Sunday, December 28, 2014

ADAPTATION – NOT DEAD YET


WHO AM I?
     According to Darwin, we live our lives under the spell of Adaptation. Adaptation is the process by which we become accustomed to change as it slowly occurs. Our lives evolve slowly day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year.

Adaptation makes us "Slow Blind” we are hardly aware of the changes as they occur. We don't notice the incremental changes.

Many times the meaning of each of the steps which has led up to the future, or the magnitude of some those steps, is not observable in the moment they happened. Our brain weaves them into a seamless whole.

     Only later when we take time to look back at what happened, can we begin to become aware of the steps that led up to the present. Their import only becomes visible on reflection.



WHY AM I HERE?

     Last August, at 2 in the morning I set out to climb Longs Peak (14,265’) in Colorado. You climb at night in order to summit before 10 a.m. Deadly lightning storms start around noon. I didn’t intend on summiting but aimed to reach Chasm Lake (12,000’+) by dawn (6:30 a.m.)

     I am well adapted to living. I am “slow blind” to death. I rarely think about my own death but am shaken out of my adaptive, slow blind mode when a friend dies. Then, after a while, the day-to-day of life and living seals over our awareness of death and dying.

     The way I am attempting to become more aware of death so I can plan for my own, is to come close to death. Like this climb. This is my third “not dead yet” climb of Longs Peak since I had my heart attack in ’01. This is one way I do something very, very physically challenging, not to die in the process, but to live longer. Believe me, it takes me months of gym work to prep for one day’s climb.

The second thing I do is to spend time reading to my “dear departed.” On this climb I will arrive at dawn, read poetry to my “dear departed” and then read their names aloud to the mountain. Last time I did this, the mountain replied with beautiful colors of dawn.



WHAT DO I WANT?

     We seem to view ourselves as “special” beings that are disconnected from the natural world. While we may be hunters and fishermen that see how animals are connected with and Moon, we believe ourselves to be different entirely separate from one paradigm and immersed in a paradigm totally independent.

     Climbing a mountain at night will erase those kind of thoughts of somehow being “precious.” The trail was steep. I wore a headlamp. I was passed by young “trail runners” who literally ran around me! The temperature plummeted. My joints felt like I was pummeled in a full-contact football game. The altitude had a significant physiological affect – at 12,000’ my breathing was labored, my energy vanished, everything went more slowly, and then slowed again the higher I got.

     I finally got to Chasm Lake, crouched behind a rock and started to freeze while I waited for dawn. It was 40-degrees, showering ice pellets with 60-mph winds – the winds were so strong Rangers would not permit attempts to summit.

     Half-frozen, bruised, exhausted; I stood at dawn and read the poetry for my dead, and then their names, slowly. They seemed somehow near to me and because I was so physically stressed, perhaps I was closer to them because I was flooded with memories.

     Once you revisit memories in a powerful way and you see the good and evil in the path up the mountain of your life, the memories move further away and have less of a power.  If you can rise above the past, of the memories, you may also get free from the spell of Adaptation you have made in order to survive and protect yourself. This gives you the capacity to greet your future in freedom. With the rising of the sun on Longs Peak I made my way down back into my day-to-day life, feeling half-dead, but not dead yet.



© Copyright 2014, Jean W. Yeager
All Rights Reserved


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Friday, December 26, 2014

YEAR END REVIEW – THREE SIMPLE QUESTIONS FOR YOU, THE READER



WHO ARE YOU?
     Blogsplot and Google provide a lot of interesting data about you, the reader of this blog. I started this blog in December 2013 and really got underway in 2014.
The threesimplequestions blog finishes 2014 with nearly 1,000 readers per month – 600 first-time readers and 400 returning readers.
Most of you are between the ages of 25 and 34.
This morning the cumulative tally shows 70% of you are from the U.S. and 30% are from other countries.
Monthly total Nov. 26 – Dec. 25, 2014 = 1,123
United States
780
France
97
Ukraine
72
China
28
United Kingdom
13
Canada
12
India
12
Russia
12
Indonesia
9
Sweden
9


WHY ARE YOU HERE?
The ebb and flow of countries presence on the blog has been interesting watch over this first year and gives rise to fun speculation on my part. For example, as of this morning, 8% of total readership this month is from France, 6% from the Ukraine and 2% from China.
This is the first month France has been this present. It varies greatly because we’re not talking lots of visitors, so just a few can change the impression one can get from looking at the data.
Why the ebb and flow from different countries at all? I have reached out to some foreign groups whom I presumed might have some interest in some content.
For a string of days, a few months ago, the number of Ukranian visitors were nearly as plentiful as those from the U.S. I was surprised. Before that, China was very active. I asked my son, a techie 30-something, why he thought Ukranians would come to my blog? He said they were either cyber-bots or hackers.  He suggested that Google translation software from some countries may picks my blog to calibrate itself for weird words. Nice. The weird word guy.
     Perhaps that was the case. French hackers have targeted my blog? Ummm.  What would French hackers want from my December posts? To read the Christmas Shepherds story re-telling? If so, welcome!

WHAT DO YOU WANT?
      This first year has been an exploration of topics, attempts to attract readers from the wide-open World Wide web. Some have said that having nearly 11,000 readers for “THAT STUFF YOU WRITE” is remarkable. I’m amazed and grateful. It’s like making a record album – you create it and put it out there and see what happens.
     And, as I say, each month roughly 60% of all readers are first-time visitors and 40% are frequent flyers (if more than once is “frequent”). Visitors look through the posts and spend quite a bit of time. Is it general curiosity? Or, are you looking for something specific? I have a few packages in the back room of my brain I could bring out if I knew you wanted plaid? Short sleeves? Garden tools? Travelogues?  Descriptions of Texas haunts? Oh, ALL of those? No-problemo.
     Thanks, mi amigos (I put that in for the Google translation software to see what it does with two languages at once.)

© Copyright 2014, Jean W. Yeager
All Rights Reserved


Thursday, December 25, 2014

NEW YEAR’S CONFESSION RESOLUTION



WHO AM I?
     Okay, I am warming up for a New Year’s Resolution but have to start with a confession.
I have just (barely) returned from the most disgusting place on our planet - and I am embarrassed to say it is beneath my side of our bed!
I felt like a CSI investigator and that I should mark each one of these artifacts as evidence.
To my eldest son age 36, mystery over! I have now found the missing stuffed toy.
To my daughter, your hamster can now rest in peace.
To my youngest son, I'm SO sorry! (leave it at that).
I honestly do not remember sliding so many things under the bed so I would know where to find them. I found them okay, that part worked. But skis and snow shoes?
I suggest each one of you clean under your bed, oh, at least ONCE every THREE YEARS. That's not too much to sugest, is it!?
Sorry to unload on everyone, but I just had to process for a moment before I put the breather-unit back on and get back in there.

WHY AM I HERE?
     To share if that’s what we call shouting warnings to social networking passers-by these days.
There was so much dust under just my side of the bed, my vacuum clogged. Scooting on the carpet charged my shoes with static electricity so when I stuck my feet under there – Static “Ugh Boots.”
Forget the 8-pound, Orrick -  go for the 28-pound ShopVac. Better yet, that thing the dental hygienist uses that just sucks the stuff up so you never see it again. Get the Giant Sized one that can handle several pair of old slippers.
I can now confirm that the Theory of Evolution applies to dust bunnies. And, as they grow they get ‘tude: these were large and angry at being interrupted.
The Law of Thermodynamics which says that matter is never destroyed but only changes forms unfortunately also applies to someone’s thong which went missing. (I thought it was a thong – thorta looked like one.)
Those menacing, glowing little eyes which were in the “Calvin and Hobbes” comics?  THEY ARE STILL THERE but under YOUR BED.

WHAT DO I WANT?
I am working with a patent attorney on the rights to the entirely new products and species that I have brought out from under my side of the bed.
Take a squirt-tube of Avon “SkinSoSoft”, toss it under the bed; wait a very, very LONG time, then squeeze. Voila – SkinSoYuck!
I have discovered what grows in old Ben and Jerry’s cartons -  “Cherry Gar-salmonella”. The National Institute of Health called dibs on that.
Your head may be bald but the land beneath your bed doesn’t need a comb-over.
Now you know where you should look when you lose your sense of humor. A word of caution: it doesn’t look today like how you remembered it.
My New Year’s Resolution? Besides the obvious one which will soften the glare in my wife’s eyes...?

© Copyright 2014, Jean W. Yeager
All Rights Reserved


ON SALE NOW
Jan – June 2014 threesimplequestions Blog Posts
Are Available In Book Form 
"Th3 Simple Questions: Slice Open Everyday Life" 
Available at
http:/www.th3simplequestions.com
Available at Internet Retailers 
By WestBow Press
6x9 Perfect Bound Softcover @ $11.95
ISBN: 978-1-4908-7124-0
6x9 Dust Jacket Hardcover @ $28.95
ISBN: 978-1-4908-7125-7
E-Book @ $3.99
ISBN: 978-1-4908-7123-3