Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Ah, heaven

When I was young, my vision of heaven was a cozy but light filled library with a ton of books - specifically books that I was interested in. I'd dream of how I could spend the entire day reading and reading and reading.
I suddenly remembered that vision today, and you know what? It still sounds mighty appealing! I'd add a couple of things though, to this vision. An endless supply of coffee and occasionally a plate of samosas. ;-)

I have about 7 books that I've borrowed from the library that are due sometime in the next couple of weeks and haven't really read even one of them...Hence this book and samosa filled fantasy! :

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Another take

Well...I was thinking about what I wrote yesterday and it seems a bit simplistic (duh!)

I mean, consider the example of one person not talking to another. While its true that the other person does not know what is going on and draws his conclusion, the first person might know the reason for his own silence. So in that sense, there is a truth which might be truer than some of the meanings taken by the observer.

But mostly we don't necessarily have access to this truth and we must draw our own conclusions. And maybe that's some kind of evolutionary thing - trying to match patterns and come to conclusions. Makes us understand who our enemies are and things like that. So assuming things based on events is not necessarily a bad thing - in general.

But obviously there are times we take it too far. My husband can probably tell you the number of times I've taken a simple remark of his and gone wild with it, perceiving it as an insult and using it to draw conclusions about him, about our marriage and everything. Oops! :-/

Maybe that's a woman thing. I don't know. What I do realize is there are times it's better to not draw our own conclusions. How do you determine which times are better for what? Alack and Alas, I don't know...

Meaning and control and other such good stuff

Came back from an awesome book club meeting. On my way back, I was listening to the radio and caught a bit of 'Ideas' on CBC. Their guest on the show today was William Irvine, who was talking about his book 'A guide to the Good Life (the ancient art of stoic joy.)'

Whatever little I heard of the programme was pretty good. If I get hold of a transcript or something, I'll post a link. Because my paraphrasing just wont do! You've got to read or hear the real thing.

One of the things he talked about was control and how little we have of it. We can control very few things in our lives but our emotions are one of them. And stoics strive to do that. For instance we can't control if the sun will rise tomorrow but we can control how we feel about that...

He talks about how people are mostly unhappy because they always want to be somewhere else than where they are in life, all the time. And we keep blaming circumstances, other people's behaviours and external events for our unhappiness when in reality our happiness is in our control, in how we choose to think or feel. Again I wish I had his exact words here. He said it much better than this.

This kind of fit in with a video I was watching recently by Morty Lefkoe. Lefkoe talks about how events are separate from our reactions to them. If someone does not talk to you, you might interpret it as anger towards you. Or perhaps you might think they are being rude. Or you may think they don't know the language. All of these are meanings that you're giving the event. The event is that the other person didn't talk. But what meaning have you taken away from it? If you're a person with low self-esteem, you probably took a meaning that confirmed your low opinion of yourself. Except that you have now (falsely) attributed the meaning as coming from someone else. It's all in your head people! ;-)

How many meanings have you created recently from simple events that inherently have no meaning? As long as we're the ones creating the meanings, why don't we create some positive ones?

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

It was a fantastic day today! High of + 15 or something like that. Picked up Kuttipa from daycare in the afternoon and spent over an hour at Bowmont park. Kuttipa played on the slide, climbing up the ladder and sliding down on his tummy on the huge curved monster of a slide. He did this for almost the entire hour, never tiring of the climb up which looked a bit taxing on his tiny legs, or of the slide down which seemed to be fun every single time! Every now and then he played the 'drum' by banging his hands on the metal slide and smiling at me and exclaiming 'drum'! And me, I just enjoyed all the sunshine, the fresh air and the spectacular view of the Bow river. And I enjoyed watching Kuttipa clamber up the slide and thinking of how nice this parenting thing is sometimes.....