Beyond Rivalry - simple_living

What 5 Things Do You Do Each Day To Stay Sane?

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 06:00:00 -0400

The question presupposes that you are sane, of course.

My sanity enhancers are:

I work out for 30 minutes almost every day, and I take a 30-minute walk most days

I very rarely weigh myself

I spend time meditating and reflecting

I hang out with my dog a lot

I don't rush

Like Tyler, below, I rarely check my portfolio and I avoid TV ads and commercial radio.

Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution) offers four:

"I try to listen to beautiful music at least once a day, I don't check my portfolio even in the best of times, I hug a loved one at least one more time than was expected (with adaptive expectations this is hard to sustain over time but I have my tricks), and also I avoid television advertisements as much as possible."

You can weigh in at Mindapples (or here of course, in the comments) with your five, and also name 5 famous people you'd like them to pose the question to.

More on the project at the British Psychological Society Research Digest.

Slow Blogging

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 20:01:00 -0400

From Dave at How to Save the World, this descibes my process much of the time:

"The coined term (by Barbara Ganley) is 'slow blogging', but I much prefer the term my friend Chris Lott uses: 'mindful wandering'. [I like both.] The idea is to see blogging, which is really just a new way of recording your thoughts in a diary, as a meditative practice, taking the time to ponder the meaning of what you're reading, thinking and writing, letting your mind meander in thoughtful and creative ways to 'make sense' of it. I find that some of my best blog posts are those I've stopped and restarted several times, allowing time for thoughts to percolate and new ideas to emerge."

For me, blogging has become primarily a way of seeing and expressing connections among various things I read, think, experience, feel, desire, do.

Fermenting

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:13:00 -0400

Malcolm Gladwell writes in the 20 Oct. New Yorker about University of Chicago economist David Galenson's theories of creativity, which Galenson divides into two types, conceptual and experimental. Conceptual geniuses bloom early, experimental geniuses later, not because experimental geniuses are late starters or because they are simply discovered late, but because "they simply aren't much good until late in their careers."

Speaking of Cézanne, the art critic Roger Fry says: "'More happily endowed and more integral personalities have been able to express themselves harmoniously from the very first. But such rich, complex, and conflicting natures as Cézanne’s require a long period of fermentation.' Cézanne was trying something so elusive that he couldn't master it until he'd spent decades practicing."

I think that's me. Not Cézanne, more like Wallace Stevens (49% of whose anthologized poems were written after he was 50), but not that, either. I feel I am practicing something intangible, and creative, sometimes enormously tiring and even monotonous in a certain way, without known product so far. 'Fermenting' and 'elusive' describe it well. Sometimes I feel very frustrated, mostly I feel excited to be part of whatever this experiment is, in some way, and to continue with the brewing metaphor,…

Having

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 10:20:00 -0400

Seems sort of fitting, after thoughts on wanting, to offer (someone else's) thoughts on having. Plus, it showed up in my RSS feeder this morning and I liked it.

At Get Rich Slowly, JD writes an interesting post on having. Having stuff. A few excerpts:

"'You know why you can't get rid of Stuff, don't you?' Kris had asked.

"'Because I want it,' I said.

"'You think you want it,' she said. 'You like the idea of having certain things, but you don't actually use them. You've got dozens of books stacked in the guest room. They've been there since the last time you purged Stuff a year ago. Have you needed any of those books in that time?'
"'No,' I said.

"After I told my friend Amy Jo about our clutter conversation last week, she shared her own thoughts. 'We each have so many interests, and certain things — like books — keep us connected to those interests, or give us the illusion that they do,' she said.

"'But they also clog up our lives and make us less efficient at doing what we are and what we want to do right now. It's hard to let go of the…

RIP Kat Kinkade (1930-2008)

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 09:49:03 -0400

Katherine Kinkade died on 3 July, at age 77 of cancer (some sources says breast, some say bone), at the commune she founded 40 years ago, Twin Oaks, on 123 acres near Charlottesville, Virginia. She sounds like an interesting woman:

"She made enemies. Her impatient style did not always sit well with community members fond of endless discussion and group consensus. Some regarded her as power-hungry and intimidating. In truth, she was more pioneer than hippie, an awkward fit wherever she went, too wayward for conventional society and too managerial for the chaotic 1960s.

"'She was a tough cookie,' Leslie Greenwood, a commune member, wrote on a memorial Web site dedicated to Ms. Kinkade. 'She was not fond of group hugs, had no interest in alternative medicine, nature-centered activities or tofu lasagna.'"

In later years, she briefly lived in Boston and worked as a computer programmer there, returned to Twin Oaks, sang in a church choir (though she's an atheist), and in 2000 moved into a house her daughter bought her in Mineral, Va, where "she rescued stray cats and talked to her flowers," among other things.

WaPo obituary.

(Photo credit: Twin Oaks Community)

Tuesday Bits: Grief, What Moves Through Us, How Will We Be Remembered?

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:17:29 -0400

Some of what moves through us, and how it keeps us moving.

sunlight, air, water, nutrients, blood, instincts, our neurons' electric spark, sensations, perceptions, information, ideas, conceptions, conversations, emotions, communion...

I like it, and I think I like the colours he uses for the words even more.

---

Leroy Sievers (My Cancer) asks how you want people to remember you. My instinctual response is, I don't. Maybe, somehow, in these things Dave Pollard lists, above, that move through us, but without my name attached. Maybe I don't want to be remembered or missed in my absence so much as felt in my presence. Ask me another day and I might respond differently. Sometimes I feel anxious and sad when I think about so much personality and experience (each person's) removed from our midst in an instant, never to be replicated in exactly the same way (or so I believe) ... Of what use was it all, all this striving, all this becoming, all these relationships, all this unique composition of particles, waves, energy, self? Then I answer myself: of no use. That's a calming thought somehow.

I like this aspiration, in the comments: "That I went through my bout with cancer…

What I'm Reading Online - Our Personal Connection To What Is Wrong

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:50:00 -0400

>> SACRALISING DRESS

This article at Anderson Cooper's 360 Blog by a former female Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint, interested me because it seems to concern sacralising behaviour (related post).

"Women lost a lot of rights in 1953. They no longer had any say in who they could marry nor could they choose how to dress. The way this was spun was that since the community had come through the raid so successfully, it was now ready to practice a higher form of God's law. (God is always the explanation when things get more restrictive; change is presented as a prize for being righteous and faithful. We were always told we were worthy of a higher law.)"

She reiterates the idea a little further down the page:

"The clothing also desexualizes women. Our chests are flattened out and any natural shape is hidden.

"We were always told by Warren Jeffs when the dress and choices became more restrictive that is was a sign that 'God loves you so much he wants you to be more like him.' (We believed Warren received direct revelations from God.) What we were losing were rights and any sense of control over our lives and all individuality."

As…

Money Woes - Profiles of Real People

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:35:00 -0400

This series at CNN Money, which presents more than 50 brief, first-person profiles of individuals and families struggling financially with job loss, downsizing, reduced home values, student loans, gas and food prices, etc., is enlightening and disheartening at the same time. I empathised with the stories of many folks; this one really speaks to me.

Working for Justice with Compassion

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 06:20:00 -0500

I really like this interview between teacher, writer, and activist bell hooks and Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön in Shamabala Sun (undated ... timeless?). They speak briefly on many topics: suffering, compassion, hatred and aggression, compassion-fatigue and irritability, dying, blame and accountability, poverty, etc.

It seems fitting at this Martin Luther King time of year to shout a few bits from the rooftops, and into my own ears:

Pema: We may long to end suffering but somehow it paralyzes us if we're too goal-oriented. Do you see the balance there? It's like the teaching that Don Juan gave to Carlos Castenada, where he says that you do everything with your whole heart, as if nothing else matters. You do it impeccably and with your whole heart, but all the while knowing that it actually doesn't matter at all.

bell: Yet it seems very hard for people to fight this racism and sexism without hope for an end to it. There is so much despair and apathy because of the feeling that we've struggled and struggled and not enough has changed.

Pema: The main issue is aggression. Often if there's too much hope you begin to have a strong sense of enemy. Then…

What I've Learned

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 07:10:00 -0500

Actually, what 50-year-old Eric Zorn, at the Chicago Tribune, has learned in his lifetime. These lists seem hard to write -- first, the expansion bit, i.e., how to recall and bring together a lifetime of lessons, and second, the contraction bit, .i.e., how to sift through it and refine it to a small number? -- so for now I'll just use Zorn's list as a memory jogger and say that these things seem worth saying:

1. It's better to sing off key than not to sing at all.

10. Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act. (q.v. NYT article about lack of empathy among physicians)

17. Don't waste your breath proclaiming what's really important to you. How you spend your time says it all.

23. Grudges are poison. The only antidote is to let them go.

39. All the stuff you have lying around that you'll never want, need, wear or look at again? It just makes it harder to find what you do want, need or intend to wear. File it, donate it or throw it out.

Oh, I did read something today that summarises something important, something I'm not…