From preschool to Adam Sandler

Here's a random, funny story I remembered the other day...

When I was working at the preschool I had a kid named Ryan in my class. We were coloring-- umm they were coloring-- one afternoon, Ryan comes up to me holding a white crayon and tells me:
"Miss Hannah, this one doesn't work!" hehehee

Arnold Schwarzenegar (I totally butchered that one) was on Charlie Rose today. It is amazing how much one can say without saying anything at all. 45 minutes of catch words and mentions of hot topics but with no depth. Oy with the politicians already! Kurt Vonnegut died this week I guess. CHarlie gave a little tribute and played old footage of interviews with him. Kurt said that computers are taking over our ability to become in our homes. He said that our homes are for 3 main purposes, and becoming is one of them. Isn't that interesting? To become, to change, to develop. hmm...

Aren't you glad that is all I am going to mention about politics today?

It snowed yesterday. Full on snowstorm. It's pretty... or was. All traces of snow were wiped away by 9 this morning. It's still cold though!

We saw that new movie Reign Over Me last night. It was surprisingly good. It's about a man who lost his whole family in 9-11, but I was glad that thye didn't go into that very much, the focus was on his way of dealing with grief rather than the cause of it. With all the negative perceptions the media gives Americans of the middle east, I was nervous that this movie would only be more propaganda in that strain. There were a couple comments, but other than that they seemed to steer clear of the issue.

The main character (here is a tangent. He was played by Adam Sandler, who, as we all know, usually plays characters who are... less than believable. So for him, this role was quite different, and I don't think he always pulled off the believability thing.. but it was still good.) is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

It would be interesting to see whether his character's illness was close to what a real ptsd would look like. It was so interesting to see his way of dealing with intense pain and grief. Everyone deals with it differently. SOmetimes I make the mistake of thinking that if someone deals with something in a way I don't understand that I don't think they're dealing with it at all.

It was very interesting and there were lots of points in it that I would like to study... maybe I'd like being a counselor. I don't know.. anyways...

In my religions class we are reading a book on Muslim fundamentalism, and the author makes several good points about American (or any capitalist society really) culture. I had never thought about being captive to capitalism. Intersting, huh? My professor, in class yesterday, also talked about being a captive to language. Everything we know is related to the words we speak. The reason mysticism is discredited by culture is that it i beyond language. It actually reaches a realm in which language is irrelevant. We have also developed our language to categorize everything we know. In one way this helps us to understand many complextites and details we really couldn't wihtout language, but I think it also produces limitations. Limitations to those categories and limitations to the things outside of those categories.

Perceptions and a sense of self are both formed by language, and all of our experiences are categorized and interpreted by our language. How facinating, yes? So apparently this affects even the ways we respond to situations and experiences. Someone who speaks a different language will have a slightly different interpretation of their experiences. Of course there are many, many factors that apply to all that too...

He also made a statement about perfection being a form of emulation. When we perfect something we are emulating something we've seen in the past? especially in religion. hmmm... But, if we are all different, made with different gifts and all that, wouldn't prefection be different for all of us? My head is spinning haha. I like to see what affects people. Theories and all that. It's interesting stuff... I think that's enough for today. Blessings