Phantom Ranch To Ribbon Falls - Hiking In The Grand Canyon

Some pictures from a day hike from Phantom Ranch to Ribbon Falls.  Great scenery and a fairly easy hike.  Fairly flat, some good shade locations,  with one small hill before you get to the falls .  It is beautiful walking through the narrow valley with high rock walls on each side and a stream going down the middle.  Some cool bridges that you cross along the way.  Don't take the shortcut just before you get to the falls and try to cross the stream.  Don't forget to climb the stairs to go behind the falls.

Please enjoy the song "Seen That Look Before" by "Be Ready To Listen"

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South Kaibab Trail To Phantom Ranch - Hiking Down The Grand Canyon

Some pictures hiking down the Grand Canyon starting from the South Rim going via the South Kaibab Trail with the ultimate destination of Phantom Ranch.  Please enjoy the song "Seen That Look Before" by "Be Ready To Listen".

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My Grandma

Next month it will be 30 years since my grandmother died.  Recently I was told that every 30 years the moon does a full cycle (1 degree per month) and if something is bothering you today, it might be related to something that happened to you 30 years ago.

I recently shared an “origin story” at a work dinner (no, not about how I got my superpowers).  It was a sharing of something in your life that helped make you who you are today.  My story naturally came to me to talk about my grandma.

My grandparents lived nearby when I was young.  I would go there by myself and usually when I arrived, my grandfather would be lying down having a nap and if it was in the afternoon, my grandmother would be watching one of the many soap operas on TV.  As a child I never understood how much she enjoyed them, and if I knew now what I know, I would have visited at a different time, so as not to disturbed her.

When I would arrive, I would say hello to my grandpa and he would say where my grandma was.  If she was watching a soap, she would immediately turn it off and come sit in the veranda with me and my grandpa.

In today's world, you would say “just a minute while I record the show” or “I got it recording, how are you doing?”  But back then, the show was on the aerial (Google it), and there were no VCR’s (Google it), or PVR’s (Google it), or pause buttons on your iPad so that you could watch it later.  I was so important to her that she would immediately turn it off.

As I'm telling this story, I realize now that she was possibly the best listener that I ever knew.  Never interrupting me as I talked, and willing to always listen.  I have tried to be a person that listens to everything that someone says, but it is hard.  We are always trying to interject or comment before the person is done or our impatience gets in the way.  Often we miss so much interrupting people.  Sometimes people discussing a problem come up with their own solution on their own and only needed someone to listen.

Her death 30 years ago probably is not something I ever got over.  As I think about this blog’s name and the songs I have written, I know now that she was a great inspiration in my life.  She has been gone for more years than she was with me alive.  It's hard to forget someone, even after that amount of time.

My next song that I will release is called “Seen That Look Before” and I dedicate it to her.

New Song Called "One Day" By "Be Ready To Listen"

About a week ago I finally released my first single.  It was a long journey and it feels great to have something out there.  I hope some people like it.

Here are the lyrics:

1st Verse

As I'm walking alone

I wonder who I am

And the time

It's moving on

My mind can't stay

To live today

That moment’s gone

2nd Verse

As I'm walking with you

Thoughts wander to the past

Troubled heart

My mind is drawn

I should listen

Words forgotten

That moment's gone

Pre-Chorus

And I know as the days go past

Missing times that will never last

They’re gone away, I've wasted days

And I know that someday I'll look back

At these times I was never at

They’re gone away, I've wasted days

I've wasted days

Chorus

One day

I'm gonna listen to the words you say

One day

I'm gonna change my selfish ways

Don't go away (By Backup Singer)

Please stay here

Today (By Backup Singer)

I am here

One day (By Backup Singer)

I'll live one day

Guitar Solo

3rd Verse

I have so many fears

What others think of me

And there's loss

The list is long

The chance to fail

Hide in life's veil

That moment's gone

Repeat Pre Chorus

Repeat Chorus

Ending

One day

What Is The Meaning Of Life?

“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” - Pablo Picasso

What is the meaning of life?  This is probably one of the oldest questions that has pondered humankind over the centuries.  Why are we here?  Is there a purpose to our lives?  What are we supposed to be doing?

Do you ever wonder what the universe would be like if humans didn't exist?  Do we add value to this whole thing called life?

Every day we learn more and theorize about how we got to where we are.  Are we only here because meteorites found this planet which happened to meet all the right conditions to allow us to evolve to where we are now?  If life came here from space, what the hell is out there?

Do you believe in the creation story?

Since Galileo proposed that the Earth is not at the center of the universe and the Earth orbits the sun (one of billions of suns),  science and religious beliefs have been in conflict.

I have accepted that I will most likely be forgotten long after I am gone and that ultimately everyone will somehow be forgotten.  You could argue that there are some people who will always be remembered (George Washington as the first president of the United States).  But what if one day, the United States changes and becomes part of a larger country (Canada, United States, Mexico) and then centuries later joins a larger country (North America & South America).  Now you go 4,000 years later (assuming the sun still works), chances are George Washington will not be remembered.  Probably he has a better chance than me.

If you believe in something like heaven after you die, perhaps the meaning of life is just a test for you to live a good life to earn your way into heaven.  Perhaps it is related to Karma and encourages you to lead a good life.  But that still doesn't answer the question, what difference to the universe will it make if humans did or did not exist.

Do we only believe that we have souls because we have the mental capacity to think about these things?  If you do not believe in God, then who made everything?

When you look back at history, the world wasn't a very good place to live.  People constantly lived in fear from enemies and groups of people that feared others and wanted to get rid of you before you got rid of them.  People suffered and still do from things like war, disease, and hunger.  Those who have been born in countries without these things are lucky (like winning a lottery) and if they have a good family environment with love and financial backing they have a better chance to continue with a good lifestyle.  Why is it that these people have it better than others?  Is that really fair and how does it fit into the meaning of life?

Chances are there is no meaning of life.   I very well could be wasting my time pondering this question and not living my life to its potential.  I should be thankful that all those conceived before me were ultimately responsible for me to exist and if any of them did anything differently, I most likely would not be here.

What we do may not really make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things.  However, for this life we might as well leave the world a little better than it was when we got here.  We should find our gifts and share them with others.

What that means for you depends on you.  No matter how you plan to do this, you should try to live a  life that is ethical and moral.  And most importantly, you should find happiness.

We should treat others as we want to be treated.  We should protect our environment so others have a chance to continue this thing we call life.

You have freewill.  What would you rather be doing?

Are You Really Just Mad At Yourself?

Sometimes we get angry at someone for pointing out something that we are doing wrong.

An example, a worker was leaving work for the day.  They were known to be very safety conscious and would actively ensure that fellow workers followed all the safety protocols and rules.

As this worker walked down the hallway to leave the building, their supervisor saw them and commented that they should not be wearing their sunglasses inside.  (This rule was actually in the rule book).  The worker removed their sunglasses and left for the day.  This person felt insulted that their supervisor would comment to them on what they thought was a trivial rule and how dare the supervisor embarrass them since they were an advocate for preaching safety.

Several days later, this anger consumed the individual as they told several people this story and how angry they were that this happened.

As I heard this story, my response was the following:  Chances are they know that they broke a rule and their true anger is at them self and not their supervisor.

This comes back to another posts called "Ownership, Versus Blame & The Victim".

We don't like it when people point out the obvious to us during the times when we know something was in our control and we did not do the proper thing.  In those situations, we know what we did was wrong and we don't like hearing it again and again.  Just like what happens in the clip below from "Office Space".

As an aside, the other funny part in this scene is how the main character is talking to two consultants who both have the name Bob, but when he talks to them, he refers to them as only one person.  Bob.

No one likes to be wrong.  Sometimes we like to blame others to falsely make ourselves feel better.  But the anger will only consume us.

Being Open To Other Ideas

Do you only read books, online web pages, or newspaper articles that only reinforce your own opinions?  Do you only talk with people who share your opinions and avoid those that challenge your ideas?

A political party is a good example.  If you read an article on a political party that you support, will you stop reading it if the article is negative to your opinion?  If the article is positive to your opinion, will you continue to read it?  On the flip side, if you read about a political party that you don't support and it is negative to that political party, will you continue to read it? If the article is positive, will you stop reading it?

We live in a world where websites like to show us things based on our past search history, which often reinforce our own opinions.

If you have a problem, and you can't decide what to do, (but you kinda know what you want to do), do you keep asking for advice until you hear what you want to hear?  This happens at work all the time where someone will go office to office until the advice they get is what they want to hear.  Eventually they find someone who shares their opinion.

A true story.  An elderly man with a bad knee wanted to have an operation to fix his knee.  His doctor told him that he was too old for the surgery and would most likely die during the surgery.  He went to another doctor who told him the same thing.  Eventually he found a doctor would said he would do the surgery.  As you can guess, he died during the surgery.

We can never grow as individuals if we close our minds to other opinions.  Some people are so proud, their opinion can never change, even if what they believe in lets them down.  (For example sport stars caught using steroids, celebrities having affairs, or politicians who get caught lying).  We tend to approach discussions with the attitude that we are 100% right and as a result we don't listen to the other point of view.  As we go down our path of opinion, we get to a point where we feel there is no point of return.  Don't let your stubbornness blind you.

Everything (like this post) is an opinion.  Nothing is exactly right (except math).

Be Ready To Listen

A famous guru was once asked, "How should I be your disciple?  Should I worship you?  Should I accept every word as truth?"  The guru replied, "Neither one.  Just open your mind to the possibility that what I'm saying could be true" - From the book "The Future Of God: A Practical Approach To Spirituality For Our Times" - Deepak Chopra

You are probably wondering why I am writing a post that has the same title of the blog after many initial posts.  I don't know the answer.

I have found with my children that they are not always willing to listen to advice when I want to give it.  That is one of the reasons I am writing this blog, so they can read it later when they are ready.  They will be given advice throughout their lives, and it will be up to them to decide if it is worth following.  But first, they must listen.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear - Famous Old Quote (Not sure who)

My understanding of the above quote is, until the student is ready to listen, there is no need for the teacher to show up and start teaching.  The teacher is wasting time being there since the message goes straight through the student's ears.  There is a huge difference when the student's attitude is set to listen and learn instead of set to "I have to be here, I don't want to be here".

In today's world, we have many distractions like email, texts, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, news alerts, etc that take us away from where we are in the present moment.  When we jump immediately to the notifications, we basically are telling the person that is talking to us that our electronic world is more important.  It is a strange thing considering that after the person walks away, the notification will still be there.  Jerry Seinfeld, starting about 40 seconds into the following video talks about this.

Sometimes when a child is upset, you will be wasting your time trying to instruct them if they are not ready to listen.  A child (just like an adult) needs time to reflect and calm themselves down before they are bombarded with advice.  When the child is ready to listen, you need to be ready to listen as well.  This post is not just about a parent trying to insert some wisdom into their child, but also the need for the parent to listen as well (and possibly receive some wisdom too).

With your child, you will have to find out when they are most willing to talk to you.  Often when a parent arrives home, they want to grill their children with questions.  This is our way of saying that they must comply with our schedule and answer when we want them to answer.  They may not be in a mood to do that (doing homework, playing, etc) so you have to test different situations to find out what works best.  Picking them up from school or meeting them when they get off the bus seems to be a good time for my children to open up about their day.  They actually compete with each other to tell about their day first.

I once heard the advice that if you have a child that is difficult to put to bed, that is a good time to sit on their bed and ask them about their day.  It gives them a chance to delay bedtime and gives you a good opportunity to sit and listen.

When a child wants to talk to you about something, you need to drop everything and listen (within reason, not when you're bench pressing 200 lbs).  This window of opportunity doesn't always last long.  You need to remember that every child is unique and what works for one child may not work for the other.  Even if the child is talking to you about something like a new video game or an episode of Spongebob that you don't know anything about, listen, this discussion is important to them and will make them feel comfortable to talk to you about other things in the future.

One of my pet peeves is when someone asks another question while the person is answering the first question.  This is another way of saying that you are not listening to their first answer (since you are thinking in your head about another question).  You most likely will miss out on a lot of information if this is your common practise.

We have two ears and one mouth.  We should listen twice as much as we talk.

Our children only live in our homes for about 18 years and then they typically move out to start working or start some form of post secondary school education.  18 years is not very long, don't wait until they have moved out to be ready to listen.

Solving Problems Quickly

Do you ever have a problem to solve and immediately come up with a solution?  As you start to implement the solution, you start to realize that it is not as simple as you originally thought.  Your ego gets in the way and guilts you to continue even though you start to realize that it may not work at all or is just too complicated.

I'll give you a good example that happened to me last night.  I recently got the newer model Apple TV.  I planned to hook up my older model Apple TV in the basement in our "work-out room".  This room has an older TV that does not have a HDMI connection.  It instead has a DVI connection, which in simple terms means only the video gets transmitted to the TV (you need a special cable that goes from HDMI on the output of the Apple TV to DVI on the input of the TV).  I needed to figure out how to transmit the audio as well (which usually gets transmitted through the HDMI cable).  I hope I haven't bored you with these details but these are somewhat important to understand this example.

Here is a listing of my immediate solutions without giving them much thought:

Failed Attempt 1:  I have a small TV that has HDMI connections, so my first solution was to go HDMI from the Apple TV to the HDMI on the small TV.  My plan was to connect the small TV to my larger TV.  From the small TV, I connected an RCA cable from the output (yellow for video, white and red for audio) to the input of the larger TV.  I could not get the video to work on the larger TV.  I tried many things to get it to work but only the audio would work.  What a crazy idea trying to use a TV to run a TV.

Failed Attempt 2:  I have an older Sling box that I was no longer using.  I could plug the HDMI from the Apple TV to the HDMI on the Sling box.  From there, I would use the component output (green, blue, red) to plug into the larger TV.  I went through the setup with the Sling box, which kept crashing on me, but could not get the picture to work.  I think the issue is that Apple TV has some copyright protection that prevents you from going HDMI to another type of video cable.

Failed Attempt 3:   I went from my Apple TV HDMI output using my cable that goes to DVI.  The picture on the TV worked but no sound (which was not a surprise, but I was desperate).  The Apple TV also has an optic audio output.  I looked on the Internet for a converter device that went from HDMI input to DVI & RCA output.  No such device existed that I could find.  You will see later on in the story that I almost had the right idea, but I continued to jump to conclusions.

Failed Attempt 4:  I looked online to see what it would cost to buy a modern TV to replace the old TV.  The cost for a TV around 60" was in the ballpark of $1,000, which seems crazy when I have a TV already.

Failed Attempt 5:  I thought that maybe I could connect a bluetooth speaker to the Apple TV and then the sound could be played through it.  It appears that Apple TV only connects via bluetooth to things like keyboards.

I looked up many other options on the Internet (many more failed attempts) and spent the better part of 3 hours trying to get all these ideas to work.  I even dreamed about it last night.

This morning, while I was not thinking about it, I realized that maybe I could buy a converter that takes an optic input and outputs RCA.  I could keep my DVI connection and use the converter for the audio.  I looked up online and quickly found such a device for about $15.   I ordered it and hopefully it works.

As you can see I spent a great deal of time and energy trying a lot of bandaid type solutions with little to show.  If someone was with me, they would think I was crazy.  If I had been successful with any of the attempts, it would of been mostly by luck.

Don't be so closed minded when you are trying to solve a problem.  Don't let your pride get in the way of being open to other solutions.  Don't think that the first idea that pops in your head is the best one.  I have seen at work this happen many times where things are implemented because someone came up with the solution fast.  Lots of time and money gets spent following the wrong path that eventually gets scrapped.

I almost bought a $1,000 TV instead of just spending $15!

Ownership, Versus Blame & The Victim

"Some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know, it's my own damn fault" - Jimmy Buffet

I love the above quote from the song "Margaritaville".  During the first chorus he starts by saying that its nobody's fault, but by the end of the song, he finally admits that it is his fault.

We live in a world where people spend a lot of energy deflecting blame onto other's for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes it can be that they work in an environment where mistakes can affect their performance appraisals, which then affect their promotions and future salaries.  Sometimes it can be just a natural reaction to a negative situation, a sort of defence mechanism.  Nobody likes to be wrong for many reasons, some of which I discussed as fear in a previous blog called Work, The Carrot, & Fear.  I think blaming others didn't just happen once we started working, but something within each of us from childhood.

Children now are raised in an environment where they are praised for whatever reason possible.  Sayings like "good job" or "you're really good" when the child actually fails are heard all too often when "good effort" could be a much better thing to say followed by some instruction/guidance on how to improve.  Kids get trophies when they win and get trophies when they lose.  When a child no longer gets the fake praise, they begin to wonder if any of it was ever sincere, and have a harder time without that type of reinforcement in the future.  Kids sports sometimes don't even keep score.

In a Star Trek Next Generation episode, Lieutenant Worf states "If winning is not important, then, Commander, why keep score?"

Kids need to learn from their successes but equally need to learn from their failures.  Learning from failures (whether it is their own or from observing others) is very important as they mature so that they will know how to handle future situations.  Helicopter parenting prevents children from learning from their mistakes, since the parent circles around the child and immediately swoops in and makes everything ok if the child is having any problems.

Once we get in the mode of blaming others, we start to feel like the victim all the time.  Being the victim takes away the ownership of our actions and as a result, the person never really learns what went wrong and how to prevent it in the future.  Saying things like "that always happens to me", or "I am not good at that" are another way of saying that you are the victim.

When really bad things happen, we always need to ask ourselves, "Is this a thing that will define me in the future?  Will I now be limited because of this past negative experience?"  For example, if someone was bitten by a dog when they were young, they can have the attitude that all dogs are bad, they must stay away from dogs, and they always seem to have bad luck with dogs.  This may limit them in the future, such as anytime they are around a dog, or their children want a dog and they tell them that all dogs are bad.  The child may actually believe the parent and now share the same belief.

We have this one life during our short time on Earth, and it is up to us to try to live it as happy as possible.  When things go wrong, take ownership of your actions (or inaction's), always look at what you could do to prevent it, how in the future you will handle the same situation, and don't blame others, or you will always be the victim.