DonaldPierce.com

Paying Attention

 
The Holiday Season is a time for reflection: what happened during the last year, your expectations for the coming year, the changes you want to make in your life and the parts of your life you want/need to clean up.
This year, more than years past, reflection and thinking about how things were and how they came to be will be magnified because of the 2016 Presidential election and the results of that election.
It is, in short, the perfect time to think about not just what has gone before and what is yet to come, but what made you, you. The influences, people, education, movies, songs, colleges, jobs, experiences, special interests and talents that made you and made you unique. For backup on that thought, let’s turn to someone who has influenced millions of us: Dr. Seuss.
“Today you are YOU
That is truer than TRUE
There is no one alive
that is you-er
than YOU”…
–From Happy Birthday to You by Dr. Seuss
In college, lots of us had to write an essay on the meaning of Lord Tennyson’s famous quote from Ulysses, “I am a part of all I have met” . Same point, different take, but when Ulysses was written, the world did not have as many channels of influence as today. Influences were experiential and personal; today influences can be digital, sonic, viral, visual, cross-cultural, rhythmic or arhythmic, in addition to experience and personal contact. We can be influenced in literally millions of ways today, which seems appropriate since there are so many millions more of us than in Tennyson’s time.
So….what made you?
What songs and musicians? What big events? What course of study (or non-study)? What trips? What neighborhoods and friends and schools? What sports and pastimes? What books, movies, photographs, museum exhibits? What victories and losses? What jobs? What girlfriends or boyfriends?
What made you?
Something to think about over the holidays, while the entire country is thinking about what our country could be going forward.
There is “no one alive that is you-er than YOU!”.
Tell us how you got there. It could be very interesting, for all of us.
 
The Fine Print: Photo embed courtesy of Getty Images , who have images to fit just about any news or blogging requirement. We thank our friends at Getty for sharing.