Joy is Nested in the Comfort of Being with Yourself
Archive for May, 2011
Soap for the heart?
May 29th
Everybody needs to cry once in awhile. To let tears flow from a standpoint of compassion is like a shower for the heart. Our heart centers afterall, need cleansing every now and then.
Bob Marley – Ambushed in the night
May 29th
My heart is wrenchened. This post is late in the coming. However, I waited for the same emotions to surface before writing it again.
On May 11th some years ago, Bob Marley passed away due to cancer. During this time I had revisited his music to pay tribute to his life and the beacon of light he left on this planet.
Possibly one of his most powerful forms of change-force are embedded in his album “Survival”. Here he conveys tunes of the slavery, poverty and turmoil within the African nations. He sings of how people in power create a supreme form of scarcity that forces everyone to be in competition with one another. In such instances it is hard to fathom the dilemmas a hungry family would face from a day to day basis. To kill another to feed their family? It is certainly difficult to determine which is the greater good…
The people of Africa are given limited education. The one exception of it which is free is that of christianity (which in essence is not the problem) and they are taught not to stand for contraception. Of course, this helps the people in power have an umlimited number of slaves to More >
11 05 26
May 28th
Your Eyes
The Beach
The Wind
Your Hug
Your Voice
The Seagulls of Time
Pillows of Sand
The Food
The Number 22
Bob Marley
The Drawing of Light Beacons
Our Gifts
The Breath of an Eternal Memory
Yippy yay its Friday?
May 28th
This post will leave you thinking Yippy Yay Yay!
The theme? It is all about peer pressure. In fact, very similar to that which most of us experience during junior high school and university.
The group mentality is one that holds a special power. As a unified team, you can have fun, dominate work and move powerfully towards a goal. On the other side, the group mentality can create a bubble of complacency and make it very difficult for individuals to leave and create their own path for whatever it is they seek to do. Again, the theme of a double-edged sword.
So why Friday? Well, possibly one of the most compelling forms of peer pressure is the idea of Friday night drinks in the corporate life. Every get feel the obligation to always show up for the purposes of the boss and the team? Do you find yourself staying for longer than your originally stipulated “just one drink and I’ll head”? I totally understand. Then everything on Sat morning seems a bit of a haze and maybe the activities you wanted to enjoy or committ to from a personal development point of view dissolve to thin air. Like a puff of smoke More >
Leaving work at work is hard…
May 20th
I find this matter of billability a pain. Of course, sometimes I feel I do 5 hours worth in 2 hours and sometimes I feel I do an hour in a day! Of course, this all goes town in my head depending on my emotional state…very muchly a function of the activities outside of work. You know what I mean? Family, friends, partners…etc…
The contrary is true too. I find the matter of purely just being with someone you care for rather tricky (not so much now). For sometimes work can be an emotional attachment…stickier than the spider web you didnt see that is now sprawled all over your face and hair…
So I come to an impasse, where separating work from personal life a matter as tricky as telling oil to mix with water…truth is, what I want for one I want for the other. If I can find a way so that life and work is but play… then I say “damn man! Everything just gonna be okay!”
Jon
So what the fuss?
May 20th
“If I care too much of what others think of what I do, then I lose the ability to think for myself”
The ideal of each profession…
May 20th
I work as a fire engineer. Whats a fire engineer do? I basically facilitate the design of a building so that in the event of a fire emergency, people can get out safely! Subsequently a large amount of what I do involves understanding human behaviour, and providing sufficient information such that people can make well-informed decisions during an emergency situation. Of course, this also involves educating them beforehand as to the key fire safety aspects. In actual fact, the robustness and effectiveness of a large number of solutions is very much reliant on the common denominator..HUMANS!
We rely on management. We rely on people being reliable.Of course, if I was to truly reach the ultimate ideal of my profession, that would mean that everyone is educated to the extent that they would not need my supplementary design measures. If education of fire safety was part of the norm, as much so as one’s reflective action to swat a fly off their nose…then there would actually be NO NEED for my problem solving skills as the problem would seek to exist.
Silly is it not? I justify my existence as long as there is a problem…but deep in my heart, I seek to More >
A reflection on ANZAC day…
May 20th
I was at the foyer of an office tower when they carried out the laying of the wreath for the Anzacs…of course I am not an advocate of war though I could feel that these men fought with hearts of gold to protect a country they loved, to survive and come back to the family they treasured, to see their mates smile afore them again!
And we concluded with the minute of silence and “Lest we forget”. My friend shed a tear and I held mine back as my heart ached…and as I returned to the office I looked around to see the number of people carrying on with their business like nothing ever happened. To a lot of us, the 15 minutes could be better spent typing a word document, sending an email or sucking up to a client at work…of course one could say that they did “forget”. However my heart tells me they meant something much more… they lived in a time where political turmoil tugged at their very lives…where what was right, cowardly, wrong was all a mashpot of emotions…
Maybe “Lest we forget” was pertaining to “Do not lose yourselves”. I am of the belief that it More >
The Party called Friendship
May 20th
It is that time of my life where many close friends start travelling overseas…People I have known for years, and people I have only known for months! People whom I hold dearly in different compartments of my heart…*sigh*.
It is indeed an artistic experience… a part of me wants to be considerate and say “Good! Piss off! Go now…” with a big smile on my face. Why? I somehow think that would make it easier for them to look powerfully forward. If I were to mope and be all “awww” I may well create an unecessary excessive tug on their hearts…
So I leave them with a parting analogy… that our friendship is real wherever we are and it is much like the slingshot effect! Where we come and dance around each other, spinning and spinning and gaining a most joyful velocity…and when it is time we let go and BOOM! We are both shot to hyperspeeds to our next destination…saying “Bon Voyage” to each other’s shining lights!
We may meet again, we may not..and when we do we may be friends…we may not…but for the time it lasted it was AWESOME!
Jon
Have a chat before that wound gets phat
May 20th
A lot of the time, I find myself painting stories about my surroundings and second guessing decisions made by people. I find myself mistrustingly criticising what is going on and brain dumping better ways of approaching matters without taking any tangible action (whilst smugly thinking I am a genius).
As I do this, the “picture I paint” as a hypothesis gradually embeds itself in my memory as a reality as opposed to silly second guessing. Soon I can no longer distinguish the hypothesized story to reality. What is real however is that I didn‟t have a conversation with someone on the matter… I did not for example ask them why they were doing what they were doing!
Proper convo can clear things up. Have a chat before your story creates a wound so phat. After all, everyone is well rational within their own minds and their decisions are very much justified….let them show you that picture and you may have well progressed humanity in the direction of understanding
Jon