Mind Games are always in season

Hi Carolyn,

Maybe  I'm in a period of hyper- awareness  because the Stanley Cup playoffs are on - and my beloved Habs are in there big time -  or it just may be that observations about internal dialogues in your last entry were so dead on with my own. I can't say for sure but, for me,  you nailed a couple of things in that  last entry.




"Promises", you said  " What an interesting can of worms."

Boy, are you smack  on with that !



 I do believe that  "promise"  has to be just about one of the most charged and dangerous words/concepts running freely about - so much contained in seven letters.








 Its right up there with " I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God. " Man, if we all lived that credo to the hilt we'd not have lawyers, would we.  I wonder if whales or porpoises or simians makes "promises" to each other or is it just something we homo sapiens do?
A promise implies that future actions will be governed by a commitment made at the point of the promise made. Do other highly intelligent animals think ahead or learn from past mistakes. Some of the stuff I've seen on The National Geographic channel suggests that this may be so.  

 Wow.









 But the whole idea of a " promise to myself" that you dealt with last time around, Carolyn, is a clear step up and intriguing on at least two levels. First of all, in one respect why would we have to " promise " ourselves anything. It sorta suggests that there's more than one conscious entity down there in our subconscious  basement  sharing ( or maybe squatting upon )  our psyche - otherwise who would we be making the "promise" to?? 





Of course we all do it. I have probably said " I gotta stop doing this! " to myself twenty-five times for every time I've said it to someone else.

 Secondly, who are you going to be in trouble with if the promise is broken?  I guess that's where the whole voice of ones conscience thing comes in. There's a separate entity down there who's gonna be chastising the on-the-surface you  big-time  upon the breaking of said promise.





I guess that's what comes with having such a complicated organ inside ones skull. When I see folks I know fighting battles with diseases that target the brain as well as the body it does drive home the idea that mortality is a bitch.



Okay, morbidity has left the building now. Back to the other stuff.


 The two stories you've forwarded to me by Jeff N Keir are simply great. I have enjoyed them immensely. I don't want to do any kind of a spoiler thing here for anyone else so I'll just leave off by saying that they do "transport" the reader in, as Bill and Ted would say,  a most savoury way. Try them, you'll like them.


Leaving off with some words from Mr. Clemens that harken back to the thought that got this entry rolling in the first place:

Better a broken promise

than none at all

Catch ya later,



Don




All images sourced from Google Images

Fig. 1 - allhabs.net

Fig. 2 - socialistnetwork.org

Fig. 3 - imgarcade.com

Fig. 4 - the-scientist.com

Fig. 5 - spring.org.uk