Before you were born of the week
It was on this day in 1981 that MTV — Music Television — had its premiere.
Meditation of the week
Fair play is primarily not blaming others for anything that is wrong with us.
--Eric Hoffer
As adults, we accept responsibility for our feelings and our circumstances. We haven't chosen our own troubles, but we have the job of dealing with them. If a man falls and breaks a leg, he might say to someone, "It's your fault, and I'll make you pay for this!" But that won't fix his leg. The healing still has to come from within.
Our impulse to blame others is an attempt to escape our responsibilities. We become overcritical. We want someone else to take the rap for our pain and our misdeeds, but this only delays our wholeness. There is no point in blaming ourselves either. When we first confront our discomfort directly and accept responsibility for dealing with it, we feel an inner urge to escape again. If we stay with the discomfort a while, a new stage begins -- the healing and acceptance stage. A feeling of wholeness comes, a feeling of being a real person, of having reached our full size.
May I not indulge in blame today - toward myself or anyone else. Instead, may I be strong and responsible.
Poem of the Week
Gil's Story
Gil tells you his story in the company truck
on your first job under his wing.
He cuts the engine and pulls
to the shoulder, which is alarming.
He's a big man who talks rough all day
to drillers, but you know he's kind—
everybody in the office says so. Gil's
a sweetheart, they say without elaboration.
He rolls to a stop and waits,
which prepares you, I think; it wipes
the fake smile off your face. He clears
his throat, then it streams like a steady well—
that lazy drive home from vacation,
his wife napping in the camper
before she and their daughter switch,
his careful introduction of the boy
who has drifted an entire lifetime
into their oncoming lane. It's beautiful
really, the way they crash into the boy's
car, how it parts the boy's curtain
of long blond hair and death anoints him
with a dot of blood on his forehead.
A single hubcap bounds like a tin deer
across the highway. Gil's frantic wife
pries the camper open to find their dead girl
whose eyes are closed as though
she's dozing through a horror movie.
Then silence. Gil turns expectantly to you.
As you sit speechless, he'll nod
at whatever sound or breath escapes you.
He starts the truck with a roar
and you're driving again to the field.
All afternoon he babies you with the pipes,
the pump, and the rig. And when you return,
the whole office comes out to greet you,
touching your shoulder, saying your name.
on your first job under his wing.
He cuts the engine and pulls
to the shoulder, which is alarming.
He's a big man who talks rough all day
to drillers, but you know he's kind—
everybody in the office says so. Gil's
a sweetheart, they say without elaboration.
He rolls to a stop and waits,
which prepares you, I think; it wipes
the fake smile off your face. He clears
his throat, then it streams like a steady well—
that lazy drive home from vacation,
his wife napping in the camper
before she and their daughter switch,
his careful introduction of the boy
who has drifted an entire lifetime
into their oncoming lane. It's beautiful
really, the way they crash into the boy's
car, how it parts the boy's curtain
of long blond hair and death anoints him
with a dot of blood on his forehead.
A single hubcap bounds like a tin deer
across the highway. Gil's frantic wife
pries the camper open to find their dead girl
whose eyes are closed as though
she's dozing through a horror movie.
Then silence. Gil turns expectantly to you.
As you sit speechless, he'll nod
at whatever sound or breath escapes you.
He starts the truck with a roar
and you're driving again to the field.
All afternoon he babies you with the pipes,
the pump, and the rig. And when you return,
the whole office comes out to greet you,
touching your shoulder, saying your name.
“Not that old” of the week
It's the birthday of filmmaker Ken Burns, born in Brooklyn, New York (1953), who has made documentaries about the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty, baseball, jazz, women suffragists, Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, and Frank Lloyd Wright, among other subjects. His nine-episode series on the Civil War, which came out in 1990, is considered his masterpiece. It won more than 40 major awards and more than 40 million people have seen it.
Video of the week
Puppies!
