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Posted 11/26/2013 6:55 PM (GMT 0)
Yooper, no need to "respect" me :)

I don't think I did a good job at explaining my position.

I'm saying someone who does not exude confidence or buy into the ribbon movement can still be hardcore about fighting whatever it is he she needs to fight.

It would be different if you were leading an army or posse into a fight or joint venture of whatever nature, but we're not talking about that.

Great about your mother nature and how it nurtured you.

Just to give a practical example, when I told my assistants and top managers that I had cancer a few of them cried, not me. With them I was positive and told them all would be well and we were talking about a few weeks away form the office at the most. The emotions I conveyed to them wer eobviously simpler than the turmoil I actually had going on inside of me.

Post Edited (davidg) : 11/26/2013 12:05:04 PM (GMT-7)

Posted 11/26/2013 7:14 PM (GMT 0)
david, that helped some ( scool  ) but my own personal psyche still struggles with "someone who does not exude confidence......can still be hardcore about fighting whatever it is he/she needs to fight."  I just really can't fathom that, if you're not confident about something then you're already starting with one foot in the hole - back to we're all wired differently I guess!!!!!

BTW as a side note, although I may not know you that well, I do know some and from what I know I have to say that I am surprised that you are anything but a positive, no-hold's bared kind of guy - someone I can see standing shoulder to shoulder with! 

Posted 11/26/2013 8:52 PM (GMT 0)
it's my bloody Jewish genes, Yooper. Mix those in with my Catholic half and I'm doomed.

Seriously though, with me it's something I alluded to in the other thread. I mitigate let down by not being too positive that way whenever things work out, and they always do for me, I can be blissfully happy.
Posted 11/26/2013 10:56 PM (GMT 0)
DavidG,
You and Yoop had an interesting discussion and I do believe in "ribbons" and positivity; I'm sorry to say that I gave up on the pope many years ago even though my cousin is a priest. Hell, I'm going to the Legion for 1 beer--lol.
Bill idea
Posted 11/26/2013 11:10 PM (GMT 0)
DavidG,
P.S.--The photos of a man's wife dying of breast cancer were "horrific"..If the husband hadn't donated the proceeds of the journey to a charitable cause, I would not have wished him well--I still don't. Just sayin idea
Posted 11/26/2013 11:18 PM (GMT 0)
i saw them as tender and a testament of his love for the woman of his dreams that was being torn away from him without reason or justice. When I took my mother to her chemo I took pictures along the way. My sister and I are documenting it every time we visit and share the photos with her and talk about how she is changing. We've also done videos of her talking about everything, form her youth to her disease. It gives us a chance to triumph over the disease and celebrate what is worth celebrating.

perhaps we saw that photo essay as Allen and Keaton see art.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8FpnM0NlXk

I think Yooper is saying this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCAAkNa08MU
Posted 11/27/2013 5:08 AM (GMT 0)
"We are all wired differently" is a great sound bite for our differences. We are all different, but the wiring for the most part at least at birth is pretty much the same. Watch a flow of automobile traffic from the air or even when you are part of it. The wiring is fairly exact. Though there are, of cousre, exceptions based on genetic disorders that can disform or greatly inform a persons makeup. In my view the wiring is then altered by how we make our choices. They are either life affirming or life negative, and tho these decisions are nuanced by environs,up bringing, etc, free will still trumps. Your life will develop up to the point of your death in a positive sense ultimately or a negative sense ultimately, based on the choices you make and irrespective of how anyone ,even yourself, defines life affirmative or life negative. It is outside of your purview to define it,but each person instinctively knows it. There is difference, to a discerning eye. You will never see your same eyeball with that same eyeball. You will need a reflection, or lets say an image for that to occur. Bottom line no one can say what came first chicken{ your wiring, hence making you who you are? or the egg { who you are, creating the wiring}. A viewpoint from one who has made "Sophies Choice" and went with one of them. And since I can't touch my right fingertip with my right fingertip, it would be "pointless" to reveal except thru who I am.
Posted 11/27/2013 11:35 AM (GMT 0)
Logo, I'm in the camp that feels people are wired differently. They have very different character and genetic traits that condition how they respond to different situations. I'm not saying there are genetic differences that account for strict different behavior that cannot be changed through culture (want to make sure nobody thinks I'm endorsing biological determinism), but there are both personal and cultural learned differences along with some different individual characteristics that can account for differences in behavior and thought process. Some people are anxious, some are not, some prone to depression, some not.

There are studies showing how Ashke****c Jews are more prone to depression than Sephardic Jews because of low serum serotonin levels. In a case like this, we can even argue that genetic disorders (within an ethnic group) can result in different strategies for coping. This might be a good example of different wiring.

I agree with you that learned behavior can help people adapt to their environment(s) and that we are not bound by biological determinism, but at the same time I think it is pretty clear that people are "wired" differently and respond differently.
Posted 11/27/2013 5:17 PM (GMT 0)
Well stated Davidg. My basic point is that no one is locked into who " they are " based on wiring. We all have the wiring to change who we are, positively or negatively, without getting into definitions of those two words, and also, that none of us have the right to judge any one's else decisions in these matters. We { rhetorically }, can agree or disagree. To judge, "correctly" is completely beyond any wiring we have or will ever have in this time/space continuum, in my view. I think Shakespear asked THE question of this issue. A question that, by posing, answered itself. On another note, the seemingly "horrid" pics of the dying wife in previous post of yours definitively posts the question and the answer of what Aloha/Love is. Regards
Posted 11/27/2013 5:24 PM (GMT 0)
There have been many studies on separated twins to study genetic predispositions. It is generally agreed that about 40% to 50% of our personalities, values, ect are genetically predisposed and the rest come from our experiences. So both play a significant part in how we arrive at a decision.
Posted 11/28/2013 12:32 AM (GMT 0)
JohnT, I would not argue, in a dialectical way, your point. I will say that whatever the percent, I am convinced, that even with undetectable, as in the std psa test,<0.1 in the spectrum, you know like the mustard seed, a person can and do change their behavior to the path they choose to follow. This is the difference between the animal, homo sapien, and the rest of the creat/eurs of this time/space continuum. My viewpoint is not a fact, but a truth in the highest sense of that word. It is not something to be proved, but believed, so as to activate that truth. " leap of faith" " the instant is the gateway to eternity'', Kiergagardian type shtick. Regards… Assuredly not for everyone, but assuredly so for those who pursue…
PS. any similarity between my view and religion is humbug. I don't believe in religion ………………. " Love is my religion" John Keats circa early 19th century C.E.
Posted 11/28/2013 1:09 AM (GMT 0)
This is not clinical or based on any research....(but a lot of therapy)

Year 1
- Feb wife asks to separate
- May diagnosed
- July tell kids & move out
- Aug surgery
- Nov surgery failed
- Dec hormones

That was 4 years ago and today I am in very bad shape on many levels ..... I often wondered how I would have handled cancer without divorce or divorce without cancer but I firmly believe that 2009 took a toll that I never recovered from....the next three+ years up until today have not been good either.

My point is that I completely believe that I have lived 2 lives as 2 completely different people

1968-2008
I don't count 2009
2010-today

I'm sure I'm wired and I'm shaped partially from my 45 years and 9 month but my life is crumbling because I wasn't strong enough to cope with 2009 and the aftershocks since...

Percy,

One of the other mods (142) promoted this comment to its own thread here.

I'll respond to it there.

Post Edited By Moderator (PeterDisAbelard.) : 11/28/2013 10:53:27 AM (GMT-7)

Posted 11/29/2013 5:16 PM (GMT 0)
Davidg, Thanks for the article. Yes, it's hard to be positive at times, but that has always been my personality and tried to live by. I don't fault anyone else for not being positive as they deal with their own life as they wish!!


A Yooper; I agree with your statement of being positive and what you have wrote.

I believe I've accomplish what I have in life by being positive!! Everyone has given some good statements on this thread. I choose to take what's said to apply to my current state. I've always dealt with stress but, since being DX with cancer, sometimes I get overwhelmed with it. Guess that's life.

Dave in Bartlett, TN
Posted 11/30/2013 4:18 PM (GMT 0)
I wasn't sure whether to comment on this thread or Purg's but I chose this one since I liked Peter DA's quote, "But a life spent in anxious misery is no kind of a life to live. A positive attitude will save whatever life you have left from that. That is the transformative message of GFMPH gatherings: that you can be sick, dying by slow degrees, and still have a pretty good time while you are still here. As Sonny says, "Each day is a bonus, choke all of the life out of every day you've got."

Sometime back I think I told a story about my late dad but it may be worth re-telling in the context of a thread about positivity. Late in his life he was involved in an horrific automobile accident. He fell asleep at the wheel and drove into a guard rail that literally cut the car in half. He was pulled from the burning wreckage and air lifted to a major trauma center. As he was being wheeled into the operating room my step mother had to tell him that he was going to lose a leg. His response was, "Well, that's ok since we don't dance that much anymore anyway".

When I arrived the next morning I found him doing pull ups on those triangular things that hang over hospital beds. When I asked him what the heck he was doing, he responded that he was thinking that he needed to increase his upper body strength since his leg strength was now reduced. He also told me that he had been thinking about any advantages of the loss of his limb and said that he figured that he could now get handicapped parking next to the stadium for football games!

I'm convinced his positive thinking helped his recovery immensely and it also taught me a valuable lesson about making the best of bad situations. My dad had our friend Sonny's attitude that every day is a bonus and we should choke the life out of it.

This doesn't work for everyone but it works for me. As an optimist, I probably get disappointed more than those who always expect the worst. But, darn...most days sure seem pretty great!!!

Jim
Posted 11/30/2013 4:55 PM (GMT 0)
For what its worth, my two cents is that everyone fights this Hellish scourge differently. I look at it as a war. Fighting spirit helps. Then again I can get really down about it if I wander off into the "what ifs" and that happens.

Thanks.
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