Meditations

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When I see a creature—a spider, a squirrel, a salmon, a deer—I see the beauty wrought by evolution, how natural selection, like a kind of sieve, has over millions of year sifted the traits of this creature. Watch how it scurries, swims, leaps. Its legs, its fins, its tail. They are finely crafted beings.

A famous actor once said, 'We're all complex.' While I think this is true in that we each of us are a uniqueness and a potential. But complexity is built. It is built through an awareness and a thoughtfulness and by actions that align with an enlightened ethics. 

The ego is insidious. Don't let it rule you and direct your actions. Always bring yourself back to humility. Therein lies wisdom. 

Socialism and capitalism are economic systems that represent a dichotomy of human nature. On the one hand, we are inclined to support one another and work together for the benefit of the whole, in particular to help those who are weaker or disadvantaged. This is the spirit of socialism. On the other hand, we are inclined to individual effort and creativity. By bringing our product or service to market and competing with others' products and services, we benefit both ourselves and the whole. This is the spirit of capitalism. Either, taken to an extreme, lead to unjust societies. But where to find the balance? We must first resist the temptation to become ideologues, which may be defined as a failure to see the utility in the other side.

Unlike watching video, reading requires effort. It's not passive. You move through a text at the pace you decide. You go back and reread a sentence. You pause to reflect, to decipher meaning. With a longer text, we synthesize what we're reading with what we read earlier. By the act of reading, we  integrate understanding in a way that watching cannot. True, you can be an active observer, but the default is passivity. Not so with reading. 

Kindness is key. It does not mean just being nice. Kindness can require a difficult conversation, one that may cause pain and discomfort. Take kindness as a primary value. It will frame your words and actions. 

Should we tell boys not to cry? The goal is to raise the boy into a strong man. We don't want the boy blubbering at a scraped knee. But we also don't want the boy who, when he feels, whether sadness, joy, grief, inspiration, pride, to compartmentalize and cut off the feeling. A boy, a man, a human is strong if he feels, if he feels fully. If he gives his emotions full range. This doesn't mean he lets his emotions make a mess of him. And, ironically, repressing emotions will, eventually, make a mess of him. 

There is nothing so effective as creating your own systems.

A good exercise: when you find an insightful quote, write it down in your own words. The act of writing will etch it more thoroughly in your mind.

Journalism is slow. Social media is fast. Fact-checked reporting can't possibly keep up with the speed and volume of posts by those with large followings. The news cycle has also accelerated. A post twenty-four hours ago is old news. Looking to be informed is like standing on the bank of a swollen river, churning and rushing and turbid. 

Starting is the key in everything. Think of a behaviour as like the firing of a neuron. A neuron has a threshold potential. Unless a minimum voltage is achieved, nothing happens. But if the minimum voltage passes the threshold, there is an action potential. The neuron fires. It's all or nothing. When you're only thinking about doing some task, you're below the threshold potential. Your job is to get yourself over that threshold. If it's a workout, maybe it's putting on your running shoes. If it's writing in your journal, maybe it's writing the first sentence. The good news is that with repeated firing of a neuron, it fires more easily. 

A spider is born knowing how to spin a web. Its intelligence is an ancient code translated into an elegant ballet and craft. All living things have such intelligences. We call them instincts, yet we too easily dismiss them even ourselves as we consider our thinking minds superior. 

Wouldn't we all live in a better world if we acknowledged and nurtured our erotic natures?

Morality is founded upon the fundamental truth that we have freedom and the capacity to exercise choice. 

Dreams show the power of the human mind. In a dream your mind creates moment by moment a story populated by actors who are perfect facsimiles of real people in your life. Your mind creates all of this and your disbelief is suspended until you wake.

You are right if you believe that skipping a single bout of work doesn't matter. But you'll only ever face a single bout of work. Therefore, you're right, too, if you believe that a single bout of work matters. You must choose in which way to be right. 

The fact that people seldom change in fundamental ways doesn't change the fact that people are capable of such change.

Consciousness is the greatest mystery. As much as we know of the materiality of our brains, of neurons and neurotransmitters, this knowledge will never explain the immateriality of consciousness.

The body is the most conspicuous example of how we may transform ourselves by discipline. We can gain muscle, flexibility, speed, endurance by our efforts. 

Just as we may build our body from a slack form to a muscular form, we may also build our minds. And just as with the body, our mind grows or decays by what we consume and how we exercise it.

Beware of gurus who teach us to always be present without regard for the future. While being present is important, so too are longterm planning and strategic thinking necessary for our wellbeing and our flourishing. 

Beware of gurus who teach us that the self is an illusion and is the cause of our suffering. While we must be wary of the pitfalls of our ego, we should regard our selves as our primary project. Our desires and dreams are to be embraced and pursued.

In quiet moments, I recall the memories of childhood when my mother and father were younger than I am now. Riding on my father's shoulders as he wended down a path through the deep cool forest and came out into the warm sunlight and the flat river and its riverbed of ochre stones. The memory makes me think of my father's innocence. 

Our galaxy may have up to 200 billion stars. This exceeds the total number of people who have ever lived, estimated at 117 billion. Now think upon the number of galaxies in the observable universe, estimated at two trillion.

What's the difference between justice and revenge? Our thirst for justice evolved for good reason. We would be stomped out of existence without it. Revenge is delicious. Yet revenge goes beyond justice when it is the only end, when all may be sacrificed to its consummation. Justice seeks redress. It calls for a new, better world once meted out.

Extinguish the words 'very' and 'really' from your vocabulary. They subtract rather than add to the weight of your words.

To be happy, we must compartmentalize the world. We do this to keep the tragedy of the world at bay. There is too much to mourn in the world. There is too much to mourn in our human history. 

Racism is lazy thinking.

Ours is the age of distraction. 

To be a good teacher, be a good storyteller.

As soon as we make an ethical decision, our rationalizations for that decision quickly follow.

Develop situational awareness. Use all the senses. Survey the terrain. Know where the exits are. A little paranoia is a good thing. It can save lives.

In the age of distraction, we miss the meditation on beauty. 

We harken back to our younger selves and think if only we had known then what we know now. Yet the greatest advantage of this retrospective is detachment. What if we brought this same detachment to our present selves?

Michelangelo sculpted the statue of David from a block of bianco ordinario marble. He believed that David already existed within the block of stone. He, the artist, would chisel layer by layer to reveal David. We may take this approach in our projects. All things exist in potential. Through our labours and vision, we bring them forth in reality. Think of beautiful David, of the subtle suggestion of bone beneath skin, of veins that branch on the inside of the forearms and trace the top of the hands, all expressed in marble. And think upon what we may bring into being.

Take time as you fall asleep to run through the scenes of your day. Engrave the moments with the people in your life in your mind. Treasure your memories, polish them, and in moments of tranquility recall them. In the end, they are all you have. 

Childhood is its own wondrous stage of life. As parents, we can get into a single-minded perspective of raising our children into adults. But let's also pause and observe our children when they are two or five or nine or twelve and understand that childhood is not just an on-ramp to adulthood. Childhood to adulthood is like the caterpillar to the butterfly — it is its own unique creature.