Hanlon, Duchenne, and me
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Hanlon, Duchenne, and me
A prayer that softens judgement, yours onto others, & more so others on to you. Especially those we moor to expectations of unconditional understanding, love, or support. Those we punish on pedestals.
High horses break backs,
the ride is intoxicating,
the view deceivingly complete,
until what you see is the cold u-turn of horse’s feet.
High horses break backs,
and pedestals aren’t propped to take flak
Keep one in the wild, and one on your mantel,
Don’t over ride their destiny, don’t augment their potential
Do not mount a horse, unless you can weild Hanlon’s razor
Do not assemble a pedestal, unless you are willing to be seen as villain
a villain in a story, in someone’s eyes, another ogre on a foot hill
While that foot hill is likely the top of your mountain, a pin on your hero’s arch,
Do not ride, run, and climb unless you are ready to take heat,
unless your face is guarded with a Duchenne smile and a pair of crow’s feet.
Fight the good fight, yes. but which one is that?
Fight to protect your mountains, the few and far in between,
Malachite mountain tops coming together in rosary rings
Sunflower souls surrounding your surrender
Protect them, they, those mountains,
build a life with and around them.
understand that your foothills, can be their hill tops
understand that their canyons, can be your waterfalls
Mountains do not move, yet they carry you places
Let your people carry you places,
Let the snow of their skies create new grooves in your brain
Keeping you forever young, in love all along,
Reserves of ice keeping your rivers running, keeping your caves cool
An ever abundant spring watering the YOU in neuro-plasticity,
the magic networks of your fields, of your forestry.
Fight, Flight, or Fawn, and you will survive.
Tend, and befriend, and we must thrive.
myself, the mountains, our hill tops, the sunflowers, and every single tree.
Listen to your hills,
I stood on a hill and met a thousand selves of mine, and I felt them all roll over and appear again in the distance just like hills do.
At times they disappear completely, only to see them again in the rear view mirror. With every turn I gain a spot and soon enough my body will glow full of them but they will never be enough.
Fickle freckles, eyeliner spots, green stickers and camouflage plaid...this way when I am back at a hill I have met before, or if I spot its face from a distance,
I will have my marks to remind me,
and my heart ready to blend us anew.
Earning my spots one hill at a time and a thousand lifetimes to go.
I will never appear the same twice.
Listen to your hills. The mountains are kin.
Today, I recognize that my interiority leads a life on rolling hills,
the people in my journey are anchoring mountains,
You, the people on the list, the invited and invitees,
the mountains that surround me and our sunflowers fields.
Big love your way, steep, stark, green, snow capped, lush, or quarried.
All of you beautiful mountains,
I am building my world around and with you,
and I am a lucky.
Amen
Fodder:
Hanlon’s razor
“Never attribute to malice or stupidity that which can be explained by moderately rational individuals following incentives in a complex system of interactions.”
- Douglas W. Hubbard
“You have contributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”
- Heinlein’s (1941) novella Logic of Empire
“Misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At least the latter two are certainly rarer.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774)
SourceDuchenne smile
“A Duchenne smile is a natural smile of enjoyment, made by contracting the zygomatic major muscle and the orbicularis oculi muscle. It’s often quite involuntary, and experienced during times of genuine happiness or enjoyment.
At age 3, children look more often at people showing the Duchenne smile than non-Duchenne smiles. By age 4, the children could verbally point out the 'real' (Duchenne) smiles and the 'fake' (non-Duchenne) smiles. At ages 4 and 5, the children expected the person with the Duchenne smile to be more friendly and helpful than the person with the non-Duchenne smile.”
Source