Facilitating proactive synergy

The change of seasons has brought a change in health about the house.

Alyssa was ill over the last weekend, so she missed her soccer Saturday and dance Monday. She's better, but still stuffed up.

Elspeth had stomach problems Monday and didn't go to school Tuesday or dance. It was odd because she hardly ate -- and she eats a ton of stuff usually -- and she was tired. She's well enough now for school but her appetite is low and she still tires easily.

Jayne's mom was quite ill today, something I expect will last a few days, at least.

I expect to be sick by the weekend because I was at a conference Tuesday and today, and the people at my table were sneezing, coughing, blowing their noses and shivering. Me? I kept getting a bloody nose all day today at the event.

This conference lasted two days at the Holland Country Club. This is the only time I'll every get there! It was sponsored by my company and its topic was, basically, how to be a better manager.

All in all, it was OK. There was lots of good stuff in it, though a lot was masked by the use of buzz words like "proactive" and "synergy." I briefly told the folks I supervise that I was planning to use some of the stuff and for them not to be alarmed if the words "win-win" pop out every now and then. They looked scared.

I don't buy into the whole "mountain top view" this workshop was selling, but I am willing to take what I see as useful tools from it. Afterall, everything is a mix of sense and nonsense. We just have to pick out the sense.

My compass

As I was taking in this conference, I thought of my "compass," as the conference host called it. I've been aware of my guiding principles for many years. Now, I don't always stick to them because I am learning as I go along, but I try.

My overall beliefs, the guidelines I have for day-to-day living, for raising children, for the relationship with my wife, my family and friends, for riding my bicycle and managing people at work stem from Vedanta. Even before I knew what it was called, I was practicing it.

It took me until the early 1980s to realize this (thus my switch to vegetarianism in 1984), and the early 1990s to open myself to active prayer and meditation. It's taken me until after 2000 to start openly talking about it -- it's something I've tried to hide from almost everyone until the last five or six years.

Vedanta is the belief that all people strive to reach Brahman, God, Heaven, Enlightenment, call it what you will. Also, people can choose different paths, such as Christianity, Islam, Wicca, Judaism, science (yes, I believe that finding fulfillment in the fact that the atom started us all is just the same as saying God created us). The main problem in life is that we get separated from our true self by so many things, such as greed, anger, jealousy, all this stuff we heap on ourselves. We spend our life -- or lives -- trying to clear it all up.

Some folks who know me will laugh and ask how I can be spiritual and still follow parts of Marxism (the whole dialectic materialism thing). And I say to my old college friends, or, OK, friend, that Vedanta and Marxism are close, just like Christianity and Marxism are. They are about sacrificing self for the betterment of others, about detachment from the results of work.

My work conference the past two days kept me thinking that I seek help from everywhere to make myself a better person, so I'll even use the word "synergy" if it means I can open another door. I just won't use it too often.

Thought: Om.