cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail., Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"Every twice in a while I get philosophical and sit back and think about relationships in time and space. I find it an interesting fact that it was recored in the seventh Thoughtlet I wrote the fact Ben proposed to Sarah Johnson (../9644.html). Whatever else these Thoughtlets are about, they are certainly about family. Family starts with a marriage proposal. It is impossible to kill off family with death or even with a divorce. Once a family starts it is a living entity, an entity which impacts the entire known universe across all space and time. Certainly the Savior is the perfect example in that his birth was looked forward to for centuries, and his death and ressurrection is remembered daily. Most of us don't make anywhere near this much of a difference. However, our impact on the universe is just as real and it is important. It is my experience that the lower order factors in a Fourier Series provide all of the originality to a seismic wavelet. Like the Dutch boy who stuck his finger in the dike and saved the country, each of us will find ourselves making life (to have a baby or not) and death (what to say in a Priesthood blessing) decisions for others, some of whom (or maybe it is their ancestors or descendents) have made or will make truly significant differences in their sphere, differences which propagate out across time and space and literally change the universe.
Sometimes a family ends up not forming after the marriage proposal. Always those involved in a marriage proposal remember, and I believe the universe remembers, this false start of a family. It is better to have a false start than enter into a mistake. Based on my perceptions of you kids, I certainly anticipate once any of you have made or have accepted a marriage proposal you will bring it to the climax of a wedding ceremony. I also anticipate and hope the commitments are genuine on both sides, and since you have each experienced the pain of divorce, you will enter these commitments intending to do the work necessary to have your family grow and flourish. It is my hope and prayer to see each of you `start with the end in mind,' to quote Stephen R. Covey's 2nd Principle.
Melanie, from what you told me about and since Jared's marriage proposal, you are both starting with the end in mind. For those who havn't heard from Paul, he proposed to Kate last Tuesday evening, the only leap day in the history of mankind to occur in a year ending with 3 zeros. Paul, you also appear to be starting with the end in mind. Along these lines, of starting with the end in mind, and as I believe each of you know, I have the strong desire to turn these Thoughtlets into a useful family communication tool. In otherwords, I would like to see each of you involved in the Thoughtlets. After all, real communication only occurs when messages pass bi-directionaly, otherwise the words are simply a lecture. I believe lectures can impact the known universe, as is shown by a series of physics lectures about E=m*c**2. However, I am firmly convinced collaboration, based around two-way communication, impacts the know universe more efficiently (quicker) and effectively (better quality).
Thinking about the above mentioned principle, namely family starts with a marriage proposal, I requested Ben and Sarah, Nate and Heather, Paul and Kate, and Melanie and Jarad to send me a brief history of their individual marriage proposals, to whit on Friday evening I sent out the following:
Of course I didn't think about this until Friday evening, and so I was prepared for none of you to respond, since there is a real good chance you won't see my request until Monday. Paul might not want to respond because I beat him in our first chess game in only six moves (note the number 6). We have started a new game (http://www.walden3d.com/dialog/paul) and he assures me he has his chess board set up right this time, and that between him and all of his friends they are going to beat me to a bloody chess pulp. We'll see. Ben responded, maybe because I also asked him on our chess game (http://www.walden3d.com/dialog/chess). His complete response is below, and I hope to share Sarah's side of next week:
This topic wouldn't be complete unless I mentioned the two times I got up the guts to make a marriage proposal. I certainly didn't realize the universal significance of the act at the time. I have been told I was just getting married to satisfy my physical appetites. I don't think this is true. However, I do anticipate the time after death, when we live outside of time and space as we now know it, reviewing these resonant events from every possible aspect. I have written about my marriage proposal to Marti (0004.html) and to Andrea (../9906.html). I recognize I am a romantic, and for those who are joining our family, I hope the positive side of romantic has rubbed off on your intended. I expect Malanie and Paul you will discuss this topic with Jared and with Kate, and if there are new e-mail addresses to add to my list for Thoughtlet distribution please let me know. It would be nice to have everyone's perception of this most important step in our eternal progression documented, and I do hope you will all drop me a note, like Ben did, share an accounting your marriage proposal, so it can become part of this history of our family called Thoughtlets.
And of course there is also the intertwining histories of all of the other people who have are active participants in a marriage proposal. Recent announcements include:
As far as how my week went, busy. For those who have the experience, it was sort of like getting ready to make a marriage proposal. I spent all day Monday preparing a presentation for Exxon-Mobil Research. These are really bright people, and Continuum could definitely use the new business. Monday night Matt did Family Home evening, and we all had a good time, although Andrea is still feeling ill and her ears are still stuffed up. Tuesday morning I woke up with an idea how to use the program Roice built me to make pictures from spread-sheets to show the power of the Knowledge Backbone(sm). So I took Rachel to seminary, and worked feverishly on it until the minute I needed to go downstairs to get ready for the demo. It worked, and I included the results in the presentation. The meeting was absolutely wonderful. I was completely wiped out after the meeting and lunch at the Chinese Plaza buffet. I spent available time in the evenings and all day Saturday working on Ken Turner's http://www.walden3d.com/hgol (Heritage Galleries On-Line web pages).
Wednesday was a day of catch-up and cleaning off my desk for the first time in several weeks. I left the office at 5:00, picked up Andrea at 5:30, and we went to an Open House for the Dean of the Business School at SMU down in River Oaks. Really fancy place, and obviously old money. The first room we went in was about 40'x20'x20' and was full of stuffed antelope, deer, lions, bears, buffalo, a rhino, etc. As we walked into the room Andrea started singing to herself `And he used antlers in all his decorating' from `Beauty and the Beast.' I spent several minutes talking to the Dean, mentioning my interest in Jerry White and The Caruth Institute of Owner Managed Business, and a desire to help the program out with time or experience if they are interested. This was my reason for going, although I thought Andrea would enjoy it. She did. Very fancy place, people, refreshments, deck overlooking the bayou, cars, and it was kind of fun. We hurried back to the Stake Center to help with the youth activities (in case you have forgot I am the Venturing Scout Leader for the 16-18 year old boys, and Andrea is the Young Women's President and leader of the 16-18 year old girls). It is a real contrast to go from the ritzy ritziness of River Oaks to the simple elegence of 60 youth sitting around a circle of chairs playing musical chair type games. I am so glad I prepared each of you for your marriage proposal in the latter environment, rather than the snob and selfish former environment.
Thursday morning's sales forecast phone call was good. There is real business coming in to each office. Enterprise Oil is doing a $30K model in London, a Real Estate Developer has had the Perth guys build a model of his new development, and we have several active projects in Houston. Problem is they are not generating enough cash to meet our requirements. At noon we had our first follow-up teleconference on the RC-SIG. It was interesting, and this is going to become a fairly major professional society. When there is an immersive environment in everyone's house, everyone will be eligible to be members. In the mean time we will be putting up a website at http://www.continuum-corp.com/rcsig with the user name rcsig and the user name rcsig and the password viscenters2000. Not sure any of you are interested in monitoring this, and I believe the concepts discussed here will come to be important to each of you over the next decade. Then again, like a marriage proposal, we don't know everything that is going to happen in the next one or two or three or four decades. Friday moring I had a wonderful meeting with my friend Alf Klaviness. I will spend a couple of Thoughtlet's talking about Alf in the future. Jeff Hume and I had a lunch with Bob Aghamalian of SGI (Silicon Graphics Incorporated who provide our computers at Continuum). I prepared a list of projects we have the potential to undertake when we get more funding, and the Perth Real Estate project was shown at CoReExchange.
As mentioned above, I spent Thursday and Friday evening and all day Saturday working on the Heritage Galleries On-Line web site. There is a big art festival in New Ulm during the month of April, named `Art in the Wildflowers.' I encourage all of you who can to come and go out with us, as this is a good way to gage the vaule of your painting inheritance. Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt, I intend to commission each of you an original Kenneth R. Turner oil painting. As with my biological kids, the painting and a college education is the inheritance I intend to leave each of you. Of course, the painting is tied to these Thoughtlets, to Prime Words, and to a rich information space, which I hope will prove to be worthwhile to each of you and to your descendents. Certainly time will tell if this is a worthwhile method of enabling descendents. As I am sure Ben and Sarah are discovering, nothing brings the implications of a marriage proposal into focus like the birth of your first child, and who can guess the impact a marriage, or a child, will have on the universe."