The Flow Campaign 3/20-3/27 Issue 2

                                   3/20-3/27            Issue 2

The Time Balance Question The Happiness initiative is in full swing and some of the results from the general survey in the Seattle area are now available on our website. The most glaring result was in the domain of Time Balance with the general survey results showing our lowest score.  The most challenging of the nine domains seems to be how to spend the time we have.  So today we will focus on some ideas and actions that will free up some of the most precious of our resources: our time. Americans spend the majority of their waking time at work.  We spend on average nearly nine and a half hours in some sort of connection to work.  We sleep an average of eight hours and the rest of the time we spend in various ways.  The non-work time of six and a half hours is cut into eating, relaxing and such with the largest amount going to watching TV.  We on average watch twenty eight hours of TV a week.  That comes out to about four hours a day. 1.     Give the Television a rest.  Do not have the TV on as only background as we get drawn in.  Only turn the TV on when there is something you wish to watch in particular. 2.     Do some morning routines at night before bed: coffee, showering, laying out clothes, make a to-do list for the next day.  All these activities will free up your morning. 3.     Plan ahead.  This includes making grocery lists, to do lists, and setting goals.  For every minute of planning we can get five additional minutes of work done. This week’s organization to check out is www.crosscut.com This week’s book recommendation is Jane Goodall’s Reason for Hope a memoir that chronicles Goodall’s journey towards peace. Sign up for the weekly newsletter here.		David Brooks Time Balance, Community www.townhallseattle.org Monday, March 21, 2011 | 7:30 – 9pm Lecture: What if everything we thought we knew about human nature is wrong?  The Responsible Business Material, Community www.sustainableseattle.org Thursday March 24, 2011 9:00 AM  - 5:00 PM The Responsible Business is about a new and strategic approach to doing business that holistically integrates responsibility. Congressman McDermott Citizen Chat Governance, Community www.sustainablewestseattle.org Saturday March 26, 2011 10:00 AM  - 11:00 AM Congressman McDermott will be holding constituent coffee hours in coffee shops around the city, and he’s decided to hold his first coffee hour in West Seattle.

I love life.

I'm not going to try and have a constructive blog here.  I'm just going to let the words come out as they come to my head.  Usually I have a theme, a plan, I don't go as far as having an index or an outline, but usually I do have a point I want to get across.  This is one of those times after all.

My heart is broken by what is happening in Japan.  The biggest earthquake on record and feared hundreds and possibly thousands dead.  I'm sitting here just stunned and broken.  I never understand the reason behind events like this.  I believe in a rational world of some sort.  I have to.

I was raised as a Christian of the classical sense and the one thing I took from that past was that at the very least their should be some reason behind what happens here on Earth.  There was a person in charge even if I now disagree with pretty much 80% of what that person says, there was a reason.

Natural disasters throw that idea out of the window.  There is no possible reason for an earthquake that kills hundreds or thousands and no benevolent creature would sit back and allow it to happen.  I just want to say that for the record the idea of a "master plan" that involves the deaths of innocents is evil.  Evil.

I am so in love with being alive.  I live everyday trying to squeeze in as much life as I can.  I don't like to sit still or just watch things past me by.  I have to live like it will end at any moment because it can and it does.  I'm so grateful to the people in my life who have put up with my foibles, problems and short comings.  I wouldn't know what I would do if I didn't feel the love of the people close to me everyday in my heart.

This world is all we have.  This life is what is important.  This place we live is all we are sure of.  We have to seize everyday.  We need to be open, kind, and take the actions that are necessary to enhance our lives.  I'm moving forward.  I won't live in fear anymore.  I'm going to do the things I want to and I am going to help others on their own chosen path.

We only have each other.  We have to see the hurt and the pain and the suffering and do something about it.  No wishes, or charms or wards will help those who need it.  We have to pick up the spades and the shovels and get to it.  No more waiting, no more delay.

I remember when the Tsunami hit in 2004 and the world was shaken to its core.  That disaster left 200,000 dead and South East Asia is still not fully recovered as if they ever could be.  I remember the blood banks in the United States turning people away because they had too much blood to handle from the donations that came spilling in.  That day was probably the proudest I've ever been of my country when we gave so much of our money, time and blood that we had to be turned away.  I've never forgotten the heart ache those days brought and it opened my eyes to the fleetingness of this life.

Some would say that the very quickness of life is the reason we should be aware or alarmed for the next one.  That argument makes no logical sense.  We are alive now, here.  We are experiencing the fullness of this world with every breath and every sigh.  I'm not waiting for Heaven because this place can be paradise if we stop the silliness and misguided notion that we are separate.  We have to be humanists first because it is the only thing we have control of.  We can do better and we can grow and we can take the blinders off.  See that we are all connected.  What happens to you is also happening to me.