#love – Page 2 – The Corrigan Encore

How can we?

October 12, 2023 John Corrigan

Accidents happen, and the nature of an accident causes changes and damage to the normal day and life that we are living. Often we see accidents happen to others and we wonder what can we do to help.

I remember listening to a country music star talk about how he was shocked when he heard the news about the terrorist attack in the United States on 9/11/2001. The star went on to say that, after the shock he just wanted to help and wasn’t sure how he could. He then decided to write and play music about the event because that is what he knew.

Of course we can and do and should give to charities, money is always helpful to a charity and if you can do it I would suggest giving in a sustainable manner (monthly, bi monthly or yearly). Money as charity is good because it is modular, the charity can use it for just about anything however, we often feel like we can and should do more but what more can we do? That’s a tough question..

Do what you know best; if you’re a runner, run, if you’re a bell, ring.
Ignas Bernstein

Often we work within our strengths, or our work becomes a strength. If you are looking for a way to help a friend or family member (beyond monetary), you should lean into your strengths. You would be surprised at what someone needs when they have suffered damage because of an accident. There was a family in my church that suffered the loss of the matriarch, and I wanted to help out. I on multiple occasions brought the family plates of food and was shocked at how much this simple act seemed to help the family.

We can do a lot of help by leaning into our strengths and helping with as much kindness as we can muster. I think maybe even more important than the action of help is the attitude that we give the help with. Help with kindness in mind, not obligation or pity.

No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted
Aesop

Take time today to help others.

Sometimes we need it

October 10, 2023 John Corrigan

People are social animals. The importance of social connections is inarguable among experts in the medical community. We need help form friends and family even if it is just a phone call or sitting in silence. Hermits risk loneliness and health problems.

Being there for others and reaching out to others is a totally healthy normal thing to do. When I think about friends and families helping each other I cannot help but hear the Beatles song, “with A Little Help from My Friends”. What an amazing song, great lyrics and a tune that is amazing!

Take time today to call or visit a friend or family remember we all need each other.

Take care of yourselves, and each other
Jerry Springer

Everyone matters

September 28, 2023 John Corrigan

There was this interesting video about a leader on Facebook who, changed a dynamic in his organization by changing the focus of the organization from goals to impacts. The speaker was Brian Fretwell do check out some of his stuff when you get the chance.

The leader would ask instead of “where are we with these goals?’, “What has impacted you this week and how have you impacted others this week?”. The leader said that they received engagement like they had never seen and it helped the company.

The speaker of the video mentions that the change happened because people were not feeling seen or did not feel like they mattered and when the focus of the leadership changed from goals to impact the people felt seen and heard.

I know that this world can be crazy and sometimes you have taken all you can bear. (Yes it is from that song.)

The truth is that you do matter and when you feel like you do not or you are doing things that make others feel like they do not matter it is time to take a breath and remember that, life is precious a gift and everyone with life matters.

Bathwater and babies

September 25, 2023 John Corrigan

A project is planned, perfected, practiced and them performed. That is an idea situation however many projects are not planned, practiced or performed and almost no project is perfect. I worked with a project manger who planned out his project for 8 months and did no performance, that manager was let go for lack of performance. The planning perfecting and practice stage of a project are important however when any of these stages prevent action on a project than the stages should be looked at and reconsidered.

Dans ses écrits, un sage Italien
Dit que le mieux est l’ennemi du bien.
Voltaire

A podcast that I am a pretty big fan of called People I Mostly Admire, interviewed psychologist and author Thomas Curran. Thomas wrote a book titled The Perfection Trap. In his book Thomas explains that the pursuit of perfection and being a perfectionist is not a good thing. Perfectionism causes burnout and depression and in his book Thomas gives us tools to avoid perfectionism and embrace the power of good enough.

A wise Italian says, the best is the enemy of the good.

Voltaire

Chasing perfection as with any pursuit must be done with temperance and common sense if it is not the one chasing perfection risks jeopardizing their mental heath and destroying their relationships with family and friends.

Perfectionism is a trait that is often associated with obsessive compulsive disorder and is often not diagnosed or treated because it is a useful trait. People who are not your friends or loved ones will use your perfectionism to promote their own agenda.

Today we should understand that while perfection is good perfectionism should be avoided.

Perfection is impossible; just strive to do your best.
Angela Watson

You are enough and your best is enough and you can and will do your best everyday.

Soundtrack of Our lives

September 18, 2023 John Corrigan

The band named Soundtrack of Our Lives, is a Swedish rock band their most popular song was Second Life Replay.

The song is pretty good but I love the bands name. When i was younger I played the pc game Sim City. In the game Sim City you are the mayor/planner/terraformer of a city. You build up land features, zone the land and manage the people on that land through city policy. The one thing I truly loved about the whole process was the music that played in the background of the game. As you built streets, rivers and lakes you were treated to Jazz music. I would listen to the jazz and go to work.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything
Plato

I love all kinds of music. The book titled And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street was Theodore Geisel’s first published book. The format for the book was said to have come from the sounds of an Ocean Liners engine on a transatlantic trip the author took.

“Everything in Life is Vibration”
Albert Einstein

Everything on earth vibrates and creates a frequency. There really is a sound to everything. The right music can make life that much better and the right music is whatever you like at a specific time.

My taste in music is eclectic and I think if people are truly honest that most peoples taste in music is also eclectic. Depending on what headspace we are in or want to be in there is music for that.

This week let’s all listen to a style or genre of music we have never heard before. There was a former work colleague who listened to a heavy dose of Celtic punk music. Until I rode to lunch with this guy I had never before heard of this music now if the mood is right I quite enjoy some Flogging Molly.

Enjoy life and the sound of all of it.

A little weekend nostalgia

September 15, 2023 John Corrigan

The year was 1986, I was 9 years old I was a third grader in Cleveland Ohio and it was Friday. The bus drive home was the longest one of the week. At the the end of the bus stop was the walk home but, it was also freedom! We were free from school for the weekend!

The weekends were special. Friday afternoon would start with phone calls to friends about where everyone would spend the night at. If you were lucky you were hosting friends or staying at a friends house. Friday night would be a movie marathon of scary movies hosted by a wacky video host and Saturday morning would be cartoons on the tv. Saturday afternoon we rode our bikes and visited the local candy store and any open parking lots. There we did “tricks” on our bikes. Sunday was dominated by football or baseball. If you were really lucky you had tickets to the game. There was also the trip to the public library.

As I got older weekends got better. As an adult I spent weekends golfing, fishing, watching sports, drinking, visiting backyard barbeques. In 2006 I was given a Blackberry Pearl and the weekends turned to not so great after that.

The always on generation did a lot to destroy the work life balance and one of the first victims of the work life balance was the epic 80’s and 90’s weekend. It is very important to maintain a work life balance. Without a work life balance you can expect health problems, burnout and depression (I know depression is a health problem).

Let’s all do our part this weekend (that’s right starting this evening when we leave work) and shut off our phones and take back the weekend. Let’s make this weekend an epic 80’s /90’s weekend!!

Nothing is that way

September 14, 2023 John Corrigan

There are videos every where you go, if you travel in public spaces. Most communities use surveillance videos to deter public crime however, the video itself does not deter crime it is the potential criminal knowing they are being recorded that deters the crime.

But there is nothing covered up that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known.
Luke 12:2

When someone is recorded while in the action of a crime or violation they know the likelihood of being caught is much higher when they are recorded in the action and therefore chances are high that they will not commit the crime.

A camera with AI technology can spot people of interest or situations that look out of the normal but because real time surveillance is basically a myth stopping crime while it is happening without a security guard present is a tough ask. There is live surveillance or as close to live as you can get but even with live surveillance the action of stopping the criminal in the act requires boots on the ground at the right time.

Technically the speed of light is 300 000 kilometers per second so no one is really seeing something as it happens. We are all processing things after the fact. Time is funny. Time is almost impossible to define and yet we all use it everyday. The best definition I have seen for time was: Time is the observation of the degradation of matter.

The past, present and future are only illusions, even if stubborn ones
Albert Einstein

I could go on and on about how time is a kind of silly human construct however today I am more interested in how the subjective nature of time. I see some people live full robust lives that affect everyone and their lives are short. I think about Jesus of Nazareth being under 40 and making such huge waves with a message of love and compassion, then there is Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Martin Luther King Jr., Keats, Mellvill and Orwell. This list is long of folks that lived short lives but made huge contributions to society. The “time” they had was used well. Time is at best a persistent illusion that when not considered or used correctly doesn’t really matter. We should all be less concerned with when and more concerned with what.

Well the thing is…

September 13, 2023 John Corrigan

I like to watch and read the news. Here in the United States the Supreme court has made some news with many of its decisions. On June 24, 2022 the supreme court overturned a woman’s right to have an abortion and left woman’s rights up to each state to decide.

Today is September 9 2023 so why am I right now speaking about this court decision made in 2022? I am speaking about the Dobbs decision today because many state laws are just being imposed on women all over the country. Right now 13 states have abortion bans in place and there is so much confusion over state laws that health providers in states that do not necessarily have a ban in place are just shutting down. So I am witting now because this issue matters now and did when it was first over turned and will for decades later.

A big part of the push behind abortion bans was a coordinated effort of the evangelical Christians in the United States of America. The Moral Majority is a group founded by Jerry Falwell and a major point of the religious organization was stopping abortion, through influencing legislation and it seems to have worked.

The evangelical Christians believe that abortion is a sin. The reason for this belief stems from something called the “univocality of the bible”. This univocality means that the bible speaks with one voice and I just don’t think this is true. There is a pretty amazing video in which a scholar I follow mentions how univocality cannot be true

Clearly though this idea for univocality is pretty hard to come up with for any work of art. The bible is an amazing work of art written by many through the years from originally the spoken word.

First it must be known that only a spoken word or a conventional sign is an equivocal or univocal term; therefore a mental contentor concept is, strictly speaking, neither equivocal nor univocal.
William of Ockham

Ockham really helps define what faith is and faith is not fact. Theology is not a sciences and I never want to live in a society where faith or theology make laws. With state laws and no protection for women the United States seem to be on the precipice of a theocracy.

If you disagree with your government, that’s political. If you disagree with your government that is approaching theocracy, then you’re evil.
Margaret Atwood

A government that is a democracy will have disagreements and those should be settle d with logic and ethics and votes however governments that are theocracies are not ran this way. In a theocracy an enemy of the state is also an enemy of god and a theocracy requires a single faith and that is problematic as well because faith is not fact, faith is subjective and different for everyone.

It should go without saying however it seems it must be said. All countries should do their best to avoid a theocracy.

Intelligent ???

September 12, 2023 John Corrigan

Humans, by humans have been widely accepted as the most intelligent beings on the planet. The ability to develop culture and transmit information rapidly are part of the reason our own species views our own species as the most intelligent animal. Arguably there are other cultured animals, dolphins, meerkats, chimpanzees and guppies display a social fabric and culture that is pretty impressive. With more research into other animals humanities spot at the top of the intelligence ladder might be under challenge. Honestly being the smartest animal will not matter if that animal knowingly destroys its own home.

With capitalism the human has created a system that is destroying their own home to generate more capital. In order to make more money humans have caused climate change and the results are now and have been disaster after disaster.

Even when faced with this truth there are many human animals that still seek profit over planet. Something to think about is this, money is imaginary and made up but the environment is not. Humans are destroying a real thing in order to get a made up imaginary thing. I am honestly to the point where I do not think humans are the most intelligent animal on the planet.

We can have a world of peace. We can move toward a world where we live in harmony with nature. Where we live in harmony with each other. No matter what nation we come from. No matter what our religion. No matter what our culture. This is where we’re moving towards.
Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall was a human who devoted her life to chimpanzees. Goodall’s research is amazing and her insight is well insightful. Her time with our closet relative taught her how to be a better human being. My Life with Chimpanzees is loaded to my Kindle and next in line with this years reading list for me. Goodall has always spoke in a way that was hopeful for the future, however she seems to be a fan of humans understanding their place in the world

Farm animals are far more aware and intelligent than we ever imagined and, despite having been bred as domestic slaves, they are individual beings in their own right.
Jane Goodall

Humans have and continue to hunt trap and kill all species of animals to include humans. Until humans stop hunting trapping killing and knowingly destroying the world they live in. I do not think it is intelligent to consider the species intelligent.

We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost effective
Kurt Vonnegut.

So if there is intelligent life on earth I do not think current humans are it. What do you think?

Does family Matter

September 7, 2023 John Corrigan

The United Nations has 193 countries in it and among the countries 7 of them do not mandate paid maternity leave for parents. The United States of America finds itself among the 7 countries. Child care in the United States for working parents costs the parents more than 20 % of their income again among developed nations the United States is last, most nations offer heavily subsidized or free child care. In June of 2022 the United States quit protecting women’s right to health care for abortions. Health care costs for families in the United States are almost twice as much as all other United Nation countries.

The election season will start soon and the politicians will lean heavy on the family and the importance of the family. However if that politician is not addressing the families needs through policies their words are nothing more than lip service and the family doesn’t matter enough for the them to do work.

When something matters and is a priority we will find ways to make that something work.