You can’t excuse yourself from consideration; from parsing the acts of others into opinions.
We have a responsibility to keep thinking even when we shouldn’t be speaking.
Tag: vision
- Theme: Self
You can’t excuse yourself
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1–2 minutes - Theme: Self
Striving breaks symmetry
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1–2 minutesTo be well-rounded implies balance and symmetry. Yet, symmetry seems antithetical to striving: the focus in one direction distending the form.
This analogical thinking uncovers my implicit bias: mathematical shapes as models for humans contain and reduce us. - Theme: Self
The gift of spite
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1–2 minutesYou can give somebody, your children for instance, the gift of having somebody to spite, allowing yourself to be the target of animosity.
If we say "you can become whatever you want," we abdicate reality for dreams. This locates future failure inside of the person: if they fail, it is shamefully on them for not wanting or trying enough.Can we reverse this? Can we offer the gift of realism from which overcoming is legitimately achievable, though producing short-term spite? And in doing so generate practical self-confidence?
- Theme: Growth
Change as Cruelty
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1–2 minutesFor children change and play are simply life. As we age we become fixed and brittle, and change begins to appear as cruelty.
- Theme: Growth
Failure is inevitable for growth
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1–2 minutesThe pain of failure is also a sign that you are on the right path, because at least you are challenging yourself rather than languishing in soft security.
From this perspective failure is never really failure, because it is merely the cost of taking a risk to grow. - Theme: Growth
Specialization as stagnation
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1–2 minutesTo specialize is to dig a deep well, which can become a stagnant pond.
The deeper you go, when you look back up you can still see the stars, but the more narrow your field of view becomes. - Theme: Culture
Dark Nudges
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1–2 minutesRandom cruelties befall us, dissuading us from our passions and dreams. The dark nudges push us into hiding and sheltering: a contracted life of self-protection.
The more you create the more you engage with the world, and the more interactions you have: both good and bad. Don’t be nudged into the cave of security, reorient to the joy of adventure. - Theme: Self
Self-narration prison
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1–2 minutesWe spend the majority of our lives in our head, crafting our dramas, articulating rebuttals. We are not happy there, yet refuse to leave.
Meanwhile nature is rustling. The minute you let go and pay attention, a supreme peace can be upon you.
- Theme: Growth
The sin of neutrality
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1–2 minutesTo remain neutral creates a vacuum.
We often stay neutral out of respect for individual sovereignty (freedom of choice or preference). Yet, without articulating an alternative, substantive vision our friends/family are left to the predation of marketed mantras that divide: "to each their own."