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Posts Tagged ‘differences’

Screaming on the Inside

Posted in Journeys, tagged on January 9, 2021| 12 Comments »

Wood storks, egrets, roseate spoonbill and white ibis all different yet getting along. Why can’t Americans. —
Photo by Pat Bean

          This is the fourth day in a row that I have sat down in front of my computer screen to write a blog, one about something insignificant that readers might find meaningful or amusing. I usually feel I’ve achieved that goal if my words give me my own aha moment, or bring a smile to my own face.

          But each time I tried to put light-hearted words together this week, I couldn’t find any. Instead, I would go back to perusing the news, which quickly had my insides screaming in agony.

          How did we become such a divided country, so full of angry people who can no longer tell truth from lies, or who can but won’t accept it because they don’t like it?

          Why do I see facts differently from some of my own friends and family?

          How can Americans put aside differences and work together — even if they never will see eye-to-eye?  Writing this, I think of the words my granddaughter and her wife spoke at their wedding: “You be you and I’ll be me.” It works for them. Why can’t it work for this country’s population?

          Michel Montaigne, a 16th century French philosopher wrote: “Men are tarnished with the opinions they have of things and not by things themselves.” I think this translates to what is going on in America today.

          Frankly, I’ve always thought our country works best when one party has the presidency and the other party has control of Congress. It forces the opposing forces to work together, mitigating extremes in either direction. Anyone who thinks they deserve to get their way in everything every time is a selfish, spoiled child with no empathy for others.

          OK. Perhaps this is enough ranting so that the next time I sit in front of my computer screen with a blank page in front of me, I will be able to write something insignificant and amusing. I dang well hope so.

          Pat Bean is a retired journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is a wondering-wanderer, avid reader, enthusiastic birder, Lonely Planet Community Pathfinder, Story Circle Network board member, author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon, and is always searching for life’s silver lining.

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The Art of Being Different

Posted in Journeys, tagged , on August 29, 2016| 10 Comments »

“Live your life so when the time comes for the funeral the preacher won’t have to bullshit the peoples.” Baba Olatunji

My friends at the Standard-Examiner, where I ended my 37-year Journalist career gave me this at my retirement party. It was drawn by the newspaper's cartoonist Cal Grondal -- and I love it The image is of me standing on the top of Angel's Landing in Zion as a bird to note my birdwatching passion. It is different -- and I love it.

My friends at the Standard-Examiner, where I ended my 37-year Journalist career gave me this at my retirement party. It was drawn by the newspaper’s cartoonist Cal Grondal — and I love it The image is of me standing on the top of Angel’s Landing in Zion as a bird to note my birdwatching passion. It is different — and I love it.

Simply Being Oneself

I’ve oft quoted the saying: “Live, so that when you die, you know the difference.” Baba Olatunji, the late African drummer whose words started off this blog, said it his way. We’re both saying the same thing, but the words we use to do it are worlds apart.

And this is me and my longtime good friend, Kim, who is as different from me as a hummingbird is from an eagle. The photo was taken at a photo booth that was part of her son's wedding reception. I love it, too.

And this is me and my longtime good friend, Kim, who is as different from me as a hummingbird is from an eagle. The photo was taken at a photo booth that was part of her son’s wedding reception. I love it, too.

Which of course got me wondering about how people can be both so alike, and yet so different.

I started off life wanting to fit in, which was impossible. There was no way I was ever going to have a cashmere sweater set like the girls I wanted to be like. And there was no way, I could not be the first to raise my hand to answer any question the teacher asked – whether I knew it or not, although mostly I knew the answers.

I see myself as once being like Hermione in the Harry Potter books — except she is cute and I was a skinny, freckled girl with tangled, nearly white hair (until it darkened when I had children) who talked too loud.

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve been told to shush-it.

Then one day, too many years later, I realized that I got loud when I got excited about something, and that my friends accepted me as I was. I even started to pity those people who never got too loud and interrupted conversations; they probably lacked the passion for life that I had.

I then began noticing that the people I liked most were nothing like me. They had their own quirks. Sometimes we filled the holes in the other. They learned from me, and I learned from them.

I then began to accept that it was OK to be different. Accepting that, I finally began to discover my own self. I’m still discovering. And it’s wonderful.

Bean Pat: Monday Motivation http://tinyurl.com/jye74xu Short and sweet, and something you should do for sure.

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Goldfinch Assumption Gets This Writer Thinking

Posted in Birds, Nature, Travel, tagged , , , , , on February 26, 2011| 4 Comments »

One of the lesser goldfinches Maggie and I saw on our morning walk. -- Photo by Pat Bean

“Our greatest strength as a human race is our ability to acknowledge our differences, our greatest weakness is our failure to embrace them.” — Judith Henderson

 Travels With Maggie

 Some days I wake up eager to write on a topic that burned itself into my brain as I slept, usually because the subject was on my mind before I went to bed. I consider these good days.

 On others, I wake brain-dead, wondering what in the heck I’m going to write about. This morning was one of these.

 Some days, Maggie sleeps in until 10 a.m. Others, like this morning, she wakes up early and immediately demands that I take her for a walk. Yes. I know. My children already have informed me that my canine companion bosses me around.

 But I welcomed her demands this morning, knowing that walks fertilize my brain. The birds clinging to a thistle finch bag feeder we passed did the rest.

I jumped to the conclusion that they were American goldfinches, which are extremely common all across the country. A closer inspection of the birds through binoculars, however, and I discovered my mistake. I was looking at lesser goldfinches, whose range rarely extends farther east than my current location in Central Texas.

An American goldfinch -- Photo by Pat Bean

 The adult males of both species are brilliant yellow and black (females are duller and in the case of the lesser more green than yellow), but the lesser has a black head and back, while the American only wears a black cap and has black wings that contrast with a yellow back. Both species are beautiful birds.

 And that got me thinking about the assumptions people make when confronted with differences in general. I suspect that erroneous assumptions, like my confusion as to which goldfinch I was seeing, are way too common. And just like my goldfinches, most of our assumptions usually have nothing to do with right or wrong.

One kind of beauty, one color of skin or one way of thinking may be no better or no worse than another kind of beauty, a different color of skin or a second, third or fourth way of thinking.

I suspect the world could do with fewer assumptions and more appreciation of differences. What do you think?

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