Essentialism..........................

     The way of the Essentialist isn't about setting New Year's resolutions to say "no" more, or about pruning your in-box, or about mastering some new strategy in time management.  It is about pausing constantly to ask, "Am I investing in the right activities?"  There are far more activities and opportunities in the world than we have the time and resources to invest in.  And although many of them may be good, or even very good, the fact is that most are trivial and few are vital.  The way of  Essentialist involves learning to tell the difference - learning to filter through all those options and selecting only those that are truly essential.
     Essentialism is not about how to get more things done;  it's about how to get the right things done.  

-Greg McKeown,  essentialism:  The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

Following...........................

.........................................Mitigating Chaos is a gift I give myself.

Fifty years ago........................

The Rolling Stones..................................................Prodigal Son

 

Highly recommended...................

........................................taking a family vacation in Ireland:

Leaving on a jet plane

First stop:  Dublin.   Enjoying library envy at
Trinity College

Good advice for the million visitors

Good eats and good drinks are found everywhere

Good company

A highlight:  the Guinness brewery tour

My favorite:   the tour of the old Jameson distillery

John Jameson's worthy motto:   Without Fear

Glendalough

Saint Kevin's Sixth Century hang out

More of Glendalough

Always good advice, and easy to find

Killarney National Park

Mild winters yield some awesome rhodedendrons

Torc Waterfall

Add some floors and a roof and we might have something

The obligatory kissing of the Blarney Stone

Blarney Castle

Ross Castle

Who am I to judge

View from Connor's Pass, Dingle Peninsula

The Cliffs of Moher

Even more Cliffs of  Moher

Looking for the pot of gold

No question about who has the right of way

My Sweetie loves the beach, even if its rock

It was that kind of week

Fifty years ago.............................

Donovan..........................................................Jennifer Juniper

 

Fifty years ago............................

Martha Reeves & The Vandellas........................Forget Me Not

Reach out................................

“Realize that true happiness lies within you. Waste no time and effort searching for peace and contentment and joy in the world outside. Remember that there is no happiness in having or in getting, but only in giving. Reach out. Share. Smile. Hug. Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.” 

-Og Mandino

image via gapingvoid.com

Fifty years ago.......................

Diana Ross & the Supremes.......................Forever Came Today

Damn................................

Without Jupiter cleaning out the early solar system, the Earth would be pock-marked with meteor collisions. We would suffer from asteroid impacts every day. CNN studios would probably be a gigantic crater it if wasn't for Jupiter.

-Michio Kaku

enlargeable photo and backstory here

Fifty years ago............................

The Rolling Stones..................................Sympathy For The Devil

Choose wisely.........................

“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.” 

-Roy T. Bennett

image via gapingvoid.com

Fifty years ago...............................

Procol Harum..................................................Shine On Brightly

Undivided................................

“There are three motives for which we live; we live for the body, we live for the mind, we live for the soul. No one of these is better or holier than the other; all are alike desirable, and no one of the three—body, mind, or soul—can live fully if either of the others is cut short of full life and expression.” 

-Wallace Wattles

Fifty years ago...........................

Van Morrison.......................................................Astral Weeks

On expediency...................

Not only does the action of Governments not deter men from crimes; on the contrary, it increases crime by always disturbing and lowering the moral standard of society. Nor can this be otherwise, since always and everywhere a Government, by its very nature, must put in the place of the highest, eternal, religious law (not written in books but in the hearts of men, and binding on every one) its own unjust, man-made laws, the object of which is neither justice nor the common good of all but various considerations of home and foreign expediency.

-Leo Tolstoy

Fifty years ago.....................

The Byrds................................................You Ain't Going Nowhere

 

No worries here..............

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

-Aldous Huxley

Fifty years ago....................

On the television.........The Avengers (sadly, without Diana Rigg)

 

Not just yet...........................

After the long night, and longer twilight, we envisage a dawn-era: an era in which the minor law of tradition shall yield to the greater law of creation, in which the spirit of repression shall fail to repress.    Man at last is become emancipated, and now is free to think, to feel, to act free to move toward the goal of the race.    Humanitarianism slowly is dissolving the sway of utilitarianism, and an enlightened unselfishness is on its way to supersede a benighted rapacity. And all this, as a deep-down force in nature awakens to its strength, animating the growth and evolution of democracy.  Under the beneficent sway of this power, the hold of illusion and suppression is passing; the urge of reality is looming in force, extent and penetration, and the individual now is free to become a man, in the highest sense, if so he wills.

-Louis Sullivan

Fifty years ago...............................

Diana Ross & The Supremes et. al........I'm Gonna Make You Love Me