Flavier's Parable of the White Jar

Once upon a time there was a young beautiful white jar. She was so fragile and delicate her mother over protected her. She lived a sheltered life. She has to follow a lot of rules that her mother imposed on her. Her mother told her, these rules came from the creator. But, of all the rules, the most significant are:


a) don't go swimming in the sea,
b) stay away from brown jars

One day while she was occupied with making herself shiny and more beautiful, the white jar saw something she had not seen before in her life. It was a brown jar solidly made and strong. Suddenly, she felt something inside of her that she never felt before.

The brown jar went up to her and began talking in a soft masculine voice that captivated her. That was the beginning of a relationship between the white jar and the brown jar.

Everyday, the brown jar would come to visit and tell the white jar of the world she had never seen, of places she could only dream of.

Then, one day the brown jar invited her to go swimming in the sea. Forgetting her mother's advise she went with the brown jar.

It was fun swimming! She never had that much fun in her life before. Then, the wind began to pick up and the waves started to swell. As much as she tried to keep her balance she could not. A particularly strong wave washed over both of the jars and the white jar was pushed violently against her brown companion. As she shattered into a hundred fragments a thought entered the white jar's mind in a flash.

"Stay away from brown jars."

Moral: When the wise one tells you something, there's always a reason for it.

The Golden Age of Travel

Billions for Intangibles

In 2003, Expedia was bought for $5.1 billion. The following year, Hotwire and Cheap Tickets was bought for $2.1 billion, and a year after Orbitz was purchased for $1.2 billion. What are these companies? Are they selling some kind of wonder drug? Or, maybe some kind of lubricant that will make old engines run like new? No. These companies sell travel. But, they're not like your friendly neighborhood travel agency with an office down the street. These are virtual travel agencies. Their business sites are on the Internet.

The New Kid on the Block

Right now, there is one Internet travel agency that's giving Expedia, Hotwire, and Orbitz a run for their money. It's YTB (Your Travel Biz) International. It was founded in 2001, but it began operations only in 2003. It has a unique formula. Instead of operating just one travel website like its competitors, it sells them to Referring Travel Agents who will operate separate internet travel agencies under the YTB umbrella. But, RTAs won't pay billions. Not even thousands.

Starting with just 3 when it began operations, YTB has now over 100,000 RTAs. The strength of this formula lies in the fact that YTB does not spend money on advertising. It relies on the word-of-mouth of the RTAs. The RTAs will simply refer their relatives, friends, acquaintances, and people they meet to their sites. One hundred thousand RTAs is a formidable advertising force.

Making Money the Easy Way

How do the the Internet travel agencies make money? These companies are technically Referring Travel Agencies. What they do is point travelers to their website. The website is a virtual travel mall where the traveler can:

* shop airlines, compare prices and purchase tickets (60 airlines)
* make reservations with hotels and resorts (55,000 hotels and resorts)
* rent cars
* book cruises
* send flowers
* buy tickets for special events (concerts, sports events)
* check out golf schedules
* get help with travel problems

Everything that makes travel easy and fun are inside the travel site. When travelers make a purchase through the websites, the vendors pay a commission to the website owner. Very simple, and very profitable. Those billions of dollars paid for Expedia, et al really say a lot.

The Reason Why: The Way to Go

Why would investors pay billions of dollars for intangible assets? It's all about trends. Right now travel is a $7 trillion industry world wide and is expected to double in 10 years. In the U.S. it generates $1.3 trillion annually which translates to:

* $3.4 billion a day
* $148 million an hour
* $2.4 million per minute
* $40,000.00 per second

BIG numbers. What brought this about? Remember the Baby Boom phenomenon? Those people born between 1946 and 1964, the Baby Boomers, had exercised significant influence on world economy for decades. When they were babies they made Gerber famous because of baby food. When they were toddlers they played with toys that put Mattel and Hasbro on the map. In their 20's, they drove sports cars and made the Ford Mustang the top-selling car in America. When they became parents, it was the minivan.

The Travel Avalanche

Now, these Baby Boomers are in their retirement age. They will start to retire at the rate of 1 every eight seconds, or 10,800 every day for the next 20 years. This figure is only for the U.S. World wide, there is an estimated 1 billion Baby Boomers!

This generation also inherited the wealth of the previous generation, the Savings Generation. Now, if you are a Baby Boomer with money to spend what would you do? Travel and go on vacation, that's what you'd do. After years of hard work you will reward yourself. Vacation, travel, the chance to enjoy life and have fun, these are the best rewards you could get.

Better Pack up and Run

If you own a travel agency with an office where you pay rent, salary for staff, utilities, and miscellaneous expenses you are in big trouble now. Why? Every 3 seconds someone, somewhere goes on line to shop or to buy- anything and everything. Eighty million Americans book travel on line each year. Baby Boomer households registered 268.9 million trips in 2003. The highest recorded travel volume in the United States.

Take a look at the trend in travel spending done on the Internet:

* 2002 - $30.8 billion
*2003 - $37.0 billion
*2004 - $54.0 billion
*2005 - $62.0 billion

An increase of 27% per year, average.

What are You Thinking Now?

So, if you're thinking of owning a home - based business the Internet travel agency would be a smart way to go. However, buying Travelocity might be way too expensive. It might cost you billions too. But, you can still get one from YTB International and be an RTA. Very smart move.

How do I know? I'm one. If you want to know the way, Green Crest will lead you.

The Lifespace (Part 3)

This is the final installment of the series on The Lifespace.

In the movie "Shawshank Redemption," I have previously discussed the experience of Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) and Red Redding (Morgan Freeman) in the light of the lifespace theory proposed by Kurt Lewin.

There was another character in the movie, Andy Dufresne played by Tim Robbins. Andy had a different experience. Inside prison, he never ceased to hope for freedom. To his friend Red, he said,

"Hope is a good thing. Maybe the best thing. And, no good thing ever dies."

Unlike Red and Brooks whose entire worlds ( both mind and body) were limited to the confines of the prison wall, Andy's encompassed the outside. He did not allow his mind to be imprisoned. It is this consciousness that never killed his desire to escape. Andy spent 20 years at Shawshank Prison. In those 20 years he worked on his escape. He did manage to escape.

One thing that worked in favor of Andy was that he was a professional and working as a banker when he went in. So he had his formation on the outside. In a sense, he was already "fully formed" when he got in. Red and Brooks, on the other hand, were very young when they got in and basically grew up - and grew old in prison.

It is important to draw this contrast. Andy's formation was made on the outside. His lifespace was stable. On the part of Red and Brooks, the substantial part of their formation was inside. Whatever early formation they had was later on eclipsed by the prison environment. While they were inside, things had changed dramatically on the outside. They world "passed them by," so to speak.

One more thing that worked in Andy's favor was his education. With these, he managed to keep intact his experience of the outside world with the use of his imagination. "Iron bars do not a prison make", as a poet once said. With his prior knowledge of what the world was, he knew what it was going to be.

The Lifespace (Part 2)

The person responsible for the theory of lifespace was Kurt Lewin (1890 - c.?). He said that a field is "the totality of coexisting facts which are conceived of as mutually interdependent" (1951).

The lifespace within which the individual acts is a conglomeration of many lifespaces which create the experiences that govern his or her behavior. Experiences in the different lifespaces make up what the person is. To be able to understand the person's behavior you need to look into his/her experiences within these lifespaces. For example, family is a lifespace. So is work, school, church, the social circle within which one moves, and any other areas where a person may find himself or herself and may either influence it or be influenced by it and gaining experience thereby.

So, according to this theory, it all begins in the lifespace. It is there where principles, beliefs, ideals, theories about the world and everything that govern a person's thought processes are formed - formed as it were, by the experiences that impact his or her consciousness.

The lifespace could be limited or boundless, depending on the capacity of the person's mind to grasp the reality that surrounds it. Obviously, where the faculties are impaired, the ability to form a healthy lifespace would be likewise impaired. Where physical constraints are imposed upon a person - where the personal world had been confined within narrow limits resulting in a limited experiential formation - such a person would also have a very limited lifespace. Consequently, expanding one's consciousness expands one's lifespace.

This explains what happened to Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore) in the movie, "Shawshank Redemption".

There was another character in the movie, Red Redding, played by Morgan Freeman. While answering questions before the parole board, Red Redding said, "To tell the truth, I don't give a shit," indicating he couldn't care less whether he got paroled or not. He got paroled.

In one instance, while working as a bag man in a grocery store, he needed to go to the bathroom. He asked permission from his boss who said, "If you need to go, just go. No need to ask." On the outside, Red was acting out life patterns formed while he was in prison. Where everything that anyone needed to do must be done with supervision.

In his narration, Red said that for so long all his actions had been under the control of somebody else: "(for) Forty years I been asking permission to piss. I can't squeeze a drop without say-so."

Outside, he cannot act on his own. The prospect of being on his own, to do things on his own, scared him.

"There is a harsh truth to face. No way I'm gonna make it on the outside. All I do anymore is think of ways to break my parole. Terrible thing to live in fear. Brooks Hatlen knew it. Knew it all too well. All I want is to be back where things make sense. Where I won't have to be afraid all the time."

Red experienced fear outside of prison. In his prison world everything was predictable. He was the wise one inside. He always knew what was going to happen next. But, the world outside was unpredictable and very threatening. (more)

The Song In My Head . . . . . .

I've developed the habit of singing in my head, depending on the mood I'm in. When I get up in the morning, there's always a song there. My favorite song in the morning when I'm getting ready for work is, "Get Me to the Church On Time." But I've changed it to "Get Me to Work On Time".

The song now goes like this:

"I'm getting to work in the morning,
Ding, dong the alarm is gonna chime.
We'll have a whopper, pull out the stopper,
I'm getting me to work on time.

I've got to get there in the morning,
Spruced up and looking in my prime.
Pull out your compass, kick up a rumpus,
I'm getting me to work on time.

If I'm dancing roll up the floor,
I'll be whistling right out the door!

Yes, I'm getting to work in the morning,
Ding, dong the alarm is gonna chime.
I'm pulling all my stoppers,
I'm gonna kick a rumpus,
Oh, I'm getting me to work on time.

At my age, I need to do this to program my mind. It works. It sets
the mood and gets me through the day.

The Lifespace (Part I)

There was this movie I saw about life in prison. The title was "Shawshank Redemption". The stars were Tim Robbins (Andy Dufresne), Morgan Freeman (Red Redding), and James Whitmore (Brooks Hatlen) among others.

Brooks Hatlen was paroled after 50 years. And, the world into which he stepped out was no longer the same world from whence he came when he went in. As anyone would expect, Brooks got the biggest culture shock of his life. The world outside was a totally different world; big, strange, and fast. Prison has made Brooks' world small. Unable to adapt, he hanged himself.

Brooks said in his letter to his friends in Shawshank:

" I can't believe how fast things move on the outside. I saw an automobile once when I was a kid but, now they're everywhere. The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry . . . . . . . I have trouble sleepin' at night. I have had dreams like I'm fallin'. I wake up scared. Sometimes, it takes me awhile to remember where I am. Maybe I should get me a gun and rob the Foodway, so they'd send me home. I could shoot the manager while I was at it, sort of like a bonus. I guess I'm too old for that nonsense anymore. I don't like it here. I'm tired of being afraid all the time. I've decided not to stay. I doubt they'll kick up any fuss. Not for an old crook like me."

Home for Brooks was the prison. He wanted to go home to it so bad. The world outside of prison has become too big and too complicated for him. In his mind, he had become irrelevant. (more)