Interesting idea applying the Pareto Principle to this. I also like to flip it around and be the plant. Who’s watering me? Then give them my energy and time.
Good catch on that tee-shirt phrase. It should be or maybe is a meme. I've watered a few dead plants in my time and you know what? I couldn't raise them from the dead😂 I'm speaking literally and metaphorically here. We all do this, and what a waste of time, energy, money, emotional well-being, heck even a waste of our health it is to try. Thanks for the reminder.
Yes. I particularly liked your comment about giving it your best shot so if it fails you can honestly say, "I did my best." I don't want to give up on people or relationships too easily. I once talked to a man who was a marriage counselor, who said that, in most cases, couples he has counseled who were on the brink of divorce but who stayed together, are now happier than ever. But there are times when you have honestly done all you can and this person is just dragging you down. If you're trying to drag someone up the mountain but they refuse to do anything to help you save them, at some point you have to cut the rope and leave them behind, or they're going to drag you down too.
Yes, there are times when you give up on someone, that if you had just worked a LITTLE harder, you could have saved it. But there are also times when you keep trying long after it is hopeless.
Well, if you really are going to "stop watering dead plants," it's really good to be able look back and see that you said everything you needed to say and made a real effort to fix things first. You don't ever want to be sitting around going, "What I really wanted was X/Y/Z. Maybe the problem was that I never asked for it or made any real effort to get it." I feel like you should at least do enough where you can definitively say, "It was them, not me" down the road.
So much this. There is a genus of plants known as "resurrection weeds" that look like tumbleweeds and even travel like them until they find sufficient water to put down roots. Then they get green and grow again. It's not always easy to know when you're watering a dead plant, but it's one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it sorts of things.
I love me some Bruce Lee. Wisdom and profundity of the highest order.
OT: Have you heard anything about the re-examination of the circumstances surrounding his death? Sounds to me like it might have been even more tragic than we were originally led to believe.
I seem to remember his son saying many years ago that he was working on a script with an actress, had a headache, asked her for a pain pill, she gave him a prescription pain pill her doctor had given her, he had a really bad reaction to it and died.
PS: I'm editing this after looking at more stories on this. His wife said the prescription pain meds were actually his and he died from a reaction to that. There are also theories that it might have to do with Bruce Lee drinking an enormous amount of water and having his brain swell because he had difficulty excreting it for a variety of reasons.
I think the medical examiner got the cause-and-effect backward, particularly given what the Florida Gator team doctors (of Gatorade fame) had already figured out about water intoxication a few years before.
Linda Lee had accepted the coroner's report of death by misadventure due to allergy/sensitivity to his headache meds, but it's far more likely that the brain swelling was the result of severe and sudden water intoxication, itself the cause of the migraine-like headache Bruce supposedly took the Equigesic pill for. What a damn shame to go like that when he was otherwise so healthy and athletic. :(
Just to nitpick: The pie chart you have to illustrate the Pareto Principle doesn't make sense. Effort and results are not two pieces of the same pie. That's not the point at all.
Like the essay!
Interesting idea applying the Pareto Principle to this. I also like to flip it around and be the plant. Who’s watering me? Then give them my energy and time.
Good catch on that tee-shirt phrase. It should be or maybe is a meme. I've watered a few dead plants in my time and you know what? I couldn't raise them from the dead😂 I'm speaking literally and metaphorically here. We all do this, and what a waste of time, energy, money, emotional well-being, heck even a waste of our health it is to try. Thanks for the reminder.
Yes. I particularly liked your comment about giving it your best shot so if it fails you can honestly say, "I did my best." I don't want to give up on people or relationships too easily. I once talked to a man who was a marriage counselor, who said that, in most cases, couples he has counseled who were on the brink of divorce but who stayed together, are now happier than ever. But there are times when you have honestly done all you can and this person is just dragging you down. If you're trying to drag someone up the mountain but they refuse to do anything to help you save them, at some point you have to cut the rope and leave them behind, or they're going to drag you down too.
Yes, there are times when you give up on someone, that if you had just worked a LITTLE harder, you could have saved it. But there are also times when you keep trying long after it is hopeless.
Well, if you really are going to "stop watering dead plants," it's really good to be able look back and see that you said everything you needed to say and made a real effort to fix things first. You don't ever want to be sitting around going, "What I really wanted was X/Y/Z. Maybe the problem was that I never asked for it or made any real effort to get it." I feel like you should at least do enough where you can definitively say, "It was them, not me" down the road.
So much this. There is a genus of plants known as "resurrection weeds" that look like tumbleweeds and even travel like them until they find sufficient water to put down roots. Then they get green and grow again. It's not always easy to know when you're watering a dead plant, but it's one of those you-know-it-when-you-see-it sorts of things.
I love me some Bruce Lee. Wisdom and profundity of the highest order.
OT: Have you heard anything about the re-examination of the circumstances surrounding his death? Sounds to me like it might have been even more tragic than we were originally led to believe.
I seem to remember his son saying many years ago that he was working on a script with an actress, had a headache, asked her for a pain pill, she gave him a prescription pain pill her doctor had given her, he had a really bad reaction to it and died.
PS: I'm editing this after looking at more stories on this. His wife said the prescription pain meds were actually his and he died from a reaction to that. There are also theories that it might have to do with Bruce Lee drinking an enormous amount of water and having his brain swell because he had difficulty excreting it for a variety of reasons.
I think the medical examiner got the cause-and-effect backward, particularly given what the Florida Gator team doctors (of Gatorade fame) had already figured out about water intoxication a few years before.
Linda Lee had accepted the coroner's report of death by misadventure due to allergy/sensitivity to his headache meds, but it's far more likely that the brain swelling was the result of severe and sudden water intoxication, itself the cause of the migraine-like headache Bruce supposedly took the Equigesic pill for. What a damn shame to go like that when he was otherwise so healthy and athletic. :(
Just to nitpick: The pie chart you have to illustrate the Pareto Principle doesn't make sense. Effort and results are not two pieces of the same pie. That's not the point at all.