Pandemics and Stoics

Knowing that being born is a fatal condition is useless, until we figure out how to live a life worth living, as Mr. Willie Nelson lyrically explains.

Pandemic, a poem by Lynn Ungur

I found this poem on LinkedIn, thanks to Susan Cain. Loved it so much I had to write it out.

Will this pandemic bring us closer together? Will we miss the simplest of things - a pat on the arm, a hug, a kiss, things that make us human - so much that we will over-compensate for it?
Or will this drive us further apart?

Thank you Lynn Ungur for this inspiring verse.

The full text of the poem's (because I know I could barely read my own handwriting 😃

Pandemic
What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down.

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch.

Promise this world your love–
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live.

~Lynn Ungar

Goals

A poem by Ella Wheeler Cox

Effort

It isn't easy and it's worth it.

Everything we really value.

My ability to take reasonable pictures of these wrotings at dawn is one of them. :) A long way to go. Any ideas welcome.

Authenticity

Every evening when I get home, I have to take off the mask(s) I unconsciously wore that day.

I had none on when I woke up that morning.
I put on one of seriousness when waking the kids up, hurrying them to get ready for school.
I put on another one when I got on to public transport, that fear of the virus very visible around me.
A stoic mask when at work - like I didn't care about the decision that will likely decimate a whole team.
I forget to take one off before I put another on.

And on those days when I get home & forget to take the various masks off, those dearest to me can't even recognise me.

I wish for more days when I don't have to wear any masks at all.

Showing up

An act of the professional is being able to show up at work every day, no matter what. 

Professional as opposed to an amateur. Steven Pressfield makes the point amply well in his book "War of Art".

I'm no professional, yet.

Doing the AltMBA rekindled the simple things I loved to do when I was younger: write. Using pen & paper, not type stuff out like I'm doing now. I found the time to do this, despite everything else going on at work & in life. 

The first weekend after the AltMBA, I decided to write a quote every day and publish it to the Akimbo community portal.   Nearly every day since then, I've done it, mostly for myself - and partly because I've thought of it as a very private act, to be shared with only those I want to see it. Irrational, but that's not the only thing I'm irrational about. And you dear reader, have your fair share of irrational acts too. 

Today was Day 30, & I published this along with my written quote.  A small victory for me. 

Day 30: GratitudeFor thirty days (a couple of exceptions aside), I’ve posted here on a single thread, a quote a day. I’m grateful for having had the opportunity and the space to rekindle the joy I have of simply writing out things I enjoy, and to do it consistently. Thank you, & I’ll say this myself, enough hogging this thread :smile:
I will continue putting my work on the interwebs at sequeiraneil.blogspot.com. Swing by anytime if you’re curious. I also made a simple album of these here

Meaning of life..

Womanhood, Walt Whitman

Found this on the brilliant Brain Pickings site - Walt Whitman on womanhood.

Interconnected

Paul Kelly's lullaby to Australia, while our political establishment continues to enable the destruction of this planet, is a sad but apt contemporary background music to today's quote.

Courage

I wrote this note for my teenage daughter today on International Women’s Day.

I encourage her to do public speaking at every opportunity: and I find her peer-pressure and hormones are my opponents, against who I am at a significant persuasive disadvantage. She’d rather be, & blend into, the audience than to lead and inspire it.

A bit like the torn paper I wrote this on, parental relationships aren’t always complete, or pretty. It’s the words, mine or borrowed, that I hope can make a little difference.

As her father, I’ll continue to do everything I can to support her growth into the kind, generous and wonderful young woman she is.

Words as pegs

No, not the drinking kind :)

I didn't have my glasses on, & didn't quite see the tiny fibre on the nib as I was writing this. The funny shape of 'ha' in that quote was the result.

Warm up drills and exercises haven't been a thing for me for a few days and I can feel the shakes as I write cold.

Time travel

A part of my routine includes writing a journal.
Paper & fountain pen.
It's my way of tending to the garden of my mind, which tends to be overgrown with weeds.
The weeds grow pretty quickly, nurtured & watered by the emotions of the day.
Writing is how I remove the weeds from one small area of the mind.

I write in whatever notebooks I find lying around, usually cheap notebooks that we buy for the kids.
For last decade or so, I've not thrown them out with the garbage.

$0.10 each when blank.

I picked one of them at random this morning, & it turned out to be from 2014, March.

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I can't remember what I had for lunch yesterday. It's impossible to remember what I was thinking and feeling  and worried about 6 years ago.  Using a journal to time-travel (or space travel) is a little bit of my idea of fun. Also why I enjoy reading.

There was no entry dated 7 March, but there was one for the 5th, made in the evening.  I'd not discovered the treasure trove of learning how to use the writing tools well, so my handwriting is barely legible.

For a little context, it was a time of upheaval at work with the usual restructures et al.
I had my desk in a corner of the basement garage.

05 Mar 14, 8:01 pm

Another day passes him by. A day full of pretend business and busy-ness. Meetings. Passing paper around. Or e-paper. Practising politics. Pretending things are more important than they really are.

But lest this become all doom and gloom, he discovered a blog by a Sydneysider, "Life and other crises", by Kerri Sackville. An entertaining writer no doubt, but it was her secret self-help tool that inspired the writing style in this 3rd person today. He wants to see if this is useful or merely a passing curiosity.

The Toastmasters contest needed more contestants in this speech evaluation, so he decided he would take part. He was disqualified on time grounds, but had fun nonetheless. Imagery was widely used by all the speakers throughout. It was as if each took some random color & threw it on to the grey matter in everyone's brain & magically created a masterpiece in each one of the audience's minds. 

He witnessed another master communication in action, the CEO, & the fear in the MD's eyes & body during a "meet-the-folks-who-pay-my-lifestyle" meeting. People pretend they are uncaring about the whole affair, while each one, internally, is terrified of the changes that will shortly be unleashed. 
His wife was here, inviting him back into real life, so head upstairs he will. And must.

Premature worry

Many of our troubles are as much a figment of our imagination as our achievements.

These “fear & worry” thoughts have a free tenancy in my head, still here long after they ended being useful. These daily practices, trivial as they seem, help to kick out these persistent infiltrators, one day at a time.

A little humor helps more than anything else.

Also, I forgot todays date as I was writing it down :)

Two videos to re-watch

Kevin Breel talking at TEDxKids
















Andrew Solomon at TEDxMet
https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_solomon_depression_the_secret_we_share

One day at a time...

Some days, it's harder to get out of bed. 

To do what is otherwise easy. 

Or necessary.

To do the work.

To listen.

To say the things that need saying...like "thank you" and "I love you" and "You did a great job"...

To ask for help.

To smile. 

To have fun.

Today's reading was a good reminder. 

One day at a time is enough.

Also, flourishes are hard😅

Connection and introversion

Life's full of apparent contradictions.

Connection is one of my core values.
I'm also an introvert.
My close friends cannot reconcile the two.  Quite often, neither can I.

I need time to recover from human interactions. The interactions are messy. They usually don't go according to plan. They require ongoing maintenance for "professional" reasons.
The damage or discontent they cause on a daily basis is often transmuted into other areas of my life, especially with people most dear to me.

Thankfully, the daily commute to & from work allows me some time to put a separation between the two.

little steps

Radio Silence

Throughout the AltMBA, a recurring feedback I had, that despite my oft-used crutch that English is not my first language, the assumptions I have about opportunities & the self-imposed constraints were invalid. My writing was "easy to read", I "already have a voice, use it", I have "a way with words" were some of the comments I received on my writing. The challenge for me: How could I reframe the problem or the situation so I could see the options?

I was mulling over this question driving home one night. The car radio was locked on our local country music station. The presenter was having a ball, talking about the music he was about to play for his captive audience. It's funny how the mind works: I remembered immediately of "Pedro", the presenter on the morning show, who seemed to have gone off air for a while now.

The next morning, I was on the radio station's website to see if I could find out if his segment / time had changed.  That was when I saw an advertisement pop-up: "Volunteers required for administration of the station". Things seemed to connect in my mind, radio - music - voice - volunteer - community. Feeling excited, I dashed off an email offering to help, using their "contact us" form.

Two weeks went by, & I hadn't heard back. "Their move" is my default response to most things after I've taken the first step - "let them take the next step".   To my bad luck, the echoes in my head, the words in my writing have all been saying the same thing: "examine your assumptions, examine your narratives".

There were several alternatives for the radio silence - pun intended. There didn't actually have anyone reading the emails. The email may not even have been delivered. The person responsible for correspondence didn't get my mail. And so on. So I followed it up with an email from my mailbox, gently reminding that I had volunteered, & was hoping the lack of response was because they didn't need my help.

That email got an immediate, apologetic response: the secretary was away for the next two or so weeks, and could we meet in the radio studio office on a Sunday morning to talk about how I could help. Finally a response! And child-like excitement: the last time I was in a radio station studio was 38 years ago, a chance visit thanks to my uncle singing Christmas carols on the radio.

That Sunday morning was yesterday.
I spent three hours at the studio, overlooking the beautiful waterfront. It was a surreal experience:  listening to the presenter both on the radio & in person, loving the music he was playing, & learning what needed to be done around the studio. The gentleman was multi-tasking: mentoring a new presenter, operating the playlist, talking to me about the station's history & the generosity of the local community, the challenges of running a community radio station. I was mesmerized by how smoothly he went from frantic activity around the office to a calm, soothing voice on the radio, & told him so.  I felt at home in the tiny studio, enjoying the conversation & the music. Oh, & among the memorablia on the walls, I found this picture of Glen Campbell. I've been blown away with his rendition of "Gentle on my mind"


I'll be at the station next Sunday, helping however I can. Maybe I'll even get to host a show :)

Meditation

I’ve not meditated for a few months now, a practice I used to do religiously, that requires just sitting down. My meditation has morphed into writing a quote every day, after reading a short passage from a book I always have around me.

For me, the act of writing involves the process of getting my pens, nibs, inks, paper, positioning the chair, and myriad other things. It is my active meditation, done in the moments before the silence of the night is gently shaken by the birds beginning their day.

How to read a book

Or more relevant, why to read books..