The Unsinkable brian cork™

repost: hate is not greater than love maybe

March31

I’m kind of cheating, today. but, this so by public request (WordPress does not have a other form of “repost” capability).

two words:

love and hate.

or, love and hatred.

they represent genuine extremes, I think.

as an aside… we’ve witnessed; and unfortunately, some of you have lived – “love hate” relationships.

but, some people love to hate. we assign that to terrorists, for example. other folks might submit they hate to love.

“there’s nothing in this world so sweet as love. and next to love the sweetest thing is hate.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I’m intently considering my keyboard, and thinking love is an elixir, whereas hatred is fuel. however, both can be the foundation for a cause. and, a result of a cause, I suppose.

apparently there exists, some where, but I don’t, in truth, care precisely where, a study using a brain scanner to investigate the neural circuits that become active when people look at a photograph of someone they say they hate has found that the “hate circuit” shares something in common with the “love circuit”.

I’m thinking the opposite of love is not hate. however, it could be indifference. but, we’re trying not to introduce other words, here. on the other hand, indifference is not the same result if you say: the opposite of hate is not love. the meaning, if not the entire context changes, and radically.

what the hell, I’ll add an aside, here. me? I’ll fear indifference long before hate, and certainly love. indifference might suggest the loss of hope. And, maybe that’s the key to strapping on a vest stuffed with dynamite, or losing the will to love. love might take more courage and effort than hate, after all.

these words, and their application, might represent an important battlefield. the on-going war that rages (now, that’s an interesting word relative to this line-of-thinking) between these emotions is relentless. we seem to have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another, unflinchingly. it’s more likely that love will turn, and viciously, into seething hatred, and not so likely that hate will transform itself into love. if someone were to say: ‘I hate loving”, it’s sad, but that is more easy to relate to than: “I love hating”, which almost sounds like a chest-thumping cause for action, or call-to-action.

hate is often considered to be an evil passion that should, in a better world, be tamed, controlled and eradicated. yet, I think were you a biologist, hate is a passion that is of equal interest to love.

like love, hate is often seemingly irrational, and can lead individuals to both heroic and evil deeds. this fascinates me. how can two opposite sentiments lead to the same behavior?

perhaps that line-of-thinking led Ella Wilcox to say: “love lights more fire than hate extinguishes.”

I can’t say I agree with that. for example, love is often viewed as given, whereas is hatred is acquired. but, we can demonstrate how hatred is ladled-out carefully and becomes so much more powerful over time. if someone handed a terrorist (we really do leverage that term liberally, don’t we) a flower, they would likely shove up the givers butt, or grind it into dust and mix it with weed-killer and craftily introduce it into their coca-cola. having said that, perhaps the makers of coca-cola are actually terrorists of a sort because soft drinks are, indeed poison, and slowly killing a large portion of the worlds population. too many people say: “I love coca-cola”, and not enough say: “I hate coca-cola”. but, I digress (although shareholders of coca-cola enterprises love to make money, and certainly don’t hate it).

me? as I continue to explore the complexities of living the authentic life, I’m more likely to try and love, in general. or, at least care. this is where indifference creeps back into the thinking. I’m not sure you can win once love is part of the equation because many lines become blurred and the self can be lost. but, nobody actually wins where hate evolves. that’s a kobayashi maru. I’ll submit once indifference corrupts the soul, there exists hatreds foothold. and, I’ll often try to encourage my fourteen year old daughter to try, and hard, not to even use the word hate in a sentence – especially relative to people, and also inanimate objects (like new cellular telephones) – but more so, then, from a common-sensical standpoint. I also want her to be careful about dispensing and leveraging the word love. there is that tipping-point, after-all.

it all requires a lot of thinking and consideration. a cause, if you will, for that winnie-the-Pooh figgerin’ spot.

peace be to my Brothers and Sisters.

Brian Patrick Cork

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Tags: hate, Life, Love, things that are opposite

posted under Authentic Life, Fun Stories, Good vs. Evil, Heterodox, Life, Love, Stuff | 1 Comment »

joanne reads like poetry

March15

are poems meant to be an opus?

life plays-out like an opus.

can change always be good? its unavoidable. more so change, hopefully, good.

I’m wondering how poetry can fit into the evolution of life.

what is the hell is “poetic justice”? that’s a bit of random thinking. however, it just struck me as I was preparing to stop tapping and launch this post. so, I’m exploring that.

all that said, the point of this post is founded with:

“The days will continue to flee, and we shall want for their passing with each missed opportunity”.

I’m listening to Fall At Your Feet (again) by Crowded House. But also, You’ll Never Walk Alone for Liverpool FC! life is such a beautiful game, poetry adds beauty and balance to it. and, it turns out that Soccer (proper football) is referred to globally as “the beautiful game”. and, a great moment in soccer is more often referred to as, “poetic”.

you may be wondering what this has to do with Joanne, at least from a post title perspective. the answer is specifically nothing and everything. it all depends on how you read it, or say it, or interpret it.

peace be to my Brothers and Sisters.

brian patrick cork

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Tags: Family, heart break, Life, Marriage, Poetry

posted under Authentic Life, Family, Joanne, Poetry | No Comments »

riding that big glassy-fronted wave of life

March8

…this is what my life feels like, right now. however, I don’t think I want that to change.

life is like riding a big glassy-fronted wave. one stupid mistake and it things get nasty, or awesome.

what is the human body made of? water. the physical makeup of all our bodily fluids and ocean is very similar. and, its glorious they find each other.

life is like riding the [a] wave. something is always changing. adapting to these changes is the challenge, just as the surfer must adjust quickly and accurately if a successful ride is to be realized.

Eckharte Tolle wrote that “if the primary focus of of your life is the now, then you will be free from pain and suffering.” thusly, when you’re on a wave, time ceases to exist, and you’re in a such an intense combined state of euphoria, peace, presence and excitement that it’s something you have to return over and over again. once you realize that, to live any other way would seem completely insane. - Srinivas Rao, The Skool of Life

that makes surfing, and life’s potential rather like feeling close to God. just like being in the arms of a woman you truly and genuinely love.

so… you can’t change the way it breaks, but you can change the way you ride it.

…seriously.

“There’s no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.” - Frank Herbert, Science Fiction writer (1920-1986)

we encounter waves in every minute of every day. there are light waves which make things visible and sound waves so we can hear. even solid physical matter is a wave that is vibrating at a certain frequency. if we observe the behavior of waves, we can see how energy changes from one state to another, and back again.

just like the ebb-and-flow of life. the analogies and potential for metaphor are boundless.

I love to watch the ocean waves. my Mom was a child of the sea. she was drawn to it. her best childhood memories speak to it. she took me there at any and every opportunity. when I told her I might love surfing as much as running (this was big), she just nodded. she got it. of course, she was born under the sign of Cancer, the sign of the crab, so she liked coastal areas like Merced, California, and sunny beaches. she would spend an entire day contentedly watching the waves, preferably with me atop one.

the act centers me. sometimes waves are big and strong and sometimes they are gentle and calm. a wave can throw us back to the shore or if we are not careful can suck us in. water that were waves have nearly taken me a number of time. here is an example: no body is home – by brian patrick cork

life is whacky. and, God has a wild sense of humor.

whatever wave you are on, one thing you can be sure of is that they will always come, crash and then smooth itself out. if we learn to read the pattern of the waves in our lives through our interaction with them we can understand the energy of a wave, how to use it to our best advantage, how to dwell amidst its awesome power, and how to avoid crashing into, or being overcome, one.

big waves are actually quite rare. just like HUGE, epic events are much too rare in other peoples’ lives. I crave adventure, the wild twist of fate, less the cruel mirth of a capricious God.

for perspective…

eighty percent (80%) of all ocean waves are less than twelve feet high, and forty-five percent (45%) are smaller than four feet. the largest waves, those measuring over thirty-five feet, require anywhere from six to nine hundred miles of unobstructed ocean, or “fetch,” to reach full size. by the time such an anomaly encounters a reef break or shore incline, it has become a powerful rolling mass of wind-born energy moving through the water at speeds of thirty to fifty knots per hour and capable of exerting forces of more than three tons (that’s six thousand pounds of pressure per square foot) as it finally curls up-and-over itself and breaks. in life that may read like a tragedy… or adventure. some might ride that wild wave, whereas others might cower from it. however, in an attempt to elucidate (look it up) just why the experience of riding a wave is so unique, author Daniel Duane writes in Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast:

“The climber never quite penetrates the mountain, the hiker remains trapped in the visual prison, but the surfer physically penetrates the heart of the ocean’s energy – and this is in no sense sentimentality – stands wet in its substance, pushed by its drive inside the kinetic vortex. Even riding a river, one rides a medium itself moved by gravity, likewise with a sailboard or on skis. Until someone figures out how to ride sound or light, surfing will remain the only way to ride energy.”

then, there is also…

emma jo rock climbing

for those driven to put themselves in the center of the “kinetic vortex” of big waves, the risk is incredible.

perhaps this is why being an adventurer, entrepreneur, provocateur is in my DNA. I’m “salty”.

being caught in the falling lip of a wave can send surfers underwater so deep and so fast that the pressure change breaks their eardrums and the capillaries in their lungs. there is the risk of losing everything in a heart beat. and, that is perfectly acceptable. dismemberment, fractures, or broken bones from contact with the ocean floor or from the seething force of whitewater are so common that Laird Hamilton – Big Wave Rider stopped counting his stitches after a thousand. both of his feet are disfigured from broken arches, but he claims that they may now be “stronger than before.”

how many times in LIFE have people around you said something like, “if it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger”.

Derrik Doerner, another pioneer of tow-in surfing, and the man who launched Hamilton into the infamous wave at Teahupoo with a jet ski, was once hit in the face by a surfboard underwater. just before he went unconscious, he felt his cheek. “My hand went in, like, two inches,” he says. “The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a helicopter. I had a broken jaw, broken cheekbone. I needed 123 stitches in all.”

…ride your waves of life.

“I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in Heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot, As if a chart were given.” - Emily Dickerson, American Poet (1830-1886)

“Believe in love. Believe in magic. Believe in Santa Claus. Believe in others. Believe in yourself. Believe in your dreams. If you don’t, who will? – Jon Bon Jovi

‘Tuesdays with Morrie’

okay… read this story to your daughters…

the story is about a little wave, bobbing along in the ocean, having a grand old time. he’s enjoying the wind and the fresh air-until he notices the other waves in front of him, crashing against the shore. “my God, this is terrible,” the wave says. “look what’s going to happen to me!”

then along comes another wave. it sees the first wave, looking grim, and it says to him, “why do you look so sad?”

the first wave says, “you don’t understand! we’re all going to crash! all of us waves are going to be nothing! isn’t it terrible?”

The second wave says, “No, you don’t understand. You’re not a wave, you’re part of the ocean.” - Tuesdays with Morrie, American Educator (1916-1995)

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.” - Henry David Thoreau – American Poet and Philosopher 1817-1862

“live your life darling. all of it. question everything. accept nothing.” – Barbara Anne Cork, Wife to one, Mother to all

the Chinese have a twist on the word, “interesting”. it’s a form of curse. but, it’s worth exploring.

there is a Muslim maxim that goes something like, “the promise is in the punishment, and the punishment is in the promise.”

I hope you all get hit hard by great waves. just don’t hold your breath too long.

peace be to my Brothers and Sisters.

brian patrick cork

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Tags: Great Stories, Life, metaphor, Surfing

posted under Fear, Fun Stories, God, Life, Mom, Sports, Sports Life, Stuff | 1 Comment »

Love and Life are not always EASY just simple

March7

so…

my life is taking some quirky twists-and-turns. simple things are not always easy.

I get up A LOT earlier than everyone else in my household. typically around 430am.

I text all three of my girls with something like, “good morning! I love you all. have a great day” at roughly 6:15am when they are all rousing. but, I am always ignored.

my Mom used to say, and almost every day, “tell everyone that you love all about it every day. demonstrate it. you never know what your last impression will be.”

and, I miss her every day.

you can miss a lot of things when you don’t have them. so, never take anything for granted. nothing.

I was at Olde Blind Dog last night with Marc Kutter, catching up, swapping war stories, and investigating opportunities. I think he and I are destined to make really cool stuff happen. I talk a lot. but, one of the little bon mots I shared with him (I’m convinced it was relevant to the flowing stream-of-conscienciousness) was a brief story about where I was less than a year before I first met Joanne.

it was 1988 and I was still in Los Angeles working on my MBA and in the midst of rehabbing my knee after a disastrous training accident while I was pretending to be a professional triathlete. I had lost all of my sponsors, had no medical benefits, and was living out of my car with my white retriever Alex. I had taken David Sugarman’s guidance and started working as a securities broker. it was a long hard struggle (mostly the knee part, selling stuff came easy), however I was convinced my next steps would eventually pay-off. I was still using commercial airlines, hitch-hiked to work sometimes, and saved every penny. every now and then I pitched a tent in my buddy Tom’s back yard, and would use his hose for drinking and washing (both me and Alex, actually). his neighbors hated me.

but, I have never shied away from fist-bumping a homeless person. in fact, I think the first fist-bump I ever received was from Otis, the crazy dude on the Promenade in Santa Monica.

things, generally, got better from there. but, they are more often than not, always interesting. and, I am so happy to have mates like Marc around. and the world spins around my girls mush like the globe upon it’s sturdy axis. and, I’ll keep telling everyone that I love, it’s from my heart. and, I’m grateful.

and, optimistic.

peace be to my Brothers and Sisters.

brian patrick cork

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Tags: Family, Great Stories, Life, Love

posted under Authentic Life, Family, Friendship, Fun Stories, Life, Love, Truth | No Comments »

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