Ithaka

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon--don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon--you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind--
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.


Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

--C.P. Cavafy
(1863-1933)

Ideology vs. Values

I have been reading The Audacity of Hope recently. Early on, Obama makes an important distinction between ideology and values. Certainly no one would doubt that values have a depth that ideology fails to plumb; my first thought is that an ideology is built on top of the bedrock of an individual's values.

Obama uses an illustration that he says occurred in the Illinois senate; a Republican colleague argued vehemently against against a school-provided breakfast program for Elementary school children. The Senator used as a reason not to create this program the argument that providing free breakfast for children would rob them of their self sufficiency! Obama countered that he has never known elementary school children who were self sufficient to begin with, and his side actually lost--in his words, Illinois school children were spared the debilitating effects of cereal and milk.

His point is that values can inform whatever situation or issue a person comes to, while an ideology is rigid and tends to blind people to the big picture in favor of minutiae. No one claiming to be a public servant would deny poor children breakfast, especially since studies show how difficult it is to concentrate when a student is hungry, yet in the name of fiscal conservation--an ideology--the value of feeding the poor is lost.

Pretty interesting, if you ask me. What do you think? In you own life, what motivates you more, ideals you adhere to, or values you carry inside? Wouldn't we all be better off if we identified our ideals and our values in play when we are thinking through various issues and situations?

I have a new cell phone number

Last week, I sat on the edge of the bathtub to help Mia--that's nothing new. However, this particular instance, my Upstage phone was in my back pocket. I picked that phone because it was slim and small and could easily fit into my pocket; the thing is, you know how in relationships, often the thing that attracts you to your mate is the very thing that drives you to despise him or her? Well, the thing that attracted me to that phone was what led to its demise.

I took that opportunity to abandon Sprint (at last!) and move to AT&T so I could finally get the phone I have coveted for so long. She is a beauty--so much more than just a phone to me. I am beginning to creep myself out, calling my phone "she."

Anyway, my new number is (903) 920-2617. My sweet friend, Nicole, suggested that I post this information here, so I took her advice. Had I taken her advice more often in the past 14 years, who knows where I would be today! :o)