Finding Purpose aka Why we do What we do!

Make someone do something they find tedious and not mentally challenging, and I guarantee you they will either not do it for long, or if they do so, it will be without enthusiam and lacking in quality. Help someone understand how this task fits into a greater whole and the inherent benefits of the finished product/project and then you may spur creativity, innovation and integration. My father was a product and very effective manager of the late textile industry. People were never told how their work interfaced with other production/product up the line and ultimately how their work benefited individuals, families, markets and the firm. So turnover was challenging, efficiencies tough to garner and output tied to pure demand.

How did Starbucks reinvent the "coffee shop"? Why is going to Target a less tedious experience for even a male? Why does Microsoft inhabit most PC's? Why do some people flourish wherever they are planted? Why do some nations prosper and other flounder? PURPOSE!!! Problem is, you have to find it for yourself, no one will give it to you, it does not arrive in of itself.

180,000 expected at the national mall 4-10-06

I am PROUD to take my son to the national mall tomorrow. I will be there not to contest the equity of laws to come, but for him to "see" why this country is the greatest conceived by the mind of man. NOT created by a supernatural force; NEITHER organized to uphold the religious beliefs of some; NOT to impose the political beliefs of some on the rest of humanity. This colony of Great Britain was organized in the pursuit of profit, and to make a profit, one must produce something desirable to another, and through free trade, men gain the freedom to utilize their labor and skill for their own benefit, and it is only in their freedom to be that men are willing to defend their rights. THAT is why we fought the Revolutionary War: to exercise the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, to create laws that come from the consent of the governed, to establish the justice of existing for our own happiness and not for the benefit of the state. This is the United States of America, a place where any man or woman, irrespective of their origins, geographic/financial/philosophical, can test their potential and by doing so, improve the lot of the rest.

Other peoples shoes...

Shared by my friend Anna:

http://www.aish.com/spirituality/growth/Other_Peoples_Shoes.asp

A couple decades later I learned about one of the Torah's most intriguing mitzvot, the obligation to judge other people favorably. The Torah enjoins us: "Judge your fellowman justly." [Lev. 19:15] The classic commentators explain this to mean "judge your fellowman favorably and interpret his actions and words only to the good." [Sefer HaChinuch 235]

Three thousand years before the advent of Cognitive Psychology, the Torah recognized that our attitudes (and consequently our words and actions) are formed not by what the other person said or did, but rather by our interpretation of what the other person said or did. Therefore, the Torah obligates us, whenever possible, to find or devise a favorable interpretation