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{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Mi querido papito me inculco el amor por la lectura y uno de sus escritores favoritos eres tu, la noche de ayer termine de leer “Ser como el Rio que fluye” mi papa me lo dio, claro el lo leyo primero y dejo sus hojas marcadas con sus intereses e inquietudes a traves de todo el libro, asi no solo conoci sus ideas como escritor, sino tambien vi un poquito mas de mi papi, lo que mas me llamo la atencion fue una lineas que escribio al final de su libro en la ultima pagina y dice “Termino de leer. – 11h40-martes 17-04-2007 – Libro que merece ser leido y releido cuantas veces pueda, po su profundidad y exaltacion a la verdad, al amor, ala personalidad.- Gracias porque me ha hecho cambiar immensamente German C- Ambato- casa nueva de esperanza reducto de amor”, no le he pedido permiso a mi papito para publicar sus letras pero queria compartirlo contigo y otra vez estoy lista para conocer un poquito mas de la magia que es la lectura para mi.
Saludos y para mi papito gracias por esto. (added by Mobile using Mippin)
Thanks Paul, for the comment and the heads up on posting teeny picture. Homilies by Seneca and Auden reliable, but Monty Python adds a nice top note.
I am really surprised about the ideas of some that a friend is others servant.Thats not true.Friends accept each other as they are,with their fawls.
I loved the short poem of Jessica.
Why do the power points are different from one country to another?
If you want to recharge your mobile phone for ex you need to buy a special power point for it.
Why aren’t they the same worldwide? and it is the same for so many other things,cars, drink bottles, shampoo – you can buy a 750ml shampoo bottle for example for $8.00 you go to Europe, the same brand 1/2 the content still the same price.Where are the government legislations? It’s ridiculous. Just another way of taking consumers for a ride again.
Aniket – I agree with what you are saying. Let’s start a business together all of us on that blog. How about that?
Pensioners – my favourite subject.The ideal situation -Time to travel, go out to restaurants, enjoy the fruit of your labour. I have got news for you buddy.
Here we are, you have worked all your life,done the right thing for your country, gone to war, haven’t put a foot wrong, manage a superannuation funds, then gets your pension. Ah !ah !you have to declare your assets, now assets includes whatever they can do to decrease the amount you will get of course.
You end up, with a small pension, and very grateful that you have a roof under your head that is fully paid ,plus a superannuation funds that disappears by the second because of the “predictable” general turmoil that is being generated at regular intervals – being we have to create wars, then the economy goes down then drugs,then you have to be responsible for looking after everybody else because there has not been any facilities available to take this people into retirement homes. Ah but we have all the money in the world for arms etc. That’s different, never mind if this is done with our tax money. . And to make it worse, in certain countries you are even responsible for their debts when they die. -Asylum is where we are heading to-. The third world countries are in the same situation. It is engineered that way.
What never ceases to amaze me is to see the number of people that think that because they own a house, they are “capitalists”.
Another thing of course, is that is being thrown at you is the “conspiracy theory”s bit.
Moral to the story ” the richer gets richer, the poorer gets poorer”
Where is this world coming to?
An excerpt from the essay How to Start a Startup by Paul Graham, a silicon valley based Venture Capitalist.
“You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.
And that’s kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable. Hard, but doable. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. Hard, but doable.
If there is one message I’d like to get across about startups, that’s it. There is no magically difficult step that requires brilliance to solve.“
Your space in my blog is addicting …
Here goes another entry from my blog.
***
It is fascinating to see how ideas germinate, take shape and blossom. But what is even more fascinating is how authors use each others ideas as stepping stones to push their own.
What follows is entirely speculation. I am not insinuating plagiarism here.
Malcolm Gladwell brought out his international best seller The Tipping Point in the year 2000. The book is about how trends reach a critical mass and tip over to become an avalanche. Simple example from the book, some young kids start wearing Hush Puppies and suddenly the near-dead brand is a rage.
Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (NNT) is published in 2001. He follows it up with The Black Swan in 2007. The idea of black swan is introduced in Fooled By Randomness and formalised in The Black Swan. NNT rejects Normal Curve as the basis for describing all random activities. He claims and proves that Normal Curve can be used for describing events that are associated with tossing of coins and other similar random phenomena, such as, weight of randomly picked sample of human beings. Power law rules the social and financial world. Thus, events that tip over are basically black swans. NNT also makes the statistical concept, outlier, popular … but only among those who have read the book.
In 2008, Malcolm Gladwell publishes a book called, guess what, Outliers.
It is as if the two authors draw energy from each other to expand their thesis. Unless they are the same author writing under pseudonyms, in one avatar the author establishes a formal basis of an idea and in another avatar he comes up with a popular version of the idea. (Yes! I have seen their photographs, they look different :-))
If I remember it correctly, NNT makes a one line mention of The Tipping Point in The Black Swan.
The approach and styles vary widely but they both talk of the same thing.
¡Hola Paulo!
I want to share with You translation of my poem. In polish it has got rhymes but I don’t want to change meaning of my poem so in english I have resigned from them.
__________
The Fight
———-
Everyone fights against the World,
Wants to lick a blotch of happiness.
Even if my strength will be lost,
I will never break down!
I will fight for my dreams,
I will fight for my longings.
Every small elation
Still gives me desire.
And I was on depth for a long days,
And I was in the dumps for a long nights.
But I don’t cry,
My worries are to small for tears!
When I’m thinking about problems
Of people who enjoy each crumb of bread,
I’m still scanning my dreams
And the magnitude of them disconcerts me.
Then I find out – I want too much!
So I start the celebration.
I achieve my simplified aims
As well as I can.
The main aim is to believe in yourself
And never surrender!
Because the fulfilment of your dreams
Is nearer than You think!
With Love,
Przemek
I liked these a great deal. My friends sustain me, even if I don’t speak with them everyday:
A mere friend will agree with you, but a real friend will argue.
Russian Proverb
========================
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality.
W. H. Auden
1907-1973, Anglo-American Poet
========================
Our friends interpret the world and ourselves to us, if we take them tenderly and truly.
Amos Bronson Alcott
1799-1888, American Educator, Social Reformer
========================
A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.
Fr. Jerome Cummings
=========================
The language of friendship is not words but meanings.
Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist
=========================
Only your real friends will tell you when your face is dirty.
Sicilian Proverbs
Sayings of Sicilian Origin
=========================
One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
=========================
One of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
=========================
It’s funny, isn’t it? How your best friend can just blow up like that?
Monty Python
=========================
Hi, Paulo,
My first comment seems not to have made it, so I’m commenting again (hope that’s okay). First, thanks for the opportunity to post. What follows is the first part of an entry called “Letter To A Widow” I just posted in my blog yesterday about the grieving process. I hope you and your readers find it interesting and perhaps even comforting. To read the whole post feel free to visit my blog.
I remember when I first read the pathology report on my patient, Mr. Jackson, my stomach flip-flopped. “Adenocarncinoma of the pancreas” it said. A week later, a CT scan revealed the cancer had already spread to his liver. Two months after that, following six rounds of chemotherapy, around-the-clock morphine for pain, a deep vein thrombosis, and pneumococcal pneumonia, he was dead.
His wife called me to tell me he’d died at home. I told her how much I’d enjoyed taking care of him, and we shared some of our memories of him. At the end of the conversation I expressed my sympathies for her loss, as I always do in these situations.
There was a brief pause. “It just happened so fast…” she said then and sniffled, her voice breaking, and I realized she’d been crying during our entire conversation. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told her again. She thanked me for caring for her husband and hung up.
I’d known Mr. and Mrs. Jackson for almost seven years and had always liked them both immensely. I thought the world a poorer place without Mr. Jackson in it and found myself wishing I’d done a better job of consoling his wife, thinking my attempts had been awkward and ineffective. I reflected on several things I wished I’d said when I’d had her on the phone and considered calling her back up to say them.
But then instead I wrote her a letter.
He explained that he worked at Hawaii State Hospital for four years.
That ward where they kept the criminally insane was dangerous.
Psychologists quit on a monthly basis. The staff called in sick a lot or simply quit. People would walk through that ward with their backs against the wall, afraid of being attacked by patients. It was not a pleasant place to live, work, or visit.
Dr. Len told me that he never saw patients. He agreed to have an office and to review their files. While he looked at those files, he would work on himself. As he worked on himself, patients began to heal.
Two years ago, I heard about a therapist in Hawaii who cured a complete ward of criminally insane patients – without ever seeing any of them. The psychologist would study an inmate’s chart and then look within himself to see how he created that person’s illness. As he improved himself, the patient improved.
“After a few months, patients that had to be shackled were being allowed to walk freely”, he told me. “Others who had to be heavily medicated were getting off their medications. And those who had no chance of ever being released were being freed”. I was in awe. “Not only that,” he went on, “but the staff began to enjoy coming to work. Absenteeism and turnover disappeared. We ended up with more staff than we needed because patients were being released, and all the staff was showing up to work. Today, that ward is closed.”
This is where I had to ask the million dollar question: “What were you doing within yourself that caused those people to change?”
“I was simply healing the part of me that created them,” he said. I didn’t understand. Dr. Len explained that total responsibility for your life means that everything in your life- simply because it is in your life, is your responsibility. In a literal sense the entire world is your creation. If you want to improve your life, you have to heal your life.
If you want to cure anyone, even a mentally ill criminal you do it by healing you.
I asked Dr. Len how he went about healing himself. What was he doing, exactly, when he looked at those patients’ files? “I just kept saying, “I’m sorry and I love you over and over again,”
he explained.
That’s it?
That’s it.
Turns out that loving yourself is the greatest way to improve yourself, and as you improve yourself, you improve your world.
I am going to practice this in my line of work in secret of course and i’m going to see what happens,
Established in 2003 the Piratebay it is one of the world’s best known P2P websites with over 25 million users. Today its founders are battling it out in court with names such as Sony and Universal in its founding country Sweden, the companies claim that Gottfrid Warg and Peter Sunde are profiting from the site through advertising and are promoting piracy on the web. Piratebay’s founders are arguing that the site itself does not promote piracy, but it is the people who upload torrents that are the real criminals, although the men are now millionaires. Both men could face up to two years in prison and could pay almost €10million in compensation and €150,000 in fines. The Piratebay insist that it will never be taken down, with servers in different locations across the globe. The trial continues.
Thanks for the opportunity to post! Here is the first part of an entry called “Letter To A Widow” about grieving and loss that I just posted in my blog yesterday. If you find this first part interesting, please feel free to click on the link at the bottom to read the whole thing.
I remember when I first read the pathology report on my patient, Mr. Jackson, my stomach flip-flopped. “Adenocarncinoma of the pancreas” it said. A week later, a CT scan revealed the cancer had already spread to his liver. Two months after that, following six rounds of chemotherapy, around-the-clock morphine for pain, a deep vein thrombosis, and pneumococcal pneumonia, he was dead.
His wife called me to tell me he’d died at home. I told her how much I’d enjoyed taking care of him, and we shared some of our memories of him. At the end of the conversation I expressed my sympathies for her loss, as I always do in these situations.
There was a brief pause. “It just happened so fast…” she said then and sniffled, her voice breaking, and I realized she’d been crying during our entire conversation. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told her again. She thanked me for caring for her husband and hung up.
I’d known Mr. and Mrs. Jackson for almost seven years and had always liked them both immensely. I thought the world a poorer place without Mr. Jackson in it and found myself wishing I’d done a better job of consoling his wife, thinking my attempts had been awkward and ineffective. I reflected on several things I wished I’d said when I’d had her on the phone and considered calling her back up to say them.
But then instead I wrote her a letter.
http://www.happinessinthisworld.com
Hi Paulo,
I visited Checkpoint Charlie in 1986. I am from the US. My roommate was from Berlin. We worked together at the Plaza hotel in NY. We spent Christmas in Berlin with her family and the next day went to East Berlin to spend the day with her relatives. We had to go through three seperate checkpoints because we had three different statuses. I, an American. Ilona, born in Berlin but now living in the US. And, the third checkpoint for her family who lived in Berlin. When, we crossed over into East Berlin – it was like walking back into the 1940′s -they still used black out curtains and our gathering was low key. You couldn’t trust your neighbors. At the end of the night – we came back to the checkpoints via a trebunk. That was 25 years ago. I didn’t speak German either. After visiting with Ilona’s family – I took off alone to explore other parts of Germany. I was on my own to communicate in a non-English speaking town in the countryside. That was exciting – to communicate without speaking the language.
How do we tear down walls? By listening. Being present in each moment and truly interested in understanding the other person. You tear down walls by being “real” with each other. SPending time getting to know the other person via their thoughts and ideas – and learning what makes them tick. Sharing yourself. You can do that on a small scale- one on one – or something grander – like audiences or countries. You can also tear down walls when you don’t expect everything to be about you.
I have a very charismatic friend. I always wonder how she gets so many people to open up? It’s uncanny. No matter where she goes – what country she’s in – people know her and smile and laugh with her. They become old friends in no time. I think that’s a gift. She should teach a class in whatever it is she does. When I observe her – I think it’s because she’s very present in the moment – whomever she’s talking to is the only person that exists. She’s very interested in figuring out who people are. It generates a feeling of openness and then it becomes generosity and cooperativeness. I think that’s how you tear down walls.
Thank you for letting me share my thoughts. I love your books Paulo.
MaryLee
Everybody Wants to be Rescued
Everybody wants to be rescued
from the unbearable existence
of unfeeling and strangeness
of life uncertain.
Clasp your hands and look up
because it is written to save your soul
from an eternal flame of desolation
fire burning your spirit alone.
Alone. The unbearable strangeness of
walking through the minutes that make up
the hour to night when the
time stands still
echoing
the empty chambers of your life.
Everybody wants to be rescued.
The reason why it is written,
that someone will for your eternity
like a thirst wanting to be quenched
craving for that feeling of final ecstasy.
It is written.
The answer is not here.
The space in between. Time separates.
I want to spend days with you.
But days are made up of time.
There are spaces between heartbeats.
Pulses rushing whenever I hear your name.
Would I even let you know?
But..
Would you recognize me amidst the crowd?
Would you search for me when you hear my voice?
Would you long for my presence?
Because I long for yours.
I count the days.
I count the years.
I say your name.
Hold me and never let go.
Through and through,
I will be with you.
I miss you.