Photo: ‘Where Have You Been‘ Copyright 2016 Frank J Casella – The moon hides behind the clouds of the morning sky in the forest.
I think these words are both simple yet profound, because they are easy to understand and agree with, yet not so easy to live:
Forgivenessis releasing the other person from the debt that they owe you. Forgiveness does not mean that what they did was permissible. It does not mean that you must be their best friend. It does not mean that you even must address the person directly. Forgiveness is freeing your heart to live and love in the measure God created you.
Obediencecan have a negative connotation in our culture today because everyone wants to be “free”. We interpret freedom as doing what we want to do. In the spiritual life, freedom comes when we are obedient to God’s will. Obedience comes from a Latin word which means “to listen”. When we listen to God’s voice and are obedient to Him, we find true freedom … Sin can be defined as “I want what I want right now.” Holiness can be defined as “I want what God wants when He wants it.” Obedience to God leads to holiness, which in turn leads to happiness, which we all seek.
Photo: ‘Tenderness‘ Copyright 2014 Frank J Casella
Many times we, including myself, tend to judge people based on how we see a situation before or without being fully educated about the matter or understanding fully the people involved.
When people hurt us with their words or actions, especially family members or co-workers for example, or people we spend a lot of time with, we tend to take it personally.
I have found that many times what is important is how we respond rather than how we react. In other words, to be always forgiving with kindness to others, even when they are not kind to us, brings many dividends in the long term.
Like the unconditional love of a dog. The more you lead them with love, the more they love back. It’s about who is at the end of the leach.
Likewise, kindness doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be truthful or matter of fact, rather the words we use and how we present the information, putting others before ourselves, makes all the difference. Because we are all a work in progress and need each other to make it in life.
I’m sure you’ve heard the words to not judge others unless you want to be judged. I tend to favor The Golden Rule of treat others the way that you want to be treated.
Always try to see people as God sees them, and don’t be so quick to judge.
With my last blog post, I talked about how using blogs and MeWe are an alternative to the big tech option of information suppression social media. This post I would like to add how Email is the original social media, and I make the argument how you could not have a world without Email.
Before blogs and social media, Email was used as early as 1972 and rapidly grew in popularity as computers became a common feature for consumers. Many of us, and I still do today, had several groups set up in our Email contacts who we share thread discussions back and forth. From this came the Email list providers, which allow us to broadcast our messages usually outbound, however the subscribers can reply privately if they choose to. And when I communicate to bloggers, we often are using Email to discuss truly important things that we wouldn’t say in public – or make plans – as not everything is in public.
Ask yourself how many times a day you check your Email account. Now compare that to the number of times you check your social networking account. With Email, you build a permission-based list of people that want to hear from you. Isn’t that what all of us do on a social media network (with a little difference in permissions, depending on what service we’re using).
Not only can Email be more secure when used properly, with social media your messages could pass by too quickly and disappear, or be suppressed, into the news feed before you even notice (this can now happen to your inbox unless you have the right webmail service). With Email, readers have to either open or delete the Email, and can save items in their inbox for further action, giving your emailed message more impact. Email may not have the buzz, but it still has a lot of power.
People also make the mistake that Facebook is the largest social network to date, in reality, the largest social networks are Email. That is if you agree if Facebook, as a private community of your friends, is a social network, then so is email. They both have the same requirements:
1) profiles (emails have signatures), 2) Ability to connect to each other (the act of Emailing, and often responding, 3) Do something useful (Email users share information, and sometimes collaborate).
Finally, Email is still a highly important mode of communication, while we often complain about keeping the inbox clean, research indicates people still trust Emails from friends and people they know – this will only continue as the Email address becomes more valuable than the phone number or street address.
In the digital world of social media, websites and blogs, mailing list providers and servers, there seems to be an increased amount of delatforming, suppression, and censoring, by companies known as ‘big tech’. Many people seem to be reacting by staying on the platforms either thinking they are not going to get suspended or they are waiting to see how long it will take. My thinking instead is it’s best to respond to big tech by being pro active, and deplatform yourself.
When enough people leave these platforms the big tech will feel the squeeze on their bottom line, which will not make their investors happy. This is why it is important to find a website or blog platform that uses it’s own servers and promotes your privacy and safety, or at least is independent of the big tech business, and don’t forget that email is the original social media.
For example, although I’m on MeWe because of it’s ‘privacy bill of rights’, I still have several groups who email with me directly. And it’s important to do all this through a privacy browser like Vivaldi, instead of using an app where big tech can peep with their prying eyes. This is the one thing about MeWe I don’t understand, however, that on mobile the website leads you to use the app when I think that is less private than going through the browser from their website.
And having your own space on a blog is the way to go, because you can still link your thoughts and responses if needed with other blogs and articles. The main take away is that as long as you follow the rules and TOS you should be fine, however, I feel that because these big tech businesses are removing others who just want to speak freely, then it is best we all move to another platform who allows this, as God made us to be social creatures as long as we respect each other.
This beautiful moment in time came and went in less than twenty minutes, yet it is one of those moments that you steal some time to notice God’s creation, that He is still in control.
The thought that came to mind, though, before I clicked the camera shutter, was how without this sky the trees are back to the ‘reality’ of everyday. That you have to look through these trees to see the full picture of colors and cloud formations.
The same thing happens in everyday life, that if we don’t keep our focus on what is important, we can become distracted by the ‘eye candy’ in front of us. That it is okay to appreciate the beauty of life to remind, those of us who believe, that it is not all about us but through His love.
In any event, I hope whatever this moment in time brings to mind for you, that you find it meaningful even if it is as quick as it came and went, from my camera to you.
Photo: ‘Speedy Delivery’ Copyright 2012 Frank J Casella
Where you live online has become more important than your street address offline, unless you have packages delivered to you. Specifically, your e-mail address says more about you, and moves with you, than any other identity we can have. Because whether or not you have social media accounts, a website, a cell phone / text number, or the bills and banking for your home, you more often than not need an e-mail address to have them.
I also think it be important to have both a free mail address for your everyday lifestyle interactions, and a custom domain e-mail address for communicating with ‘live’ people in your life. With your own e-mail domain, unlike free-mail providers, you can easily move a domain to a different provider if need be. You can’t do this with your house or the address with which you live. And, in the United States, domain names count as intellectual property – they are legally protected. As with free-mail domains, you are forced to change your e-mail if the provider changes.
So, this is why I say that if your identity is important to you, and that people find you directly before using a search engine, that your e-mail address makes this easy to contact you straight away.
Social media was intended to be a place where good people of all walks of life are free to express themselves and share opinions authentically. With the widespread censorship we’re currently witnessing runs contrary to this purpose.
Likewise, it is a false myth that our data is what we have to give up to have a great online social experience. Both Vivaldi and MeWe are “free forever” because privacy is not something anyone should ever have to pay for.
This is why I say that this Vivaldi blog, for me, is like Blogger without the ads, and with more privacy. If you have a blog with at least a contact form, and your posts become visible on the search engines, people who share your interests will start to contact you. And very often they’ll be people who don’t use social media.
Now I said on my first post for this blog that I would stay away from talking about my professional interests, but I have to make an exception this time, because I find this too important not to talk about. As an art photographer, I find that many artists use social media to sell their works and gain followers. But they forget that what makes your art distinctive is to be yourself.
So with all that is going on with social media now (with the exception I think of MeWe), we see artists changing platforms. I say why not walk away from social media and make your voice on a (Vivaldi) blog. Many times Artists say they can’t blog because they don’t know what to talk about, but they forget all you have to do is be yourself, just like your art.
So, if you are an artist, or photographer, I invite you to look into the business model of Vivaldi, that, like a photo sharing site, lets you see the image properties of photos on the web.
The key is to be intentional on how you use these platforms. Use technology to stay connected, but do so on your own terms.
While growing up, several members of my family would take a nap in the middle of the day. It was called a ‘power nap’ that would help you to be alert and focused for the rest of the day.
But another concept that I was brought up with is how there is a difference between sleep and rest. In other words, when you sleep you ‘recharge’ your human battery, so to speak, but sometimes you still need to rest your body even though you have caught up on your sleep.
I’ve been seeing more and more people running around and being more active, and saying that even though they get enough sleep how they are still tired. Well now you know, the key to finding true rest is to also make time to just rest your body as well.
While growing up I used to lie all the time, until about my college days, because I had low self esteem, short of the long, and I wanted to be accepted by everyone. Then I realized how exhausting it was to remember what lie I told to what person. The other danger I found about the lie, is that you can become a chameleon towards issues, which over time causes people not to trust you because they don’t know where you truly stand.
Most people rationalize through life. My late father always talked at the dinner table about how his co-workers always took the path of least resistance, and rationalized it. So, while in college, I asked him what he meant by this and why he often talked about it. He told me that in life you have to know where you stand, or you will fall for anything. When you stand for something, people come to trust you or know whether or not you fit into their orbit.
A lot of this caused my going deeper into my Catholic faith that taught me how it’s not so much about my being accepted, as much as it is how much I give to this world to make a positive difference through being truthful and transparent, and being the best version of myself that God made me.
In this digital age we have many choices from social media, to e-mail and mailing list, and even blogs, to write our thoughts. But the thing I often hear from people is they have fear of sharing their thoughts because people won’t like what they have to say.
Now I know that some platforms are censoring what people are posting, and yet others are losing their jobs or are publicly humiliated for what they share online. However, the important thing for me was to find the platform that allows me to share what I need to, and not worry about what other people think who read it, and dump the others.
The reason for sharing your thoughts is that it not only helps to form our own opinions, but that we all have a right to our own opinion even if we don’t have a right to our own facts. It doesn’t matter if others are reading what you are saying, because you need to do this for yourself first.
The title of the picture for this blog post is ‘Conversations at the Preserve’ because along the path of life what is important is to spend time thinking and talking, even if it is only with yourself. I have been (and you will be) surprised that when people in the real world ask for opinions how much (you and) I will have it, and speak it, well thought out already.
Sometimes our prayers, with good intentions, don’t seem to make a dent in things, other times we see change, and yet other times prayers are meant to change us to see God’s wisdom in each matter.
But the important thing is that, no matter how God responds, He gives us the power of prayer as a secret weapon that goes beyond human understanding. When we pray, we are making an appeal vertically for everything we are dong horizontally. Other times God may put it on our hearts to pray for a matter.
For example, there is this belief in politics these days of what is called the silent majority. This is when people don’t say or show who they support or will vote for. However, when it comes to our faith and prayer, there has been a silent majority through prayer for ages … you might also call this the wireless connection to God.
So it is important to pray for each other, because we need each other, and our prayers do not go to waste.
This is an election year, here, for the United States President. It is said there is a silent majority of people who are not saying who they will vote for, nor put political signs in front of their houses as is the custom.
But I say the real silent majority that keeps our country with many blessings is not so much the public servants as it is the power of prayer. Yes, there are many prayer warriors who, in numbers, I would suspect are in greater than any number of voters can make.
So, I say that people can vote their consience, but it is the Lord God who knows the outcome already who, through our prayers, moves the minds of the people who are in tune with Him.
“Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, [amen,] I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. 20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”Matthew 18:18-20
When I bought my house, my late father told me to not get attached to it. And the same goes for my neighbors, a few of them recently sold and move out of state.
Life has its seasons, and the people we meet are only for a certain time, then we meet others. And this happens for a reason, so we must trust that it is meant to be.
It brings different experiences, good or bad, to our life. Just like the leaves on the trees, and the sunlight and storms that pass each day.
Because it is through these experiences that makes it why we call it life. How we decide to live through, or respond to, these seasons determines who we become.
There is something about fog that is both beautiful yet mysterious or challenging.
Have you ever heard someone say “I need to get through the fog on that” or “this problem has me in the fog”??
Fog is simply condensed water vapor in cloud like masses lying close to the ground and limiting visibility. There is much to that about life as well.
When we drive our car through the fog, for example, it is sometimes hard to find our way. We usually have to wait for the fog to lift to get to our destination.
Likewise, to get through the fog in our lives, we sometimes have to wait for the issue or problem to take its course, and the fog to lift, so we can then see the path we need to take.
Fog reminds us to see the beauty of the pathways in our life.
I just read a book by Glenn Reynolds, “The Social Media Upheaveal”. He says that we are deep reading less, and learning from headlines more. He also says that many of us share on social media articles that we have not read, more so share by the head line.
I think it’s important to write down our thoughts, so that we know where we stand on the issues of our time. My late father used to say that you have to know where you stand, so you don’t fall for anything. So it seems, today, the best way to be more educated than the masses is to read more than the headline. Then write down our own thoughts.
Writing also helps those who come after us to see the person we were. It doesn’t matter if it is a journal, a newsletter, a blog, or a spiral notebook. Sometimes it can speak to people here today, as well, to share in the discourse, because we are all at different levels in life, and sharing helps each other through it.
The thing about writing and reading blogs, is that you can connect the dots between thoughts and ideas. Although my newsletter is my favorite creative outlet for sharing, my blog is where I share thoughts that link it with the thoughts of others. A practice that is uncommon today. So, if a comment to a blog post might be too long, with blogs we can link to it with a post in response.
I like to follow people who are successful doing the uncommon thing. Like it is said to be successful you have to have your own website or blog, with a custom domain name, and I have found this to be untrue. I also have seen several bloggers over the years who have moved back and forthe from having their own platform, to blogging on a community provider, just like I’m doing here with Vivaldi. The big guy, Reynolds, known as “The Blogfather” is doing just that here for example.
Some people say that podcasts are the new blog. But I say that more people are moving away from social media and migrating (back) to the open web with some sort of blogging. Just like it has been said that email is dead, but I would bet more people read email than social media … becuase to have a social media account you usually need an email address.
All of this to say that my transition to Vivaldi is the place where I develop my thoughts and ideas with pictures and words. I hope you find what I have to say meaningful, as I’m proud to do it!
When the paths that we take in life become overshadoweed with obstacles, the best route to take is to be optimistic and thankful. The people who become successful use their struggles to become stronger, and surround themselves with others who see opportunities from each failure.
Know too, that when we focus on God instead of self, and tell our obstacles about God, instead of telling God about our obstacles, we see tiny bits of progress each day as if there is light at the end of the tunnel.
So when given a choice, take the path of being thankful.
Photo: American Flag Through the Trees – Copyright 2020 Frank J Casella
The United States is a county made up of immigrants. Many immigrants I talk with say the USA is the greatest country in the world.
It’s a land of opportunity. A place where, through hard work, dreams do come true.
In my view, every person in this county is either an immigrant or an ancestor of one.
I find that, many of us like me who were born here in the US have trouble tasting and achieving success in a way that immigrants do.
We’re not on fire, or appreciate, as much the gift and opportunity this country offers. But I’m not saying we are lazy …
In talking with immigrants about this, I have concluded, when us who are ‘cradle Americans’ face a challenge or a goal to achieve, we should try and think how our ancestor who immigrated here would do it.
This puts a very different light and perspective on our own success. For we have much to thank our family ancestry for.
Dignity is said to be the right of a person to be valued and respected for their own sake, and to be treated ethically with inherent nobility and worth.
Said another way, then, is dignity the quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect?
I share this with you because, today, I think it is important to be mindful of dignity. We see lack if it all around us, both online and offline. And we lack dignity mainly when we are not treating each other as such.
We can blame this, if we want, on social media, politicians, other people in our personal lives or work environment. But the buck stops with us, I think. We have the sole power to hold and give dignity.
Confidence, success, respect, and integrity are some of the benefits of dignity. And when we treat others with dignity is the best way to see others treat us the same way.
Likewise, just as a good friend is found by first being a friend, and happiness is never found by the person shopping for it … rather, genuine happiness is the byproduct of making someone else happy.
So, no matter what your interpretation of dignity is, the best way to describe it to others is to live it.
Photo: ‘Networking’ – Copyright 2020 Frank J Casella
Networking is about relationships and the exchange of ideas, information, or services. And many people today have the thought about networking being the practice in business of finding other people to provide their services to, or personally finding relationships to better their lifestyle or position.
The true key to networking, though, if you study the biographies of the top successful people and leaders in the world, is all about giving to others. And the secret to this is to give without expecting anything in return.
Two quotes from the late Zig Ziglar spell this out better than I ever could find the words:
You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want
If you go looking for a friend, you’re going to find they’re very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
There is this argument among freelancers and contractors, that when you pay for their services that you’re not paying for the service time as much as you pay for the years of experience that brought them to providing their service.
I think you pay for the minutes and not the years. The ‘guy’ who provides the best performance gets the privilege to those minutes. It’s the byproduct of how, say, two different professionals spend those same years. So if two professionals charge the same for those minutes, I’m going with the one who knows their stuff and provides the best service.
I’ve had several service techs and freelancers tell me they’ve been in the business for several years who take for granted what that really means. And this is why it is hard to find a good service tech.
“Do more than you are being paid to do, and you’ll eventually be paid more for what you do.”
“Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.”
“A manager is not a person who can do the work better than his men; he is a person who can get his men to do the work better than he can.”
“The more you are grateful for what you have the more you will have to be grateful for”
If you look around at websites and social media profiles, some businesses, and the social media platforms themselves, seem to be bowing to the culture wars, especially here in the United States. They design their logos to highlight the cause, and use the hashtags everywhere, etc.
I think when they do this, they are not thinking how much more polarizing they become. Because, true inclusion and diversity is to appeal to their general audience and not cater to a smaller (controversial) audience unless it is their long-term business model.
Instead they should speak to this by showing how they live out what they believe, by not ruling out the individuals they are trying to highlight.
I spend much time reading blog posts and, more often than not, many bloggers seem to try to be profound rather than just being themselves.
By profound I mean to be far reaching in your thinking, or having great insight or understanding on a subject or topic.
The reality is, for most of us, the best way to be profound is to just keep it simple. As one of my mentors has put it, simple things make big impact. And this is very true.
Of all the things I have shared on my blogs over the years, the ones that have made the most impact are those where I thought I was being too basic or simple.
So, keeping things simple is more profound, than trying to be profound.
One of the things I have noticed, or learned, being isolated by this pandemic is that it’s okay to not be busy. I am often thinking ahead about what I need to do, and the slowing down of life recently has showed me how to be more intentional about how I use my time and the people I connect with.
One person I was talking with online said that a simple act that someone did when they were a child has still made an impact on their life several decades later. I think it is important, then, to remember that simple moments create big impact even if for a minute or too, and we should not be too busy to see this.
It is okay to not be busy to allow time to see what is happening around us now, in the moment, and not always looking ahead on what we need to do or be doing.
Update 3/11/2021: I’m including photographs to my blog posts now, as they contribute to my thought process.
There are several blogs I host on the internet that require action or response from the reader. So with this blog, my intent is to share my personal thoughts that are not meant to be monetized.
Those other platforms didn’t feel like the right place to do this, but once I learned from DuckDuckGo about the business model of Vivaldi browser, and how they use the WordPress blog software, this feels like what I have been looking for.
I plan to make a blog entry at least once a week, and hopefully more, that is NOT about my interests with photography, the Catholic Faith, manhood, or art, but rather everything else I might be thinking about and just need to write it down.
Thinking is a rare commodity in our world today, especially with the distractions of our information age. It is important now to be mindful how we are intentional about blocking out time with our own thoughts.
For example, it is said how the late Abraham Lincoln, when he was President of the United States, would spend much time in pure solitude with the decisions that he had to make after he got feedback from his advisors.
So I hope that you enjoy this blog, and come back to it often if it speaks to you. I don’t expect you to comment, because this blog is more about my thought process and I hope you can benefit from it.
