The Truth Shall set you Free

the movie, Up in the Air, where the motivational speaker (George Clooney) is using a backpack analogy, getting the audience to imagine filling the backpack with all the things and physical "stuff" of their lives, and then having them imagine trying to move with all that placed on their back....

Thanks Wendy I enjoyed that and the words underneath are so true................

and Chris, that's a good analogy, we carry such a lot of excess baggage around with us - I'm off to dump a bit more into the trash can, such a lot to get rid of 

valx

Thank you Wendy ...was a great read and a good start to the weekend.

Cool Wendy, we are on a roll, or should I say Roll-er-coaster, and I just love rollercoasters.

Thanks for the post, loved the ending, loved that movie too.

Ian

There are a flood of these "we can do it" videos popping up-Goodness!. They're cool and fun to watch but some don't seem to have an aim-just to stimulate our emotions. OR I may be not be a good listener too-I have often enough failed to understand what others see easily. I liked the young woman speaking near the beginning:  "Paper or plastic? Here's your change". "Do you want ketchup with that?" it hit me hard-how dehumanizing our commercialized world is getting. I go thru McDonald's drive thru for breakfast a lot (gasp)and I try to be a bit human with the same guy who's always there to take my order. He's clearly relieved to have a little human contact even if it's only that I call him buddy...aside from these microscopic interactions he's on a conveyor belt of query/response transactions that is so deadening that it comes with it's own form of exhaustion. Like holding your breath for an entire work shift. Ships passing in the night. I remember growing up in my small town where the store in town was "Harold's Store" it didn't have a name. The place was all wooden and the squeaky floors were worn thru a 1/4" of wood from decades of shoes. We got candy and soda from the intimidating owner with his sweet dog-'Playboy' who wouldn't hurt a fly. I can still smell the stores smells. By contrast I've been installing new security and camera systems into a series of convenience stores in my area and the alienation of each individual by the corporate personality is sad. There's no room for a pause to converse with the clerks-all their conversations are video and audio recorded-that's a given incidentally-you're being audio recorded in nearly every convenience store you enter. We need to be able to take time to have a little conversation or comment or to see something unique in the other person. I see things changing too and I feel we are going to blossom and grow so much-I just hope it's not because of some terrible heartache or disaster that befalls us even worse than the artificial one we're afflicted with right now. Whatever will be, will be I guess.