Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I’m finding my phone to be a painfully easy distraction that’s sucking away too much of my time. I need it to write this post. I need it to meditate. I need it to listen to music while I work out. I need it to listen to my book. These are all legitimate reasons to ‘need’ my phone.
I don’t ‘need’ it beyond that, but it still ends up in my hands, it still takes my attention. It still sucks time out of my day.
I’m realizing that I need to put it down more, tuck it away more, leave it alone more.
I spent some time weeding my in-laws garden yesterday. I put on headphones and an audiobook, and just went to work for a few hours. It’s not a job I have to do often and so I enjoyed the process, but I wouldn’t enjoy gardening every day and weeding all the time.
It’s interesting to see how weeds can really blossom when they find a space to grow and spread. They can take over a section of a garden, spreading far faster and wider than the intended flowers, creating a root system that ensures their return unless the entire plant is removed.
I think addiction is like that in the mind. It takes over a part of the brain and takes root. You can try to remove the addiction, you can do some addiction weeding, but if there are roots of it left behind, you relapse and the addiction returns.
I’ve only ever met one person who had an addiction who I think got all the weeds out. He was not someone who had to fight the addiction daily, he didn’t have to do any more weeding. I asked him about this and he said he filled the space that the addiction held. He planted new seeds.
He found a way to fill the deep seeded needs the addiction gave him. For him it was love, of family and life, which brought him more joy than the addiction. He grew a new garden that prevented the weeds from taking root.
I have not dealt with addiction, I have not had to fight the battle that others fight daily… but I wonder if the idea that every day you must weed out the addiction is the best model? Are there ways to plant new gardens so the old weeds can’t take hold?
There are some therapies that seem to be able to do this, like the guided use of psychedelics, which seem to rip all the weeds out; Which rewire the brain so that weeds can’t grow where they used to take root.
I know programs like the 12-step program work and have saved many people from addictions, but they are designed to teach you that you must weed daily for the rest of your life… I wonder what other ways there are to weed, such that life can go forward with new healthy roots that reduce the need for daily work?
Any easy question to ponder when you aren’t the one that has to do the weeding every day.
The objective is to be right. The objective is to succeed.
But if you’re always winning, you’re undershooting your potential.” ~ James Clear
I’ve written about this as it relates to school a number of times… but I like this slant of ‘undershooting potential’. Our school system is filled with smart students who know exactly what to do to get ‘A’s. They jump the provided hoops, they strive for the 95%, rather than 88, or 90. They complain to the teacher about the 96% because they want 98. They know how to play the marks game, and yet they are nowhere near their potential.
No, I’m not saying that their potential is actually 100%… I’m saying the entire system allows them to underperform. They do a dance to earn an extra 2-3%, they read and re-read the criteria to make sure they hit all the targets, they spend an extra hour editing their work. But that work is nowhere near their potential. They are doing work that shows their answer is right. They are proving they can succeed at the task. They are winning at the good marks game, but they are undershooting their potential.
They are answering the same questions as their peers, they aren’t developing their own questions.
They are responding to questions that have a clear and definitive answer, they aren’t trying to solve complex problems with no clear answer.
They are following textbook experiments with pre-defined procedures which have been replicated thousands of times with the same results, they aren’t testing their own unknown variables.
“In no way am I suggesting getting good grades is a bad thing; that would be foolish. Getting good grades is not the problem. Allowing grades to dictate one’s life is.
When you chase marks, good marks are the goal. Many students can play that game without really hitting their potential. The problem isn’t wanting good grades, these are still needed to pursue future dreams. The problem is a system where students always succeed without knowing what their potential is. I’ve said before that this is an injustice:
Every student will encounter failures later in life, ‘in the real world’, so if we don’t challenge them in school, we have not given them the tools to face adversity later on. The question we have to ask ourselves is, “Are we challenging students enough, so that they are maximizing their learning opportunities?”
The pursuit of an extra couple percent on a cookie-cutter assignment with uniform cookie-shaped answers is a system designed to allow students to undershoot their potential.
Students need to design their own learning challenges, and learn to fail and to overcome those failures along the way.
A couple days ago I wrote: The paradox of religion, and this morning Miguel Guhlin responded with an insightful post: Skirting Paradox. I encourage you to not just read the post, but also to follow the links… grab a coffee and dig in, if you have any interest in faith and religion, this is a piece you’ll want to read and reflect on.
Here is my comment response, but it does not stand alone, it sits in reflection to Miguel’s thoughts and ideas and if you choose to read only one of the two, read Miguel’s thoughts above rather than mine below.
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Miguel, thank you for sharing such an insightful post! It took a while to read because I paused to go to every link. I appreciate your links to scripture and your perspective on them. I wrote this back in March,From Faith or With Faith.
In honesty I did not remember writing this when I wrote the post above… the consequence of writing every day is that I often repeat concepts months later, not remembering what is unexpressed versus written thoughts in my mind. But the slant in the link is a little different, less harsh, less of an attack on religion (which I was concerned about, but you saw through in your response). This previous writing reminds me of a conversation I recently had with a religious colleague, whom pre-covid I often spent time with speaking of and about religion. In this conversation I said to him at one point: (paraphrasing)
When I share my atheistic points, they are not intended to convert you. I do not perceive atheism as a religion to adopt, simply a lack of religion… there is no intent to change your mind on your faith… in fact I see how your faith grounds you and I see no benefit in you not believing what you do.
But that is a conversation between two educators, two public school principals, both of whom do not share their religion/beliefs with students. This does not change the ideas above that you succinctly reduced to:
“What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what [evil] it does.”
That is the thesis statement. That is the problem today, be it with evangelical beliefs on abortion versus the liberty of women over their bodies in the US; Or warring Shiites versus Sunnis in the Middle East; Or Chinese versus Tibetans in Asia; Or… Or… Or… the list is almost endless. Why would a benevolent, all-knowing, and un-interfering God want His/Her worshippers to impose their beliefs on others? When two people of differing faiths squabble, no finger of God comes waving down upon one of them. When that squabble leads to the use of swords or guns, no hand of God shields the supposed Righteous One. Instead, Man’s evil against Man is shed, and the God they love is no longer represented in their actions.
And there in lies the problem of religion, it does not remain in the ‘respective closets’ you mention. Instead, it manifests in hatred of the heathen non-believers. In fact, the wrath of God on non-believers in scripture is what turned me away from religion. I wondered as a teen, “What kind of cruel God would do this?”
~ Coffee after Class
“What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what [evil] it does.”
Faith in God will not ever end, but maybe we can find a humanist… (I fear saying Humanist with a capital ‘H’, for this too can become dogma worth fighting to protect)… maybe we can find a humanist approach to faith that invites love of life and liberty, dialogue not conflict, and faith without evil.
There are still a few things I need to do before I go full into summer mode. Most I’ll get done this week, but a few items will drag into next week. But I’m already feeling distracted and like I’m slowing down. I don’t feel very efficient right now.
Part of this is the routine woes that I already spoke about. I have tried to keep my routines, but it’s 6:30am and I’m usually done writing and meditating by now. I’ve already pushed my workout later in the day twice and missed a workout this week, and it’s only Thursday.
Part of me knows it has been a long year and I’m partially checked out, which is easy to do going to a building where there are no students or teachers, and even my secretaries have been relocated for summer. Part of me feels like I’m just being lazy. No matter how I look at it, I’m less productive than I should be. Yesterday I checked two things off of my ‘To Do’ list and I added two more. Today I hope to add nothing new and just check off a few more.
One item I’m excited to do will have to wait. It’s a series of lessons I’m developing based on James Clear’s book Atomic Habits. I want to create 10 two-to-three minute lessons to run over 2 weeks, with a goal of students starting a good habit that they decide on. My whiteboard in my office has had most of the concept and plan on it all year, but I really need some uninterrupted planning time to get it from idea to reality, and my ‘to do’ list is too big of a distraction right now. Still, I’m excited to get this ready for September, and I know I’ll be coming into my office to get it done over the break.
But for right now, I need to stay in work mode and get stuff done. Summer holidays won’t feel like holidays until I can put my ‘away from office’ notification on my email. Until then, I need to push summer mode to the side.
I know people of faith. Good people. Jews, Muslims, Christians. Good people all. Faith can be a good for people, it can anchor them, it can ground them. It can build community and a sense of belonging. But there’s a catch. It’s a big catch: Religion is only helpful to good people. That’s right, religion doesn’t make people good, it fosters the good in already good people.
Meanwhile, religion is used by bad people. Bad priests who prey on believers. Foolish people who take words from ancient texts literally. Weak people who feel hopeless and lost. And sometimes it even takes good people and clouds their judgement, turning their faith into misguided devotion.
When good and smart people who contextualize religious teachings with a morality that anchors them and their faith leave that faith, they do not suddenly become bad people. The religion isn’t a necessary part of being good. But religion is often used to to harm ‘others’; to ostracize and attack those that don’t fit. The crusades, military jihadists, ethnic cleansing, these are examples of how religious beliefs undermine morality as opposed to foster it. Man’s inhumanity against Man has often been driven by faith.
If religions were to suddenly disappear, would there be more or less violence in the world? How many good people would suddenly fall from grace? On the other hand, how many blindly devout and misguided people would suddenly have no need to harm non-believers?
Today, more hate is promoted by religion than love. This is the paradox of religion: Good people will be good without their faith, bad people will not be as bad without scriptures to misinterpret and blindly follow. What religion does to support good people is grossly outweighed by what it does to co-opt the weak, draw them in, and have them blindly follow the misguided religious teachings of men and women who misinterpret old and outdated texts.
Has religion helped some people? Yes. Absolutely. But at what price? How many have died in the name of their or other’s religions? How many continue to die? To hate? To fight? To abuse believers? To impose their beliefs on non-believers? All in the name of God.
I saw a post on LinkedIn yesterday that was more like a post you’d see on Facebook. It was essentially a ‘proud’ American saying, ‘This is my Pride flag’ with a picture of an American flag. And while I see no issue with an American being proud of their flag, I think that’s a purposefully insensitive way to express it. The comments were quite literally written from two fractured camps, and included comments that discussed women’s rights and abortion.
Then today there was this LinkedIn story, “TikTok has a new reigning champion. Khaby Lame, a 22-year-old Senegalese-born creator, became the most-followed person on TikTok last night, surpassing American TikTok star Charli D’Amelio”, and the headline was, “World’s most followed person on TikTok, Khaby Lame, is a Hafiz and practicing Muslim.” I’ve seen previous articles emphasizing that he was a factory worker. In both cases there were comments asking why his religion or his poor beginnings mattered?
What I find frustrating to see is how many people miss the point:
You can be proud of a country without intentionally belittling the pride flag. When Charli D’Amelio became the number one person followed on TikTok the storylines did not have the same emphasis as Khaby Lamé’s. I’m not sure if anyone can tell you her faith based on headlines written about her?
But it’s not just the headlines, it’s all the people that are in the comment section who also miss the point. That’s what concerns me. The headlines are a problem, but so too is the fact that so many people not only don’t see the problem with the headlines but actually support them.
Headlines matter, and when they miss the point, so do many that read the message.
Strum a guitar near another guitar and the second guitar’s strings start to vibrate.
Jim Rohn says that ‘you are the average of the five friends you hang around with’. This resonates with me. This resonates like the guitar.
Even these words combine to resonate as you read them, some with understanding, some with agreement, some with doubt, some with disagreement… Once read, the words resonate.
What do you do when you come across someone that doesn’t resonate? Do you pluck your own strings harder, louder, so that you drown out the sound the other is creating? Do you try to hear what they resonate with? Do you try to find a way to mutually resonate? Do you leave them be?
We can strive to resonate, or we can choose dissonance. Consensus or conflict. We can create music or noise.
I know that I want to positively resonate with others, but I also find myself seeking dissonance and distance, from those that do not resonate with me. Dissonance when others resonate with hate, and harm others. Distance to showboating, antagonists, and stupidity.
Resonance, dissonance, and distance. There is a time and place for all three… but what I seek, what fills my heart is finding ways to resonate with family, friends, and those that I can assist and support. Seeking resonance fills me with harmony and gratitude, and I’m grateful for all the wonderful people that want to resonate with me.
The earth has been around for 4.55 billion years. Homo sapiens for about 200,000 years.
200,000/4,550,000,000 *100= 0.0043956043956
Humans have only been on earth for 0.0044% of the earth’s history. Or if you look at the age of the one universe, 13.78 billion years, humans have only existed for 0.00144% of all time.
For a little more perspective, a single 100 year life is lived for only 0.00000073% of all time. Insignificant. Our lives are not even a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of the universe. Nothing.
Yet for us, it’s everything. It’s all we know. It’s all we have. It’s no wonder people want to believe in an afterlife… why, there simply has to be more… or so the thinking goes. But regardless of your beliefs, this life is unlikely to go past 100 years. Life is so short and fleeting. This begs the questions:
Are you passing time, or are you experiencing it?
Are you completing tasks or creating memories?
Are you treating life like it is nothing, or do you realize that, for you, it is everything?
I have a friend who knows everybody. I’m at a loss to remember the last time I was out with him and we didn’t see someone he knew. Doesn’t matter the city or even country we have been together in: San Diego, Cancun, Philadelphia, and local cities in BC. He likely has 3,000 plus people in his phone contacts, and could probably tell you something personal about 2,500 of them, and easily tell you how he knows the other 500. He doesn’t just add them to a pool of people he sort of knows, he can name them.
I’m not like that. I’m way too much of an introvert, and my memory issue with proper nouns makes it such that if I am at a social event and meet more than 2 people, it’s unlikely I’ll remember their names. It’s hard to remember thousands of names when you can’t remember the names of people you already know. I had an issue yesterday where I was with friends and bumped into someone I have known for a few years, and have had several exchanges online with, including 3 days ago, and I couldn’t introduce them. I had to go to a Microsoft Teams conversation to pull his name up.
The weird thing is, if I don’t see him for a couple months and bump into him again in an unexpected place, and especially if I have the added stress of having to introduce him, it’s likely that once again I won’t be able to retrieve his name. This is one of the few areas in my life where I actually feel anxious. I will even forget the names of the people I’m with when it’s time for an introduction.
The most panicked I’ve ever been in my life was when I was a vice principal and at a ‘meet the parent’ night the principal unexpectedly said to the audience, “And now Mr. Truss will introduce the staff.” I made it through but when one of the teachers I knew best was about 3 introductions away, I was completely drawing a blank and I actually started to sweat. When we were done I told him, “Never do that to me again!” and he was taken aback by my response. He and I did a lot of sharing things out and it wasn’t unusual for him to throw me a task like that, so he had no idea of the terror he put me through.
So if we meet and I don’t know your name, it doesn’t mean I don’t know you. It doesn’t mean I didn’t care enough to know your name, it doesn’t mean I didn’t try. If you give me directions and I ask you to remind me where a main/major street is, even if I travel on it regularly, know that I’m not being lazy, I’m actually in an anxious state where my brain is on overdrive, and the name or your name is not retrievable from my memory bank.
