This week’s post on Vocal
On the road less traveled, life becomes an adventure. We spend so much time planning to live that we miss the opportunity to experience our existence on our terms.
https://motivation.media/life-isn-t-meant-to-be-straight-lines
When we play everything safely, are we lengthening mediocre existence? Is adding days to our lives what is important? Should we be taking some chances and adding life to our days?
I suppose just by asking that question; I am exposing my bias. I believe we should step over the imaginary line every chance that we get. I am not suggesting skydiving but not ruling it out.
Every day, I am presented with opportunities, most of them free, that challenge my public circle of comfort. I meet new people who are trying new things when I go to places that aren’t my regular haunts. My views are stretched by reading authors and magazines that don’t fit my usual library. If I have the opportunity to walk alongside someone who I disagree with and ask lots of clarifying questions, I get to see the world from a different viewpoint.
On days that I don’t feel like riding my bike, I try to ride it 5 km further to see what is on the other side of my destination. If I am feeling rushed, I try to slow down and breathe more deeply. When I am anxious, I make space to step away rather than instinctively charge ahead.
I swing on swings and slide down slides whenever the opportunity appears. I play with children and ask questions of older strangers. I present ridiculously impossible queries to friends and colleagues and attempt to leave my preconditioned bias outside the discussion.
On frigid days or muggy summer afternoons, I agnostically spend time in the elements appreciating whatever is presented rather than surrendering to the inertia of excuses to stay inside.
Taking risks is about embracing a small unknown nugget and accepting what follows. When we do anything for the first time, we receive a little prospect of unexpected. I always feel something when my boundaries are poked. I am better for new experiences even when they don’t seem favorable.
Convenience and comfort are poor metrics for a life lived well. Limiting what we hear, say, do and who we live life with reduces the quality of our existence.
Disclaimer “Don’t ever, even as a joke, put your head in a lion’s mouth” but when you are presented with the prospect of seeing a lion, I recommend spending some time watching her behavior. Maybe there is a lesson to be learned.
Even in my embrace of ambiguity or possibly because of my quest for uncertainty, I have strong opinions loosely held. My position on the environment, economics, politics, family dynamics would lean center left on a traditional spectrum, mostly. My views on some other social issues are muddled and huddled in the middle and on some other issues, especially around justice, I lean into the right.
When I am talking about conservation with most of my friends and colleagues, we congregate around science, ecology, greening, and personal responsibility. The confirmation bias of my huddle is strong, and so I try to venture into the territory of other camps and hear what and why they understand and believe. My belief that we are living through unprecedented climate change and that our actions are the most significant contributor was formed by research, reflection, conversation, and personal observation but I hold my conclusions loosely enough to enter into dialogue with others. (Dialogue is the process of sharing ideas, opinions, viewpoints, and facts so everyone is heard and we can all leave having learned something.) Sometimes the nudge is less quantitative than qualitative, sometimes the shift is more about trust, and mostly we all come closer to understanding what the other is thinking.
Over the past four years, I have moved from a self-described recovering post-modern fundamentalist to a fully outed atheist. The move was painful intellectually, and I needed to break down some significant brick walls to get ready to build a different foundation. I still honor people of faith and will participate in the traditions intellectually as a show of support, and they have come to see that I believe lots of the same things as them, without the overarching narrative of God and salvation.
When I am open to the possibility that what I believe or understand may not be entirely accurate or correct, I allow space for the as yet unimagined (my brain hasn’t yet imagined it). I can’t arrive at that Eureka Moment if I remain stubbornly locked in my own prison of certainty.
Have you taken a certainty break this week? Are you actively exploring something that doesn’t fit with your biases? I am sure that the thought of shaking your foundation sounds a bit overwhelming and crazy, but I encourage you to give it a try.
B
Source: Rangeland expansion justified
Are you optimistic, pessimistic, neutralistic? Is the world abundant, scarce or three bears just right? Is your view of the world about how you perceive the truth, your disposition, and/or your experiences? I can find myself feeling ‘hell-in-a-handbasket’ like my father, my grandfather and I am sure on occasion my grandchildren or I can deliberately expect and demand a different perspective from myself and different results from the world. My tendencies are a matter of wiring and if I don’t want to continue wallowing in self-pity I can undertake to rewire my brain to observe the magic, beauty, and mystery alongside the tragedy, hatred and vitriol.
For me, it begins with morning meditation. I use a guided application called “Simple Habits” and practice is the first activity I schedule after my feet hit the floor. It isn’t a spiritual exercise as much as a consciousness and mindfulness kick start. This morning’s meditation was about gratitude for discomfort and how the aches and pains I feel physically and emotionally are likely my body and brain attempting to protect me from additional harm. Without feeling the twinge in my left Achille’s tendon, I might run until something snaps. If I didn’t feel anxious, I might jump off the next cliff without some measure of investigation and reflection. If I didn’t feel regret for not saying something to a loved one in a time of trouble, I might become callous and distant.
I don’t have any chronic conditions that cause me distress do I am not sure how someone could feel grateful for that kind of infliction but I encourage you to take a moment to understand and appreciate your stress, aches, or anxiety. Don’t allow yourself to wallow in it and don’t just accept the situation if there are options to improve or dissipate them.
My tactics for reframing are ecological, entertaining, and explicit. If I want to change my patterns, thoughts or actions I need to be aware of the surroundings that I find myself in and the surroundings that fit with how I see the changed self I want to become. In order to be more grateful, I can’t be surrounded by ungrateful or selfish people. I need to be surrounded by light, love, and learning. I can’t continue doing the same things in the same places in the same way that brought me to the valley of distrust and disappointment. For the circumstances to change, I need to change my where and how and who. Escaping from stinking thinking is essential. It means that there are people in my life today that can’t be in my life tomorrow. There are places I need to stop going and actions that I must stop undertaking. We all have a preferred or imagined ecology that fulfills more of our aspirations and unfortunately, it won’t manifest itself. We need to seek it out through our actions.
I can be shallow and unfocused and unless the change process is fun, I know that I might retreat to the depths that I am trying to escape. Fun need not be onerous or expensive. Meeting with uplifting people for an activity, a meeting, a coffee, a walk will put a smile on my face even when or because the conversation is an adventure. I met with three friends this morning for ninety minutes and we ranged across the sublime and inane to the profound and debatable. We laughed, we shared, we disagreed and we hugged. We expressed our gratitude for each other and the time spent and booked another gathering for a month from now. I left inspired, thankful and challenged. The stimulus of camaraderie and conversation caused neurons to fire against my hippocampus and began nurturing new pathways.
My final tactic; explicit is really an e word for intentional. ( I love alliteration so much that I always trying to catch it in my lists – ecological, entertaining, and explicit). In my worldview, nothing happens organically. Or nothing will predictably happen without intention. I must invest my resources and time in creating a V2.0 or V11.5 of me and I need to be vested in the outcome.
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.
All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” ~ Johann Wolfgang van Goethe
Make Today Remarkable, by choice,
Bob
Start wide, expand further, and never look back. ~Arnold Schwarzenegger
Let’s not be narrow, nasty, and negative. ~ TS Eliot
There is in true beauty, as in courage, something which narrow souls cannot dare to admire. ~ William Congreve
Certainty narrows, curiosity widens. ~ Bob McInnis
We live in a world of unparalleled possibilities yet more often than not we rely on the tried and true heuristics that worked yesterday and on all our yesterdays. Fear, laziness, complacency or ignorance convince us that there is ‘nothing new in this world’ that is worth exploring, worth trying, worth learning. In my not so humble opinion, there is everything new in this world, and I can soak it up, synthesize it, reflect on it and then reflect the as yet unimagined creation to those willing to see it.
My youngest grandson loves binoculars. At three, he prefers to look through them backward from how I use them. He ‘likes things far away’ better than close up. I have tried them both ways at his insistence and realize that I see more clearly having seen the tree and seen the leaves. Simply by adding one perspective widened my view of and appreciation for the world. If I had continued to bring things close, I wouldn’t have seen the forest.
When I read Robert Sapolsky, YH Harari, and Ali Bryan over the last few months, my perspective widened. When I investigated and booked a trek, my world became wider. (and when we climb the Via Feratta, it broadens). By looking at the world differently, we see a different world. When we read or listen to a new voice, our understanding gets broader. If I go somewhere and do something for the first time my experience of life is deeper.
I can be a creature of habit and choose to live narrowly, or I can opt for richness and surprise. Mediocrity lives and thrives in habitual practice, routine observations and rigid, echo chamber ideas.
This week, let’s explore getting wider and broader.
B
The Cultural Curiosity Daily will be a hodgepodge on some days and a treatise on others. If you are entertained, provoked, inspired, edified or angered by any of it you can respond with comments and as always you can ‘buy me a coffee.‘
In my intimate relationship that has survived and flourished for 43 years. All of the above is encapsulated; complicated, exhilarating, supportive, dedicated, grace and committed. But I believe that the reason that we have continued to work hard every day to live happily ever after is because we don’t want to disappoint each other. I have disappointed her and been disappointed, but I know that each day I ask myself “if I do this would it disappoint her?” 99.5% of the time the answer is “no” and 99.9% of the time when the answer is “yes,” I don’t make that choice.
My relationships are my responsibility, and I take seriously the role that continues to evolve and hold those close to me to a high standard.
Are your relationships healthy and reciprocal? Do you care and demonstrate that you care in equal measure? Are you willing and ready to step up and move to the next level?
Make Today Remarkable, for someone close to you,
B
The Cultural Curiosity Daily will be a hodgepodge on some days and a treatise on others. If you are entertained, provoked, inspired, edified or angered by any of it you can respond with comments and as always you can ‘buy me a coffee.‘
It seems paradoxical that I can be inconsiderate of people that I have never met and people who are closest to my heart. Neither are acceptable. When I encounter someone, for the first time, that challenges me, offends me, or rubs me the wrong way I feel justified in any rudeness or callousness that pours out of me. I am not justified in treating them badly regardless of the circumstances. Rudeness begets negativity, and I am always in the position to decide to break the cycle. As I reflect on the times that I haven’t considered someone else, there are far too many times that the object of my derision is the person or people who mean the most to me. I take them for granted; I raise my voice; I cut them off; I can be mean-spirited. Is this because I feel safe that my outburst will be forgiven?
There is a huge segment of my social and public spheres that have never seen that side of me. I see them once a month, once a year or in specific situations. I treat them with respect even when I challenge them. We disagree without animosity. Is the reduced familiarity a factor? I don’t know how they will react, so I am on better behavior? Am I consciously deciding to treat them as I want to be treated even when I may want to lash out? Can I consistently decide to be respectful to everyone? I think it is possible. I know people who are always sincere, interested and ethical (I don’t live in their skin so my impression may not be accurate).
It is my responsibility to choose to be respectful. To decide to be compassionate. To opt for consideration, especially when I feel challenged.
I am going to observe my tendencies and alter my approach as needed over the next month. Would you benefit from a wee modification?
Make Today Remarkable, for someone else,
Bob
Make It Your Problem 