Was she a middle school teacher?
"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people."
Eleanor Roosevelt
Eleanor Roosevelt
Plainsies, Clapsies
A ball bouncing game from my youth instructed the player to throw the ball up ( plainsies ), throw it up and clap ( clapsies ) throw it up and roll your hands ( roll the ball ) and touch your shoulders ( tabapsies ). In trying to locate the rest of the ball bouncing chant, I found out not only is my “tabapsies” a mondegreen , but also the motion – touching your shoulders – isn’t even the correct movement! You are supposed to clap your hands behind your back and say “ to backsies .” Yeah. That makes much more sense. Being only slightly deflated by this discovery, I will still share my exciting news. In an attempt to counteract the stretching of my wrist from doing front squats two days in a row, I pulled out the tabapsies motion this morning. This, in itself, is not newsworthy. However, I grabbed both shoulders with all five fingers!!! Again, not exciting unless you know that when I was nine years-old, I broke my left elbow doing a running c...
Comments
Few of those are to be found in middle school.
I was more referring to the fact that both of my daughters, sometime during their middle school years, needed to be reminded of the bad medicine associated with the third.
I like this quotation as it applies to talking about people in an attempt to gain social approval with peers. I'm guessing this behavior is related to a self-esteem issue. I'm trying to work through exactly what it means to my daughter who seems to be taking on a new personality directed by peer approval.
Ick.
Like many short quips, this one by Eleanor doesn't capture all the subtleties. Here's how I interpret this quote.
This set of three captures 3 major stances toward reality (idealism, pragmatism or experientialism, and social-metaphysics) by listing their center of focus (ideas, concrete events and people.) None of those is the best way to approach reality. I added "events in terms of ideas" (which also could have been "ideas in terms of events") in order to point the focus toward philosophical realism and objectivity.
Perhaps I am reading too much into it all---but these little exercises can sometimes help me clarify my thinking--and in a geeky way, I find it fun.
Open to your thoughts.
Right now I have to be able to articulate my frustration with a bigger situation, of which this is a small part, to myself and then make a plan of action.