"The Jewish Jesus was a total badass."

"These days I go to church more than synagogue. But I've learned you can't take the Jew out of the boy. I'm attracted to Jesus the Jew, not the wispy, ethereal, gentle-faced guy with his two fingers in the air whom Christians have invented and put into centuries of European paintings. The Jewish Jesus emerged amid revolution, violence and strife. He walked into the center of all the clashing authority structures and he overturned them all. The Jewish Jesus was a total badass."

~ David Brooks, 
from his essay “The Shock of Faith: It’s Nothing Like I Thought It Would Be”

“When a clown moves into a palace . . . "

“When a clown moves into a palace he doesn’t become a sultan, the palace instead becomes a circus."

~ Turkish proverb

Barack Obama on Change, 2008

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Barack Obama, President of the United States 2009-2017

Elon Musk on "civilizational suicidal empathy"

Snopes.com fact check:

Elon Musk said these words during a Feb. 28, 2025, episode of "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, from around the 1:16:00 mark:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSOxPJD-VNo 

Musk: There's a guy who posts on X who's great, Gad Saad?*

Rogan: Yeah, he's a friend of mine. He's been on the podcast a bunch of times. 

Musk: Yeah, he's awesome, and he talks about, you know, basically suicidal empathy. Like, there's so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself. So, we've got civilizational suicidal empathy going on. And it's like, I believe in empathy, like, I think you should care about other people, but you need to have empathy for, for civilization as a whole, and not commit to a civilizational suicide. 

Rogan: Also don't let someone use your empathy against you so they can completely control your state and then do an insanely bad job of managing it and never get removed.

Musk: The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. The empathy exploit. They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response. So, I think, you know, empathy is good, but you need to think it through and not just be programmed like a robot. 

Rogan: Right, understand when empathy has been actually used as a tool.

Musk: Yes, like, its weaponized empathy is the issue.

Source:  Snopes.com "Yes, Musk said 'The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.' Here's context"

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elon-musk-empathy-quote/  

* Saad is an atheist who describes himself as culturally Jewish.  (Zeitlin, Alan (26 May 2021). "Jewish author Gad Saad stares down the growing tide of antisemitism". The Jerusalem Post.)

Copilot definition of empathy vs. sympathy

Empathy and sympathy are related but distinct concepts:

Sympathy: Involves feeling compassion, sorrow, or pity for someone else's hardships. It is an external expression of concern for someone who is experiencing something difficult. 

Empathy: Involves understanding and sharing another person's feelings by imagining yourself in their situation. It is an internal emotional response that allows you to connect with someone else's emotional experience. 

In summary, sympathy is about feeling for someone, while empathy is about feeling with someone.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empathy

: the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another

also : the capacity for this

“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. . . . "

“Everybody can be great...because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

~ Martin Luther King Jr.

"If your God never disagrees with you, you might be worshiping an idealized version of yourself."

"If your God never disagrees with you, you might be worshiping an idealized version of yourself."

~ Rev. Tim Keller

20 LESSONS FROM LIFE

 20 LESSONS FROM LIFE

1. Life isn't fair, but it's still good.
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Life is too short - enjoy it.
4. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will.
5. Pay off your credit cards every month.
6. You don't have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself.
7. Cry with someone. It's more healing than crying alone.
8. Save for retirement starting with your first paycheck.
9. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile.
10. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
11. It's okay to let your children see you cry.
12. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
13. If a relationship must be a secret, you shouldn't be in it.
14. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind.
15. Get rid of anything that isn't useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways.
16. Whatever doesn't kill you really does make you stronger.
17. It's never too late to be happy. But it's all up to you and no one else.
18. Over prepare, then go with the flow.
19. No one oversees your happiness but you.
20. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "in five years will this matter?"

Church of the Brethren

from "Bread for the Journey" by Henri J.M. Nouwen

from Bread for the Journey by Henri J.M. Nouwen:

“To console does not mean to take away pain but rather to be there and say, ‘You are not alone, I am with you.  Together we can carry the burden.  Don’t be afraid.  I am here.’  That is consolation.  We all need to give it as well as receive it.”

"The art of practical therapeutics"

"The art of practical therapeutics involves keeping the patient entertained, while nature effects a cure."

~ Voltaire (1694-1778)

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

Late Fragment

by Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

'How might you have changed that situation?'

 2-time CEO always asks this question in interviews: It shows if candidates ‘just want to complain’

Story by Gili Malinsky, 2/27/2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/2-time-ceo-always-asks-this-question-in-interviews-it-shows-if-candidates-just-want-to-complain/ar-AA1zVcDW

quotes:

Serial entrepreneur David Royce has been building companies for years. . . .

In his decades building businesses, Royce has identified some immediate red flags when interviewing job candidates. One is negative talk about former employers. 

"It's totally okay to have both positive and negative things" to say about them, he says. But if a candidate focuses mostly on the negative, "then the problem is likely" that person.

As such, Royce has a question he likes to ask people he's interviewing to suss out their disposition.

'How might you have changed that situation?' . . .

"Tell me about your previous employer," he says. "What are some things that they could do to improve?" . . .

For any pitfalls they mention, he asks, "how might you have changed that situation?" . . .

"Are they constructive in the way they critique," giving examples of how they would've or could've solved the problem, or do they "just want to complain about it?" . . . [and] drag down the morale of the whole team.

"The No. 1 thing that makes A players want to leave is B players and certainly C players," he says. People who aren't focused on producing and creating a positive environment can "spoil your culture and then potentially force out the best talent."

When choosing who to hire, "I want to make sure somebody is generally positive and looking for opportunities to or ways to improve," he says.

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.