Origami Exchange

I had a great 'origami exchange' with a elderly woman on my flight today. I gave her a butterfly in a small envelop. She was so thankful, but, after a few moments, I had to advise her that the gift was not simply a pretty rectangle. She opened it up and marveled at the butterfly. From the corner of my eye, I could see her examining it closely. After about 5 minutes, she asked if I could make her another one. "Sure", I said, "do you want a different color or something?". "No", she said, "the same color would be nice", and then she showed me a rectangular piece of paper which had previously been the butterfly. "I tried to figure out how it was made", she admitted. "No problem!", I replied, and then I countered, "I just hope you did not have a puppy when you were little" :-)

The Self-Interested Ecologist

In my opinion, only self-interest and economic competition can drive us towards an ecologically sustainable global community. We cannot legislate it. Even if we priced hydrocarbons out of existence in the US, the total global carbon footprint would continue to rise, albeit at a slower rate. We cannot rely on global accords. Every 3rd world country trying to balance reducing greenhouse gasses vs fighting for its very survival will undoubtedly tip the scales towards the latter. If we could see our way clear towards making the right investments and policy compromises to, for example, build enough wind power generation in the plains states such that we can run factories, produce goods, transport them and consume them (even) at a fraction of the cost, then the rest of the world would have to follow suite, as a matter of survival rather than good intention. Of course, there are other avenues to this kind of result. My point is that we cannot rely on good intentions to solve this problem :-/

From a Sharing Economy to a Caring Economy

In a sharing economy, the idea of ownership gives way to the efficiency and practicality of use, as many people use the same asset sequentially (or even concurrently) to drive from one location to another, or stay overnight at one place or another (probably not concurrently - wink, wink), but there still needs to be an owner of sorts to look after the efficacy of the asset, which could very well be the manufacturer or some other third party company that essentially gets a return on the asset through a series of micro-leases. This is great, in terms of the efficient use of assets, but I sometimes wonder if it is going to create the same level of carelessness that other such 'shared assets' creates today. Just look at the way we have treated all of the shared resources that we do not pay for directly (even if indirectly), whether natural, public or other such resources where our direct use of same is transient. How will we treat the car that we only intend on using to get from point A to point B and never intend on using again? How will we treat the pay-per-use appliances in our home? We need only look back on our history to understand the negative consequences when we calculate that our actions have no direct consequences on ourselves, especially in today's throwaway society. I think that it will be very important for us to instill the notion of a 'caring economy' in lockstep with the emerging 'sharing economy', or else risk trading inefficiency for ineffectuality.

See Clear

I chimed in on a friend's Facebook post regarding some grief that he was catching for maintaining his exercise regimen on a holiday and his commitment to stay the course, which, personally, I applaud, subject to the following: The most elite athletes train every day all day, but part of their training entails recovery and relaxation. They cast *everything* as training, so there is always perfect perceptual alignment. This is as opposed to seeing exercise as training and everything else as not-training, thereby creating a conflict. To that end, I came up with an acronym to capture the precedence of things in my life: SEE CLeaR. Sleep, Eat, Exercise, Career, Love and Recovery (e.g. relax, recharge, etc). Love, the most important thing in life, is 5th in line, because without its predecessors, it cannot be enjoyed. One should not feel guilty for doing what one needs to do to enjoy the rest of their life, but should also take care to leave room for the rest of their life. Anyone who takes care of others to the detriment of their own self-care should remember this, as should anyone who takes care of themselves to the detriment of others.

Mind Your Hydrodynamics

Like a ship that leaves the shore, even the slightest tilt of the rudder upon departure can lead one to a significantly different destination than one was otherwise destined to reach. The doubt that we are capable of actually doing what we love, as children, students or working adults. The hope that we are the best at what we do, again, as children, students or working adults. This is partly self-doubt, partly self-confidence, and partly external influence. As we are passengers on each other's ships, it is incumbent upon us to mind each other's tillers, taking care not to cast dispersion on an inner most dream, or taking care to steer the ship against adverse waves when the people we love are adrift in the inevitable challenges that accompany chasing a dream. It is this essential, mutual support that inspires me, and makes me chuckle a bit whenever I hear about the 'self-made' man or woman. No one is self-made. Even the strongest mind can be cut down by a cruel teacher, or built up by a mindful parent. So... Mind your hydrodynamics!

Enlightened Living

So simple? A pupil asks an elder monk who was thought to be enlightened, "what does an enlightened being do?" The elder responded, "I wake, I eat, I work, I play and I sleep." The pupil was surprised by this answer, and said "but I wake, eat, work, play and sleep too." ... "Yes", said the elder, "but when I eat, I eat; when I work, I work; when I play, I play; and when I sleep, I sleep." Insofar as meditation is practice for life, life can and should be practice for meditation. With sufficiently narrow attention, even 30 minutes on the treadmill can be truly liberating. Try it!

The Astronomy of Relationships

It is not often that astronomy offers salient analogies for relationships, probably half as often for anyone to even notice, but, in reading about solar systems in our galaxy and beyond, I found a few: More than four-fifths of the single points of light we observe in the night sky are actually two or more stars orbiting together. The most common of the multiple star systems are binary stars, systems of two companion stars. Some people even think that our sun is part of a binary system, with an as yet to be observed companion. There are 'wide binaries', consisting of two stars whose orbits are spread apart from one another, leaving them to evolve separately; 'close binaries', consisting of two stars that orbit one another so closely that one might actually transfer mass to the other or be pulled into the other completely; and everything in between, including categorizations that have more to do with how we perceive these stars: 'visual binaries', which can be distinguished visually through a telescope; 'spectroscopic binaries', which can only be distinguished by the wavelengths of the light that each one emits; 'eclipsing binaries', whose angle with the earth and our line of sight, so to speak, makes it so that we see these stars in alternating eclipses; 'astrometric binaries', where a visible star appears to be dancing around empty space, when, in reality, it is dancing with an unobservable companion; and 'double stars', which are two stars that appear to be binary stars, based on our angle of observation, but, in reality, are nowhere near one another. I think that we can all attest to either living through or observing relationships that align with these categorizations, and, perhaps, some of us are clear about how we want our heart to orbit another heart. The beautiful break from these analogies is that we create our own gravity. You can pull the heart you love straight to yours, if you choose to, or you can tether it at a distance and risk it being pulled away by other gravitational fields. My take, pull with everything you have, and don't be afraid to spin so closely as to become one, bright, shiny star.