Tag Archives: philosophy

The 09/20/13 Joy Jar

21 Sep

Stephen Wunker posted a great Forbes article, Asking the Right Question:

We are trained to be solution-finders. In school, we are given questions and graded on the quality of our solutions. As we develop in our careers, management examines the solutions that we propose, not the questions that we have asked. For annual reviews, “performance” is usually defined as creating and implementing solutions rather than finding the best problems to tackle. We become wonderfully efficient at solving problems, even if they are the wrong ones to solve. Few kudos come from asking the right question.
Yet the right question is often the key to breakthrough business success. With a properly-framed question, finding an elegant answer becomes almost straightforward.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenwunker/2012/12/15/asking-the-right-question/

Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is a wish that moi always asks the right question.

The Heart of Innovation blog posted, 15 Great Quotes on the Importance of Asking the Right Question:

As an innovation consultant and a facilitator of the creative process, I continue to be astounded by how few organizations have any kind of process is place to PAUSE, reflect, and make sure they are coming up with the right questions. Apparently, I’m not alone…

1. “It’s not that they can’t see the solution. They can’t see the problem.” – G.K. Chesterton

2. “There are no right answers to wrong questions.” – Ursula K. Le Guin

3. “We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.” – Bono

4. “Ask the right questions if you’re going to find the right answers.” – Vanessa Redgrave

5. “Asking the right questions takes as much skill as giving the right answers.” – Robert Half

6. “What people think of as the moment of discovery is really the discovery of the question.” – Jonas Salk

7. “What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.” – Werner Heisenberg

8. “The uncreative mind can spot wrong answers, but it takes a very creative mind to spot wrong questions.” – Antony Jay

9. “In school, we’re rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question.” – Richard Saul Wurman

10. “In all affairs, it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.” – Bertrand Russell

11. “Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.” – Pablo Picasso

12. “Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.” – Voltaire

13. “We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.” – Friedrich Nietszche

14. “My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” – Peter Drucker

15. “He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.” – Chinese proverb

Thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for locating these great quotes
http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2012/02/1_its_not_that.shtml

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The 09/12/13 Joy Jar

14 Sep

While on a walk, moi noticed a beautiful stain glass window. Windows can be fairly utilitarian and you really don’t notice them if they are clean or until they are missing. Windows in unusual shapes make a statement about either the architect, the owner, or they just say look at me. Stain glass windows are another matter, they draw you in. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is the beautiful windows of the world.

People are like stained – glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
Dale Carnegie

The body is a house of many windows: there we all sit, showing ourselves and crying on the passers-by to come and love us.
Robert Louis Stevenson

If you believe in God, He will open the windows of heaven and pour blessings upon you.
Mahalia Jackson

The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.
Sydney J. Harris

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you’ve closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart.
Desmond Tutu

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.
Horace Mann

“This life’s dim windows of the soul
Distorts the heavens from pole to pole
And leads you to believe a lie
When you see with, not through, the eye.”
William Blake

“Clay is molded to form a cup, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the cup depends. Doors and windows are cut out to make a room, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the room depends. Therefore turn being into advantage, and turn non-being into utility.”
Lao Tzu

“Let there be many windows to your soul, that all the glory of the world may beautify it.”
Ella Wheeler

There comes a time in a man’s life when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he walks through a wall.
Bernard Malamud

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The 09/10/13 Joy Jar

9 Sep

People may ask what is the greatest gift one can receive? Moi would point them to the great King Solomon:

2 Chronicles 1
New International Version (NIV)
Solomon Asks for Wisdom
1 Solomon son of David established himself firmly over his kingdom, for the LORD his God was with him and made him exceedingly great.
2 Then Solomon spoke to all Israel—to the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, to the judges and to all the leaders in Israel, the heads of families— 3 and Solomon and the whole assembly went to the high place at Gibeon, for God’s tent of meeting was there, which Moses the LORD’s servant had made in the wilderness. 4 Now David had brought up the ark of God from Kiriath Jearim to the place he had prepared for it, because he had pitched a tent for it in Jerusalem. 5 But the bronze altar that Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, had made was in Gibeon in front of the tabernacle of the LORD; so Solomon and the assembly inquired of him there. 6 Solomon went up to the bronze altar before the LORD in the tent of meeting and offered a thousand burnt offerings on it.
7 That night God appeared to Solomon and said to him, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”
8 Solomon answered God, “You have shown great kindness to David my father and have made me king in his place. 9 Now, LORD God, let your promise to my father David be confirmed, for you have made me king over a people who are as numerous as the dust of the earth. 10 Give me wisdom and knowledge, that I may lead this people, for who is able to govern this great people of yours?” http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Chronicles+1&version=NIV

Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is moi’s request for wisdom.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

May, Path, Leave

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley

Experience, Happens For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.
Audrey Hepburn

Good, Knowledge, Alone If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.
Michael Jordan

Work, Give, Trying By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius

Experience, May, Learn The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
Socrates

True, Knowing We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.
Swami Vivekananda

Travel, Care, Words A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.
Moliere

Best, Patience, Wise A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.
Nelson Mandela

Good, Heart, Head

Wisdom begins in wonder.
Socrates

Wonder, Begins The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.
Khalil Gibran

Teacher, Wise, Mind If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.
Nelson Mandela

Heart, Him, Talk A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
John C. Maxwell

Smart, Strong, Mistakes Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
Albert Einstein

Reality, Illusion, Persistent Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson

Book, Honesty, Chapter

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
William Arthur Ward

Change, Wind, Pessimist I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.
Lucille Ball

Done, Regret, Rather It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

Matters Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.
Jim Rohn

Between, Discipline, Goals A fool flatters himself, a wise man flatters the fool.
Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton

Wise, Fool, Himself Winners never quit and quitters never win.
Vince Lombardi

Win, Winners, Quit Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
George Bernard Shaw

Knowledge, Ignorance, Dangerous Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nature, Patience, Her When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.
Confucius

Cannot, Action, Goals Silence is a source of great strength.
Lao Tzu

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/topics/topic_wisdom.html#XmGc2kgD9GZrt9wA.99

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The 0/09/13 Joy Jar

8 Sep

Some individuals are special not only because of their lives, but the words that they leave as a legacy. Such a person was Mother Teresa.

Mother Teresa (baptized August 27, 1910, in Skopje, Macedonia) taught in India for 17 years before she experienced her 1946 “call within a call” to devote herself to caring for the sick and poor. Her order established a hospice; centers for the blind, aged, and disabled; and a leper colony. She was summoned to Rome in 1968, and in 1979 received the Nobel Peace Prize for her humanitarian work. http://www.biography.com/people/mother-teresa-9504160
http://www.motherteresa.org/layout.html

Today’s deposit into the Joy Jar is the great gift of Mother Teresa’s life.

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa

Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.
Mother Teresa

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.
Mother Teresa

We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature – trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence… We need silence to be able to touch souls.
Mother Teresa

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.
Mother Teresa

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.
Mother Teresa

We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.
Mother Teresa

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.
Mother Teresa

Peace begins with a smile.
Mother Teresa

Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.
Mother Teresa

If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
Mother Teresa

We shall never know all the good that a simple smile can do.
Mother Teresa

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.
Mother Teresa

The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.
Mother Teresa

Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.
Mother Teresa

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.
Mother Teresa

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.
Mother Teresa

If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.
Mother Teresa

Intense love does not measure, it just gives.
Mother Teresa

Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own.
Mother Teresa

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
Mother Teresa

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.
Mother Teresa

Let us more and more insist on raising funds of love, of kindness, of understanding, of peace. Money will come if we seek first the Kingdom of God – the rest will be given.
Mother Teresa

One of the greatest diseases is to be nobody to anybody.
Mother Teresa

I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?
Mother Teresa

The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis, but rather the feeling of being unwanted.
Mother Teresa

The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.
Mother Teresa

Each one of them is Jesus in disguise.
Mother Teresa

Many people mistake our work for our vocation. Our vocation is the love of Jesus.
Mother Teresa

Jesus Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.
Mother Teresa

There is always the danger that we may just do the work for the sake of the work. This is where the respect and the love and the devotion come in – that we do it to God, to Christ, and that’s why we try to do it as beautifully as possible.
Mother Teresa

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.
Mother Teresa

I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.
Mother Teresa

Our life of poverty is as necessary as the work itself. Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God better because of them.
Mother Teresa

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mother_teresa_2.html#PPAL8gtCpxCfekKs.99

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The 09/05/13 Joy Jar

5 Sep

Moi is over three quarters through the ‘Joy Jar’ exercise of finding something to be grateful for every day. What moi saw when she looked at a tape measure recently was not only measurements which relate to things, but it was a metaphor about measuring, a life. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is thinking about how a life measures in terms of quality.

“We shall see but little way if we require to understand what we see. How few things can a man measure with the tape of his understanding! How many greater things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!”
Henry David Thoreau

I never had a policy; I have just tried to do my very best each and every day.
Abraham Lincoln

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.
William Shakespeare

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
David Star Jordan, The Philosophy of Despair

Character is much easier kept than recovered.
Thomas Paine

Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Buddha

Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Albert Einstein

Character is higher than intellect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Laws control the lesser man. Right conduct controls the greater one.
Chinese Proverb

A man has to live with himself, and he should see to it that he always has good company.
Charles Evans Hughes

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them.
Aristotle

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The 09/04/13 Joy Jar

4 Sep

After a holiday, sometimes it is just hard to get going. Everyone at one time or the other needs motivation to put the foot one before the other. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is motivation.

Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.
Dalai Lama

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.
Norman Vincent Peale

A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
Ayn Rand

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
C. S. Lewis

The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential… these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence.
Confucius

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.
Helen Keller

If you can dream it, you can do it.
Walt Disney

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas A. Edison

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The 08/31/13 Joy Jar

31 Aug

Every person has a mission. Each of us was placed here for a reason. As we go through the Labor Day weekend, we are reminded that while work is important, it is not necessarily your mission. One’s work may further their mission, but work alone cannot be the mission. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is finding one’s mission in life.

Here is the test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished: if you’re alive, it isn’t.
Richard Bach

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.
Viktor E. Frankl

When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.
W. Clement Stone

Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
Umberto Eco

Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
Umberto Eco

Make your life a mission – not an intermission.
Arnold H. Glasow

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The 08/22/13 Joy Jar

22 Aug

Moi takes Seattle public transit ALL over. There is the METRO tunnel which goes under Seattle. If one is headed to the airport on light rail, then one goes through a tunnel. A tunnel is a metaphor for going through difficult times and surviving. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is a tunnel.

The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s going to keep digging, he’s going to keep trying to do right and make up for what’s gone before, just because that’s who he is.
Joss Whedon

Wherever my story takes me, however dark and difficult the theme, there is always some hope and redemption, not because readers like happy endings, but because I am an optimist at heart. I know the sun will rise in the morning, that there is a light at the end of every tunnel.
Michael Morpurgo

Learning is a tunnel experience that makes us think more broadly.
Anna Deavere Smith

If you do not have an absolutely clear vision of something, where you can follow the light to the end of the tunnel, then it doesn’t matter whether you’re bold or cowardly, or whether you’re stupid or intelligent. Doesn’t get you anywhere.
Werner Herzog

Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.
Robert Anton Wilson

“Carve a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

“When faced with a mountain, I will not quit! I will keep striving until I climb over, find a pass through, tunnel underneath or simply stay and turn the mountain into a gold mine, with God’s help.”
Robert Half

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.
Corrie Ten Boom

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The 08/17/13 Joy Jar

17 Aug

vMoi has been walking all over and she notices the various types, forms, and shapes of concrete. From pillars which support highways to planters, to sidewalks, to buildings – it is everywhere. Sometimes, they try to pretty it up by coloring it or embossing it, but it is still concrete. Because it forms so many useful structures, today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is concrete.

“The road is a word, conceived elsewhere and laid across the country in the wound prepared for it: a word made concrete and thrust among us.”
Wendell Berry

“Clearly, then, the city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo.”
Desmond Morris

“There is always opportunity until concrete is poured.”
Rosaleen Tallon

“Concrete is, essentially, the color of bad weather.”
William Hamilton

In the abstract conception of universal wrong,
all concrete responsibility vanishes.
Theodor Adorno

Christianity stands or falls as a living program,
a way of life, made concrete in the life of man by
the life of God through the life of the concretely living Christ.
-Kenneth L. Pike

Art is the concrete representation of our most subtle feelings.
Agnes Martin

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make
abstract that which is concrete.
Jean-Paul Sartre

For though we often need to be restored to the small,
concrete, limited, and certain, we as often need to
be reminded of the large,
vague, unlimited, unknown.
A. R. Ammons

Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content,
from which changes of mind might naturally arise.
– Hannah Arendt

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.
Alfred North Whitehead

Your purpose is to make your audience see what you saw,
hear what you heard, feel what you felt.
Relevant detail, couched in concrete,
colorful language, is the best way
to recreate the incident as it happened
and to picture it for the audience.
– Dale Carnegie

For myself, I do not now know in any concrete human
terms wherein my individuality consists.
In my present human form of consciousness I simply cannot tell.
– Josiah Royce

Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life;
everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment.
Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated,
thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.
-Viktor E. Frankl

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The 08/06/13 Joy Jar

6 Aug

Moi takes public transportation all over Seattle. She thinks, watches people and sometimes writes. Public transportation is really an exercise in being ‘present in the moment’ no matter what is going on around one. Today’s deposit into the ‘Joy Jar’ is being ‘present in the moment.’

Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.
Tennessee Williams

The art of life is to live in the present moment, and to make that moment as perfect as we can by the realization that we are the instruments and expression of God Himself.
Emmet Fox

Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.
Thich Nhat Hanh

God is always coming to you in the Sacrament of the Present Moment. Meet and receive Him there with gratitude in that sacrament.
Evelyn Underhill

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man’s whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.
Abraham Maslow

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