Endurance Weekend

1) “Let us run the race with endurance…” Showing Rockstar Heather Dorniden’s inspiring run, this weekend…

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2) If you can win, after falling flat on your face in the race, surely you can laugh while running? 33 Funny Parents. We’re not there yet, but I get the idea it must be hard to be the parent of a teenager…

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3) If you read one inspiring and serious one this week, let it be 10 Life Lessons From A Navy Seal.

“The University’s slogan is, “What starts here changes the world……..”

“……….Our struggles in this world are similar and the lessons to overcome those struggles and to move forward—changing ourselves and the world around us—will apply equally to all…… ….To me basic SEAL training was a life time of challenges crammed into six months…”

Before reading this article, I never really understood, when I heard accounts of Singaporean classmates’ BMT (Basic Military Training), why they always scream at you and make you miserable and physically uncomfortable. There’s this bit in the article that explains it – your uniform is never going to be good enough to pass inspection and no matter what you do, you’re still going to end up with the discomfort of “punishment for imperfect uniform.” The purpose of the drill was not about the uniform or the nicely made bed or etc – it was to build emotional resilience, that sometimes no matter what you do right, you will not get your “just deserts”.

One of my biggest stumbling blocks in human relations (me being mildly obsessive compulsive) has been the preoccupation with, shall we say, “Type 1 and Type 2 error”. Being wrong about someone (thinking they’re guilty when they’re not, thinking they’re innocent when they’re guilty) is – was – a big reason for my at times freakishly long fuse. I got through it by telling myself “When no one sees, God sees.” Then recently, my nightly prayers turned to helping me see.    

Now back to the article. As I read about the drills, the physical discomfort, what stood out for me was: Emotional Resilience. No matter what you do right. No matter how perfect you think your uniform is, how well made your bed is, that was never the point. That’s why instructors are mean, it’s because if they don’t make the quitters leave, the rest of the platoon might one day be in a life-or-death situation where they rely on would-be quitter.

If you are in an actual situation, say, a military deployment, where you can see people are literally going to die if you feel sorry for yourself about shit happening to you that you didn’t deserve, you will probably pull yourself right out of that hole asap. And that ain’t just for the military. It’s just easier to see when you’re in there, I guess.

One more:

“…you must be your very best in the darkest moment.”

That’s point #8 in the link, it’s a story definitely worth reading, here’s another which I will otherwise probably never find a place to mention. It’s somewhere in Our Daily Bread, and I forget most of the details but for one point – “When one person kept something for themselves, we knew it was the beginning of the end for them.” That was in some horrible concentration camp where the prisoners were starving. But they shared every extra morsel they could.

Go back and read that sentence: “….we knew it was the beginning of the end for them.” I took that to mean that it wasn’t whether you had an extra bite to eat that really determined if you “survived”. It was your heart. Emotional Resilience.

When God tells us to be a light in a dark place, it’s because that’s the best thing for us.

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4) If you read two… 25 Life Lessons From Albert Einstein. Because freakishly smart people are totally known for their humongous EQ and social graces.

Yeah, I wanted an excuse to put up a pic of Albert Einstein in bunny slippers. In honor of a certain little brokerage-style private bank I once worked in (they no longer exist) – the really cool boss man had only two rules for RMs: 1) You have to make some money, and 2) You absolutely cannot have any compliance issues while making that money. Geddit? RMs were installing massage chairs and dvd players and tvs in their cubicles – during the very uncomfy HK summer months they ordered in and watched soaps – and yes, flopped around in Juicies and bunny slippers (they hung their client-intended power suits in said cubicles too).

Pic of Mr Einstein and bunnies from:

3) San Francisco Globe’s 69 Rare Historical Photographs You’ve Probably Never Seen And Will Probably Find A Little Disturbing.

Proving Nerd + Nerd = Cool.

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4) Also maybe a little disturbing: China has a Sphinx. (Or maybe for not much longer, according to the SCMP story.)

So Egypt complained to UNESCO, and China has to take it down. And I’m going to say my wishy-washy two cents: China has actually some amazing, seriously amazing historical monuments of their own from an incredibly rich culture. The Sphinx is………. not one of ’em. As in, to the nth degree. There is just no freaking way there can ever be an actual historical mixup or whatever, to having a Chinese Sphinx surely? Like, who is going to visit Hebei for the Sphinx? Or maybe they can…… not make it look too much like the real thing? No one gets mad at Vegas for Eiffel tower-decorated hotels or Caesar’s Palace or the other swanky one – whatitsname-something to do with Venice…

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5) Public service message: Secondary drowning – what you need to know. It can happen when a small amount of inhaled fluid acts as an irritant, causing inflammation and leakage of liquid into the lung. Your child can drown in their own fluids and symptoms can take up to 72 hours after the incident to appear. Very scary, especially when our second one, the “fearless” one, has no problem leaping into all kinds of pools of water (she assumes you, her servant, shall always be there to catch her if she goes under…. Actually it’s not just water, it’s anything she can climb on, jump off, etc.)

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6) The Miss has the skit this week, and it’s Beam Me Up, Scotty.

Good Weekend, dears…