Welcome to this Sunday’s Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. Today we target: Imagination

  • Much like Hemingway winning the bar bet that he could write a full length novel in 6 words, does this Sunday’s title and target stir images that please or unsettle?
  • Does Hemingway’s poignant creation: “Baby Booties, For Sale, Never Used”, serve as model for “Doggie Waiting, Dying, Heaven’s Door, Awaiting”?
  • Is the anonymous, hurt your heart, dog poem “Waiting at the Door” only surpassed by Kipling’s “The Power of the Dog” that brings tear causing memory and stern reality of what’s coming or already passed–that terrible day?
  • Is unconditional love just a natural state for dogs or is it a found or created “meaning of life” that makes tails wag?
  • Can the same be true for man?
  • Does Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy (The Third Viennese School of Psychology) and his seminal work “Man’s Search for Meaning” provide an elaborate but simple framework for a personal, supporting construct that works when the bad times come, earned or unearned?
  • How about in good times? Are logotherapy techniques even more valuable? Why?
  • Does creation of “Something of Value” (a nod to Robert Ruark appropriate), if only mental or for itself or just for you establish an avenue to personal meaning?
  • Will love or value of sought and achieved experience open a path to meaning especially if coupled with an optimism despite anticipated and inevitable suffering?
  • Can you imagine how focusing on the needs of others can assist “life of substance” achievement?
  • Are humor and ridicule (often more bawdy, the better) effective tools to deal with fear?
  • Why is subtle mocking more marvelous than frontal assault argument? Mustn’t forget the worth of wry self-depreciation?
  • Isn’t the Third Degree internal dialogue meant to encourage discovery, answers and meaning behind your own words, thoughts and experience (mine too)?
  • Can you imagine waiting at the door of America and with what attitude and expectations?
  • What are we impelled to do? What can we imagine?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living”. The answers and actions are yours.