Monthly Archives: October 2021

One day closer

I am listening to a podcast by Sam Harris titled The Paradox of Death. Paraphrasing him, he says, ‘One thing you can be certain of is that today you are one day closer to death than you were yesterday’. He goes on to say that you can be totally depressed about that thought, or you can turn it around and realize how valuable every moment is.

There is so much we have to be thankful for. So many people we value and appreciate. Do we share (enough) time with them? Do we tell them they are appreciated? Do we worry too much about things that probably won’t ever happen? Do we appreciate the time we have left?

If I were only going to live for 50 more minutes, would the people I leave behind know what I thought of them? If I was going to live for only 50 more days, who would I spend my time with, and why am I not making more of an effort now? And if I lived for 50 more years, would I want to look back and see a life of gratitude or a life of unfilled and unfulfilled moments?

We are all one day closer. We all have the opportunity to cherish the time we have… or squander it.

Process vs results

My personal best on a 10-round Vegas 3-spot target (highest score 300) at 18m (20 yards) is a 289. I’ve done that 3 times now. I got a 288 last Tuesday with all arrows in the gold (score of X, 10, or 9, with an X also being worth 10). Today I shot a 284, but had three 8’s and a 7. I also had three more X’s than Tuesday (which is the bullseye the size of a penny).

Tuesday:

Today:

Take away my last 4 arrows and even with the 8’s I was on par for an equally good round as Tuesday. The problem is the huge lack of consistency.

Both results give me feedback to reflect on. Tuesday tells me that I can keep the arrow in the gold. Today tells me I can hit the X or 10 two-thirds of the time. Both results show improvement, and that I have a lot to approve on. But most of all, they tell me that I need to focus on every shot, and not think about the results. On Tuesday I knew I was shooting well, but I had no idea I was close to my record. Today I let myself slip at the end, because I already had 3 in the red, even though when I was on, I was really on.

Archery is unforgiving. Small mistakes are exaggerated as the arrow moves further away. Distractions and stray thoughts leave me doing things I shouldn’t, like triggering the release with my thumb rather than using back tension. Thinking about my results while shooting actually hurts my results.

It’s all about the process. And when I have a day like today, where I have big movements that end up with me shooting three 8’s and a 7, I think to myself, ‘I just need to keep shooting. 1,000 more arrows, then 1,000 more after that…’

Another year, another Costume

One thing about being in education that’s different than many other jobs is that when Halloween arrives, it’s time to dress up. Every. Single. Year. Costumes are not something you do for that occasional party, it’s a yearly event. 22 years in education, 22 Halloweens in a row dressing up on the school day closest to this special day.

I’m not a huge fan of dressing up, but I jump in and participate. For the second year in a row I’ll incorporate a fun mask into my makeup, so that my safety measures are part of the costume rather than something over top of it. I bought a jagged toothed black mask and I’m going for a creepy black and white theme this year, but just 30 minutes before I start my makeup, I’m still not sure of the exact look I’m going for?

The thing about being an educator and celebrating on the Friday before Halloween is that when you finish work and you are covered in makeup, you look ridiculous doing things like going to the bank, or in my case today, going on a popular hike after school. I’ll probably be the only one with makeup on my face and without the mask, with only my upper half of my face painted, it will look even more silly. But I won’t have time to go home and get the paint off my ears and eyes, and I’d look even worse trying to get most of it off.

Another year, another costume. I might sound like I’m complaining, but I know it’s an event kids love, and I’m happy to join in on the celebration. Happy Halloween, a couple days early!

Junk vs treasure

As we pack up our main floor for our renovation, I’m coming across souvenirs and trinkets from vacations and travels. Some of them have been hidden in drawers and cabinets unseen for years. Do we keep it or throw it away? Does it get put in a box only to be seen again when we unpack after the renovation, and then tuck it in a drawer not to be seen again until we move? Or do we let go of it now?

The saying goes ‘One man’s junk is another man’s treasure’ but when looking at your own stuff, sometimes it is simultaneously both. Do we need 3 sizes of wine glass sets for more than 6 people each? Do we also need the fun set of patterned wine glasses, and the plastic ones for outside? No, we don’t need them. But will we throw or give any away, or will we keep them? Are they worth holding on to?

I suspect we will be keeping a lot more junk than we should. We’ll see value, be it functional or sentimental, and we’ll hold on to too much stuff. I think we would get rid of a lot more items if we had a critical friend helping us and just asking, “Do you really need to keep that?” In most cases the answer would or should be ‘No’, but for my wife and I, many of these things will end up in a box and back into a drawer or cabinet. Hopefully we’ll be a bit more hesitant to keep some of our boxed junk when it’s time to unpack, and these unnecessary items will be given away to find homes in someone else’s house.

But I’m sure of one thing, we are going to end up keeping far more than we should… Maybe not truly a treasure, but not quite considered junk (yet).

Human intersections

Last night I went for a walk with my wife. Minutes from home we were walking on a quiet, empty street that doesn’t have sidewalks. Then a car approached from in front of us. We started to move to the side of the road, and noticed car lights coming from behind us as well. The cars crossed paths right where we were on the edge of the road, having had to slow down to cautiously make space for us and the other car. Then we continued our walk with no cars approaching us from either way until we arrived home.

I find it fascinating how we seem to be drawn, pulled to intersecting points with other people. For the amount of times someone walks by our house, or the front of my school when I arrive before any students, I’m amazed how often I have to wait for a pedestrian to walk cross the driveway before I can make the turn… amazed that as I wait, I can see no other pedestrians for an entire block.

In a car you are turning left and must wait for the one car coming the other way to pass.

At a shopping plaza you go to open a door to a store and the one other person in sight is coming through the door the other way.

On a path in a park, you are walking faster than the people in front of you, and as you go to pass them, other people are approaching from the other way crowding the path at your takeover point.

I think we find ourselves at these intersections at a rate that is greater than probability would suggest… The likelihood of such intersections happen far more than just by chance. Like magnets passing one another, there is a pull towards others, an unseen force that draws us into each other’s path. It isn’t a case of bad timing, it’s not that we are unlucky and forced to slow down, wait, or squeeze by someone else. It’s actually just the opposite. We naturally seek each other out on some unconscious level. We are drawn to human intersections.

Internal clock

When I go to bed, I can set an alarm and the tell myself to wake up before it goes off. I’ll wake up before the alarm goes at an average better than 9 times out of 10. It doesn’t work when I’m napping. It does t work if I’ve had a few drinks. But on a typical morning, I’ll wake up anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 minutes before my alarm.

However, if I wake up and check the time an hour or more before my alarm, what I can’t do is change the time I plan to wake up. It’s like the original time is locked in, and in a half-sleeping state, I lose the ability to change that time.

This morning I woke up an hour and 25 minutes before my alarm and decided, I’ll get up 30 minutes earlier. Closed my eyes and even dreamt about waking up earlier. Then my eyes popped open 2 minutes before the original time I had planned to get up, allowing me to shut off my alarm before my wife had to hear it. No extra 30 minutes for me this morning.

Despite my inability to change the set time during the night, I’m always puzzled and amazed at how I’m able set my internal clock before going to sleep. How does my body/mind know what time it is? If I woke up at exactly the same time every day, I think this would be more understandable. But I vary my wake up time by over an hour on weekdays and wake up another hour plus later on weekends. And I haven’t heard my alarm in over 2 weeks.

With respect to how we’ve evolved, the inventions clocks is such a new novelty, that there is no way it was a necessarily learned behaviour. Being sensitive to light outside our eyelids is a natural cue to let us know it’s time to get up. But the difference between waking up at 4:45 and 5:30, in total darkness, isn’t something our bodies should just know and be able to do.

How does our body know the difference? How are we able to control an internal clock? And how do we keep track of this while we are asleep, unconscious?

Book stacks

As part of our main floor renovation, I moved a bookshelf yesterday. On this shelf I found 4 books that I had put aside to read. On the corner of my desk at work I have another 5. On Audible I have 3 credits, and a large list of books on my wish list, but I am listening to a few books offered for free first, and re-listening to parts of one that I’m developing some lessons for, for my Inquiry Hub students.

I’ve always been a painfully slow reader and so audible has been a wonderful treat. Since I started listening to Audible in 2017, I’ve listened to the equivalent of 1 month and 12 days worth of audio, according to the app. I have 111 books in my collection of which there are only 8 I have yet to read. In that time, I’ve read about 6-7 paper books completely and another 4-6 partially.

My stacks are unlikely to be read… unless I add them to my digital audio stacks. It’s a bit of an awakening to realize this. I don’t read books anymore, I listen to them. For me physical book stacks are nothing more than an audio wish lists. But somehow, I like seeing the stacks, even if I never get to them.

Living in a dream

One of my favourite responses when someone asks me how I’m doing is “Living the dream!”

Yesterday I wrote about how there seems to be many people who think they ‘took the red pill‘ – revealing an unpleasant truth, but they have actually taken the blue pill – remaining in blissful ignorance.

Then this morning I was listening to a podcast and musician Baba Brinkman was quoted as saying, “What we call reality is just when we all agree about our hallucinations.”

This made me realize how much reality right now (for many if not all of us) is literally like being in a dream. Let me explain… In a dream, when something doesn’t fit with reality, it doesn’t always trigger a response.

Examples:

  • You are in a dream talking to someone and turn away, you turn back and now it’s a different person, but having the same conversation.
  • You are in a dream and in it you are in your own house, you change rooms and now you are in a room you’ve never seen before, or even outside.
  • You are in a dream and cars can fly, or you can fly.

In each of these cases, had it been reality, the experience would be jarring, but in a dream it just makes sense.

Well in today’s reality, I think many people are living in a dream. So, you give an anti-vaxer, or a flat earther some profound point that undermines their belief, and what happens? Nothing. It doesn’t interrupt the dream. It isn’t jarring, it doesn’t ‘wake them up’. Their reality includes points and counterpoints that do not trigger a wakeful response. So, the dream can keep going… uninterrupted.

“What we call reality is just when we all agree about our hallucinations.”

The problem today is that too many people are agreeing on hallucinations that just don’t fit our reality; hallucinations that undermine our future reality… and I’m not sure how we can wake them up?

Revisiting

I wrote this here on Daily-Ink a year ago:

— — —

“We are living in a red pill/blue pill moment, except people are colour blind and everyone thinks they are taking the red pill.”

— — —

The Terms Red Pill and Blue Pill refer to a choice between revealing an unpleasant truth, represented by the red pill, or to remain in blissful ignorance, represented by the blue pill. These terms are in reference to the 1999 film The Matrix. ~ Wikipedia

The insightful thing about this is that there are a lot of people who are (unknowingly) choosing the blue pill. This can be summarized by 2 TikToks I’ve seen recently:

1. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8DgTr6X/

2. https://vm.tiktok.com/ZM8DpNoJP/

While these are American references, (welcome to using social media in Canada, that’s what you get), there are many conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxers all over the world that think they’ve somehow taken the red pill, but are colourblind and have ignorantly taken the blue pill.

This is so much more dangerous that people who just choose the blue pill because that’s what they wanted. This is about people steadfastly believing that they have seen behind the (metaphorical) curtain. They “know” the unpleasant ‘Truth’.

Ignorance may be bliss but intentionally seeking out ignorance and claiming it is fact is outright dangerous.

Dangerous. Not mistaken, not misguided, not just ignorant. Dangerous.

Social media has amplified this danger. When Facebook posts with misinformation get shared 5 times as fast and as much as the information debunking the information; When QAnon can constantly change their stance(s) and people still believe, despite how wrong this ‘inside information’ has been; When crackpots that claim to be experts get more views than researchers who actually share the data… this is dangerous.

It’s one thing to choose the blue pill, it’s a whole other kind of scary thing when the blue pill is ignorantly chosen while the taker believes they are taking the red pill.

The stories we believe

We don’t perceive reality. We quite literally make it up. Our beliefs are fiction. It’s not an easy thing to accept. But this, unlike our beliefs, is true.

Religion, politics, relationships, even theories are all based on the knowledge that we’ve either had passed down to us or that we consumed. Relying on other people’s beliefs.

Then we make judgements and then we stand by them. Some are good, some are bad, all are judgements… not reality.

Think of the stories that have been passed down to us. From origin stories to cavemen to great floods. How many people believe that early humans lived at the same time as Jurassic dinosaurs? That’s just one story many people have wrong.

There are so many more. We should be more humble, and less susceptible to stories that don’t move us towards being more loving, caring, and kind people. We should worry less about tribal stories that keep us apart.

Why can’t the stories we choose to believe help us make the world we live in a better place to live? But then again, that’s the reason for religious wars… the strongly held belief in a better world. It’s an endless loop.

We need better, more believable stories, the current ones aren’t working.