Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 30 trips to carry that many people.

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The conversation then tends to cover Big Mama’s statements about the Indian blood that leads to a noticeable lack of body hair and then on to other topics. This time the conversation stayed with that Indian blood thing. My sister proposed that our father may have been half Native American. It was a thought line that had never been considered before in my presence, but it somehow made sense … and then it caused me more concern than I would have guessed. You know how people find out  as adults that they were adopted into their family and the knowledge knocks their world off center? Well my reaction wasn’t that strong, but it was much stronger than I would have guessed.

My father’s background is a mystery because there is no record of who was his father. His mother would never tell out of fear that the man would be lynched. Now we’ll never know as she took the secret to her grave. Before my sister’s Native American theory, I always assumed my paternal grandfather was black, and I really didn’t give any more thought to him than that. Now I’m obsessed with knowing more and have no way to find out.

I sure hope they don’t tell me later that I was adopted.

These conversations remind me of a statement by Dr. Robert Anthony: “When you blame others, you give up your power to change.” How can you blame others for your willingness to allow a company to have access to your personal data in exchange for letting you post a picture to your Facebook wall or vote in their online poll? This is a choice you get to make. If you don’t like the trade, pass on it. There is a Deny button right there next to the Allow button.

Man Up people. Accept the responsibility for putting all of your personal business out there online for others to mine for profit. It isn’t there fault that we can be sold so easily.

The mass appeal of Jobs’ speech is the truth about the reality of death. Jobs read, “If you live each day as if it will be your last, someday you will most certainly be right.” On the other hand, if you treat each day as if it’s not your last, you’ll only be wrong once. So what’s really the smart bet?

I’m not putting my money on either. Yes, I believe that facing one’s own mortality tends to clarify priorities, but it doesn’t take a near-death experience for that to happen. It just takes time being present. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean.

- A couple of years ago, doctors discovered that I have a slight pinch in my spine (C5,C6) that causes pain in my shoulder. To avoid long term dependence on pain meds, I tried traction and it worked as a temporary relief. I’ve spent 20 minutes nearly every morning since in a home traction device. Woe for me, having to sit every day. No woe, I spend that time meditating, which I was unable to do before because sitting still for that long was hard for me. Use the moment instead of harping on it.

- I have this recurring pain in my back. Once every couple of years while doing something completely routine, I throw out my back and have to spend the better part of a week in severe pain. My most recent bout started this past Saturday. As I hobbled into the grocery store on Monday, thinking about how painful it was to walk, a man in a wheelchair came rolling out. Appreciate what you have instead of what you don’t have.

When we have practices, these kids, who collectively think a long run is from one end of the basketball court to the other, have only each other with whom to compare. It feels OK to walk when half of the team has already started walking. And it feels OK to walk today because you walked yesterday. It’s only when they see the rewards of not walking that they can begin to make the commitment to tough it out tomorrow. And if I keep them sheltered from the hard working runners by picking meets where they compete only against similar teams, they will never get to see how real effort can pay off.

One of the biggest mistakes my generation made in child rearing was to instill a belief in our children that most things are easy. That’s just not true. Most things worthwhile are hard, at least in the beginning. I want my runners to know that early in their carreers. If they can’t internalize the notion that they will only get better thru hard work, they have no hope of getting better. No amount of technique or strategy will make them champion runnners if they don’t train hard.

We finished at the back of the pack, yet every one of my runners set a PR at the Westlane Roundup. More importantly, they all know that they can be much better if they are willing to do the hard work. I look forward to Monday’s practice. More than that, I look forward to our next meet. These afe not the same children who signed up for Cross Country a few weeks ago.

Now, before you go out and start power-walking everywhere, recognize that this is based on the natural gait that most of us keep fairly stable throughout our lives. The correlation isn’t causal so walking faster won’t make you live longer (other than the aerobic benefits it will impart). However, watching the rate at which grandma moves might give you some indication as to when she needs to see her doctor. A change in gait may indicate a condition that needs attention.

Recent research from the University of Reading in England demonstrates that consuming dark chocolate creates an improvement in vision two hours later. In the study (which I would love to have been a part of) subjects were given either dark or white chocolate to eat. Two hours later they were tested for visual contrast sensitivity, motion sensitivity and direction detection time. The dark chocolate participants improved while the white chocolate (not really chocolate, you know) had no change.

So now in addition to the improvements in mental processing and heart protection, dark chocolate also helps vision. I’m going to add more to my diet. How about you?

Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t make it true, or right. I offer one exception: When EVERYBODY believes something, then it is as good as fact because everyone will act accordingly. My favorite example is when everyone believed the world was flat. For all intents it was flat … until one guy stopped believing and did something that broke the spell.

So, I come to my point. Many executives in industries that are under attack by the rapid digitalization of everything (music, television, movies, books, magazines, newspapers) believe that they can beat back the onslaught by way of copy protection and lawsuits. What if that’s the wrong approach? What if, in reality, they can increase their sales by allowing the copying of their material? It turns out that’s what happens in most of the instances where the idea has been tested. Letting people experience your work for free will expose it to some who would never have paid for it — no revenue loss there. Some of those people will like it enough to buy it, or a future work by the same person — new revenue there. It turns out, this new set of buyers is generally large enough to offset the handful who took the work for free but might otherwise have paid for it if it weren’t freely available.

Stop fighting the urge to follow your “common sense” executives. Quit making it hard for those of us willing to buy your stuff to use it in a meaningful way. Get rid of copy protection. Stop suing little old ladies. You’ll survive. Just like that guy didn’t fall off the edge of the world.

Those who know me know that I am a big fan of mindfulness. I have tried, on-and-off, for years to reach that empty mind state that Buddhist monks find during meditation. My problem is that my thoughts don’t ever stop! When I examine one and then release it, another one barges right in on its tail, leaving me to deal with it instead of the nothingness that I desire. I must admit that I come closer all the time, but I’ve only experienced the true in-the-moment feeling during long runs.

Now research from Harvard University indicates that the monks are onto something. Apparently, daydreaming has a correlation with depression. Subjects in a recent study who reported being most distracted throughout the day also reported being more depressed. How depressing is that!

The only way to describe this is … SWEET!