Category: Uncategorized

I’ve moved HappyWisdom, my main blog, to a new host, and it was a lot. I don’t think I followed best practices, or there wouldn’t be all those broken image links and other issues, but I sorta wanted to make a new start. I’m standardizing on DreamHost because they’re more generous with SSL, instead of trying to charge me for that. Anyway, please excuse the dust!

So I messed up and I\’m still not sure how. You see, I run this blog and an unrelated product, called GamerSusan. It\’s a fun product for board gamers. Think a lazy susan but for board games! You can check that out here, but if you\’re not into that, and got an email, or vice versa, we apologize. Unfortunately, somehow the back end system got confused and the Happy Wisdom emails got mixed with the Gamer Susan people. Additionally, lawn games are a fantastic way to enjoy the outdoors with friends and family, offering fun activities like cornhole, frisbee, and bocce ball.

Let me assure fans of the Gamer Susan that the product is still in development! Indeed we\’re getting some prototypes ready to show! Very exciting.

For those in the Happy Wisdom universe, I hope you don\’t mind this little peek behind the curtain. Small businesses are hard to start, and sometimes mistakes are made.

If you want to get on the Gamer Susan action, please head to GamerSusan.com and throw your email in. I promise there is a low volume. Indeed, I should be doing more communication, but I don\’t want to waste people\’s time.

If you\’re a HappyWisdomer, then stay right where you are! We\’ve got three episodes for the podcast nearing completion. I\’m really excited to ship that out to you and get the conversation started in Audio form. Blogs and Podcasts are great partners, so I\’m stoked.

If you\’re into both of these communities, all I can say is thank you!

Till next time – Joe

Did you know you know that there\’s a good chance that Plato read Moses? Or that the concept of the Atom predates science by thousands of years? My training is in Engineering and then Organizational Development. We don\’t get much into the humanities, so I\’ve had to engage the philosophy/theology track on my own.

I would like to take you on that journey with me. There\’s a lot to the perspective that the philosophical, historical, and theological void I grew up in might be part of why the West is in such a precarious position. While we all can\’t be philosophers, we all should know what the last two or more millennia have done to get us here. We\’re plopped on this earth with a mountain of knowledge and work under us. College, some hold, is supposed to take us through that mountain, but what it really does is show us the range and give us a hook and rope to climb with (some might say with the focus on STEM that it hardly does that, but I\’m not there yet).

I\’ve been diving through YouTube, and some Podcasts, namely Steven West\’s Philosophize This! and the School of Life. Both are fairly secular in their presentation so I\’ll be blending folks such as Peter Ens (How to Read the Bible) and John Dickson (Bulles and Saints), to name a few. It\’ll be fun, so thanks for reading!

I\’ve spent a few more hours than I care to admit feeling Saudade about the many things in life. From as profound as a loss of a friend to the impactul artistry of the Avengers, it captures the emotion perfectly. It is a brilliant word. Saudade, per Wikipedia, is described as \”the love that remains\” after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places, or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again.\”
Here\’s another take at this untranslatable word, courtesy of NPR:

Perhaps my favorite of these elusive words is saudade, a Portuguese and Galician term that is a common fixture in the literature and music of Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde and beyond. The concept has many definitions, including a melancholy nostalgia for something that perhaps has not even happened. It often carries an assurance that this thing you feel nostalgic for will never happen again. My favorite definition of saudade is by Portuguese writer Manuel de Melo: \”a pleasure you suffer, an ailment you enjoy.\”

When do you feel saudade about something? I decided to make it a celebratory, human word. It perfectly summarizes the human condition in one word.