[remember -- once a month, whether I like it or not, I'm going to RAVE instead of RANT whilst up on my soapbox]
... my boss Katie O shared 'This is Water' with our team on Friday, what with it being the season of commencement speeches, and, having not heard it before, I knew it was something that I needed to pass along to as many people as possible.
Why? Because it offers up coping mechanisms which we all could use ... because it reinforces the power of cognitive therapy which I strongly endorse ... because it asks the listener to consider the possibility that the "fear of the scary other" that feeds so much hatred in today's world can be better managed by controlling your own thoughts and recognizing that "the scary other" has just as much of a story to tell as you do ... because it empowers the individual with skills to better navigate within the community (skills that seem to be fading rapidly from society).
And because he nails it when he says: "The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
Please consider doing what he says: Choose consciousness. Choose awareness. Choose freedom.
'THIS IS WATER' EXCERPTS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfw2Qf1VfJo
AN ARCHIVE OF COMMENCEMENT SPEECHES:
http://apps.npr.org/commencement/#/_
MAY I RECOMMEND A LITTLE COGNITIVE THERAPY TO HELP YOU ADJUST?:
http://www.cognitivetherapyla.com/CognitiveTherapy.php
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