understanding patterns; connecting dots

You know that thing where you think you understand something … then you discover there are layers you never knew existed. Well that … when it comes to the idea of living in the present. There’s the cliches that were born of wisdom but have been appropriated by bucket-listing popular culture as in; ‘All we’ve got is today’, ‘What if you knew you only had five years.’ etc etc. Yeah, no. Not that, although they are great things to consider. A few friends expressed concern for me following  my last post . They wondered how I was, expecting that the shifts and uncertainty might be causing some anxiety. But, to be clear, I’m doing magnificently. I’m good. Better than good. The wrestle is the with question about how to live beautifully  with  uncertainty and chaos (to steal a  Pema Chödrön  phrase), not to find strategies to eliminate it. But I’m not pursuing a Pollyanna approach, a superficial suppressive positivity, I’m realising the antithesis, in fact. The narrativ...

A couple of mornings ago I was sitting at coffee and a friend looked me in the eye and says, “I sense there is a bit going on.” I subsequently did a rubbish job at trying to explain some things. It prompted me to sit down and think more clearly about what  is  going on for us. So here goes. There are transitions in 3 dimensions. 1. I’m navigating a seasonal career change. 2. We are making some ‘step changes’ to better align our living with our espoused values. 3. We are wrestling with what it means to live wisely as the world as we have known it unravels. The easiest one of these to explain is 1. Then 2 and 3 get deeper and ultimately more substantial. There is stuff going on in the outer world. But the inner world journey is for us the main game, and our wrestling with 2 and mainly 3 is where that comes to the fore. I’ve stumbled, and been confusing in my conversations with people about what we’re processing because I’ve cherry picked bits and pieces from each of 1, 2 & 3...

It’s a melancholy Sunday afternoon. It’s a bit weird actually, middle of summer (yesterday was the classic beach day) but now it’s raining and dark and I’ve got a slow brewing broth on the stove for some lamb and barley soup - so it smells like winter inside despite the fact I’m in shorts and T-shirt and shoeless. I had a celebratory morning with some swimming friends for a birthday, then did an open water swim in the river in glassy clear conditions before the dark clouds, thunder and rain defined the day. Slow brewed stuff tastes better right? The flavours are deeper and richer and more complex. And even better when you’re doing it yourself because, like right now for me, you get to savour the process by being immersed in the aromas. So why is it harder for me to savour slowly brewing stuff in the rest of life? Stay with me on this for a few paragraphs … Yesterday we had an open for inspection for our house. The rationale was that there would be lots of visitors around and we’d get s...

Reality as we perceive it comes from the story we (mostly unconsciously) tell ourselves. And we rarely make the story up ourselves, it is typically the story that the media (news, marketing, pop culture and TV drama, etc) tell us. One of the stories that I have, perhaps cognitively rejected, but for all intents and purposes have bought into, is the story that security and certainty offer peace. Further, that security and certainty is a product of outer world things such as income, housing, and other material ‘things’. While I may have agreed intellectually that this is not the case, I struggle to practice an alternative in my living, in part because I haven’t known what the alternative is. Paradoxically, it seems the path to true peace is to let go of the things I think offer me security and certainty. When I tell myself that I am ‘self-made’, that my lifestyle and it’s privileges are of my own making, the story I am believing is that I am entitled to what I have, and that anything tha...