I am that Harry Potter fan.) I dropped him off with her, and for over three years didn’t see the little guy.

Recently, when I went to visit Megan when she was visiting up here in Youngstown (I know you all know Megan – it’s her sister who now owns Goliath), I heard the barking and rustling of the dog pack coming at me, and instead of the “you’re a stranger” greeting I expected…

Goliath greeted me like an old friend, with attention hogging and nudging and showing me his belly.

No one else in the room was shocked that he remembered me and the kindnesses of attention, food, and shelter I’d given him for that one short week.

I won’t lie and say it was the allergies that had me a little fogged up in that living room.

It started me thinking about kindness and the way that we’re remembered. If a dog can remember something that was to me so trivial… Why can’t I be remember and react to those who are kind to me as well?

It can be easy to make a list of the small nice things that happen every day. A door gets held, a coffee on the house, a smile from a passing stranger, or a partner’s understanding hug. Remembering insult and embarrassment is much easier than remembering the good things people have given you, sure – but which is more productive? Which makes you smile more?

I spent a week conducting a little experiment on myself and the people I work with: I made a list of the people in my life who annoy me the absolute most and at the most frequent intervals, and made myself look for something good. Their act didn’t even have to relate to me, but I found that this helped. It made it easier to smile at them, to work honestly with them and with a lighter heart, too.

I’m not usually the animal-whisperer type, but this time, I think the dogs have it.

Rudi Whitmore is a girl who’s learning with everyone else how the world works, and in particular, how it works for her. She writes, loves, dances in the kitchen, and does nothing professionally. Yet.