“The Pizza Meditation” now on BizCatalyst360

Once again good fortune prevails. BizCatalyst360 is taking my musings on life and sharing them with a larger audience.

In this case, The Pizza Meditation, a short piece about learning, caring, and giving.

In the guise of making pizza.

FYI, many people comment on the quality, flavor, and texture of my pizzas. One person wrote “…makes pizzas to die for…”

No need for that, of course, and do enjoy The Pizza Meditation on BizCatalyst360.

 

Intention (Parts 1 and 2)

Is it possible to be so present the world stops and waits?

This post originally appeared in two parts on the original ThatThinkYouDo blog, resurrected to the new ThatThinkYouDo, and then the ExpandedAwareness blog. I’m reposting it here as a single entry for a friend.


Part 1
I’ve been studying people who are “living with intention” for about thirty-five years now. Originally I found them due to my cultural anthropology studies. Now I’m finding a few of them in the modern world.

“Living with intention?” you ask. “What does that mean, exactly?”
Continue reading “Intention (Parts 1 and 2)”

What if Today is The Day You Make Oceans?

Make oceans form.

 
A favorite anecdote of mine is this:

A friend’s daughter is a concert oboist. No one else in the family ever demonstrated any penchant for music. One day he asked her what caused her to pursue music with such determination.
She said that when she was a child – she thought maybe three or four years old – the family went on a trip and met a friend of her father’s in a restaurant. She remembers that she was fidgeting because her mother kept telling her to sit still while her father and his friend talked.
This friend asked the waitress for an extra straw. He took out a pocketknife and made a few cuts in it, then put it to his lips and started playing music with it like it was a flute.
Real music. Tunes you could recognize.
He then gave her the straw and said, “Here you go. Play me some music so I can go to sleep when I get back to my hotel.”
She said she didn’t remember who the friend was but did remember that his ability to take a common soda straw and turn it into a musical instrument was magic to her. True magic and she never forgot it.
It’s also what caused her to pursue music the way she did, because she wanted to give others that kind of magic.
That friend was me. I’d been making musical instruments out of straws since I was a bored kid in a restaurant and had to ask my dad to borrow his pocketknife.
But what her story taught me is that we can never know how much the slightest act of kindness – or cruelty – will affect another’s life.

Continue reading “What if Today is The Day You Make Oceans?”