zenslacker #9

1.    Revel in being a recluse. Reflect on the fact that Darwin

rarely, if ever left his house after the age of 35. Tell others you are becoming a recluse. 

2.    Experiment with checking your email once a week. 

3.    Take an entire day to sew on buttons and mend clothes. Alright sew on one button.

4.    Dig the garden. No garden? Wade up a stream instead.

5.    Remember the only thing you really own is your state of mind right now.

how to be a parent #2

You want to be the best parent since the cranial expansion of homo sapiens produced 'modern' man several hundred thousand years ago.

That’s a lot of generations that have preceded you.

Naturally they all knew nothing. Which is why you haven’t even bought Dr Spock, the bible your parents swore by. But then they probably didn’t take parenting quite so seriously as you do.

This is the paradox. You think parenting is incredibly important yet you can’t be arsed to read anything about it or even ask anyone for advice.

I know- the above describes me.

Finally, though, I cracked.

It came about when we were still up at 1am with our little son playing very happily at our feet. I cracked.

This had to stop. I needed time for myself. For my wife. For my life. Our life. Life in general was being threatened by that which we both loved to bits. Loved, but were ignorant of.

Next day, he went to bed at eight after a bath and a little story. Conditioning. Old as Pavlov and his dogs. Get ‘em used to baths and stories and sleep will follow. He woke, not at 4am as we expected but at 8am, the same time as usual- but was less crabby than usual. He’d had a good night’s sleep for a change.

We live in an over stimulated and over stimulating world. We have electric light and TV and noise and city hum- so kids don’t drop off when they are tired. You have to decide, these days, for them. It’s an opt-in world we live in. Not opt–out like the good old 1960s or before. (What I mean is, if you don’t opt-in to certain arrangements, routines, practices- nothing happens- it’s just you staring at your screen waiting, looking out of the window.) So you have to find out and then opt in to certain childcare practices. After you crack, of course.

how to be a parent #1

Jeff and Denise were hippies. (This is a true story by the way). They let their kids do anything. They weren’t particularly close to their kids. They weren’t those lax but loving kind of parents. They just let their kids do anything they liked. When they liked. Total and utter freedom from the word go.

They had two children: River and Free (real names!). Free is now an alcoholic. He has never held a job down for more than a few months and he has been in and out of alcohol addiction counseling for years. River, on the other hand, has, from the same parental start become a world famous architect, happily married with two children of his own. Though in professional practice he goes by the name of James.

When you’re feeling you aren’t doing enough, or the right thing for your kids take heart, drop down a gear, cut yourself some slack. Even if you do absolutely nothing you’ll have a 50% success rate…

fear and the boss

Founder of Yoshinkan Aikido Gozo Shioda was so skilled he did not need to hurt people to make his aikido work. His top students understood this and flocked to him to learn. But those who studied under the top students were less perceptive. And since the top students sometimes hurt the junior students and did more obviously ‘powerful’ moves, there arose among the students a kind of whispered consensus that Shioda had been overtaken by his students. They whispered he wasn’t so good anymore.

Shioda understood what was happening. So he started hurting people again, as he had done before he was any good at aikido.

Respect came back from the unperceptive students, who were the majority. They said Shioda was again at the top of his form. Only the best knew, however, that this was actually a retrograde step, in a way, made necessary only by their ignorance.

Shioda made a choice: when you run a school you have to make a show too. People behave like children: you have to scare them a little – but only if you want to be the boss.

zenslacker #8

More and more people are zenslacking these days- isn't it great...

1.    Always be out without your cell phone if you are supposed to be waiting in for an important phonecall.

2.    Enjoy what is offered.

3.    Refuse to be impressed by money. Turn the conversation instead to the subject of ‘murderers I have met’. If you feel unable to fabricate having met a murderer talk about the overwhelming appeal of the colour yellow in all walks of life.

4.    If you can do it easily, without consuming the emotion, ie. not piously; then give away things that come to hand as gifts. 

5.   Often lie about your age. Pretend to be older too.

6.    On forms and CVs include a few pointless lies that are impossible to check.

7.    The mad modern world tries to process you. Avoid this by not processing others.

do you have more money than time?

My sister raises money for charity from time to time. In her home town, a rich commuter suburb, she arranged a charity showing of a yet-to-be released film. Though she almost sold out, not many people actually came to the film. They had more money than time. They want to give but not to do.

I’ve heard the same thing from various voluntary groups. With a bit of common sense it’s easy to raise money. The hard part is finding people- more volunteers, more people to do things.

When people have more money than time what does it mean?

It means you should sell time!

Initially this was done through selling time saving devices- dishwashers spring to mind especially for some reason.

But now we have an infinite amount of claims on our time. It’s called the net. Every waking moment can be filled when you sit plugged into the world behind your computer screen. You can work and play to your heart’s content.

This means that, as of about five years ago, you WILL NEVER AGAIN HAVE ENOUGH TIME.

EVER.

So rather than be in a perpetual angst ridden rush until the end of your days it makes sense to start timeshifting.

Timeshifting is to time what exercise and a sensible diet is to certain Pacific Islanders. In the past they had little food and had to do a lot- so they ate everything they could. That same strategy has turned many of them into giant lardasses in the present abundant world they live in.

In the past we had less things to do, less claims on our attention, TV that went off at midnight and no internet. All that free time is just …gone.

Timeshifting often means MOVING temporarily someplace that has no internet- for example going on a walk- so that during that brief period you are experiencing time as you used to, without competing claims.

Deeper timeshifting means altering the way you look at your life. Life shouldn’t look like one damn thing after another.

My guess is we need to limit not just how much information we take in (turn off the TV, stop surfing the news headlines), but also how much we can POTENTIALLY take in. We do this through being in an environment that, temporarily, turns its back on outside information. When you go skiing don’t take the blackberry and text people at home, don't check the cricket results as you wait for the ski-lift. Grow your own small-group-feeling instead. Try to get a GANG together that has its own mythology and group purpose that does not rely on being plugged into the giant nipple of sky sport, sky news, the world wide web or your phone contact list.

For fans of EM Forster: Only disconnect.

balance in cairo

On the way to the airport today I saw a young woman making her way on foot amongst the craziest traffic. She wore rather fetching trousers tightly drawn around her waist, a blouse, long curly hair; a slim attractive woman rather deftly moving between the six lanes of dodging and weaving cars. But there was something not quite right. I looked at the taxi driver and he nodded, “Magnoon”- mad, and as we passed her I saw the look of harassed intent and jerking movements of her head that told me she was mentally disturbed. Who else would be mucking around in the middle of a particularly mad highway in the craziest traffic system in the world you might ask?

The strange thing was, right up until I realized she was mad I’d been thinking how dynamic and ‘western’ she seemed compared to the swaddled and rather impassive women at the roadside…

You can go mad anywhere if you haven’t got an instinct for balance. I was thinking this as I looked at the wealth of excellent self-help material available for free on the web. But on most sites it’s ALL self-help. There’s no let-up. It begins to seem like a kind of greed - a greed for personal growth- which is still greed, in other words something blind, automatic, and capable of blocking what you see. Greedy people make sillier mistakes to put it bluntly.

So even on a site loaded with self-help there needs to be some kind of balancing factor.