Middle Season #12 - 2024

A slightly more demanding path

 

From Steve Magness

The little voice inside your head saying, “I can’t do this,” is often a sign that you’re on the right track

It’s your mind trying to pull you back to the familiar path that represents your comfort zone

Just-manageable challenges are about choosing a slightly more demanding path

From Leo Baubauta

I challenge you to do a test before you read the rest of this post (well OK, read the next two paragraphs then go do the challenge) …

Open an email that’s been sitting in your inbox but that you’ve been avoiding responding to or acting on. Pick the hardest one. Try to sit there, read the email, and then act on it and/or respond to it.

Then notice if there’s a moment when you want to just get away from that email. What does that moment feel like?

This moment of overwhelm and anxiety is usually invisible to most of us. It happens multiple times throughout the day (possibly dozens), and determines the actions we take or don’t take. But we rarely notice it — we just try to get away from it.

This is the moment that ruins our focus. It’s the moment that causes our procrastination and avoidance. It’s the moment that ruins our best habits and our best intentions.

It’s a moment that has a feeling we don’t want to feel. In fact, we’ll often spend a lot of our time trying to avoid that feeling. It feels too hard to feel.

We might have even set up a large part of our lives so that we don’t have to feel it — our lives are designed around that kind of feeling, to avoid it. For example, if you feel that feeling when you talk in front of a group, you might have set up your life so you never have to talk in front of a group. If socializing with strangers gives you that feeling, you might have a life where you don’t have to do that. If you get the feeling when you share your creative work with others, then you might have a life where you never have to do that. You get the picture.

That’s all fine — you don’t have to change your life. But if you’d like to not have to avoid the feeling, and you’d like to create amazing focus and the ability not to avoid your most meaningful work … read on.

The main thing is to let yourself feel the feeling, whenever you notice it. If you can do that repeatedly, as a training, you’ll get much better at it, and the feeling becomes much less of a big deal.

So first, notice when the moment comes — when you’re feeling the thing that is overwhelming and that you want to get away from. It might be because of a difficult or scary task, an upcoming event or meeting or trip, a difficult conversation or a frustrating person, an email or message you don’t want to read. Just try to catch the moment when it’s happening.

When you notice it, pause. Just sit for a few seconds, and breathe deeper and more slowly. Let yourself calm down for a minute, and just be with the feeling. That means to give it your attention and not to turn away from it, just for a few seconds.

If it’s too intense, get up and walk around. Shake it off. Distract yourself. Then you might try again, just for a few seconds. Maybe do that 2-3 times if you feel up to it. No need to push yourself too far.

If you practice this several times a day, you’ll get better at it. If you do it 10 times a day, you’ll get better even faster. Soon, you’ll be able to stay with it for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute. Then longer. You’ll grow your capacity to be with this moment.

Then everything becomes possible. 

Label each one with a purpose

 

From Tim Urban blog from 2016 (from Alastair Humphreys)

Most people sleep about seven or eight hours a night. That leaves 16 or 17 hours awake each day. Or about 1,000 minutes.

Let’s think about those 1,000 minutes as 100 10-minute blocks. That’s what you wake up with every day.

It’s always good to step back and think about how we’re using those 100 blocks we get each day. How many of them are put towards making your future better, and how many of them are just there to be enjoyed? How many of them are spent with other people, and how many are for time by yourself? How many are used to create something, and how many are used to consume something? How many of the blocks are focused on your body, how many on your mind, and how many on neither one in particular? Which are your favorite blocks of the day, and which are your least favorite?

Imagine these blocks laid out on a grid. What if you had to label each one with a purpose?

You’d have to think about everything you might spend your time doing in the context of its worth in blocks. Cooking dinner requires three blocks, while ordering in requires zero—is cooking dinner worth three blocks to you? Is 10 minutes of meditation a day important enough to dedicate a block to it? Reading 20 minutes a night allows you to read 15 additional books a year—is that worth two blocks? If your favorite recreation is playing video games, you’d have to consider the value you place on fun before deciding how many blocks it warrants. Getting a drink with a friend after work takes up about 10 blocks. How often do you want to use 10 blocks for that purpose, and on which friends? Which blocks should be treated as non-negotiable in their labeled purpose and which should be more flexible? Which blocks should be left blank, with no assigned purpose at all?

A Real Apology

Un moment de lumière,

Etel Adnan - 2017

 

From Gottman Newsletter:

When you and your partner argue or hurt each other, do you apologize? Have you ever received an apology that felt like it was shifting blame? 

 

Let’s take a look at what is and is not an apology.

 

These are not an apology: 

 

I'm sorry, but…
It's not my fault.
You're being too sensitive.
I love you.
Let's just move on…
Just drop it.
I only said that because…
You know I didn't mean it.

 

These are an apology: 

 

I’m sorry. 
I didn’t mean to make you feel that way, I apologize.
I’m sorry, how can I make it better?
I didn’t realize, I’m sorry.
I should have _____. I’m sorry.
I did _____ and I’m sorry. I will do better.

The emotions grid

 

link

Found this from Alastair Humphreys... Ben Saunders, article explorer:

Following my previous article – lessons of lockdown, learnt on the ice – a number of people got in touch to find out more about the ‘emotions grid’; a monitoring system devised by a psychologist to help me share my emotions more accurately and honestly while on my first major solo expedition.

-

My education and my ego therefore led to me becoming someone who would need help in asking for help. 

This is where the grid came in. On an A6 laminated sheet, glued into the back of my expedition diary, were 26 emotions – a full range of human feeling – measured against a scoring system of 0-4 – ‘not at all’ through to ‘extremely.’ We were short on time and money so this iteration was rough and ready – you'll see an emotion or two repeated – but it proved to be a lifeline. It proved also to be an expedition tool which was ahead of its time; the mental health landscape of the early noughties was archaic, and even more so in my peculiar line of work.

On the satellite phone I would call my expedition manager, Tony Haile, each evening and was usually greeted with the word ‘numbers’. The conversation ­– before any further chat was exchanged – went into code – ‘8 – 2’ ‘14 - 4’ ‘18 - 1’ ‘23 - 3’ ‘4 – 4’ and so on. With this data he would seek the guidance of our psychologist on how best to help me that following evening. Did I need a metaphorical arm around my shoulder, kick up the backside or word of encouragement? Would I benefit from a heartfelt message from a loved one, distraction through some amusing anecdote from the real world, or incentive through a new near-term goal?

The shift in my understanding of what constitutes ‘strength’ or 'bravery' began with these phone calls and is mirrored by the changing faces of my role models and heroes. Those I look to for inspiration today display none of the overblown, chest-puffing belligerence, which I recognise now to be the opposite of courage. What takes real bravery is being able to ask for help. Which is why tools for making that step simpler – like the grid system – can be invaluable.

Real Luxury

Static-Dynamic Gradation - Paul Klee

 

From a short article accompanying a NYT recipe for Irish Brown Bread. 

“I don’t need a Prada handbag.  For me, this is real luxury.” - Darina Allen 

Find something more important than you are

Paul Klee - Untitled

The secret of happiness is:

Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it. - Daniel Dennett (1942 - 2024)

How to Criticize Wisely

Philosopher Daniel Dennett died on April 19.  I found this graphic.

How to criticize wisely:

1.  You should try to express your target's position so clearly, vividly, and fairly that your target says, "Thanks, I wish I'd thought of putting it that way."
2.  You should list an points of agreement (especially if they are not matters of general or widespread agreement)
3.  You should mention anything you have learned from your target
4. Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or criticsm

The Magic Ingredient

Hokusai

Last Friday I attended a Carol Jago talk about "challenging books."  She was, as usual, smart, inspiring, filling with wit and wisdom, filled with reading and ideas.  But there is something more than just smarts and ideas.  She is nice to be around.  You feel better after talking to her.   There's some magic ingredient that she has.

I have been reflecting on that underlying element, which I'll call "enthusiasm" for lack of more accurate word. She has this enthusiasm and positivity that lots of smart and well-informed people I know don't have.  The enthusiasm is NOT just unbridled "can do" attitude.  It's a "purpose-informed" enthusiasm.  

I know a lot of smart, well-read people.  But lots of them, there's the smarts are tainted by a negativity (it's so hard, it's too much, they're against us, they're stupid), or a lack of direction, or a lack of follow-through/engagement, or a self-centeredness (MY role is so hard, other people are mistaken, buy I have it figured out).  

In conversation with Carol, she shared that she was in the first class of Our Lady of Peace and that they were treated like they could/should do important things -- write the school song for one.  She said it was a special time -- 1968 -- and that many of her peers went on to do public spirited things -- public defendants for instance.  

There's part of this in her still... teachers CAN help change kids.  Teaching work is essential work.  

Maybe this quiet enthusiasm is based on a deeply held idea that what teachers do is important.... essential.  It's not merely a job.  (It may not necessarily be a calling... but it's important work.).   

(thinking now:  do we do more than just help kids get jobs?  Bill Walsh talks about "help kids achieve their ideal future... but maybe is more like "you can help change the world".   Curriculum work is important because it frees up your mind to focus on the HOW, rather than the what.   There has been a huge burden on teachers here to figure out both the WHAT we teacher and the HOW.  The WHAT (what skills on this paper? what grammar? do I teach vocabulary?  what words? what's on the final? poems, what short stories) is often what we have endless debates and some conflicts about.  The debate about what the exact grammar skills should be taught in each semester could go on indefinitely... eventually we just need to choose and get to work and be open to adjusting next year.  And often individual teachers don't know the WHAT of the previous or next year. )

Here are the key ideas of her presentation, which I wanted to keep track of...

• The underlying current -- the tone behind everything -- was not "this sucks," but 
• There were never any good old days in teaching.  It's always been hard.
• Still, there are extra challenges today.  
• One is distractedness of kids, There's lots of evidence that kids are being changed by their phones and social media.  (Often, she summarizes a book (with the image on the screen) with a couple sentences). 
• Another is the challenges to books from the left and the right.  Both are wrong.  (Left is about trigger warnings, The right is about topics/books.) There is a great critical center between the two.
• (we read an article about how reading novels really does create empathy with a pen, talk about it together).  You have just done this important thing.  You can use this in the classroom.
• (another "turn and talk" that was about how kids' reading habits are different)

It's hard work.  It's important work.  You can do it.

Closing the Windows by Ted Kooser

 

Closing the Windows

First, the uncertain white fingers 

Of lightning, fumbling around

With the black hem of the county,

Peering in under, then thunder,

Then the slat slap of the first drop

On the roof, like a fingertip 

tapping, “Right here, put the rain 

here.” And then my father

In his summer pajamas

Moving in silhouette, closing

the windows, no word from him

who swept through the house

like a flashing shadow, but a chatter

of leaves blown over the shingles,

the clunk of sash weights

deep in the walls, then the storm

muffled by spattered glass.

It was all so ordinary then
to see him at the foot of the bed,
closing a squeaky window,
but more than sixty years have passed
and now I understand that it was
not so ordinary at all.

I'm so glad you're here today

 Tweet from Jason Kennedy.

Adults in schools, Find five kids today & tell them this: "I'm so glad your here today because..." Leaders, do the same with 5 teachers. Every single person in school bring something special to it. And we should make sure each one knows. Repeat this process often.

here's another one:

Hey educators, If no one else tells you today, you need to know. You are showing up to the most important job there is & you are awesome at it. It's seen even though others might not say. It's known even though it's not acknowledged Your kids are better because of you.

Middle Season #11 -2024

 

Serviceberries bloom along the driveway; this tiny flowers in the Fullersburg Woods forest floor, primary colored daisies against the blue sky, lilacs go from tight tiny fists into full open.

Mr Elf

 from Art of Manliness Podcast episode with guest Marc Zao-Sanders who writes on Time-Boxing.  What are regular healthy things to do to fill up your day?

I’ve got a mnemonic, which might be helpful to listeners, Brett, which is Mr. Elf. So Mr. Elf stands for meditation, reading, exercise, learning, and friends or family. So the idea here is that if you’re at a loose end, so either because you’re planning your day at the start, then… And you don’t know, okay, what am I gonna do 10 to 11? What would be healthy for me? What would be a good use of time that I won’t regret later? Think of that mnemonic, Mr. Elf, and it might help you out.

It’s also very helpful I find when sometimes an expansive time just opens up before you. So I know someone… You’re gonna have dinner with someone, you had to get there and then you’re gonna come back. So all in all, it was gonna be three or four hours, but they cancel on you. All of a sudden, you’ve got three or four hours. Now it’s very easy to then get into, well, just stream from Netflix or go to social media. And I’m not judgmental about that. I do some of that myself. But what I’m encouraging people to do more of is in that moment when you realize, okay, dinner is not gonna happen, let’s think about how I’m gonna spend my time and choose the right thing. So with Mr. Elf and these five activities, it’s just very easy to remember. 

Implementation Intentions

 

implementation intentions

from Art of Manliness Podcast episode with guest Marc Zao-Sanders who writes on Timeboxing. Z-S talks about the concept of "implementation intentions."  It's the fancy terms for why timeboxing works.

it’s a statement that you make of the form. When situation X arises, I will perform response Y. So not just I wanna lose weight or be kinder or go on vacation, but you’re saying that when a certain thing happens, then I will do such and such and such. So timeboxing is exactly that because it’s saying with the situation arising, at a certain time when the situation X arises, so when it’s say 1 o’clock, I will do such and such activity. What the science behind it says, and you can Google this, implementation intentions, you’ll see a bunch of journals that basically say, look, if you say that you’re going to do something at a certain time, you’re very, very likely to do it, about 90% chance of doing it. Whereas if you just have a vague notion of, well, I probably should do it and there’s some light encouragement, it’s more like 30%.

So actually, there was a study in which there were three groups. The first group was a control group. So they were just given the instruction. It was about exercise. So they’re given the instruction to just record when they do exercise. The second group was given some motivation and educational material and also asked to record the exercise. And then the third group were instructed to timebox it. The first two groups are very similar, about 30, 35% of them did the exercise or exercise weekly. But the third group, the time boxes, they did it to… I think it was 91% of them exercised weekly. 

From Harvard Business Review article by Zao-Sanders

 Five years ago I read Daniel Markovitz’s argument for migrating to-do lists into calendars. Since then, my productivity has at least doubled.

That momentous (at least for me) article describes five problems with the to-do list. First, they overwhelm us with too many choices. Second, we are naturally drawn to simpler tasks which are more easily accomplished. Third, we are rarely drawn to important-but-not-urgent tasks, like setting aside time for learning. Fourth, to-do lists on their own lack the essential context of what time you have available. Fifth, they lack a commitment device, to keep us honest.

--- ----

Fourth, you will feel more in control. This is especially important because control (aka volition, autonomy, etc.) may be the biggest driver of happiness at work. Constant interruptions make us less happy and less productive. Timeboxing is the proper antidote to this. You decide what to do and when to do it, block out all distractions for that timeboxed period, and get it done. Repeat. Consistent control and demonstrable accomplishment is hugely satisfying, even addictive. This is not just about productivity (largely external), this is about intent (internal, visceral) and how we feel.

Fifth, you will be substantially more productive. Parkinson’s law flippantly states that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. Although it’s not really a law (it’s more of a wry observation), most of us would concede that there is some truth to it (especially as it pertains to meetings). A corollary of this observation in practice is that we often spend more time on a task than we should, influenced by the time that happens to be available (circumstantial) rather than how long the work should really take (objective). Disciplined timeboxing breaks us free of Parkinson’s law by imposing a sensible, finite time for a task and sticking to that. Although it’s hard to precisely quantify the benefits of any time management or productivity measures, this is clearly enormous. Just take a commonplace example: do you habitually take two hours (cumulatively, often drawn out over multiple sessions) to complete a task that really could have been done in a single, focused, time-boxed hour? If the answer is yes, then your personal productivity might be double what it is right now.

 

Speaking back to nature

 

NYT Learning network - link

 “You Are Here” is an anthology of nature poems by 50 of the most accomplished poets working today, including the PEN/Voelcker Award winner Rigoberto González, the former U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo, the Pulitzer Prize winner Diane Seuss and the Kingsley Tufts Award winner Patricia Smith, among many others who have won national awards for their work. “I just asked for these original poems, like, ‘Will you make this poem that speaks back to the natural world, whatever that means to you?’” Ms. Limón said.

Surrender Myself to the Current of My Thought

C.G. Jung in his Memories, Dreams, and Reflections.  

After the illness a fruitful period of work began for me. A good many of my principal works were written only then. The insight I had had, or the vision of the end of all things, gave me the courage to undertake new formulations. I no longer attempted to put across my own opinion, but surrendered myself to the current of my thoughts. Thus one problem after the other revealed itself to me and took shape.

Something else, too, came to me from my illness. I might formulate it as an affirmation of things as they are: an unconditional "yes" to that which is, without subjective protests— acceptance of the conditions of existence as I see them and understand them, acceptance of my own nature, as I happen to be. At the beginning of the illness I had the feeling that there was something wrong with my attitude, and that I was to some extent responsible for the mishap. But when one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one's own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee-not for a single moment-that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer—at any rate, not the right things. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead. 

It was only after the illness that I understood how important it is to affirm one's own destiny. In this way we forge an ego that does not break down when incomprehensible things happen; an ego that endures, that endures the truth, and that is capable of coping with the world and with fate. Then, to experience defeat is also to experience victory. Nothing is disturbed— neither inwardly nor outwardly, for one's own continuity has withstood the current of life and of time. But that can come to pass only when one does not meddle inquisitively with the workings of fate.

297

Pass through the dry place

 From "Stages of Monastic Life," by Norman Fischer.

The fifth stage, the dry place, we get to bit by bit without knowing it. Because we are never perfect in our letting-go to the healing winds of time. In a subtle way we hold on to our life even while we have given it up entirely in renunciation. We don't really escape our ancient conditioning. This subtle fact is not announced to us in a dramatic way, and we may not notice it. We go on practicing sin-cerely, seemingly going deeper and deeper with our renunciation, becoming more and more settled in the life of the dharma. But this becomes exactly the problem. We are too settled. We seem to be getting a little bit dull, a little bit bored. We've lost the edge of our seeking and searching mind and are feeling fairly comfortable. We have a position in the community, we are an experienced person, a respected member. We have a good grasp of the teachings, or at least we have heard them so often that we seem to grasp them. We can't go back into our old life, and yet there seems nowhere to go forward to. We are stuck.

Fear arises. Fear of never realizing or even glimpsing the path; fear of the world we have left behind; fear of what we ourselves have become. Sometimes none of this surfaces. We go about our business in the monastery, feeling OK, but actually dying a little bit more every day. Up until now our path may have been difficult at times, yet we have always been growing and learning. But at this point we have few difficulties and we have stopped growing and learning. This is exactly the problem. And we have mistaken the laziness or dullness that covers our fear for the calmness that comes of renunciation. It's true that our mind is calm, but it is a dark rather than a bright calm. Our creativity, our passion, our humanness, is beginning to leave us, little by little, and often we have no idea that this is happening.

If we can pass through the dry place-which is always done in the company of and with the help of others, and usually occurs spontaneously, for no reason at all-there is an opening into the simple joy of living the religious life every day. Even when the monastery has great controversies and problems, as any group of people will have, these no longer have a stickiness that catches us. We can enjoy being with the others but don't need to feel compelled by them. The quiet meditation periods, the daily work, the sky and earth of the place where we live and practice, all of these things take on a great depth of peacefulness and contentment. We come to appreciate very much the tradition to which we now truly belong, we feel a personal connection to the ancients whom we see as people very much like ourselves. Texts that formerly seemed arcane or luminous now seem biographical. We are grateful for the place where the monastery is located, for the people now and in the past who founded and support it. Our life becomes marked by gratitude. We delight in expressing it wherever and in whatever way we can. This is the sixth stage, the stage of appreciation.

Little by little this appreciation, which begins as a religious gratitude and is private and quiet and joyful, becomes more normal and ordinary. We begin to take a greater interest in the practicalities of caring for the monastery, and in doing so we begin to notice how marvelous are all the people with whom we are practicing. We see their many faults, of course, just as we see our own faults, which remain numerous. But as we forgive, and are even grateful for our own faults, we forgive and are grateful for the faults of others. We see others as they are, but despite this-or because of it-we love them, as we love the sky and the trees and the wisdom of our practice tradition. This love is different from the love we have known before, because this love doesn't include much attachment. We are willing to let people, places, and ideas go. In fact, this willingness to let go is the most essential part of our love. We know that we will eternally be with these people and that wherever we go we will see these same people, even if we never see them again. So we don't need to fear or worry. We are willing to see them grow old or ill, and die, and to care for them and to bury them and to take joy in doing this. 

On design, education

Monet, Sunrise

Sara Hendren introduces her newsletter as follows:

This is undefended / undefeated, a newsletter by Sara Hendren on design, education, disability, technology, and related ideas.

The listing reminds me of how, on a college department's website, a professor will list his or her areas of study.  It seems like a worthwhile reflection to reflect on what your current "areas of study" are.

Related: I have some post about someone's "doing now" (or now doing?) page of his blog.

I have also been thinking about making a 9x9 table on the blog as a way to contain: who are my current TEACHERS.  

What are my "areas of study"?  What am I doing now?  Who are my teachers?

Love is something precious and brief

 

In essay "Falling in Love."

When we fall in love... 

We are overcome with a warm and enthusaatic feeling that cannot be denied and that will distract us day and night.  We exist in a special zone of delight as a result of this encounter with the unexpected force of love.  All songs, soap operas, and most stories feed on whatever memory or longing we have for this feeling.

Unlike anything else we think or experience, bodhichitta is not a creation of the ego: we don't decide to fall in love with our mate or our child; it is something that happens to us willy-nilly, a force of nature whose source is wholly unknown. The sutras call it "unproduced," which is to say, unconditioned, unlimited. 

When we see a baby, when we look at the face of our beloved, we know that the way we've been conditioned to perceive the world isn't right: the world is not a fearful and problematic challenge; it is, instead, a beautiful gift, and we are its center always.

All things are impermanent, created fresh each moment, and then gone. This being so, the miracle of love between two people, or within a family, is something precious and brief. In fact, any human relationship is brief.  We are together for a while and then inevitably we part. To love someone truly is to recognize this every day, to see the preciousness of the beloved and of the time we have together, to renounce any clinging need for or dependency on the other, and to make the effort to open our hands, so that instead of holding on we are nurturing and supporting.

Escape the madness

“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”

—Graham Greene

Splitting an Order by Ted Kooser

Splitting an Order

I like to watch an old man cutting a sandwich in half,

maybe an ordinary cold roast beef on whole wheat bread,

no pickles or onion, keeping his shaky hands steady

by placing his forearms firm on the edge of the table

and using both hands, the left to hold the sandwich in place,

and the right to cut it surely, corner to corner,

observing his progress through glasses that moments before

he wiped with his napkin, and then to see him lift half

onto the extra plate that he asked the server to bring,

and then to wait, offering the plate to his wife

while she slowly unrolls her napkin and places her spoon,

her knife, and her fork in their proper places,

then smooths the starched white napkin over her knees

and meets his eyes and holds out both old hands to him.

From Splitting an Order. Copper Canyon Press, 2014.

 

Middle Season #10 - 2024

 

Hyacinths in Spring Rock, budding lilac bushes by work, maple helicopters by work, pear (?) blossom by work, tulips right at back door.

Limiting Virtues

William Rawn Associates

Sara Hendren, in her Undefended, Undefeated newsletter, writes about "limiting virtues."  The subtitle of the posting is "freedom to" and "freedom from" in the cafe, church, and library... Here, she writes about the cafe:

Faro café, in Harvard Square, gets its name from the Spanish word for “lighthouse,” and it’s got a no-laptops policy that is gently, but strictly, enforced.

You can look at your phone. You can use a little gaming tablet. But they’ve outlawed laptops — upright and rectangular cognitive anchors that suck all energy toward themselves. Multiplied across a room, laptops erect an office where a café had been. And Faro is trying to keep the office at bay.

But the office-style café is really great, you say. It is! You can go a few doors down in a couple directions and find some good ones. But Faro has their little manifesto printed and hung on one wall — unobtrusive, easy to miss — and they just want something else happening in the space.

I sent my architecture students to Faro and two other nearby sites this spring — a scavenger hunt to find some of the “limiting virtues” embedded in buildings. I got inspired by David McPherson’s The Virtues of Limits, where he lays out humility, reverence, moderation, contentment, neighborliness, and loyalty as virtues that constrain us in order to set us free.

All these virtues are laudable, surely, but not exactly high on the aspirational list in a culture more enamored of the active virtues, like courage and magnanimity. I wanted students to see where a built space takes away some freedoms — enforcing the moderation and contentment that mitigates all-screens-all-the-time, for example — and thereby opens up other freedoms. A no-laptops policy means you can’t get a certain kind of work done, but it does mean everyone present will be a little more eyes-up-and-talking, or maybe absorbed by a book or notebook. The activities will be at the speed of the body, one to another. Is it nostalgic and precious? Maybe. But it’s not the only café in town to make this move, and I think there’s some signal there. Faro started out with no-laptops only on weekends, and the policy was welcome enough to make it a daily norm.

Solar Eclipse

 

Crazy crescent shadows of a tree.

pinhole camera of a sheet of paper with round holes cut in it.

How do we love rightly and teach others to love rightly?

link

Alan Jacobs references this NYT article about how terrible tech is for kids in school and says that "everyone knows" this, along with a number of harmful things that we do.  The blog post begins with:

Reading this Jessica Grose piece — so similar to ten thousand other reports made in recent yers — on the miseries induced or exacerbated by digital technologies in the classroom, I think: Everyone knows all this.

The post ends with:

So our problem is not a lack of knowledge; it’s a deficiency of will and a malformation of desire. St. Augustine explained it all to us 1600 years ago: My actions are determined by my will, and my will is driven by what I love. We do badly by our children because we do not love them sufficiently or properly; we do badly by our neighbors for the same reason; we do badly by ourselves for the same reason, because narcissists — and one of the things everyone knows is that all the forces named above breed narcissists — do not rightly love themselves. 

Those of us who care about the future of our children, our neighbors, and ourselves don’t need to repeat what everyone already knows. We need to devote our full attention to one question and one question only: How do we love rightly and teach others to love rightly? If that’s not our constant meditation, we’re wasting our time. 

C.G. Jung Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Carl Jung artwork

Notes:

On "the only beautiful thing"

Here all the furniture was good, and old paintings hung on the walls. I particularly remember an Italian painting of David and Coliath. It was a mirror copy from the workshop of Guido Reni; the original hangs in the Louvre. How it came into our family I do not know. There was another old painting in that room which now hangs in my son's house: a landscape of Basel dating from the early nineteenth century. Often I would steal into that dark, sequestered room and sit for hours in front of the pictures, gazing at all this beauty. It was the only beautiful thing I knew.

My self-assurance was increased and diminished at the same time

about his parents] She always seemed to me the stronger of the two. Nevertheless I always felt on her side when my father gave vent to his moody irritability. This necessity for taking sides was not exactly favorable to the formation of my character. In order to liberate myself from these conflicts I fell into the role of the superior arbitrator who willy-nilly had to judge his parents. That caused a certain inflatedness in me; my unstable self-assurance was increased and diminished at the same time.

On "Why, then, I must get to work!" 31

But when I returned home everything was as before. One doctor thought I had epilepsy. I knew what epileptic fits were like and I inwardly laughed at such nonsense. My parents became more worried than ever. Then one day a friend called on my father. They were sitting in the garden and I hid behind a shrub, for I was possessed of an insatiable curiosity. I heard the visitor saying to my father, "And how is your son?" "Ah, that's a sad business," my father replied. "The doctors no longer know what is wrong with him. They think it may be epilepsy. It would be dreadful if he were incurable. I have lost what little I had, and what will become of the boy if he cannot earn his own living?" I was thunderstruck. This was the collision with reality.

    "Why, then, I must get to work!" I thought suddenly.

    From that moment on I became a serious child. I crept away, went to my father's study, took out my Latin grammar, and began to cram with intense concentration. After ten minutes of this I had the finest of fainting fits. I almost fell off the chair, but after a few minutes I felt better and went on working.

    "Devil take it, I'm not going to faint," I told myself, and persisted in my purpose. This time it took about fifteen minutes before the second attack came. That, too, passed like the first.

    "And now you must really get to work!" I stuck it out, and after an hour came the third attack. Still I did not give up, and worked for another hour, until I had the feeling that I had overcome the attacks. Suddenly I felt better than I had in all the months before. And in fact the attacks did not recur. From that day on I worked over my grammar and other schoolbooks every day. A few weeks later I returned to school, and never suffered another attack, even there. The whol bag of tricks was over and done with! That was when I learned what a neurosis is.

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I had another important experience at about this time.... suddenly, for a single moment I had the overwhelming impression of having just emerged froma dense cloud. I knew all at once: now I am myself! It was as if a wall of mist were at my back, and behind that wall there was not yet an "I."  But at this moment I came upon myself. Previously I had existed, too, but everything had merely happened to me. Now I happened to myself. Now I knew.: I am myself now, now I exist. Previously I had been willed to do this and that; now I willed.  This expereinece seemed to me tremendously important and new: there was "authoirity" in me.  

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Somehere deep in the background I always knew that I was two persons. One was the son of my parents, who went to school and was less intelligent, attentive, hard-working, decent, and clean than many other boys.  The other was grown up -- old in fact -- skeptical, mistrustful, remote from the world of men, but close to nature, the earth, the sun, the moon, the weather, all living creatures, and aboe all close to the night, to dreams, and to whatever "God" worked directly in him.  I put "God" in quotation marks here. For nature seemed, like myself, to hae been set aside by God as non-divine, although created by Him as an expression of Himself.  Nothing could persuade me that "in the image of God" applied only to man.  In fact it seemd to me that the high mountains, the rivers, lakes, trees, flowers, and animals far better exemplified the essence of God than men with their ridiculous clothes, their meanness, vanity, mendacity, and abhorrent egotism -- all qualities with which I was only too familiar from myself, that is, from personality No,. !, the schooolboy of 1890. Beside his world there existed another realm, like a temple in which anyone who entered was transformed and suddenly overpowered by a vision of the whole cosmos, so that he could only marvel and admire, forgetful of himself.  Here lived the "Other," who knew God as a hidden, personal, and at the same time surpa personal secret. Here nothing separated man from God; indeed, it was though the human mind looked down upon Creation simultaneously with God.  

88 the birth of the shadow 

100 brick wall of traditional views. 

101 I was able to study Kant on Sundays. Also Nietzsche

112:

With my work at Burghölzli, life took on an undivided reality-all intention, consciousness, duty, and responsibility. It was an entry into the monastery of the world, a submission to the vow to believe only in what was probable, average, commonplace, barren of meaning, to renounce everything strange and signifi-cant, and reduce anything extraordinary to the banal. Henceforth there were only surfaces that hid nothing, only beginnings without continuations, accidents without coherence, knowledge that shrank to ever smaller circles, failures that claimed to be problems, oppressively narrow horizons, and the unending desert of routine. For six months I locked myself within the monastic walls in order to get accustomed to the life and spirit of the asylum, and I read through the fifty volumes of the Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie from its very beginnings, in order to acquaint myself with the psychiatric mentality. I wanted to know how the human mind reacted to the sight of its own destruction, for psychiatry seemed to me an articulate expression of that biological reaction which seizes upon the so-called healthy mind in the presence of mental illness. My pro-tessional colleagues seemed to me no less interesting than the patients. In the years that followed I secretly compiled statistics on the hereditary background of my Swiss colleagues, and Gained much instruction. I did this for my personal edification as well as for the sake of understanding the psychiatric mentality .