Dall-E

 

from Dall-E

Middle Season #6

 

Falling Upwards by Richard Rohr

Falling Upwards by Richard Rohr

Questions of first half of life:  "The first essential questions: What makes me significant? How can I support myself? and Who will go with me?"

“The task of the second half of life is, quite simply, to find the actual contents that this container was meant to hold and deliver.

Erik Ericson - generative person - one who is eager and able to generate life from his or her own life

Unamuno - tragic sense of life

Pope John 23: in essentials, unity; in nonessentials, liberty; in all things, charity

Rilke - when we are only victorious over small things, it leaves us feeling small

(what are neo-conservatives: inconsistent mix of old fashioned style and symbols with contemporary styles  of consumerism, tech, militarism, and individualism )

“When you get your “Who am I?” question right, all the “What should I do?” questions tend to take care of themselves.”

Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan and find it insufficient, we will not search out or find the real source, the deep well, or the constantly flowing stream.”

“Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have—right now. This is a monumental change from the first half of life, so much so that it is almost the litmus test of whether you are in the second half of life at all.”

Thomas Merton, the American monk, pointed out that we may spend our whole life climbing the ladder of success, only to find when we get to the top that our ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.

“I am not preoccupied with collecting more goods and services; quite simply, my desire and effort—every day—is to pay back, to give back to the world a bit of what I have received.”

“In the second half of life, we do not have strong and final opinions about everything, every event, or most people, as much as we allow things and people to delight us, sadden us, and truly influence us.”

“Invariably when something upsets you, and you have a strong emotional reaction out of proportion to the moment, your shadow self has just been exposed. So watch for any overreactions or overdenials.”

“We actually respond to one another's energy more than to people's exact words or actions. In any situation, your taking or giving of energy is what you are actually doing. Everybody can feel, suffer, or enjoy the difference, but few can exactly say what it is that is happening. Why do I feel drawn or repelled? What we all desire and need from one another, of course, is that life energy called eros! It always draws, creates, and connects things.”

“What we all desire and need from one another, of course, is that life energy called eros! It always draws, creates, and connects things.”

There is no practical or compelling reason to leave one’s present comfort zone in life. Why should you or would you? Frankly, none of us do unless and until we have to. The invitation probably has to unexpected and unsought.

“People who have not been tutored by some “limit situations” in the first half of their life are in no position to parent children; they are usually children themselves. Limit situations, according to the German philosopher Karl Jaspers, are moments, usually accompanied by experiences of dread, responsibility, guilt, or anxiety, in which the human mind confronts its restrictions and boundaries, and allows itself to abandon the false securities of this limitedness, move beyond, one hopes in a positive way, and thus enter new realms of self-consciousness. In other words, we ironically need limit situations and boundaries to grow up. A completely open field does not do the job nearly as well or as quickly. Yahweh was creating a good limit situation for Adam and Eve when he told them not to eat the apple, fully knowing that they would.”

In our work with men, we have found that in many men this inability or refusal to feel their deep sadness takes the form of aimless anger.1 The only way to get to the bottom of their anger is to face the ocean of sadness underneath it. Men are not free to cry, so they just transmute their tears into anger, and sometimes it pools up in their soul in the form of real depression. Men are actually encouraged to deny their shadow self in any competitive society, so we all end up with a lot of sad and angry old men. 

“The world is more magical, less predictable, more autonomous, less controllable, more varied, less simple, more infinite, less knowable, more wonderfully troubling than we could have imagined being able to tolerate when we were young. —JAMES HOLLIS, FINDING MEANING IN THE SECOND HALF OF LIFE”

“One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. —CARL JUNG, THE STRUCTURE AND DYNAMICS OF THE PSYCHE 

In its own time

 

from my front yard; alliums on February 20

This week I began noticing signs of spring.  Birds are beginning to call and sing.  Snow drops are blooming in south-facing areas.  Daffodils are coming out of the dirt in some places.  These alliums in my front yard are some of the first things I've seen emerge.  Here you can see both the green shoots and perhaps a little bit of frost burn.  All emerging from the varied brown detritus of fall and winter.

This year I've developed a list of 10 meditations from Insight Timer and taken notes on the "verbal instructions."  After taking these notes, I've started a 10-day cycle of meditations guided by notes and NOT the actual meditation instructor.

One of the instructions was watching the breath "in its own time."  It's one of the Bangor University guided meditations called "Short Mindfulness Meditation."  

Notice precisely the sensations of the in-breath and the out breath; each one is unique, give attention to each one its own time.

That phrase seems part of late-life wisdom: be attentive to things, be curious to watch as things develop and grow and change in their own time.  Things, people, don't change when we want them to.  The world doesn't work or unfold according to our hopes or plans.  

And if we do have plans for things, we will be disappointed AND we will not be able to see the development, the unfolding, uncoiling of the actual world.  

Breads of 2023 - No-Knead Bread

 

Here's yesterday's NYT recipe for No-Knead Bread.  It's crispy on outside, filled with holes, and delicious.  I had struggled a couple times this year with the recipe.  I'm wondering if it has to do with the size of the vessel (last time it was a larger dutch oven and the bread didn't rise so high), the amount of time during rising (maybe it was too long during the second rise?).  

I've made better rises before (with large "ears" extending).  I had to work to get this to grow by putting dishes of warmed water under it both Friday night and all Saturday morning, reheating the water every hour.  

10 Things Always to be Grateful For

Gustav Klimt -  Lakeside with Birch Trees, 1901 

I've been searching for awhile for something I read in college about a Native American prayer of thanksgiving.  It a reminder to be thankful for a series of basic things.  It's something like... be thankful that you are alive, be thankful that there is life at all, be thankful that the universe exists.  There's one more "layer" somewhere.  I like the "power of tens" movement that happens there; it seems to shock your imagination into realization that there are a lot of "vertically integrated" things that didn't need to happen that DID happen that are pre-conditions of your own existence.

Somewhere on Twitter, probably from a mindfulness site, there was something that reminded me of that, but in a different way.  It involved being thankful often for things like: clean clothing, enough food, shelter to sleep in.  Maybe family or friend?  Here it takes the perspective of maybe being homeless, alone.  

I've been trying to be more grateful for things as they pop up unprompted in my mind through the day.  For instance, yesterday, as I rolled the garbage cans back to the house, I was thinking I was grateful for garbage service... someone takes my stinky chicken carcasses and accumulated junk and "magically" gets rid of it for me.  On a cold night recently I was thankful that we have indoor plumbing.... I'm glad I didn't have to go outside with the shivering raccoons to take my nightly pee.  These are more like things that make my life easier, more pleasant, more cocooned.

Marcus Aurelius says, "When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love."

All three are from different "vantage points."

Maybe I can create a list of ten things that can like a daily mantra.  I'm not sure which of these vantage points to do it from.  So, I'll just start collecting them here.

1. indoor plumbing
2. garbage service
3. home that protects me from the cold and the wind
4. a car/transportation
5. enough food each day (far MORE than enough!)
6. enough clothing. (far MORE than enough!)
7. family that would support me if I'm in need 
8. a basic relationship with my kids

Jane McGonigal - Imaginable

Notes on Jane McGonigal's Imaginable.

I first learned of her on "Cool Tools" podcast.  Then I ordered her book from the library.

Book Notes

your brain is literally processing [past emotionally charged moments] from a more insightful vantage point...  taking a mental time trip ten years to the future can help you feel "unstuck" emotionally. You momentarily get a break from your normal mode of thinking and feeling and get to float above it all, like a satellite looking down from space. (15) [from Chapter "Take a Ten-Year Trip" which is about the benefits of thinkin

a major benefit of switching from first person to third person is that it's a huge empathy booster. In scientific language, we "reduce our egocentric biases" and become "less ego-identified" -- which means we get our of own own heads and can start to see things the way someone else might. We're better able to consider that others might have different wants, needs, values, or ideas than we do. (15) [In the context of the benefit of 

I'd invite them them to take a quick mental time trip with me, so they could imagine their fvery first time riding in a completley autonomou vehicle.  "Imagine it as vividly as you can," i say o them. "What color is the car?" Where are you going? How comfortable is the seat? Is anyone with you?" ... "In one word, how would you describe the emotion you're feeling during this first ride?"... People predict they would feel excited, nervous, awed, terrified, curious, nauseated, grateful, thrilled, confused, vigilant, asleep, free.  The words they share run the full gamut of positive and negative emotions, with no consensus whatsoever.... With this kind of insight into other people's imagined futures, it becomes much hard to hold any strong opinion about self-driving cars too tightly. [19]

Lots of young people aren't so exited about getting their driver's license.  "What do I take from this data? Freedom clearly has a wider range of meaning young people today when it comes to cars -- not just personal mobility or control over a machine but also freedom from debt, freedom from feeling guilty about the environmental impacts, freedom from anxiety about risky activities." (21)

Rule #1: Take a Ten-Year Trip.  When you think about the future, focus your imagination ten years out.  A ten-year timeline will lift the ceiling on your imagination. . .  increase your empathy, set more optimisitic goals... [G]ive yourself a ten-year deadline, make a ten-year resolution, create an even on your calendar for ten year from now, or talk to others about how the world might be dfferent ten years from now.  It will change how you think and feel today.

Chapter 2: Learn to Time Travel

For the next thirty seconds, I want you to imagine yourself waking up tomorrow morning. Try to picture it in your mind or describe it to yourself as clearly as possible.   What room or space are you in? What wakes you up -- is it an alarm, the sunlight, someone nudging you or calling you? Is it light out or still dark? Is there anyone with you? Which side of the bed are you on?  What kind of mood are you in? What the very first thing you do, now that you're awake?  Now do it one year from now.  Is there something different with your room? Are you physically changed in some way? Would you like to imagine waking up in a complegely different mood than you expect to wake up in tomorrow? What might put you in this mood? Now ten years.  Where are you ten years from today? What's around you? What do you see, hear, smell, and feel?  Whoe else is here? What's the first thing on your mind as you wake up?  What do you have planned for the day?  How are you physically different in this future?  Try not to make this future scene a total fantasy. Stay grounded in what you feel is genuinely realistic and possible for you. (this is EFT - episoidc future thinking. it's a decision-making, planning, and motivational tool).  Is this a world I want to wake up in? What do I need to be ready for it? Should I try to change what I'm doing today to make this future more or less likely? (Scene construction involves "semantics" - the rules of the future.. "In a world where... In a land where... In a time when...  (college is free, cars are banned). 

EFT: 1. [Build the scene] Where exactly am I in my future -- who else is here, and what's around me? 2. [Make the rules] what's true in this version of reality that isn't true today? 3. [Detect opportunity] What do I really want in this future moment, and how will I get it? 4. [Pre-feel the future] How do I feel, now that I'm here?

EFT linked with mental well-being... you learn to control your imagination.  People with depression tend to imagine future with vague details.  They can't can't vividly anticipate pleasure. They don't feel motivated by possible future events.  They can't envision their future as being different from today.  Imagination gets stuck and leaves them literally with nothing to look forward to.

EFT helps creativity significantly (when people are asked "imagine yourself meeting a friend for breakfast a year form today or imagine yourself taking a walk ten years from today. (35)

Episodic memory - construct 10 years ago scene.  How has your life changed in the past decade? Is there anything that's true about your life today that would have surprised the past you? 

Chapter 3: Play with Future Scenarios

Future Scenario #1: Thank You Day.  Everyone gets $2000 to spend.  $1000 must be gifted to essential and frontline workers.  Moment of choice: do you choose to participate? who will you send thank you dollars to, and why? (decision points are engaging to participants and provide quick moment of agency)

Futur Scenario #2: Have You Checked Your Asteroid Forecast? 5% chance that asteroid will fall in your path 5 years from now.  (ring of impact). Moment of choice: Who do you want to talk to? What thoughts would you share? what options would you discuss?  (This scenario sounds like a Hollywood blockbuster... which is intentional... "To convince our brains to do the hard work of imagining hard-to-imagine futures, we have to moe our of a state of boredom, distraction, or indifference and into a mindset of high interest, curiosity, and attention."   But this is akin to climate change disaster... sea-level rising (something we should be tackling!)

Chapter 4: Be Ridiculous, at First

Dator's law: any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.  We can suspend disbelief if we are willing to take in information that challenges our assumptions about what can and cannot change.  

Game:  Stump the futurist.  "What is one thing you are nearly 100 percent confident will be pretty much exactly the  same ten years from now?" The futurist finds "clues/signs" that something along these lines could happen.

Future Scenario #5: The Global Emergency Sperm Drive.  Birthrate is down 30%.  Moment of Choice: do you donate your genetic material to the GESB? why or why not?  IF you are not able to, what do you encourage others to do?  Whose input would you need tohelp you make your decision?

Angus Fletcher.  The God's-Eye vantage reduces actiivty in our brain's deep emotional zones, acting as a neural shock absorber against the traumatic events before us.  Fletcher is interest in how novels, plays, and movies can give readers and audiences that same beneficial feeling of foreknowledge... It shifts our tragic feelings of helplessness into a psychological senseation of helpfulness.  Book Title: Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature. 2021.

"Imagine the world is dealing with a dangerous respiratory pandemic, with no vaccine or cure. How do you use your unique skills and personal strengths to help?" (from Superstruct simulation) (my emphasis)

Chapter 5: Turn the World Upside Down

One Hundre Ways Anything Can be Different in the Future.  Pick a topic, like work, or food, or leanring.  Then you list one hundred things that are true about it today.  The simpler or more obvious the fact, the better.  Next, you rewrite each fact, one by one, so that ten years from now the opposite it true -- no matter how ridiculous at first the new ideas sound.  Finally, you look for clues, or evidence of change already happening today, that these ideas are plausible and realistic. (88) (author does "shoes")

Free shoes, shoe shaming, post-traumatic shoe sleeping... any of these ridiculous, at first, ideas could inspire a mental time trip.  In one word, how would you feel in that future? What are the risks? What are the opportunities? What actions could you take to make this world better?  This is the final challenge of the OHWACBDitF.

Questions: Which fact about today do you think is most important to challenge going forward? Which of the possible upsdie-down world futures would you most want to wake up in? Ten years from now, what actions would you be proud to hae taken today to make this future more likely? Which of the possible upside-down futures would you most want to avoid?  Ten years from now, what actions would you be proud to have taken today to make this future less likely?

Make a list of at least five things that are true about your life today. Then rewrite them so that the opposite is now true. Whatever alternative pops into your mind first, go for it.  For example, I wrote "I'm an American citizen," "I have two daughters," I'm a writer," I sleep at night," and I had flying," and then I flipped those facts... "I'm a British citizen," "I have three daughters," "I manage a doughnut shop," "I sleep during the day," and "I love flying"...  whatever you imagine, just by taking these alternative possibilities about your life seriously enough to simulatie them in your ind, you're improving your ability to take in new ideas.  You're getting better at examining ridiculous, at first, ideas for plausibility and potential benefits. And you may find, as I do, that taking a few minutes to freely imagine waking up in a completely diffeernt life gives you a subtle, but noticeable, sensation of freedom and creativity today. (99)

Future Scenario #4: Medicine Bag.  Free fresh food.Moment of Choice: What do you fill your bag with?How do you feel about this future?   (this is an example of a better world)

Chapter 6: Look for Clues

Every form of creativity has its own raw material. For futurists the raw material is clues. We collect, combine, and build future scenarios out of clues to how the future might be different.

To find future clues, you need to develop a new way of looking at the world around you, a way to spot weird stuff that others overlook. You have to be constantly honing in on things you haven't previously encountered, things that make you say, "Huh, that's strange," and "Hmmm... I. wonder why that's happening," and "Wow, this is weird, and I want to understand it better."  

A signal of change is a concrete example of how the world could one day be different.  It might be a tiny change happening in just one town, or just one school, or just one company, or just one person's life.  William Gibson famously stated, "The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed."  

"Mindar" Buddhist robotic priest.

Philosopher Sam Keen: "To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to ecome an asker of questions."  Investigating a signal of change is like being on a quest. The purpose of the quest is not to predict what the future will be; it's to ask question after question about what the future could be. (112)

"constellation collective"... along with fifty thousand other people, you pay a monthly fee to share in the costs of maintaining and lfying a fleet of illuminating drones, Once a month, you get thirty seconds of "airtime" to spell out any message or create any image you want in you local sky.  What do you do with your airtime? What message or image are you putting in the sky? What time do you schedule it for, and where will it appear? In one word, how do you feel when the drone creates your constellation?

Find signals can be as simple as doing a quick news or social media search.  "future of prison reform, future of pets.  Throw in terms like innovation experiment, trend, weird, strange, creative idea, scientific study.  Or, ask people: what new things they're seeing in the world that excite or worry them.  What's happening in the world that you wish more people were paying attention to? (ask: what's driving the change?)

Chapter 7: Choose Your Future Forces

Let's start by acknowledging that there's no "back to normal" future now. Kathi Vian

A future force is a Megatrend..  extreme heat from climate change, post-pandemic trauma, radicalization of young people via social media, facial recognition technology, cyberattacks, infectitious diseases, WMD, social unrest due to lack of economic opportunity

When you think of a worrisome thing to come... don't worry.  worry later. Instead, "use this time now to identify one thing you could do to help one person affected by this force, now or in the future.  Keep it small.  

Pema Chodron.  "Depsite what we might think much of the time and what the news programs imply, we all wish to be sane and openhearted people We could take our wish to be more sane and kind and put it in a very large contesxt. We could expand it into a dsesire to help all other people, to help the whole world. But we need a place to start. We can't simply begin with the whole world. We need to begin by reaching out tot the people who come into our own lives -- our family members, our neighbors, our coworkers."

from "Smile at Fear" the best Buddhist Writing of 2012.

Johns HOpkins Univesity first aid course taught online.  (mental health support skills)

Scenario #5: Don't Face Search Me (151)

Future Force Friday. picking a few future forces to track of the next few your years.  Do it once a month.  Search: "facial recognition" and any of these words: advances, breakthroughs, ethics, regulation, dilemma, challenges, risks, opportunities, benefits, new study, new app, innovation, unexpected, unintended, forecast, prediction

World Economic Forum: Global Risks Report

Future Scenario #6: Have You Declared Your Challenge Yet?  Students and lifelong learners are getting ready to "declare their challenge" like they used to declare their major.  Here's were most popular challenges: climate change, good health and well-being, sustainable cities, gender equality, no poverty, racial justice and equity, ethical technology and innovation, peace, justice, and strong institutions, zero hunger, responsible consumption and production.  Moment of choice: what cahllenge are you going to declare? Why? Whom do you talk to, oto help you amke your decision?  (if you work at a college... MOC: what new challenge did you help design? why did you feel it was important? can you imagine what types of classes might be offered, what skills would be taught, and what projects would be completed by students in this challenge?

Chapter 8: Practice Hard Empathy

example of men encircling/protecting woman.  What would it be if in your own life you were expected to live by this custom? Can you imagine being considered so in need of protection that you relatives created a human chain around you whenever you went somewhere you might encounter strangers? what if you were expected to be a protector? To be clear: do not try to imagine that you are one of those two young women in that rural village in India. Don't put yourself in their shoes, so to speak. Stay exactly who you are and exactly where you are. What you're changing in your mental simulation are the facts of your own life. If you live in NYC, then you're imaging that a human chain of protection around young, unmarried women is something you commonly see in NYC.  Who is protecting you? who are you protecting? whose hands are you holding? where are you going? how do you feel?

(why do this hard empathy? when we try to imagine what it would be like to be someone else, and we have no direct experience of that person's circumstances, we're not very good at it... we often get it wrong.  (this is also called "blended empathy") Far future training and hard empathy are mutually reinforcing. They are a kind of cross-training for your imagination.  

Two questions: 1. What keeps you up at night when you think about the future? 2. what makes you leap out of bed with excitement in the morning when you think about the futre?  (she has database with 9681 answers) (176)

Scenario: Day Zero (based on water shortage in Cape Town... 50 liters of water per day.  toilet = 10 liters

freewriting and writing is important in thinking about the future. Here she suggests that writing is an improvement over thinking only about it (from mental simulation to social simulation). Part III of the book, she promises, she'll invite us to "Spend Ten Days in the Future" or to write ten different journal entries from the future in response to some very suprising scenarios.  You'll be able to add you own stories online to a large-scale social simulaiton.... This kind of first-person storytelling is the "core mechanic" of all social simulations that we run at the Institute of the Future.

Future Scenario #7: The Great Disconnection.  All internet is ended in ten minutes. Journal Prompts: 1. Set the scene.  Where are you when you receive the emergency alert? If with someone, what do you say? Descirbe the moment in detail.  2. Feel the moment. What emotions? What physical sensations? What thoughts? 3. Try to make sense of it. What possible explanations do you come up with? 4. Name your worries. What problems might you have adapting to at least two weeks -- without internet? 5. Take action. What immediate action do you take after receving the alert? what plans do you start to make?

McGonigal goes on to "Could a future like the great disconnection really happen?" Let's take a look at the signals...

Scenario #8: Double Your Money (digibucks) (2 weeks of trading your cash for digibucks) (185)

Chapter 9: Heal the Deeper Disease

Future Scenario #9: The Howl

Part III - Imagine the Unimaginable

Chapter 10: Answer the Call to Adventure

242 - references that gamers feel more agency, set higher goals for themselves, less likely to ui in the face of real-world setbacks... more likely to ask for help and offer real-world assistance to family and friends... etc.

244 - Joseph Campbell's call to adventure "it's a challenge to embark on a journey to 'a zone unkown,' a 'fateful region of both treasure and danger,' somewhere that 'the familiar life horizon has been outgrown; the old concepts, ideals, and emotional patterns no longer fit.'   Sometimes there's a "refusal of the call"... Campbell: "In actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered." Refusal may occur when the potential hero is "wall in boredom, hard work, or 'culture'" - that is mentally stuk in the trappings of the status quo by the desire for the "present system... to be fixed and made secure."    McGonigal connects this to people who she works with in her business who refuse the urgent call to the future through distancing, denial, fatigue, or surrender.  (to me denial sounds like "minimizing")

What are you good at? What do you know a lot about? Wha communties are you a part of? What's something you're more passionate about than most. people? (skills and abilities, deep knowledge and passions, communities, values

Treat every future scenario as an invitation to imagine yourself doing something important Ask yourself three questions to better understand the opportunities for action: What will people want and need in the future? What kinds of people will be particularly helpful in this future? How will you use your uniques strengths to help others in this future? Consider how your values might motivate you todo hard things. Think of how you might serve or mobilize the communities you belong to.

Chapter 11: Simulate any Future you Want

274 artifacts from the future (to keep around your house during the simulation)

typically, during simulations, you post short narratives on an online discussion board ot "in the wild" (on currently existing social media with hashtags #AlphaGalCrisis

Much of what we encounter will be possibilities that our own brains would never conjure up.  Think of it as an exponential "noise injection" for our waking imagination, with data collected from many other brains and many other lived experiences. (277)

simulation called Feel the Future made for students and teachers.... videos. teacher instructions on 282.  the institute published a summary 22-pages of the most interesting themes and ideas.  www.facinghistory.org/face-future-game-videos 

How do you "play" a simulation game? "I mean actively think about the scenario at least once during the day, tell a quick story or capture an idea about how they might personally be affected by the scenario, and then share it with the group."  Best is 10 days.

I always encourage the host to do some curation and spotlighting of their favorite ideas and stories through the simulation, so that the most interesting stories and most surprising ideas get seen by all.  Simplest way is nto pick one "moment from the future" each day or each week to share with all the participants by pinned post or email. This helps create a common narrative and a universal experience.  

During Feel the Future, we posted a new guiding question on the online discussion forum to keep the conversation moving in different directions.  How might families and parents use FEel That? How might it be used in education? How might it be used in policing and criminal justice system? in art? storytelling? entertainment? romantic relationships? We shared this list of nearly 50 dif questions with teachers in advance.  

You can ask groups to collaborate together: What are 100 thing people will need help with in this future? What are 100 ways people will help each other in this future?

Why do it? (long list on 291) including "To create an opportunity for collective collaborative creativity, a way for many different people to tell a story together and share a vision of the future as a kind of public art."  or "To 'stress test' an idea that I think coujld create change for the beter: could it really work? whihch groups and communities am I leaving out?

Chapter 12

journal #1: write your bio/profile as the first entry in your journal (how old are you? where do you live? whom do you live with? how do you spend your days? what are your passions and interests?

journal #2: list your skills and abilities, deep knowledge and passions, communitiies, values

other journaling ideas: Your goal is to create a total of ten journal entries about daily life in this future. Try to imagine it in as much vivid and specific detail as you can: How is your life changing? What are you doing differently? What good things are happening? What problems have come up? Be sure to write from your own unique point of view -- about the places you know, the people you spend time with, the work and activities do, the causes you care about, the communities you belong to.

Be a journalist and report on what's going on....  sit in a park, a school, a workplace, a place of wor=ship, public transport, a sotore, a gym, restaurant, coffe shop, how do the scenario show up in this pace? what do you see, hear, feel

Find a small moment in your daily life where the scenario could show up -- something that's routine today

Imagine what's happening on social media

Think of special days you look forward to: holiday, tradition, vacation, party, etc.  how might the rules affect this occassion

To ask yourself ten years from now:  What's one "surprising" thing you saw coming and felt ready for? What's one important change you made, or helped make -- in your life, or in your community, or in the world? (357)

The most important hours of the week

 

 If I could only work 2 hours per week on my business, what would I do?

The 80/20 principle, also known as Pareto’s law, is the primary tool in this case. It dictates that 80% (or more) of your desired outcomes are the result of 20% (or less) of your activities and inputs. 

What would this look like if it were easy?

 

What would this look like if it were easy?

No hurry, no pause

Hoshun Yamaguchi

“No hurry, no pause” is one of the “9 Principles of Harmony” from Breema, a form of bodywork.

From the Breema website:

No two movements are ever the same, and nothing actually remains as it was even a moment before. The value of each moment for us exists not in its particular manifestation, but in our correct relationship to it.

When you rush, time shrinks. When you’re relaxed, time expands. This is true even though it’s very hard for the mind to get. When you’re relaxed and doing something willingly, you’re participating in life.

When you are present, you don’t experience even the slightest pressure of time. Whatever you do feels like the only thing that needs to be done, and you are doing it. You have no sense of time, because you’re living in the present. The pressure of time comes when you’re in the past or future.

All thing on earth become beautiful

 

image: Hasui Kawase

"spring rain --

all things on earth

become beautiful"  Chiyo-ni

Middle Season #5

 

Breads of 2023 - Oatmeal Bread

 

Here is King-Arthur's Back of Bag Oatmeal Bread.  This loaf turned out as soft as Wonder Bread.  We ate it through the week.  The photo hide an imperfection in the loaf.  This side is beautifully rounded; the other side (about half the loaf) is not nearly as handsomely crowned.  

We all have three voices

 

Dalle-E

From Austin Kleon:

W hen John Hendrickson and I were talking about his memoir, Life on Delay: Making Peace With A Stutter, I asked him about the advice to “find your voice” when your voice so often betrays you.

He said this beautiful thing that I keep thinking about:

“We all have three voices: the one we think with, the one we speak with, and the one we write with"

Constructive Paranoia

“Eruption of Vesuvius,” by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes.Credit...DeA Picture Library/Art Resource, NY

 Jared Diamond in NYT recently ("Let's Embrace Constructive Paranoia") uses the recent earthquakes in Turkey to talk about his concept of Constructive Paranoia.  It's not just completely unexpected that natural disasters, like Vesuvius, will occur.  And many "disasters," are probably predictable.  And there are things individuals and nations can do about it:

Finland offers a model of preparing politically for any disaster. During World War II, Finns suffered greatly as a result of being cut off from imports. Finns responded after the war by setting up a government commission that meets once a month, imagines everything that could go wrong and each month plans and prepares for one such disaster. (A Finnish friend of mine is on that commission.) Finns are now prepared for chemical shortages, fuel shortages, medical supply shortages, an electric net failure and other eventualities.

One of those Finnish commission meetings several years ago recognized the likelihood of a respiratory disease pandemic. The commission advised the government to buy and store lots of face masks, which were cheap at the time. The result: Finland was ready for Covid, as well as for all of those other disasters.

He had written about the concept on a personal level in 2013 ("That Daily Shower can Be a Killer"), stemming from learning from his New Guinea friends who would not ever sleep under a (dead?) tree because of the remote chance it would kill you.  So, here it was more about "pay attention to 1 in 1000" events.  Be prepared, be wary of them.

Life expectancy for a healthy American man of my age is about 90. (That’s not to be confused with American male life expectancy at birth, only about 78.) If I’m to achieve my statistical quota of 15 more years of life, that means about 15 times 365, or 5,475, more showers. But if I were so careless that my risk of slipping in the shower each time were as high as 1 in 1,000, I’d die or become crippled about five times before reaching my life expectancy. I have to reduce my risk of shower accidents to much, much less than 1 in 5,475.

Thus...

This calculation illustrates the biggest single lesson that I’ve learned from 50 years of field work on the island of New Guinea: the importance of being attentive to hazards that carry a low risk each time but are encountered frequently.

I first became aware of the New Guineans’ attitude toward risk on a trip into a forest when I proposed pitching our tents under a tall and beautiful tree. To my surprise, my New Guinea friends absolutely refused. They explained that the tree was dead and might fall on us.

Yes, I had to agree, it was indeed dead. But I objected that it was so solid that it would be standing for many years. The New Guineans were unswayed, opting instead to sleep in the open without a tent.

I thought that their fears were greatly exaggerated, verging on paranoia. In the following years, though, I came to realize that every night that I camped in a New Guinea forest, I heard a tree falling. And when I did a frequency/risk calculation, I understood their point of view.

 

The role that shutting up can play

 From Rob Walker Newsletter:

And it reminded me of a book I read a few weeks back as part of some research I’ve been doing: You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters, by Kate Murphy. (Bookshop.org link.)

Possibly my favorite chapter involves the role that, well, shutting up, can play in listening well to others. This includes something as simple as resisting the very human urge to blurt into every conversational pause and just allow whoever you’re listening to collect and finish their their thoughts.

“To be a good listener is to accept pauses and silences because filling them too soon, much less preemptively, prevents the speaker from communicating what they are perhaps struggling to say.”

That may seem like an intuitive point, but Murphy adds some other, more extreme examples of staying silent that I really liked. Notably:

“For Canadian composer and music educator R. Murray Schafer, silence is a ‘pocket of possibility,’ and to make the point, he sometimes required his students to remain silent for one day. “

Students weren’t crazy about this at first, but:

“At the end of twenty-four hours, many reported a greater awareness and appreciation of not only environmental sounds like the hiss of a lawn sprinkler or murmur of simmering soup but also subtleties in conversation that they would have missed had they been able to talk.”

I appreciate Walker's point about being quiet in conversations because it allows the other/s to say something that they're struggling to say: that it sometimes takes time for someone to formulate a thought and say it that's related to the Eudora Welty famous quote about not knowing what she thinks until she writes and reads it.

I'm thinking this after an afternoon with in-laws where there was a lot of "filling in gaps" in conversation and the gaps felt uncomfortable.  The gaps were filled with conversational crutches that are distinct for each person (the dog, restaurants, stories about people at work (that no one knows)).

For introverted me, these conversations can be exhausting.... like walking on a tightrope. 

What was missing from these conversations, from my point of view, were things like: "I wanted to chat with you about..." or "I was interested to talk to you about..." or "I wanted to share with (especially) you that..." or "I've been thinking about ___ and wanted to pick your brain."

An original idea expressed poorly

 From NYer. Ted Chiang on ChatGPT: "ChatGPT is a blurry JPEQ of the Web"

Obviously, no one can speak for all writers, but let me make the argument that starting with a blurry copy of unoriginal work isn’t a good way to create original work. If you’re a writer, you will write a lot of unoriginal work before you write something original. And the time and effort expended on that unoriginal work isn’t wasted; on the contrary, I would suggest that it is precisely what enables you to eventually create something original. The hours spent choosing the right word and rearranging sentences to better follow one another are what teach you how meaning is conveyed by prose. Having students write essays isn’t merely a way to test their grasp of the material; it gives them experience in articulating their thoughts. If students never have to write essays that we have all read before, they will never gain the skills needed to write something that we have never read.

And it’s not the case that, once you have ceased to be a student, you can safely use the template that a large language model provides. The struggle to express your thoughts doesn’t disappear once you graduate—it can take place every time you start drafting a new piece. Sometimes it’s only in the process of writing that you discover your original ideas. Some might say that the output of large language models doesn’t look all that different from a human writer’s first draft, but, again, I think this is a superficial resemblance. Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. That’s what directs you during rewriting, and that’s one of the things lacking when you start with text generated by an A.I.

Valentine's To-Do

 

Odilon Redon: Vase of Flowers Pansies

Your Valentine’s Day To-Do List from the Gottman Institute: 

Say “I love you” to your partner today.

Tell your partner specific things you love and appreciate about them. 

Make your partner feel special with small gestures, such as surprising them with flowers, giving them a back massage, or gifting them their favorite candies.

Ask your partner an open-ended question about their work, friends, or hobbies. 

Communicate to your partner how proud you are of them and your relationship. 

Surprise your partner with a special way to celebrate the day!

If you’re someone who hears “Valentine’s Day” and cringes, use this day as an excuse to have a low key date and stick to a cozy night in together instead. Just be sure you’re 100% focused on each other!

We get to live here!

 

Heather Swan 

@beegood2bees

posted this with:

We get to live here!!

All that is unfolding inwardly and outwardly

 

Odilon Redon - Flowers in a Turquoise Vase, 1912

From JKZ Covid episode 8

• Put out the welcome mat for discomfort, for troubling emotions (anger, boredom, fear, greed, aversion, 'othering') ; it gives you an extra dimension [in being able to deal with troubling things with ease, normally]
• Don't see thought as "I, me, mine." - Everything in mind is "an object of attention"
• Every breath is a new beginning and opening
• It's all already here, we're already home
• Be in the midst of all that is unfolding inwardly and outwardly

Middle Season 4

 

Gottman - 4 Things All Successful Relationships Have in Common

 GI: 

1. Fondness and Admiration: Fondness and admiration grow when couples intentionally put a positive spin on their relationship, on their history together, and on each other’s character. When they talk about each other and their relationship, they choose words that express warmth, affection, and respect.

2. We-ness vs. Me-ness: Happy couples tell their stories with a sense of “we-ness” or of solidarity and togetherness. Often their words show shared beliefs, values, and goals. 

3. Expansiveness vs. Withdrawal: All couples have a story to tell. How couples share what Dr. John Gottman calls the “Story of Us” can determine the health of the relationship. When the “Story of Us” is positive and full of detail (expansive) versus lacking detail or negative (withdrawal), a couple has a strong buffer against conflict and they tend to focus on their partner’s positive qualities.

4. Embrace Your Journey Together: As Dr. John Gottman says, couples who "glorify the struggle" express great pride in their ability to overcome difficult times together. They talk about how the hard seasons strengthened their bond and how they use conflict as a catalyst to grow closer together. These couples share profound meaning together and a life of purpose.

Reflect on these four things in your relationship. Is there room for opportunity? How can you strengthen each of these aspects?

Gottman - 6 Second Kiss

 GI: 

Want to revive intimacy and find deeper connectedness with your partner? Try a six second kiss today.

Lengthening kisses to six seconds could be one key to a better relationship. Dr. John Gottman says six seconds is long enough to make a moment of connection with our partner. It stops the business in your brain and puts your focus on your partner at that moment. Kissing can be a good exercise in mindfulness.

Here are some things a six second kiss can do:

It can build a ritual of connection.

It can create physical touch.

It can be a bid for connection.

If your partner has initiated, then it’s turning towards your partner.

It boosts fondness and admiration.

It builds appreciation between you.

It can increase your love maps of your partner’s kissing style.

It adds to your emotional bank account.

It can boost your positives for the 5:1 ratio.

It can lead to sex.

It can be self-soothing.

It can reduce cortisol (the “stress” hormone) and boost oxytocin (the “love” hormone).

Why not try a six second kiss today?

Gottman - Expressing Gratitude and Appreciation

 

from GI:

Gratitude

As simple as it may seem, expressing gratitude has enormous power. Your bond is strengthened every time you acknowledge and openly discuss things you love and appreciate about your partner.

There is nothing complicated about reviving or enhancing your fondness and admiration for each other. Think about what makes you treasure your partner. And then tell them.

• Thanks for listening to me.
• Thanks for being such a great parent.
• Thanks for making me laugh when I was feeling down.
• Thanks for communicating what you need.

Add an example of when your partner demonstrated each action or displayed the positive qualities you are appreciating.

• Thank you for being understanding today, even though it was stressful at some points. I feel grateful to have a partner who is so patient and kind.

Want to take it further? Write your partner a love letter, make an effort to do small daily acts of kindness, and take notice and express thanks when your partner does something kind or thoughtful.

Appreciation

Appreciation is a cornerstone for building a culture of respect in your relationship.  

You have the power to do one little thing every day to keep the connection with your partner strong: get in the habit of practicing daily gratitude to ensure that romance, affection, and appreciation are a part of your life together.

Choose a characteristic that your partner has demonstrated today from the list above: Tell your partner why you appreciate this about them! 

Repeat this habit of appreciation every day to nurture your connection. 

(elsewhere: Start an appreciation ritual by sharing two things you appreciate about your partner each day before you go to bed. The main objective of this ritual is to avoid negativity and to focus on what you love about each other. )

Show appreciation by doing Small Things Often. Make the most of small intentional moments to respond to your partner’s bid for attention. Examples of responding to bids include a facial expression such as a smile or blowing a kiss, or expressing positive feelings like “I’m so happy to see you.”

Tell your partner what you appreciate about them. This might include their personality or actions. Be sure that your words are specific and detailed. For example, you can say, “I love the way you care for our family. You’re so thoughtful.”)

****

Negative Sentiment Override is a relationship downer. In healthy relationships, it’s the nagging perspective that your otherwise supportive partner can’t seem to do anything right. You find yourself critical of their every move. When left unchecked, it leads to bitterness and contempt on both sides.

How can you shift the outlook on your partnership to a positive one? To begin, take a cue from the sentiment of the holiday season.

Instead of a naughty list, write down everything nice about your partner. You can be broad (“I love how you make me laugh”) or specific (“It meant a lot when you washed the dishes after that messy meal yesterday”). The goal is to come up with as many nice attributes about your partner as you can. This is a mental exercise of “Sharing Fondness and Admiration,” which is also an essential level of the Sound Relationship House.

The more intentional you are about looking for the good in your partner, the more good you will see

My Two Favorite Things

 

Melissa Sweet art. book - 

“My two favourite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.”

— Peter Golkin 

Also - check out this library journal review and "use guide" for the book.

(from Austin Kleon tweet)

Gottman - Make Life Dreams Come True

 GI:

What are your life dreams? As you imagine the future, who do you want to be? What do you want to achieve? 

Does your partner support your dreams? Do you support theirs? Have you determined any shared goals you’re working towards as a couple?

These questions are all part of Make Life Dreams Come True, the sixth level of The Sound Relationship House. 

Make Life Dreams Come True means that you want the best possible life for your partner and you are willing to do what it takes to make that happen.

You and your partner should create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about their hopes, values, convictions, and aspirations. 

When you make space for these things in your relationship, you can reach your individual and shared goals with the support of your partner, and that’s the best part of making your Sound Relationship House your dream home.

***

Talk about life dreams: Create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about their hopes, values, convictions, and aspirations.  

***

What are your life dreams? Do you know what your partner’s dreams are? Do they differ from yours?

Envisioning your life together isn’t something that you do one time. No matter how long you’ve been together, you can always share new hopes and dreams about your future.

Find time to sit down with your partner and ask them to think about their dreams in life. You may find you share some of those dreams with them, and you may find that your partner’s dreams differ from yours. Discuss how each of you can support the other in their life dreams. 

***

A Lifetime of Love

Honoring each other’s dreams is the secret ingredient to creating love for a lifetime. 

Life dreams are things you've always wanted to do like opening a business, taking kickboxing classes, learning how to knit, or traveling to Italy. 

Each of your dreams is important and deserves to be shared with your partner. When you hide your dreams, big and small, you hide the most important parts of yourself. You block intimacy and connection. 

Instead, be open and honest about your dreams and respect and honor your partner’s dreams, even when they’re different from your own. Honoring your partner’s dreams is a potent way to show your love for them. 

Be curious. Ask them what their dream means to them. There is a story within every dream you have and within every dream your partner has. Listen to each other’s stories.

To become a dream team, ask each other these open-ended questions around dreams: 

• What are your three most important life dreams? Why are each of them important to you?
• How can I support you in your dreams?
• How would you feel if your most important dream was fulfilled? If it wasn’t?
• What dreams can we share?

Gottman - Create Shared Meaning

 GI:

Creating shared meaning is all about understanding important visions, narratives, myths, habits, and metaphors about your relationship.

These Rituals of Connection define you and your partner’s life together.

The top floor of the Sound Relationship House, Create Shared Meaning, functions much like the foundation of Building Love Maps, except on this level, you build and understand an inner world as a couple.

The Gottmans think of it as developing a culture of symbols and rituals that express who you are as a team. It can be as simple as getting pizza from the place you both love every Friday night and as intricate as the unique way you celebrate birthdays.

These Rituals of Connection define you as a unit, and you create them together.

10 Gottman Relationship Ideas

 

Gottman... "What Works in Relationship Practice"

1. Do a weekly check in. (link) Start with 5 appreciations (there's a handy 'characteristics bank').  
2. Plan date nights.  (link to recent blog post)
3. Do Things together.  (link to recent blog post)
4. Create Shared Meaning. (link to recent blog post)
5. Build Love Maps.  How well do you know your partner’s inner world, their history, worries, stresses, joys, and hopes?  Build Love Maps is the first floor of The Sound Relationship House. The concept is simple: you and your partner should know each other intimately.  Emotionally intelligent couples are familiar with each other’s worlds. They remember major life events, and they keep updating their information as the facts and feelings of their partner change.
6. Make Life Dreams Come True. (link) You and your partner should create an atmosphere that encourages each person to talk honestly about their hopes, values, convictions, and aspirations. (link to recent blog post)
7. Express Gratitude and Appreciation. (link to recent blog post)
8. Six Second Kiss.  (link to recent blog post)
9. The Magic Ratio.  Successful couples have a 5:1 ratio of positive interactions.  Be interested, express affection. demonstrate they matter, intentional appreciation, find opportunities for agreement, empathize and apologize, accept your partner's perspective, make jokes
10.   Magic 6 Hours a Week.   Partings. Reunions. Appreciation and Admiration. Affection. Date Night. State of the Union Meeting.

Also: The four things all successful relationships have in common (link to recent blog post)

Also: How to do Valentine's Day, which reinforces many of these ideas.  (link)