To thine own self be true

Average no. of times smartphone-users check their phones per day.

This is the first and best Poirot movie Ustinov made back in 1978. Ustinov is in high gear as his nuanced humorous self and so this adaptation never gets as serious as its predecessor Albert Finney’s Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express. But the three murders keep viewers long in suspense and the solution is fairly complicated and well worth waiting for.

The movie was shot on location in Egypt and has a cast chock full of old stars: Bette Davis, David Niven, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Smith, Mia Farrow, George Kennedy, Olivia Hussey, Jack Warden, Jon Finch, and Lois Chiles. Anthony Shaffer who wrote the original Sleuth play and movie does a good job balancing all elements of suspense, nastiness, irony, and humor. The look of the film is also quite satisfying; this movie deservedly won the AA for Best Costume Design and has a strong atmospheric style.

If you’re looking for an entertaining whodunit with numerous stars and a funny Poirot, this movie is definitely for you. I highly recommend it for cold winter evening viewing.

Example of Understatement: (line from a dream last night) “Life is a bit of a gamble.”
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Well, there you go. The proverbial roll of the dice especially in personal choices and decisions. We do make (up) our own lives as we go. There are many things we can count on these daze including more and continual change as well as new conflicts and challenges. Certainly personal growth requires risk and often taking the plunge to move forward in whatever ways.

Many of Joseph Campbell’s views and quotes were based on the latter idea. A sampling:

“A shift in consciousness is all it takes.”

“You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”

“To refuse the call means stagnation.”

“When this refusal of the call happens, there is a kind of drying up, a sense of life lost.”

“The call is to leave a certain social situation, move onto your own loneliness and find the jewel, the center that’s impossible to find when you’re socially engaged. You are thrown off-center, and when you feel off-center, it’s time to go. This is the departure when the hero feels something has been lost and goes to find it. You are to cross the threshold into new life. It’s a dangerous adventure, because you are moving out of the sphere of the knowledge of you and your community.”

“You enter the forest at its darkest point, where there is no path.”

“Where you stumble there lies your treasure.”

“As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.”

“Money is congealed energy and releasing it releases life possibilities.”

“If you follow your bliss, you will always have your bliss, money or not. If you follow money, you may lose it, and you will have nothing.”

“Snake and moon both die to the old, shed their shadow to be reborn.”

“When threatened by fear and desire, let ego go.”

“The limitation comes where your judgement comes.”

“The creative act is not hanging on, but yielding to new creative movement.”

(These and all other Campbell quotes are excerpted from Reflections on the Art of Living: A Joseph Campbell Companion)

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highly recommended reading and viewing: Campbell’s The Power of Myth

“With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs”–James Thurber

The most important connection, first of all, would be with oneself. One needs to be relatively familiar with and in tune with oneself before one can significantly connect with others in adult life. Often, we see and meet people who are chaotic, ‘lost’, merely role-playing, and living on surfaces. I think one has a better chance of avoiding these limited/limiting, distracting types if one knows oneself, is relatively organized and focused, basically connected with oneself. We are, each of us, entitled to know ourselves–to be our most authentic selves in the contexts of society and nature. In that, a significant responsibility to self and others.

Family, of course, is our next most significant connection. They are with us from birth and in and out of our lives when we are adults. Family works best when it is mutually respectful, somewhat nurturing, and without imposed personal agendas. To parents, one owes the most, since they raised one and invested a fair bit of responsibility, care, and love to one’s development. With family, one can usually/optimally most be oneself. With children and grandchildren, there is also a special teaching-learning experience that brings parties closer together. And even with serious illness and death, there is much to be learned from parents and other family members too–basic lessons of connection and love.

A few good, close, true friends emerge and remain true over the years. The closeness of connection and intimacy draw people together when there is kindness, trust, and mutual disclosure. Betrayal of one kind or another and agendas test friendship. It is always best when people are and can be themselves with friends, exchanging the basic gifts of self. Humor is often the glue of friendship, as is sharing in areas of mutual interest. It is truly enjoyable to be with friends with whom there is that common interest and free type of exchange and giving.

Then there’s that something we might call love–perhaps the most mysterious connection of all, the one that even bring two very different, strong individuals together. How does one describe or even begin to make sense of deep inner feelings? What is it like to trust deeply, accept, know, understand, appreciate, and savour another person as up-close-and-personal as one can get? (And vice-versa–pretty rare stuff.) In that, the mystery of love–a very powerful ‘drug’ and experience that often heightens purpose and mutual freedom. If one has only had a single, very deep exposure to love, one has come much closer to understanding others, to general empathy, to personal fulfillment/completion, and to a natural, sublime free state that opens up special meanings and purpose, as well as all of one’s inner resources. In many ways, love embodies heightened, soulful, spiritual living–a major, transcendental expansion of self, possibilities, and consciousness.

And so it is the individual who decides on and chooses what significant connections to have. Sometimes individuals like Mother Teresa or Walt Whitman even open up themselves to the multitudes. More often and typically, there are simply the people of one’s immediate circle/day and oneself. Again, the latter being the person that one lives with every day inside. And that is never a bad place to start with any choices or consideration of significant connection.

I go to nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put in order.–John Burroughs

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little.–Oscar Wilde

Nature is painting for us, day after day, pictures of infinite beauty.–John Ruskin

Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.–Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I’m painting my room in a colourful way
And when my mind is wandering
There I will go.”
-McCartney-Lennon, “Fixing a Hole”, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

“Hell is other people.”–Jean-Paul Sartre

Indubitably. One has only to refer to the wisdom of myriad books, plays, and films. Or reflect on the amount of violence and conflict in society leading to such things as abuse, assault, abduction, separation, divorce, and a zillion failed relationships. The newspaper headlines proclaim and further exemplify the truth of Sartre’s quote. Then there is just the plain facts that people are not perfect, make mistakes, often have agendas not shared by others, or are just plain bad, blind or ignorant. One finds examples of Sartre’s quote from No Exit at work in the home, in the workplace, on the roads, etc.

But I think it is worth adding that–if one uses common sense or is lucky–one might drive defensively, or move to a better, more harmonious, civil workplace, end a relationship, or retire! There is that no-small matter of personal choice regardless of whatever (imagined, often enslaving or limiting) necessity.

To surround oneself with the positive family one has helped to create and foster, or the few longtime true friends are other obvious positives. And we can often, certainly choose how we live, whom we love, and the kind of lifestyle and experiences we’d rather have than a bunch of forced, conflictful sorts of situations and negative or limited people.

There is also a lot to be said for the inner peace and contentment that one can find or cultivate with a modicum of freedom. This not only gives us more perspective for dealing with problem people and conflicts, but alters one’s attitude usually for the better.

Too often, the story of or behind whatever conflict is is about how we don’t empathize or let limited/limiting agendas undo us (c.f. King Lear). In short, ‘we do it to ourselves and others’, or vice-versa. Hell can also be created by ourselves through our attitudes toward others, especially in relationships. Hell is often just a context we simply don’t want to be in, I would add.

And then there is just that ‘small’ basic matter of personal choice. We can become that which we imagine, behold and choose. And when that happens or is happening optimally, there usually aren’t any hellish people or situations in sight. I believe we do largely fashion our own hells and don’t have to be locked up in a claustrophobic No Exit room with people we don’t want to have to deal with. In that–autonomy, freedom, health, etc. In that, the salvation posed also, ironically, by Sartre and other of the French Existentialists. Our lives can largely be what we choose to make of them.

“If someone hangs on or around long enough, then he or she might finally get what s/he really wants, needs, or deserves.”
–RD

-common sense

-intelligence

-sense of humor and wit

-decency

-sensibility

-personal depth

-natural capacity to respond to beauty

-creative consciousness

-empathy and sympathy

-civility and courtesy

-gentleness, kindness and caring

-natural innocence, awe, and wonder

-natural curiosity

-appreciation

-institutions that truly serve the public and not merely politicians, parties, or government

-permanence

-real intimacy, open-heartedness, love, and touch

-live in-person presence

-actual traditional works of art

-nature and pets

-genius and vision

-civilization

-personal freedom

-true individuality

-unconventional consciousness

-moments of being

-unagenda-ed possibilities

-un-e-mediated spirit and soul experience

-un-e-mediated magic moments

And never will be. All those many things that are rapidly vanishing, quickly forgotten, or gone largely missing in our ‘wonderful’ brave new d-world.

“Technology dominates us all, diminishing our freedom.”–Dorothy McCall, quoted, 14 March 1974″