2013
December 22, 2013
Today is Compassion
How sad that, in this new millennium, an ethos that reveres looking out for #1 as a signifier of courage and character is being reasserted. In urban culture, to be compassionate and caring is to be a sucker, a soft, bleeding-heart wuss begging to be victimized. In neo-conservative, libertarian ideology, compassion is seen as debilitating, enabling the takers to drag down some hypothetical and idealized meritocratic market where the makers are the victims of this liberal compassion.
But we really are, as I tried to explain so obtusely yesterday, all connected. A rising tide does raise all boats; the success of the least of us does in fact vitalize our collective life, and more importantly, we are wired to support each other. Contrary to the ‘red in tooth and claw’ trope (Darwin in fact discredited it himself) selfish genes are importantly benefited when the organisms that carry them assist others with whom the gene is shared.
Compassion is in fact the more powerful invisible hand that binds us together and forms the collective being that is, and always has been, essential for our survival.
So Happy Compassion. At ‘this time of year’ let us embrace the notably Christian values (thank you Francis for reminding us!) of service and goodwill toward all.
December 23, 2013
Today is Kindness.
Lost Horizon is one of my favorite films. In it, Sam Jaffe plays the High Lama of Shangri-la, a utopian community hidden high in the Himalayas. When asked how Shangri-la manages to remain so peaceful and harmonious, the High Lama replies with their simple and single law: Be Kind.
Kindness can not help but warm the cockles of your soul. It may not be quite enough to replace our constitution, but anyone who has studied the gift economy at Burning Man knows the rather astonishing power that simple acts of kindness can have.
So a Merry Holly Days to us all, and kindness bless us, every one!!
December 24, 2013
Today is Hope.
The axiom that Hope springs eternal illuminates why positive reinforcement works so much more powerfully than punishment. Most of us would rather not hold in our imaginations memories and fears of being hurt, but images of gifts and love have a way of welling up in us again and again. Our hope that we will get to revisit these joys can not help but motivate us.
On the flipside, consider this little tale:
I once saw a little neighbor kid, about 6, get hit by a truck on my street. He and his pals liked to play soccer in their front yard. One day when the ball got headered out into the street, the kid took off after it. There was rarely much traffic on our street, and that day he was lucky. His mom, who was on the porch, was scared none the less and freaked out. She grabbed him by the arm, swatting him over and over as he cried and she dragged him in the house.
A few weeks later, the ball went into the street again, and he took off after it again. When he got to the curb, he remembered his beating, and checked over his shoulder to see if his mom was around. She wasn’t and so he didn’t slow up, and because he was looking back, didn’t see the truck. Being too far away to hear my shouts to warn him, he darted out from between two parked cars, and into the path of that thankfully slow-moving delivery truck, badly breaking both his legs and his pelvis.
A warning in a concerned and loving voice, a story about the danger told with compassion, would have sprung eternal with that little boy, and he would not have spent the whole summer in a crazy A-shaped cast from waist to ankle.
Happy Hope. I truly hope that your heart’s desires are satisfied by the love and generosity of your family and friends.
December 25, 2013
Today is Generosity.
Holly Days is kind of 4 sub-holidays, each three days long. The first at the solstice, is pagan-ish. The second, the one we are in the middle of today, on Christmas Day, is Christmas-ish.
I think most of us love Christmas (and by infection the minor Jewish holiday of Chanukah) because of the gifting. Contrary to the cynical take on the greedy side of gifting, generosity really does feed our spirits whether on the giving or receiving end.
I particularly love Christmas, though not Linus’ or Mygan Kelly’s, but my father, Ned’s. Here is a memoire about Ned’s Xmas (‘X’ because he had a lot more antipathy to the baby Jesus than I do).
It’s much too much on-the-nose, and my tone is much too solemn for this day, but there are a number of images of him, and a mess of others generously ‘donated’ by the miracle of Google.
December 27, 2013
Today is Truth
The poor Truth has gotten an odd reputation. You see it on the back of cars with truth fishes eating Darwin fishes. The idea that truth is only reveled by ultimate authority, that it cannot be discovered, undermines everything we use to keep our civilization running.
I shudder to think what could happen if Yahwee or Xenu or Allah were to reveal some new “truth” to someone with oversight of critical technology like nuclear weapons or power plants, or fundamental infrastructure like power grids or water supplies.
Most of us, even those to whom faith is an important spiritual palliative, are horrified at the thought of General Jack Ripper’s finger on the button. In the Crusaders, the Mullah’s and the SS, we have seen the utter havoc that true believers can reek.
So while I think seeking the truth is by far the most important task we have as sentient beings, it is the path and the markers we leave along it that are what we need to cherish, not that gleaming city of perfect truth we imagine in the haze at the end of it.
Today, just over the hump, on the downslope of Holly Days, let us all try to look closely, see clearly, and understand deeply.
December 28, 2013
Today is Love
Love is some powerful shit. I don’t think time heals all wounds, but I think Love might. Love is so cool that some folks even claim it to be synonymous with god.
It was the “Sixties”, tho’ actually 1971, and you who were there know what that means (wink wink). I was the object of some love that I was not requiting, and she had followed me to Carnation, Washington, a tiny, beautiful but exceeding square town east of Seattle on the Snoqualmie River, where a couple of our friends had emigrated. Them and about 200 other hippies – that in a town with a population of about 400.
Turns out a few poor kids had drowned in the river the previous summer. Some were hippies and some were cowboys. The town had planned, on the night we arrived, to hold a fundraising dance at the local Grange Hall to raise money to build a public pool.
We had just come up Highway 1 in huge home-built housecar, which at times had as many as 25 hitchhikers on board, and we had been gifted about 50 hits of various varieties of psychedelics. Our Carnation friends had prepped a big jug of Kool Aide to which we contributed our stash, and which they planned to share with all their fellow Carnation Hippies at the dance.
Everyone in the town, and I mean absolutely everyone, from the granmas to the major, was there, and the cultural tension at the beginning of the evening was palpable and even a little dangerous. There was an open mic and various folks were getting up and playing in an impromptu battle of the bands, some jamming, some with carefully prepped numbers, some country and some rock.
As we hippies began to peak, we began to dance with more abandon, and the whole Grange Hall began to vibrate with a contact high. As the evening wore on, the stage hosted a round-robin, cross-section of the whole town, all eefing in a free-form rhythmic jam and the dancing became even more tribal.
Eventually everyone, and again I mean everyone, was on their feet jumping and swirling in unison, even me (and I hate to dance). There was a spirit of love in that hall that I had never felt before in my life, and I suddenly looked at this woman who had been pursuing me and thought, ‘why not her?’ finding myself instantly in love with her.
Of course ‘why not her’ is about as unromantic as it gets, and it was not at all the sort of requiting she longed for, meaning that, of course, love notwithstanding, it never really worked out. But that love on that night had infected our lives in such a way, that when she gave birth to another man’s baby many years later, I fell completely and utterly in love with him too.
Happy Love, Happy Holly Days, and may you be filled and surrounded by love for all of your days.
December 29, 2013
Today is Courage
In this 3rd trinity, which is not really attached to any traditional holiday, we have used Truth Love and Courage, as these constitute the totality of my belief system.
Courage may be a little idiosyncratic to my personality, as some folks are already pretty brazen, and might do better to believe in Beauty, Peace or Humility, but for myself and most folk I know, fear holds us back from achieving and being what we wish for.
When I was in High School my two best friends, Topher, Doug and I took a trip to Mexico together. An older boy, Gumpert, who was a bit of a mentor to us, had invited us on a SCUBA diving trip to Baja. He had a big 4×4 truck with a camper and a huge PTO winch that we all believed could go anywhere.
At the last minute, a family crisis caused him to cancel, but he generously offered us the use of his truck and gear. We were all still really just little boys, raised in harmonious and comfortable middle class families who had never really faced any adversity who had had our drivers’ licenses for less than a year, but we were packed and ready to go, so we took off together for Punta Banda, just south of Ensenada.
Heading out a dirt road, and asking the locals ‘donde esta la playa’ we got the words ‘derecha’ and ‘derecho’ (one meaning right and the other straight) confused, and turned off onto a tiny road heading across a large mudflat. As the road got softer and softer, we got scared and decided to turn around, but the minute we turned off the little track, we instantly sank up to our axels in the mud. With the huge tires spinning and nothing to attach our winch to, we were hopelessly stuck, and all the digging and pushing we did was useless.
Eventually, we noticed a taxi cab off in the distance also stuck in the mud, with the driver asleep in the back seat. We woke him up and helped him get unstuck, then tried to use his car as a pick point for our winch, but the ground was so soft and our truck so heavy that we just slid him along the road. Now covered in mud and exhausted, we gave up and he took off, promising to send help.
After what seemed like hours, an old tow truck finally arrived driven by the very personable Pedro, and we used his winch and ours in various combinations, putting chains on his wheels and any other trick we could imagine, but only managed to eventually pull both trucks next to each other, more firmly stuck than ever.
Pedro took off on foot, also promising to send help. Shortly we noticed that the ocean seemed to be getting closer, and realized that we were in a tidal flat. Terrified as the water rose to almost 3 feet deep, we sat on top of the camper and read and re read our tourista insurance policy in detail, as fishermen in boats cruised past laughing at the sight of two trucks stuck in the middle of the bay. Finally deciding to go for help, we left Doug behind to watch the truck and Topher and I sloshed off to hitchhike into Ensenada.
Stalked by starving dogs and mocked by locals who honked and threw stuff at us, our hitchhiking had been mostly hiking and so by the time we finally made it to Ensenada, everything was closed. We called our parents to let them know we were alright, and headed back to the truck in the dark.
Our return trip was even more frightening, as the dogs seemed more aggressive and the locals seemed drunker. Our last ride, out into the now empty bay was on an old Chevy chassis loaded with guys with rifles who were cruising the mudflat hunting something. They had no headlights, but one of them hard a big sealed-beam lamp jumpered onto the battery with which he scanned the surroundings.
Finally we realized the truck was gone, and the hombres, of whom we were at first petrified, but who now were our amigos, dropped us off at a little trailer park near the highway, and we headed back into Ensenada.
By now it was the middle of the night and there was no traffic at all, just the dogs snarling in the darkness. Exhausted and about ready to try to find some ditch to hide in, our terror turned to ecstasy when we saw Gumpert’s truck come rolling down the highway.
Doug explained how Pedro had returned with another tow operator who pulled both trucks out, and then demanded $200, which he didn’t have, so they “impounded” the truck and our gear, and locked it in their little garage. Doug knew how freaked out Chris and I would be, and so after beguiling the guard with his guitar playing and a stirring duet of Cielito Lindo, he was able to convince the guard to let him take the truck to search for us, holding our SCUBA gear as a deposit. After cruising up and down the road for hours, and just a few yards before he was ready to give up, he found us.
The next morning we went in to the insurance office to get them to pay the tow company, but they refused. By then, we had been though so much, and had read our policy so carefully, that we knew we actually were covered.
Formerly obedient children, we by then felt enough like ‘men’ to stand up to the dismissive insurance men, just as we had the hungry dogs, flooding tide and all the rest, until they agree to pay, and we were finally able to go home.
So, buck up your Courage, and get ready for the challenges of the New Year.
Happy Holly Days!
December 30, 2013
Today is Atonement
We think of this last trinity as the Days of Awesomeness. We are, each and every one of us, awesome manifestations of billions of years of evolution of this amazing and mysterious universe of which we are a part.
It is our duty to this magnificent heritage to make ourselves and all that we touch as awesome as we possibly can. None of us is, or ever will be, perfect in this pursuit, but when we are less than we wished we could be, we should not become discouraged or cynical, we should just atone, and hope for forgiveness, most importantly from ourselves.
I have been living with my older sister for the past decade or so, and it has been a really wonderful arrangement. We get along so well, know each other so well, and despite each of our failed marriages, we still have someone to come home to, a helpmate with which to share our lives.
I love her deeply and am so grateful to her, but I also have a sister who I have not seen for almost 30 years. She was angry with me and cut me out of her life, and I have to confess that I was a little grateful for that, as our relationship had been, especially since our father’s death, very difficult.
I have a temper. I am not alone in that, but I am a big, strong and powerful person, and when my eyes are blazing with anger and I am trembling with restraint, I can be very, very scary.
She knew just how to push my buttons and I would become angry and lash out at her. I know I still feel that she was more to blame for our conflict, but the last thing she communicated to me was that she felt she was a victim of my anger, although that was almost 20 years ago.
Last Holly Days she reached out to my grown children, and took them out to dinner. She had not seen them since they were babies, and she expressed real gratitude and hope that they could once again be in her life.
I am not sure I want her back in my life. It has been so long and I am used to things the way they are, but I also still love her and want her to be happy. I know it takes two to tango, and that I certainly have considerable responsibility for that conflict we had 50 years ago when we were kids.
I am not sure how to atone for my part in that, except to say how sorry I am that I hurt her so badly that she would separate herself from my kids, who I know she has always loved very deeply. So to her, and to anyone else I may have hurt in my life, I ask for forgiveness, and offer myself to atone in any way I can.
Happy Holly Days, and may you find all the awesomeness you deserve.
December 31, 2013
Today is Forgiveness
The power of forgiving is awesome. We seem almost compelled to forgive those who show remorse and offer apologies.
Traffic is an amazing microcosm of human interaction. Moving in traffic is a compelling way for us to experience and understand our role in the dynamics of culture, and even the universe: the ways we merge and yield, or don’t, the way the freeway flows seems to resemble the behavior of gasses and obey Boyle’s Law.
In our cars we feel an inexplicable privacy (perhaps because most interactions are extremely fleeting) and a clear and powerful sense of autonomy surrounded by all that steel and horsepower. It is the most dangerous thing any of us do, and for it to work at all requires us to surrender that autonomy to our most strict of rules conduct and civility. Still, most of us have been the victim or perpetrator of some level of road rage; from cussing out the guy who cut us off, to violence over a contested parking place.
In using traffic to teach my kids about our social contracts, especially from a game and systems theory perspective, we would sometimes do little experiments where we would study how people reacted when these standards of behavior were violated. I would ask them to watch the reactions to my bad behavior (generally unwitting) in face of the driver who had been wronged.
What we saw was a universal reaction of anger, but also that a little wave of apology, a recognition of “my bad” almost universally resulted in seeing that anger instantly melt away, resulting in a corresponding wave of forgiveness. On the flip side, ‘flipping’ other less generous hand gestures always resulted in a marked increase in their anger.
Interestingly we found this to also be true in reverse, even when we were the victim, and the other driver was covering his guilt with transference, that wave of conciliation – of spontaneous and unrequested forgiveness, always drained the anger from our partner in the dance, just as an insulting gesture always escalated it.
Contrary to Eric Segal’s silly trope, love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry, it means ALWAYS having to say you’re are sorry. We are all responsible in some fraction for almost every conflict we find ourselves in, and offering an apology, saying sorry for that part, is almost always the road to forgiveness.
Joyous Forgiveness, Happy Holly Days and may all your trespasses be forgiven.
January, 1 2014
Today is Redemption
I think Campbell’s Monomyth, and all the various iterations of the Heroes’ Journey, actually miss the end point of our story lust. What we really all seek most desperately in stories, myths, and indeed our own lives, is to be redeemed, to be healed. No matter the level or perception of our own freedom or mastery, we all hold doubt about the rightness of our paths, the potential of concealed evil in our actions for which we yearn to be redeemed.
As our calendar resets today, and these High Holly Days come to an end, hopefully, we have sought to understand ourselves and our place in the world and have resolved to make it a little better in the coming year. I know for me this ritual of examination, celebration and communion always leaves me feeling a little more steeled for the future.
I am moving to Berkeley today to take a new job with All Power Labs helping some old friends make a success of a noble effort to promote and distribute small-scale biomass power. APL is also an effort to spawn a bit of a hacking culture around issues and technology of power, energy use and generation, something so sorely needed given this moment of time we find ourselves in, on the cusp of unprecedented energy instability and its consequences.
So Jolly Redemption, and for the first time this year Happy Holly Days!
Nesdon, over and out.
2012
December 21 2012
Happy Hollydays!! Today is shortest day and longest night of the year. Tonight, at half past midnight, the sun will be at its lowest point in the sky.
Today is also the first day of our celebration of the 12 days of Holly Days. Our Hollydays principle for the day is Unity.
We are and always have been one people of one one planet, blood cousins to every living thing that has ever lived. We are each and every one of us, every man, woman, child, beast, bee and bug, members – single cells if you will – of the exceedingly rare and wonderful being that is life on earth.
December 24, 2012
Today is HOPE
The first of our xmaz trinity.
And doesn’t it spring eternal? It is a cognitive reality that Hope abides, carrying us over our rough and dark passages.
Hope is what makes positive reinforcement so much more powerful than negative and what distinguishes optimism from pessimism. The first joke I remember my father telling me was about two little boys in a room full of horse shit. One sat despondent at the filth, the other dug about gaily, exclaiming “there must be a pony in here somewhere”. It didn’t really seem funny to me, more a profound and abiding lesson in the power of hope and our ability to manifest it.
Happy Hollydays!
December 25, 2012
Today is GENEROSITY.
You reap what you sow. Another value that becomes inescapable after even one week on the Playa.
On this day that many people celebrate as the birthday of Jesus, how sad and ironic is it that most of the politicians and public figures who claim that tradition most loudly, lack generosity so emphatically.
At my father’s funeral, there was a large flower wreath that read “Goodbye Santa Claus”. He was a bohemian and an atheist, a hedonist and aesthete whose greatest joy in life was pretending he was the real Santa Claus.
A curmudgeonly old Jew (whom I loved), Ira Katz, owned the toy store where my dad held forth as Saint Nick every year in exchange for gifts for me and my sisters. Ira and my dad would get to know all the kids who came into his store and just what they wanted for xmaz or chanukah and they would share this knowledge with the kids’ parents.
But there were always a few who had fallen on hard times, and to whom the knowledge of their kid’s desires was a just dagger in their hearts. Ira would give my dad the gifts they knew these kids wanted, and they would put them in a big red velvet sack. Then he would put on his santa suit, glue on his beard and show up, unannounced, at these families’ homes on xmaz eve, where he would deliver the gifts he and Ira had picked out.
That booming laugh I mentioned yesterday was a particularly convincing Ho ho ho, and with that, he would then just turn and walk away, leaving those kids with delighted joy and wonder, and their parents with tears of gratitude.
December 25, 2012
Today is GRATITUDE.
I sat last night, next to my sister, in our warm and beautiful home, across a table full of delicious food, from our 3 kids, all wonderful and special people: beautiful, strong, kind and intelligent.
What are the chances that 4 billion years ago, scattered globs of stuff from dying stars should happen to coalesce into ball, just big enough to hold onto its atmosphere, and just far enough from from a young star so that water would remain liquid? How many gazillion globs of stuff there are, and how astonishing that this glob, should be in just this place at just this time?
What are the chances that after dividing some gazillion times over that 4 billion years, two cells should somehow fuse together, and turn into these astonishingly wonderful beings?
What are the chances that they should have each dodged a gazillion moments of potential oblivion from rogue viruses, careening buses, cometary impacts, angry psychopaths or their own stupidity?
The answers my friends, are blowin’ in the wind, and I don’t really give a flying f**ck what they are, I just know I am damn grateful, a gazillion times over, for the lives we get to share, against all odds.
December 27, 2012
Today is TRUTH.
I am in love with the truth. She is a tantalizingly beautiful woman my heart aches for and whom I lust to know fully. But the limit of the consummation of this love and lust has been but the slightest glimpse of her magnificent panties, seen in a fleeting instant as a serendipitous breeze lifted her skirt for just a moment, barely suggesting the wonders hidden behind that tiny silk veil.
I will never have her, but I hope I will continue to pursue her for the rest of my life, and perhaps beyond. I pray that I will never let my frustration at her insolent coyness set me off her scent, and more, that I never stop trying to know her, really know her, and not settle for my own fantasy of who I wish she was. I pray that I never pretend that her vulva behind those panties are perfect and unblemished, that her scent is of flowers and not flesh. I know I will never know her and must be content just to pursue her, satisfied in her mystery.
The truth is the first of this third and reflective Hollydays trinity, which forms the principal values I use to gauge the worthiness of our goals. And the truth is the worthiest goal I can imagine.
December 28, 2012
Today is LOVE.
An old friend, whom I had not seen for 35 years, stopped by yesterday. It was a delight to talk with her, and the love we felt for each other, as nascent, nearly platonic and fleeting as it was, was as evident today as it was way back then.
One of the things we shared was our love of the Coen Bros.’ take on the book of Job, A Serious Man.
[Spoiler alert] The climax of the film, is when Larry Gopnik (the eponymous protagonist) finally manages to get a meeting with wise and fabled Rabbi Marshak, who then only quotes Darby Slick:
When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joy within you dies
Don’t you want somebody to love.
Of course the Slick clan, back in 1965, was probably singing more about the carnal variety, but just as in my post yesterday and as in this wonderful film, Love is an undeniably powerful force in our lives, and inextricably fused in its most exalted and basest connotations.
I have this abiding faith (and I abide very few things on faith, in fact only the three principles that make up this 3rd trinity of Hollydays) that love is in fact a spiritual panacea. Saint John notwithstanding, we may need a bit more than love, but not much.
Happy Hollydays
December 29, 2012
Today is COURAGE.
Last night we went to see We Bought a Zoo, which was really wonderful, and surprisingly apropos to this trinity.
One of the life lessons the dad passes on to his son is that if you can just commit to 20 seconds of courage, you can change your life. It was inspiring to me, as someone who must frequently buck up my courage in social situations, to realize that 20 seconds is actually probably enough.
How much less terrifying to see the object of our fear as a brief hurdle rather than a long, white-knuckled journey. And indeed, once the die is cast, it can often be all downhill.
So as we close out the year, let’s try to remember that those boogie men that keep us trembling under our beds, are only monstrous in our anticipation, and that once we manage that 20 seconds of courage, we will usually see that they are just one more little challenge that we proud apes can easily surmount.
Happy Hollydays
December 31, 2012
Today is FORGIVENESS.
So hard and so easy. Think of all the horror that vengeance wreaks, and then how at their heart, hate and anger are just ideas and feelings, fleeting and transient. We have more control over our inner lives than we like to use.
In 2002, my first day on the Playa was daughter’s first day at Vassar. It was also the first day of listing my house for sale, a house I had shed literally cups and liters of blood, sweat and tears to birth. But after that week sailing around the floating world in my canoe car, the first thing I did when I got back into the range of the default world was to call my ex wife, and give her our house.
Since she only wanted me to sell it so she could use her share of the equity buy a house for herself, I figured why not just take the house we had built together, which she did.
A few years later, when she wanted to move to Oregon to be with her first granddaughter, she decided again to sell the house. By then I was living next door in the house we had built for my sister, and I begged her to sell it to us. She refused, and then to add insult to injury, also refused to split the proceeds of the sale with me.
Now a few years later, the stinging grief I felt at losing the houses, has abated, and I tell myself that I am over the whole episode. But my ex has just returned to live in Topanga, and her proximity raised some bitter feelings in me.
As a Hollydays gift, I printed a couple of short stories I have written in which she is a sympathetic character. She is an amazing person, brilliant, insightful and loving person, and I wanted her to know how I had portrayed her.
But then, a couple of days ago, talking to my daughter, who has been visiting for Hollydays, my hurt and resentment oozed out in my tone as we talked about her mom, and I realized that those feelings had wounded my daughter.
I hope she can forgive me for that thoughtless injury, and I hope she knows that despite those residual hurt feelings, I will continue to try to deepen my forgiveness of her mom.
Happy Hollydays!
2011
December 23, 2011
Today is Kindness. I think we are wired to reciprocate. Kindness will tend to be met with kindness, cruelty with cruelty. In Lost Horizon, the wonderful film by Frank Capra, Sam Jafee, as the High Lama, explains that Shangri-la runs on only one rule: Be Kind.
So many of the jaded and cynical among us seem to feel that kindness is a sucker’s bet. But they are wrong. I like to look at traffic as a metaphor and microcosm of human society. The consequences are heightened, the rules are more clear and simple, and we are each single actors. This allows us to see very clearly the consequences of our behavior.
Next time you have a chance to let someone merge, rather than rushing forward to close the gap, watch what happens, it is contagious. The fellow behind you will be more likely to do the same, and a nice smooth zipper merge may evolve. Then see how much faster it all moves, how everyone will get home a little sooner. It is an easy miracle.
December 27, 2011
g-d is powerlessness. g-d is childish. GROW UP and take responsibility for your own life. You don’t need your daddy to save you, save yourself.
So today is Truth. Our humpday of Holly Days and, for me the most profound of them. I hold the truth as the primary compass for my life.
We are all trapped behind a wall of subjective perceptions, unable to be certain of even the existence of an objective reality, let alone any of its details. And yet our ability to know the truth of this reality and to synchronize our behavior with it are key to our survival and to our ability to attain quality.
Knowing the truth is an imperfect and never ending struggle. As maddening as our fitful and uncertain relationship with the truth may be, we must be very careful never to think we have found it, always to remain skeptical and remember that we can never know it perfectly.
Knowledge is power and the truth can set us free, but these are both processes and not destinations. Stay vigilant and learn to enjoy the journey.
HOLLY DAYS 