Tag Archives: energy

Cycles of energy and interest

This was the first weekend all year that I didn’t shoot arrows. I could have made the time but I didn’t. I’ve also been going through the motions for my workouts, getting my cardio in, but not doing a lot more. I think I need to change things up a bit. I am also finding my daily blog a lot harder to get started each morning, the blank page feels daunting.

I tend to be an even-keeled person who doesn’t hit extreme highs and lows, and so it can be hard to know when I’m feeling low. Often it’s only after I recognize my own lethargy towards the things I enjoy doing that I realize that I’m in a bit of a funk. While there are disadvantages to not feeling the high highs, there are advantages to not feeling the low lows… I can identify where I am and make small adjustments to unstick myself.

I’m going to wake up a bit earlier so I feel less rushed. I’m going to shoot arrows after school 3 times this week. I’m going to give myself a physical challenge that reinvigorates my workouts. I’ve hit a low cycle and I’ve realized it. I’m going to act my way into a new way of thinking, because that’s easier than thinking my way into a new way of acting.

I’m lucky that I’m able to do this, I know many who struggle to do the same, some who simply can’t. They get consumed by anxiety or depression and can not (as opposed to will not) move themselves out of it easily. For those that struggle in this way, we are unhelpful when we tell them to snap out of it, or just to think of something else, or to cheer up.

For them we can be helpful by listening, not judging, by acknowledging, not instructing, and by engaging in active conversations, going for walks, being outside, and being social. We can share our energy and time. I think too often we don’t give people we care about our time.

For me, I need to give myself the time to do things I enjoy… and I need to remind myself that I enjoy these things. It’s like I need a reminder that I get joy out of the things I enjoy. I like shooting arrows, even if my score doesn’t constantly get better. I enjoy writing daily, it’s a positive outlet, not a chore. I enjoy getting my heart rate up and feeling the endorphins of a good quick workout. And I’m blessed that I can cognitively make this shift simply by thinking about it.

And so my workout beckons. I’m going to try my new headphones on my treadmill, then do a light all-around workout keeping my heart rate up the whole time, rather than pushing any one muscle group. And I’ll put my current audio books on hold and listen to some music today.

It’s time to shift into a good cycle, and I’m already on my way simply by writing about it today.

Stop pig wrestling

Like my Papa used to say, “Never wrestle a pig, you both get dirty but the big likes it.”

I’ve shared that quote before and also said, ‘Bad ideas get unwarranted publicity when the battles get messy… and the weak-minded get fuel to oppose good ideas when those with the good ideas act in bad faith. You do not have to ‘turn the other cheek’ but you do have to act in a way that is decent and good, if you want to fight for things that are decent and good.‘

Recently, across many social media platforms, I’ve seen people using the strategy of sharing hurtful, mean, and ignorant comments from internet trolls, and doing one of two things: 1. Calling out the person for being mean (or essentially saying ‘ouch’ or ‘look at this idiot’). Or, 2. Sharing it to launch an attack.

While I get why, and understand that sharing like this can garner sympathy, or feel like a way to vindicate yourself, or attack the attacker… this is a bad idea! It’s pig wrestling.

These people aren’t worth your time. They don’t deserve you, or those who follow you on these platforms, as an audience. Don’t surrender your time and energy to them. They. Aren’t. Worth. It!

Delete the comment, block the idiot.

Let me say that again: You get a rude/mean/nasty comment on a social media post, so what do you do?

1. DELETE 2. BLOCK.

… and move on. They don’t deserve your time; they don’t deserve your attention; they don’t deserve your mental energy. So why give it to them? Why allow them more time in your thoughts than they deserve?

They are pigs. Don’t let them get you dirty just because they like to get dirty. And hey, I get that it’s hard to turn the other cheek sometimes, and if they threaten you in some way, then sure, take it seriously. But most internet trolls are playing a game, they are purposefully trying to engage and enrage you. To steal your time and attention, and to hurt your feelings. The act of mud wrestling with these losers helps them win.

You want to strike back at these mean people making mean comments? Diffuse their energy by not giving them any of yours: Delete. Block. And move on to spend time and energy on people that are better than them.

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Addendum: I’m not suggesting you delete and block people just because they disagree with you, this is only about comments with malice intent. We don’t learn from them but we can learn from people who disagree with us.

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I wrote this a decade ago:

I remember watching The Razor’s Edge years ago. Bill Murray plays Larry Darrell a taxi driver ‘in search of himself’ who at one point serves as an ambulance driver in World War II. His partner/co-attendant Piedmont is a sour man that is bitter and unpleasant.

If memory serves me correctly there are also two wonderfully optimistic, volunteer, British ambulance drivers that work with Larry and Piedmont. In a scene, these two happy-go-lucky ambulance attendants have engine trouble as they attempt to bring injured soldiers to safety while under fire. Stalled, the Brits attempt to repair their ambulance while enemy fire pinpoints their stationary location. Bombs get closer and closer until they blow up the ambulance, killing these two men. Larry is distraught and the bitter Piedmont says a few kind words about how nice these two were and then says, to Larry’s disgust, “They will be forgotten.”

Later, Piedmont is killed (I don’t remember how), and in a monologue Larry talks of this unruly, unkind and cantankerous man and then says, “He will be remembered.”

I was still a teenager when I saw this movie but it has a powerful lasting affect on me. I realized then and there that we tend to pay far more attention to people and things that are negative and annoy us than on the things we should be happy and appreciative about. I’d like to think that this is learned and not human nature. We don’t have to focus on the negative, and we are better people when we don’t.

The energy of the sun

I’m sitting in the morning sun, feeling the rays warm my shoulders and back. I love this feeling. It’s not so hot that I feel I need suntan location, and yet it’s warm enough to bring the heat to my attention.

While energy can’t be created or destroyed, we know it can be transformed from one form to another. The rays of the sun initiate the process of photosynthesis, which creates sugars and gives us the mass of trees. What an amazing thing! But going further, when we say that energy can’t be destroyed, it certainly can be tapped and taken advantage of. There is an incredible abundance of energy in our world. While in a closed system the amount of energy stays constant, we do not live in a closed system.

We live about 150 million kilometres away from our sun, a blazing ball of energy that constantly sends a massive amount of energy our way. It actually sends that energy out in every direction and we get in the way of a infinitesimally small amount of it as the earth sits within gravitational equilibrium of this glowing fireball of power.

It is the earth’s battery, and it is the ultimate provider of light, energy, and life. We’ve only just begun to understand how to tap this power, and one day we will learn to store it in such a way that energy will be almost completely free. How different will our world be then?

On a small yet very significant scale, the poor will have light without kerosene, and formerly forested areas in places that now have scarcely enough wood could be allowed to grow again, without the needy scrounging for firewood. On a large scale, industry could pollute far less with the lack of need of fossil fuels to run machinery.

Imagine a world where energy is literally created out of thin air? Tapped from the power of our sun, and shared wherever needed. It would be a very different world!

The mass of trees

There are many questions that might seem simple but aren’t. For instance, where does the mass of trees come from?

Many people believe it comes from the soil. However, most of a tree’s mass comes from carbon… in the air.

This is one of those tidbits of information that if you know it, it’s not a big deal, but if you don’t, well then you likely either checked the date of this post to see if it was written on April Fools, or you did a Google search.

While it is interesting to dig into the science of this and learn about photosynthesis, and study the exchange of gasses, and what happens to carbon in the process, it’s also wonderful to marvel at the idea of what’s happening: Trees grow and get their size out of the air.

Here’s a quick video that explains it.

Here is another thought about trees. They won’t grow without the energy of the sun doing the work to convert the carbon from the air into the mass of the tree… so when you throw a log into a fire, you are converting energy captured by the sun back into heat energy.

From Wikipedia:

In physics, mass–energy equivalence is the principle that anything having mass has an equivalent amount of energy and vice versa, with these fundamental quantities directly relating to one another by Albert Einstein’s famous formula:

This is a big jump in thinking, but isn’t it interesting that so much of the mystery of life and our universe can be derived from the mass of a tree?

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* Update: See the first comment by Stephen Downes that points out my error in connecting the relationship to the mass-energy equivalent… I should have just left this post at the marvel of trees growing out of air!

Gas in my tank

Yesterday evening was the Inquiry Hub Open House.

Here is a snippet from the ‘Cold Open’ that started the event, a song written by one of our students.

I wrote about the rehearsal and shared it here.

My day started with my meditation at 5:30am and getting to work by 7:20. I got home after the event at just before 10pm. I should have been exhausted, but the event was so rejuvenating! I came home and had a late night 2nd dinner, and was asleep just after 11pm. That should be a wipeout kind of day.

It wasn’t.

Watching our students showcase their school and their passion projects was wonderful. The enthusiasm was contagious. The night filled my gas tank. Sometimes we need events like this to pump some fuel into us, and get us off ‘E’. I’m ready to cruise through the craziness of the month ahead.