First, Grasshopper No.5 has been invited by an Art Gallery in Minneapolis to display her photo "work". This is the second time she has received an invitation and the exciting part is that the showing is in the Spring (April) when different events that get artists and "buyers" together. Exciting! Look out Rembrandt.
Now "reference points". Our life is filled with things that affect us (reference points) that shape everything we do. If we touch a hot stove, we burn our fingers and that event becomes a reference point for not doing it again. If your significant other responds to "I love you", this becomes a reference point for further action. You get the idea. Our whole life is "reference points" commited to memory conditioning how we are going to behave.
It has occured to me that we get old because our reference points tell us to. If you see someone with severe arthritis at age 65, maybe this is what happens when you are 65. You know it does not necessarily pertain to you but maybe something else is suppose to happen to you at 65. My great-grandparents lived to be over 90. Hey I've got some of the same genes and maybe 90 is my destiny (wishful thinking). I ignor the reference point that remembers my Grandmother Helen died of high blood pressure at 59 (I screen out bad points). So potentially being healthy and 90 represents one of my favorite reference points. You get the idea.
It occured to me that if you were placed on earth without any other people (to reference the aging process), maybe you wouldn't know you should get old and you would live forever. You wouldn't see other people crippled up or saddled with constant pain. You wouldn't know what "old" looked like. You would be "hot" for as long as you like. My guess is that someone of the opposite sex would come along and entice you into eating the damn apples and mankind would endure the same fate.
The lesson Grasshoppers is that your family provides thousands of reference points. You behave the way you do because of those points. Give your kiddies all the positive "reference points" that you can. It will condition their behavior forever.
Love,
Dad