Thoughts about cracking eggs

Wow – a whole week of 2010 gone already. It’s been a busy week – in addition to the normal things around the house, at least daily visits with my Dad tending to his needs, getting back into the church building project (filling in while the project manager is out of commission dealing with medical problems, visit to the ortho clinic Monday (last time for the elbow until he does surgery in a few months to remove the plate & screws he put in in July) , Wednesday visit to dentist to do the prep work and get a temporary crown, preparing (Tuesday) and then restoring curtains etc for new windows which were installed Wednesday, organizing family supper next Friday to celebrate my Dad’s 93rd and a couple of visits with some folks who were needing someone to listen to them as they wrestled with some tough things in their lives and capped off last evening with a nachos and movie night with some friends from our church family – AVATAR – even in 2D -- it’s a cliffhanger (literally at times)

I am thankful to be blessed with the health and energy that let’s me enjoy this pace and for the ability to make jokes about the similarities between lists and rabbits. (you’ll have to get to my FACEBOOK page for full details on that one)

Last week I included an excerpt from “The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain” by Barbara Strauch and then I asked

“How can I ‘crack the cognitive egg and scramble it up’ so as to create positive changes in my relationship behaviors” (or is this even possible)?

As I have been journaling this week, I started thinking about this idea and it generated these random thoughts

1. It’s easy to crack an egg – but not as easy to do it right. Have you seen a child the first time trying to crack the egg and get the contents into the bowel without also included the shell or observed with wonder an expert doing 2 eggs one handed with ease and flair (You can watch the Youtube training video to develop this skill for one egg))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfHqdc4pbbs&feature=player_embedded
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2. There are different reasons for cracking an egg – one is to get at the contents to cook them – another is to allow the hatchling inside to emerge. (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCdbRR8FbX0)

While the metaphor of the cognitive egg seems to refer to the breaking to let the contents out and change into a new shape, perhaps there is some merit in pursuing the hatchling idea .

3. Sometimes the contents of the egg are scrambled, sometimes they are fried and sometimes they are hardboiled. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kv8vsuNWhWQ
I wonder I really want to do any of these things with my brain (thought processes) and I also think that any of these might at times be an aptdescription of my current situation.

4. There’s the Humpty Dumpty syndrome to consider. We can crack the egg and scramble up the contents – but how will we put it back together again?

5. Isn’t there something a little unsettling about this metaphor – If the egg is my skull – do I really want to crack it open and start scrambling the grey stuff inside?I think not.

6. It doesn’t matter how much thinking we do about cracking the egg if we never get on with the work of changing. And this blog is evidence of that fact – it is a way of posting something despite not having done much "real work" on this question this week.

However, if I’m going to pursue this I know it will take discipline and consistent effort. And part of that is a commitment to a weekly blogging exercise to share things that may be of help to others – so for this week we’ll be a little silly and just think about cracking eggs. Any thoughts about that that I’ve missed?

Maybe by next Saturday I’ll have something more on this – or maybe not--
I'm thinking the this may be a tough egg to crack(pun intended)

God Bless
Charlie