thinking out loud

Thinking Out Loud: What Have You Done Today to Earn Another’s Trust?

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Harper Lee’s  work, To Kill a Mockingbird.

“We’re paying the highest tribute you can pay a man. We trust him to do right. It’s that simple.” ― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Note: One can’t order trust online. Nor can one expect somebody to trust him/her without first earning that trust. Trust results from the accumulation of hundreds of small action. It only takes one act to destroy all the previous good acts. Once lost, it’s difficult to regain another’s trust. Trust is an imprint on one’s character. It’s indelible. We earn another’s trust by keeping our word, standing on trusted values, and never taking the cowards way out when facing difficult challenges.

Thinking Out Loud: Discovering Real Courage

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Harper Lee’s  work, To Kill a Mockingbird.

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

Note: It takes courage to stand alone against the crowd (in can be anywhere) to support something you know is right, but the crowd doesn’t want to hear. If you know in your heart you are right, you take the stand and along with it, the consequences. I found myself in that situation several times. I have the scars to prove it. I can look back and wonder where I found the courage. All I know is that it was there at the right moment. I think that’s how it works. You have to face it, alone. When you do, the courage awakens within you, and you discover strength you didn’t realize was there.

Thinking Out Loud: Who Are You?

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Harper Lee’s  work, To Kill a Mockingbird.

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

Note: I think about parent – child relationships. I loved my dad, understanding him takes more work. He was one of eleven children of Italian immigrants. His father died when he was 14. He quit school in 8th grade to go to work in a shoe factory to help support his family. My dad and mom were married during the great depression. He was drafted during WWII and fought in Europe. I will never have the experience of his anxieties, fears, or doubts. Nor will I understand where he found the inner strength to go forward and raise a family. Like my dad, we all have stories. Our stories are similar, yet vastly different. The way we experience our story creates the person we are today. Perhaps the good way to understand another is to listen non-judgmentally to their story and appreciate the challenges they overcame to get to the present moment.

Thinking Out Loud: The Dance of Love

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Boris Pasternack’s  work, Dr. Zhivago.

“Their love was great. Most people experience love without becoming aware of the extraordinary nature of this emotion. But to them—and this made them exceptional—the moments when passion visited their doomed human existence like a breath of eternity were moments of revelation, of continually new discoveries about themselves and life.”

Note: A deep, passionate love continuously breathes new life into a relationship. The parties to the relationship lose themselves in each other. They maintain their individuality and simultaneously surrender themselves completely to the other. Observing them is like watching two great dancers. The individuals become absorbed into the dance of love. With each beat of music they capture another glimpse of the other and fall deeper into love.

Thinking Out Loud:

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Boris Pasternack’s  work, Dr. Zhivago.

“It’s good when a man deceives your expectations, when he doesn’t correspond to the preconceived notion of him. To belong to a type is the end of a man, his condemnation. If he doesn’t fall into any category, if he’s not representative, half of what’s demanded of him is there. He’s free of himself, he has achieved a grain of immortality.”

Note: The moment we can honestly say, “I don’t have to be who you want me to be. I choose to be what I am destined to become, and I will choose the path,” we are free. We are free to fail miserably. We are free to succeed beyond our wildest expectations. Waylon Jennings in his song, The Chokin’ kind, sang, “You can kill a man with bullets, poison, or a knife / But it hurts him more to take his pride and run his life / Whatever it is you want, girl, I hope you find / But that hat don’t fit my head, ’cause it’s the choking kind.” When we have the internal freedom to live up to the expectations we set for ourselves, we discover the who we were meant to become.  

Thinking Out Loud: Experiencing Moments of Grace

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Boris Pasternack’s  work, Dr. Zhivago.

“For a moment she rediscovered the purpose of life. She was here on earth to grasp the meaning of its wild enchantment and to call each thing by its right name.”

Note: Moments of clarity are few. They come to us unannounced. In those moments we know as we were created to know. I call them moments of grace. In these moments I know that I am part of something vast, wonderful, overflowing with an abundance of love. I want to remain in those moments, nothing else matters. The moments leave. They leave me recharged, filled with the Spirit, to move forward with a heart overflowing with hope and love.

Thinking Out Loud: Dare to Speak the Truth

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Boris Pasternack’s  work, Dr. Zhivago.

“Ordinarily, people are anxious to test their theories in practice, to learn from experience, but those who wield power are so anxious to establish the myth of their own infallibility that they turn back on truth as squarely as they can. Politics mean nothing to me. I don’t like people who are indifferent to the truth.”

Note: Searching for and speaking the truth is a dangerous journey. Historically, people who have dared speak the truth are martyred. The adage “the truth hurts”  often does to the one speaking the truth. They are guilty of naming what is happening, of cutting away the fog from the evil that is being committed in the name of truth. It happens at a national level where tyrants name the truth and those who speak out claiming that the truth spoken by the tyrant is a lie are destroyed. It happens in every social unit where there is oppression. When someone confronts the oppressor with the truth, the oppressor strikes out, often violently. Grateful for the courageous people who dare to speak the truth because the truth to them is more important than the threats from the oppressor.

Thinking Out Loud: Looking Forward to the Next Chapter

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Boris Pasternack’s  work, Dr. Zhivago.

“Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.”

Note: Life for us is a long series of letting go. We let go of childhood to enter adolescence. We let go of adolescence to enter adulthood. During our adult journey we may let go of good health. We may lose a partner to death. Each time we let go we experience the pain of separation. We’re never really healed from the separations, each separation leaves a scar. Some of my scars are more visible than others, but I carry them as you  do yours. With each separation there is a time of mourning. If we’re healthy, we begin to look forward to the next chapter with hope-filled expectations. Then we get on with life and leave what was lost behind.     

Thinking Out Loud: Good Things Are Coming Your Way

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Boris Pasternack’s  work, Dr. Zhivago.

“And remember: you must never, under any circumstances, despair. To hope and to act, these are our duties in misfortune.”

Note: We all face misfortune at times. It comes with living. How we respond to it sets a stamp on our character. Viktor Frankl in Man’s Search for Meaning said we always have the freedom to choose the attitude we take toward our circumstances. Boris Pasternack encourages us to never despair or allowing ourselves to fall into the black pit. Instead, hope is the antidote to despair. Yes, tomorrow will better than today. Believe good things are coming your way. If you’re awake, you’ll catch them.     

Thinking Out Loud: Do You Dance in the Sunshine?

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Today’s Thinking Out Loud reflection is on Boris Pasternack’s  work, Dr. Zhivago.

“Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about life—they have never felt its breath, its heartbeat—however much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.”

Note: I witness it every day. I see people, age doesn’t matter, who go through the motions of existing. Each day has a repetitiveness about it for them. I also see people, age doesn’t matter, who engage with life. They wrestle with doubts, daemons, and dark struggles. They dance in the sunshine, sing in the rain, and choose to grow and evolve embracing each step as a new adventure. Which are you?   

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