For those in a hurry
The Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh tells a wonderful story about peeling a tangerine which, for me, really sums up our failure to live in the moment.

A man was sitting peeling a tangerine. Firstly he peeled off the bright orange outer skin. The smell of the zest as he broke the skin increased his anticipation of the taste of the tangerine and how it would quench his thirst. After removing the peel he started to strip the strands of inner skin which clung to the segments. He spilt the tangerine in two and then removes one of the segments. All the while his anticipation of the taste was increasing. He then careful cleaned up the first segment and popped it in his mouth. Trouble was he then didn’t taste the segment at all!! His attention had now moved on to peeling the next segment and the anticipation of how that one would taste.

This is how many of us go through life. Not appreciating each moment because we are either anticipating the next one - or indeed regretting the last one.

For those in a hurry
The Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh tells a wonderful story about peeling a tangerine which, for me, really sums up our failure to live in the moment.

A man was sitting peeling a tangerine. Firstly he peeled off the bright orange outer skin. The smell of the zest as he broke the skin increased his anticipation of the taste of the tangerine and how it would quench his thirst. After removing the peel he started to strip the strands of inner skin which clung to the segments. He spilt the tangerine in two and then removes one of the segments. All the while his anticipation of the taste was increasing. He then careful cleaned up the first segment and popped it in his mouth. Trouble was he then didn’t taste the segment at all!! His attention had now moved on to peeling the next segment and the anticipation of how that one would taste.

This is how many of us go through life. Not appreciating each moment because we are either anticipating the next one - or indeed regretting the last one.

For those in a hurry
The Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh tells a wonderful story about peeling a tangerine which, for me, really sums up our failure to live in the moment.

A man was sitting peeling a tangerine. Firstly he peeled off the bright orange outer skin. The smell of the zest as he broke the skin increased his anticipation of the taste of the tangerine and how it would quench his thirst. After removing the peel he started to strip the strands of inner skin which clung to the segments. He spilt the tangerine in two and then removes one of the segments. All the while his anticipation of the taste was increasing. He then careful cleaned up the first segment and popped it in his mouth. Trouble was he then didn’t taste the segment at all!! His attention had now moved on to peeling the next segment and the anticipation of how that one would taste.

This is how many of us go through life. Not appreciating each moment because we are either anticipating the next one - or indeed regretting the last one.

Spot on....
I love doing this. I love writing. I love telling stories. I love the random contact I get from this site. I love hearing stories. I love people reaching out and saying quite simply "yes, like that." I love tinkering and experimenting with words, and experiences, and code. I love the fact that I've been doing this for ages, and I'm not bored of it. I love that it's not a linklog or a diary or a journal or any of that. It's just me, my world, a life, unfolding on the page, in all its gloriously weird randomness. I love that some of you love it. I love doing it, and so I'm going to continue.

not.so.soft dot com >> words >> person, not product via synthesis

Spot on....
I love doing this. I love writing. I love telling stories. I love the random contact I get from this site. I love hearing stories. I love people reaching out and saying quite simply "yes, like that." I love tinkering and experimenting with words, and experiences, and code. I love the fact that I've been doing this for ages, and I'm not bored of it. I love that it's not a linklog or a diary or a journal or any of that. It's just me, my world, a life, unfolding on the page, in all its gloriously weird randomness. I love that some of you love it. I love doing it, and so I'm going to continue.

not.so.soft dot com >> words >> person, not product via synthesis

Spot on....
I love doing this. I love writing. I love telling stories. I love the random contact I get from this site. I love hearing stories. I love people reaching out and saying quite simply "yes, like that." I love tinkering and experimenting with words, and experiences, and code. I love the fact that I've been doing this for ages, and I'm not bored of it. I love that it's not a linklog or a diary or a journal or any of that. It's just me, my world, a life, unfolding on the page, in all its gloriously weird randomness. I love that some of you love it. I love doing it, and so I'm going to continue.

not.so.soft dot com >> words >> person, not product via synthesis

Humbling
I sometimes wonder how on earth Mark Wood at wood s lot keeps finding such great content from such a diverse range of sources.I occasionally feel guilty for referring to stuff he has found so often but...it's just so good.

Here's more....

We investigate the value of spiritual concepts in the context of our evolutionary fitness, and attempt to bring together science and spirit under the common viewpoint of complexity theory. Within such a paradigm, we show spiritual ideas to be perhaps the most valuable and neglected aspects of our education, and give some complexity based criteria for the evaluation of religious systems. The idea of spirituality as a worldly asset permits us to re-evaluate many of the assumptions lying behind traditional science and religion, and allows us to move to a viewpoint integrating both spiritual and scientific processes into the psychology of the mind.

Spirit of Complexity via wood s lot

Humbling
I sometimes wonder how on earth Mark Wood at wood s lot keeps finding such great content from such a diverse range of sources.I occasionally feel guilty for referring to stuff he has found so often but...it's just so good.

Here's more....

We investigate the value of spiritual concepts in the context of our evolutionary fitness, and attempt to bring together science and spirit under the common viewpoint of complexity theory. Within such a paradigm, we show spiritual ideas to be perhaps the most valuable and neglected aspects of our education, and give some complexity based criteria for the evaluation of religious systems. The idea of spirituality as a worldly asset permits us to re-evaluate many of the assumptions lying behind traditional science and religion, and allows us to move to a viewpoint integrating both spiritual and scientific processes into the psychology of the mind.

Spirit of Complexity via wood s lot

Humbling
I sometimes wonder how on earth Mark Wood at wood s lot keeps finding such great content from such a diverse range of sources.I occasionally feel guilty for referring to stuff he has found so often but...it's just so good.

Here's more....

We investigate the value of spiritual concepts in the context of our evolutionary fitness, and attempt to bring together science and spirit under the common viewpoint of complexity theory. Within such a paradigm, we show spiritual ideas to be perhaps the most valuable and neglected aspects of our education, and give some complexity based criteria for the evaluation of religious systems. The idea of spirituality as a worldly asset permits us to re-evaluate many of the assumptions lying behind traditional science and religion, and allows us to move to a viewpoint integrating both spiritual and scientific processes into the psychology of the mind.

Spirit of Complexity via wood s lot

Nice Victorian Clip-art Site

OldFashionedClipArt.com thanks to wood s lot

Nice Victorian Clip-art Site

OldFashionedClipArt.com thanks to wood s lot

Nice Victorian Clip-art Site

OldFashionedClipArt.com thanks to wood s lot

Walking the talk
After my post about conversations I had the uncanny experience of having a physcal equivalent of "talking to yourself but better".

I've tended to stay clear of large groups of walkers in the past. My walking in the lowland countryside round where I live has been mostly on my own and trips to mountains have been with my wife or one or two friends. But today I went out with a walking club for the first time. But this wasn't an ordinary walking club.

The Time Out Saturday Walking Club is a very clever system set up by Nicholas Abery, the originator of the Global Ideas Bank. There are 52 walks in the "system", one for every Saturday in the year and all within an hour or so of London. There is then a published timetable for the start of each walk (based on trains out of London) and a description of the walk. This means that anyone with the book can just turn up at the right place and time and expect to meet a group of possibly complete strangers with whom to spend the day walking.

The weather was very foggy and the usual pleasures of looking at the countryside we walked through obviously much dimished. But the real pleasure of the walk, and the point at last of this post, was the conversations.

Walking seems to induce people to have more philosphical conversations than you might sitting across a table or in a room. Perhaps it is the fact that you tend to walk side by side rather than facing each other and there is a sensation of talking to someone else but not quite. There is also something about the rhythms of walking which induce a mellow, almost trance like state which helps the brain to relax and chuck ideas around with less of the usual limiting scripts getting in the way. It is also interesting the way stops and starts at fences or styles tend to make it easy to pick up with another person as you move on, another conversation, another thread.

Taking part in these sometimes intimate, sometimes philosophical and always interesting conversations with people who I had never met and would probably never meet again in the very surreal foggy circumstances reminded me of the point I was trying to make in the last post. With the desire to converse and share, the connections to make it happen and the stimulation of interesting company walking too can be like talking to yourself but better!

Walking the talk
After my post about conversations I had the uncanny experience of having a physcal equivalent of "talking to yourself but better".

I've tended to stay clear of large groups of walkers in the past. My walking in the lowland countryside round where I live has been mostly on my own and trips to mountains have been with my wife or one or two friends. But today I went out with a walking club for the first time. But this wasn't an ordinary walking club.

The Time Out Saturday Walking Club is a very clever system set up by Nicholas Abery, the originator of the Global Ideas Bank. There are 52 walks in the "system", one for every Saturday in the year and all within an hour or so of London. There is then a published timetable for the start of each walk (based on trains out of London) and a description of the walk. This means that anyone with the book can just turn up at the right place and time and expect to meet a group of possibly complete strangers with whom to spend the day walking.

The weather was very foggy and the usual pleasures of looking at the countryside we walked through obviously much dimished. But the real pleasure of the walk, and the point at last of this post, was the conversations.

Walking seems to induce people to have more philosphical conversations than you might sitting across a table or in a room. Perhaps it is the fact that you tend to walk side by side rather than facing each other and there is a sensation of talking to someone else but not quite. There is also something about the rhythms of walking which induce a mellow, almost trance like state which helps the brain to relax and chuck ideas around with less of the usual limiting scripts getting in the way. It is also interesting the way stops and starts at fences or styles tend to make it easy to pick up with another person as you move on, another conversation, another thread.

Taking part in these sometimes intimate, sometimes philosophical and always interesting conversations with people who I had never met and would probably never meet again in the very surreal foggy circumstances reminded me of the point I was trying to make in the last post. With the desire to converse and share, the connections to make it happen and the stimulation of interesting company walking too can be like talking to yourself but better!

Walking the talk
After my post about conversations I had the uncanny experience of having a physcal equivalent of "talking to yourself but better".

I've tended to stay clear of large groups of walkers in the past. My walking in the lowland countryside round where I live has been mostly on my own and trips to mountains have been with my wife or one or two friends. But today I went out with a walking club for the first time. But this wasn't an ordinary walking club.

The Time Out Saturday Walking Club is a very clever system set up by Nicholas Abery, the originator of the Global Ideas Bank. There are 52 walks in the "system", one for every Saturday in the year and all within an hour or so of London. There is then a published timetable for the start of each walk (based on trains out of London) and a description of the walk. This means that anyone with the book can just turn up at the right place and time and expect to meet a group of possibly complete strangers with whom to spend the day walking.

The weather was very foggy and the usual pleasures of looking at the countryside we walked through obviously much dimished. But the real pleasure of the walk, and the point at last of this post, was the conversations.

Walking seems to induce people to have more philosphical conversations than you might sitting across a table or in a room. Perhaps it is the fact that you tend to walk side by side rather than facing each other and there is a sensation of talking to someone else but not quite. There is also something about the rhythms of walking which induce a mellow, almost trance like state which helps the brain to relax and chuck ideas around with less of the usual limiting scripts getting in the way. It is also interesting the way stops and starts at fences or styles tend to make it easy to pick up with another person as you move on, another conversation, another thread.

Taking part in these sometimes intimate, sometimes philosophical and always interesting conversations with people who I had never met and would probably never meet again in the very surreal foggy circumstances reminded me of the point I was trying to make in the last post. With the desire to converse and share, the connections to make it happen and the stimulation of interesting company walking too can be like talking to yourself but better!

Isn't everything a conversation?
I remember the first time I really got into live chat on the internet. I struck up a "conversation" with someone who I knew I would never meet, living on the other side of the planet, with no concievable connection between us other than the fact that we were both sitting at computer keyboards connected to the internet.

Once we had got through the a/s/l pleasantries it quickly became clear that this woman was going through a rough time in her marriage. I started asking some genuinely interested questions and getting more and more full answers. As this process continued I realised that I was in effect counselling my "friend", the paragraphs of writing appearing on the screen from her got longer and more powerful as time passed by. By being willing to listen, being non judgemental and caring, I was helping her sort out her problems. I remember thinking at the time that it was a bit like talking to yourself but better.

Sure "markets are conversations" but then isn't everything? Don't we define ourselves in relation to the conversations we hear around us when we are young, the conversations we have with others as we grow and become more independant and even the conversations we have with ourselves as we constantly chatter in our own heads. It is surely through these constant dialogues (even the monologues are dialogues) that we prove we exist and what that existence means.

Isn't this what is so wonderful about the internet - its power to connect us across physical or cultural barriers in such an intimate way that it feels like talking to ourselves but better!

Isn't everything a conversation?
I remember the first time I really got into live chat on the internet. I struck up a "conversation" with someone who I knew I would never meet, living on the other side of the planet, with no concievable connection between us other than the fact that we were both sitting at computer keyboards connected to the internet.

Once we had got through the a/s/l pleasantries it quickly became clear that this woman was going through a rough time in her marriage. I started asking some genuinely interested questions and getting more and more full answers. As this process continued I realised that I was in effect counselling my "friend", the paragraphs of writing appearing on the screen from her got longer and more powerful as time passed by. By being willing to listen, being non judgemental and caring, I was helping her sort out her problems. I remember thinking at the time that it was a bit like talking to yourself but better.

Sure "markets are conversations" but then isn't everything? Don't we define ourselves in relation to the conversations we hear around us when we are young, the conversations we have with others as we grow and become more independant and even the conversations we have with ourselves as we constantly chatter in our own heads. It is surely through these constant dialogues (even the monologues are dialogues) that we prove we exist and what that existence means.

Isn't this what is so wonderful about the internet - its power to connect us across physical or cultural barriers in such an intimate way that it feels like talking to ourselves but better!

Isn't everything a conversation?
I remember the first time I really got into live chat on the internet. I struck up a "conversation" with someone who I knew I would never meet, living on the other side of the planet, with no concievable connection between us other than the fact that we were both sitting at computer keyboards connected to the internet.

Once we had got through the a/s/l pleasantries it quickly became clear that this woman was going through a rough time in her marriage. I started asking some genuinely interested questions and getting more and more full answers. As this process continued I realised that I was in effect counselling my "friend", the paragraphs of writing appearing on the screen from her got longer and more powerful as time passed by. By being willing to listen, being non judgemental and caring, I was helping her sort out her problems. I remember thinking at the time that it was a bit like talking to yourself but better.

Sure "markets are conversations" but then isn't everything? Don't we define ourselves in relation to the conversations we hear around us when we are young, the conversations we have with others as we grow and become more independant and even the conversations we have with ourselves as we constantly chatter in our own heads. It is surely through these constant dialogues (even the monologues are dialogues) that we prove we exist and what that existence means.

Isn't this what is so wonderful about the internet - its power to connect us across physical or cultural barriers in such an intimate way that it feels like talking to ourselves but better!

I thought he'd be good.....and he is
Thoughts, wrote Nietzsche, are shadows of our feelings: always darker, emptier, and simpler than these. And the written word, it strikes me, is but a shadow of our thoughts.

I’ve been working on this piece for nearly an hour now, writing a clause or two, thinking about it, writing another, going back and changing what I’ve written, moving things around, deleting, deleting, deleting, and yet all it probably took you to read it is two minutes. How different it would seem if we were talking. For it appears, reading back, that I have a certain point in mind and am taking the shortest route available to making that point, when in fact I’ve been discovering things as I’ve gone, not knowing what I would find.

from oblivio

I thought he'd be good.....and he is
Thoughts, wrote Nietzsche, are shadows of our feelings: always darker, emptier, and simpler than these. And the written word, it strikes me, is but a shadow of our thoughts.

I’ve been working on this piece for nearly an hour now, writing a clause or two, thinking about it, writing another, going back and changing what I’ve written, moving things around, deleting, deleting, deleting, and yet all it probably took you to read it is two minutes. How different it would seem if we were talking. For it appears, reading back, that I have a certain point in mind and am taking the shortest route available to making that point, when in fact I’ve been discovering things as I’ve gone, not knowing what I would find.

from oblivio