Philosophy for life
As a wise friend pointed out, when your wings are being clipped or you’re feeling held back, it’s worth remembering the floral profusion of the tropical bougainvillea.
Sometimes a good winter pruning is just the thing to promote healthy balanced growth – and a summer burst into full bloom.
It takes both sun and showers to grow and flower. So sometimes, it’s good to gather oneself and take on a little less. Much better a blooming bougainvillea than a prickly rambling rose.
Interesting to realise – on my last day of work in 2013 – that something I’ve been responsible for a long long time is no longer going badly.
In truth, it was never going quite as badly as some made out. But looking back on 2013, you have to say it is now going pretty well.
When a baby is crying, it’s hard to focus or get anyone else to focus on anything else. But, just like when a baby stops crying – or when your kids stop waking you up every night – you quickly forget and simply get on with everything else.
Still, it’s progress. So here’s to even fewer tears in 2014.
Useful to be reminded this week that among David Hume’s many contributions to the world of ideas is this one – you can’t get an ought from an is.
So it is. You can describe a phenomenon or circumstance, however awful or wonderful but it doesn’t mean it’s objectively good or bad.
Nearly everyone struggles with this. It feels all wrong – but that’s the point, it feels. ‘Oughts’ are a matter of interpretation and beliefs, not matters of fact.
9/10ths of bother in human affairs derives from this misunderstanding. And so it was this week as I was besieged by people pointing out things they didn’t like – and inviting me to agree with them on what ought to be the case. Generally I didn’t.
Sometimes, all you can do is give people the context; more facts and data, the ‘oughts’ we all end up deciding for ourselves.
Is there anything more naff than emojis? I’d always thought they were about the lowest form of communication known to man. But…
I was wrong. Perhaps it’s my recent trip to Japan – but saying it in pictures sometimes says it better than words.
This was my week:
📥📝📯📨📤🚜💩🐓💣👴👵💤👃🏃⌚️🏠🌵🌛🔙🔜⁉️
Probably only one other person in the world truly knows what this means. But the laughter we shared on opposite ends of mobile phones puts emojis on a par with poetry.
As Aristotle almost said, perhaps sometimes the job of the poet is to say something transcendent and universal about the human condition – in no more or less emojis than are needed…
🔚
Lots to reflect on after some time in China and Japan – not least how much I enjoyed it. Normally, in my past, being jetlagged and on display from morning till night would have seemed as much fun as the proverbial ‘root canal work’.
Facing myriad ‘state visits’, handshakes, speeches, staff talks and formal lunches and dinners, the curious discovery was – with few deep breaths and some positive thinking – it all went fine. And in fact, I really enjoyed it.
Talking to an interesting chap this week, he pointed out that, physiologically, the sensations of anxiety are pretty much indistinguishable from those of excitement. All that’s different is the mental picture.
Bungee jump = Excitement
Standing too close to a cliff edge = Anxiety.
I was back in the dentist’s chair for my actual root canal work yesterday. Injections, a clamp, a rubber sheet over my mouth, drills, cement, industrial disinfectant dribbling down my throat, UV, x-rays, smoke, fumes, thumbs, pins and screws.
The fear of pain put this in the ‘anxiety’ not the ‘excitement’ category. But every time I remembered to adjust my mental state, to breathe and to separate the physiological from the mental, it wasn’t half as bad.
Nobody wants a dull life. So realising anxiety and excitement are just two sides of the same physical coin is a good discovery – once again, the picture in the mind makes a very big difference to how it all feels.
Achilles & Aristotle 