Psychology | Tracks In The Dust

Archive for the tag “Psychology”

12 Mar 2015

Asking Questions

I have said it before, in the world of “instant messages” it seems like we are being programmed to provide an “instant response”. That leads to us not thinking before we respond, and not often clearly understanding the meaning being conveyed. My advice to my kids: “Ask questions”.

Maybe it is just a symptom of the speed in which everything happens today, but I don’t see many people asking questions about things. Often it doesn’t even seem that they are listening, perhaps because they are working-up a response.

Recently I was speaking with my son about a great opportunity ahead of him in his life, it seems like the direction he wants to go and the “doors” are opening for him to go on the journey. For him, getting answers to the “why” were still unknown. We can always ask the hard questions, but sometimes they get missed.”Why” is one of the hardest ones to ask in my opinion.

Whether it is a life-changing event or just a simple decision, it takes little investment to just understand things more clearly. It is our right to ask questions, to better understand someone when they talk, to be sure to know where someone is “coming from” before we form an opinion, or make a call on something.

You might even learn something. Listening to what is being said and responding in a question means “dialog” – can open many more options, can make for better understanding that can lead to friendships, or more confidence or just simply a better picture of the world around us.

Listen. Don’t take everything at face value.
Ask questions. Understand the meaning of things
Don’t be in a hurry. It could be an investment in your life worth making.

I am sure there are plenty of times when things can move along without complicating it with questions. But there are as many times (or more I think) when a few minutes may change everything.

21 Aug 2012

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Dreaming of Magic Again

Some times it seems almost hard to believe. I am not really good at remembering dreams. I wake up and I can recall a dream for about 5 seconds, and then it starts to fade. But there are a few that keep coming back, like a late nite movie that keeps showing up every week and you can’t stop watching it.

There are a few things that are in black and white, and a few that are in color. I noticed that they seem to incorporate a lot of things in “real” life, but things that are not really connected that way. They are associated somehow in my sub conscious I guess, and so they get thrown into the soup of the dream.

What dreams do you have that keep coming back?

Okay so there is a huge psychological process to interpreting them and having them end up determining what kind of person you are. Not so into that, I think there is some merit to it, but really. Some of my dreams just come up because I have weird food before I go to sleep (like Frito-Lay products with spicy flavors-can you say “Doritos”?) or because I saw a strange movie (anything by Stanley Kubrick) or listened to some music (like Explosions In The Skyincredible music). Some are just there for whatever reason. But like I said they disappear in the morning fog of the first cup of coffee.

So this one dream. It has a soundtrack and a mysterious lady. The song (perhaps the inspiration after all) is Magic by Ben Folds Five written by Darren Jessee [see below]. It seems like a mysterious song on its own, perhaps about someone who has passed on, or who has lost their life or perhaps their life’s memory (through Alzheimer’s perhaps)… but it is always the sound track. I am watching it from above and it plays out with a lady dancing by the light of this huge moon (some times it looks like it is my wife, sometimes someone I don’t actually know). Along the way I the whole thing becomes distant, and then again really close. I am sad but happy at the same time. In the end it makes me calm that the world will continue and this person is in it somehow.

That’s it. All you dream interpreters can have a hey day on what that all means, and I guess I could spend a lot of time in analysis to discover my mom or something was at the root of all of it. But no matter what I do, it just pops up.

What dreams do you have that keep coming back? How do you deal with them? Where do they take you?

Magic by Ben Folds Five

From the back of your big brown eyes
I knew you’d be gone as soon as you could
And I hoped you would
We could see that you weren’t yourself
And the lines on your face did tell
It’s just as well
You’d never be yourself again

Saw you last night
Dance by the light of the moon
Stars in your eyes
Free from the life that you knew

You’re the magic that holds the sky up from the ground
You’re the breath that blows these cool winds ’round
Trading places with an angel now
Saw you last night
Dance by the light of the moon
Stars in your eyes
Free from the life that you knew
Saw you last night
Stars in your eyes
Smiled in my room