Part of recovery is learning to be grateful for the good things in your life...so Thanksgiving isn't the only time of year that I make gratitude lists, or give thanks for my many blessings.
Today I'm enjoying a blissfully luxurious day alone at home, curled up on the couch with my new (and working!) MacBook Pro, alternating between online amusements and the lure of the HD channels on our TV. I've come across two things that have really touched me, so I'm sharing them both here with my readers.
The first, which many of you have probably already seen, is the "last lecture" by CMU Professor Randy Pausch. It's extraordinary. I've watched it four times, and every time it makes me laugh, and cry, and remember what's important.
The second is much lighterweight, but it made me happy. It's an MTV Unplugged performance by Bon Jovi, with two of the members of All American Rejects, singing "It's My Life." Better on a 46" HDTV, obviously, but still a beautiful rendition.
Enjoy. And may your Thanksgiving holiday be filled with food, fun, and gratitude. Mine will.
Happy Thanksgiving, Liz!
Ditto Liz! :)
Sigh - Bon Jovi not available from outside the US - http://screencast.com/t/SZ41FrNg Guess that's one more thing to be thankful for. For you, I mean - I like Bon Jovi - I didn't mean I'm thankful I can't watch it :-)
I watched bits of the video and it is ironic that I am out of the time I have alloted for myself for online sojourns, but even though (unlike apparently millions of other people) heard of Randy Pausch before, I certainly have this permalinked in my own system as something that I will watch and watch again.
I am sure that out of six billion people in our world there isn't just one Randy Pausch, but we don't see those who are hidden from our view, but they are out there and I am cogent of that fact, and am so because if we can be transformed by the ordinary that we don't know, then how much more so by the extraordinary that we do - and Randy Pausch is extraordinary.
I googled him and see that he is presenting one more lecture on more update on his "Time Management" lecture on November 27th, 2007 at the University of Virginia.
None of us really know what our timeline really is but life, and there are so many healthy people who do view life as a disease rather than as a gift and Randy Pausch certainly isn't one of them and kudos to him to embrace life so fully and with such grace and goodness that it is impossible for such an energy ripple not to flow through and serve to strengthen our so human hearts.
M.
This particular clip does not play in Canada where I reside, but You-Tube has plenty of links available, but I do not need to hear the song to resonate the connection between the two video's here. The opening lyrics of Bon Jovi says that this purely about the vitality of life and not the narcissism which media can become a magnet for.
While it is all to easy not to live up to these words because it is difficult to enshrine anything to its max as a way of life, this is why intelligent people return to such links as provided here as one means of ensuring a more pure heart - and because repetition is the mother of learning and because in nature entropy is a real factor, our bodies do need the renewing flow of cleanliness and hearts do need the renewing flow of goodness.
This ain't a song for the broken-hearted
No silent prayer for the faith-departed
I ain't gonna be just a face in the crowd
You're gonna hear my voice
When I shout it out loud
It's my life
It's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive
(It's my life)
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just wanna live while I'm alive
It's my life
People such as Damasio have connected emotion with reason as a means to demonstrate its importance to a society that preach either reason or emotional intelligence as a distinct faculty; and for far too often we have pulled these two things apart and label them being touchy-feely or living an objective life - but neither of these human faculties serve either sapience or sentience well in their own right, but our response to emotion and reason in combination certainly are as real and transformable as the lives we personally experience.
Thank You, my brief time visiting here has been extremely worthwhile as well as a honor that serves to raise the bar on my own intelligence.
M.