Quote of the Day -- Judy Garland

Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.

-- Judy Garland

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According to Goodreads, Judy Garland (1922 - 1969), a Minnesota native, was the star of many classic musical films, was known for her tremendous talent and troubled life. She started out in show business at an early age. The daughter of vaudeville professionals, she started her stage career as a child.

Book Review: Reading People

Reading People by Anne Bogel is essentially a "Cliff Notes" to popular personality frameworks. Bogel takes a tour through The Five Love Languages, Keirsey's Temperaments, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, The Clifton StrengthsFinder, and The Enneagram. My primary mission for this book was to learn about the Enneagram because I am constantly encountering references to it and felt mystified.

I did learn enough about the Enneagram to fake my way through a conversation, but much to my surprise, I learned a lot more about Myers-Briggs. I first encountered Myers-Briggs several decades ago in a workshop at work. Since then, I've taken the test several more times. My results always come out the same (INTP) and my feelings about it haven't varied much over the years. 

I have no trouble with the N (big picture versus facts) and the T (driven more by reason than emotion). I tend to be an ambivert but I'm OK scoring as an introvert. But I have always struggled with the P/J. In fact, I can never adequately even describe what they are. Not surprisingly, my P/J score is almost evenly split -- 51 to 49 almost every time I test. And that is the area of my life where I am most conflicted between how I think I should be and how I am.

Reading People gave me valuable new insight. Bogel described the cognitive stacks (how we process information and make decisions) that go with each different type. I'd never encountered this discussion of cognitive stacks, before. I read the descriptions before I looked at the stacks, and low and behold, my cognitive stack is definitely INTJ. And the two stacks (INTJ and INTP) are completely different. No wonder my results always left me feeling conflicted!

I can only say, thank you Anne Bogel. The book in general was delightful to read, succinct and friendly, informative without being academic. And you helped me come to terms, finally, with my Myers-Briggs. Worth the price of admission!!

Quote of the Day -- bell hooks

Many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

-- bell hooks

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According to her New York Times obituary, bell hooks' incisive, wide-ranging writing on gender and race helped push feminism beyond its white, middle-class worldview to include the voices of Black and working-class women. Her work included over 30 books, and encompassed literary criticism, children’s fiction, self-help, memoir and poetry, and it tackled not just subjects like education, capitalism and American history but also love and friendship. She died in December 2021 at the age of 69.

Quote of the Day -- Kurt Vonnegut

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Quote of the Day -- Anne Lamott

 ... the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.

-- Anne Lamott

Quote of the Day -- Rabindranath Tagore

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted and behold, service was joy.

 Rabindranth Tagore

Quote of the Day -- Audre Lorde

Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.

-- Audre Lorde

Quote of the Day -- Diane Ackerman

Living things tend to change unrecognizably as they grow. Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? 

Flora or fauna, we are all shapeshifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves.

-- Diane Ackerman

Quote of the Day -- Katherine May

We are in the habit of imagining our lives to be linear, a long march from birth to death in which we mass our powers, only to surrender them again, all the while slowly losing our youthful beauty. This is a brutal untruth. Life meanders like a path through the woods. We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.

-- Katherine May

Quote of the Day --- Alexander Dumas

All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.

-- Alexander Dumas

Quote of the Day -- Aija Mayrock

You were not born to please, you were brought here to disrupt, awaken, and speak truth, to ease the pain scattered around and so when you are told to quiet down, I hope you grow louder.

You are an entire symphony that needs no applause.

--  Aija Mayrock, Dear Girl

Quote of the Day -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Quote of the Day

Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.

-- variously attributed to Einstein, Aesop's Fables, and other sources

Quote of the Day -- Lucille Clifton

What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.

-- Lucille Clifton

Quote of the Day -- R Eric Thomas

Maybe I was reaching for authenticity through a funhouse mirror. I didn’t know. I just didn’t want to be who I was. It turns out that’s not a specific enough request.

-- R. Eric Thomas

Quote of the Day -- Mary McCarthy

There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing.

-- Mary McCarthy

Quote of the Day -- Friedrich Nietzsche

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions–as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Quote of the Day -- Melody Beattie

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.  

-- Melody Beattie

Quote of the Day -- Isaac Asimov

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won't come in.

-- Isaac Asimov

Quote of the Day -- Alex Trebek

The secret to happiness, of course, is not getting what you want. It’s wanting what you get. 

- Alex Trebek, RIP 11/08/20