Doug Van Pelt

ASR: Award Show Regret

I was talking to a friend yesterday, who lamented: "I did it again! I knew better, but did it anyway. I spent the 2-3 hours watching an Awards Show and it was terrible." I think he wants that time back. hehe. He could've taped three episodes of Prison Break and watched them back to back. Talk about good programming...

Lots of rain and lightning today. I might have to turn my computer off for safety today. I just did an interview with a college student, which was perfect timing, since the rain was coming down so hard and limiting my computer work anyway. My internet connection is via a satellite dish, and really bad weather can slow that down a lot. She was doing an interview for a class, which was a project to get her information on the career she was looking into (Journalism). That was cool.

I heard today was some sort of blog day. That we should blog on green. I told my friend that I would pour a quart of oil out on my land today as my green statement. I need to change the oil in my riding lawnmower and don't have a container to pour the old oil into. hmmm...

I was told by another friend/blogger that bloggers everywhere were "supposed" to blog about the new Radiohead album and how they're giving it away. I went to their website and am downloading it now. I bout their last album the week it came out. I like the band and hear that this new one is good. I'm anxious to find out.

I want to blog about Soul Cravings, however, so I'll do that.

The writings of Viktor Frankl supports McManus' discussions on the necessity of hope. Frankl was a Nazi concentration camp survivor:

"...Whenever there was an opportunity for it, one had to give them a why -- an aim -- for their lives in order to strengthen them to bear the terrible how of their existence. Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on. He was soon lost."

A sense of not only hope, but destiny and purpose drives us -- even when we are facing incredibly bad circumstances. It's almost impossible to empathize with an atrocious ordeal. We can pretty much only empathize with things that we've been close to ourselves. The inspiration that we can derive from another's suffering, though, is reflective of the grace that we get all the time. We can learn from another's pain, as well as our own. I hope I can always listen when an important lesson is being taught.

No oil was spilled here today.

Posted by Doug Van Pelt at October 15, 2007 12:28 PM