The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here with branches disentangled since time immemorial. The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple, sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.
~ Wislawa Szymborska from, http://www.brainpickings.org/2017/03/27/wislawa-szymborska-nobel-speech/
slip:4ubawi1.
ɕ
To cut the story short: By speaking in the first person we can make statements about ourselves, answer questions, and engage in reasoning and advice in ways that bypass all the normal methods of discovery. As a result, we can participate in dialogues founded on the assurance that, when you and I both speak sincerely, what we say is trustworthy: We are “speaking our minds.” This is the heart of the I-You encounter.
~ Roger Scruton from, http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/opinion/if-we-are-not-just-animals-what-are-we.html
slip:4unyoi5.
ɕ
This is pretty common. Thinking isn’t the problem, but the struggle comes when we’re constantly spinning stories in our heads and getting caught up in them.
~ Leo Babauta from, https://zenhabits.net/stillness/
slip:4uzesi2.
Hear! Hear!
ɕ
The man who is calm has his course in life clearly marked on his chart. His hand is ever on the helm. Storm, fog, night, tempest, danger, hidden reefs— he is ever prepared and ready for them. He is made calm and serene by the realization that in these crises of his voyage he needs a clear mind and a cool head; that he has naught to do but to do each day the best he can by the light he has; that he will never flinch nor falter for a moment; that, though he may have to tack and leave his course for a time, he will never drift, he will get back into the true channel, he will keep ever headed toward his harbor.
~ Brett McKay from, https://www.artofmanliness.com/2012/08/11/manvotional-the-majesty-of-calmness/
slip:4uaoma1.
ɕ
You may be sure that this refractory nature, which demands much toil, has been implanted in us. There are obstacles in our path; so let us fight, and call to our assistance some helpers. “Whom,” you say, “shall I call upon? Shall it be this man or that?” There is another choice also open to you; you may go to the ancients; for they have the time to help you. We can get assistance not only from the living, but from those of the past. Let us choose, however, from among the living, not men who pour forth their words with the greatest glibness, turning out commonplaces and holding. as it were, their own little private exhibitions, – not these, I say, but men who teach us by their lives, men who tell us what we ought to do and then prove it by practice, who show us what we should avoid, and then are never caught doing that which they have ordered us to avoid.
~ Seneca from, http://www.lettersfromastoic.net/letter-52-on-choosing-our-teachers/
slip:4ulele1.
ɕ
For remembering makes everything “just now,” doesn’t it? Just now I was a boy, sitting in the house of Sotion the philosopher; Just now I began to argue cases; Just now I stopped wanting to argue them; Just now I ceased to be able. The rapidity of time is boundless—and is more evident when one looks back. For though it goes at breakneck speed, it glides by so smoothly that those who are intent on the present moment fail to notice it passing.
~ Seneca
slip:4a837.
The question is, do we want parkour to be a thing that is a casual part of more people’s lifestyles, like walking a dog or riding a bike? Or do we want it to be a pursuit only the able and passionate need bother even try?
~ Amy Vhan from, https://fallingleavesandabird.com/2016/11/29/parkour-spectacle-competition/
ɕ
As we get older, failure is not so inconsequential anymore. What’s at stake is not some arbitrary grade or intramural sports trophy, but the quality of your life and your abiity to deal with the world around you.
Don’t let that intimidate you, though. You have the best teachers in the world: the wisest philosophers who ever lived. And not only are you capable, the professor is asking for something very simple: just begin the work. The rest follows.
~ Ryan Holiday from, https://www.librarything.com/work/17943661/book/137049348
slip:4uliwo1.
ɕ
But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
~ Albert Camus
slip:4a597.
(Part 60 of 72 in series, My Journey)
I’m working on a crazy idea as a side project. Totally unrelated, I’m reading Julie’s CinéParkour. I’m just reading along this evening, and I get to this paragraph. This is so apropos of my train of thought these past few weeks.
Mind.
Blown.
Traceurs are active subjects within dominant power relations who use parkour as a technology of the self; an active transformative tool, to create and understand themselves and move away from fixed notions of identity and behaviour. Through a process of critical thinking and self-awereness traceurs problemitise and set ethics by which they adhere to. Parkour becomes a ‘practice of libery’, where traceurs practice freedom as a lifestyle, based on inventions and styles, that create ethics centered around creative environmental interactions and connections, to reclaim the body as an autonomous vehicle, away from the dominant notion of ‘bio-power’ and other dominant discourses.
~ Julie Angel, from CinéParkour, pg 152
‘technology of the self’
‘freedom as a lifestyle’
‘ethics centered around creative environmental interactions and connections’
‘reclaim the body as an autonomous vehicle’
ɕ
(Part 18 of 37 in series, Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault)
I’ve now read the entire book several times, and Chapter 6 never ceases to inspire!
Three thoughts:
I may not be the strongest. I may not be the fastest. But I’ll be damned if I’m not trying my hardest.
~ unknown
It ofttimes requires heroic courage to face fruitless effort, to take up the broken strands of a life-work, to look bravely toward the future, and proceed undaunted on our way. But what, to our eyes, may seem hopeless failure is often but the dawning of a greater success. It may contain in its debris the foundation material of a mighty purpose, or the revelation of new and higher possibilities.
~ Chapter 14, “Failure as a Success”, from Self Control, Its Kingship and Majesty, by William George Jordan, 1907
…
Failure is often the turning-point, the pivot of circumstance that swings us to higher levels. It may not be financial success, it may not be fame; it may be new draughts of spiritual, moral or mental inspiration that will change us for all the later years of our life. Life is not really what comes to us, but what we get from it.
The application in the Ways is to falls in life. To be able to take a disaster or a great failure, with the whole personality, without shrinking back from it, like the big smack with which the judo man hits the ground. Then to rise at once.
Not to be appalled at a moral fall. Yet it is not that it does not matter. The judo man tries by every means not to be thrown, but when he is thrown it does not hurt him and in a sense it does not matter. It matters immensely, and yet it does not matter.
‘Falling seven times, and getting up eight.’
~ “Falling”, from Zen and the Ways, by Trevor Leggett, 1978
ɕ
In one spot in the part of the universe we can see—and probably in an infinite number of spots in the part of the universe we can’t—there’s a small blue-green planet with thin film of bio-matter on it. Among other things, this film supports some bipedal mammals who like building things they can set on fire.
~ Peter Welch from, http://www.stilldrinking.org/shut-up-about-the-universe
slip:4usisu1.
Douglas Adams meets irreverent atheist. Many smiles. Much like.
ɕ
A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.
~ “Agent ‘K’“
slip:4a330.
(Part 13 of 37 in series, Study inspired by Pakour & Art du Déplacement by V. Thibault)
Over the last few years it seems I have — finally! — learned some key lesson about pace; the idea of enjoying the journey. The idea of focusing on what I can control. The truth that some of these projects I will not finish, some places I will not see, and some people I will not manage to spend enough time with. These ideas are patently obvious and unequivocal, but learning the Lesson, and deeply and truly making it part of your work-a-day life and personal philosophy takes effort.
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
~ Leonardo de Vinci
Years ago I started journaling as a form of self-reflection. It enables me to look back. Sometimes it’s a travel log, but mostly it’s a “this is what I was thinking” log, a glimpse at what I was working on, inspired by, or frustrated by. After a large amount of writing and thinking I gained enough perspective to start removing some things, and changing others. I learned to say ‘no’ to some things I would have taken on in the past, and learned how to rearrange other things to make more space.
I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on Earth. Then I ask myself the same question.
~ Harun Yahya ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Oktar )
But only recently have I found myself turning more often to look forward, rather than back.
What would the best possible version of myself do?
Walk the Earth with eyes turned skyward.
Point A to point B, efficiently.
Close the gap.
ɕ
(Part 33 of 72 in series, My Journey)
Nevertheless I shall brave this danger and be bold enough to show [Marcellinus] his faults. He will act in his usual way; he will have recourse to his wit, – the wit that can call forth smiles even from mourners. He will turn the jest, first against himself, and then against me. He will forestall every word which I am about to utter.
~ Seneca, from Letters From A Stoic: Letter 29
slip:4ulele2.
Many of Seneca’s letters are pretty obtuse after all this time. But this one… this one jumped out at me as being really apropos of modern life. And, uh, painfully on point for myself.
ɕ
The largest portion of life passes while we are doing ill, a good share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; The major portion of death is already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death’s hands.
~ Seneca
slip:4a191.
My guess is that we have all experienced this combination of effortlessness and effectiveness at some point in our lives. While we are completely absorbed in chopping and sautéing, a complex dinner simply assembles itself before our eyes. Fully relaxed, we breeze through an important job interview without even noticing how well it’s going. Our own experiences of the pleasure and power of spontaneity explain why these early Chinese stories are so appealing and also suggest that these thinkers were on to something important. Combining Chinese insights and modern science, we are now in a position to understand how such states can actually come about.
~ Edward Slingerland from, http://nautil.us/issue/22/slow/trying-not-to-try
slip:4unaiu1.
ɕ
One of the insidious things about the distraction habit is that we often don’t even realize it’s happening. It sneaks up on us, like old age, and before we know it we’re addicted and powerless.
But actually we’re not powerless. The power we have is our awareness, and you can develop it right now. Pay attention to what sites you visit, how often you’re looking at your phone, how long you’re spending in front of a screen all day.
~ Leo Babauta from, http://zenhabits.net/distraction/
slip:4uzedi1.
ɕ
We’re supposed to be thinking people. We’re supposed to be able to question everything.
There are things that happen in the world that are bad, and you want to do something about them. You have a just cause. But our culture is so war prone that we immediately jump from “This is a good cause” to “This deserves a war.”
You need to be very, very comfortable in making that jump.
~ Howard Zinn from, http://www.progressive.org/zinnjuly09.html
ɕ
Yet from the first encounter, the theories unraveled in the face of situations that could never have been predicted. The most respected generals in the world were made to look like amateurs. Their faith in abstract planning blinded them to the reality of the situation. It took years of conflict before they began to really adapt to the reality of their situation.
~ Kyle Eschenroeder from, http://www.artofmanliness.com/2014/10/21/5-tools-for-thriving-in-uncertainty/
slip:4uaoto1.
ɕ