I've realized just tonight that people have stopped listening. For whatever reasons their listening capacity is limited, or they've filtered it through their lens so much they don't know the difference, but people aren't hearing other people for what they're really saying, more and more, and it's affecting their judgment on all range of things, personal and professional.
It's happening in my own life, with my own family and then out to all the people I love the most, where I'm not getting through to them like I want to and they don't seem to get where I'm coming from completely; the way I am trying to explain it is not working.
When I signed on to be a journalist at my high school student newspaper, "The Redbird," in little old Loudonville, OH during the early-80s, I took it seriously! I thought I was being a journalist!!!
But you know what was in my heart at the same time? I wanted to be an actress!!!! I wanted to go to New York City and suffer all the slings and arrows (like eating beans from a can, literally in my mind!). I was a huge fan of the old movies at the time. I started my habit with them in high school. My favorite people in life were Doris Day, Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, etc., etc. They were my "peeps", believe it or not!!!!
I like to think of myself as "old school" about things. While my father was in his heart very much against it, he allowed me to go to Ohio University (where Paul Newman attended) with the outset plan that I would be a theatre major. Thankfully I saw right away, as in the first two quarters of my freshman year, that I wanted OUT of theatre "crowd."
I guess I transferred my interest in the theatre (along with my physical transfer to Ohio State for the Spring quarter of my freshman year) to an interest in being a "Journalist." I took it from TV shows like "Mary Tyler Moore" and "Lou Grant." But I took it with the same amount of passion as the thought of me being a star some day!!!!
I was unbelievably influenced in this path by several retired-- high-rank in the trade of journalism-- generals of the trade, in fact, and I can instantly know them; I can name them by name just like I would in my sleep! Henry Schulte, John Clarke and Paul Underwood (who died in a house fire in New Jersey the same quarter I was taking his advanced class on how to write an editorial column, including obituary columns!)
I ended up writing an editorial about Underwood's sudden death that ALL of my favorite professors admired and said captured him. These men were highly successful and highly respected men at some of the WORLD'S largest newspapers, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Chicago Daily News.
I always think if it weren't for my favorite-of-all professor Schulte . . . who was the Sunday Editor of the Chicago Daily News when it 'was put to bed', to use a newspaper term, for the final edition going to the presses for the evening for the final time--I wouldn't have had the drive I needed to get into the real practice of the trade.
He taught me all the bolts and nuts and let me know every step of the way that he was there for me and was rooting me on. The thing is, he suddenly announced he was going to retire at the end of the year--only months away from me finishing my junior year! It came as a total shocker to me!
But he was there, in the very last week of his tenure, to meet my mom at a ceremony where I was given a prestigious scholarship for, get this, my ongoing "Leland's column" I wrote that went campus-wide and carried much controversy, ending up in hundreds of letters sent to the student newspaper at Ohio State University, The Lantern.
I am always grateful to the student editors at the time for posting both negative and positive letters about my writings. The letters, as I say, were in the hundreds and ultimately led to a full page in The Lantern being devoted to them!!!!!
here's an old post and new article tomorrow:
My news feed tonight had a headline from the L.A. Times that I couldn't resist: "Stanford scientist, after decades of study, concludes: 'We don't have free will'. It was a great read for any dispensational Bible believer and I will share my insights about it tomorrow. In the meantime, here is an interesting article I posted a year ago, almost to the date, and notice the advice is given to read a book because you're forced to concentrate on the words on the page:
"We are blissfully unaware of how blessed we are to have the most expansive variety of resources in the history of humankind constantly at our fingertips," says Rayn Khan of the University of Minnesota (marketing department) in today's Wall Street Journal.
"Living in the Information Age, we must conform to the reality that enterprising minds prioritize access to high-quality information and, with lower attention spans, can digest this information at increasingly rapid rates.
"Being able to understand complex ideas in spite of reduced attention spans is producing people with efficient models of comprehension and a skill set built for impromptu problem solving.
"Ultimately, it is up to individuals whether they want to strengthen this instant information-processing muscle or whether they want to devalue this intellectual advantage for the sake of short-term gratification via the consumption of trendy but pointless content."
*****
In the same Wall Street Journal article, a woman from Macalester College, Maddie Heinz, reasoned, "Why are we always on our phones? Because tech moguls and social-media developers designed a piece of technology so addicting and damaging that we can’t handle concentrating on real life.
"We shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves for being easily distracted; developers created this technology to be addictive. But we can resist by making real efforts to slow down our consumption. Reading a book is an easy and simple solution because it forces us to concentrate on the words on the page. There’s nowhere to scroll."
Patrick Barry, Georgia Institute of Technology, aerospace engineering, concluded in the WSJ piece, "Long attention spans brought humanity the work of Einstein and Newton; let’s stop allowing technology to change us and embrace deep thinking."
*****
Here is a study I posted at the bottom of this blog entry from Nov. 1, 2022:
"If your mind is programmed by error, it's going to produce some real predictable emotions and desires that come out of error," says Richard Jordan. "Dumb, bad, erroneous thinking authored by your old sin nature comes from the 'sin that dwelleth in me.' Jesus said, 'It's by the heart the things that come out of a man defile a man.'
"The things that defile you are not the places you go and the things you see. What defiles you is the response you have to those things in your heart.
"Instead of programming the mind with error, program it with truth, because programming with error causes you to produce some actions that are counter-productive.
"If I program my mind with truth and facts, then I can take actions based upon faith that will produce some fruit and the feelings show up later.
"Have you ever noticed that your feelings . . . I have never walked up to an elliptical machine and said, 'Man, I'm just so happy I'm here.' But there's a strange thing. If you get on it, in about 10 minutes, you think, 'This wasn't near so bad.' About 20 minutes later, you say, 'Well, you know, I think I can do another 10 minutes.'
"You get the body and the endorphins going and you feel differently about it. Emotions do that. They'll follow, but you had to make that choice over there. They're not to be the ones that inform you truth; your mind is to be programmed by God's Word.
"Volition is a function of our will where we make choices. We make choices based upon what's in our mind; this memory center we have. Those thoughts become reality to our emotions because emotions don't think; they're dumb. They have no intellect; they are only designed to be responders to what you're thinking.
"This is critical. You think about something, you have the information, you make a choice what to do based upon the truth in your heart and your emotions see that choice that you've made and say, "There's reality," and they respond appropriately.
"When they respond, that's what they are for--the word emotion is for motion. They are to produce activity but they're not to be the source of the action. When they become the source, where the action comes from, all of a sudden, rather than the truth residing in your mind being what your will makes its choices based upon, your emotions become the ones running the show.
"The 'tyranny of emotional revolt' is when the emotions say, 'I'm going to be the one to sit on the throne and I'm going to be the one who decides how we respond and what we do!'
"You face a difficult situation and your emotions say, 'I know what we better do!' and your mind says, 'Okay, okay, okay, okay.' Your mind begins to think your emotions know what they're talking about so your mind begins to think what your emotions are feeling is true.
"What's your will going to do? He's got to make choices based upon what your mind is programming, so now your will winds up making good choices or bad choices?
"Well, it might be as good of a choice as you can make under bad information, but the problem is the whole source is backwards. So now what's running you? Error. If you can get that concept in your thinking it will change everything."
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