cloud of imagination
I attended a church ceremony earlier this afternoon. There was a death in the family and I felt obligated to compromise my projects at work with the intention of paying my respects to our lost one in the family. The community followed the experience and the participants included my co-workers from justice who shared history with our dearly departed. The respect flowed in her memory, of all the generous, dignified, and kindness that she expressed to her family, friends, and strangers alike. With further clarification, the personal experience for me reinforced my concept of healing through understanding.
To begin, aside from a of passing near-talent less wit, remarking Johnny Cash look-alikes. I found there was one difficult joke to grasp during the speech, it was about a insider illustration shared between lawyers about determining balance. The word balance not only the exists in justice as a word between peace and harmony but to me, the control and drive that lies within our ability to balance becoming stimulated and nourished from inside and outside of our whole experiences. If I were going to have more emphasis put into practice, kindness for one (although I'm not implying I'm entirely deficient in said action) can be difficult to practice in everyday life. With honesty you have to allow yourself to be at first... honest with yourself, and in the case of some, we often hide from the truth.
Often, while overlooking my past, I've most often been with myself, when with others on the save few occasions, I often begin to watch how I communicate. It's often difficult, physically, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically to be in that balance. Positive and effective practices like acts of kindness are but one of many techniques that essentially develop in our daily function, but how can it be when such properties are not nourished or even returned?
I remember my experience in therapy last year was to help me realize that balance only dealt with two parts, what I needed to deal with was all parts to bring things into balance. Checking today.... I just have to jump on the scale or look in the mirror to find out that I am not taking care of my physical self. Spiritually is very personal but I've found that to some, connecting with kindness and honesty connects one with the creator so you know.
The other two pieces are family and community. I'm determined enough to say that it would be my practice in art that brings me closer to connecting with myself and family. Art to me is very basic and concrete, although to some it can be even the most complex of matter. Through my art and over time I can see how I am changing and how my community is changing and the world around me. When I look at this world in a physical sense I see alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, apathy, sexual abuse, all those things et al.
After the reception I was overwhelmed in a sense. It cannot be addressed in parts, but I know, for I, the question remained -- what do you want to do with the rest of your life? That is when I remembered this new book I stumbled upon entitled.... Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.
Without putting myself into sham for advertising, I've been seeing this as a essential for everyone looking for a new perception and attitude towards a new lease on life. It's about why the future we imagine, plan for and work towards ends up so often being both very different from and less satisfying than we expected. This is due in part to not knowing ourselves, and how we are changing, and not knowing what makes us happy and will make us happy:
Some people... tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as though it were your last, which only goes to show some people would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice...We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy...Why (then) do they (our future selves) experience regret and relief when they think about us, rather than pride and appreciation...when we gave them the best years of our lives?... Shouldn't we know the tastes, preferences, needs and desires of the people we will be next year?
Most of the book is devoted to describing these illusions which fall into different categories. It examines and discards several alternatives, including practicing imagining (just retrenches the illusions) and asking others for opinion or coaching (they just reinforce the same myths that cloud our own imaginations). Instead, it advocates finding 'surrogates' -- people who are now in a situation similar to the one you think you might be in in the future, and asking yourself if you would be happy if you'd done what they did and were doing what they're doing. Less imagination, and more research. This entails learning more about what the future will probably be like when you get there, so that you have a richer context for understanding what your life might be like, and then searching for people who have already made a similar journey -- people whose present is as much as possible like what your future, as objectively as you can imagine, will be like. Then study them, and learn about your future self. In other words, get real.
Wrapped with plenty of dark humour the book does an interesting job dissecting the argument that we're all unique, and that no one could possibly teach us about our future or how happy we will be in it. So I suggest this book just for the fun of reading this 'anti-self-help book'.
To begin, aside from a of passing near-talent less wit, remarking Johnny Cash look-alikes. I found there was one difficult joke to grasp during the speech, it was about a insider illustration shared between lawyers about determining balance. The word balance not only the exists in justice as a word between peace and harmony but to me, the control and drive that lies within our ability to balance becoming stimulated and nourished from inside and outside of our whole experiences. If I were going to have more emphasis put into practice, kindness for one (although I'm not implying I'm entirely deficient in said action) can be difficult to practice in everyday life. With honesty you have to allow yourself to be at first... honest with yourself, and in the case of some, we often hide from the truth.
Often, while overlooking my past, I've most often been with myself, when with others on the save few occasions, I often begin to watch how I communicate. It's often difficult, physically, emotionally, spiritually and psychologically to be in that balance. Positive and effective practices like acts of kindness are but one of many techniques that essentially develop in our daily function, but how can it be when such properties are not nourished or even returned?
I remember my experience in therapy last year was to help me realize that balance only dealt with two parts, what I needed to deal with was all parts to bring things into balance. Checking today.... I just have to jump on the scale or look in the mirror to find out that I am not taking care of my physical self. Spiritually is very personal but I've found that to some, connecting with kindness and honesty connects one with the creator so you know.
The other two pieces are family and community. I'm determined enough to say that it would be my practice in art that brings me closer to connecting with myself and family. Art to me is very basic and concrete, although to some it can be even the most complex of matter. Through my art and over time I can see how I am changing and how my community is changing and the world around me. When I look at this world in a physical sense I see alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, apathy, sexual abuse, all those things et al.
After the reception I was overwhelmed in a sense. It cannot be addressed in parts, but I know, for I, the question remained -- what do you want to do with the rest of your life? That is when I remembered this new book I stumbled upon entitled.... Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert.
Without putting myself into sham for advertising, I've been seeing this as a essential for everyone looking for a new perception and attitude towards a new lease on life. It's about why the future we imagine, plan for and work towards ends up so often being both very different from and less satisfying than we expected. This is due in part to not knowing ourselves, and how we are changing, and not knowing what makes us happy and will make us happy:
Some people... tell you sternly that you should live every minute of your life as though it were your last, which only goes to show some people would spend their final ten minutes giving other people dumb advice...We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy...Why (then) do they (our future selves) experience regret and relief when they think about us, rather than pride and appreciation...when we gave them the best years of our lives?... Shouldn't we know the tastes, preferences, needs and desires of the people we will be next year?
Most of the book is devoted to describing these illusions which fall into different categories. It examines and discards several alternatives, including practicing imagining (just retrenches the illusions) and asking others for opinion or coaching (they just reinforce the same myths that cloud our own imaginations). Instead, it advocates finding 'surrogates' -- people who are now in a situation similar to the one you think you might be in in the future, and asking yourself if you would be happy if you'd done what they did and were doing what they're doing. Less imagination, and more research. This entails learning more about what the future will probably be like when you get there, so that you have a richer context for understanding what your life might be like, and then searching for people who have already made a similar journey -- people whose present is as much as possible like what your future, as objectively as you can imagine, will be like. Then study them, and learn about your future self. In other words, get real.
Wrapped with plenty of dark humour the book does an interesting job dissecting the argument that we're all unique, and that no one could possibly teach us about our future or how happy we will be in it. So I suggest this book just for the fun of reading this 'anti-self-help book'.
posted by daneatkinson at 20.6.06
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