What I've Learned So Far

The fifth installment of my series of reflections on John XXIII’s daily decalogue:

5. Only for today, I will devote 10 minutes of my time to some good reading, remembering that just as food is necessary to the life of the body, so good reading is necessary to the life of the soul.

It’s one of the ironies of my Internet-centric working life that I’m a professional writer who reads a lot but I’ve never yet done the type of writing I most want to do (i.e. book writing) and that I do much less than I’d like of the type of reading I most enjoy (i.e. book reading).

This suggests something skewed in my perspective, which I’ve been working to correct. Instead of “noodling” online, I’m working to spend more of my time actually working on my writing, and more time living in books.

When we say “I’d like to be doing more of so-and-so,” it’s usually a lie we’re telling ourselves, because if we’d really like it . . . we’d be doing it. Typically, what’s really going on is that we’re too distracted to be doing what we know would be a better use of our time.

That’s why Pope John’s advice here is so worthy: even beyond the direct — wonderful — commitment to spend time in good books, it reminds us that we can pull back and spend a little time, even just ten minutes, each day on the things that we say are really important to us. We don’t have to be distracted or overwhelmed all the time. We can and we should carve out space to focus on something worthy.

My guess is I need to do no selling to this audience when it comes to the worthiness of reading books. At this moment, for no cost, you can choose to bring Shakespeare or Dante or Dickens or Dickinson or Woolf into your life. The great minds of the past are just waiting to share space within your own mind. When we thinking of “reading a book” as “doing a chore,” we treat it with as much warmth as we usually treat the laundry or the dishes. But when we treat “reading a book” as “communing with great minds” — that’s another proposition entirely.
~

Previously in this series:

• “Without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once.”
• “I will not claim to improve or to discipline anyone except myself.”
• “I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy.”
• “I will adapt to circumstances.”

(Photo by David Sifry.)

This long (!) item by Kevin Kelly shows the power of thinking Big, especially in terms of BHAGs (big, hairy audacious goals) that have the promise of transforming important areas of human endeavor and understanding.

A Web Page For Every Species

Here’s a story about something big. Big as the planet. Not well known, but important. I go into great detail because I was present for part of its rise. It’s also the story of how big things get done. With set-backs, failures, many people, unexpected turns. This is not the whole story; it is just beginning. There may be lessons for others hoping to launch a big hairy audacious idea.

Kelly goes on to tell the story of the Encyclopedia of Life (cameo appearance: E. O. Wilson) and the dreamed-for All Species Inventory.

This is a great read if you’re interested in biology, biodiversity, transformative technology, or just the power of Big Ideas.

Check it out.

This is a peak:

This is “pique”:

So, nothing “peaks” your interest. Believe me when I tell you that your interest was not “peaked.” It was piqued.

Now that that’s straightened up, please feel free to resume your normal activities.

(Image of Annapurna from Alpine Visions.)

Continuing (after quite the hiatus, eh?) my series of comments on John XXIII’s “daily decalogue”:

4. Only for today, I will adapt to circumstances, without requiring all circumstances to be adapted to my own wishes.

One of my fundamental beliefs is that we should deal with things as they are, rather than dealing with them as we wish they were. This is hardly an original insight on my part; in fact, it’s a core tenet of Buddhism, among other belief systems.

On old friend of mine summarized this particularly well with a turn of phrase he would use to talk about some of life’s unpleasant but unavoidable realities: “It’s just so.” It’s how he counseled himself and how he counseled his friends: you may not like it that your relationship has fallen apart, but it’s far better to acknowledge that “it’s just so” and get on with the rest of your life. Maybe you had big dreams of being a movie star in your 20s and now you find yourself working in cubicle-land in your 30s or 40s, but since “it’s just so” that you are where you are, why not start out from here?

In the long run, you can reshape all sorts of things in your life and in the world around you, if you’ll demonstrate sustained willpower. (Hellen Keller did this; Winston Churchill did it; even Arnold Schwarzenegger has done it.) But in the short run, it’s a heck of a lot better to cast off your illusions and deal with things as they are, not as we wish they were.

Your bank balance . . . is what it is.

Your waist measurement . . . is what it is.

The state of your relationships . . . is what it is.

The quality of your career . . . is what it is.

And so on.

This isn’t a license for despair, or for throwing up one’s hands and giving up on trying. Rather, being honest about the circumstances around you and then adapting your actions to deal with those circumstances is the best way to start influencing those circumstances in the direction you’d like them to go. Dealing in a clear-eyed, grown-up way with your bank balance, your waistline, or your relationships is an ideal grounding for having a better bank balance, waistline, or set of relationships a month or a year or a decade from now.

Try it this week: look without flinching at the unattractive realities of your life, accept them for what they are, and think about how you might deal with them more effectively in time to come.

~

Previously in this series:

• “Without wishing to solve the problems of my life all at once.”
• “I will not claim to improve or to discipline anyone except myself.”
• “I will be happy in the certainty that I was created to be happy.”

(Photo by Bistrosavage.)

Dear readers:

Easter Day seems like a good time to comment on rebirth. The tender green shoots of plants burst forth in the spring, and so at times do the tender green shoots of ideas burst forth from the mind of yours truly.

Lately I’ve realized just how many of my ideas sit dormant, half-done, uncaptured, or entirely unexpressed to the world at large. That’s a mug’s game — especially for someone who makes his living by ideas — for the reason that Paul Graham has captured here:

An obstacle downstream propagates upstream. If you’re not allowed to implement new ideas, you stop having them. And vice versa: when you can do whatever you want, you have more ideas about what to do.

So, please brace yourselves as I share substantially more ideas with you. All of this is by way of reshaping this blog to be a more active venue for my professional as well as personal thoughts. Oh, I’ll still assail you with my off-the-cuff remarks on life, do not fear, but you should also expect to see much more on literature, the environment, foreign policy, history, and other chewy topics.

Often I forget to say “thank you” to my readers. So thank you for joining me here, and thank you in advance for any interaction you choose to offer, whether in the form of comments, e-mails, trackback links, tweets, or what-have-you.

All best wishes on this Easter Day, and every day.

(Photo by Matalyn.)

Yesterday I posted this frivolous tweet:

Someday I’m going to write a cop novel in which all the characters are named after Intel chips. Lead roles played by Tukwila and Dunnington.

Egged on by a couple of Twitter friends, I started composing the story, 140 characters or less at a time, in Twitter. Partway in, I started using “hashtags” to capture the tweets on the fly, but here’s the whole story in one place. Expect small but regular updates. Oh, you should also expect typos, abbreviations, and so on until I have a chance to clean it up.

~~~

Tukwila and Dunnington: Chapter 1

Tukwila sat on the porch at Taco Shack, sipping his coffee while he stared, puzzled, at the iPhone screen. Dunnington sat down next to him.

“What? Can’t get your new toy to work?” Tukwila cut him a glance; it was Dunnington who refused to keep up with the times.

“No, it works fine,” Tukwila said. “But my girlfriend signed me up for this thing, this messaging thing, and I can’t figure it out.”

Dunnington chewed his Burnet Road Burrito for a second, then said, “Even I know how to IM.”

Tukwila cranked his glare up to about an 8 out of 10. “Thanks, genius, I know how to send an IM, too. This is a group-messaging thing.”

“What’s it called?” Dunnington wiped his chin with a paper napkin, then took a sip from his coffee.

Tukwila looked back down at his phone and said “Twitter.” He said it in a soft voice.

“Twitter?” Dunnington was talking with his mouth full, and his eyebrows were halfway up his forehead. “Twitter-twitter, like a mockingbird?”

“Something like that.” Tukwila took another sip of his coffee, tossed the phone onto the table, and started unwrapping his tacos.

“So how do you like that phone?” Dunnington had a habit of talking with his mouth full. 8 years with the same partner will erode manners.

“The phone’s great. It’s more than I can even use.” Tukwila chewed thoughtfully. “It’s like a drug.”

“That might be *slightly* melodramatic, bro!” Dunnington took another huge bite; the burrito was already nearly gone. Tukwila shrugged, took another bite of his taco, and looked down at the phone. It rang.

“Tukwila.” He squinted at the flower beds next to the patio, not seeing them. “Right… Right… Got it.” He hung up the phone and turned to his partner. “Let’s go.”

They got into Dunnington’s black Suburban. It belonged to the P.D., but everyone thought of it as his, since he alone drove it. The tall, rawboned detective had driven HumVees in Kuwait & Somalia with the Tenth Mountain Div. He wasn’t the sort to argue with. Dunnington still kept his sandy hair cropped close, just shy of a buzz-cut, and he hadn’t lost the look of a soldier. Tukwila was most of a foot shorter and looked almost delicate — until you saw him handle a weapon or a rough customer. His looks were hard to place until you learned he was Native American, Korean, & what he called “American whitebread” all in one.

“Where are we headed?,” Dunnington said.

“The Four Seasons, downtown.” Tukwila was tapping away at his phone as Dunnington pulled into traffic on Spicewood Springs Road.

“We’re moving up in the world.” Dunnington chuckled at his own joke, but Tukwila wasn’t paying attention.

~~~

[To be continued . . .]

Attention, all ye who prize free-range learning, for yourselves and your children:

Visible Body Brings Human Anatomy to the Browser

. . . The purpose of the [WorldWide Telescope] software is to provide access to the world’s collected astronomical data and put it in the hands of regular people. Similarly, the Visible Body, which launches tomorrow, aims to do the same for human physiology.

Created by Argosy Publications, an animation and illustration firm that specializes in medical and scientific animations, the Visible Body is a neat interactive web animation tool that lets users explore the human anatomy and all its various systems. Created by the company’s specially trained biomedical visualization engineers over the past few years, the Visible Body is an accurate portrayal of the human body that we’re told is already being used in classrooms.

Here are links to these two tools:

• Visible Body
• WorldWide Telescope

Now, go ye and do some free-range science larnin’!