I have a strange policy about phone calls and emails.
When too many voices are demanding bits of my time, I become as confused as a termite in a yo-yo. Consequently, fewer than 10 people on earth have my cell phone number. And the only emails my spam filter will pass through to me are those sent from an email address contained in my address book. In other words, I can't receive an email from your computer until I have first sent you an email from mine.
The Monday Morning Memo is not sent from my personal computer.
Yes, I realize that I'm missing out on lots of good things sent to me by lots of good people.
(I didn't say that my policy was right for everyone, just for me.)
Here's an email I received from my friend Russell Friedman.
I'm really glad I got it:
Roy,
Responding to this quote from todays MMM: (September 24, 2007)
And so I will tell them one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest story of all the story of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of love and hate, of beauty and ugliness. I shall try to demonstrate to them how these doubles are inseparable how neither can exist without the other and how out of their groupings creativeness is born. John Steinbeck, East of Eden, 1952
And Sadness & Joy!
Once upon a Yogi time, I was called on to address a group of 14 PhDs at a Los Angeles County department that was charged with the well-being of children who had been subjected to the severest of grief episodes. Before it came my turn to speak, I listened with mounting revulsion as each of the phuds expounded on ways for the children to not feel sad or bad. When it was my turn, I stood and looked all 14 of them squarely in the eyes which can only be done if one has multiple, multiple personalities and I said: I would no more take away your sadness than I would take away your joy!
14 jaws dropped in unison, and the attention level shot up off the charts. Until then, with all their book-learning, theyd never heard anyone speak to the normalcy of grief. On that occasion, I also decided to drop a little scriptural bomb on their collective pates. I recited Proverbs 25:20, using the most current language translation which is: Singing cheerful songs to a heavy heart is like stealing someones cloak in the winter or pouring salt on a wound.
Have a happy, sad, or mixed Monday your choice.
Russell
Our pal Tom Grimes also received Russell's missive.
Tom's response:
From the Bible, Ecclesiastes III (King James Version,) borrowed by the old left guard guitar strummer Peetey Seeger who TURNED it into a song:
3:1 To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
3:2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
3:3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
3:4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
3:5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
3:6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
3:7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
3:8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
I just wish there was a watch that told you the right time to do these things!
Tom
If you're not in my address book…
Corrine@WizardOfAds.com reads and passes along to me any emails she feels I'd want to read. But any email containing a challenge, a request, a complaint or other helpful advice is quietly deleted from her computer. I share this only as a courtesy to keep you from wasting your time. “Time,” as Ben Franklin told us, “is the stuff life's made of.” I'm no more anxious for you to waste your time than I am to waste my own.
In closing, my wish for you
is that you should have friends as interesting as Russell and Tom.
Roy H. Williams