Thinking Citizen Blog — If You Knew That Tonight’s Dinner Would Be Your Last, What Would You Talk About? How Would You Structure The Conversation? Would It Matter?
Thinking Citizen Blog — Friday is Education and Education Policy Day
Today’s Topic: If you knew that tonight’s dinner would be your last, what would you talk about? how would you structure the conversation? would it matter?
The future of humanity is in your hands. We learn and teach by example. The ball is in your court.
The buck stops with you. How can you change the world before you go to sleep tonight? Well, you can start by making that list of seven most important things you have learned in your life and sharing it with everyone you love as I have been harping about for way, way, too long.
But today, let me give you a second assignment to stick in that back pack of your day. Because tonight’s supper may be your last. Our fate is not in our hands. How can you make the most of that last meal?
Well, turn that meal into a “what matters table.” Go around the table asking every member of the family or friends circle to share the most important thing they learned in their lives.
And have one member of the circle be elected or appointed the scribe — to record the answers and share the list with loved ones who were not present. No volunteers?
Do it yourself.
Brick by brick, step by step, meal by meal. How we do what we do becomes who we are. We build ourselves slowly. Habit by habit. How about cultivating the habit of daily focus on what matters most deeply to us?
Every dinner is an opportunity to focus our collective minds on what matters most to each of us. What would that be? How about “learning something new, thinking a bit more deeply, and spreading a little joy every day”?
How about always having a good answer at dinner when the rotating head of the table asks, “How was your day, dearest ___?” Fill in the blank with your name.
Experts, please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE LAST SUPPER (Michelangelo) — “Cenacolo” — in the dining hall (“refrectory”) of the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan, Italy
1. To me this is the most important painting of Leonardo Da Vinci. Nothing else comes close.
2. It depicts the moment that Jesus announces that one of the apostles will betray him.
3. All the apostles but John, the apostle whom Jesus loved, are agitated and desperate, but John, to the right of Jesus, who looks more like the Virgin Mary than a man, sleeps.
NB: My reading — this is no time to point fingers. Focus instead on distilling your life into communicable chunks of wisdom and sharing them with your family and friends so that together we may structure our lives to bring forward that day when every child born on the planet earth reaches their full potential for joy, productivity, and responsibility.
The Last Supper (Leonardo) — Wikipedia
https://cenacolovinciano.org/en/
YOUR NEXT WALK — TRY GREETING A STRANGER OR TWO OR THREE (my daily count is usually between 10 and 30), make the great outdoors your classroom, your laboratory of joy
1. The ancient Greeks were smart dudes. They knew that walking helps you think. That’s why their schools were “peripatetic.”
2. But why not lever every walk? Greet some one, smiling. See what happens. Do they smile back? Probably. Why? We are all born copy cats. We all are wired with a reciprocity gene.
3. Then compliment them in some specific way. Their shoes. Their hat. Their scarf. Their gait. Their eyes. My favorite way is, having found out where they are from, singing to them the most beloved song from their homeland. They tend to say things like “You made my day!”
NB: Then, once the ice has been cracked, ask them what the most important thing they learned in their life is. You may be in for some real wisdom. And perhaps a good laugh. In my experience, the percentage of total strangers who take this request seriously approaches 99%.
THE SOCRATIC DIALOGUE — have you ever had a serious conversation with anyone about anything really important ever? To be honest, I have been trying for about a decade and I feel a bit like Diogenes with his lamp, because, well, honestly, I haven’t. Why? No one wants to do the homework. If each participant does not make the commitment to do their homework, well, sorry — there will be no real conversation, no follow through, no continuity, and no depth of collective thought. Shall we give it a go?
1. The only solid basis for a real conversation is the exchange of “Orions.”
2. An “Orion” is your prioritized list of the seven most important things to know about topic x.
3. I have been sharing my lists at the bottom of every email I send out for years. The topics covered are a.) the most important songs to memorize as soon as possible to acquire the super power of tearing down all cultural barriers between any human you meet anywhere on the planet earth in 10 seconds, b.) the meaning of justice, and c.) the Israel Palestine conflict.
NB: I am waiting, patiently, for your Orions on any topic. The ball is in your court.
Thinking Citizen Blog — The Exchange of Orions and Israel-Palestine (Re-Visited) — Taking The Bull…
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What is the “Harkness Method”?
QUOTE OF THE MONTH
“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
My spin — then periodically review, re-rank, and exchange your list with those you love. I call this the “Orion Exchange” because seven is about as many as any human can digest at a time. Game?
LAST FOUR YEARS OF POSTS ORGANIZED THEMATICALLY
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IP5ATbqCWPv0WKC4dCDgAiidbFVOaqR_
#1 A graphic guide to justice (9 metaphors on one page).
#2 “39 Songs, Prayers, and Poems: the Keys to the Hearts of Seven Billion People” — Adams House Senior Common Room Presentation, (11/17/20)
NB: Palestine Orion (Decision) — let’s exchange Orions, let’s find Rumi’s field (“Beyond all ideas of right and wrong, there is a field. Meet me there” Rumi, 13 century Persian Sufi mystic)
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to education or education policy. Or the coolest thought however half-baked you had.
Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to education or education policy that the rest of us may have missed.
Or just some random education-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to makesome one’s day. Or to cement in your own mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply than otherwise about something that is dear to your heart.
