Where the Wild Things Are
“Where the Wild Things Are” is one of the most storied children’s books ever written and holds a very special place in my heart. When I was young, my parents sent me to my room regularly. Each time, I would sit down in the center of my room and concentrate for hours, hoping that – through strength of will – I could force the jungle to suddenly sprout from the stale white carpet. After I’d squinched my nose for so long that I began to feel dizzy, I would run downstairs and apologize to my parents and beg for them to feed me. Some things haven’t changed…
To me, “Where the Wild Thins Are” is more than just a childrens’ book, it’s an exploration that drills into the core of our shared humanity. It’s a book of love, fear, and struggle. It’s a book about basic human emotions that we all experience, but are often too proud to show.
All of this to say that this afternoon I discovered this trailer for a movie to be released in the near future. As soon I saw the trailer had been posted I became skeptical. How could someone make this book into a movie? How could this movie ever measure up to the the pedestal I’ve held the book on for so long? Then, I watched the trailer and realized that there is no comparing the book to the movie. The book will always be special to me, but this movie will provide me – and various others – with a new interpretation of how Max became the King of the Wild Things. It’s not that the movie will be better or worse than the book, it will be different and should be celebrated in it’s own medium.
This general theme has been something I’ve been struggling with lately. I’ve recently fallen into the habit of seeing things as “good” or “bad” rather than seeing the facts as they truly are. Watching this trailer re-focused my mind on seeing what is there, rather than focusing on interpreting what is there. This may sound wonky, but all this really amounts to is a simple recognition that each of us sees the world and then interprets what we see. Very rarely do we simply see what is going on around us and say “there that is.” So, I’d like to say thank you to Warner Brothers for taking on this project. I know many will assert that this book should never be made into a movie, but I think that’s the wrong thing to focus on. What we should do is look at this movie within it’s context, on a movie screen, and see what is actually there. All I ask is that you watch, observe, and enjoy the images as they flicker across the screen. I promise that if you do that you’ll find things that you never thought were possible.
Sad because it’s true…
While I don’t like to take political stands on this blog, I feel that this humorous video gets to the heart of much of what is wrong in our country right now. While separation of church and state is not overtly written into the Constitution, one of our founding fathers – and author of the Delcaraton of Independence and Constitution – coined the term “separation of church and state.” Thomas Jefferson had the opportunity to see – first-hand – the awful and destructive power that organized religion can have when it is used to promote intolerance. Many of our country’s founding fathers had forebears who left Great Britain due to religious persecution that ranged from legal sanctions to death.
This video tells this story in a painful and humorous way.
Getting into Action
Questioner: How can we put into practice what you are telling us?Krishnamurti: You hear something which you think is right and you want to carry it out in your everyday life; so there is a gap between what you think and what you do, is there not? You think one thing, and you are doing something else. But you want to put into practice what you think, so there is this gap between action and thought; and you ask how to bridge this gap, how to link your thinking into action.Now, when you want to do something very much, you do it, don’t you? When you want to go and play cricket, or do some other thing in which you are interested, you find ways and means of doing it; you never ask how to put it into practice. You do it because you are eager, because your whole being, your whole heart and mind are in it.Think on These Things Krishnamurti
On the Recent Unemployment Numbers
Republican Congressman from Michigan, Thaddeus McCotter, gives a powerful speech on the recent unemployment numbers and what they mean to our society. As you listen to him think about the following questions:
- What can each of us do to release our own entrepreneurial spirit in these troubled times?
- What must we demand of our government as unemployment rises and economic news worsens?
- Who do we want to be at the other end of this economic downturns?
The Bobby Kennedy Quote in the Speech:
“Even as the drive toward bigness [and] concentration . . . has reached heights never before dreamt of in the past, we have come suddenly to realize how heavy a price we have paid . . . in loss of the values of nature and community and local diversity that found their nurture in the smaller towns and rural areas of America. And we can see, as we enter the last third of the twentieth century, that the price has been too high. Bigness, loss of community, organizations and society grown far past the human scale-these are the besetting sins of the twentieth century, which threaten to paralyze our very capacity to act, or our ability to preserve the traditions and values of our past in a time of swirling, constant change. . . .
Therefore, the time has come . . . when we must actively fight bigness and over concentration, and seek instead to bring the engines of government, of technology, of the economy, fully under the control of our citizens, to recapture and reinforce the values of a more human time and place . . .
It is not more bigness that should be our goal. We must attempt, rather, to bring people back to . . . the warmth of community, to the worth of individual effort and responsibility . . . and of individuals working together as a community, to better their lives and their children’s future . . . if this country is to move ahead
. . . it will not be by making everything bigger, not by piling all our people further on top of one another in huge cities, not by reducing the citizen to the role of passive consumer and recipient of the official vision, the official product.”
Be Careful
With unemployment increasing by over 500,000 people each month it’s more important now than ever to be cognizant about how others see you. If you are on facebook, check out this video.
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