Relationship Bank Account

I remember a day that I had the perfect opportunity to make a major RBA deposit and didn't.

One of those deposits that doesn't seem that major, but when you get caught with your fly down or spinach in your teeth, you really appreciate someone letting you know.

I was eating lunch with three friends and an older couple with kids my age. The cafeteria was serving pipping hot cookies, chocolate chip ones, that we were scarfing down.

Then the couple's son strolls up with a hand full of cookies and starts chatting with the group. He begins telling some story and eating his cookies all at the same time.

Bad move, buddy!

Chewing with his mouth open, chocolate began coating his teeth and lips! Now I'm not exactly sure how you don't feel half a cookie on your face but I guess he found a way.

He continued to deliver his story but by this point I had no earthly idea what he was yakking about; all I could do was stare.

I jerked my eyes away to see if anyone else had noticed this oddity. As luck would have it, my three acquaintances had noticed and turned to look at each other with bewildered eyes.

That was it! I busted out in giggles and had to cover it with fake coughing.

We tried subtle hints and desperately tried not to laugh but he plowed on in his story. No one told him, not even his parents. As far as we knew, he could have walked around all day that way.

So my entreatment is this:
The next time something like that happens, just tell the person. I'm sure you would want them to do the same for you.

This quote is the perfect explanation for my title, Insides Out:
"All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up." -James Baldwin

Begining with the End in Mind

At first glance this headline struck me as odd. I didn't quite grasp what the author, Sean Covey, was trying to get across in the "2 habit" of his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.

Then as I read the "habit",chapter, I understood what he meant.

A summary of those thirty and some odd pages is nicely summed up in a quote from Mencius:

"Men must be decided on what they will not do, and then they are able to act with vigor in what they ought to do."

Sean's ideal way of sticking to your goal's for life was to write them out as a mission statement, a written form of your "will and won't"s, to refer to when you reach a crossroad in life.

So that's what I did. I couldn't find the perfect quote but I found three that do the job:

1. Leave no stone unturned. -Euripides
2. The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere, nor of his actions that they may be resolute - he simply speaks and does what is right. -Mencius
3. A man is the orgin of his action. -Aristotle