Now & Then & Etc

My place to narrate happenings and thoughts now, or to post from my writing archives experiences then. By nature this site’s writing is rough and exploratory.

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  • Do You Know Your Unifying Principles?

    Do you know who you are and what you want to do in life? If not, or if you only vaguely know, it would benefit you lots in the years to come, especially if you’re young, for you to determine now what is most important to you: your Unifying Principles. Knowing them early, reviewing them regularly, and using them in your planning will chart your actions for decades—and greatly increase the chance that you will live you.

    Know thyself; do thyself.

    Take time to determine your principles. Because planning per principles will significantly influence your life, it’s important to take the time, think lots, and craft them well. During my thirties I took two years of Sundays to determine mine. Here’s how that happened:

    When stationed in Newport, Rhode Island with the Navy, I would bicycle every Sunday for two hours, even in the winter, alongside a New England coastline, looking at the rocks, waves, and sky. I had lots of time for solitary meditation (one tends to find oneself solitary when bicycling in New England in December), and I’d contemplate life, time, and being—the things we all ponder when we find ourselves by ourselves in a quiet spot in nature.

    Afterwards, I’d settle into a warm coffee shop to enjoy a hot latte and a berry bagel smeared with honey cream cheese. In that coffee shop—nature inspired, endorphin stimulated, and caffeine buzzed —I would think about and learn about what drives me, what makes Michael go, and I’d pen those realizations onto 3 x 5 index cards. It was important to get each principle in blue and white before me, on its own card, to see it real, and I’d work on just one principle each Sunday.

    The next Sunday I’d rewrite the principle to get the words simpler. Eventually I’d be satisfied that the words clearly expressed my thoughts, and so I’d progress to the next principle and card until, after two years of rewriting (it takes time to learn the inner you), I’d derived seven principles—each with its one- or two- sentence description—that synopsized me.

    In later years I’d review my principles monthly, but with time my edits became less as the wording more accurately portrayed my truths. Now I review my unifying principles twice a year (or whenever I need to refresh myself as to what’s really important), and I use them to inform my plans and actions.

    =====================================================================

    My Unifying Principles:

    EXPLORE & ENGAGE LIFE
    Explore and Engage enthusiastically life, nature, the world (local and far), and ideas.

    FAMILY AND CLOSE FRIENDS
    Love my wife, be kind to her, support her, and listen to her. Explore life and the world with her, and date her regularly.

    Family and Close Friends—engage and benefit them; make time; be a good husband, father, grandfather, and friend; create optimum situations for you and yours; communicate habitually; help them when needed

    Casual Friends—be kind and considerate; engage in ballroom dance, pickleball, playing cards, dinners, visits, and walks.

    FOCUS (on or two skills, to get good at them) and DEDICATE
    Advocate for the environment.- Write and speak about habitat, biodiversity, environmental ethics, and stewardship. – Volunteer. Preserve and restore habitat for many species and for your children and grandchildren.

    Write and speak about health care cost control (a 2023 addition).
         (This is still mostly aspirational as I’ve not done much of it yet, and some of my principles—such as the ideals of husband/wife relationship—are continuous works in progress.)

    Be a good freelance writer-speaker, both for advocacy and to know your thoughts
    – Study.
    – Clear thinking and communication.

    Some helpful maxims:
    – “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and he delights in his way” (Psalm 37:23).
    – Aim higher” (Regina Brett, Be the Miracle).
    – Live life with passion (Bon Jovi).
    – Be brilliant in the basics and master your job (Jim Mattis, Call Sign Chaos).
    – Shine light and bear fruit (Jesus).

    PHYSICAL WELL-BEING
    Work out, eat healthy, maintain a good weight, get sleep, have a health maintenance schedule, and be smart in your choices.

    GROWTH
    Pursue intellectual, artistic, and social growth. Read, write, and speak. Explore the being of God and the mind of man. Do dance and guitar for fun.

    PEOPLE
    Treat people with dignity and respect and be a positive influence.

    GRACE
    Get out into God’s nature. Serve, give back, and volunteer at church. Be grateful for God’s many blessings and pray every day.

    MONEY-SMART
    Twice a month review health, finances, and maintenance of the house, truck, and van.

    Study, plan, save, and invest (be finance- and tax-wise) to facilitate your other priorities.

    ==================================================================

    Know Thyself; Do Thyself
    EFFPGPGM (the first letter of each principle) is the mnemonic I use to keep my principles in front of me as I’m drafting projects and to-do lists. EFFPGPGM spells me.

    You’re spelled differently. Your letters (your principles), if regularly reviewed and acted upon, will determine the goals you set, the decisions you make, and the course you chart.

    To evolve a principle into reality, I paste it to the top of a project list (for example: “Family Project” or “Physical Well-Being Project”), and then, during monthly or quarterly reviews of projects, I create goals and action plans. From these big picture and subsequent detailed reviews spring daily to-do lists. Knowing my letters syncs my to-do’s with my wanna be’s and transmutes intention into accomplishment.

    Well-thought-out principles can write your life. Let’s look at one as an example of how knowing you translates into doing you:

    For me, E means “Explore and Engage enthusiastically life, nature, the world (local and far), and ideas.” Because of E, I, a sailor in Rhode Island, contemplated how I might explore for real, and, after having free-thought options, I wrote on my to-do list: “Call the Navy assignments-person and ask for a posting to Italy.”

    I called, I went, I explored, I ate pizza. But my forays into the pizza-eating world wouldn’t have occurred unless I hadn’t already downed lattes and bagels at a New England coffee shop after many chilly but inspiring bike rides—and then written in blue and white that soul-searched letter that has directed me to explore and engage local and far ever since: E.

    Unifying Principles Apply in All Phases—and They Interweave
    A satisfying surprise was learning that unifying principles, if well thought out, fit in all of life’s phases; they hold up over time and place. How each principle is executed, however, changes with physical, geographical, and financial situations.

    When acting upon the Physical Well-Being principle during my thirties, I road biked long distances. But in my slower and ache-ier (ache-ier is a real word for me these days) sixties, Physical Well-Being translates into walking an hour a day, dancing, or playing pickleball.

    To consider the Focus principle and how it can change with different phases of life, focusing on one or two skills and getting good at them during my middle-aged productive years as a surgeon meant a disciplined study of medical journals and it meant regularly attending continuing education courses. Now, in my older-aged productive years as an environmental advocate and health care cost control advocate, it means volunteering with local conservation groups and contributing to health care cost discussions and actions. Studying the art of writing and speaking adds to the tools in the toolbox that I need to do advocacy.

    The other welcome surprise when living my letters was learning that they multitask and support one another. For example, when doing E-Explore in a national park, I’m with my wife (F–Family), in God’s nature (G-Grace), and I inform (G-Growth) my environmental knowledge. When I journal about the experience or I write an article or speak about it, I’m writing and speaking (F–Focus).

    EFGGF—five letters that intersect and cross-link. But you would expect that in a mix of qualities that churn inside you, wouldn’t you?

    What’s inside of you? Bring out what’s important and put it in front of you.

    Determine Your Unifying Principles
    This New Year, instead of saying “I wish I may, I wish I might,” and having those words fade into the noise of the year, consider writing your Unifying Principles. What’s important to you? Seeing them before you (in blue and white or digitally), and then reviewing them as you draft your plans, will set your direction, actions, and future. Think hard about your principles and craft them well—for you’ll find that, over the years, in doing them they are what your life becomes.

    Know thyself; do thyself.
    Have a good year and a good life.

    MRM

  • Words of Affirmation

    My sister and I spoke on the phone. It was a routine “how are you doing?” call, and during it she told me she loves me, and I replied I love her. She related how, when we were children, I’d asked her to draw designs on my cassette-tape cases. I lauded the drawings, which made her feel like she was an artist. Unbeknownst to me, that affirmation, those positive comments, affected her deeply—they made her feel good and worthwhile, and they still do she said, even as a sixty-year-old woman.

    The words we say. 

  • Write Down Your Dones. . . and Smile.

    Days roll by—for that is life—and each night before I go to bed I think, “What worthwhile did I do today?”

    I do my day using a to-do list, but what I’ve added to that habit, and which brightens my being, is to write my dones into a calendar notebook at the end of the day—sort of a record of having engaged life. And then I put asterisks beside the good dones, those dones that I think brought some good into the world or into other peoples’ lives. With all the day’s busyness, many details fade by nightfall, but by reviewing my to-do list and notating what I’ve accomplished, I realize, “I did worthwhile stuff today, mostly little things, but I’ve done them.” I conclude: “It’s been a good day,” so I smile. MRM

    ———–
    Some maxims–mine and others:

    “Do something good and useful each day, be good with others, and be grateful for God’s many miracles: Having done that is sufficient to have lived a good day.”
         — MRM

    “What’s on your to-do list becomes your dones. In the evening, write down your dones, and feel good about the day.”
         — MRM

    “Do it now. You may never get another chance.”     
         — MRM

    “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
    — Theodore Roosevelt (Quote seen on a mug that I bought at the Medora Old Town Theater. Medora is the town next to North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park.)

    “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”
         — Aristotle

  • Cycles and Memories

    Pacific Beach (on the coast of Washington state)

    The sun is going down, the detritus of the beach—razor clam shells, crab shells, bull kelp, driftwood—is scattered about, and the waves roll in from forever.

    We have a history here because twenty years ago my wife and I hosted our wedding celebration at Pacific Beach, for us and our families, and we’ve returned here regularly since. Also, it’s on this beach, often sitting against a driftwood log, while looking out to the forever ocean and forever sky, as I’m doing now, that I’ve realized and written some of my deepest thoughts.

    Varying detritus, forever ocean and sky, and mortal me with twenty-plus years of memories at Pacific Beach. Gulls are always here, pecking at the crabs. And sandpipers—the little brown and white birds that scurry about—are often here, these transients who are migrating through on their way to northern Alaska. And as predictably as the sun goes down and up, so will the gulls and sandpipers, in some reincarnated form of their current bodies, be here in July of 2026, 2027 and so on, replenished by the cycle of life.

    Rain clouds and a rainbow have crept into the sky behind me. Before me, the sun sinks lower, eventually to disappear (for a night) into the sea, and on its way it will cycle the clouds through many shades of twilight colors. Raindrops begin to fall on my notebook paper, so soon I must leave this beach of memories and return to the dry and warmth of our van where my wife is resting and reading.

    Thank you, God, for life and time, for nature, for people I love, and for thinking, writing, and prayers.

    — MRM

  • ENGAGE FOR GOD’S NATURE

    Does God like life on Earth?

    Yes, he made life and variety of life, and he pronounced his creation good (Gn 1:31). His life flourishes in the oceans, sky, and land, and in nooks and crannies in an almost infinite variety; it testifies to the joy he feels from variety of life.

    Does God need us to protect his nature and variety of life on Earth?

    He doesn’t “need” us to protect it for him, and very likely he has other life-filled planets in the universe or universes, but he does “desire” us to protect it for life’s sake and for our sake. He values his creation on Earth. He values our having a spark of him in us. He desires his spirit to shine in us through our stewarding of his creation.

    Loving God and Loving Our Neighbor

    Jesus taught us that God’s greatest commandments are for us to love God and to love our neighbors, and we were given many ways to do this: To love God we can worship, pray, study, sing hymns, preach, meditate upon and appreciate his nature, and do many other actions that express his will through us. To love others we can be kind, give, heal, forgive, and help. Loving God and loving others are necessarily wrapped up together.

    Climate change and mass extinction

    Climate change and mass extinction are the two existential threats facing humankind and many species. Other times had their challenges—for example: plagues, Huns, the Inquisition, World War I and World War II—but climate change and mass extinction are bigger that them, for they threaten the existence of all humans and of many species. The rub for us and who we are is that these challenges are occurring now, for us to deal with. There were other times, but this one is ours.

    We live in an Earth environment that supports many species that also support us. Plankton and plants produce the oxygen we breathe, as one example of the multitude of interlinkings of the millennia-evolved ecosytems that supports human life. It’s not all for us—our brief but destruction-filled history refutes such hubris—but we’re blessed to be here. God did provide us with free will, minds, and power by which we can care for, or extinguish, this garden of Eden, but caring for it requires us to apply our souls, too.

    Engage for God’s Nature

    As James teaches us, “faith without deeds is useless,” (James 2:17). The challenge is squarely before us. We either express the fullness of God’s love and work to care for his nature for all of his variety of life on Earth and for the benefit of his human children and other species, using the gifts spirit and minds, and expressing our humanness and our participation in his works, or we will have wasted his many gifts to us and not been part of the new heaven and earth, but instead been just dust recycled back to dust.

    “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
    — Theodore Roosevelt (Quote seen on a coffee mug at the Medora, North Dakota, Old Town Theater. Medora is next to Theodore Roosevelt National Park)

    “The critical issue is not what we know but what we do with what we know.”
    — Admiral Hyman Rickover (father of America’s nuclear Navy; quote seen on the wall at the Navy Exchange in Bangor, WA in 2020)

                ⸺ MRM

  • In His Nature: Love, Life, Wisdom, and Time

    Yesterday, as I walked in the forest of the North Kitsap Heritage Park and observed the buds on the trees and the birds in the air, I realized that in nature I can, undistracted, be in God’s unadulterated essence. God obviously loves life and variety of life for he’s filled all of Earth’s niches with it and then, in his wisdom, created the universe’s structure and laws and ecosystems that enable these multitudes to coexist and flourish.

             In finding quiet in the woods, strolling by the seaside, examining a flower or a bug, watching birds peck for food and preening their feathers, or as I look at and think about the stars and the vastness of space, I realize and pray thanks for God’s love, life, wisdom, and time.

    ⸺ MRM (Penned 18 Mar. 2018 and then edited.)