I like my brain

Lessons From Prince

When I was a kid, we had an old dog named Prince, Yes, there really are dogs named Prince. He wasn't always an old dog, but he got that way. He was clever as dogs go, because he could tell the time. Now, mind you, not in the way the circus dogs do, by barking to add up a sum or ringing a bell with his teeth. No, he was a far more practical dog.

This was a dog who was not fed from the table. In fact, he was not allowed into our little dining room except by invitation and then he would come with that furtive look that says he knew he was breaking some kind of rule but it still felt good.

Between the kitchen and the dining room there had been a swinging door. I suppose this seemed to be a good idea when the house was designed, but in my lifetime there was no door, mainly I think to spare life and limb of the two adults and six kids careening through the place. The two different colored linoleum floors demarkated where the door had hung.

Prince's supper time was five o'clock the same as the rest of the family. His place was on the mat next to the kitchen door leading out to the back porch, and that was where his water and food bowl sat.

We would straggle in from school one by one and Prince would be lying off his mat now, paws together, head on paws, nothing moving but eyes. He was three feet closer to the dining room. Mom would start tuning up the usual kitchen symphony while one of my sisters started piano practice and another complained about her turn in the batthroom. Prince was now six feet closer to the dining room. My father would arrive home from work and the hum of the place was in high gear. Prince was now lying inconspicuosly in the middle of the kitchen floor, four feet from the dining room door. Immobile. Not there. Nobody ses me. Am I not a clever dog.

He would hide out there until the propitious event, and that was when my father took his seat at the far end of the dining room table. Prince would then doff his cloak of invisibility and appear at the break in the linoleums; lying on his stomach with paws on the line, nose on the paws, all on the line. Only eyeballs moving, drinking up the clamor in the dining room.. He would watch patiently and as vittles were passed around, remain patient, relaxed, immobile and silent. His bowl was filled behind him at the kitchen porch door, but it was not yet time for the family to begin eating.

When were about to begin, one of us whose turn it was (because that showed responsibility), would say "okay Prince" and then and only then did Prince go to his bowl, gobble up his part of the family meal and come back to join in. He stayed on the line and left after the last member of our horde had left. This was, day in and day out, the ritual for Prince.

He had learned what he needed to learn to survive in his doggy life, until time closed the dining room door.

You and I on the other hand, don't have a mark in the linoleum to keep us grounded.

Information overload stresses us as never before, while technology races ahead of us. This discordant cacaphony pervades our lives relentlessly. We feel as if we are being sucked down into some accelerating maelstrom and that this vortex is taking the whole society. Not just the senior, not just the students, not just the caregivers, not just the mothers, not just the workers, not just the youngsters; everybody. Our focus, our minds, our memory, and our brains are being degraded.

There is hope.

With the techno-invasion has come the solution

You can sharpen up your mind and get out of the doldrums. Erase your low self-esteem and shatter all your self-limiting beliefs, and fill your need to expand your all around abilities. Whether your goal is high grades, a better job, or to step up your self esteem and thinking ability, strong new science gives us the good news.