I am not someone who gets tired of looking at a beautiful view. If I ever move out of my current home, the view will be a priority. Ideally I would have a view of the ocean.
Large vistas and the open ocean speak to me. I feel energized by them, and yet calmed by them. I can hear the silence of the openness, I can feel the emptiness of the space.
If I can’t find an affordable a place with a view, I guess I’ll just have to prioritize this on my holidays.
Sometimes things don’t go as planned. You think everything is trucking along and life surprises you. Humbles you.
It’s a good reminder to appreciate what you have. We complain about the simplest of things. We don’t take the time to say, ‘thank you’. We focus on the negative instead of all the positives.
Meanwhile there is so much to appreciate and value. And this is what we should focus on.
I have gotten a lot better at leaving work at work over the last few years. I’d happily stay at work some days past 5:30 or 6pm, knowing that when I go home I can let things go until I arrive back at work the next day. That never used to be the case. I used to regularly respond to emails and continue to work well into the night.
What started to change this for me was my Vampire Rule for Email that I started for my staff, essentially never contacting them for anything work related after 6pm (unless like if I was a vampire, they invited me in… If they emailed me a question for example). After doing this for a few years, I realized I deserved the same courtesy. So, I’d stay at work a bit longer, knowing that if I was caught up enough on important matters, everything else could wait until the next day.
It’s a little different in the summer, when I’m off for so long. Today I looked at my growing unread emails, and realized there are a few things I need to deal with. Today I did a few quick ones, but I’ve got a few that need a more thoughtful or time consuming responses. Now it’s in my head and I know that if I don’t deal with them tomorrow, I’m going to spend some mental energy thinking about the fact that I need to respond.
Essentially, I either deal with it quickly, or work just lurks in my brain rent free, with niggling reminders that there is stuff I need to do. Because I don’t have an official work day coming up anytime soon, the idea that there is work on my plate stays on my plate and on my mind until I get it done. My choices are get it done tomorrow morning or think about it the whole weekend.
I’m definitely better at letting go and having mental breaks during the school year, but on holidays I still need to do these mental gymnastics to keep work from lurking in my mind when I should be enjoying my break.
I heard a quote on a podcast today and I really felt it: The podcast is Jimmy Carr on Chris Willamson’s Modern Wisdom:
“The answers you’re looking for is in the silence you’re avoiding. You need fewer inputs, not more.”
How often do we seek answers externally when what we should be doing is looking inward?
When we look back at things in our past, we really don’t see things 20/20. There is no perfect memory, no perfect reflection on things long past. We don’t have 20/20 hindsight vision, it’s more like 10/20.
You remember that amazing moment that you cherish? …You probably don’t remember the struggle to get you there.
You remember that infuriating exchange with someone? …You probably don’t remember the insight you gained, or how you changed your behavior for the better afterwards.
We recall special memories, (hopefully far more good ones than bad ones)… the stories we tell and retell with nostalgia, held up as if they are 100% true. Perfect reflections of what actually happened. But each of these memories are tempered with emotions that require our memories to fit the story we want to tell.
Our we making them up? Yes and no. No we aren’t fabricating them with an intent to misconstrue what actually happened. But yes, we are making them up because we are only choosing to tell the part of the story that fits the narrative.
Hindsight is far from perfect. It’s just us highlighting the parts of our lives that give us meaning and purpose. If it was 20/20 we wouldn’t hold on to the memories the way we do. We need to cloud our vision of past events to make them worth keeping.
It’s hard to believe that we are at the end of the school year. As I reflect back the year seems to be a blur.
The older I get the greater time warps. Looking forward, future events can seem so far away, then looking back the same amount of time can seem like it was just yesterday. A week to wait for something can seem like forever, yet a month can fly by… even if that month included a week that felt like forever.
I often wonder if our brains get affected by our age, not just from a metabolic standpoint but from our perspective. To a 10 year old 5 years is half of a lifetime. To a 50 year old it’s just 10%. So now that I’m in my late 50’s, a year can fly by as a somewhat insignificant amount of time.
It just reminds me to appreciate each day. To find in each day a moment worth remembering, with reflecting on. Or at least a moment worth enjoying. Take away these moments and the days, weeks, and even years slip by… almost unnoticed.
We live in time warps, where the perception of time fluctuates. If we don’t want time to disappear on us, it’s up to us to spend time wisely, and meaningfully.
We need to create moments, not seize them, but rather savour them, find joy in them, and cherish them.
I do not think I’m unique. I don’t believe this is a flex. I’m sure we all have it. We all have that undefined part of us. The part others don’t see. The part that we hide not because we are being candid or elusive. No. It’s not that. It’s… unexplainable. Undefined.
It’s the ‘I’ that only I know. It keeps me grounded, yet it also makes me uneasy. It keeps me centered, yet can also make me a feel a little unbalanced. It boosts my confidence, yet can cripple me with doubt. Undefined.
I know it’s there, but I can’t see it, can’t illuminate it, and yet it is ever-present. It can feed bravery as much as cowardice. It can protect me, and also make me feel vulnerable. It has its own voice, a voice that’s within, yet doesn’t feel like mine. It offers alternative perspectives I didn’t know I had, has questions I should know the answer to, but don’t. Undefined.
It’s not a schizophrenic voice, it’s uniquely mine, but not of one mind. An undefined perspective, an undefinable perspective which I know serves me more than hinders me. I know it’s at the core who I can be without inhibitions, without restraint. Powerful, thoughtful, full of potential… and yet somehow undefined.
Do you ever think about the things that consume your thoughts and how much control you have over those things? What are the things that concern you that you can change versus those that you cannot change? And how does that compare to the time spent on these different things?
There’s a difference between living in anxiety and stress versus living a life you design for yourself. Spending time thinking about, and worrying about things beyond your control is anxiety building and stressful. On the other hand, although you might still feel stressed about making good choices and doing the right thing when you have the ability to control the outcome, this is far more empowering. Worrying about what you cannot change is playing victim to circumstance. Whereas, strategizing about doing well with the things you can change is designing your own circumstances.
Sure, there is still room for doubt. Yes, you might make mistakes. It’s possible to worry too much about things you do have control over… but in all these cases the opportunity is there to alter your own destiny. Meanwhile the person perseverating about things they have no control over is punishing themselves with worry and anxiety with no potential for positive outcome.
What’s within your sphere of control? That’s the healthy place to focus your attention.
I was listening to Chris Williamson on a podcast and he said this quote.
“People think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”
~ First attributed to William Fitzjames Oldham
This reminds me of another often quoted phrase, regarding there being three sides to every argument, the one side, the other side, and somewhere in the middle is the Truth.
I had a phone discussion with a friend recently and we were discussing politics. We saw the topic from two totally different perspectives. I then had face-to-face discussion with another friend about a global issues and again we came from completely different perspectives. In both cases neither of us changed each other’s minds.
In one case I want to be wrong, in the other case I wish that I was wrong, and that my bias, ultimately my prejudice, could be changed. In both cases I recognize that getting new information really didn’t change my view… even though I might be happier and see things more positively if the other person was right.
Am I just a symptom of the times? Am I a victim of misinformation, who is choosing to believe perspectives that are intentionally biased? Am I not able to see the truth somewhere in the middle because I lack perspective, or am I blind to my own prejudice?
It’s getting harder and harder to find narratives that are clearly true. Arguments tend not to be about seeking truth but rather earning airtime, and garnering clicks & shares. The math is such that a false accusation will get millions of social media likes and reshares, but the correction barely gets seen. A fake video gets major attention. A blatant exaggeration or even a lie is simply accepted as close enough to true and accepted.
It doesn’t add up. It doesn’t lead us to the Truth, ‘somewhere in the middle’. No, instead we are left rearranging our prejudices and biases, and sticking to our points of view without ever really thinking.
Sometimes we see things that aren’t there. We’ve all heard the term, “Your eyes deceive you,” and the reality is that there’s a lot more to this saying than we think… because our eyes are always deceiving us.
We don’t see the same range of colours as other species of animals. We don’t see bands of light such as infra red. We have a blind spot that our minds fill in. We see a version of the world around us, and while it’s a fairly accurate perception of the world, it’s still only a rendering of what’s there.
So there are many things that we are unaware of. Things that happen too fast for us to fully see. Even our frame rate for seeing things affects what we see as and interpret. We don’t see a hummingbird’s wings in flight. Do hummingbirds?
We can’t see as far as a hawk. Nor are we as aware of movement in our peripheral vision as hawks. Birds wouldn’t be very good flying hunters if they only had the eyes of a human.
On top of our eyes naturally deceiving us, our mood and disposition further skews what we see. We see half of a glass of water and some consider it half empty while others see it as half full. Different observers can see two people conversing and can feel curiosity, jealousy, or even no interest in the conversation. Each of these perspectives alters the meaning behind what we’ve observed, and ultimately colours the experience for us… changes what we think we see.
I find it an interesting thing to think about. Our visual impression of the world is just that, an impression. It’s a form of deception. We have a specific lens of the world that is not true as much as it is interpreted. And, it is interpreted based on a reasonable facsimile of the world, not a true view of reality.
We are observers with imperfect observation tools, which while deceiving us also gives us a good enough grasp of reality that we can share our experiences… and others find what we experience to be congruent enough with us that we walk around believing we see the world as it is. But really we don’t. We are constantly being deceived by the limitations of our eyes. And for the most part we believe that the world we see is the world that actually exists, not just our limited but effective interpretation.
