witness, honour, appreciate, celebrate, play, love, let go
morsels of insight to go deeper in relating to myself, to you, to life, the universe and everything
on this thing that we are all really good at: making mistakes
It was last Sunday. My 9-year-old son was having a friend sleeping over at our place. His dad came before noon to pick him up. I had exciting family plans for the rest of the day, but the boys said that they wanted to continue playing together. I abruptly said no, I wanted time just with my family. Only that I was away the day before and in the end, I forgot to properly discuss our Sunday plans. And it didn’t help that I hadn’t interacted with my son much on Sunday morning. At that moment I was a stranger and intruder for him. He was hurt and immediately shut down on me. Only then I realized my mistake, and it took another 1.5 hours of loving patience and showing him how sorry I was to open him up again.
One of my favourite, most helpful, and liberating life observations is the simple fact that we all fuck-up, and we do this with astonishing regularity. Below is my ideal scenario of dealing with our missteps towards other fellow humans.
let’s mumbo-jumbo
Biology is hardware, evolution is software, culture is firmware, intelligence is computing power and consciousness is hacker. Will AI become a new OS?
fight-or-flight OR flight-mode: don’t let screens fry your system
Ever heard of the “fight-or-flight” response? This reaction had been instrumental to our survival for hundreds of thousands of years until we swapped hunting for agriculture some 10 thousand years ago and wild beasts gradually have become less of an issue. Nonetheless, when we stress, our brain still “thinks” that a tiger might be involved and, just in case, it prepares us physiologically to face it.
This century we are witnessing another major switch in the way we live: turning away from the material world to virtual reality on our screens.
learning to unlearn
When I was a kid I was told to be nice and say yes to others. Now I’m learning to say yes to myself first.
When I was a kid I was encouraged to look at the stars and be mindful that “God” made humans a crown of its creation. Now I look back at the sky and realize that the idea that people are the centre of it all is a cosmic joke.
When I was a kid I was commanded to love my enemies. Now I am learning to recognize that I don't have enemies in the first place.
what can Classical Languages tell us about our monkey minds
What exactly are those mental fluctuations that we call “thinking”? This incessant talking to ourselves inside our heads. Our mind’s motion. And are all thoughts equal?
There are lots of ways to answer these questions and many frameworks that can help with it. I often find it very helpful to start by looking for clues at the level of language itself. And this, most often, brings me back to Latin or Greek, where the original meaning of so many words can be re-discovered. Equipped with this linguistic perspective, I looked for words that can be associated with a thinking process. I then examined how those words came about and what insights they could offer us about various characteristics of our thinking process. So that’s what this post is about.
thoughts and waves
Our thoughts are like waves viciously crashing on the shore and making us think that they are the whole ocean. The ocean is infinitely bigger and waves are just the end of this endless depth. In the same way our thoughts and rational mind are but a tiny friction of who we really are.
voting with our wallets and…with our clicks
Someone once said that every time we make a purchase, we are choosing the type of world we would like to live in. In other words, we vote with our wallets.
It makes me wonder whether in our times we don’t do this with our clicks too (feel free to replace clicks with swipes, taps etc.).
sadness that makes my heart grow
I realize that for some of you out there this title might sound like a bad joke because there might be so much overwhelming sadness in your life that the last thing you want is to magnify it any further. As much as this can even be possible, I understand it. So maybe this post simply will not be appealing to you at this particular time of your life.
I am a jolly fellow. Surely, not because I just choose to be. Rather, it’s a combination of my particular chemistry, life circumstances, and only then come my personal preferences and choices.
kids and weather
The winter is here with all its shades
Mighty winds, gloomy clouds and chilly days
With gods and goddesses of ice and snow it parades.*
don’t love your enemies
We all agree that the world would do with more love. But, to quote an accomplished musician and lyrics author Haddaway, “What is love”?
Obviously, we cannot command someone to love, this is not how it works. “Love your enemies” sounds like a great message on the surface, but can I really just decide that? And are “love” and “enemy” even compatible?
Imagine you want to learn how to roller-skate. Would it be helpful if your trainer told you: “Find your balance, do not fall, turn right and then stop”? Things like good balance are not something you can teach directly. Rather, they are natural outcomes or even by-products of more nuanced clues like “bend your legs slightly and look forward”. And of course, they don’t come on the first try. They are a result of extensive and intentional practice.
In much the same way, I see love as an outcome, a spinoff from other things, almost a side effect, and as a skill that needs to be trained daily.
mono tones
Before playing in an orchestra it might be a useful thing to have some solo practice first.
Before I actively partake in the symphony of life, I like to train myself in monotony, in mono tones.
And so I turn my day into a litany of repetitive routines.
I absorb the patience and vastness of a calm ocean.
A suspension and fragrance of nature on a hot day.
a skillful swing play
When I imagine a crowded children’s playground, one place quickly comes to mind. It is children lining up to a swing (maybe that’s where we begin to chase or collective dream of conquering the skies?).
The interesting principle about this thing that many of us used to love (and many retain the feeling through their adult lives ;) is that you increase the fun – the amplitude that is – by going skilfully into the extremes. By moving the energy rhythmically, we produce what physics calls resonance – the jolly feeling of increasing the “flight time”.
I can’t help but think how this principle could apply to my life.
my day or mayday
When a day is left to a chance, it can easily turn into a Mayday. Being unintentional is like a magnet for entropy. Before I know it, I become a galloping rider from a Zen story. When asked where he is going, he yells: I don't know, ask the horse!
And such days can imperceptibly turn into years and eventually into the whole life.
soulful stones
Being by the ocean is such a treat. The part of this experience that I now find the most magical is the coast’s intertidal zone, the in-between-zone where the playful dance of high and low tides takes place. Where the land and water have been shaking hands for several billion years (whatever that number even means). Where I am taught by nature how to be giving and letting go, giving and letting go.
everyday travelling
What is it about travelling and being in new places that can be so invigorating? The magic may just be in a switch back to the discovery mode, a child-like mind, when everything is new and fresh again. We are more conscious again.
the paradise lost
For a long time I believed that childhood is the paradise lost. But the actual loss is buried deeper than that. What we grow up from is presence. It is being fully emerged in the "now" that we gradually unlearn and exchange for a growing sense of "I". We all begin as mystics and then start sliding down towards existential chaos.
(Coronavirus) meditation
In a closure of a morning meditation, in the end only a handful of questions seems to really matter:
Am I ready to love today?
Am I ready to die today?
And if not, what is obstructing love from flowing and how can I dissolve it?
What is it that holds me back and how can I loosen it up?
one more day
Falling asleep and waking up are such precious parts of a day. They bridge conscious and subconscious mind, and as such can be really helpful with re-programming our patterns.
Just after waking up, I have two main emotional menus to greet a day with:
Oh, no!
or
Fuck, yeah!