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
pandemic as a catalyst for discovering deep acceptance and freedom
It is quite a challenge to balance our external plans and ambitions with acceptance and letting go. This interplay is coming up for a lot of us with special intensity during Corona times. The pandemic has a pronounced effect on our everyday choices. But can it have any effect on genuine freedom? The one that escapes any lockdowns?
what do writing, atoms, and playing Jenga have all in common
Ever read a book and then felt that you could squeeze those several hundred pages into one or a few core concepts that would fit on one page? Admittedly, there is a lot of beating around the bush happening in the realm of non-fiction writing. Core concepts are wrapped in layers upon layers of mush. Curiously, this seems to pretty much reflect the structure and dynamics of an atom. It has a lot of “empty space” that is actually not empty (typical quantum mechanics quagmire, right?). To simplify, it is a soup of plenty of things and interactions that average out to zero.
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.