understanding patterns; connecting dots

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...