Thought for the Day: I Remember

The look you get from a child should remind you when you tell him, 

"Wait until tomorrow."

Thought for the Day: Help

Remember what she says:

In the event of a decompression, an oxygen mask will automatically appear in front of you. To start the flow of oxygen, pull the mask towards you. Place it firmly over your nose and mouth, secure the elastic band behind your head, and breathe normally. Although the bag does not inflate, oxygen is flowing to the mask. If you are travelling with a child or someone who requires assistance, secure your mask on first, and then assist the other person.

It's always a good idea to make sure you have prepared yourself before you try to help others.

Herb Ratliff

Thought for the Day: Love

Love is not given to careful evaluations of practical matters.

It revs up its engine and races til it splatters or solidifies.

©Herb Ratliff

Thought for the Day:Illusions

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

Alexandr Pushkin - poet, novelist, playwright (1799 - 1837)

Thought for the Day: Persistence

In life as in the dance, grace glides on blistered feet.

Alice Abrams

Thought for the Day

Have you ever marveled at the disappointment

you feel when people don't do what you didn't

ask them to do, but expected?

Herb Ratliff

While You Were Out: Part II

Thought For The Day

From yesterday: While You Were Out


On a fourth of July weekend somewhere around their child's third year I invited them over for a cookout. As fate would have it the event we speak of was just after the Berber carpet was installed.  In planning the event I gave no consideration to child care. Since it was a cookout, hot dogs and hamburgers seemed the logical choice along with cold slaw, potato salad and baked beans, finished off with chocolate cake and ice cream.

This is going to take a little longer than I thought. Stop by tomorrow for the rest of the story.

Part II

When my friends arrived I was almost surprised to see their daughter. I was not accustomed to being around people with small children. She was a lovely child, pretty and charming but then she started exploring. A three year old in an adult males apartment is not a pretty sight. Everything needed to be picked up and put in a holding area until the tiny explorer left.

This is when my obsessive nature began to rear it's ugly head. I began thinking about the food. How could I manage cooking, serving and controlling a three year old with baked beans, chocolate, ketchup and mustard on a paper plate? I knew the guests would not be concerned about my cream Berber carpet. I could see the ketchup on it, being ground into the fibers with grubby little hands. Damn! What could I do?

Seems like something else was happening of interest, maybe Wimbledon. Anyway, there was something being watched on tv and people were wandering around inside and out chatting, munching exploring. I was preparing the hot dogs and hamburgers while obsessing over the carpet and ketchup.

When the burgers and hot dogs were finished I placed them on a buffet table along with condiments and accessory dishes. I invited people to help themselves to food and went back into the kitchen to take a quick inventory of what was out and what would come out later. Then, she caught my eye. The little person was getting her own food. Damn! I rushed over to help her. She didn't require any assistance. (I think that's the adult version of: "No! Me get.") I was hovering over her with fear and trepidation and wondered why her parents were so calm and relaxed. I needed a quart of Maalox.

To my absolute amazement. She got her food, accessorized it, ate it and put her plate in the waste basket without a crumb hitting the floor. (I , on the other hand, had developed a bleeding ulcer.)

When folks left I sat on the patio for a bit and then went to the pool and took a swim. I didn't realize how tired I was until I woke up from an hour long nap. When I awoke I was starved. It was then I realized I had not eaten. I was seriously hungery.

I went back to the house and fixed myself a couple of hot dogs, slathered with onions, ketchup, et al, loaded my plate with potato salad, cold slaw and baked beans; threw on a couple of brownies and headed for the TV room to watch some more tennis. As I hustled through the living room I stumbled when the plate started to give way under the weight of the meal atop it. Only then, in painfully slow motion, did I see what all of those things that I worried about a three year old spilling, could do to a new, cream colored, Berber carpet.

So, if it gets in your head and you start focusing on it, it will happen; just not necessarily in exactly the same way you think it.

©Herb Ratliff, July 3, 2012, All Rights Reserved

I'm going to......

Thought For The Day

One of the more difficult concepts to integrate into daily life is how important it is to manage your thoughts.

What you believe is not nearly as powerful as what you think. I know, you don't agree with that on the surface but let's take a look at the bottom line. Let's look at what you do and what precedes what you do. Yep, what you think.

Let's take a walk together. As we walk down the street or path or sidewalk lot's of things start rolling past the monitor between our ears. Maybe what happened last night, that could be a good thing or a bad thing and that will influence how you feel and if it's good you may start skipping. OK, you'd have to feel exceptionally good to skip but you get the idea. If you did something bad or hurtful then your steps might be heavy or slow and you might plod along the way.

Whatever mood prevails gets to pick the things you think about. So, if you're happy and skipping you might fancy yourself a ballet dancer, or a decathlete in competition for the Olympic gold metal. You will be focused, alert, positive and you will believe that your actions will be beautiful, winning and inspirational. And, guess what? They will be, in a relative sense.

If you watch Tiger Woods play golf and frankly, this is why so many people do, you can almost see his belief in his skill and his intent. So when he makes the sixty foot put to win the Masters, you find yourself captured in the moment because you believed it too.

This is a dangerous skill. It works no matter what you think.

I know you can't help what you think every moment of every day, we are human. But here is what you can do. You can believe that you own your thoughts and that they answer to you. So if they get out of line, you have a short meeting with them and explain that you prefer looking at the bright side and pulling for the good in life. It doesn't always work, but it does a lot of the time and as I practice I have noted that I don't have to stay in a bad place. I can think my way out of it the same way I thought myself into it.

Finally, look at it this way. You are going to think yourself into the next thing you do. Why not make it a force for good. It is for you

©Herb Ratliff, June 4, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Paying Attention, Really

Thought For The Day

Sometimes what is really amazing is how little attention we pay to things that are truly amazing.

When I worked in the financial field of computer technology and development there were many things that were done by both hardware and software engineers which were literally changing the world. It was sometimes hard to comprehend how these ideas could be conceived, let alone produced and made available for use in the home and office.

Consider how it would have sounded to Thomas Edison if you had suggested that you had created a language which if used properly would allow you to talk to a machine. Further, you would be able to tell the machine to follow a variety of different instructions if and only if you could create a machine which could read instructions which were essentially a series of electrical impulses which did nothing more than say open or close.

That would be amazing, right?  OK, it's a little difficult to compare yesterday's world with today's. But that is, in a nutshell what the early computers did. They read one's and zero's as yes and no, or open and close. What made it all work was the exceptional speed at which the processor was able to read these instructions. By the way, those speeds today are snail like.

I am fairly certain that people who don't even care about computers would be willing to agree that they are exceptional tools. So let me get to the point of this thought, paying attention to amazing things which came to me as I was thinking about all the flying I did when I was working in that field.

One day I was sitting on a plane bound for California from from Michigan. The early instruction sets had been offered by the flight attendants, preparations were being made for beverage service and I was settling in with a book when the captain in a smooth, confident voice began to give us a bit of a trip tic for our journey. He began by saying that we would be cruising at an altitude of     35,000 feet. (That's a little over six and a half miles above the ground, I thought.)

Hmm, I murmured, that's about how far it was from my childhood home to the High School I graduated from. He then said, "We'll be traveling at about 550 miles per hour." That's when I pulled out my calculator. After a bit of figuring, eye brow raising and reconfirmation I discovered that in understandable terms that meant that we were moving in a straight line at the rate of  807 feet or a little over two and a half football fields a second.

That, is amazing, wouldn't you agree?

©Herb Ratliff, June 1, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Differences

Thought For The Day

When friends and family gather 

it's rather like a late Spring field 

filling with wild flowers, 

many and various colors, 

tall and short,

full and sparse 

but 

splendid in their variations.

The perfect bouquet.

Herb Ratliff, April 19, 2012, All Rights Reserved

Dew Drop In

Thought For The Day

The air is heavy with moisture,

orb webs beaded with droplets

of dew drape like bejeweled tapestries.

The birds sing with more insistence,

their voices loud in the early morning light,

bright with promise, each singing 

just a bit louder than his neighbor.

And my neighbor because we live next to a pasture,

insists a rooster belongs here with his brood

who crows victoriously and teases the hawk

who lives in the tallest pine across the meadow.

The great red tail lifts his voice to the chorus

It is morning, time to celebrate.

Herb Ratliff, April 17, 2012, All Rights Reserved

New!

Thought For The Day

October 2011 St Joseph, MI

There is no certainty in any day. 

We awake and have plans or not, 

but waking is not a given, 

it's a gift. 

What follows is never routine

even if it's the same thing 

you did yesterday morning 

because, it's new. 

You are new,

life is new,  

possibilities run wild across your path.

Herb Ratliff, April 12, 2012, All Rights Reserved