Pragmatism is not so much realism as flexibility. There are a lot of ways to get from point A to point B. It doesn’t have to be a straight line. It’s just got to get you where you need to go. But so many of us spend so much time looking for the perfect solution that we pass up what’s right in front of us.
~ Ryan Holiday
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I recently returned from a whole bunch of movement. I was at the annual American Rendezvous event in Somerville MA, followed by taking the Level 2 ADAPT Coach Certification course. Immediately followed by some just-for-fun hard work at Vandrar Hem.
This morning I sat down on the concrete for meditation and it was sublime. 10, 15, or maybe even 20 minutes of simply sitting and breathing. Weeks of continuously have a “next thing” on the schedule every minute of every day is its own type of exhausting. This morning I was recharging via stillness. But completely still (like being totally active) is not the correct state.
What I had failed to cultivate in my recent travels was equanimity.
Too often, equanimity is described as a practice or technique that aims at the production of something – usually a state of stillness. Other proposed aims include a ‘countercultural’ refashioning of the self: eg, ‘to disarm the way we define ourselves in terms of achievements, fame, praise, and what we’re told should make us happy’, as the meditation teacher Christina Feldman and the psychologist Willem Kuyken put it in Mindfulness (2019); or being compassionate and caring instead of discriminatory and judgmental.
~ Michael Uebel, from Equanimity is not stillness – it is a mobility of the mind
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Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us, and can feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position—it is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.
~ Nick Cave
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Whether you’re a binge-watcher or a doomscroller or some other type of time-bider, the following is probably true for most people reading this: There are things you want to do with your life that you’re not doing. You know these things are worthwhile. You know these things are possible.
~ David Cain, from How to Start Doing the Things You Daydream About
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Cain draws our attention (often in his writing) to the noticing part. That is the really difficult part. If you’re not noticing that there’s a tension in your life, then you’ll surely never change.
Beyond noticing comes relaxing into the feeling. Then deciding whether the tension and the feeling represent something to allow to bloom. And deciding what to let go of to make room for that new growth.
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No man’s body is as strong as his appetites.
~ Tillotson
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What did I do to lose 60 lbs? […] Based on all that, I am pretty much convinced that the main factors were the following:
~ Ned Kock from, My transformation: I cannot remember the last time I had a fever
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Over the years on this blog, I’ve linked to a bunch of things from Health Correlator. This—like everything—is well worth the read.
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In this modern age, very little remains that is real. Night has been banished, so have the cold, the wind and the stars. They have all been neutralized: The rhythm of life itself is obscured. Everything goes so fast and makes so much noise, and men hurry by without heeding the grass by the roadside, its colour, its smell and the way it shimmers when the wind caresses it. What a strange encounter then is that between man and the high places of his planet!
~ Gaston Rébuffat
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In one tiny town, more than a dozen people were diagnosed with the rare neurodegenerative disease ALS. Why?
~ Shayla Love, from Was a Mushroom Behind an ALS Outbreak in the Alps?
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Which looks exactly like a click-bait headline—but it is not. I started reading this article and couldn’t stop. ALS is not caused by mushrooms… except perhaps in these cases it was?
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Persevere in what you have begun; hurry as much as you can, so that you will have more time to enjoy a mind that is settled and made flawless. To be sure, you will have enjoyment even as you make it so; But there is quite another pleasure to be gained from the contemplation of an intellect that is spotlessly pure and right.
~ Seneca
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So, here’s something of a little manifesto or rallying cry:
- If you only spend your time on Facebook/Twitter/Medium then stream in, stream out – you’re going to get what you ask for. A fleeting set of stories loosely bound.
- So, spend time in the corners of the web. Subscribe to some newsletters. Bookmark some forums and blogs in your browser and show up regularly. It’s hard, there’s no stream. But you’ll start to find the mom & pop internet not the shopping mall internet.
- Dabble with your own space. Dabble with your own voice. Own your own platform.
- But don’t stop there – own your own distribution too! Build a newsletter. Build a messenger bot to alert people to new posts. Build your own stream. Create a shared delusion of showing up regularly.
Long live the indie web.
~ Tom Critchlow, from Indie Blogging & Distribution
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I was a frequent user of the Internet before the web. Today is vastly better than then. The web straight up kicks ass, and the web is not just alive and well, it’s flourishing. If you aren’t seeing great content, you simply haven’t yet figured out where to look for it. Go look. (Right after you go read the above, of course.)
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