0:05 who are you and where are you going what do you [Music] want hello and welcome to jigger's place both the show and the place this is my home bar and for those of you who have seen the show before you know this is where every other Thursday at at this time we make a cocktail sit back and
0:42 relax and talk about all the things that are important in life aside from Business and Professional Endeavors and so to today or this this afternoon I'm going to be talking about the pursuit of beauty um but before we do that I'm going to mix up a cocktail that I designed with the help of chat GPT called The Blossom Elixir and I'm uh the ideas to evoke uh Beauty through through uh Spirits does that sound like a good reason to drink I hope so so this
1:17 cocktail is going to use vodka I don't think I've made a vodka cocktail before this is the the the vodka I have in my bar regularly this is just great smernoff vodka now I I know a lot of people turn their nose up at SM off and they say oh no you've got to have Sarat or you've got to have um Kettle One or you've got to have you know whatever the reality is on tasting tests blind tasting tests people could not tell the difference and that's really the essence of vodka vodka is tasteless
1:53 it has no smell unless of course it's been infused with something but it's just regular vodka it's tasteless has no smell and so the idea that um you know people can tell the difference between uh you know Gray Goose and smof turns out at least in in a broad blind taste test to not be true so maybe you can okay fine but but um I like smernoff because uh it was advertised in the 60s as being James Bond's vodka it
2:31 um Woody Allen for a while was this this U spokesman for for smof so it has some uh Illusions uh for for me um the other ingredients are raspberry lure in this case I'm using deyer uh deyer has been around a long long time and you know again it's it's one of those things that people they they turn their nose up at diyer oh it's diyer but I I I think their their um their lur and and uh and schops are quite good and
3:06 then we're going to use some rose water so if you've never had rose water get yourself some and smell it and interestingly enough it smells just like roses and then finally some fresh squeezed lemon juice to balance out the various flavors okay so here we go we're going to start out with an ounce and a half of vodka you can see by how full the uh oh and you know we got my shaker here is
3:42 filled with ice so you can see I don't I don't make a lot of vodka cocktails anymore vodka is a really fun spirit in that it basically takes on the character of whatever you mix it with now there are times when you drink you know when vodka drunk straight um it's a very popular Spirit to have with with caviar especially if you're doing kind of a Russian thing you've got some bini some sour sour cream and some some caviar um and and you know um I like vodka chilled now you can put a bottle
4:18 of vodka in a in the freezer and it will not freeze because the freezing temperature of alcohol is is much higher than it is for um for other Spirits so let's see where is the okay oops okay let's see where's the half o okay there we go okay so we're going to put in a half oun of um the uh um of the uh raspberry lur okay rasmas okay we we did an ounce and
4:53 a half of um of vodka half ounce of the um raspberry lur we're going to do a half oun of the rose water okay and we're going to wrap this up with 3/4 of an ounce of lemon juice I'm going to try and not get the lemon seed in here let's see if I can do it there we go
5:31 okay and now of course since it's Shaker we're going to shake and we're going to shake it for a good 10 20 even 30 seconds to get all the ingredients not only to mix together nicely but to show them down and to delute them to bring out the flavors I always talk about that every week and I've got my Coupe that's the sort of rounded glass it's my favorite glass for champagne other like most people these days like glutes I I like to C it's it's it's more of a 30s 20s and 30s kind of thing uh 20s I should say a 20s thing of course
6:06 prohibition until the 193 by speaking of prohibition today is the re is repeal of Prohibition Day so it's a particular particularly good day to be having a cocktail uh because on this day December 5th 1933 prohibition was lifted and once more um you didn't have to drink in a Speak Easy you could drink in a regular bar okay so here we go we're going to pour this out it's got just a bit of a pink tinge
6:41 to it and you'll notice I I I mentioned a garnish so garnish with a a lemon twist kind of twist that there and take a little sip of this let's see I think we have another winner okay I'll see you over on the couch
7:44 so there we are this this turned out to be really good there's such nice layers of flavor so the lur has a bit of sweetness the uh the lemon juice of course a little bit of tart the rose water it gives it the scent but also it has a bit of a a taste to it too the the sort of Rosy taste um gosh you know what I'm I'm I'm impressed chat GPT you're you're a great
8:19 uh co- drink Creator Crow cocktail Creator so the topic for today the pursuit of beauty so this touches on a number of topics that I've thought about for many many many years now and uh for those of you of my vintage you may remember a song that was popular I think in the very in the late 60s early 70s um Everything Is Beautiful in its own
8:55 way like a starry summer night or a snow covered Winter's day yeah I know I'm not a great singer my voice not beautiful so I think this is an idea that emanates from the 1960s the idea that everything is beautiful and there's a couple of problems with that idea first of all what in what context are we talking about
9:32 beautiful number one and number two if indeed Everything Is Beautiful then what does beautiful really mean right so I'm going to start with the first of those two ideas what does beautiful mean so one of the advantages of the English language is it is so rich so the English language today has I
10:08 don't know a million words two million words a huge huge number of words now contrast that with Hebrew for example which is a much older language than English Hebrew has roughly 20,000 what are called Shoring a Shores basic basically translated means root so in Hebrew the way the language works is you have a Shores it's usually two or more often three letters and then from that root you add
10:45 one or two sometimes three letters and you create variations of the idea that's that's uh expressed by the shes okay and as a result and also Hebrew is a language of spirituality so if you want to discuss a scientific Endeavor Hebrew is not the right language to do that
11:22 because the ideas contained in the shoreshim have to be change well not changed but sort of refashioned to try and express the preciseness with which science is developed okay English on the other hand which is a Germanic language so it's it's related to German is a very uh technical language
11:58 so you can you know if you go into a thesaurus you will see multiple words to express the same concept except that each of these words is just a little bit different than the other ones and so English is a language of preciseness and it was that way I think until the 60s so people prized having a a large
12:34 vocabulary they you knowing a lot of words knowing their definitions being able to express oneself in a very precise manner was a a skill that people aspired to have and somehow I guess that idea became fell out of fashion I don't know maybe it was decided that it was elitist or it was too you know egghe headed to you know in a referring to Academia in a negative way not exactly
13:11 sure why although I lived through that time I was raised that having a broad vocabulary was a good thing and and as you probably know I love you know $4 words so there's started to become a sort of devolution of English whereby the richness of it was no longer expressed and one word and and a a somewhat pedestrian
13:48 word was used to refer to a whole range of Concepts or a whole range of ideas and Beauty I think became unfortunately became one of those words so in the song that I mentioned a few minutes ago everyone is beautiful they're really talking about a god- centered idea and it's not that God created everyone beautiful in the sense of
14:23 physical Beauty what what what God did is he he every human soul he created was is equally precious to God so in in and really you know um the song would be more accurate to say every everything is precious everyone is precious meaning every person has value everything has value right precious is an expression of
15:00 in essence importance in the larger scheme of things okay now it has other meanings as well like we we talk about you know panda bears they're so precious um but when we talk about the preciousness of an individual human being and more specifically the human soul there is no question that each human soul is precious specifically to God but hope y to each of us as well so that even if
15:35 our enemy and our or our mortal enemy is destroyed we should recognize that although that may be a good thing in the end it's still a shame that a human soul a precious human soul had to be destroyed in order that the world could become a better place it would have been better if that Soul could have reformed himself rather than
16:13 having to be destroyed now the reality of EX existence is sometimes the only way the only way to make the world a better place in April of 1945 not the only way to make it a better place but the only way that Hitler could have made the world a better place in April of 1945 was to either completely repudiate everything he had did or be dead and he chose the second option right and with the demise of Hitler came the fall of Nazi Germany
16:51 and the opportunity for the world to recover from this evil ideology right so um I think today when we talk about the pursuit of beauty beauty is a term that helps us distinguish between the beautiful and the not beautiful so if we say that everything is beautiful presumably we're saying there is no such thing as not a beautiful so if there's no not beautiful
17:27 Beauty ceases to have any meaning at all because beauty is a descriptive term that allows us to say something has the quality of beauty one thing has the quality of beauty and another thing does not okay and this cocktail has the quality of beauty so another s so Beauty
18:03 historically was referring to a physical quality okay so in in the in uh Genesis in in the Torah in the Bible uh Abraham's wife Sarah it is described as a woman of beautiful form now I do not pretend to know what a beautiful form of a woman was like 4,000 years ago no idea or 3,500 years ago when when when Abraham and
18:40 Sarah lived okay but whatever that was Sarah had it and the only way that term beautiful has meaning is because Sarah had it and other women didn't otherwise the term means nothing if every woman was is is was beautiful at that time so it meant nothing because women had different faces they had different bodies different body shapes they had some women were tall
19:17 some women were short okay now we're speaking be of beauty here as a societal uh phenomenon if you will right that's and and God didn't say that Sarah was beautiful in Abraham's eyes although it seems pretty clear that she was right so there is subjective Beauty I.E what I think is beautiful and there is
19:52 objective Beauty what is beautiful in terms of societal stand s so what I think is beautiful may or may not align with societal standards okay and societal standards may change so if we think about what a beautiful woman looked like in the 1950s and the the iconic beautiful woman was was probably Marilyn Monroe
20:29 okay by more contemporary standards of beauty Marilyn Monroe was what we might call kind of a big girl okay but that was what was considered beautiful at that time and and in and by the way in American society so in other cultures what was considered beautiful Marilyn Monroe even in her day would not have be considered beautiful so in Chi in in China at that time I doubt that
21:06 Marilyn Monroe was considered the standard of feminine beauty okay she was she was too big she she had you know large feet um all that kind of stuff okay so um uh these you know what what is beautiful in one Society is may very well be different than what's beautiful in another Society okay another aspect of beauty that has changed is it used to
21:44 be that being we'll call it fleshy was if not a sign of beauty it was a sign of wealth because wealthy people could afford to eat a lot and become fleshy right and poor people could not today it's the opposite obesity is far more common among low income people than it is among High income people and there there are reasons for
22:22 that generally speaking people who are wealthy have better nutrition they have more opportunity for exercising and people in lower income brackets and and and living in lower income neighborhoods in some cases they don't have access to healthy food like fresh fruits and vegetables um and and they they don't they don't have time to exercise perhaps or they're it's not part of the sort of culture in which they live I don't I don't mean culture in the sense of um racial or or
22:59 national origin culture I mean in the in the the neighborhoods if you will in which they live right so when so the standard of and and so today honestly I'm not even sure what the standard of beauty is and I I I find that to be a shame because beauty is something that can enrich our lives and it can Inspire us it
23:35 can be a reflection of a bit of the Divine and and and those are all wonderful things to experience but I'm not sure we experiencing experience them anymore so without naming it although you'll probably guess it there's a makeup company out there and it's its whole marketing is based on every woman is is beautiful and they and and they mean physically beautiful but what they've done is they created an idea that negates the existence of
24:12 beauty at all they would be more accurate to say every woman is precious and that indeed is absolutely true but the reality is some women are more beautiful than others that doesn't that doesn't mean that a woman who is less beautiful than the societal ideal is or should be valued less not at all okay there's a great song in uh one
24:47 of my favorite uh Broadway shows and movies called on the town it's not in the M actually the song's not in the movie it's only in the the Broadway show uh and it's sung by the woman taxi driver and the the actress who played it in the original Broadway cast was not a particularly beautiful woman I'm trying to think of the actress's name it's not coming to me I mean she wasn't ugly but she wasn't particularly attractive and she sings a song about
25:23 how she's a great Taxi Driver she's a great cook she's a great baker she's uh she's the kind of woman that can make a man feel wonderful and and the song is so terrific because what she's really saying is although I am not the ideal of feminine beauty marry me and you will have an amazing life because I'm an amazing
25:59 woman and indeed she is right and and so while we can appreciate Beauty and and obviously I'm speaking from a a male perspective because I think men are more uh shall we say hung up on how a woman looks than women are on how a man looks so while you know we men like beautiful women the reality is it's one thing to
26:36 appreciate Beauty it's another thing to idolize it and this is where I think our society got off track so the idolization of women of beautiful women is a problem okay because most of us men are not going to get the ideal beautiful woman we're not going to you know marry the you know the the Marilyn Monroe of
27:11 our times I don't know is it Jennifer Aniston I I I could I couldn't I can only tell you within my context I I to my mind you know probably you know Jennifer Aniston is is the ideal beauty at least from my perspective but I think more broadly societal es especially in her day when she was on friends I think she was pretty universally considered to be sort of the ideal of feminine beauty uh there's only one of her right and as much as I don't like Brad Pit he
27:48 got her until he was stupid enough to let his marriage break up so what we need what we need to do is appr appreciate Beauty but not idolize Beauty and that that's a tough that's a tough walk to take right because we've been steeped in this idea that we can have everything totally false we cannot have everything we will not have everything not not the remotest chance
28:24 the wealthiest person in the world cannot have a at all nope doesn't happen even if you had unlimited money you're not going to have at all because there are people and things in this world that are unique and if they're already committed over here there's they're they're not going to be enticed to you no matter what you have and that's that's something we used to have to come to to come to ter terms with as we got older
29:02 matured and gained wisdom but I think nowadays that idea is has kind of been lost and it's a shame because it it facilitates this I this false idea that everything is beautiful unfortunately everything is not beautiful but that doesn't matter and in fact it's a good thing that not all things are equally beautiful because it allows us to delve into our lives more deeply
29:41 delve into our relationships more deeply and really find in them their Essence their preciousness their importance their opportunities for growth their wisdom their their true uniqueness which probably has nothing to do with beauty their ability to spark an idea to make us laugh when we're down to give us
30:16 the opportunity to help them when they're down all of these make life Rich Beauty to a to a certain extent as a patina and it it often times Fades one of the downsides of the fact that we can record almost anything is now what 25 years after the show Friends ended we can still go and look at Jennifer andison when she was in her 20s and was so
30:53 beautiful whereas the Jennifer Aniston of today well I I would argue she's still a very beautiful woman she's her beauty has as much to do with her maturity as someone who is now basically twice the age she was when she started in friends and it comes from the experiences she's had her her abil I'm I'm projecting now I've never met her but but I suspect
31:28 she's much better able to understand life she's probably able to express empathy better than she ever than she could have 25 years ago all of these make her a richer person they make her a more precious person they don't make her a more physically beautiful person so that's my message to you on the pursuit of beauty one more sip of
32:03 cocktail and it's food for thought and that's often what I'm trying to do at jigger's Place many times I took jiggers for a walk and we would just go on what I used to joke with him walk about around the neighborhood like you know bust austalian term and we would see things we might see birds or we might see flowers or whatever we saw and I would converse with him and no
32:39 I'm not crazy he did not converse with me back he he was a dog um and while I think jiggers was a handsome dog jigger's preciousness came from his vibr y as a dog and his ability to comfort human beings especially when they were troubled that was his truly unique quality if you could read the saying on the the the wooden chest right over
33:14 there that says [ __ ] places on it it says um where there where there are no strangers only great friends we haven't met yet that was the philosophy that I attributed to jiggers and it's a wonderful philosophy would that I could live that philosophy and and and be the the the the human being that my my dog jiggers thought I was so as we head into the end of the week and into the
33:49 weekend and we spend time with family and friends hopefully I I wish you much relaxation and and and hopefully you'll you'll get some happiness and maybe you'll Ponder this these ideas a little bit and they'll help you enrich your life so as always I would love to hear your thoughts feel free to drop them into our social media and I will be happy to respond if
34:25 there's something of a private nature you can always my email address will be in the show notes after this episode posts and if nothing else make yourself another Blossom Elixir and enjoy the the pretty color the wonderful scent the delicious flavor and see all of those I could have said the the pretty the beautiful color the beautiful taste the beautiful scent right but that's not that that's too to be too
35:00 pedestrian right so the Luscious flavor is really gets to the heart of what flavor is the aromatic scent right all of these words help help us experience life more deeply and more wonderfully so a toast to you thank you so much for joining me this afternoon as always I really appreciate it I see we've got some people who are joining me live here thank you so much and this this wraps up my shows for this week so I wish you oh so you know
35:38 have to do my thing so next week Monday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time is my show trust in the states weekly my guest is Kevin Quinn who's the president of the independent trustees Alliance and I invite you to come and learn learn about the ITA if if you're in the uh trust and probate Administration the estate planning world it's a relatively new organization and we're looking for it to do great things and and like I said if you're in the same professional world I am I I can encourage you enough to uh
36:15 join Kevin and me Kevin and Kevin it'll be the Kevin and Kevin show on Monday at 10: a. on Tuesday at 10: a.m. Pacific time is my show uh uh business lessons from the mil and then on Wednesday at 10: a.m. is my show people making money the uh topics covered I think are self-explanatory based on the titles of the shows so thanks again for joining me wishing you a wonderful evening and a wonderful rest of the week and signing off as I always do Marie darling you are my
36:53 bell courage at all times my friends