Seeking is like traveling. You have to look around while you're moving, or you will miss the whole point.
I took a few hours this past week to pick my head up from my seeking to look around and read some books. Of note were "Influence", "Siddartha", "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo", and today, start to finish in 230 pages, "The Alchemist."
There is much to commend about any one of these books. Together though, they were like a spicy paella for the soul and the brain.
Reading new material excites neurons and opens the senses. Possibilities not previously conceived explode into being. Motivation and desire that may have sat collecting the stiffness of apathy springs up and says "Let's do it!"
Not a day goes by that I do not see the psychological clicks and whirrs described in Influence. My time next to a river nearly every day reminds me of Siddartha's view of the never ending nature of life, the universe and everything. In my practice the savagery and the inscrutable nature of people reflects right back to the sadistic and self serving characters in Dragon Tattoo. Finally, the crystal merchant in The Alchemist looked up at me today from the pages of the book and said "I am you. Is that enough?"
My personal legend has yet to be written, but I am on the path. Maktub.
Monday, May 30, 2016
Wednesday, May 11, 2016
Big and small at the same time.
Look down at an ant. It is tiny. Even close up to your face it will be small. Its legs and antennae thinner than hairs. As small as it is, it is to an aphid as you are to it. Gargantuan. Monolithic. To a bacteria an aphid is a skyscraper. And so on.
You may be a 450 pound giant strongman. 6 foot 9 and dwarfing most humans on the planet. But from the top of a 15 story building, your bulk is invisible. Your relative size rendered meaningless. You would be like an ant.
To a toddler child, adults are giant gods. Even so, to any observer, from say 5 miles away, we are all but invisible; unseen even as we walk, drive, love, fight, vote, and otherwise go about living our lives.
All things are this way in this universe; both giant and tiny, all the time, overlapping each state, depending on the observer's perspective.
In this respect we are no different than stars, galaxies and planets. Why would we be? We're all made of the same stuff and in the same place. Gotta love the universe. Thanks Alan Watts.
Friday, April 22, 2016
Antidepressants = suicide.
The NY Times reports that the U.S. suicide rate has surged to a 30-year high. A snippet: "particularly among women and middle-age Americans, according to federal data
released Friday. The suicide rate for women ages 45-64 increased by 63 percent
from 1994 to 2014, while it jumped 43 percent for men in the same age range,
according to a National Center for Health Statistics study. The overall suicide
rate climbed 24 percent during the period of the study." Hmm.
A 2011 article from the Harvard Medical Journal noted that over a similar period anti-depressant use surged.
The age group and the stupid amount of prescribed "feel good" pills are killing off American adults. It isn't social media or isolation that is killing people, it's self interested doctors earning their pharma bonuses and trips by telling their patients to take a pill to fix their blues. What they should be telling them is to get of the couch, skip the fast food, and for God's sake take a walk now and then.
Nobody can be surprised by this connection. There are warnings with those drugs. They tell users and doctors that suicidal thoughts may result from taking the pills. It's okay though, "they have to put those warnings with the pills", I've heard my doctor say about Cipro, a tendon obliterating antibiotic with a "black label" warning. But he downside risk is too dramatic to be minimized by its probability. All it takes is one in a billion if you're the "one".
The connection is there to see.
The actual side affect warnings should read: "Ingesting this drug occasionally leads to suicide. Not suicidal thoughts, but actual put a gun to your head and pull the trigger bloody-mess suicide."
A 2011 article from the Harvard Medical Journal noted that over a similar period anti-depressant use surged.
The age group and the stupid amount of prescribed "feel good" pills are killing off American adults. It isn't social media or isolation that is killing people, it's self interested doctors earning their pharma bonuses and trips by telling their patients to take a pill to fix their blues. What they should be telling them is to get of the couch, skip the fast food, and for God's sake take a walk now and then.
Nobody can be surprised by this connection. There are warnings with those drugs. They tell users and doctors that suicidal thoughts may result from taking the pills. It's okay though, "they have to put those warnings with the pills", I've heard my doctor say about Cipro, a tendon obliterating antibiotic with a "black label" warning. But he downside risk is too dramatic to be minimized by its probability. All it takes is one in a billion if you're the "one".
The connection is there to see.
The actual side affect warnings should read: "Ingesting this drug occasionally leads to suicide. Not suicidal thoughts, but actual put a gun to your head and pull the trigger bloody-mess suicide."
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Thursday, December 17, 2015
Sheep don't surf.
My 15 year-old daughter was crying and it was my fault. It was ten to seven in the morning and she had just told me to hurry up and take her to school. She was way early; and I was not ready to go. "Did you eat?" I asked.
"No, but I’ll get some cereal."
She, of the "let’s go" a moment earlier, then filled a bowl with cereal and milk and sat down to spoon frosted flakes into her mouth while operating her i-phone with the other hand.
"What the heck?" I said. "You just told me to hurry up and now you are sitting down looking at Snapchat! Do we need to go or what?" She started crying.
"I’m stressed out and failing. Stop it!"
I was mortified. I forgot she had two semester exams that day; in algebra II and history. Both were honors classes and the math was super tough. She had been studying hard and was spent. My angry tone was too much for her.
I quickly apologized. She stopped crying and finished her food. I dropped her off at school went back home to finish my coffee (we live close). I’ve been listening to an audio book. It’s titled Excellent Sheep. The author is an Ivy League graduate and former admissions official and professor at Yale. He believes the educating and parenting paths that many Americans follow is a mistake. He says that the insidious pressure to keep up with the Joneses has motivated us to wrongfully push our kids to follow a poisonous path we’ve been told leads to lifetime success and happiness. I think he is right.
We may not be Ivy Leaguers ourselves, and we may be happy with our lives. Ecstatic even. Nonetheless, we are urged by a tsunami of media influences to believe that only if our children are straight-A, activity-fueled, community-serving, multi- lingual, club-forming leaders accepted to Harvard will they ever be happy. My wife and I have at times pushed that vision on our children.
Baa. Baa. Baa.
Warren Buffet went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business - for two years. Then he returned to the University of Nebraska. Now he’s one of the wealthiest people on the planet and seems content with his life.
Mark Cuban went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University. Not the Ivies in any way. He has always been a business owner and entrepreneur and would likely be successful, college or not.
Apple’s creator, Steve Jobs, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates both dropped out of college. Higher education is sometimes necessary, but it is NOT a prerequisite to financial or emotional satisfaction.
Look at the other end of the wealth spectrum: the professional surfer. I follow several on Instagram. They never seem to have a bad day. How could they? They are always near beaches and are directly connected to nature. They are all tanned, toned, and smiling. But they aren’t usually rich in money. I envy their visible lives anyway. Wake, eat, surf, eat, sleep, repeat. Bliss.
Honestly, we can’t know how happy or unhappy anyone really is. It’s impossible to know what they carry in their trunks. But you can’t deny that people the world over appear happy even though they never scrambled for admission to a prestige college.
My children (like yours) are smart, talented, and capable. I can see that one may take to being herded better than the other. But if they decide they are not following the same path as the rest of the flock, and I will let them decide, and instead take up acting, writing, Ebay commerce, or even big-wave surfing, then I may be the one crying. Not out of sadness or pain, but with joy.
"No, but I’ll get some cereal."
She, of the "let’s go" a moment earlier, then filled a bowl with cereal and milk and sat down to spoon frosted flakes into her mouth while operating her i-phone with the other hand.
"What the heck?" I said. "You just told me to hurry up and now you are sitting down looking at Snapchat! Do we need to go or what?" She started crying.
"I’m stressed out and failing. Stop it!"
I was mortified. I forgot she had two semester exams that day; in algebra II and history. Both were honors classes and the math was super tough. She had been studying hard and was spent. My angry tone was too much for her.
I quickly apologized. She stopped crying and finished her food. I dropped her off at school went back home to finish my coffee (we live close). I’ve been listening to an audio book. It’s titled Excellent Sheep. The author is an Ivy League graduate and former admissions official and professor at Yale. He believes the educating and parenting paths that many Americans follow is a mistake. He says that the insidious pressure to keep up with the Joneses has motivated us to wrongfully push our kids to follow a poisonous path we’ve been told leads to lifetime success and happiness. I think he is right.
We may not be Ivy Leaguers ourselves, and we may be happy with our lives. Ecstatic even. Nonetheless, we are urged by a tsunami of media influences to believe that only if our children are straight-A, activity-fueled, community-serving, multi- lingual, club-forming leaders accepted to Harvard will they ever be happy. My wife and I have at times pushed that vision on our children.
Baa. Baa. Baa.
Warren Buffet went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business - for two years. Then he returned to the University of Nebraska. Now he’s one of the wealthiest people on the planet and seems content with his life.
Mark Cuban went to college at the University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University. Not the Ivies in any way. He has always been a business owner and entrepreneur and would likely be successful, college or not.
Apple’s creator, Steve Jobs, and Microsoft’s Bill Gates both dropped out of college. Higher education is sometimes necessary, but it is NOT a prerequisite to financial or emotional satisfaction.
Look at the other end of the wealth spectrum: the professional surfer. I follow several on Instagram. They never seem to have a bad day. How could they? They are always near beaches and are directly connected to nature. They are all tanned, toned, and smiling. But they aren’t usually rich in money. I envy their visible lives anyway. Wake, eat, surf, eat, sleep, repeat. Bliss.
Honestly, we can’t know how happy or unhappy anyone really is. It’s impossible to know what they carry in their trunks. But you can’t deny that people the world over appear happy even though they never scrambled for admission to a prestige college.
My children (like yours) are smart, talented, and capable. I can see that one may take to being herded better than the other. But if they decide they are not following the same path as the rest of the flock, and I will let them decide, and instead take up acting, writing, Ebay commerce, or even big-wave surfing, then I may be the one crying. Not out of sadness or pain, but with joy.
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Stars in the dark
Do it now. Limited time only. This deal won’t last. There has never been a better time to buy.
Why do we take this bait? Why does anyone?
There is no limit to time. There is always another opportunity coming. There will always be a time to buy, or sell, or jump, or eat or sleep, or even fall in love.
As long as you are alive there is opportunity to act. It’s okay if you don’t squeeze the juice out of every moment. Even the guys who cheat death for RedBull videos on YouTube spend countless boring hours planning, arranging and practicing for their 30-90 seconds of fame.
Often we act as mice in a maze, bouncing against walls of our own making, scrambling from event to deadline to event, until we stop, exhausted, and sometimes without ever having eaten the cheese. (Cheese, glorious cheese).
Many of us feel we have to be "productive" at home, on days off, even on vacation at the beach (Maria), anytime when we aren’t working for someone else. This is when we desperately need to slow down and live. Breathe in, breathe out. Just float in the water, catch a wave, look up at the stars and wonder just where you are, just for the sake of wondering.
Looking at the night sky is one of my favorite pastimes. I’ve found that if I can see some stars, I can focus on a point between two or three, in what appears to be dark emptiness, and just try to see as far as I can imagine seeing, then, to my delight, a pin-point of light will materialize where I am looking.
The stars are there, in what seems to be darkness. They are always there. Just like opportunities. Take a moment. Breathe. Look. See.
Why do we take this bait? Why does anyone?
There is no limit to time. There is always another opportunity coming. There will always be a time to buy, or sell, or jump, or eat or sleep, or even fall in love.
As long as you are alive there is opportunity to act. It’s okay if you don’t squeeze the juice out of every moment. Even the guys who cheat death for RedBull videos on YouTube spend countless boring hours planning, arranging and practicing for their 30-90 seconds of fame.
Often we act as mice in a maze, bouncing against walls of our own making, scrambling from event to deadline to event, until we stop, exhausted, and sometimes without ever having eaten the cheese. (Cheese, glorious cheese).
Many of us feel we have to be "productive" at home, on days off, even on vacation at the beach (Maria), anytime when we aren’t working for someone else. This is when we desperately need to slow down and live. Breathe in, breathe out. Just float in the water, catch a wave, look up at the stars and wonder just where you are, just for the sake of wondering.
Looking at the night sky is one of my favorite pastimes. I’ve found that if I can see some stars, I can focus on a point between two or three, in what appears to be dark emptiness, and just try to see as far as I can imagine seeing, then, to my delight, a pin-point of light will materialize where I am looking.
The stars are there, in what seems to be darkness. They are always there. Just like opportunities. Take a moment. Breathe. Look. See.
Friday, December 11, 2015
Life. Bulbs.
First blackness and calm, then crackling and pulsing alertness.
Everyone in the circle is awake and glowing. There are hundreds of them, six or seven different outlooks, but all connected for the same bright purpose.
They don’t live on their own. It’s the shared energy that animates them. The same force that propels thoughts, movement and light. It gives life to them, maybe to all of us.
One of them stops. It no longer participates in the group. Its family stops and stares, still glowing and feeling. What can they do for this one?
Evolution of their kind allows them to live and work all together on the same wavelength, and to continue even when one of them departs. Earlier families would live until their weakest member passed. Then they would all die together, as one.
Now they try to recover their own. They make a fuss. They crackle and hiss. None wants to believe there is no way back for one.
But there isn’t a way. Sometimes darkness is all there is.
So they go on beaming and gleaming, until it’s time to sleep, and the switch is flipped.
Everyone in the circle is awake and glowing. There are hundreds of them, six or seven different outlooks, but all connected for the same bright purpose.
They don’t live on their own. It’s the shared energy that animates them. The same force that propels thoughts, movement and light. It gives life to them, maybe to all of us.
One of them stops. It no longer participates in the group. Its family stops and stares, still glowing and feeling. What can they do for this one?
Evolution of their kind allows them to live and work all together on the same wavelength, and to continue even when one of them departs. Earlier families would live until their weakest member passed. Then they would all die together, as one.
Now they try to recover their own. They make a fuss. They crackle and hiss. None wants to believe there is no way back for one.
But there isn’t a way. Sometimes darkness is all there is.
So they go on beaming and gleaming, until it’s time to sleep, and the switch is flipped.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)