Damoiselle

Damoiselle: (n) a young woman or girl; a maiden

The joke is that employees at Federal Express read on a package, “Fragile, handle with care,” and toss that one even higher.

I’m sure that’s not true.

It is the instinct of the human race to rebel against the things we’re told to do.

This is especially true when we feel like someone is being picky or prissy.

So over the years, as women have been trying to establish their equality, the females have also accepted special consideration for being dainty when it suited the circumstances.

Because of this, religion, politics and business have been able to mask bigotry behind a sense of appreciation for ladies, deeming them damoiselles—because this title can place them in distress—and as we often saw in the cartoons, they were tied up and laid on railroad tracks, waiting for the hero (a man) to come and save them.

Many years ago, because I wanted equality with my “sisters in life,” I stopped phony recognition.

I hold doors open for women because I also hold them open for men, and even once, if I remember correctly, a dog or two.

I do not frantically run toward a woman carrying packages and take them from her, lest she break a sweat.

It is how women end up being handled rather than regarded.

It is why a word like “demoiselle,” though just a French translation for “woman,” brings with it the tentacles of oppression.

It’s a sinister way to make sure that women never gain the even footing their stance demands.

If I am working with a woman, I talk to her just as directly as I would her male counterpart. Amazingly enough, from time to time, some women regard this fair play as chauvinism.

Because privately, they want to plead for fairness but also want to maintain the perks of being carried along gently by men—men who are convinced they are innately weaker.

So I say to my dear friends who happen to be the “she-dom of this world,” you must make up your mind.

If you want to stand toe-to-toe, you probably should carry in your own boxes.

And if you want to be considered the same, then demand the same.

 

Counseling

Counseling: (n) professional guidance in resolving personal conflicts and emotional problems.

I certainly understand why people are leery of counsel. I completely comprehend why entering a counseling session could be terrifying.

Because as horrific as it may be to consider following an errant path, having one chosen for you and then failing would certainly place a root of bitterness deep in your soul, which could be very difficult to extract.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Stated bluntly, if I’m going to end up screwed, I’d like to be the driver.

For true counseling has nothing to do with guidance or instruction. Any person who desires to give counsel to another human being must understand that since God has no intention of removing free will from any son or daughter of Adam and Eve, it is therefore not the job of the inspirer to rob someone of his or her own fragile, but necessary, power of decision.

What is good counseling?

  1. Clarify all the crap, trash, fears, insecurities and prejudices and help individuals discover what really surrounds them.

Most people don’t die in battle. They pass away from suffocation, because that which could have aided them crushes them. A good counselor literally clears the air and allows a friend to see exactly what of the dilemma is real and what is trying to haunt the darkness.

  1. Long before answers arrive, questions must be taught politeness. They need to be arranged by importance and dealt with respectively within that lineup. The counselor helps someone to find the right questions and then place them in a pecking order.

After these two things are achieved, the counselor listens, only steering when a cliff is in sight.

If you want to call that “professional guidance,” then you would be correct.

But what I believe it to be is a calm reshuffling of availability.


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Corroborate

Corroborate: (v) to make more certain; confirm

There are those final moments at the end of a heated argument when two or more people stare at each other, exhausted from trying to outwit one another, realizing that life needs to go on, yet all the debaters are suspicious of exactly how that could happen.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

Human beings are the most fragile, yet indestructible, organisms ever conceived.

We can have our bodies shot with radiation to kill cancer.

People have fallen out of fifteen-story windows, landed on cement and survived.

Yet one foolish accusation or ill-placed assumption can render us emotionally paralyzed, unable to continue without years of therapy or medication.

What is it that causes us to believe that disagreements, which are plentiful, are somehow or another insurmountable?

There may be only one thing that aids the survival of the human race: a single action placed at just the right time after we have failed, cursed, stumbled, lied, cheated, argued and even threatened violence. It is the stillness which often comes over the soul and allows a moment of heartfelt reflection.

At this juncture we realize that the best way to confirm what we hope, what we are or what we believe is to stop fussing and go out and find a way to corroborate it.

  • Cease wishing; begin to work.
  • Stop praying and instead, produce.
  • And fail without becoming a failure.Donate Button

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Coma

Coma: (n) a state of deep unconsciousness that lasts for a prolonged or indefinite period

Vigilant.

It is the most frustrating, mystifying and perhaps unachievable emotion available in the human heart–to continue to pursue a path of behavior and passion with no evidence that such devotion will ever guarantee success.

When my son was in a hit-and-run accident, he suffered a severe brain injury which placed him in a coma.

I was very young, and not just in years. I was young to the idea of inconveniencing myself.

Even though television portrays dutiful family members staying by the bedside of their loved one who is in a coma, the TV dramas only dwell in that lonely, still room for thirty seconds or so.

The silence is maddening.

Some nurses told me that people in a coma can hear, and others said there was absolutely no medical evidence that the patient has any awareness of the outside world at all. I stayed by his bedside.

Minutes were hours.

Hours, days.

And the days seemed like years.

I hated it. I felt like I was putting on a show for those around me by perching next to the unresponsive body of my young son, pretending to create a connection.

To my regret, I often slipped away early or arrived late.

A coma is when a human separates from us before drawing his or her last breath, letting us know how fragile life truly is.

My son finally did emerge from his coma, only to live in a vegetative state for about six years. The only thing he gained was an obvious function to feel more pain.

A horrible experience.

At times I have tried to glean some value from it, but ultimately, in my more cognitive perceptions, I declare it darkness.

 

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Biped

Biped: (n) an animal that uses two legs for walking.

Dictionary B

 There is an old saying infrequently used, but still chronicled somewhere in the testaments of time.

“The legs are the first thing to go.”

When I was a kid, I had no idea what that meant. Even growing into manhood, the idea of losing strength, power and ability in my legs–in other words, not being a confident biped–seemed ludicrous.

So I foolishly and often recklessly utilized my motoring abilities by foot without any regard for the fragility of the practice.

About ten years ago–due to my obesity, activity and sometimes even abuse–my knees, ankles and hips began to complain ferociously by welcoming pain and discomfort into my life.

It gradually got worse and worse, to the point that today, most of the time, I have to use a wheelchair to get to my destinations.

It is odd. I took it for granted. Now I lust as I watch others walking along confidently.

I’m not angry. There is no resentment.

I don’t feel I’ve been targeted by life to be relegated to a diminished capacity.

But I am fully aware that if other things want to go, I must struggle to encourage them to remain.

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Anti

dictionary with letter A

 

Anti (prep): opposed to; against

 

I usually don’t date my material by speaking on contemporary issues, but rather, addressing broader subjects to have lasting appeal which salves the ego of this writer, who believes his material might survive his own mortality.

But I do wake up this morning feeling the need to share my heart on the death of Robin Williams.

I am certainly against it.

You could say that I’m anti-Robin Williams’ suicide.

Matter of fact, I had a chilling thought go through my mind as I rose from my bed this day: less than twenty-four hours ago, Robin was still alive, though conflicted in the process of determining to cease his journey.

What could have been done?

You see, there’s the problem. Because the news cycle feels the need to make a lot of money, movies desire sensationalism and religion works feverishly to frighten converts and potential clients into salvation, we have so negatively charged this planet with an anti-contentment of despair that it is very difficult for some people to pull out of the nosedive of depression before they crash to earth.

Am I saying we are all to blame for the death of Robin Williams?

No. He alone is the perpetrator of his own disaster.

But I am saying that God has given us many sensitive souls who are fragile in nature, and are susceptible to fits of fretting, in order to warn us when the temperature of hope has plummeted to the point where we begin to freeze out the possibility for true joy.

When someone has the gift to make people laugh, but he, himself, is so despondent over the conditions that surround him that he takes a deadly journey through drugs and anguish to finally end his own life, we must realize that a fragile soul like Robin is here to warn us of our own tendency to be dark, depraved and faithless.

  • Somewhere there has to be a light. Otherwise the darkness is no longer considered to be bleak.
  • Somewhere there has to be a pro to every con or we become convinced that life is a perpetual misery waiting for a terminal conclusion.

I wake up this morning praying for my brother Robin, because I still believe that a merciful God will show kindness to such a loving soul who just wasn’t well-suited for the “anti-everything” climate which permeates our society.

I refuse to be against anything right now because it’s too damn easy.

 

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