Belly Button Lint

Feeling Lint-y?

Tag: time

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    standards and gauges

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    1–2 minutes

    Once a system has been established, there are "tolerances" that shape the energies and forms that exist within it.
    These normative parameters influence how we move through the world: slowly transforming and deforming under increments of utility and efficiency.
    Said another way, our pathologies are incrementally ratcheted into expressions that can be grasped, that is certain "images" or "normative outcomes" that operate with the most efficiency inside the system.

    These easy-to-grasp conceptual abstractions are recognizable forms -archetypes or stereotypes as well as inches and ounces- which reduce friction by universality: to get the results you desire quickly make it easy for people to grasp your "increment."

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    Seeds of transformation

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    1–2 minutes

    Establishing a goal and aiming for it is admirable, but the Kantian/Euclidean path ignores the embodied process of change that occurs.

    Instead a goal is a field that grows seeds, allowing us to tend to (and react to) changes over time.

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    Emotional Rappelling

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    1–2 minutes

    As you bounce and slide into a new life, letting loose just a bit, your partner remains the stable anchor point.
    Are they left behind or left to pull you back? Either way sucks to be them. Next time, try tandem skydiving.

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    religious infinity

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    1–2 minutes

    I was introduced to infinity (endless time and space) through religion. God is beyond time and space, yet knows us intimately and allows us eternal life in heaven or eternal punishment in hell.

    You can imagine how this started: "How much does God love you?"
    "More than you can imagine: infinitely."
    And the inverse becomes, "How bad will your punishment be?"
    "It is unfathomable, and forever."

    The impulse for both comes from the same sublime conception.

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    Subtraction: Ever-Present Happiness

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    1–2 minutes

    Happiness is not finding something or adding something. If it were, rich people would be happy.

    To discover happiness you must clear away the excess. We bury our happiness, suffocating it under our wants and ambitions, our fears and failures.

    Once cleared away, we find happiness is not something we seek, but something we have always had.

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    Take care of your investments

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    1–2 minutes

    Without maintenance, things break, and even with care, they fail.
    By checking in regularly we can prevent being shocked by catastrophic failure, perhaps even avoid it altogether.
    Whether it is your relationships, car, job, or tools: if you spent the time and resources in the past, spend time now as well instead of courting disastrous loss.

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    Memory is redundant

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    1–2 minutes

    Memory is redundant: its repetition makes remembrance more significant.
    Perhaps you only see something once, yet its oddity makes it significant enough to multiply, having an inflationary effect that drowns out other details. Our memory is captivated by intensity and novelty, shaping our remembrance further with the weight of excessive repetition.
    (inspired by Italo Calvino)

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    numbness to life

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    1–2 minutes

    When life is too good or rich for too long, we experience a complete flattening.
    At the extremes, it is anhedonia: the inability to feel pleasure.
    While pressures perpetually increase, humans function in cycles (or seasons), not in ever-escalating trajectories. Withdrawal from "the good" is necessary to reset and enable yourself to experience joy.

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    Pay Attention to Avoid Regret

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    1–2 minutes

    Not paying attention means you have focused internally, retreating from the world.
    Living in your head means you miss the world and enriching details. That is, you miss out on life for a fantasy.
    Of course, the external world may be a nightmare, and fantasy is your reprieve, or perhaps your internal ruminations are terrible, and you avoid your mind to survive. But the only way out of regretting a life of escapism is to begin anew in the present.

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    Impulse to manufacture

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    1–2 minutes

    When we have a spare moment, it is a survival imperative to look around and act: to plan or consume, to create.

    Thoughtfully progressing from the external inward, we self-assess and label our feelings to more deftly acknowledge and manifest them.

    We constantly manufacture and work to maintain a state instead of just being here.