Values, Beliefs, and Behavior

How do they relate to each other, if at all? It is simple and not so much.

Values  +  Beliefs  =  Behavior

Know a person's motivations in the context of their values and beliefs and you will better understand the "why?" of behavior. This understanding is critical in our world today as politicians seem to become more and more populist and less and less moderate. They speak for and to a smaller and smaller but more vocal segment of society with harsher and shriller words. WHY they do what they do is a function of the equation.

Values govern behavior; it is the motivation for our actions.

Beliefs are how we express our values to ourselves and to others, how we operate them.

When you understand the concept of how they work together, you will understand human behavior better than 90% of the world's population.

Think about that the next time you are angry at the Trumps or Le Pens or Putins of the world's governments. It might help keep your angst and blood pressure down a bit.

What 'The West Wing' Taught Me

I have done it. I have made it through seven, 22-episode seasons of one of the best television shows ever made.

Two, four-year terms of the Bartlett Administration are in the books. The president contracted MS. The actor that played Chief of Staff Leo McGarry died during the filming of Season 7, thus changing the arc of the show, I am sure. Charley came up from almost nothing, dated the president's daughter, then got early-admission to law school.

And somehow, I survived, relatively unscathed.

I have learned some other things:

• I thought I had already seen all the seasons. Not so. There is much I missed in the last three years. 
• The horrible effects of MS appear to peak then diminish as ones presidential terms come to an end. Probably for dramatic impact, maybe. 
• Apparently, being selfish, self-centered, unable to manage personal relationships, and being a completely ego-maniacal spoiled brat is not an impediment to success, even advancement, in the White House. Oh, wait... 
• Also apparent is the decisional conflict one has to make at the end of eight years between two more years helping an inexperienced president's staff learn their ropes or heading up a $10 billion fund to pave roads in Africa to facilitate getting life-saving medicine and food to starving people. (P.S. That would be after already having spent eight long, tough years in the White House, after having been plucked from obscurity and moving on up to become the Chief of Staff to the president. 
• And the last thing I learned was this: when they left for the last time, not once did POTUS or anyone in his family thank their Secret Service detail for SAVING THEIR LIVES. I hope real presidential families are not like that. 

It is now on to other endeavors for me.

A child's memory of school, foreign service style

I was a quiet kid, the oldest of five children. Unlike my two brothers and my two sisters, I had a room to myself. I was the oldest; thus, I was given the honor of sitting on the right side of my father at one end of the dinner table. My mother sat at the other end.

After serving in the U.S. Army in World War II, my father went to college on the GI Bill, against the wishes of his father, an English immigrant who believed that staying in their hometown of Wilton, New Hampshire, and taking "a good job" at one of the Sam Abbott-owned mills in town was the way to support his growing family.

• As an aside, the Abbott family was one of the wealthy business families who supported hundreds of European immigrant families in southern New Hampshire to work in the textile industry. My paternal grandparents both worked in the Abbott Worsted Mill that made fancy men's fabric (for customers such as Brooks Brothers) and my maternal grandparents worked in the Abbott Machine Shop.

After developing a successful career as a teacher - he started in a one-room schoolhouse in Greenfield, New Hampshire - and eventually working his way up to vice-principal, principal, assistant superintendent, then superintendent of various school districts while completing a Masters degree from Boston University and being accepted into Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, he went to work for the U.S. State Department in what was first the International Cooperation Administration's Operations Mission in Amman, Jordan, in 1959. Two years later, ICA's Operations Missions combined with other U.S. governmental foreign assistance organizations to become the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, under President John F. Kennedy, whose international visions and outreach created USAID and the Peace Corps.

My Dad completed his doctoral work at Harvard while working on creating a university system for teachers in Jordan where there had been none before. The reason my Dad stayed in Jordan as long as he did - normal tours would be four years, two, 2-year tours - was at King Hussein's specific request to the U. S. Secretary of State.

Being a youngster growing up and going to elementary school in Amman, Jordan, was an interesting time of my life. At first, there was no formal 'schoolhouse,' as such. The young students, all children of Embassy personnel, were schooled in a vacant house rented by the government. The teachers were wives of the Embassy men; some were trained teachers, most were not, and all used the Calvert System for texts and lesson plans.

Every Monday, the students would go to school and find their Calvert boxes on the tables. These boxes contained the week's assignments and materials, including any new textbooks, the dreaded 'blue books' - those little books in which our assignments and homework were written to be returned to Calvert for recording and grading (Calvert was an approved school based in Maryland, near the nation's capital in Washington, D.C., and was geared to American students in remote countries around the world long before distance-learning schools became popular.) The boxes included everything we needed as students and teachers, including scratch paper, pencils, and rulers.

I still have a clear memory of the excitement of opening my "Calvert box," as they were known.

I Did It

I bought two items on Amazon.com today, a waffle maker and a toaster. First, let me tell you about the waffle maker.

The unit I have is a rotating Belgium waffle maker made in China by Oster. 'Rotating' means the unit turns after the batter has been put inside. Think hotel breakfast style waffles. A Belgian waffle is a thick waffle with much deeper holes than a conventional waffle; the person making the waffle can put things like fruit or chocolate chips in the batter more easily with less 'stickage' to the plates. A Belgian waffle maker is not really what I wanted since I don't add anything to the waffles except butter and syrup. Plus, I bought it when I first moved here a decade ago for probably less than $20. I do not use it very often, probably two or three times a year.

This morning, while making waffles with the top open to remove the finished round waffle, it tipped over, something it has never done before. Trying to right a tipped-over, hot waffle maker, while holding a finished waffle in one hand made me realize that, since it was getting old and starting to fight me and never really made the waffles I wanted, I decided it needed to go to Goodwill.

It was then I started considering the toaster, too.

I have owned the toaster for a very long time; in fact, it was made in the USA and you know how long ago anything was made in the USA, right? But the heating elements were going bad, so I was getting almost burnt-undone differences on my bread and that just is not okay. I like bread and I like toast; I want my toast to be properly toasted, a simple task at which my current Cuisinart unit was failing.

While checking around, I learned the only toasters made in the USA these days are $1,200 commercial toasters. I don't think I need that...but it would have been nice. There is a company (one person, really) in New York who refurbishes very old USA-made toasters and resells them...for prices starting at about $250-$300. One can buy a pretty good foreign-made toaster for that much.

My search then went to Amazon.com, my primary source for "things." It was there I found and bought a new waffle maker and a new toaster. After spending some time considering things like style and price, I made my choices and punched the keys to buy them.

The toaster has been replaced by a 2-slot new unit from Cuisinart, my favorite kitchen small appliance maker, and a new regular, square waffle maker from someone else...Cuisinart has a good unit for $85 and I just couldn't see spending that much. (Famous last words?)

I then spent the better part of two hours cleaning the two units. The waffle maker has a noticeable amount of oil residue and the toaster has cooked-on burn spots, so both of them went into the sink, into the water - I know what you are thinking, that one should not submerge an electrical unit in water, but that only applies if one plans on using it soon. I do not and I plan on letting them sit on their shelves for a week or more to dry out before shipping to Goodwill using my favorite GiveBackBox.com.

So my replacement kitchen appliances arrive Tuesday and I will check out the result. Hopefully, I will get better waffles and great toast. Perhaps the greatest, most beautiful toast anyone has ever seen.

Oh, wait. Those are someone else's words...

What is the difference between "quit" and "resign?"

To quit. To resign. We all do them and often under similar, but different, conditions. Not only in the job market sense of the word, really, though I am sure there are similarities.

Quitting a job has the feeling of leaving employment without good feelings toward the employer, while resigning a job, though the reasons for departure might be the same, connotes some moderation of the negative feelings, even if kept inside. Many of us are familiar with that; we have all quit and/or resigned. Job security, pay, compensation or benefits, family- or health-related are all reasons for leaving one job going to another.

This thought is much larger than a job or career. It can be a reason for leaving work, but it really relates to the internal feelings one can develop when the external stimuli become almost overwhelmingly difficult or incomprehensible.

Quitting life in certain ways short of death. Resignation of ones spirit.

These can happen for many reasons, but this thought of mine relates to what has been happening in our world for the past couple of years. We have witnessed a disturbing increase in violent behavior in parts of the world, overt political corruption in others, and a seeming departure from civility among some of the world leaders.

Eight years ago the United States did something few, if any, people thought was possible. They elected an African-American president. Many thought this was a step in the direction of unify and reducing the impact of deeply-held racist feelings that affect pretty much everything that happens in that country. On the other hand, many also saw it as an abhorrent result of an election that insulted people of a certain race.

The stress only increased for the next eight years. Political differences and decisions, ways of communicating or not communicating with segments of society increased the chasm between the races and between the political opinions. Then the voters did something nobody expected, including the winner.

They elected an narcissistic, self-centered, thin-skinned, billionaire TV reality star non-politician as their next president. And the stress increased as the racial and political divisions became more stark, pronounced, and overt. What used to be private or quietly shared among like-minded people now jumped onto the big screen. People felt no remorse when badmouthing "them" or when violently, physically assaulting "them" merely because they did not believe like "we" do.

Us. Them. Yes. No. Black. White. All. None.

What the world has come to be; segregated by politics, by nationalism, by racialism, by materialism.

In short, by any and all man-made boxes.

For me, the stress has almost become unbearable. I struggle with conflicting feelings. I deeply believe in the oneness of mankind as the pivot around which unity of the world's peoples must revolve. Yet I also am unsure how to get there, whether my yet unborn granddaughter and her own siblings and cousins will live to see it.

Makes me want to quit. Just to get away from all this. To stop. To get into a place of comfortable misery, I guess. I have already cut way back on reading social media posts. I do not read much news. I long ago stopped watching broadcast television, so I do not watch any news program, cable or otherwise.

In short, I try to focus on things that will not damage my already-injured psyche anymore.

I am not always successful and it makes me just want to quit. Not resign, with the feelings of moderating negatives. Just quit. Cold.

I just want the madness to stop.

You have 30 days left to live. What would you do?

I read an article on Medium this morning. The author wrote about choices made and regrets held. Making choices at an early age can seem easier and less results-oriented and some of those choices can lead to regrets later in life.

Reading the article led me to ask "What would you do if you only had 30 days left to live?"

It is not as macabre as it sounds and does not mean one should plan every minute of every day for the rest of ones life. Perhaps many people would answer the question with things like these, which we have all heard almost ad nauseam - thank you, Hollywood script writers:

• I would quit my job.
• I would travel as much as I could. 
• I would visit my children, grandchildren, parents, college or high school buddies. 
• I would stop paying my debts and spend the money working on my hobby.
• I would...

While those are all well and good, to me they have a desperate sound of a person who has not lived a life so far and now wants to make up for it by cramming "activities" into a 30-day period. I wonder why.

For me the answer to the question is pretty simple: I would not do much different than I do now.

I have done pretty much everything I ever wanted to do in life...except fly helicopters for the tuna fleet. I have owned and raised an Old English Sheepdog, been married, been a firefighter and a paramedic. I have driven an 18-wheeler and a taxi. I owned a boat, and flew aircraft of all kinds for a living.

I have traveled to every state in the United States and several of the non-state territories like Puerto Rico. I lived in a bunch of those states and several foreign countries. I went to elementary and high schools in four countries, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and the USA.

I fought a war in the rice paddies and rivers of a faraway country and returned home in one piece but not so much in peace.

I bought fish off a commercial fishing boat in Homer, Alaska. I swam with sharks in San Diego Harbor, and I saw Janis Joplin and the Moody Blues in concert. I attended one of Buddy Rich's concerts on stage not long before his death.

In short, I have done almost everything I ever wanted to do and then some. My childhood dreams have all been met.

Have yours?

If one tries to jam a bunch of activities into the last 30 days of life, I am sure the end result will not be one of happiness, but one of deep regret for not having done some of the activities earlier in life.

So, if you do learn you have only 30 days left to live, well, simply live each day as if you have 30 days to live and you will have a happy life. Do otherwise and you will be a sad being, regretting the things you did not do and blaming someone or something for not having done them. Those last 30 days will be filled with angst, remorse, anger, frustration...and probably a lot of other negative feelings.

Start now.

Live.

Random musings

We are about two weeks into the new administration in the United States and what a tumultuous time it has been. Protests, marches, even school children in New York City ditching classes en masse to protest the confirmation of an entirely-unqualified billionaire, Betsy DeVos, to head up the U.S. Department of Education. She was probably put there by Trump to dismantle the Department my father worked for so long; I do not have respect for either of those people.

I have been working diligently on my genealogy blog and notice the readership has increased slowly. I have nowhere near the thousands or more that read many blogs, but increased numbers was never the goal. Hopefully, at least one new reader working on his or her own family tree will glean some helpful hints on the journey.

My last W2 form came today, so I will work on finalizing 2016 taxes and get it out of here. I feel just a bit that this will be a final cap for what was, for me, a truly miserable year, and not only in the political sense, though that certainly contributed. I spent the year driving the truck, really pushing myself to make money to cut some of these bills I have down to size. I think it worked, but it also took a big chunk out of my life-energy. I want this year to be more relaxed and enjoyable.

I have also volunteered to be a transcriber for Baha'i Center web talks. So far, I have done one, and it was a good one. It was by Annette Reynolds, a South Carolina Baha'i. She spoke of what we used to call the "mass teaching" efforts there and the lessons learned from those efforts in a highly racially segregated state. This will prove to be a valuable, educational exercise for me, I hope.