Practice dying to live with perspective

When you say hello try and mean it.  It is a simple gift, but it reverberates to our marrow.  It sets the stage for good bye.  There is a part of Albuquerque called San Jo, short for San Jose.  I had a cousin who represented this area as a boxer.  He was born on this date.  As I have posted previously, he was violently murdered, wasting talent and a good heart.  I can see his grave marker, a concrete boxing ring with ropes and all, when I drive south on I-25.  He reminds me of the work that can be done in our Albuquerque communities.

I think of him when i am in a tough workout.  I try to think of the struggle he put up in his last hours alive.  I think of him when I can taste the iron in the back of my throat.  I think of him when each breath is in itself exhausting.  I think of him when my muscle are filled with lactic acid and they become unreliable.  I think of him when I reach that dizziness that only lets me concentrate on breathing and movements motivated by muscle memory.  My workouts finish and I rest.  I think to myself how that workout might be practice for death.  The anxiety of life is a hello to struggle.

Before each workout I get nervous because I despise the exhaustion and fatigue that leaves me vulnerable and cashed.  With every hello to a workout there is a deep connection to the living experience, the moment, and it ends.  It ends with what feels like heaven.  They call it a natural high and it is a reward for saying hello and trusting the good bye.

Happy Birthday Primo!

Perfection

The Catholic church has engrained in me a victim's mentality.  It never taught me how to be a champion.  I have for years felt it was better to lose with dignity than to believe in power and leverage.  Blessed are the meek, and pity the underprivileged.  I also recognize how those who persist and finish the race are cherished.  Be strong in spirit.  Where does our spirit live?  I believe it lives in my body. I must strengthen my vessel, without decorating it for parades. The bishops, the cardinals, and high priest all celebrate their vocation with robes, incense , and basilicas, I celebrate my revolutionary vocation with a fit body, mystical thoughts, and enduring spirit that tastes fatigue in all aspects of living.  So those of you who think it is better to be frail in body, I ask are you also frail in prayer?

Cooperation or Corporation

These two words are perplexing.  The American dream might be somewhere between. 

This morning's walk

Our institutions work very hard to empower us, and at times their expectations disable us.  I took a 100 level course this spring, biology 124.  It is typically filled with second semester freshmen.  I, being 36, was nervous, self conscious, and curious.  I was nervous that I would fail. I was self conscious that I was too old and would stick out.  I was curious about how the body works.  I put effort and resources into this course.  I am grateful to my peers, my professor, and my loved ones for supporting me through the experience.

  I thought about how stressed each student was before each test.  I thought about the fear of losing site of a dream because of poor scores in college.  I asked why do we pay so much money to fail.  It seems like a large enough portion of students are paying to try and learn.  It is as if our higher education is a casino.  You pay for an opportunity to win.  I am a father of two healthy and intelligent young ladies.  I am as patient as I can possibly be with their learning.  In turn I have learned to be patient with myself.  Should education lead to qualification?  If we are paying to learn concepts in a course, why don't we demand that we get what we pay for?  If we fail is it like buying a new car and driving recklessly?  Is learning a commodity to be capitalized on?  Is learning a privilege to be rationed to the willing?  Are poorer communities getting what they deserve?  Should we withhold from the willing and able to supplement the immature and naughty?  As long as education and learning are seen as qualifications and capital, then yes it is wasteful and foolish to spend currency on a delinquent customer.  Our uneducated youth will find new ways, new careers, that will likely be detrimental to the greater community.

It seems foolish to create obstacles that discourage or scare a learning student.  It reminds me of the horse and plow.  The horse plows because it is afraid of the whip.  Do the majority of students fear the whip of failure.  I didn't start learning until I failed in love.  It took an "F" in life's most fundamental lesson to help me see that learning is not to be feared but valued like a family heirloom.  There isn't a drop out rate, its drop over rate.  A learner may drop out of school, but they won't drop out of learning.  We never stop learning, we only stop participating in systems we continually are punished in.  This might be healthy if we think of learning as having a fit.  I think if we concentrated on where school drop outs land we'd have better information on how keep them healthy and contributing in productive ways.

Arguing to share

Do we as a culture need to convince, convert, or agree?  I find more often than not, that expressing myself leads to reasoning and explaining, more than it leads to collaborating and understanding.  I find value in alignment and agreement, but not for the sake of patriotism, legislation, or peer acceptance.  I think our individuality is a healthy part of remaining a symbiotic system.  I am interested in how often I am asked to discern what is right and wrong.  I desire more times that confront the duality of things by embracing the potential of things.  I desire times when we ask questions like "what can be anticipated" versus "is this right".  This is where the scientific mind reveals the paradox between knowing and not knowing.  Science does give truths for argument but in my understanding it gives information about complexity.  When arguments are held, more questions are answered and less are created.  Can we ask more question about sharing, versus questions that fool us into conclusions?

Inspired by my brother's graduation from college

The educated man 

 The goal of the school is to make uniform, hopeful to distribute equally a curriculum. The curriculum is only a framework for the synthesis of education. Is education the goal? It is not for a learning man. Curriculum is like a vascular system feeding the parts of the body with known goodness. At times forgetting it is helping the body grow. It is the mind that harnesses the power of curriculum. The mind bridges the gap between the outside world and the inside world. 

The process is learning. Learning is the adaptations, integrations, failures, and inspirations that revitalize our understanding. When we are replenished with newness some ideas concepts must die. There must be a letting go. Intellectual maturity is a cycle. Take what is known, feed the body, absorb the world, experiment, and adjust the curriculum with thoughts and ideas. 

The goal of life is learning, school must not limit itself to an institution. It is the light of the day shining on objects wanting to be understood. It is the darkness of night holding silent to be felt. It is violence of confrontation anxious to be feared. It is the paradoxes that humble us. Like the sun being a night star shining so bright we call it day. And like the night that reveals the multitudes of days in the universe. It is eternal. 

 The goal of the educated man is to get swept away in the spirit of learning, not the accrual of knowledge?

 Dedicated to my Brother Peter Estrada.