On this day

June 14th

Auto-pilot

June 14, 2024

Auto-pilot is great. Presuming of course that one understands all the things that one is handing over to be controlled by the auto-pilot. Auto-pilot as a tool for relieving us of drudgery and opportunities for mistakes? Yes, please. As a way to shirk our responsibility to lead our lives in a fulfilling way? Not so much.

The reality is, behaviour change is hard, and many people have not been taught effective goal-setting. For example, someone might know that they’re unhappy and have intentions to change, but they focus on something too broad (‘I want to be happy’) or on what they don’t want (‘I don’t want to be depressed’). An ill-defined focus can lead to trying many things without following through on any one thing.

~ Kiki Fehling from, How to stop living on auto-pilot | Psyche Guides

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I wasn’t taught effective goal-setting, but I’ve got it sorted now. I find it super-effective to not always set clear goals. Set instead, aspirations. Better yet, identify inspirations and regularly update them.

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To love one true

June 14, 2023

It warms my heart any time I discover someone writing on the open web. But boy howdy is it a good day when it’s also someone I know, who I think more people need to hear from.

I write because I need to.

~ Jesse Danger from, To Love One True

I’m biased, of course. Most people don’t write out in the open (I’m not criticizing.) Being a someone who does simply means I understand the urge, and the challenge (and the fear) that goes into the pensive from which writing ensues.

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One day

June 14, 2022

One day I’ll be a filmmaker! One day I’ll be a famous artist! One day I’ll be a CEO! One day I’ll be a Creative Director! One day I’ll be a Venture Capitalist! And so forth.

Then you get to a certain age and you realize that the time for “One Day” is over. You’re either doing it, or you’re not. And if you’re not, a feeling of bitter disappointment starts hitting you deep into the marrow. Which explains why we all know so many people in their 30s and 40s having mid-life crisis’.

~ Hugh MacLeod

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Nonequilibrium?

June 14, 2022

I don’t know if you like parties. I don’t know if you’re organized or punctual. But I bet you don’t like rotting smells or long swims in freezing water. That is to say: People are different, but only in certain ways. What’s the difference?

~ “Dynomight” from, Are some personalities just better?

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This article is about personality types, and it goes down the rabbit hole, (in a good way.) We’ve all learned about the theory of evolution, and there are countless examples where it’s used to explain—or at least to try to imagine—how some specific feature of ourselves came to be so.

Way down in that article he mentions in passing that we—us, the people—might not currently be in equilibrium with the current selection pressures. This was a startling thought for me. Evolution can be fast—a gene mutation leading to a significant change in one generation—but I’ve always had the impression that it is most often slow and steady. I’ve always imagined a big-ship with a small-rudder metaphor. And I’ve always had the impression that who we are genetically, (the big ship) has its rudder set for straight-ahead. I’ve imagined that at some point in our distant past, selection pressures made us who we are as a species, and that was then. This is now, when we’ve been on a stable, no-changes evolutionary course for all of recorded history.

What if, let’s say around the time of the invention of the transistor and computers, the social pressures changed drastically. That is to say: Suppose that introduced a major change in the rudder’s position? Suppose we, the big ship with the big pile of DNA-encoded information, are right in the middle of a slow course change. What if right now, important and noticeable features of our biology and psychology are being strongly differentially selected?

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Impressions

June 14, 2021

Nothing but what you get from first impressions. That someone has insulted you for instance. That —but not that it’s done you any harm. The fact that my son is sick —that I can see. But, “that he might die of it,” no. Stick with first impressions. Don’t extrapolate. And nothing can happen to you. Or extrapolate. From a knowledge of all that can happen in the world.

~ Marcus Aurelius

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A deep sense of malaise

June 14, 2014

(Part 6 of 72 in series, My Journey)

You can harness and channel these needs, but a man completely ignores them at his peril. Modern men are told there’s nothing real about manhood — that it’s all a silly, outdated cultural construct — and they sure work hard to believe it. And yet they cannot shake a deep sense of malaise, and they don’t know why.

~ Brett McKay from, Where Does Manhood Come From? | The Art of Manliness

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I consider myself very lucky. I’m expressing my mid-life crisis in some pretty healthy and productive ways. Instead of going on a more traditional bender, I’m shaking off shackles and bindings that I in fact put on.

One day I realized that there is no longer anyone left to tell me what to do. Certainly one has responsibilities, but there are precious few of those which are immutable bedrock. You look at your life and think, “Look at all these ideas I’ve accepted.” When you pick idly at some of the threads, the whole thing comes apart, and you find yourself in a row boat on the sea — or on a bicycle on the open road (choose your own metaphor). On the open sea in a good way; You realize you are free, that in fact you have NOT always been free, and that there’s an awful lot of life left to live now that you’re ready to start.

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Flag Day 2013

June 14, 2013

Today is Flag Day in the United States.

National Flag Day commemorates Congress’s adoption on June 14, 1777 of the Stars and Stripes as the flag of the United States. Although not officially a federal holiday, Pennsylvania has declared it an official state holiday. (Huzzah Pennsylvania!)

HISTORY

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June 14th, 1885 – Bernard J. Cigrand, a then 19 year old grade school teacher at Stony Hill School, placed a 10 inch, 38 star flag in a bottle on his desk and assigned essays on the flag and its significance. He went on to work for decades spreading recognition of June 14th as a nation day of remembrance and observation of the Stars and Stripes. (See also, House Resolution 622.)

May 30, 1916 – President Wilson issued Presidential proclamation 1335, calling for a nation wide observance of Flag Day on June 14th:


Proclamation 1335 – Flag Day
May 30, 1916

By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

My Fellow Countrymen:

Many circumstances have recently conspired to turn our thoughts to a critical examination of the conditions of our national life, of the influences which have seemed to threaten to divide us in interest and sympathy, of forces within and forces without that seemed likely to draw us away from the happy traditions of united purpose and action of which we have been so proud, It has therefore seemed to me fitting that I should call your attention to the approach of the anniversary of the day upon which the flag of the United States was adopted by the Congress as the emblem of the Union, and to suggest to you that it should this year and in the years to come be given special significance as a day of renewal and reminder, a day upon which we should direct our minds with a special desire of renewal to thoughts of the ideals and principles of which we have sought to make our great Government the embodiment.

I therefore suggest and request that throughout the nation and if possible in every community the fourteenth day of June be observed as FLAG DAY with special patriotic exercises, at which means shall be taken to give significant expression to our thoughtful love of America, our comprehension of the great mission of liberty and justice to which we have devoted ourselves as a people, our pride in the history and our enthusiasm for the political programme of the nation, our determination to make it greater and purer with each generation, and our resolution to demonstrate to all the world its, vital union in sentiment and purpose, accepting only those as true compatriots who feel as we do the compulsion of this supreme allegiance. Let us on that day rededicate ourselves to the nation, “one and inseparable” from which every thought that is not worthy of our fathers’ first vows in independence, liberty, and right shall be excluded and in which we shall stand with united hearts, for an America which no man can corrupt, no influence draw away from its ideals, no force divide against itself,-a nation signally distinguished among all the nations of mankind for its clear, individual conception alike of its duties and its privileges, its obligations and its rights.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the City of Washington this thirtieth day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and sixteen, and of the independence of the United States of America the one hundred and fortieth.

1949 – In the summer session of the 1949 Congress, the House and the Senate agreed to H.J. Res. 170, a joint resolution officially recognizing June 14 of each year as Flag Day, and authorizing and requesting the president to issue an annual proclamation informing the American people of the occasion.

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