“When you completely identify with your role (mother…doctor…), then something vital is missing. If you play a role at work, you always have a secondary motive because the ego is at work. You’re not totally focused on the task at hand because there is some self-interest there. You want to protect yourself. You want to get credit for yourself…or use the people around you.”
Eckhart Tolle
Many years later, when Kevin was in his backyard with his children, his daughter Ava cried out, “Dad! Josie is cheating at Tag!”
Kevin said just one thing.
“Is that so?”
*Kevin the Complainer
I sat down to work on my Teachers’ National Board Certification.
I got a lot done:
Three loads of laundry, the dishes, my car, and refrigerator are clean, and my dog got a bath.
And now this post.
Ok. Here I go. I’m really going to do it.
The next day, Kevin approached Carlos and Minji.
“I’m sorry for my behavior. I want to hang out with you guys again. I promise I will never lose my temper and be a sore loser…or an annoying winner.”
“Or complain about the sun in your eyes?” Minji asked.
“Or grumble about being tired when you’re losing?” Carlos added.
Kevin promised.
Carlos and Minji accepted his apology and they all were friends once again.
Kevin watched. The wheels in his little mind were turning.
*Kevin the Complainer, to be published in March 2019
“Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference.”
Eckhart Tolle
“Yeah, we like you. You’re cool,” Minji hugged Lily.
*from Kevin the Complainer, my second book
Recently, I checked my personal email account address to see if it’s been used in any security breaches. My result: 10 websites with my email have had serious data breaches.
Check yours today and then change your password to include numbers and symbols immediately:
Oliver, who cited Walt Whitman as an influence, is best known for her awe-filled, often hopeful, reflections on and observations of nature. “Mary Oliver’s poetry is an excellent antidote for the excesses of civilization,” wrote one reviewer for the Harvard Review, “for too much flurry and inattention, and the baroque conventions of our social and professional lives. She is a poet of wisdom and generosity whose vision allows us to look intimately at a world not of our making.”
Her honors include an American Academy of Arts & Letters Award, a Lannan Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Prize and Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Oliver held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching at Bennington College until 2001. She lived for over forty years in Provincetown, Massachusetts, with her partner Molly Malone Cook, a photographer and gallery owner. After Cook’s death in 2005, Oliver later moved to the southeastern coast of Florida. Oliver died of cancer at the age of eighty-three in Hobe Sound, Florida, on January 17, 2019.
*This contents of this post come from Poets.org
Mary Oliver reminds me to look to nature whenever I feel humans are letting the world down. Rejoice in the strength of the trees and the persistent bloom of flowers.
-CCW
Kismet 