(VIDEO) DEALING WITH FAILURES

 Emily Frankel asks her husband, John Cullum, how he deals with failures.

John, quoting Kipling, refers to success and failure as "two imposters."

As the Cullums remember some of their projects that "bombed," John's thoughts on the subject bolster and delight Emily.

THREE WISHES

Wishes are for kids. 

Though I am a grownup, I still wish for things.

Like a child, I've given myself three wishes.

I try to make what I'm wishing for very practical, so that it could possibly come true.

I try to keep in mind "if wishes were horses, beggars would  ride."

I repeat to myself what Eleanor Roosevelt said --" “It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”

WISH # ONE ...
I wish there were no ads on television.

Yep,  I am spending one of my three wishes on this even though I realize that ads are the king/queen/jackpot-maker of success on television.  Yep, television decorates my life -- it is on like a radio whenever we're in the kitchen, and I hate -- H A  T  E -- what ads have done to our minds. Ads cram my mind with unfactual facts about disease, politics, cars, and foods, while influencing our culture -- shaping a dumb-dumb corrupt reality.

WISH # TWO ...
I wish all religions of the world would stop warring with one another and accept each other.  

It's a big wish -- that all the different "God" beliefs -- Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism. Sikhism, Confucianism, Shinto, Taoism, Jainism, Baha'i, Zoroastrianism -- would stop hating and rejecting the other versions of God and right and wrong.
       I am using up a wish on this because I see and hear the huge conflict building in otherwise good people -- for instance, those who fear Islam, hate Islamics, and wish to destroy them. That hatred is destroying those people. I have to clear the decks and the various things in the world that keep me from focusing on what I want for me. 

WISH # THREE ... 
I wish I could go into the studio and dance my dance.

The choreography of my dance isn't steps. It's  the synchronization of movement with some wonderful  music -- "Fantasia On A Theme by Thomas Tallis," by R. Vaughn Williams. I have been dancing to this music every day for more than 15 years. The "dance" changes as I have changed, but the flow of thought that is my dance gives me joy. Like a prayer, it lifts up from my mind, my limitations, woes, wonderings, and vanities, and deeply involves me in just dancing my dance.

It's a bit nutty that I have a dance. but if you think of it as my prayer ritual, maybe you will nod, and understand.

I can't dance my dance and do my prayer when I feel the ads on TV and the potential war between world religions will destroy the world.