Do I own a Platform?

It has been a week since I started this blog. Many thoughts have occurred to me regarding this platform since I took the flag of this and stuck it sharply and defiantly into existence. To be bold enough to say that you have any platform is a big step and I pledge not to take this lightly. And yet I don’t want to take it on my shoulders like a heavy boulder either, because then I will just toss it. Now I very well could’ve tossed it if my ego led the way.

When I bring up the ego, it is reflected off of recent readings of mine. The author/spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle is my hero of the moment so let me share a quote from “Stillness Speaks”.

“If you set egoic goals for the purpose of freeing yourself, enhancing yourself or your sense of importance, even if you achieve them, they will not satisfy you. Set goals, but know that the arriving is not all that important. When anything arises out of presence, it means this moment is not a means to an end: the doing is fulfilling in itself every moment…”

E.T.

Okay…we’re out of quotesville now. Just wanted to set the scene.

I published on Facebook that I was starting a blog. What my ego found astounding is that for all the flowers, kids and random weird posts I get a certain amount of “likes” for, news of this blog rendered a much smaller response (anyone that says they don’t look at their likes is lying). Therefore, what I find MOST precious and dear to my heart isn’t given a second thought by others, some of whom I truly like or love and honor their opinion and I suppose their attention. Also, I have been on other blogs and I am getting a feel for what I can aspire to. Yet even still, maybe no one will read this and so what? I would love to think that I don’t care and maybe one day I can be sitting with the Buddha, but for now I remain very much human and unfortunately vulnerable. Where does this lead? Watching myself. I am choosing to write for writings sake. AND I have asked for and gotten even a moment of your time, dear reader, and that is quite precious.

Now I wish to tackle a subject that seems to come up a lot lately and one that I don’t quite know how to solve. Also, I would LOVE for you to respond to this as a way to somehow make peace with it (not sure yet how people who are following this blog can see one another’s comments). Our precious children and MEDIA. Tablets, phones, games, sites, etc. I have talked with a lot of my friends about this and basically how to have a healthy childhood with its inclusion. One of my very dear friends (whom I deem a great mother) said, “I control what I can and it’s basically the way things are. We can’t fight it so we just have to learn to tolerate it”. Really? Now I myself am still navigating these murky waters and I suppose that tolerating is the way it’s been going. However, my younger daughter Ava will share with me this or that that she saw on a YouTube video and I feel like I have NO control because I simply can’t be around for every moment that she’s exposed. And I really do not wish to be a crazy helicopter Mom but I have this nagging feeling that in say ten or twenty years from now we’ll see staggering statistics on the detriments of our children’s brain-on-devices. I do limit their time but who’s to say that a wicked thought or a stray notion doesn’t sneak its way into their budding, evolving brain and thought pattern and create some negative effect?

That is all for now. I will write this blog every Tuesday. Can’t predict the time. In the future I hope to have more ways to link to material that furthers my thoughts and master most of what a blog can be capable of. And perhaps make even small contributions toward saving our planet. What?!?

THANK YOU for spending a few moments of your busy day reading my words. It means a great deal to me. —- Dianne

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