Tag: kindness

Always be

John Corrigan

The movie Glengarry Glen Ross was an adaptation of a play with the same name. The movie and play show the cutthroat side of the sales industry. A famous line from the movie is “Always be closing”. The line has been repeated all over the world by everyone in sales.

In the cutthroat world of sales this is pretty good advice because if a sales person doesn’t close a deal they don’t get paid and if they don’t get paid they don’t eat. Most people who know me know that I am not a big fan of capitalism for this reason here. Capitalism is meant to divide up and manage resources equitably through placing a dollar amount on resources and then forcing consumers to work for the dollar amount by processing, or selling the resources. The problem with capitalism is that it doesn’t work. If the goals of capitalism are equitable resource allocation and proper resource management it doesn’t work. Proof is in the socio economic state of every capitalist nation on Earth. Capitalism puts money first not the person, it seems that the true goal of capitalism is to make a very few amount of people wealthy and leave all others in want.

If our species plans to survive we will need to show some kindness. Instead of Always be closing good citizens should take up the mantra “Always be kind”. Instead of amassing capital that we can trade for resources we should be focused on making sure the resources are managed and shared with our neighbors. If people do not care for each other or the natural resources then one could argue that we do not deserve either.

Instead of focusing on money we should focus on kindness and resource management. Instead of being consumers we should be citizens, kind citizens who care for each other in deeds not just words. Try today to “Always be kind”.

Moments

John Corrigan

Saturday afternoon was spent with my wife the dog and my niece kayaking out to a light house and an island. We stopped on the island swam tried to get the dog into the water ( failed) and then got back into the kayaks. My wife took pictures and they were saved in her phone and marked as moments.

These are truly moments, last year we did the same thing with my daughter (we left the dog at home then). At the end of the day Saturday we were; wet, tired, a little sun burnt but I felt content. Just thinking back on the time spent Saturday and last year makes me smile.

Photo by Zukiman Mohamad on Pexels.com

Take time every day to have these moments with family and friends. You will experience all kinds of moments and how you live it out will make a huge difference on whether or not thinking about the moments make you smile or frown.

No matter what the moment is be kind (that is a tough one because in some moments friends and families are not always agreeable). No matter what the moment is realize it is that a moment so stay present.

How to make others

John Corrigan

My wife bought and has started using a halo (she has always had one since I’ve known her) actually, it is called the Amazon Halo Band. The Amazon Halo Band will track sleep fitness and over all health as long as you wear it. Full disclosure here, I am an Apple fanboy. I am still rocking the 1st generation Apple watch. Why am I rocking the 1st gen watch? Well it still works and I love it however, at the beginning of this year I made a new years resolution to loose some weight and if.. no no WHEN I loose 20 lbs I plan on rewarding myself with a brand new shiny Apple watch.

Last night my wife was showing me her new fitness band and one feature that she loved. The band will analysis the tone of your voice and tell you how based on your tone others are perceiving you. I thought this feature was incredible! She turned on the feature and as she and I spoke the words happy, confident and amused floated across her I phones screen (the band works with I phones). I was blown away by the technology and the geek and me wanted to know how it worked what was the algorithm used for making these calls? How do you analysis tone? Is timbre involved?

The human/husband/bestfriend was kind of pleased with the words that floated across the phones screen as she spoke. It is very important in a relationship to build up the other person. You will be at your best when the other person is also at their best. I loved that my wife felt all those things while she and I were speaking. Don’t get me wrong my wife is fun, kind, smart, confident woman. I did nothing to make her that way either but I never want to be the reason that she feels bummed out, unhappy, dumb, mean or shamed.

I will admit I have been angry with some people and I have treated them in a way that would (if they paid any attention to my words) make them feel bad and that is not great. I think that we should always use our words to make others feel at the very least safe. When it comes to loved ones we should certainly use our words to make them feel like they are the most important people on the planet!

According to this Linkedin in post, an average of 7000 words leave your mouth per day. At the very least I hope that a majority of the words are perceived as uplifting and complimentary. Sometimes it can be hard to build. It always seems harder to build than it does to tear down but its builders that make a difference.

Humanity has been on this earth for 300000 years and accomplished some amazing and some truly horrific feats. Lets work together with our words to make the majority of humanities feats going forward truly amazing and good.

peace

john3c

Wait what and huh???

John Corrigan

Last year the date was January 6 2021, I was at work in the factory and my watch and phone started blowing up with news and Facebook alerts. The news alerts read like; “Protests unfolding at the U.S. capital” and my Facebook alerts were like; “Republicans should be ashamed of themselves” and “Who says walls will keep people out (this one had a Getty image of protesters turned insurrectionists / terrorists climbing the United States Capital wall)” and “It’s our house (this one on Facebook had an AP image with the protester / insurrectionists / terrorists marching through the halls of the capital damaging public property looking for blood)”. I was knee deep in a work project so the alerts went noticed but un read, about an hour later while on break I sifted through the alerts and thought it was a joke. After I realized this was actually happening and I was basically seeing it unfold in Realtime I felt some of the same feelings I felt on September 11, 2001. I was at work on that day as well and I got the alerts then too. I was stopped by a fellow coworker and told to go to the break room and watch tv with them. On September 11, 2001 I watched the events in Realtime on the breakroom tv with coworkers, on January 6, 2021 almost 20 years later I watched the events on my break from my phone alone. The feelings on September 11, 2001 were that the country was being attacked, the feeling from January 6, 2021 was also that the country was being attacked. My country was attacked my capital was attacked. The difference was that, on September 11, 2001 my country was attacked from an “outsider or groups of outsiders” and my fellow citizens were there with me in the breakroom, on January 6, 2021 my country and capital were attacked from fellow citizens, there was no fellowship or comradery on January 6, 2021 there was only terror and the feeling of being alone.

After the January 6, 2021 attack on the capital, the alone feeling persisted. There was even a debate on who attacked the capital many claimed it was a “false flag” operation and not as bad as people in the media made it out to be. It has been one year since the attack on the United States capital, one year since the vice president was hunted for in the halls of the capital and there is still debate as to who was responsible for the leadership of the terrorists at the capital and why it all happened.

We are living in strange times, today some people who were involved in the attack on the capital are running for public office. I try really hard to post uplifting things here and I have turned this attack on January 6, 2021 every which way to look for some positive spin but I cannot do it. The people who attacked the capital weren’t hungry or living in a country without direct elections like the people in Kazakhstan. The people who attacked the capital were not being shot by police officers or kept out of schools work public places or lynched because of the color of their skin. The people who attacked the protest were upset that their leader did not get re elected, that was the reason the capital was attacked and the vice president was hunted after! See? nothing positive there… So if there is nothing good to say about January 6, 2021 why even mention it at all? Well, I wanted to mention it because there is an investigation into how and why this happened, how is pretty much answered but the why is going to take a long time. The why is very important. Why did a group of people who are not in the aggregate hungry, poor, under represented feel the need to attack the government that works to make sure they are taken care of. I am not sure why but I think that perception is a big part of it. The protestors that became insurrectionists and terrorists’ thought that they were not being represented, and they thought they were poor. The mob forgot that they were part of a nation and failed to see their neighbors and family and friends. In a fit the mob allowed a rally to turn into a terroristic attack.

I think that the why to the attack lies in the fact that no one in that mob cared about their neighbors. I think the positive we can take from the attack is a life lesson. When we fail to consider our neighbor chaos ensues and we get the anarchy of Jan 6 and Sept 11. If either of those groups would have considered their neighbors I am positive they would have acted differently. We should all take a page from the book of the great Fred Rogers.

Even the bible and almost all religious texts demand that we treat our neighbors kindly. Tragedy like the attack on the capital is memorialized best through actions and I think a great action today tomorrow and forever is to be kind to our neighbors and when you think about it everyone is our neighbor.

peace

John3c