I've been reading this book called me to we. The book was written by two guys that at a young age, reached past their comfort zones and got involved in bettering the world any way they could. Those efforts have since grown and they are currently inspiring more and more people to realize that when we help others, we help ourselves because we're all in this together.
The book is not just their own stories of how they got involved or how you or I can get more involved. It also addresses an it's all about me mindset that seems prevalent in modernized society.
A paragraph on page 66 really inspired today's mission:
Linguists tell us that language reflects culture. The more words you have for something, the more important it is. Hence the old joke about why the Inuit have so many words for snow-there's a lot of snow! Take a moment to think about North American Society. How many words do we have that revolve around money? Seriously-stop reading and count the number of words that come to mind: cash, credit, dollars, cents, checks, paychecks, down payments, bank, mortages, the list goes on. What does that reflect about our society and it's priorities?
-Me to We, Craig Kielburger and Marc Kielburger
As I read that, I thought...well...yeah! I am all about shifting our mindsets to joy. So, your mission, should you choose to accept it is to create your own words for joy! Or gratitude. Or beauty. Or whatever affirming and empowering mindsets you'd like to see more of. What an awe-inspiring idea...that we can literally shape our society with our words.
You can see one of my creations above. And you'll get to see more later on this week at thursday sweet treat. Natasha, the creator of this blog focused on weekly creative projects, was inspired by the joy rebellion for this week's theme of spreading joy. Of course, I am so honored by this and will be gladly participating this week with some creative contributions. Make sure to check back (or join in!) on thursday on her blog for more creations of joy.
I am getting back to the basics of missions so the focus is on the mission itself and however you'd like to express it, and not necessarily on photos (though of course, if you take photos of what you create/express, I love to see them on your blogs or in the flickr group!)
Happy missioning joy rebels-I'm so excited to see what you come up with!
8 comments:
What a tremendous idea -- these guys have got the right attitude!!
And I love your word "dancitude" -- you go girl!!!
I love that word, 'Dancitude'!
It really says it all.
I was so happy to find your blog through the Sweet Treat, you are both working wonders.
janet and sherri-doesn't that word just want to make you get up and dance??? ;-)
think how amazing it would be if we added joyful words like this to our society-how the mindset would change. awesome.
I love, love, love this idea. Since I'm a huge fan of words (comes with the territory of being a writer I guess), I cannot think of an assignment I like more. So... here I go...
My word is presentivity. What is presentivity? Well, living positively in the present of course! :)
Information overload
It is great to have access to huge amounts of information, but since we are not reading faster than before, we can not take advantage of this new situation. Therefore the need of a discipline that help human beings deal with all that data is fundamental.
Natural language processing is the process of building computational models for understanding natural language. It studies the problems of automated generation and understanding of natural human languages. NLP includes natural-language-generation systems that convert information from computer databases into normal human language and natural-language-understanding systems that convert samples of human language into more formal representations that are easier for computer programs to manipulate.
NLP also studies the information contained in human generated texts, along with its language structure.NLP is a multidisciplinary field, which studies artificial intelligence techniques, multivariate statistics, linguistics and any other domain that can be used to process, generate or interpret language with computers.
Linguistics is the scientific and philosophical study of language, encompassing a number of sub-fields. At the core of theoretical linguistics is the study of language structure (grammar) and the study of meaning (semantics). The first of these encompasses morphology (the formation and composition of words) and syntax (the rules that determine how words combine into phrases and sentences).
http://singyourownlullaby.blogspot.com/2009/03/introduction-to-natural-language.html
Wonderful mission, thank you.
(See faerian's thread as well on SARK under Expansions of Joy :-)
Hi Brandi,
This all makes so much sense! The example of all the terms we have for money (and therefore a society that revolves around money) is so interesting. Like you, I'm going to work on utilizing more words that focus on joy. If I end up talking like some sappy happy country song, so be it! Ha!
I read the book last year. It changed my life and I wrote about it as well. Amazing people those two guys!
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