Just chillin
“God is overjoyed when you steadily seek [God] with your gratitude, needs, and actively listen for [God’s] voice and guidance. Praying that you always feel God’s presence wrapped around you, reminding you of the most perfect love and that within the areas where you need the most support and grace, God shines the brightest”
-D
I ran into this episode of Science Friday and I loved how the guest, Philosopher C. Thi Nguyen, spoke about metrics. I am not typically a fan of metrics, I feel they often do a disservice to understanding whole stories. This guest explained this nature of metrics as a weakness that gives it its strength – a strength and weakness that go hand-in-hand – which is that metrics allow information to be shared across contexts (strength), but to do that the information has to be decontextualized (weakness):
“…metrics are both incredibly powerful and incredibly limited and that their power and their limitations are part and parcel of their core function. They offer us clear, simple, objective, unbiased counts, but that there’s also an incredible price to that.
One way to put it is that metrics are incredibly good at capturing the kinds of things that we can all count together easily. And I think the kinds of things they miss systematically are the kinds of things that people are going to count differently, that require some kind of discretion, some kind of judgment, some kind of sensitivity….
Theodore Porter puts it this way…qualitative knowledge is rich and sensitive and open ended and dynamic, but it travels really badly between contexts….
So my favorite example, as a professor and a teacher, is the evaluations I write on my students’ essays. But what I write is not going to be comprehensible to a business school professor or a CS professor. And what they write on their students won’t be comprehensible to me. So what Porter says is that when we make quantitative data, we pick a chunk that’s going to be steady and stable across contexts. We find a chunk that everyone can understand, no matter their background, across the institution or across the world.
So in education, that’s letter grades, GPA. And I think you can get a glimpse of what’s going on here by just thinking about how different and how rich a qualitative evaluation is and how hard it is to understand at a distance, and how quick and easy a letter grade is to understand and how thin and simplified it needs to be.
I felt like this was my, like, Matrix, ‘the veil is ripped from my eyes’ moment, was that metrics are powerful because they’re designed to be stable across contexts so we can all understand them and we can all collect into them. And that’s what creates this kind of cross-cutting, massive, shareable piece of information. But to make that, we had to cut out the context. That is actually the design feature and the design bug in one. They are powerful because they’re decontextualized.”
-C. Thi Nguyen
The Black Hole of Neediness my friends. This is what I am calling my recent discovery. To get right to it: I discovered I have an emotional hole in me that has been there for years. And I have been trying to get other people to fill this hole for me. But this hole is insatiable, it can never be filled by anyone.
Subconsciously, without my awareness, in my past relationships (romantic and non-romantic) I have wanted other people to fill this hole. I was not aware this is what I was trying to do. But people are incapable of filling this hole, nobody can do this, even if they wanted to.
So I must walk around with this hole, realizing that it is permanent, and that nobody can fill it. This lets everyone else in the world off the hook. It also relaxes me, because now I can stop looking for a person to fill this, which allows me to set healthier boundaries, expectations, and honestly provides greater outlook for the future.
Something interesting is that once I realized I have this Black Hole, it dramatically reduced a visceral, physical anxiety response I would experience in my neediness sometimes. Instead of physical, the response has become more mental, which is actually an easier response for me.
This video is a bit long and slow. But if you’re in the mood, I hope you enjoy. Love and Blessings.
“Look, I worked for Apple. There’s a lot of people who believe that Apple is exploitative in a way that is horrific. You know? We all have our lines that we are willing to cross. We get into a problem when we’re unforgiving, in any way – we offer no grace. And that doesn’t mean I don’t have lines that I draw that if people cross it, I wont do. But I do try to not be so rigid in the way that I think society has become….
I love a good argument. I love different points of view in all facets of things. But I also love grace. I’ve got people in my family that are to the right of Attila the Hun, and when people tell me ‘How can you platform that person on your show?’ I go: ‘I platform my uncle every f* Thanksgiving.’ And by the way, I love him. He’s a 3-dimensional human being who has qualities that I really admire – things about him. And we’ve lost that, we’ve lost the ability to love people, because we litmus test at every point, in every single moment.”
“Do we live in a profane world, or do we say ‘Yes, indeed, sacred space is right here….’
Instead of aiming to go somewhere else, where everything is so much better, the Zen imperative is to recognize that the sacred is here by practicing, living, cooking in the way of sacred space.
You practice making sincere and wholehearted effort. You do not think with ordinary mind, and you do not see with ordinary eyes. You let things come and abide in your heart and let your heart return and abide in things.”
-Edward Espe Brown, No Recipe (cooking as spiritual practice)
The following is part of a lucid dream, as recorded by Robert Waggoner in his book “Lucid Dreaming”:
I stop and look intently at the deep darkness. Is there evil in there?
Then, from within, I hear a voice deliver this message: “The light upholds the darkness.”And suddenly I know that behind all apparent evil or darkness is light; band that it’s light that gives us the sense of darkness.
Then I hear: “Everything is sacred and alive.” I intuitively realize that the light is in every living creature as a condition of its existence.
And then I hear something more clarifying: “Even the space between your fingers is sacred and alive.” I look at my outstretched hand and see the space between my fingers, that precious emptiness, and know with clarity that I live in a sacred universe, where even the apparent emptiness is aware and alive. With form or without, all is sacred and alive.
-Robert Waggoner, Lucid Dreaming
Even negative things have a sacredness to them, in their struggle. Don’t sacrifice their sacredness for your ego.
Example: Someone I love is having problems abusing medications, they’re unable to stop. I can turn on a music video with a catchy song about someone’s pill addiction problem, maybe I turn it on to make a joke for my entertainment, or to compare myself to “feel good” that I don’t have this problem. This is sacrificing the sacredness simply to feed the ego. Honor someone’s struggle, including your own. It is sacred. And while humor can be therapeutic and I believe even spiritual, ask yourself, are you feeding your Spirit or your Ego? With any move you make, are you feeding your Spirit, or your Ego?
“Motivation, Resilience and be Fearless in the Pursuit of what Sets your Soul on Fire.”
-Anthony, President of the Board
While I technically graduated this past September, I finally celebrated the official graduation ceremony this past Friday, May 9, 2025. Here is a photo of myself and my advisor, Erich Dietrich, who hooded me as a Doctor of Education 🙂
Funny, before the ceremony when I was in the bathroom, it hit me: I look just like Erich! Meaning, our gowns were essentially the same. This was a realization that I am on the same degree level as him now, as well as being on the same level as my other professors. It’s a pretty amazing realization. And during the ceremony he sat next to me in the audience and walked on stage with me – again signifying this equal level of education attainment. Of course he has much more experience, research, etc., but the degree levels are the same. It really helps me understand where I am at in regards to education, position, and potential.
Here are a few other photos from May 14, 2025, the NYU celebration Grad Alley, where the streets around campus are blocked and filled with food, carnival games, music and entertainers, and other fun things to celebrate graduation. It was raining plenty but I wanted to celebrate, and celebrate I did =D
Dr. Orlando Fernandez
“Surrender to the Perfection of Imperfection.”
This was a quote from my cousin. What the heck does it mean? He was talking in reference to relationships, where each person must sacrifice and accept imperfection in a sort of surrender, and that is how things balance and continue to function.
If the world were perfect, I don’t think there would be laughter. Laughter comes from imperfection, doesn’t it?
“Cada sacrificio merece su recompensa.” (quoted in Spanish)
-Alfredo
Happy Early Mother’s Day 😆 And Happy Early Halloween 😊 I am posting this 2017 podcast audio of me chatting with my mom over a variety of deep, human topics. She is a therapist, substance abuse counselor, and is highly credentialed. But besides that, she is a practicer of much Life, wisdom, love, and deeply challenging human experience.
“It’s better when you let go and surrender because then what’s real will float to the top.”
-Mom =)
How about some music? Some days ago I happened upon this old song. I remember this song from childhood but the chorus would only ever be played, whether for a commercial, a movie, etc. Listening to the entire song now, it’s really masterful to my ears, almost haunting actually, beautifully. Enjoy 🙂
(Released January 1967)
The biggest difference between those who succeed and those who fail at any endeavor is their level of commitment. Most people would like to be committed. But in practice, commitment requires an endless series of small painful actions. When a person has no way to deal with that pain, [their] commitment falls apart.
-Phil Stutz and Barry Michels from “The Tools”
It hit me on the bus ride home. It was snowing, peacefully. I was watching the same old scene, the same stores, the Taqueria, the vitamin store, the pizza shop, the lights. And the warmth and peacefulness of the warm, full, quiet bus, and the dark but lit road outside, with people bustling across the narrow street. This is what my life is. This is what it could be every single day, in a way. Me staying a little late to help my coworker teammates with a task. Me being ready to do a little more work tonight at 10pm from home, and then some more careful work tomorrow. Everyone just accepting that this is the life, their life.
And it was a beautiful thought, a beautiful moment. Tears flowed down my face while the bus stopped to pick up a cold couple from the bus stop. I didn’t want those people to see me crying, but it didn’t really matter. This is NYC, I generally don’t know these people. But they are part of my neighborhood fabric in a way.
A beauty to accepting this is my life. The life I have been granted. A life I have worked for, and also have been blessed with.
Thank God.
Thankfully….
“I don’t think it’s about whether someone’s right for you. It’s whether you both want to make it right. Like there is no perfect person, there is no perfect partner. There’s only the person that wants to make it work with you and the person you want to make it work with. And if someone doesn’t want to make it work with you it doesn’t matter how perfect you think they are, it’s not gonna work.”
-Jay Shetty
Let me quote my mom and myself for a minute.
Yesterday my mom texted me: “I finally have an armoire to put my sheets in. Yay! So silly the things that make you happy when you get to my age. Have a wonderul day. Love you!!!” And I replied to her: “It’s beautiful when the simple things make you happy mom ❤️”
I have been struggling with gratitude recently. As I said to someone a few days ago:
“I feel like the practice of gratitude for me…I have to keep working on it….its like I get called / lured away from this gratitude, by these social cues / lures for things that I desire, not really material things but more ideas of a ‘better life’, like an amazing self-business or making so much $ from selling books, or having the whole family and everything with amazing job….but I look at people with fame, with $ and status, with great work, and I know they have sacrificed, probably things I dont want to sacrifice, things I truly value, like the people in my life, my loved ones. health, people, meaning and comfort. so this means that really, I think I have what I value the most, and I dont want to lose it soon, not before its natural time….I have to be grateful. and its this constant exercise of not only telling myself that this life is ok, but looking at it in its gorgeous illustrious beauty, because it is beautiful. gratitude really gives us beautiful lenses to see everything with.”
So, I think it is beautiful when we can appreciate the small, simple things. In fact I think appreciating the small simple things expands them in a way to be bigger and even more beautiful things. A key to happiness? Hmm….
“Whatever your Comfort Zone consists of, you pay a huge price for it. Life provides endless possibilities, but along with them comes pain. If you can’t tolerate pain, you can’t be fully alive. There are many different examples of this. If you’re shy and avoid people, then you lose the vitality that comes with a sense of community. If you’re creative but can’t tolerate criticism, then you avoid selling your ideas to the marketplace. If you’re a leader but you can’t confront people, no one will follow you. The Comfort Zone is supposed to keep your life safe, but what it really does is keep your life small.”
-Phil Stutz & Barry Michels, from their book The Tools
“Doing something with all your heart gives things meaning”
The above is a re-worded quote from a nice book: The Dog Who Followed the Moon by James Norbury.
I think there is truth in that meaning can arise from what we put into something. Especially if it is with all your heart. What does it mean to do something “with all your heart?”
I guess it means you put your entire self into what you are doing.
I found this poem tonight. I had written it on 4/4/2013 at 1am. This was a poem I wrote to myself; I was realizing and learning how I needed to feel love, instead of just logically knowing that I was loved. At the time I was referring to romantic love. Now I can probably expand this beyond that:
A Poem for Love for Me
It is not enough for me to know I
am loved, I need to Feel it.
I need to feel I am loved.
A week ago I realized a baby portrait of
mine has had barbed wire attached to
it all these years, literally. I could
not hold the portrait tight. I could
not hold it right.
Then I realized, that baby needs to be
held, not looked at. Not put somewhere
to be looked at. He
needs to be held.
And that is me. And it is a daily occurrence,
daily need. I need to feel it
everyday. Anything else is not enough.
Because When I don’t, I shrivel up and recoil,
and get cold and bitter. I cant live like
that.
I need to grow and open my heart,
open up, and bloom. I’ve come too
far, I must
continue opening and growing
I May forget these details, but my heart
will not. My heart knows
that it needs Love it can feel.
My heart will not let me
stay with anything else.
-Dr. Orlando Fernandez
“O God, please give me the grace to welcome the unexpected, to see your blessing in every moment and to be awed by holiness wherever encountered.”
-From a prayer of Our Lady of Lourdes
“A Decision Can Change Your Life” – Janine Diaz
“Stay focused in the moment. Be where your feet are.”
-Robert Saleh (Head Coach of the New York Jets)
“Humanization” is a word that describes the act of perceiving other people as human. This may sound like not a big deal, but it is the opposite of dehumanizing, which is lowering the value of a person to something less-than-human.
Below is an excerpt from Man’s Search for Meaning, a book written by Viktor Frankl, a Jewish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps:
“It is apparent that the mere knowledge that a man was either a camp guard or a prisoner tells us almost nothing. Human kindness can be found in all groups, even those which as a whole it would be easy to condemn. The boundaries between groups overlapped and we must not try to simplify matters by saying that these men were angels and those were devils. Certainly, it was a considerable achievement for a guard or foreman to be kind to the prisoners in spite of all the camp’s influences, and, on the other hand, the baseness of a prisoner who treated his own companions badly was exceptionally contemptible. Obviously the prisoners found the lack of character in such men especially upsetting, while they were profoundly moved by the smallest kindness received from any of the guards.“
Then the author provides an example of being humanized:
“I remember how one day a foreman secretly gave me a piece of bread which I knew he must have saved from his breakfast ration. It was far more than the small piece of bread which moved me to tears at that time. It was the human ‘something’ which this man also gave to me–the word and look which accompanied the gift.“
“There is no ultimate arrival. Only continual reflection, failure, refinement, and re-commitment.”
-John Wineland, from his book “From the Core: A New Masculine Paradigm for Leading with Love, Living Your Truth & Healing the World”
This video doesn’t do justice to this set of thoughts and feelings I have. But it is a little hard to unravel, I will try a little here:
I write, speak and think a lot about meaning. Creating meaning, living meaningfully. Experiencing meaning. The reason why is because I’ve felt and experienced the opposite, which is a dangerous place to be because without meaning it is difficult to come up with a good reason to stay in this life.
I love this quote: “it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us.” – Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning.
Somehow, meaning is tied up in this, in a sort of giving, sacrificing. We are all temporary. Like beautiful pups or tiny plant shoots that spring in the beginning of our lives, we are full of all kinds of potential, time, vigor. Through life, time, and all that, we expend, transmute and propagate energy. We are energy conduits, channels. But every conduit in reality that humans use, endures weathering with usage and time. There is another beautiful quote which I love to try to remember: “We have only the present moment, sparkling like a star in our hands — and melting like a snowflake.” – Marie Beynon Lyons Ray.
When I think of that quote, I think of the snowflake like a burning star in our hand. Alive it once was. Alive it began, full of potential, life, energy. And then it expends these things, giving beauty, giving heat and warmth. Very likely, giving meaning to the observer. In this expulsion and giving, sacrificing of energy, of life, of meaning itself, it creates meaning in whoever or whatever is lucky and blessed to experience these things.
It gives its breath. It gives its mind. It gives its heart, its warmth, its focus, its attention, its Presence, and burns into that palm. And in that experience is beauty, warmth, wonder, tears, love. Meaning.
Is that star asking for anything??? WELL? IS IT??? If you think so, go ahead and tell it that. Tell that star, burning itself to death, but in that process exuding brilliance, light and practicing love of life, that it is asking for something. Maybe it is. Maybe it wants connection. Maybe it wants your attention. Your presence. Your focus. Your kiss.
That is my intro to this video, which comes off slightly different than this intro, but which is trying to get at the same thing, I think.
Blessings. And Love.