The process of working with my wife, Cherita, over the last, several weeks to create aand develop this Living Action web site has been an educational one, one that's certainly contributed to my growth. I know that this process will continue, as I make further use of this site and engage in more dialogue with others. I've learned how to use software features with which I was previously unfamiliar, and I've learned how to sharpen my expression by making use of the distinctive features with which a web site is especially well equipped.

Most of all, though, I feel indebted in this context to my outstanding teacher: my wife, Cherita, who has patiently assisted me in innumerable ways, not only by teaching me how to make use of this web site, but also by collaborating with me in the creation of other web sites, in the past.

Thank you for being you, Cherita! I love you! <kiss> :-)

Saturday [4 June 2005] was our "Free Day" - the one day per week that we allow ourselves to eat junk food. (The best selling book, Body for Life: 12 Weeks to Mental and Physical Strength, by Bill Phillips, inspired this "Free Day" idea. You can read about and purchase that book here.) In accordance with our "Free Day" freedom, we decided to go out for dinner with our three year old daughter, Aliana, at the Old Country Buffet.

When we approached our table, I overheard some people at the next table say (approximately): "Oh, what a beautiful child!" (It never ceases to amaze me how often perfect strangers will say this. Don't get me wrong. I completely agree, of course! But it does sometimes feel as though I'm traveling with a movie star! :-) )

Later, while my wife, Cherita, was getting food for herself and Aliana, one of the people at that table called out to me, "Excuse me?"

I turned around, and said, "Yes?"

"You look like an intelligent person," she said. "Is it true that you can get a heart attack from eating too much salt?"

Then another woman at the table said, "But isn't it that salt can cause hypertension or high blood pressure?"

Then the woman who had spoken first said, "Yes, but the high blood pressure can then cause a heart attack."

I said, "Yes, consuming too much salt can contribute to high blood pressure, which can contribute to the risk of a heart attack, over time."

"Thank you," they said.

Aside from the fact that these people not only correctly identified my daughter as a beautiful child and gauged that I was intelligent, (LOL!) I was struck and delighted by their being so willing to act on the basis of their immediate impressions and to openly express them. Honestly, it just made me feel good about them, about being out, and about the state of our culture!

It was a good day... and I'm happy to be able to write about it... and I'm especially happy to be able to share it with you, through this amazing medium.

Thank you for joining me today.

By my standards, then, the effort that Cherita and I have invested in creating, developing and launching this web site qualifies as work.

In order to emphasize the interconnectedness of these categories, though, I'd like to add a new thought, now.

Even though I think that "Work" activities qualify, from one point of view, as "means to ends," I also think it can help to cultivate the ability to psychologically experience such "Work" activities as "ends in themselves."

This doesn't mean that such activities then cease to serve as "means to ends." Nor does it then convert them into activities that qualify primarily as "Play."

Even so, it can do a person a world of good to learn to cultivate a sense of "Play" in one's work.

In this connection, the book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, has, for me, proven to be enormously insightful. You can read more about this book, and even order it, here.

Struggling with this has been a learning - and therefore, a growth - process.