November 26, 2016
This morning I read a beautiful note (email) my friend Jason Fane sent to my youngest daughter Leah Smolker last night.
Jason gave Leah recommendations on what to see in Italy.
See copy of Jason’s email below.
Leah,
Jason and Leah are both beautiful people.
They are both lovely people.
They are always their real selves.
Beautiful is not how you look on the outside.
Beautiful is what you are made of.
Beautiful people spend their time discovering what beauty is.
They the share the beauty they have discovered with other people.
A Beautiful Person is a person who soaks up the beauty of the world, makes that beauty his or hers and then shares that beauty with other people.
That is what Jason and Leah do.
Jason and Leah fill themselves up with beauty; they take it in; they make it theirs; then, they share it with other people.
They glow.
When you are with them they make you feel warm and safe and curious.
Travel is good. Fashion is good. Food is good. Ideas are good. I share what I know about those topic with other people.
I blog about those topics.
We are all pursuing happiness above all else.
But we are not going to find lasting happiness in travel, fashion, food or ideas.
We are going to find lasting happiness in love and intimacy more than anything else.
The trick to being happy is being the “real you”; being the real you on both the receiving and giving ends in a relationship with someone else.
Look at the happy and joyful the correspondence between Jason and Leah.
Jason and Leah are being 100% real with each other.
They are bonding with each other.
By the way, I know they never stop bonding with each other.
Compare the happiness they are sharing with each other by sharing the beauty of the world with each other and their true feelings with each other with the miserable lives you know many people are living.
Some married people are living miserably.
At a recent dinner party a married woman told me she is a nun: “None in the morning, none in the afternoon, none at night.”
At the same dinner, a “single wealthy older man” told me he believes women will do anything [including having sex with him] for financial security, or even for a “free meal.”
Many men and women have told me that is their view of reality, of the way of the real world.
They have reached a point in their lives where it is their reality to see sex as a transaction.
Some married men, some married women, some single men and some single women think of sex in terms of satisfying a physical need without any emotional content.
Those people are not beautiful.
They are incapable of having a tender loving emotional relationship with one another.
In “Love Warrior” Glennon Doyle Melton reports:
One hot morning in the summer after tenth grade, my best friend and I go to the local pet store to visit the animals. My friend is considering having sex with her boyfriend and she asks me to tell her what it’s like. I watch the kittens play in their cage and notice one pouncing on a nearby scratching pad. I point to that kitten and say, ‘Sex is like that. I’m the scratching past and Joe pounces on me when he gets the urge. My body’s a toy he likes to play with, but he’s not all that interested in me. It’s like, he’s touching me – but he’s not really touching me. Sex isn’t really personal. It’s just that I happen to be his girlfriend so my body is his to play with. It feels childish to me. Like cats pouncing on scratching posts. But I learned this trick: I just leave my body there to get over with and I slip out and think about other things. I plan outfits and stuff. Sex is something I have, really, it just happens to my body while I’m up here, waiting for it to be over. But, I don’t think Joe knows. Or cares.’
Believe it or not, many women experience sex they way Glennon describes sex in the above paragraph.
Furthermore, I have heard of married women who have not had sex with their husbands for ten years or more.
People are made for intimacy.
They find someone they are drawn to, someone they want to have a relationship with.
Their relationships will not work when if they are unable to bring their whole real self to each other.
Look at how Jason and Leah bring their whole real selves to each other in their email exchange about Italy.
You can only be in love with someone else when you are fully present.
Another person can only be in love with you when you and the other person are both fully present.
Love is a sacred place created when two people decide it’s safe to be their real selves, a place to be fully human and fully known.
Building trust and intimacy takes time.
Intimacy and trust between two people is a mountain.
You can’t start by leaping to the top.
If you do, you miss the climb; the climb is where you bond.
You’ve got to climb together one step at a time.
|
Below are some of the pictures posted on Leah’s blog post referred to above titled “Italy Armchair Travel” ….
Gozo in Malta
Rome is one of the most famous cities in the world:
Milan’s cathedral is one of the most famous in the world:
Syracuse, Noto and Ragusa are all charming Baroque cities in Sicily:
Panarea in Sicily is a small island near Stromboli that offers excellent views of the volcano:
The Four Seasons Hotel in Florence
Aman Hotel in Venice
Cava Grande, Sicily
If you want to have long lasting happiness, pair up with someone
You will know when you have found a person like that because people like that glow, they radiate beauty, they emote beauty, they share beauty.
When you are around Jason or Leah when they are talking about the beautiful things they have seen in the world or talking about the beautiful things they have seen done, or thought about, you feel warm and safe and literally purr in contentment.
Gary S. Smolker, publisher, movie reviewer, social commentator Gary S. Smolker Idea Exchange Blog www.garysmolker.wordpress.com Gary Smolker, fashion blogger Dude's Guide to Women's Shoes www.dudesguidetowomensshoes.com
The Eiffel Tower was “monstrously huge” when it was built more than 100 years ago in Paris as an exhibit for the 1889 Exposition Universelle, and years ahead of its times.
It is monstrously huge today, and still years ahead of its time.
I believe today, or someday, a boy or girl will look at the Eiffel Tower and be inspired to think/say “I am going to build something bigger and better than that.”
But if the Eiffel Tower was half as tall, that wouldn’t happen.
I want to challenge other people’s imagination, to expand their perceptions, to add to their ideas and knowledge and thereby enrich and stimulate their experience of their lives.
I believe the Eiffel Tower is inspiring and therefore enriches other people’s lives.
I believe it is everyone’s duty to enrich their own life, my life and everyone else’s lives.
I don’t believe in half measures.
Therefore, I wouldn’t want the Eiffel Tower to be half as tall as it is today.
Recently, I have been figuring out how to increase the productivity, satisfaction, joy and enjoyment of my 13 year old granddaughter.
Should I give her a conventional gift, a gift you might expect anyone to give her, or should I give her a gift that will make her and other people go “wow”?
Her father is a top echelon corporate finance lawyer.
I assume her father is preoccupied because corporate America has $1.48 trillion dollars of cash on hand to invest or return to stockholders and the tech sector – in which he specializes – has $515 billion cash on hand to invest or return to stockholders, and biotech and life sciences finance, in which he is extremely active, is red-hot.
Her mother is a senior executive in a publicly held tech company listed on the NYSE and other stock exchanges.
Her mother participates in intense and stimulating worldwide meetings and conferences at least weekly.
They live a “full” conventionally sharp life.
My granddaughter is on a lacrosse team.
Where I grew up we didn’t have lacrosse teams or play lacrosse.
My granddaughter actively participates: In addition to being on a lacrosse team, she individually competes as a free-lance swordswoman in fencing competitions; she plays the guitar and she is a fashionista who publishes a private limited circulation fashion blog.
When I was growing up I didn’t know anyone who was a swordsman or a swordswoman. Blogs did not exist. Cell phones did not exist. The Internet did not exist. YouTube and Instagram did not exist yet.
My granddaughter is interested in (1) fashion, (2) the fashion industry, (3) understanding money, (4) money, (5) finance, (6) history, (7) leaders, (8) leadership, (9) how the mind works – the science of consciousness, (10) how the mind works – why we make choices, (11) creativity, (12) peak performance, (13) persuasion and (14) art.
I want the gift I give my granddaughter to stimulate my granddaughter’s mind but not to offend her parents by being so unique they will believe I do not show love and respect to the three of them. I have been warned not to give an unconventional gift because to do so might be considered inappropriately “off-the-wall.”
To encourage my granddaughter’s interests in fashion, art and business I recently informed her of the following facts:
I want my granddaughter to have confidence.
I want my granddaughter to follow her passion, to do whatever she feels intensely passionate about doing.
I want to give my granddaughter a gift that is seriously amazing.
How can I do that without “offending” anyone?
Here are some of my gift ideas: (1) flower etched bracelets hand fashioned from solid brass, plated in sterling silver; (2) a 536 one-of-a-shape piece puzzle crafted of quarter-inch maple veneer plywood and archival ink and paper which portrays two Koi; (3) an authentic Japanese yukata patterned with fluid flowing carp motif – the carp symbolize strength and patience; (4) an Art Nouveau Peacock Trinket Box hand-enameled in brilliant hues and bejeweled with sparkling Austrian crystals; (5) a Saw-Whet Owl sculpture; (7) Lion and Lioness bookends; (8) “A World of Butterflies” – a 432 hardcover book, containing 245 stop-action photographs of butterflies.
Of course, the best gift would be to do things with her; a series of events and experiences that the two of us get to share together will create priceless memories.
For example, if her parents would allow it, and if she is interested in ballet, I would love to take her to NYC for a weekend to see a ballet, visit museums and see the garment district. I would love even more to take my daughter (her mother) with us.
Best of all would be to go to New York Fashion Week shows or to fashion shows in Milan together.
New York Fashion Week begins on September 4 this year.
I would like to take my granddaughter somewhere that is the “center” of something she is keenly interested in.
If she were interested in movies, that would be the Toronto International Film Festival which runs from September 5 through September 15, this year.
I want me granddaughter to personally see the “very best” of whatever she is interested in.
In the years between 1830 and 1900 adventurous American artists, doctors, architects, politicians, lawyers and others of high aspiration set off for Paris burning to know more about everything, ambitious to excel in their work by “discovering things” while “living”, “working” and/or “studying” in Paris, which, at the time, was the center of things. Nearly all of these remarkable American men and women spent many of the happiest days and nights of their lives in Paris.
Among those Americans were Elizabeth Blackwell the first female doctor in America; Charles Summer who would become the most powerful unyielding voice for abolition in the U.S. Senate; James Fenimore Cooper (famous author), Samuel F. B. Morse (inventor of Morse Code), medical student Oliver Wendell Holmes, and writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Henry James, Harriet Beecher Stowe; sculptor Augustlus Saint-Gaiudens, and painters Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent.
These Americans were ambitious to excel in work that mattered greatly to them, and they saw time in Paris, the experience of Paris, as essential to achieving that dream.
They were “ambitious to learn, to live and work in the company of others of like mind and aspiration, inspired by great teachers and in a vibrant atmosphere of culture far beyond anything available at home.”
Those ambitious men and women wanted to live in Paris because Paris was a city that was so great and rich and in which life was lived on a grand scale. By comparison life in the American cities they lived in was too quiet and uniform for them.
Like those famous Americans, my youngest daughter, Leah, wants to intellectually and emotionally flourish.
On her own, Leah has plotted a course of action to satisfy her burning desire to know more about every great civilization and to see (in person) the best of everything man and nature have created.
Leah is presently 26 years old.
During the past three or four years, Leah visited 30 countries, looked at man-made and natural masterpieces of all descriptions, and when there were significant volcanoes in a place which Leah was visiting Leah took it upon herself to climb those volcanoes.
Two yeas ago, I met up with Leah to celebrate her birthday with her in Istanbul.
Leah has just “returned” to her home in California from that great journey of her own design to start going to law school.
I want my granddaughter to have the same amount of passion to explore her interests that Leah does.
That being said, what should I get my granddaughter, who lives on the East Coast, for her thirteenth birthday?
You may read a well written description how ambitious young Americans lived/worked/and/or studied in Paris to satisfy their hunger to better their “real selves” in the years between 1830 and 1900 in David McCullough’s book “The Greater Journey – Americans in Paris.”
David McCullough is a renown author.
Mr. McCullough has twice received the Pulitzer Prize, and twice received the National Book Award.
He is the recipient of numerous other honors and awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian award.
Leah is not famous, but she is doing the same kind of things for the same reasons.
Leah is on her way to be like them.
Leah recently sent me the following (priceless to me) note.
Great art is designed to make people happy.
Artists like Van Gough painted flowers to make people happy, to make them smile.
No one appreciated his art. He died a tortured and starving artist unable to sell his work.
The audience did not appreciate his work until after he died. Now his art has snob appeal because the audience believes his work was ahead of his time. His art now sells in the tens of millions of dollars.
Seeing Van Gogh’s work in Copenhagen and London made me happy.
I would have appreciated the tortured artist’s work whether anyone else saw it in him or not.
I was pleasantly surprised to see Van Gough’s art housed in Copenhagen. I did not expect to see it there.
I want to thank YOU for making that possible.
I swinged CPH at the last-minute because of YOU.
Thanks for letting me go.
Leah
Life is a social phenomena; the effectiveness of a communication depends 20% on content and 80% on how you feel about what you are communicating.
Good taste always generates satisfaction, joy and enjoyment of life.
That is why Leah’s “thank you note” is so compelling.
Goethe was acclaimed as a brilliant writer while still a young man, thought a genius by his contemporaries, and lauded by luminaries around the world.
Here are some of this thoughts.
In “Conversations with Eckermann (1823 – 1832)” Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe told his young friend Johann Peter Eckermann to seek out the best of everything.
I agree with Goethe’s advice to Eckermann reported in “Conversations with Eckermann”:
“Inferior talents do not enjoy art for its own sake: while at work they have nothing before their eyes but the profit they hope to make when they have done. With such worldly views and tendencies, nothing great was ever yet produced.
“The style of a writer is a faithful representation of his mind; therefore, if any man wish to write a clear style, let him be first clear in hs thoughts; and if any would write in a noble style, let him first possess a noble soul.
“It is great folly to hope that other men will harmonize with us.
” For it is in conflict with natures opposed to his own that a man must collect his strength to fight his way through; and thus all our different sides are brought out and developed so that we soon feel ourselves a match for every foe…..
“[Y]ou must at all events plunge into the great world, whether you like it or not.
“Concentrate your powers for something good, and give up everything that can produce no result of consequence and is not suited to you.”
Goethe once said: “If you see a great master, you will always find that he used what was good in his predecessors, and that it was this made him great.
In support of that observation, in “Conversations with Eckermann” Goethe argues:
“All talent must derive its nutriment from knowledge, and thus only is enabled to use its strength.
“I have lately read a letter from Mozart in reply to a baron who had sent him his composition.
‘You dilettanti must be blamed for two faults, since two you generally have: either you have no thoughts of your own, and take those of others; or, if you have thoughts of your own, you do not know what to do with them.’
“Is not this capital? and does not this fine remark, which Mozart makes about music, apply to all other arts?
“Our young painters lack heart and intellect. Their inventions express nothing and effect nothing: they paint swords that do not cut, and arrows that do not hit.”
QUESTION: What is tasteful, what is healthy, what is best?
ANSWER: That which brings joy and satisfaction to life and that which is necessary for creativity to flourish is always tasteful, is always healthy, enriches life and is of the highest order of all creations.
Some 73,000 tons of iron went into constructing the Eiffel Tower over a period of 22 months (1887/1889), with 12,000 metal parts and 2,500,000 rivets.
Its success at the 1889 Exposition Universelle was unparalleled: two million visitors made their way to the top of this “gigantic and original specimen of modern Engineering.” (Thomas Edison).
Not everyone was in favor of construction of this tower in the center of the City of Paris.
Leading intellectuals signed a petition to protest the construction of it:
“We have come together – writers, sculptors, architects and painters, all of us ardent lovers of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris – to protest with all our might, with all our indignation, in the name of French taste thus so badly misunderstood, in the name of art and French history both in this way threatened, against the erection at the very heart of our capital of the useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower. For, there can be no doubt about this, the Eiffel Tower (which even commercial America would reject) will be the dishonoring of Paris.” – Extract from the artists’ protest, whose signatories included Charles Garnier, Alexandre Dumas, and D.J. and Guy de Maupassant. Le Temps, 17 February 1887.
In my mind, the Eiffel Tower is a symbol which represents man’s ability to strive to achieve the best he is capable of accomplishing.
In my opinion, man’s desire to do his best is as fundamental a force of nature and as powerful as that force of nature that compels plants to grow towards the sun.
In my opinion if the Eiffel Tower was half as tall, Paris would still be Paris, but mankind would be diminished.
Poets and writers have attested to the fact that Paris and the Eiffel Tower and have stood the test of time:
“. . . the supremacy of Paris is an enigma. Think about it. Rome has greater majesty, Trier is older, Venice more beautiful, Naples more graceful, London more wealthy. What, then, can be said for Paris? The Revolution. Paris is the king-pin city on which, one day, history turned.” Victor Hugo, 1867
“Poetry inhabits and enlivens all this material: thousands of tons of iron, millions of bolts, beams, entangled girders, 300 metres tall, a vertiginous mass, great depth. My eyes are led to the sun …” – Blaise Cendrars, IZIS, PARIS DES REVES, 1950.
“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” – Ernest Hemingway, PARIS, A MOVEABLE FEAST, 1964
Although Paris is a city full of natural beauty, it is things made by men that one can see today in Paris and the ideas, concepts and work of men who have been inspired by living and working in Paris and it is the ideas discussed and acted upon that originated in Paris that make Paris so much more than just a pretty place.
The topic of human intelligence is receiving a lot of attention today.
Psychologist Howard Gardner and his colleagues have proven that each of us possess at least seven measurable intelligences and have catalogued twenty-five different subintelligences.
Psychologist Pyotr Anokhin has demonstrated the minimal number of thought patterns the average brain can make is the number 1 followed by 10.5 million kilometers of typewritten zeros.
Anokhin has compared the human brain to a “multidimensional musical instrument that could play an infinite number of musical pieces simultaneously.”
According to the latest research of renowned neuroscientist Dr. Candace Pert, “. . . intelligence is not located only in the brain but in cells that are distributed throughout the body. . . . . The traditional separation of mental processes, including emotions from the body is no longer valid.”
Brain scientists believe you can learn seven facts per second, every second for the rest of your life and still have plenty of room to learn more.
I find it interesting that neuroscientists believe we have brain cells in all parts of our body because a psychotherapist friend of mine told me that humans have mirror neurons which “pick-up”/ “mirror” the feelings of other people who are nearby.
This friend warns: if you are near a person who is depressed that will cause you to become depressed.
Therapists and social workers have to watch out that the their tendency to become suicidal when they are near people who are suicidal does not overpower them, that their urge to commit suicide does not become to strong.
The “mirror neuron” phenomena supports folk wisdom.
Surround yourself with people who support you emotionally.
Stay away from negative people.
I am interested in the study of knowledge.
I am constantly engaged in learning and study.
I am constantly having direct experiences of the world and interactions with other people from which I derive knowledge.
When people ask me what I do, I tell them:
I have collected meaningful insights into human behavior and have many thoughts on how a person may beneficially increase their understanding of the world as well as their understanding of other person’s behaviors based on concepts, rules and principles I have developed during the past 68 years.
I love the study of knowledge.
I love the study of creativity and critical thinking.
See the June 10, 2014 post on the “Gary S. Smolker Idea Exchange”, at http://www.garysmolker.wordpress.com, entitled How To Increase Your Perceptual Space.
I realize most people have few if any independent thoughts; that most people are robots.
Most people’s lives and what they “think” has been programmed for them by their parents, by their community, by their teachers, by their friends, by the news media, and by other intellectual influencers.
They do not know “why” or “if” their advisors believe the advice they give is beneficial or if their advisors have sound reasons for advice being given.
Most people do not seek “best explanations.”
If I ran the world, I would have everyone ask themselves: Why do we know what we do?
I would have everyone spend their entire lives trying to determine the basis of [and if there is any basis for] everything they think they know.
I am interested in meaningful insights into human behavior, in having an intellectual framework for understanding science, health, wellness, creativity and the course of social, political, and economic events.
If I ran the world, everyone would seek “best explanations.” People would try to “figure out” how things work and why things happen.
According to stock market trader Paul Tudor Jones, II: “Four hundred seventy-one million to one. Those are the odds against George Soros compiling the investment record he did as the manager of the Quantum Fund from 1968 through 1993.”
Soros once made a billion dollars betting the British pound would be devalued.
QUESTION: How was Soros able to be so successful?
MY ANSWER: He figured things out.
Another note from Leah:
George Soros is an inspiration to humanity. He wrote that he wanted to put his money on hopeless places such as Burma, Sierra Leone and the Congo because he likes to fight uphill battles and win.
The Eiffel Tower was a new concept and apparently ahead of its times.
Great art is ahead of its times.
Van Gogh was light years ahead of his times.
I like thing because they are new and they change and evolve. They grow because they are alive and teeming with life.
I am now focused on acing law school and landing internships and jobs while doing yoga and keeping myself healthy.
I am also plotting future places to travel and my dreams become more and more ambitious each and every time I travel.
I am now interested in seeing Angel Falls in Venezuela and Devil’s Pool in Zambia.
Leah
Copyright © 2014 by Gary S. Smolker
 | Diana Kohler on Reality On The Ground –… |
 | boobibooblog on “UNCUT GEMS”… |
 | Passport Overused on VISUAL IDENTITY #3 – A W… |
| boobibooblog on VISUAL IDENTITY #3 – A W… |
| Boo Schaub on WORLD CHANGERS by Gary Smolker… |
Gary S. Smolker 