Our truly amazing youthful complexion serum has been absent from Evan’s Garden site temporarily and I am returning it today with the intention of resurrecting it.
I owe you an explanation. Ingredients for it aren’t just pricey, they’re so expensive that I have to time restocking with an overflowing bank account.
Some are awfully rare. One oil in particular has, if my searches have been in-depth enough, only one source, a farm where it’s grown and extracted.
As a rule, I can plan to cover As Young As I Feel expenses. However, with having moved, a right time to buy them has not presented itself. Rather than omit things from the recipe, which is essentially reformulating it, I took the serum off the site. (If you knew how I put formulas together, you’d see that removing ingredients is out of the question because the whole thing, by the addition of or removal of anything, is altered into something else, into a new and different concoction.)
How’s this for a solution? My idea is:
If you want As Young As I Feel Serum, place an order for it — I’ll return it for now to the site so you can. If you love it, get as many as you like.I will reserve the funds from your order for the ingredients purchases and make it available to you as soon as I can. (I want my serum, too!)
Here’s a Coupon Code: WANTAYAIF to save 10% on the serum. It is good through Sunday.If there is another sale, these offers cannot be combined but in any case, you will be able to save.
If you are an Evan’s Garden Fans Club Member, I apologize but I cannot honor the club discount for As Young As I Feel just now. If you want to help with this now, call me and I’ll help you place an order at the 10% discount.
It will take quite a few orders of the serum to cover the costs. I think we can do it because it’s a popular product.Of course, any order you make (of anything) will help toward this. But if you love this serum, speak up now, please.Should we be unable to raise enough to cover the needed supplies, I will contact you to see what we do from here.I think we can pull it off, don’t you?
So, if you re game, run over to the website and place your order.
I’ll take it from there. And thanks for your help and vote of confidence!
Save on your order of Evan’s Garden handmade items:
Any order, save 4%
$50 — save 8%
$175 and more — save 14%
Apply Coupon Code SPEC140629
Cool FreebieslWith each $100 you spend (after discount and before shipping) get a FREE Eye Color Powder or that 5-gram pot filled instead with a Mineral Rouge Powder. We won’t know to do this for you unless you tell us to, so llet us know in the Comments Box as you checkout that you’ve earned a Freebie(s) and your shade preference.
Please tell your friends in person, on blogs, forums and social media about Evan’s Garden. That’s a very supportive thing you can do for us. And thank you!I just learned about Instagram. Are you familiar with it?
My Morning RoutineTick, tock, tick….Brrring!Cockadoodle doo!
Oh, my gosh, morning already…
Okay, up and at ’em, me!
This account of how I use what products in the morning may be interesting to you. And then, it may not. :o) So it’s here to read if you want to.Once I accept the fact that my head is not on the pillow, I get to the bathroom, wash my hands and pick up some Tooth & Gum Powder to put on a tooth that’s been painful again recently. With the toothbrush, or my fingers after pouring some into my hand, I get plenty of powder onto the trouble spot. I’m going to leave it there for a while.
Because I know it might mean surgery (No!), I do this twice and perhaps three times a day.The idea is to hold it in your mouth (spit some if you have to, that’s fine) while you get ready in the morning (or take your evening shower), then spit it out. In this way, the powder stays in contact with the area for 10 or 20 minutes.
Morning, face! Hi, DreamSoap! I use a clean wash cloth and purified water. (Velvet Fruit & Flower Scrub and Simply Sensational Masque are evening treats for me, once or twice a week).Being of a supposedly mature age, on goes As Young As I Feel Serum and Ma Jeunesse. I may layer on some La Creme de la Creme or Creme Rose. Each is unique and my skin calls for what it needs.Pretty often, I mix some The Perfect Rose in there somewhere. I top it off whatever I’ve done with a little spray of Skin Perfection Mist. Sniff…ahhh.
I use enough to do the job and for my complexion, that’s never gobs. Still, when my skin is dry either because of weather or health, I use more.
Oh, man…a pimple.If I have a blemish (doesn’t that sound better than “pimple”? ;o) I apply First Aid Ointment. I only need Clarity Spot Serum if it’s bad. The ointment has made pimples go away so fast and marks disappear (or not become marks).
While straightening my bangs a few months ago, I burned my forehead pretty badly. All Better, Honey has healed the burn. There’s a very faint hint of it still so I’m continuing with it. After cleansing and moisturizing, I rub a bit on the burn area. A bit later, I wipe off any brown goo (let’s face it, ABH is a brown goo! LOL). Some ABH stays on the skin but is not visible.While I am into the ABH jar, I apply it to any bruise. I bumped myself quite a bit while moving. This salve has clears up those bruises.I am not much for foundation but I use some over any spots and maybe a little under the eyes. With my skin moisturized, it’s easy to spread.
After some mascara (I know, we don’t carry this) and Rouge Powder, either 13 or 9 for me, perhaps 5 (depends on the season and outfit) or Shea Butter Cheek Tint if I have been able to make off with a bit of it, I turn to my wild head of hair.
This mop is color-treated. I look so much older if I leave it grey. Some people look great with grey hair. I look like me in an old hag costume. :o)
It’s blond not just cuz blonds have more fun ;o) but because darker shades of hair color are considerably more poisonous than bleach-lighter colors. And because grey as it grows out doesn’t show as much against blond as against brown.Anyway, back to my routine. It’s time for Crowning Glory Conditioning Pomade only on days when I have shampoo‘ed and so forth. Happily, I don’t need to do the whole time-consuming hair prep daily because my hair doesn’t need to be washed every day.BTW, the best shampoo for me used to be Dry. After a few months, my hair was no longer dry. Now I use Normal.
When I first created the Hair Be There system, I needed it myself. Hair loss is a frightening and depressing reminder of our vulnerability. I am so happy that I grew back my hair where it was vacating the premises (right where a lion would have ears!). Now I just use the Scalp Oil once in a blue moon if it seems as if I need it.
Chester does not do this routine every morning.
Pomade is needed by me only on shampoo days. To apply it, I melt a very small amount between my fingers and dab that (light dabs) over my hair in different spots. Then I rub my hair, one part against the other, making a real mess of it, to spread it well. When I’m done, any remaining pomade helps soften and protect my hands.Tangles — use a wide-toothed comb and I bet your mother also warned you not to tug. Start at the bottom, moving up as tangles are gently taken apart.The next step of the daily morning routine is a once-through brushing of my hair and arranging it — and that’s that.
There is a hair care ritual that I enjoy now and then. Our mothers and grandmothers told us, remember? that for beautiful, shiny hair, one should give it 100 brush strokes a day. Doing this helped our Victorian predecessors achieve a well-kempt look; in those days, women washed their hair much less often and brushing well to distribute the oils was necessary to keep it looking cleaner.I love to do this, though, even if the reasons for it are different now.
You might want to try it. Brush 100 times (or so) from the scalp to the ends, from the back to the front, every which way. Your scalp gets ooo-ooo so tingly.If you have any hair loss, go very gentle with this.
The repeated brushing both relaxes and energizes me.Beyond that, the 100-stroke brushing is indulgently pleasurable and, because I suppose my grandmothers and probably theirs did this, it wraps me in sentiment. I feel thoroughly feminine.Do you often hear, “You can watch TV while you do this” as a selling point? For this, TV would oppose the mood. I like to hum and imagine myself in a white lace nightie and robe such as our tea lady wore in her private chambers.
Still with me?Hey, what are you doing in my bathroom?! LOLOkay, it’s time for Amazing Balm for Dry Skin to amaze my knees, feet and elbows, my lips and if it is dry weather, my whole mug. It’s an addiction. The leftover gets massaged into my hands and wrists. I reapply if I think of it during the day.
Like an old grannie, yep! I have a touch of the rheum’tism in my hands. I read about emu oil for arthritis and I can report to you that it’s been helping reduce inflammation and pain.
When dressed, I grab the Certainty Deodorant Powder. My fav is Romance but I go for Lavender, too. I need only a smallish amount.The spray is wonderful, too, but I happen to prefer the feeling on my skin of a soft and fragrant powder.I get some into my hand and apply it by reaching in and putting it on under my clothes. This way, any powder that falls lands on the inside of my clothes and that’s perfectly okay.
I’m washed, dressed, spruced up and ready. Time to spit out the dental powder. I’ve probably spat a few times already…you just have to holding that in your mouth for a while. I use water (purified, have it in the bathroom in a glass bottle) to rinse out any brown blobs from my mouth. Finish it with a small sip or capful of Tooth & Gum Rinse. If I don’t do the rinse now, I do it before I hit the sack.
Some days are perfume days, you know?Embrace! Beach House! Bouquet de Reves! Rose Enchantment!I seriously love to wear the perfumes.
Now at this point, I used to apply Nail Oil. It gets put on and left to sink in for a minute or so. Why did I stop? Because my nails grew so long and strong, I couldn’t play the piano without hearing loud clicks. Some people are best with short nails.Voila! I’m gahgeouss! Or at least ready to get to work. :-DEven though this may seem like a lot, it goes fast. A little blob of cream, pat, brush, swish…done! And all the while I’ve been treating my tooth.
I’m very interested to hear what and how you do your own routine. Write me with your story and any questions.:o)Evan
P.S. A health tip: For some good exercise, run, don’t walk to the website to place your order! :o) We so appreciate that and love serving you up these goodies.
There is an action that our bodies do that is automatic and to which we usually give little conscious attention: breathing. There is, however, a way of breathing that’s terrifically more efficient and more relaxing than the way many of us breathe most of the time. We probably don’t want to bother placing any attention on how we are doing our breathing; yet there is a way to take in air that supports well-being and it is quite different from how we normally do breathe. Learning (or re-learning) and practicing this breathing technique can bring us deeper and more full-body relaxation and considerably improved health.
Not that all breathing is the same. It suits the situation: when we’re tense, our breaths might be shallow or gasping. As we approach sleep, our breathing slows and deepens. When we do aerobic exercise, we tend to breathe from the chest, just as when we’re frightened or excited.
But take a look at the way that small children breathe (when they’re relaxed). Next time you have the chance to observe a child peacefully sleeping, watch for what on the child’s body rises and falls with breathing. It’s the abdomen, not the chest.
I went to a chiropractor about 25 years ago now who spoke to me about breathing. She pointed out that we learn as we grow older to breathe from higher up, from our chest. Quite without realizing it, adults tend to hold the diaphragm frozen. Women may get the idea that they look more alluring breathing from their upper torso rather than their abdomen. But I can assure you that it is best to break the higher-chest breathing habit.
In many cultures, breathing is considered synonymous with life, the physical animation we call life and with the spirit. However that may be, it is certainly of prime importance to health and well-being. The action of inhaling is meant to bring in fresh oxygen to be absorbed into the blood and from there circulated to all the organs, to every cell in the body. With every exhale, we emit carbon dioxide into the world and this, happily, nourishes the plants, makes the world greener.
When breathing is shallow, as is upper-chest breathing, we don’t dump as much toxic gas through the exhale and old, stale air tends not to get cleaned out. On the contrary, when we suck in deep draughts of air from lower in the abdomen, the lungs clean out old air faster and the blood gets far more oxygen. Looking at this holistically, at the whole effect of it, breathing naturally (deeply) creates a consistent internal rhythm with which all our systems function in harmony.
Natural, healthful and relaxing breathing is diaphragmatic. It uses the diaphragm muscle, the muscle which separates the lungs from the abdomen. When we breathe from the diaphragm, the ribs expand as the lungs fill with air. Diaphragmatic breathing brings air down far into the lungs. Here it is that the oxygen exchange is most efficient and thus the blood best enriched. Breathing deeply from the diaphragm relaxes and helps energy flows throughout the body. The rhythmically moving diaphragm muscles can even massage the abdominal organs, helping energize and tone them.
Here is a quick check you can do to see how you are breathing: Put one had on your abdomen and one on your chest. Inhale and exhale and note what moves. You want your abdomen to push outward as you take in a deep breath and to pull in as you exhale.
More on the benefits of diaphragmatic breathing: when we breathe properly, blood pressure decreases and the heart rate slows, our muscles relax, digestion improves vastly and all this goodness may help ease anxiety…we calm down. Diaphragmatic breathing helps reduce the frequency of hot flashes by 50% as per one study. Breathing deeper helps us sleep much better, improves circulation of the blood and increases alertness. Working with the breath can assist people to overcome addictions.
Retrain your body to breathe properly
Here’s an easy breathing exercise that helps teach us the habit of diaphragmatic breathing and after a while makes it once again unconscious, effortless, as it should be.
Find a time and place to do this where you will not be disturbed.
You can do this exercise sitting up straight or lying down. Eventually your breathing will switch over, you’ll have replaced shallow for deep breathing. I suggest that at first you place a hand on your abdomen while you do it. Later you can drop that action out.
1. Take a deep breath through your nose. Feel the air flowing into the farthest, deepest recesses of your lungs.
2. Notice, be aware of the energy from this breath flowing to every part of your body.
3. Feel your muscles relax as your abdomen expands outward.
4. Do not hold your breath, but when your lungs are full, begin to exhale slowly from your nose (some say that exhaling should be done through the mouth but it is more relaxing for the purposes of this exercise to exhale through the nose). As you do so, your abdomen will move inward.
5. As you exhale, be aware of the toxic air leaving the body and stresses dissolving.
Repeat 1 and continue.
Make sure also that you’re well hydrated as dehydration interferes with proper breathing.
You can extend the length of time to inhale and exhale and also how long you do the exercise for. Doing two or three times a day is extremely relaxing and beneficial. Of course, the more regularly you perform this exercise, the easier it becomes to adopt natural diaphragmatic breathing as the body’s normal, automatic breathing method.
This exercise is a helpful way to start and end other exercise routines, too.
See below also for some aromatherapy breathing aid ideas.
A Tip on Singing
As a singer, I took lessons for a short while in order to be able to sing a cappella (without accompaniment) and without a mic for many hours at a time. It turns out that in order to do that at all, I had to move to abdominal breathing and abdominal singing.
I was amazed to learn that when we push up from the deep-down diaphragm muscle to move air out of the lungs up through the voice box, a mechanism at the bottom of the diaphragm engages automatically, causing a natural reflex as irresistible as a knee jerk. This reflex places the vocal cords into proper position, for beautiful and more effortless singing. You want your vocal cords, like two ribbons pulled straight, good and taut, placed right next to each other yet flexible, so they will vibrate in the air stream. This singing produces a naturally better voice, eventually clearer and more powerful.
The other way to sing, where you use the throat muscles to control the vocal cords, may bring tension to the area and may lead to damage of the vocal cords especially if one is singing loudly (as in rock music) or long (as in opera, musical comedies or long performances). Using the throat not the diaphragm can so irritate the vocal cords as to swell them. Singers using their throats like this can get blisters and welts on their vocal chords. These can prevent the vocal chords from lining one right up against the other, where blown air will cause them to vibrate and produce a tone.
When severe, the vocal chord bumps can be removed surgically but the operation is quite chancy. One risks losing one’s singing voice by abrading the vocal cords and causing blisters and one risks losing one’s voice with the surgery. I don’t know how she is now, but a few years ago I heard that Julie Andrews had lost her incredible voice after a vocal cord operation she chose to undergo. I cried so for her. I’d lost my voice due to fungus taking hold in my lungs several years ago…it was gone for an emotionally torturous three years. (Got my voice back when I created SuperImmune Boost™ Tonic and took it often to handle this, by the way.)
Almost incredible to me is the fact that returning to the diaphragmatic singing method can itself clear up vocal cord sores and return the voice to its natural, resonant sound. Wonderful!
I am very glad after all that I lost my voice after my first day’s singing those 8 or 9 hours. I’d not have found out this great data. See, I’d awakened with no voice and another day’s full performance schedule. Knowing he was being trained by the city’s opera coach, I called our quartet’s bass and whispered my situation to him. With just one exercise he taught me, I took my throat out of the equation and triggered the proper vocal cord position with my diaphragm and voila! about an hour of drilling brought my voice back.
I’ve found that this method, singing from the diaphragm, helps to relax the singer, too.
Again, this is natural for small kids
I also learned then that children sing using their diaphragm, naturally. They later “learn” their way out of this.
Essential oils can help
By the way, there are essential oil blends that help clear and soothe the breathing passages. Certain essential oils can help ease muscles spasms that can occur in the breathing apparatus from tension, allergies and so on. Mrs. Breathewell’s™ Chest Rub is a blend I created which can be rubbed on the chest and throat, also around the nose and sinuses, but best not too close to the eyes, to help open those passages.
The appropriate essential oils also can help clear mucus from the air passages, nose and throat. (Do consult your naturally oriented physician if you’re having trouble breathing, of course.) I make an air freshener called Ice which contains amongst several other good lung essential oils, eucalyptus and peppermint and is great for breathing.
Most people can breathe easily in a forest, So tree essential oils, such as cedarwood, cypress, fir and pine, can help us to breathe easily. When sprayed or diffused into the air, a blend of lung-healing essential oils can help purify the air and make deep breathing easier. The micro-particles of essential oils remain airborne for hours, too, continuing to destroy bad bacteria and viruses. Plus, most people really enjoy their smell. Ahhhh!
Take a deep breath
The old advice for when we’re nervous or frightened — to pause and take some deep breaths — makes good sense. Breathing properly is a super way of defusing stress and helping the body to operate as a harmonious whole to attain greater health.
I hope this information helps you and yours. Write me to let me know, OK?
The following is an essay I was moved to write. It’s relatively long so read it if you’re so inclined. If you read it, let me hear from you, OK? If you disagree, I truly welcome your viewpoints, but please remember that we all have a valid human right to express our heartfelt opinions. Just tell me yours. I am interested in that.
IS WEALTH INHERENTLY BAD? This week, with Steve Jobs’ death at a relatively early age and Wall Street protests, I feel it’s important to create one’s own viewpoints and avoid generalities that one may hear. Generalities and proclamations not made entirely rationally are all over the media and it’s important these days to wear logic and ethics armor. To expect to be swayed but not to let one’s feet slide with the undertow of mob mentality. Yes, it may be hard to hold one’s ground but it is vital. Suddenly lots of people cheer wildly about how horrible someone is for not paying forward (read on) and what do you and I perhaps feel drawn toward? Is there an urge to pipe in with the throng? Sure, an urge. Yet it is not an urge to permit to become action beyond taking note of it.
I have been hearing this week that it is bad to be rich.
Would you fault a child in school who had come up with a great and strikingly original science project, chastise (find fault with) him when people applaud and reach to him to find out more and get involved? And if people gave him some money to go on to further research and study?
If your child had made a killing with a lemonade stand at a school baseball game, would you take him home and require that he share all his earnings with every child in school? Would that encourage him to repeat his enterprise?
If your older son takes the initiative when his siblings refuse to help and does all the dishes himself in anticipation of your smile, hey, HE deserves the hug or prize, right? If you insist that he share it with the undeserving brothers and sisters, the prize loses value, his work is sucked of validity, his morale may well have probably tanked. He has good reason to register a mannerly complaint about that, don’t you think? And if a parent were to diffuse the reward by including those who did not earn it, the non-helpers get the idea they can get something for nothing and that sloth pays. Not a good road to head down.
All that pertains as much to a society as to a family.
A free market tends to let people gravitate toward what they want and simply requires that one has enough responsibility to look into the worth of what one buys. A free market will adjust toward rewarding what’s actually valuable after some time. Information channels do need to be left open. False advertising ought to be actionable. And the truly good stuff will be learned about. The actual innovators, with just laws and a lack of serious corruption, should receive rewards more than the copycats who also may yet serve a purpose and perhaps forward the line of discovery.
There is the factor of product quality — that which is touted as good, is it in truth good or is it a con-job? Well, eventually or soon, the market will sift through the scams. Thank goodness for word of mouth and reviews. Word regarding unworthy or evil products and services spreads (as long as people can communicate) and world of great products spreads as fast.
The point is, those who work, who produce worthwhile things, who contribute and create, deserve rewards. Those who don’t help don’t merit a reward. Happily, most people seem to feel and know they need to contribute: contribution and help make life bearable, make life better the more one gives and gets, make life delicious. It’s interchange, at the heart of life itself.
Children love to help. It’s a natural urge. To the contrary, to disallow people their contribution is to mash them into degradation.
No one likes to get something for nothing, really. It’s upsetting, unbalanced, it violates one’s deepest integrity, even if that integrity has lain concealed and inactive for eons. At some level, people know the injustice of taking without exchange.
So when Steve Jobs made (or helped make) work that monumental science project in his garage way back when and brought it to market, didn’t he deserve riches when people wanted it in droves?
If we say, money is evil, then we say, reward or good attention for giving people what they need and want is bad. But how could that be bad? It’s not evil, by any stretch, to offer something good to others.
And hey, if wealth is bad, we sure run ourselves ragged trying to attain it. LOL
THE RICH BY WAY OF CRIME
Some have stolen, or sinned their way to the top, cheated, lied, murdered as our dear Rockefellers, Rothschilds and Morgans, it has been told, did to get to their pinnacles of wealth — and since then, some others we won’t mention here, following in that “grand tradition” — pun in there, by the way. ;o) All right, when it’s known that someone has done that, the rewards of wealth appear to us ethical people as unearned, right? The man who is wealthy by harming, stealing, cheating has robbed others — as in the banking and wall street bailouts now to be paid by taxpayers and taxpayers children. I call that theft!
Hooray for those protesting this!
The criminal wealthy, let’s refer to them as that, have to do a lot of conniving, lying, and paying PR men to cover their crimes and make them look like good philanthropists all out for everyone’s benefit. They’ll get things named after them and they come to be revered. Creeeepy.
A criminally rich person or one who supports or condones this sort of thing also robs himself. He deprives himself of well-being, spiritually and mentally where it really counts. He forfeits his peace of mind, no matter the practiced smile and white teeth for the public.
But a man (or woman, I am using the generic word, “man,” as in “mankind”) who creates something that others need and want as proven in the marketplace (as Steve Jobs did) and which has not done more harm than good and so on, that fellow has EARNED his money. It’s honest money. And when you (I mean YOU) earn a bunch of money (let’s say “when,” not “if”), won’t you hold to your right to spend it as you want?
ENTITLEMENT It’s easy to say that we all should get a piece of the pie. It is better to see that we all should contribute something of value — help pick the fruit, make the butter, fuel the oven, clean up afterwards — bake the pie and earn our pieces of it.
Entitlement appeals perhaps if we let pity for those in trouble cause us to expect they could never help themselves or could not be brought closer to learning or regaining ability. Feeling that some people should be entitled to get without giving can be viewed as right, also, if we truthfully don’t assess their potential abilities as of much value. I have spoken to some people about this point and at the end of their thought line was just that: people are too stupid, people are too lazy, people are too incapable.
In fact, as shown by handicapped people who learn a skill and young kids who master sweeping a floor, etc., just about anyone can learn or get off his rumpus and whip up some way to give to others something they want and thus make a living.
A Socialist society, for all idealism, leaves out these facts…that people have innate willingness and people like to contribute; that people feel degraded if they are deprived of the opportunity to give a good exchange or to earn their own bread; and that people can learn skills unless maimed or aged too much. Then they need to be tended to and a society can certainly pick up that cause.
HEAR, HEAR FOR CHARITY WHEN NEEDED! Sometimes people need a leg up. Of course! Let’s give it! It is at least as beneficial to the donor as to the donated to, in my experience. Religious groups, churches, etc., Leagues of Lady Aardvarks :o), the Elks, the Fraternal Orders of Alien Animals, such as these have traditionally run these needed organizations to restore people to better ground. Food for the temporarily disenfranchised, homes for the lost and needy, OF COURSE! Charity! Help at Thanksgiving with yummy meals for the hungry, toys at Christmas for tots in poor families, etc. I do stuff like that whenever I can, don’t you? There are organizations that help keep kids off drugs and defend parents under siege by a government which appears to wish to dispense with those pesky parents who dare interfere with Big Pharma. Organizations to forward the arts, to save the oceans, etc.. Now, I only like to give to what I believe in, though. You, too?
ENFORCING HELP My feeling is that to enforce this upon individuals through taxes, to make a whole society have to agree with mandates on who needs help and how much should be given, and what kind of help (if help it is, really) and a society that does not permit people to decide for themselves is itself a way of saying, “You’re too stupid or selfish to help, so we’ll make you give.” As I said a moment ago, I don’t find that to be observably valid. And what if someone vehemently disagrees that a certain “cause” should be supported? Like Planned Parenthood which will be supported if the government ha its way, with our taxes?
People are good at heart and can be brought up to learn the more ideal behaviors and rein in the bad. I’d say that most care deeply about others. They can be appealed to and informed and wow, the help that flows is sometimes overwhelming, as when there have been catastrophes in the world!
Enforcing help is pretty much an insult to people and is just not necessary. Someone may have to man the phones to drive in donos but people will give.
THE POWER OF CHOICE
To REQUIRE someone to donate is, well, slapping on the shackles. I have enjoyed the rewards of being a giving person as did my father, most prominently, for he made a ton of money and helped create some of what Providence, RI has artistically happening now (its ballet, and I believe, some other arts activities.).
But no one had to twist his arm. These were HIS originated gifts. He saw the lack and he filled it out of love of humanity and art. And I can warrant you that, wherever he is, he’s in better shape for that.
But if I get rich and only buy a mansion in the Apple Core Mountains and become a permanent hermit, if being that hermit means that I have cut my own reach toward the world of others with spiritual scissors, well, hey, I feel I would suffer for it. We ARE alive as/when/to the extent that we connect, right? And that means help.
Now, I very briefly heard some talk on some news radio (if it’s news, I usually will change the station but I was on a longish drive) that some people are putting down Steve Jobs for not adequately “paying forward.” One certainly can criticize a very wealthy person for not doing that. He might be selfish.
There are universal laws in play here. If one doesn’t give back, well, isn’t it clear that one now robs oneself of the spiritual satisfaction that helping and contributing to good things uniquely gives? Okay, so that’s the punishment, ultimately, of someone who is miserly.
But one cannot force generosity and enlightenment any more than one can force a baby or a pet to love you.
So, to be honest, I don’t know if Steve Jobs was a philanthropist or a miser, but I heard it said or implied in so many words, he was rich and don’t we all know that rich = bad.
My first feeling is that WHETHER or not one Pays Forward is one’s OWN CHOICE, though. And WHAT one supports is up to no one but oneself.
But hang on…maybe Steve Jobs did pay forward! Do you really know? Did Elizabeth Warren, the Mass. politician, know positively, when she stirred the crowd against successful entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs? She put people down who consider, per her mistakenly so, that they have singularly caused their own success.
Ms. Warren pointed out that no one makes it alone, that the roads the goods move on are roads “we built;” that the employees hired were ones “we” got educated, etc. Uhhh, pardonnez-moi, but who is “we”? and why doesn’t “we” include the successful guy who also paid road and education taxes?
My jaw was too dropped to enunciate the “Whaaaa?” I was crying out mentally. A successful person is responsible for his success. He has stuck his neck out far. He has had to probe honestly and deeply to learn what works and what doesn’t. I’d even say that he’s as responsible for his success as the unsuccessful person is responsible for his failure, though his succeeding took a lot more work and smarts.
As a note, the unsuccessful guy is best to discover just how it is that he screwed up. Finding out the causes of failures is an unavoidable part of moving toward success and those selfish, successful guys must’ve done a lot of self-correcting in order to end up with a smash hit. ‘Course, Ms. Warren didn’t mention to the crowd any of these facets of success. Does she not know them?
I’ll give you the one fiber of truth in the poisonous apple she fed the crowd and it qualifies as hard fact: that others help. That one, tasty little snippet of truth was used to attract an unthinking crowd. It was the morsel they salivated at, bit into and which drew their approval. Moving on the truth that others assist, she maneuvered home her denigrating point, thus robbing successful entrepreneurs of credit for their successes and shaming them for not paying enough forward. It sickened me to listen.
What, think on this for a moment, what would less innovative, less endowed with genius, less driven people do without the visionaries and the movers and shakers of the world who CAUSE successful ventures and CREATE hitherto unimagined new tools and vistas upon life?
This was, of course, a generality, a vast put-down of successful business people like Steve Jobs who seem therefore to owe everybody. Everybody? Yes, you know, everybody knows…the great Unnamed Everybody. When she declaimed successful people for not paying forward, to the cheering response of the crowd, did she know and appreciate what ticks in the hearts of successful businessmen? And who is she to define what’s valuable? Or how wise is she in discerning what good effects may have rippled from Steve Jobs’ actions?
Maybe he inspired millions. Maybe the tools he put into the world have helped people connect. Maybe his creations have made art projects come to exist faster and better than if he had not done what he did. Maybe he donated to Antelopes International or the Fuzzy Organization for Serendipity of Cloud Meetings or whatever. I honestly don’t know about Steve Jobs’ philanthropy or lack of it and I am not going to bother, as that was his business but I DO know that what he helped create gave the world a big, fat lot. Whether you prefer Macs or pc’s, he did his part to enhance our world.
GENERALITIES Rich = bad. I just gotta tear this apart a bit more here, guys. It’s such bull-pukky, I can barely type it. Any statement, you could overall say, that goes “ALL (whatever) is always (whatever)” is a generality and when we buy into them, those broad statements made about a whole class of things or persons, those “everybody knows” “facts,” we are actually being mentally lazy, and underneath that, unethical. I think people know that claims that all whodjimafoogles swerve badly are untrue or partially true at best…and you see people who use this simplistic “thought,” you see them having to defend themselves, hard.
LOOKING & THE ACTION OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND
All it takes for a truth-seeker is inspection of the singular piece of humanity in front of his eyes. He has to LOOK and from there, if he wants, he may indulge in opining about (coming to an opinion) or judging what he sees. Pretty simple process that starts with “look” — but it’s not lazy.
Observation and contemplation are things that only an individual can do. I can’t say to even a smart, caring person, “Please think for me and I’ll be back in a hour to pick it up.” I won’t have thought it myself; it’s borrowed thought and not merely stale, it could be wrong. I’ll do my own contemplation, thanks! :o)
I love this quote, thanks to a customer of mine whom I connected with on Facebook:
“Iron rusts from disuse; stagnant water loses its purity and in cold weather becomes frozen; even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.” Leonardo da Vinci Wise and well put, eh? And this from a man who by observation alone drew in astonishing and accurate detail eddying water patterns of a stream, moving water passing obstacles, drops and so on. Look at what a master of observation can do. (Source of this is banzai.msi.umn.edu. which I was unable to access when I clicked link.)
TV A quick detour: TV is crammed to overflowing with generalities that, if inspected, have little or nothing to do with any one individual or even with most individuals in a type. It also spews outright lies and can boggle and confuse, can distort and at least distract from the real issues. It asks us to accept without thought. It appeals to and tends to bring about the lazy mind.
TV forwards concepts best squelched or eradicated. Stupidity…….and drugs, violence, promiscuity, envy, war, materialism, “peeping-tom-ness” or spectatorism, rapaciousness, purposelessness, nasty competition, natter (complaint born of one’s own carefully hidden misdeeds, as Shakespeare knew and others I can tell you about). Whew! Okay, I love some shows, especially old movies, good romantic comedies or sci-fi, time-travel anything but, what a lot of stupefyingly petty, false and degraded stuff oozes out of a TV set, eh?!
Any one rich person, as any one dark-skinned person, or Arab, or Jew, or old person, or salesman, or, or, or….is who he is, fascinating, dull, eager, apathetic, crude, refined, smart, stupid, happy, sad, loving, hateful…I mean, of course! And that can change, too. Prejudices are generalities. Decisions leapt to or chanted in advance of any actual looking.
We may love to peg things but when we do that automatically, we suffer and and the world with us.
A FEW BAD GUYS MAKE EVERYONE BAD?
I am all for the protest, as the bailouts were no less than criminal, cheating the taxpayers of this country and making these uber-wealthy (“uber,” “over everything” in German) people even more hyper-wealthy. Plus these particular wealthy people were rendered immune to natural consequences of mismanagement and theft, were saved from loss, bankruptcy, prison. Okay, fine. Yucky as heck but all right, that’s what went down.
No matter, some bad rich guys don’t bleed evil into other people by association, those who also happen to be wealthy or striving for it. Might such conclusions perhaps be tainted with jealousy? with an attitude of entitlement (the world owes me)? One thing I feel is for darned sure: it is not tainted with reason (sane, logical rationality is what I mean by “reason” here).
I have had my say. Sigh, ahhh!
_________________________
This week, I may have trouble getting right back to you with answers to your letters, but please do let me know what you have to say about this, OK?
One of the most enjoyable health “things” that we do in our family is to take what we call Sea Baths. These are baths in ocean mineral salts. Anytime we feel less than par, we fill the tub and soak. “Aahhh,” we sigh and promptly fall deeply asleep. Looking at ideas for a healthful and relaxed the holiday season, this valuable therapy comes to mind.
The benefits of ocean water have been known and used for thousands of years, probably since there were both people and oceans. Health seekers travel far to soak in the curative waters of the Dead Sea and other spots like mineral springs. Reported results are dramatic. Mineral baths, whether in the Dead Sea, in a mineral springs, at a spa or bathtub turned spa-at-home are a great and proven way to improve health.
WE NEED TRACE MINERALS
We have a need for trace minerals that is literally vital, even though the quantities of certain of them might only be minute. Trace minerals are in much shorter supply in food than they used to be when soil had lots of micro-organisms worming their way through it, depositing minerals on the way. And we need those minerals! They help virtually every part of the body to function properly. This includes nervous system function — trace minerals are said to reduce stress. Having the trace minerals requirement met may be an important part of the ability to get yourself a full night’s sleep. It’s not all of the puzzle but it’s a large piece. Continue reading The Value of Ocean Minerals
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