Yesterday, because it was National Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day, I tweeted this:
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I don’t know how you feel about Mac & Cheese ice cream but how creative are the rest of my images for today?
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I think The Daily Bitch is very creative.
There are many creative people on YouTube.
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I look forward to your creative comments, below.
Thanks to all the creative people who help me create these daily blog posts, including YOU!
When someone showed me this quote from Maya Angelou, I believed them the first time.
When someone shows me who they are and they are scary, scared, disturbed, angry, hurt, or unkind, I believe them the first time. I also want to believe they can get better. I believe that is because I am a psychotherapist.
I also believe people have to be themselves and some people are more capable of change than others.
Do I show you who I am when I show you the images I capture for this blog?
When The Daily Bitch showed me who she was years ago, I believed her the first time (and every time since).
When someone showed up on a truck in my neighborhood yesterday …
… I believed it was Santa.
Here are Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey showing you who they are as they talk about this important life lesson.
When you show me who you are in a comment, I’ll believe you.
I’ve been showing you who I am — a grateful person — since I first started this blog, and I hope you believe me!
As I am experiencing differences between Los Angeles and Boston and exploring similarities and differences at a group therapy conference, do you notice any differences in today’s post?
Here are some quotes about differences:
One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis for all human knowledge. — Alfred Nobel
The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for differences. — Ruth Benedict
I refuse to let any man-made differences separate me from any other human beings. — Maya Angelou
Stories are the common ground that allow people to connect, despite all our defenses and all our differences. — Kate Forsyth
If you don’t acknowledge differences, it’s as bad as stereotyping or reducing someone. — Aasif Mandvi
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. — Audre Lorde
We don’t need a melting pot in this country, folks. We need a salad bowl. In a salad bowl, you put in the different things. You want the vegetables — the lettuce, the cucumbers, the onions, the green peppers — to maintain their identity. You appreciate the differences. — Jane Elliot
Talent perceives differences; genius, unity. — William Butler Yeats
All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything. — Swami Vivekenanda
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee. — Marian Wright Edelman
Embrace your differences and the qualities about you that you think are weird. Eventually, they’re going to be the only things separating you from everyone else. — Sebastian Stan
Between friends differences in taste or opinion are irritating in direct proportion to their triviality. — W.H. Auden
One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. — Mark Twain
What are your different thoughts and feelings about differences?
Here‘s a song about differences that I think about on many different days:
Thanks to all who make a difference, including YOU.
Yesterday, while I was waiting to be judged at The Voice try-outs along with hundreds of other people …
… somebody asked me if the judges from The Voice were somewhere in the building, judging us. Because I’ve tried out twice before, I knew that the judges from the show, including Adam Levine and Blake Shelton (who seem to judge each other a lot), were nowhere near. I knew we would be judged by one person, sitting in a room with a laptop.
When I was waiting outside one of the audition rooms with nine other people, somebody said she hoped we would go into the room one at a time to be judged. I said, “No, we’ll go in as a group and each have 40 seconds to sing.” She judged that idea and didn’t like it.
The judge with the laptop in our audition room asked me to sing first. I sang 40 seconds of “Mad World” because I judged these lyrics easy to remember:
All around me are familiar faces,
Worn out places, worn out faces.
Bright and early for the daily races,
Going nowhere, going nowhere.
And I find it kind of funny and I find it kind of sad
The dreams I have of dying are the best I’ve ever had,
I find it hard to tell you and I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very mad world.
I think I’m a good judge of singing and I’d say my singing yesterday was fine, but not fabulous enough to get me on the show. After I sang, I judged the other singers and thought they were fine, but not fabulous enough to get on the show. Then the last hopeful in our room — a young girl accompanied by her mother — walked up to the “x” on the floor and KILLED her audition piece. I judged that she was amazing and totally Voice– worthy. When the judge with the laptop said he was going to ask only one person in our group to stay, I wasn’t surprised. However, he asked somebody else to stay, which made me doubt his judgment. On my way out of the building, I saw the young girl and her mother and I told them that I judged her the best singer in our room, by far. Another singer from our room asked if I was going to try out for The Voice again in the future. I said, “I don’t think so,” and we told each other to keep singing, no matter how we’re judged.
I shall now ask the judges of this blog to judge which photos are their favorites.
Here’s my final judgment of this post: I don’t need a $40 fidget spinner, because I get to blog every day for free.
If you sing along to “Mad World”, please don’t judge yourself.
Thanks to all who helped me create this “Judges” post and — of course! — to YOU.
Welcome to another free blog post here at The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally!
Over the years, I’ve been working on becoming free to express myself and to take action, free from fear.
Here are some free quotes about “Free.”
Smile, it’s free therapy. — Douglas Horton
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. — Lewis B. Smedes
This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the land of the brave. — Elmer Davis
Now I’ve been free, I know what a dreadful condition slavery is. I have seen hundreds of escaped slaves, but I never saw one who was willing to go back and be a slave. — Harriet Tubman
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. — Albert Camus
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
For to be free is not merely to cast off chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. — Nelson Mandela
I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free. — Nikos Kazantzakis
Nobody’s free until everybody’s free. — Fannie Lou Hamer
The highest a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. — Baruch Spinoza
I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty. — Woodrow Wilson
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power and, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free. — Jim Morrison
The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. — James A. Garfield
Those who are free from resentful thoughts surely are free. — Buddha
I am free of all prejudices. I hate everyone equally. — W.C. Fields
Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty. — Albert Einstein
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free. — Michelangelo
Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or a good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again. — Maya Angelou
Great artists make the roads; good teachers and good companions can point them out. But there ain’t no free rides, baby. — Ursula K. Le Guin
“There ain’t no free rides, baby,” said the late, great author Ursula K. Le Guin, who died earlier this week.
Please feel free to share your favorite “free” quotes, below.
I am free to take photos and free to post them here.
I am also free to try out for The Voice again today and free not to care about the looks I see on faces while I’m singing.
I am free to choose “Mad World” for my audition song.
Here and now, thanks are also free for all who speak out about freedom and — of course! — for YOU.
The Year(s) of Living Non-Judgmentally 