Leaning Toward Wisdom

Don’t cry. Well, go ahead if you want to, but I’m not going to make you cry. I’m not even going to try. Even though we all know it’s a world of hurt. Today’s show is mostly about resolve and resilience – two qualities we all need because it is a world of hurt. Hurt […]

The pillow says what many people want. They want to turn around, but they’d like somebody else to do it for them. But that’s not what Heather Maloney sings in that opening track. We’re not bike riding kids any more. When I was a kid we stayed outside as long as we could, unless the […]

James Morrison is a UK singer/songwriter with a style I love. Soul. Lots of soul. Like so many artists I find myself listening to – James was a busker. One of these days I need to do a show on busking and interview some buskers, or ex-buskers. It’s a pretty fascinating tactic, going to a […]

Love isn’t easy. But no love is harder. Time, it’s a straight line with no exit at the end. Well, actually there is an end to time. It’s death. I ought to know how to let go — it ain’t easy. Life Takes Us Further Than We Think I still remember every moment that we spent together. […]

I just can’t seem to take much more of this Got too much hassle, baby and not enough bliss Got to give these hangers on a miss ‘Cos I need some help, I just don’t get No one seems to understand what’s up, what’s up What’s up, so called friends come and go and things […]

NOTE: Nobody is paying attention, but lest I endure the wrath of the correctors of the interwebs – those people who can’t wait to spot a typo or some other mistake – I’ll confess it. I skipped episode number 4062. This should have been that episode number, but it’s not. I messed up. I own […]

This past week the guy who has been the radio and TV voice of the Dallas Stars NHL hockey club decided it was time to quit. Ralph Strangis has been working for the Stars for over 20 years. He left Minneapolis with the team and arrived in Dallas with the team back in 1993. Fans […]

Today’s show is an interview with an attorney who was a public defender in the Salt Lake City, Utah area for 14 years until last August. For 20 years he played regularly – twice a month – at a pizza joint with a fellow attorney/musician, a prosecutor. Together they performed Toto’s hit song, Africa on […]

Paul Pena was 55 when he died. His life had been a constant struggle with health issues. By the time he was 20 he was blind. His grandfather and father were both professional musicians and Paul followed. He connected with Frank Zappa, The Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia - among others. Songwriting, playing and touring...I suppose it's the dream of most musicians to simply be able to play music for a living. You know one of Paul's songs because it became a hit record. Not performed by him, but by somebody else. Before today's show is over, I'll play it for you and you'll realize you never knew it was written by Paul Pena.

Patience. "Patience. That's MY strength." I can honestly say I've never met a person who made that claim.

People claim all sorts of positive attributes that run the range, but patience or longsuffering is beyond the scope for us. First off, it's highly unlikely that any of us have an abundance of it...enough to claim it as a strength. Secondly, who among us would be arrogant enough to make that claim? Saying it out loud about ourselves is almost proof enough that we're lying about it.

Social scientists and casual observers might point to the surge of instant gratification.

In the 1960s, Stanford University Professor Walter Mischel ran an experiment where he gave little kids (about 4 years old) a simple proposition. They sat with a marshmallow in front of them for fifteen minutes. If they could refrain from eating it, they'd be get two treats when the 15 minutes were up. Some ate the marshmallow right away. Others staved off temptation and waited.

Subsequent research discovered that the children from the original experiment who could delay satisfaction scored better academic results, earned higher salaries, and been less prone to obesity. The actual fact of instant gratification has likely always been present among us, but this may have been the first time somebody was able to put a label on it.

Professor Mischel, who is now at Columbia University, wrote a new book a few years ago entitled, The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control. Self-control is at the heart of patience, but it's also at the heart of self-discipline. When a 4-year-old is faced with eating a marshmallow right now to waiting 15 minutes to double the treat, it's no wonder the child often goes for the instant reward. He's inexperienced in self-control. How much time could he have possibly spent honing the skills of self-discipline? Zero is a likely answer.

As fascinating as such studies are, we're not 4-year-olds. If you're listening to me right now and you're 4, then I'm very impressed. You're going to be super wise by the time you hit double digits. That means, when you're 10.

Listen, here's the deal. Self-control is both learned and practiced - if it's effective. It's not so much an age thing as a time thing and intentional thing. People who exercise themselves in self-control, self-restraint and self-discipline are better than those of us who don't. The have's surely must out-number the have-not's. I suspect far more of us are doing what we want, when we want versus those who are willing to sacrifice today's pleasure for the prospect of increased pleasure later. Or success, or whatever else we're chasing. Even as a 4-year-old, I'd have let that marshmallow turn hard as a rock 'cause I hate marshmallows unless they're in hot chocolate.

And that brings up another issue when it comes to patience or self-control. The object of the temptation is individual. Tempt me with a marshmallow and I'll be a patience camel. Put a Twix bar in front of me and I'll have a much harder time. With a marshmallow I won't have to think about anything to endure a 15-minute wait. Or, I might gobble it down just to avoid knowing I might have two marshmallows in 15 minutes.

I really like that photo. It reminds of a young man I used to follow online many years ago. He’d photograph the street people in Detroit. The site is still up, but he hasn’t updated it in years. Even so, I still go to it and look through the photos and read the captions, which […]