My beloved Grandpa Ernie, who shared this birthday with Judge Caprio, grew up on “The Hill” as well. My father and his three brothers were students at the high school where Judge Caprio taught during the day before driving to Boston for law school at night. Since my father was Class of ’65, they’d likely have walked those same corridors together. For all I know, Judge Caprio may even have taught my father.
For the record, I’ll never see a can of peaches the same way again. In fact, I’ll be buying a can at the market this week and putting it in my kitchen to honor Judge Caprio and this epic, if not saintlike, sPEACH! “Frankly”? The man should be canonized. Meanwhile, I once saw a powerful tribute to another of humanity’s treasures, Keanu Reeves. You’ll find those words in the slideshow below.
Few are the people whose character is worthy of such impeccable words. Judge Caprio, however, was one of them (as was my Grandpa). If you don’t already know who this enigmatic bastion of kindness and treasure to humanity was, it’s not too late to get to know him now. His life-changing nuggets of wisdom will honor not just his forefathers but mine and so many others’ as well throughout the ages! I’d also like to think that I’m honoring MY forefathers and following in their footsteps by showing kindness and compassion to as many people as I can, up to and including strangers, and that I’ve raised two kids who do the same. Happy Heavenly Birthday, Judge Caprio and Grampy!
It’s “World Day of Bullying Prevention” once again, and I don’t know who needs to hear this right now, but if you’ve ever been the one some giant FUCKTARD did or said something cruel to during a time when you were already on the ground searching for even the smallest shred of light in all that darkness—only to have the door slammed SHUT and leave you all but blinded—I want you to know that you didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry you had to endure it, but I’m GLAD you’re still here reading this.
Even when everything feels lost, darkness does not get the final word. Sometimes it is the darkness itself that teaches us how fiercely to look for The Light.
Inspired by Disturbed, “The Light”
In the meantime, if YOU are the FUCKTARD who all but put your hands around the throat of someone who was already struggling to breathe … YOU’RE GROSS! Also? Karma is a Jean-Claude Van DAMN mother-effing bitch, soooo … have fun with all that!
Well, folks! It’s that day again, “World Day of Bullying Prevention,” and imma let you in on a “little” secret. Bullies only bully because of that metaphorical four-foot-two leprechaun of a “person” hiding way down deep inside of them (regardless of their size, gender, or status) who only sees a hobbit of an existence when they look into the mirror of their life. So, bullying others is the only way they can grow the inner shrinky-dink they see in their self-reflection:
The “Napoleon complex” is an informal stereotype suggesting that domineering or aggressive behavior can be used to compensate for perceived physical or social inadequacy. It is not a clinical diagnosis.
Paraphrased from the Wikipedia overview of the Napoleon complex
Meanwhile …
Seneca once said:
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Oh, hi there Lord Maximus Farquaad, ya weak-ass little BIG MAN! It’s okay … I “see” you way down there desperately trying to make yourself feel BIGGER by kicking people to the ground with that BIG little mouth of yours! Whether or not your mommy loved you—which, let’s face it, could indeed be the BIGGEST part of your LITTLE “Whoopee! Look at me being HUGE and SIGNIFICANT!” problem—remember that GOD loves you, and therefore, so do I. But, umm … it’s really kinda hard for the world at LARGE not to laugh at you while you’re having to stand on top of people to make yourself … err … “taller”!
Bye, everyone, it’s me, CAT! Oh, and for the record, to any man or woman out there reading this who’s not a Rock-sized mountain of a human, please know that in no way are my words intended to offend or poke fun at your dimensions. Some of the greatest, most powerful, and GIGANTIC men I’ve been honored to know are not exactly what one would call “towers.” It’s the size of their heart, soul, character, and integrity that make them Adonis-sized presences in any space they occupy—and therefore loved, adored, and respected far beyond any measuring stick!
Where did I go wrong? I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness … and I would have stayed up with you all night had I known how to save a life?
So, it’s World Kindness Day 2023, and let me just say THIS: We all have different strengths and gifts to contribute to humanity, and “Lighthouse” isn’t for everyone. We aren’t all equipped to stand there waving our arms and shining our beacon to the masses who are drowning or simply struggling to swim. Guess what? THAT’S OKAY!
Not only do some people prefer to just lay low, but some people are barely hanging on themselves. It’s kinda hard to reach for someone else’s hand when your own hands are clinging to the life raft. Meanwhile …
There’s a happy medium to be found, my friends, and being kind, gracious, and respectful to others is not only “good enough” … it’s just … so much BETTER!
The bottom line is this …
Don’t be a “light EXTINGUISHER”! Not only is it GROSS to be a toxic, hateful, ASSWIPE of a “person”, but KARMA is ALWAYS watching!
Do YOU think it’s cute to step on someone’s fingers as they’re desperately flailing to pull themselves up the side of a cliff? Lol. Just wait for KARMA to crush your SOULLESS body for sport while the rest of us laugh our sinking asses off! Just thought I’d share.
Try as I may to express my affection for Keanu Reeves, I’ve yet to find the perfect words. So, in celebration of his birthday today, I honor, celebrate, and finally give proper credence to the “Wicken” of it all in my life with these excerpts from a brilliant fellow Quoran. His words say everything I’ve been trying to say:
“I know that the ones who love us will miss us.”
This is what Keanu said when Stephen Colbert asked him what happens to us when we die.
He understands misery unlike anybody else in Hollywood. His dad left when he was 3. He struggled with dyslexia, attending 4 different high schools before dropping out. His best friend died of a drug overdose at 23. His girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, had a stillbirth 8 months into pregnancy. She later died in a car accident not too long after. Even with his hardships, he hasn’t let his success get to his head.
[…] When his flight had an emergency landing en route to Los Angeles in Bakersfield, he not only opted to rent a large vehicle and drive the rest of the way, but he took a good number of people on the flight with him.
He’s known for paying attention to detail: There is a story about him on Twitter where he bought an ice cream just to get the receipt paper so he could autograph it for a fan. He later tossed that ice cream away.
He is one of the few actors who gets to know everybody working on the set of his projects. Several accounts of him genuinely asking people about their day and well-being.
He treats everybody with the same amount of kindness. Someone on Reddit recalled a friend who was stranded on the highway outside of Los Angeles. Keanu Reeves pulled up, tried to jump the car to no success, and then drove her 50 miles out of the way to get her home. Not only that, he gave her his number to call in case she needed help with anything.
There is no additional component to his character. He’s stayed the same human throughout the worst and the best in his life. He’s pure … and people see that.
Quite frankly, I can think of no finer words to describe the “love incarnate” this living angel on Earth embodies. And if I could choose just four simple words for the legacy I’m working tirelessly to leave behind—for “mine” and for anyone whose path I cross, if only for a minute—they would echo the words just used to describe Keanu: “She was love incarnate.”
Happy Birthday, Dear John! I SEE YOU! May your masterpiece of love continue growing forward, outward, and upward for as long as humanity is blessed by your epic life of use to others on this Earth. You are loved, and I’m so proud to be a practicing “Wicken.”
Why, yes! Yes, I was “singing” in my house on a Saturday night, and doing it so loudly that two little boys from my hood who were passing by my castle on an acre of land with a 6,000-foot-long driveway heard me doing it. Lol! What must they have been thinking? God love the precious little souls who ended up giving me a random gift that I never would have seen coming:
Is she happy? Is she mad? Is she getting hacked up by a contractor who’d been hiding in her attic? Maybe we’ll just leave her a note?
By the way, never will I EVER throw that sweet little Post-it note away. I’ll treasure it along with all the sweet little “everythings” my own kids have gifted me over the years, especially when they were just about the ages of those two little nuggets who rang my doorbell! Lol. Don’t be surprised if I don’t end up having “Are You SINGING?” T-shirts printed before it’s all said and done and handing them out to random strangers!
Twenty years ago this month, humanity lost a treasure the likes of which it has rarely known: Mister Rogers. Much like Keanu Reeves—one of his modern-day brethren whose halo still graces our atmosphere—Fred Rogers was “love incarnate,” and there truly was no additional component to his character. To borrow and adapt the words of Anthony Andranik Moumjian’s tribute to Keanu:
“He stayed the same human throughout the worst and the best in his life. He was pure … and people saw that.”
Perhaps my favorite part of watching Mister Rogers was the way he’d meet me at my level, remind me that I mattered, and offer words like these …
“I like you just the way you are.”
“It’s you I like.”
“You’ve made this day a special day, by just your being YOU!”
“Look for the helpers!”
Indeed, an entire generation of us was fortunate enough to grow up with impeccable words like these planted deep within our psyches—the tentpoles of our understanding of kindness, caring, empathy, patience, and compassion. He was so much more than the PBS TV host in his mother’s beloved hand-knit sweaters, the man so many of us watched while our mothers were in the kitchen keeping the home fires burning. He was a living transmission of love, showing us what humanity at its utmost and highest could look like. That imprint remains across our hearts—a reminder many of us still call upon and at least try to carry forward as adults.
I wanted to share my response to a Quora submission I recently made. My excitement, however, is NOT about my pride over the staggering amount of “views, shares, and comments.” It’s about the fact that SO many people from around the world are talking about it. You know? That very unpopular monster “IT”: mental illness. The awareness is spreading, and the stigma is being reduced one “real conversation” at a time:
Hello, my fellow Quorans. Please allow me a moment to generally respond to all of your overwhelmingly supportive and reflective comments and say THANK YOU! Although I have, indeed, and will continue to read each and every one of them, there are only so many hours in the day, and time will not permit me to respond to everyone. So let me just say this:
If there is a general consensus to be made here, it’s that this subject—“mental health”—and, more than that, what appears to be the very real decline in the mental health of a vast portion of the population, is something on ALL our minds these days. Rightfully so!
Life isn’t as simple as it used to be, and I personally find it to be a rat race more than ever. Sadly, it does appear to be getting harder for even the strongest among us to just “exist.” Especially because there is also that other general consensus—if not “elephant in the room”—that the family system is truly breaking down. (See also, “Nowhere Kids.”)
“To each his own” is NOT always the best way. So, as a digression, I’ll say this: Whatever your “family” looks like—because, yes, the modern family picture has changed—embrace it! If you have a “tribe,” no matter the different walks of life you all arrived from, cherish it. Protect it with all you have!
We need each other, folks! It is true … just look at this forum we’re all on. Look how this question has banded us all together “like a tribe.” Do you agree?
It is highly likely that there aren’t a lot of us on this thread who are educated medical professionals with either psychiatric or psychology degrees. From what I can see, we’re all coming together this way with our own very personal, real, and first-hand knowledge of this subject. Call it “mental health awareness,” or, if you’d rather, just call it “a bunch of broken people banding together to try and find a way either out of our own darkness or to help someone else out of theirs.”
In some circumstances, a forum such as this may be the ONLY resource someone has to try and find their way out of whatever Hell they’re living in. If you are on this site, chances are you’re here because you just want to “know things” so that you can somehow help, too. Inquiring minds typically WANT to know and NEED to know for all the right reasons.
We can learn from and feed off one another’s experiences so that we can then take “all of this” out THERE, onto our own streets, and try to make a difference. Even a TINY change in each of our life cycles can make a difference!
Small as I may be, I see myself as a pebble. I’m a pebble that’s been dropped in the ocean! Everything I do, think, or say is creating a ripple into a future that I myself may never see. We’re ALL just pebbles, my friends. Beautiful little pebbles with the power to change EVERYTHING if we just open our hearts and minds to the “bigger than us” perspective and share it.
Thank you all for reading me. I have to be honest right now in saying that, yes, it’s been exactly 171 days since the one true love of my life put a gun to his head and turned my world literally upside down. I have long since made it my purpose, with whatever days I am lucky enough to have left here of my own, to try to be the BEST damn pebble I can possibly be—because it’s the right thing to do, and also, my kids are watching!
All of your words and thoughts here have truly strengthened my faith, hope, and spirit, and I am grateful. Imagine that? Thousands of random strangers from thousands of different places just lifted me—a random stranger—even higher out of my darkest hours than I thought was possible.
If you are on this forum because you are indeed an “inquiring mind that just wants to know and help,” you’re a rock star and a pebble and my kind of vibe and TRIBE! We can all do this if we just stick together this way. We CAN make a difference. Much love to all of you. ROCK ON! Or is that “pebble on”? Hee!
A small act can become a ripple. A ripple can become a wave. And one person choosing kindness, courage, or compassion can set something in motion far beyond what they may ever see.
— Paraphrased from “Make a Wave,” Joe Jonas & Demi Lovato
Every now and then, I will hear or see certain words strung together that hit me like a ton of bricks. And by that, I mean words that really strike me so hard that I just know I’ll be repeating them for the remainder of my life and, hopefully, passing them down through my kids.
Take, for instance, the day someone showed me those “Four Agreements.” Now, those were some impeccable words. I live, breathe, and will die by them, by the way, and sometimes even make a mockery of them. Regardless of how far I’ve come thus far in my mental wealth and growth journey, I’m still just an extremelyperfectly flawed human after all.
Well, today, IT HAPPENED! A friend and I were watching our daughters play volleyball and talking about that good ol’ Devil’s boomerang called karma. Of course, we both pointed out the painfully obvious: “What goes around comes around … blah, blah, blah.” But then she said this:
People only think of karma in the form of bad things coming after bad, but I believe that karma also works in reverse. Good will always come after good given time.
I have long believed that perspective is everything, and today, my lifelong perspective on karma took a turn for the best—EVER! Karma can curse you … but karma can also bless you. It is my hope that karma will continue to bless me, mine, and any of you who are reading this.
I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I’d cry for a week.
Everyone was packing for the journey back home, but I was on pins and needles. Since my bags were ready, I’d decided to walk down to the water to clear my head once more before we left. On the way down the boulevard in Beaulieu-Sur-Mer, I ran into our tour guide, Adoram, who was heading back to the hotel after having been out with our driver, Pierre.
Adoram was a lovely Israeli man who everyone on tour fell in love with. I sensed that he was an empath who was deeply concerned with the human condition, and it was clear that he fervently loved not only France, but even more so his job sharing it. He didn’t work from a script; his musings came from a place of pure love and adoration as he described the things we saw. He’d even managed to capture the attention of the boys who were the reason for our trip, which of course was a feat. As you can imagine, your average teenager wants as much to do with the history of a foreign country as waking at 6:00 a.m. on a summer vacation in the first place. Adoram and I had spoken often while on tour, and on several occasions, he’d commented that I’d seemed even “farther away” than the trip itself. “How are you, Cat?” he asked me many times, but I would just change the subject, as I didn’t want to become too heavy and truly wanted to stay immersed in the experience.
That night, Adoram and Pierre caught me heading down to the waterfront around 9 p.m. as they were heading back up. He wanted to know where I was going and didn’t want me wandering alone in the dark. So, he turned to Pierre, uttered something in French, then turned to follow me back down the hill.
Well Cat, I’m not thrilled with you out here alone in the dark like this, so you can go and sit by the water as long as you like, but I’m afraid I’ll be joining you.
After much resistance on my part, but insistence on his, and having repeatedly said my stroll was for sightseeing only, we finally began talking about life in general and then about “what had me staring so far out the windows of the bus each day.” He was such a good listener, never once interrupting my thoughts, and in fact was quite easy to talk to. “What’s really bothering you, Cat?” is what he wanted to know. With that, I talked, then cried, then drank Sambuca, then cried and talked some more, then breathed … then finished.
When I was done telling him all “the things,” he fixed his gaze upon the shoreline like a deer caught in the headlights as we sat quietly staring into the abyss for what seemed like eternity. “Okay,” I said, “THIS is where you pat me on the back and tell me how beautiful my life is NOW!” Still, no response. “… AND” I continued, “THIS is where everyone else usually tells me, ‘Everything’s gonna be okay and everything happens for a reason.’” Then he turned to me and spoke the words I never knew I’d needed to hear:
No, Catherine! NONE of this is okay, and none of this may EVER be okay! You have had some HUGELY rotten shit happen to you, and I can hardly believe that you’re still here to talk about it!
Adoram Schneidleder … my beautiful Israeli tour guide … the first of any to validate my broken feelings and help me begin to shed my skin on the coast of France in the wee hours of dawn. I’d begun to find my voice!
As we walked back to the hotel, I felt lighter than I had in what felt like a century, a sensation I couldn’t quite relate to. Yet, somehow, it felt SO good! He hugged me so tight before I headed to my room. I thanked him profusely and said I felt as though I was about to have a truly restful sleepfor what was left of the morning. And? I DID! I laid my head on the pillow and closed my eyes for the first time in years and drifted peacefully to sleep! No drugs. No alcohol. No food. No anesthesia. Nothing to medicate my slumber! I fell asleep on my own and awoke feeling reborn.
The lobby was abuzz that morning with the clamor of travelers and their suitcases. Adoram was busy answering questions, directing traffic, and saying his goodbyes. I felt a little uneasy with him at that point, as I wasn’t exactly sure how he may have received and digested our conversation just hours earlier, and I was a bit uneasy to approach him. It had only been a couple of hours since he had brazenly walked through the gauntlet of my mind, and he had to have thought I was insane. When we got to the airport, though, immediately after he hugged me goodbye, he handed me an envelope with this note inside:
Dear Cat,
Since on tour there are not many moments for communication, and tomorrow we probably won’t get the chance, I decided to write you a note. Your story – that you shared with me last night – is huge. I did not at any point feel that you were being either inconsiderate, selfish or just “needy” by sharing it with me. And, if having “unloaded” some weight with me has helped you see things clearer, then I actually feel honored to have been able to help. No fears whatsoever. And I hope you will sleep as well tonight as you did last night and that you will continue this way forever. I understand that it was important to unload – and probably being in a foreign country and doing with a stranger who would listen was the best way. I’m happy to have been that person for you. You have gone through some real heavy shit. Don’t ever forget it! And, don’t lose to consciousness of your inner strength. You have it – it’s there! Don’t forget to take care of yourself – of your needs and desires – while you give everything you have to your family. If you don’t take care of yourself, you won’t be able to take care of them. I am sure they love and need you. I know Christian does. I can see it in his eyes and in the way that he looks at you. Take care of yourself girl! You’re a wonderful woman and you’ve got lots to give others and to yourself! It was a pleasure meeting you!
~ Adoram
SHED MY SKIN
I am not alone. I live with the memories; regret is my home. This is my true freedom. Express all the feelings of what I’ve become. I watch the rising sun. I hope I find some peace today. It seems I’ve gone away. It seems I’ve lost myself; it seems I’ve really lost my way. It seems I’ve lost myself; it seems I’ve shed my skin. Are you ready for me to purge my love? Are you ready for me? A bitter sinking feeling. Awake to the fact there’s no going back to this world in which I was living. I’m searching for something but found less than nothing.
