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Schools of Thought (Twelve-Step is tried and true)

• Twelve-Step Excerpts (with Twelve-Step List)
• Teachings of Jesus the Christ
• Life-tested Family Advice
• Medical Advice from a Layman
• Just Saying
• Food for Thought ‡

 

Twelve-Step Excerpts

• The Twelve-Step program, Serenity Prayer:

  God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
  the courage to change the things that I can;
  and the wisdom to know the difference.

• One day at a time (ODAT), is a key teaching in Twelve-Step programs.  Focusing on today, we’re not overwhelmed by the future or past.  “We may find in each day a measure of comfort, serenity, and a sense of achievement.”  Al-Anon offers a book entitled: Courage to change : one day at a time.
• Alcoholics Anonymous step 10 states that we continue to take personal inventory and when we are wrong, we promptly admit it.

• Here’s the entire 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous (although other 12-Step programs, like Al-Anon, for the families and friends of alcoholics, use almost the same, exact, 12 Steps):

  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.

  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

  7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

• HALT is a Twelve-Step catchphrase: Hungry, angry, lonely, tired.  Halt, when your vices come to roost, when you indulge in what you shouldn’t indulge.

  Two more, Twelve-Step tenets: Live and let live; let go and let God.  With the latter, one lets go and lets God, or their higher power, take over.  There is much out of our control that only God, your higher power, or the Creator, can marshal, or bring to bear.

• Twelve-Step programs discuss a higher power, you are not alone, not powerless, in your struggle:

  “It is frequently stipulated that as long as a higher power is ‘greater’ than the individual, then the only conditions are that it should also be loving and caring, and able to relieve the individual of their alcoholism.”

• Another slogan of Twelve-step programs is: Easy does it.  Or proceed slowly, carefully, and deliberately, calm down, or handle with care.  Keep it simple is yet more wisdom.  Don’t over-complicate matters, especially to your disadvantage.  Here’s another Twelve-Step catchphrase: Progress not perfection.

This too shall pass, is a reminder that whatever difficulties you’re having, they will pass away, as they always have, and always will.  This is just the impermanent nature of all of life, positive and negative.

• Here’s another slogan you hear at Twelve-Step meetings: “Don’t sweat the small stuff, and it’s all small stuff.”  And another: “Keep doing what you’re doing, and you’ll keep getting what you got.”  Yet another: “God doesn’t make junk.”

• If you don’t drink alcohol (or smoke marijuana), you learn to live your life without artificial anesthesia.  Abstinence makes you stronger.

  If you think you might have a substance abuse problem, you owe it to yourself to check out the Twelve-Step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, or Overeaters Anonymous (to some, gambling and food are much like drugs).  There are also Twelve-Step groups for people who know anyone belonging in AA, NA, or OA — whether they already go or not — such as Al-Anon, or Alateen.

• Look for these four signs of a gambling problem: a preoccupation with it; gambling alone; not being able to stop gambling even when trying to; and feeling compelled to gamble more after losses.

• This is the Prayer of Saint Francis, often discussed in the Twelve-Step programs:

  Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
  Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
  Where there is offense, let me bring pardon.
  Where there is discord, let me bring union.
  Where there is error, let me bring truth.
  Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
  Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
  Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
  Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
  O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek
  to be consoled as to console,
  to be understood as to understand,
  to be loved as to love,
  for it is in giving that one receives,
  it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
  it is in forgiving that one is forgiven,
  it is in dying that one awakens to eternal life.

• The suggested Twelve-Step meeting closing is The Lord’s Prayer:

  Our Father who art in heaven,
  hallowed be thy name.
  Thy kingdom come.
  Thy will be done
  on earth as it is in heaven.
  Give us this day our daily bread,
  and forgive us our trespasses,
  as we forgive those who trespass against us,
  and lead us not into temptation,
  but deliver us from evil.
  For thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

  Amen.

• Don’t get caught up in all the caustic hate and turmoil in this world.  Here are quotes for a modicum of peace and tranquility.
• You might find this interesting as well: It’s self-improvement, from WikiHow, entitled Be a Better Person.

 

Life-tested Family Advice

My grandfather had five lessons for his son, my father.  These proved to be good advice for both him and me:

• Buy land, they’re not making any more of it.
• Learn to box (okay, this was around World War II).
• Do not lend money to anyone, give it away.  If they need money, they likely won’t be paying it back.
• Get an education (or learn a trade), at least until you’re twenty-one years of age.
• Do not drink alcohol.

 

Medical Advice from a Layman

• Pilgrim State Psychiatric Hospital was officially opened on Long Island in 1931.  It has 13,875 beds.  Today, almost all of those beds are empty.  Why?  The introduction of Thorazine in the 1960s.  Before that, treatment could be as harsh as lobotomy.

• The female genitalia is significantly more complex than the its male counterpart.

• You may say that immortality is impossible, and you may be right, yet Methusaleh of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament lived 969 years.  Did he eat better than the other ancients?  Did he exercise more?  Were his friends all good people?  On this, the Bible is not explicit, no longevity guidance is given, just that this guy, Methusaleh, lived almost a millenium.

• Try not to lose ground in the Battle of the Bulge.  Be vigilantly calorie-conscious.  Choose fruit over cake; poultry over beef; and seafood is a very healthy choice.

• 

  Above is responsible for all life,
  or so we’re told.
  We can be simply gobsmacked of
  the simplicity of random DNA mutation,
  and this explanation of life,
  or we can have a healthy amount of skepticism.

  Deoxyribonucleic Acid, or DNA, is collectively the genome, the blueprint for humanity.  This blueprint, the DNA, is a binary encoding of a sequence of two nucleotides, of two pairs of amino acids: adenine/thymine, and cytosine/guanine.

  Somehow, these two pairs of protein create fingers, legs, and most miraculously, our brains, which can think, remember, and reason.  Doesn’t this seem so far-fetched as to be next to impossible?  Yet, the DNA model of double helix laddered nucleotides define all mankind.

  It is just incredible, isn’t it, that the miracle of life is predicated upon a real miracle, binary amino acid encoding.

 

Just Saying (Reflections on Life)

I trudge into my rented-out Brooklyn office (equipped with teletype machine), all set for another day of global news-breakers, that I dutifully report, unpaid, hardly appreciated, and mostly, as an unknown reporter at an unknown blog...

Direct audio feed from my Coney Island office:

I open my window in my Coney Island office, and this is what I hear (no, not the annual, Nathan’s hot-dog contest):

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I was listening to my stereo out on my deck — classical music specifically, to not annoy anyone.  The birds were chirping.  They seem happy, likely because I feed them birdseed this time of year, and I keep their birdbath full of water.  My family enjoys birding.  Anyhow, just watching the world go by, at 56°, as we get closer and closer to Spring.  2/26/25.

---

I was sitting out on my deck.  It’s a little bit of adventure, it’s 40° temps, and I’m getting on in years.

I noticed something: It all works.  The sun provides energy; in winter, everything rests.  The birds survive, I survive fine.  The trees arc overhead, grow, then shed their leaves, for decades.

Up from the firmament, life thrives without much impetus from me, or wildlife.  It is as if it were all on the Lord’s autopilot.  We all do what we need to to eat, quell hunger and thirst, as well as keep our internal generators generating energy.  Life is just about an impossibility, but it all works.  (My Mom said that about Manhattan once, that somehow it all works.)  1/26/25.

---

Life is a miracle.  Just think about it.  Out of the dust, humans of the present day can: Walk and run, well-balanced; metabolize sugars for energy; talk languages; think in the abstract; do arithmetic, and beyond; remember (sometimes have lifelong memories); have ideas, appreciate (or even play) music; make food of varying complexity; create; procreate; enjoy procreating; gender differentiate; the list goes on forever.

We played no part in our existence on this Earth, although there is the possibility of advancing one’s bloodline to the next generation by having children.  Isn’t this a Creator-blessed miracle, that any of these capabilities exist in a being risen, or somehow sparked, from the dust of the firmament?

Can there be another realm that we pass into at this life’s end?  Given all we were capable of as a living, breathing being, and how miraculous life is, isn’t it possible that there is a hereafter, an afterlife, as well?  A fundamental law of physics is that energy and matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only interchanged.  What then becomes of our life energies and body at the end of the road?  Where does this energy go?  Why can’t there be a spirit world?  4/02/25.

 

Hopefully, not Pedestrian Fare, but Food for Thought

• I met President Bill Clinton in 1993 after writing a letter about universal healthcare to his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  This was a life highlight.  I also met Donald Trump, and asked him how to make my blog a huge success.  He said, “write exclusively about golf.”  The former meeting is actually true, the latter is just BS.
• I hope I’m not a racist, although I do think racist thoughts involuntarily.  In my humble opinion, racists use the n-word, without compunction, without any remorse.  I cringe at hearing that word.
• What do I hope to gain by writing The Other Letter?  Maybe I’ll get a bit of recognition for new ideas, I’ll make a difference somehow, or I’ll just have something to wile away the hours.  I once hoped for a paycheck, but because I don’t have subscribers or advertisers, and because this whole work lacks commercial appeal, that’s really impossible.
• You know you’re retired (or even on sabbatical), when it can be difficult to distinguish between your weekends and weekdays.
• Try to take pride in your work.  A corollary, my dad would say: “You’re responsible for the effort, not the result.”
• If you’re having an identity crisis, you can try to think of yourself as being a good example.
• IMHO, what do doctors do best?  Set broken bones, and advise people to lose weight, as well as quit drinking, and smoking.
• When they say that raccoons have rabies, are these fed raccoons, or starving ones?  In other words, are they aggressive because they have no food, and want to get some from you, or because they have an infection?  I’ve had raccoons in my backyard for years, well-fed four slices of bread daily, they don’t bother me at all, garbage cans untouched.  I see them out back sometimes...  For that matter, I have had deer in my backyard, and I am only forty minutes from Manhattan.  I don’t have a tick problem, I love it when they stop in here every couple of years.  I worry about animal control killing them, antlers and all.  Can they bring them upstate, or out East, then release them?  Or they only know to slaughter them, and put them in the dumpster.
• “Does your dog bite?”
  “No.”
  (Chomps on Inspector Clouseau’s leg.)
  “I thought you said your dog did not bite.”
  “That is not my dog.”
  (Attribution: Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, from The Pink Panther.)
• But for the grace of god, go I.  Most of us are blessed in ways we may not recognize.  As very harsh examples: We are not living in the Warsaw Ghetto during WWII, or trying to survive Auschwitz; most Americans will never know violence, or starvation (with Trump’s food stamp program cuts, some may know hunger though).  We have our health, and if not that, we have our lives, in a tenaciously-defended and Constitution-protected democracy — this isn’t Russia, or China.
• There’s so much bullying in social media, which is neither policed, nor self-policed via reporting options.  Often, your only option if you incense the Nazis there, is to delete your initial post.  The best workaround is to write your own blog, where you can say anything you’d like, within defamation laws.  Except for public figures, who have their own bully pulpit to settle scores, everyone is entitled to their good reputation.
• What I try to do here, is write succinctly, convincingly, and compellingly, viewpoints that get diluted elsewhere, in social media, or the mass media.  We’re adults, we can handle the truth.  How is Other Letter any different?  I have no advertisers or subscribers, I have nothing to stop me from saying, the Emperor has no clothes.
• As the progressive wing of my street, you wouldn’t expect this: Besides the economic impact of zoos and aquariums, endangered species can be reestablished there as habitat.
• Take good care of your health.  Stave off the grim reaper.

• To many Republicans, poverty is a choice, not an affliction.  The uncharitable do think this way.  LBJ’s War on Poverty gave us Medicare, which Trump and the GOP are chipping away at, they don’t know from want and destitution.  The poor, and the homeless, suffer from misfortune, lack of education, as well as substance abuse, mental health, and family issues.  No one wants to be poor.

  I am still aghast at Trump’s White House ballroom, even though it is funded privately.  Ultimately, the funding is a favor that will be repaid.  Instead of money keeping Americans alive, it’ll keep the GOP partying luxuriously.  Trump is blithely unaware of the suffering of the lower classes: Let them eat cake, Donald?  No, that’s not true, he couldn’t care less about the unfortunate.  They have no money, so the GOP doesn’t cater to them.

• To gays and lesbians, homosexuality is not second choice.  They are different, queer, they don’t go for straight coupling.  Need proof?  It’s just obvious, even historical.  (Look at how Michelangelo painted women in the Sistine Chapel, as brutes.)  Same-sex coupling is immoral?  Because of the Old Testament’s Leviticus?  (The Bible also cautions against bestiality.)  Then you’re saying you have a hateful god, when god is love.
• I have actually been asked where I learned to write.  For me, writing was learned by repetition, by doing a good deal of writing, for this blog, for letters to the editor, poetry for local journals (when I was younger), and trying to effectively articulate my thoughts.  Being half Canadian, and my dad being from Boston, I picked up lots of colloquial expression (common, colorful, conversational speech).  Also, my mom was an English major.  Practice makes perfect, especially with writing.  I don’t identify as a writer, but I do enjoy writing.
• Try to be a good person.  Try to do your part to make the world a better place — even picking up litter counts, or recycling bottles and cans as well.  Try to contribute to make this a better world — respect others, or write a letter advocating responsible change, if possible.  If you can, get involved in charitable works — to me, the GOP is just a business club, the Democrats want constructive, lasting improvement.
• Mental illness is not encouraged here, it is endured everywhere, very often for one’s natural life, only alleviated with appropriate medication, environment, and/or coping skills.  As a for instance, just think of anyone who has commmitted suicide such as Vincent Van Gogh, Marilyn Monroe, or Robin Williams, or anyone who has tried to do so, like Billy Joel.  This should never be taboo to discuss, stigma kills as well.
• “At times, I’ve had an unusually trying life.  Yet I stuck it out, I persevered, I saw the light, and now the really tough parts are over.”
• Please be considerate to those with a mental illness.  Your life is so much easier than theirs.  People who believe in any god, or possess any kindness, would never compound the misery of those less fortunate than themselves.
• There are many, many people who live in denial, those who cannot believe life can be so far away from the so-called norm.  There are deniers of: The Holocaust; climate change; mental illness; homosexuality; and the possibility that Karen Carpenter is alive.
• For love or for money?  The former achieves more, of greater quality.  The latter is not devoted to craft, just to lucre.
• “If you appreciate, like and/or love yourself, it really doesn’t matter so much what other people think of you.  You’re in good with the final arbiter.”
• Music is very often a celebration: of life and the human spirit, of love triumphant, of justice even.  When it’s not, it really tends to come up short.  What are they singing about then, anything rousing?
• Everyone has goodness, short of Nazis, and well there is a whole contingent on the Right, hawks, we’re not too thrilled with.  But if you want humanity to come out ahead, you’re of the good.
• Love, falling in love, and being in love, is like nothing else, it really makes you happy.  There are other ways to be happy, achieving something, for instance, but what really gets the endorphins flowing is knowing someone cares about you.  It’s a real tough go without love, or even any kindness.  I don’t know of your circumstances, but depending, you might try to make a Twelve-Step meeting, or call the suicide and crisis lifeline at 988.
• The problem with charter schools, is that money that should go to public schools, is helping fund the private schools of the well-to-do.
• So much of life is about accumulating green bank script, lucre, or money.  It is either this or barter.  It’s just odd how much of human endeavor revolves around having piles of green paper.  Trump understands this all too well.  Money isn’t everything, despite Trump’s tenure in the White House, and his bias towards giving the upper crust yet more lucre, and tax breaks; as well as, most recently, denying the rank and file American, healthcare subsidies.
• Are you shopping for one of these, or these?  Then can you park a half-million-dollar ride without dents, pay near homeownwer insurance rates, or always be the center of attention?  There is a downside to buying an extreme, luxury automobile, in some sense, it is not for the faint of heart.  Okay, sour grapes.
• Parental controls need to be used to block pornography from your offspring, and even to block this site, the Other Letter — if you think wholesomeness, adult spirituality, and political activism, is so dangerous.
• “I feel better when I’m occupied, and when I’m getting stuff done.  I want to be rested, but I also want to look back on the day with satisfaction, that something (or anything even) was accomplished.  Get my mind off of my worries.”
• “Sometimes, doesn’t it feel good to be alive?  I mean we’ve been through the wringer (like COVID, Trump news), but given we can afford to read this, we have food, we have a decent place to live, and we may have good people in our lives.  Just a thought.  This is not because I’m going to a dispensary, I’m kinda high on life, I’m grateful for what I have, because some have very little.”
• Dancing wins over marching; Mother Nature trumps the manmade; the pen is mightier than the sword.  Ask a true Lefty.
• If you’re against freedom of choice regarding pregnancy termination, then you’re in favor of: teenage moms; welfare moms; unplanned families; and unwanted children.  You also believe that fetuses are people, and that women cannot have agency over their own bodies.
• “When she said that, she too, was deeply into process enhancement, I knew my search was over.  I had found myself a wife.”
• Jerry Garcia, explaining the popularity of the Grateful Dead: “Not everyone likes licorice, but those who like licorice, really like licorice.”