Be careful what you wish for....

We all have items on  our wishlist that we would like to acquire.   Then perhaps we get some of them, and we wonder: why did I want this?
I have a funny case in point.

A few years ago, a well-known retailer advertised a multipurpose cake server, salad bowl, hors d'oeuvre server, and punch bowl.   I had to have it and put it high on my Christmas wish list.  I received, and everyone commented, as I did, how wonderful.  Can we borrow it for such an event?
Fast forward to a couple of years later;  the dish set was still sitting in the original box, which clearly showed all its uses.  I decided to unpack it.   It is huge and heavy.  Now I have to figure out where to store it.  Yes, its multipurpose functionality is impressive, but it is HUGE.   Where do I put it?   I am not sure it will fit in my one empty Christmas shelf.  Empty because I have given away a lot of stuff to friends and charities in recent months.

Minor pet peeves

We all have pet peeves and they shift over time.   A couple of my current pet peeves are the following:

Iconic.  Have you noticed that everything currently is iconic?  Performances, films, appearance?   Listen at how often this word comes up in the media.

Another pet peeve.  When you ask someone for a website or a link, they start out with www.    Why?  All websites have www.  Do they think you have never looked something up before?  Don't they realize that the various systems (explorer, google, firefox) all insert the www. automatically?

Why are we surprised?

With the latest data revelations about the federal government, the most surprising element is the surprise that people are expressing.

We are in an era of social media, where many details of our lives are publicly displayed on the internet, from our birthday to our feelings of frustration often expressed publicly on Facebook.   Retailers know our preferences and market them accordingly.   Amazon regularly tells me about products/books related to earlier purchases.  
It is only natural that with all these resources that the government can monitor as well as Amazon or other retailers.
The only surprise for me is why they did not uncover the Boston bombers earlier, with their international calls, trips, etc.   Hopefully, the next time the Russians send a tip, our security agencies will heed it.  

Defining and Living Our Priorities

Most people (including me most of the time) tend to think that defining your priorities means sitting down seriously with pen and paper (or perhaps a notebook computer) and outlining your life's priorities.   That is a good exercise and useful to do from time to time.  I recommend it in some of my leadership classes and workshops.  It can be good to do a "time out" to define and re-define one's life priorities.

But our priorities in reality are manifested in what we do on a daily basis.   Just a few examples.  If we choose to linger over the newspaper and coffee in the morning before work instead of going ahead with our chores, that demonstrates a priority.   If we choose to go to the gym or grocery shopping on Sunday morning instead of church that too demonstrates our priorities.

If a man chooses to go out with the guys instead of playing with his children, he is revealing his priorities.  If  a woman prefers "girls' night out" to playing with her children, she too is revealing our priorities.

Instead of sitting down and thoughtfully planning the "ideal" life priorities, it is a better, more realistic exercise to sit down and record how we actually live our days.   Then we can look it over and ask:  what can I change?  What can I eliminate?   What are my priorities?    There are some givens:  work, sleep, etc.   Look at  your life.   Don't eliminate the basics but think about the other things in your life.  What is essential? What is dispensable?

A key is simplifying our life.  It can be done.  Not overnight, but a little at a time, perhaps over years.

We can start now by examining our lives and then asking:  what does my life say about me?  What are my priorities?   This is what I have chosen.   Is this what I want?     It is up to all of us to define our priorities by living them.

Why Do Little Things Bother Us?

I have spent years getting myself to be calm in most situations, and most of the time I succeed.  However, not always.   Sylvia Boorstein, the noted author and consultant, who combines Buddhism and Judaism, once said she is two words away from losing her equanimity.   She has spent years cultivated calmness and inner peace, as I have I.
In Sylvia's case, the two words are : "Hello, Ma," at the other end of the telephone!

Yesterday, I lost my calmness as well, when a charity to which I regularly donate wrote a letter telling me I was behind in my long-term pledge.   The fact is that I paid off my pledge early, and that apparently has caused havoc with their bookkeeping. 

For the next couple of hours, off and on,  as my tension rose, I checked three years of files on my current computer, and then went to my back-up hard drive to find older records.  By 11 last night I had reconstructed the whole pattern of giving, but had also given myself a good tension headache and a tenseness throughout my whole body.

Why?   Why do we let this happen?   I have no easy answers.  I think it is a dilemma that everyone faces.    So, we keep trying not to sweat the small things, but in the meantime, what do I do about this tension headache?