KEEPING YOUR SANITY BY COMMITTING TO LIFE WITHOUT CRISIS
The Leap of Faith – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
I’m used to hearing from people in crisis. As a psychotherapist and life coach, it’s part of my business. It may be a crisis in a marriage, a crisis at work, a financial crisis… There are many places for crises to wreak havoc in our lives.Some crises are unavoidable. We control only so much of what happens in our lives, and sometimes life throws hardship, tragedy, or deeply chaotic circumstances our way. I don’t make light of or gloss over the realities of life; but I do make it my business to help people to avoid unnecessary troubles, and there is one thing that we can do to prevent some of the more predictable crises of life:
Make and hold your positive commitments all the way, without reservation.
Commitment requires a leap of faith. Like Indy’s Leap of Faith to reach the Grail, we are ordering our future without any assurance of what that future will bring. It asks us to remove the safety harness, forgo the escape hatch, burn the ships that could take us back to our familiar life, and believe that we can handle the risks and the rewards of commitment.
DRACULA’S CASTLE
Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula” described Count Dracula’s home as a castle located high above a gorge perched on a rock in Transylvania’s Carpathian Mountains. And here you are, Bran Castle, built in the late 1300s near the town of Brasov in Romania, and traditionally associated with Vlad Dracula (1428-1477).
His father, Vlad Dracul (Vlad the Dragon), as the ruler of Wallachia (southern Romania), led Christian knights fighting Ottoman Turks called the Order of the Dragon, or “Dracul” in Romanian. His son succeeded him as Dracula – “son of the dragon” – waging war upon the Moslem Ottomans so brutally he became known as “Vlad the Impaler” for impaling his enemies. They began spreading rumors of his being literally bloodthirsty, drinking his enemies’ blood.
Over the centuries since, Vlad Dracula has been celebrated by Romanians as their national hero in his liberation struggle from the Ottomans. But was Bran Castle his home? He had many homes, and was here many times during his campaigns. Visiting Dracula’s Castle is always a highlight of our explorations of Eastern Europe. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #56 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – CLIMBING THE GREAT PYRAMID
Fifty years ago – August 1971 – I was able to climb the Great Pyramid of Cheops all the way to the top. 450 feet high, 4,000 years old, the only one of the original Seven Wonders of the World to still exist, it was my first time in Egypt and I had to give it a go.
Of course, this is illegal. So I waited near sunset and all the tourists had gone, walked around to the northwest corner hidden from most views where there was one lonely guard. I gave him 20 Egyptian pounds which made him very happy, and up I went. Each block at the bottom is about five feet tall and gets smaller as you climb, with over 200 stone layers or “courses” base to apex. The top is flat, about 10-foot square – the limestone casing reaching a point gone long ago.
I was a philosophy doctoral student back then, so I sat down, took out from my daypack Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and read my idol’s wisdom in the light of the setting sun. It was a sunset I’ll never forget, too mesmerized by the moment to take a picture. The photo is of me taken recently where I began my climb of decades ago. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #126 Photo ©Jack Wheeler)
ABBOTT AND COSTELLO ON UNEMPLOYMENT
COSTELLO: I want to talk about the unemployment rate in America
ABBOTT: Good Subject. Terrible Times. It's 5.6%.
COSTELLO: That many people are out of work? ABBOTT: No, that's 23%.
COSTELLO: You just said 5.6%. ABBOTT: 5.6% Unemployed.
COSTELLO: Right 5.6% out of work. ABBOTT: No, that's 23%.
COSTELLO: Okay, so it's 23% unemployed. ABBOTT: No, that's 5.6%.
COSTELLO: WAIT A MINUTE. Is it 5.6% or 23%? ABBOTT: 5.6% are unemployed. 23% are out of work.
COSTELLO: If you are out of work you are unemployed. ABBOTT: No, Biden said you can't count the "Out of Work" as the unemployed.
You have to look for work to be unemployed.
COSTELLO: BUT THEY ARE OUT OF WORK!!! ABBOTT: No, you miss his point.
COSTELLO: What point? ABBOTT: Someone who doesn't look for work can't be counted with those who look for work. It wouldn't be fair.
COSTELLO: To whom? ABBOTT: The unemployed.
COSTELLO: But ALL of them are out of work. ABBOTT: No, the unemployed are actively looking for work. Those who are out of work gave up looking and if you give up, you are no longer in the ranks of the unemployed.
COSTELLO: So if you're off the unemployment roles that would count as less unemployment? ABBOTT: Unemployment would go down. Absolutely!
COSTELLO: The unemployment just goes down because you don't look for work? ABBOTT: Absolutely it goes down. That's how it gets to 5.6%. Otherwise it would be 23%.
COSTELLO: Wait, I got a question for you. That means there are two ways to bring down the unemployment number? ABBOTT: Two ways is correct.
COSTELLO: Unemployment can go down if someone gets a job? ABBOTT: Correct.
COSTELLO: And unemployment can also go down if you stop looking for a job? ABBOTT: Bingo.
COSTELLO: So there are two ways to bring unemployment down, and the easier of the two is to have people stop looking for work. ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like a Democrat.
COSTELLO: I don't even know what the hell I just said! ABBOTT: Now you're thinking like Biden.
HEY ABBBBOTT!!!
HALF-FULL REPORT 08/19/22
As they say, “Do you want the good news or the bad news first?” Okay, the good news.
The DemFascist “Inflation Explosion Act” passed late last Friday (8/12). On Tuesday (8/16), Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) published an “Open Letter to American Job Seekers” warning them: “Don’t Work for Biden’s IRS Army.”
“These new positions at the IRS will not offer you the long-term job stability you may expect from a position with the federal government. Put another way: this will be a short-term gig. Republicans will take over the House and Senate in January, and I can promise you that we will immediately do everything in our power to defund this insane and unwarranted expansion of government into the lives of the American people.”
You can bet your bippy that’s exactly what they’ll do because they, along with a very large majority of voters, are in a state of rage over this. This is good news you can count on.
The bad news?
SKYE’S LINKS 08/18/22
[Note by JW: Skye has jam-packed so much need-to-know cool info here, all the way to the end. Wow!]
A brief history of how we got to this political precipice by Pete Hoekstra:
Understanding woke social dynamics and the woke drive for ever-greater victimhood, a real must-read!:
THE TERRACE OF INFINITY
Over a thousand feet on a mountain ledge above Amalfi on the Mediterranean, you’ll find the Terrazzo dell'lnfinito, considered by poets for centuries the most beautiful view in the world. It is part of the magnificent gardens of the 11th century Villa Cimbrone, in the hilltop town of Ravello, built by the Romans in the 5th century.
The Sorrentine Peninsula is a finger of land south of Naples sticking out into the Med’s Tyrrhanean Sea, off the tip of which is the legendary island of Capri. The main town of Sorrento is on the north side facing Naples and Mount Vesuvius. But it is the steep southern shore of the Amalfi Coast that is our planet’s most spectacularly scenic drive with its ancient ports of Amalfi and Positano.
Exploring this magical part of the world is an ultimate “bucket list” experience. And to top it off, on the way down from Naples, you get to visit Pompeii, the excavated Roman city buried and preserved by the ash of Vesuvius in 79 AD. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #115 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
THE FORBIDDEN GODDESSES
In the 1st and 2nd Centuries AD, there arose in what is now northern Iraq an Arabian kingdom called Hatra, named after its capital city. Made wealthy with the caravan trade from Mesopotamia to the Mediterranean, the Arab kings of Hatra built magnificent temples to their gods and goddesses.
The one you see above is known to archaeologists as The Lady of Hatra as what the Arab Hatrans called her is not known. Three others, however, are definitely known – for they are the Forbidden Goddesses, worshipped and adored by Arabs 2,000 years ago, hated and feared by over one billion people today.
Here they are – Al-Lat in the center, flanked by Manat, and Al-Uzza – the daughters of Allah. The Forbidden Goddesses that drove a Moslem fanatic to stab Salman Rushdie almost to death a few days ago.
THE CAMPUS LEFT, IRAN’S MULLAHS, AND ORWELLIAN “FREE SPEECH”
Oberlin University is under fire over its Professor of Religion and Islamic Studies who once served as the Iran’s ambassador at the United Nations. He’s Mohammad Jafar Mahallati, who supports the fatwa against Salman Rushdie.
His personal website further states his research is “focused on the ethics of peacemaking in Islam in the context of comparative religions.” Nothing says ethics and peace more than a lethal fatwa targeting dissenting authors. Right?
Few academics would support Iran’s blood-soaked interpretation of free speech. However, we need to address the creeping relativism that is sweeping across our campus. It’s as fully 1984 Orwellian as Mahallati.
RUNWAY ABLE
It is a profoundly somber experience to stand here on this abandoned weed-strewn airstrip. For this is Runway Able on Tinian Island in the Northern Marianas, where 76 years ago, on August 6, 1945, a B-29 nicknamed Enola Gay piloted by Capt. Paul Tibbets took off with Little Boy in its bomb bay bound for Hiroshima – and three days later on August 9, a B-29 nicknamed Bockscar piloted by Maj. Charles Sweeney flew off with Fat Boy in its bomb bay headed for Nagasaki.
As a consequence, on August 15, Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan to America. Here is where World War II was won, and the Nuclear Age begun.
This lost bit of tarmac is the most consequential airstrip on earth. Be prepared for a deep complex of swirling emotions if you ever stand here yourself. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #14 photo ©Jack Wheeler)