Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Quiet the critic (that is me)
I think I need to learn some relaxation techniques for occasions like this morning, when my BART train stopped in the trans-bay (translation: under the Bay) tunnel for 15 long minutes...as the billions of gallons of water and tons of earth around us exerted incredible forces on the tunnel. As a public transit rider...heck, as a person living around here...you take some of these things for granted -- the structural integrity of a tunnel or a bridge and the faith it will perservere against the forces of nature...including the unavoidable Big One (earthquake).
So, learn relaxation techniques to slow my brain and heart and sweat rate as I ponder what it would be like to get crushed under the Bay in a train.
Another intention (not resolution) for the New Year: be less critical of myself and others. Nicola sent the following along, and it's been food for my thought:
As Nicola says, this is a bit "woo woo" -- or I would call it New Age-y pabulum, but I do think there is something there. Can I accept the premise that things are neither one thing or another -- they just are? I don't know...but I do want to be more accepting of myself and others. I am very self critical, for example, about this blog -- it's not topical enough, it's not funny enough, it's not interesting enough, who cares what I think about streetcars, who cares what Lindsay did last week. So I talk myself into not writing, when I should just be writing to write, to enjoy the process of finding my voice and finding my own comfort and satisfaction with keeping a blog that is largely for personal consumption and archiving anyway.
More pondering to come.
So, learn relaxation techniques to slow my brain and heart and sweat rate as I ponder what it would be like to get crushed under the Bay in a train.
Another intention (not resolution) for the New Year: be less critical of myself and others. Nicola sent the following along, and it's been food for my thought:
Life is the coexistence of all opposite values. Joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, up and down, hot and cold, here and there, light and darkness, birth and death....All experience is by contrast, and one would be meaningless without the other. When there is a quiet reconciliation, an acceptance in our awareness of this lively coexistence of all opposite values, then automatically we become more and more non-judgmental. The victor and the vanquished are seen as two poles of the same being. Nonjudgment leads to quietening of the internal dialogue, and this opens once again the doorway to creativity.
As Nicola says, this is a bit "woo woo" -- or I would call it New Age-y pabulum, but I do think there is something there. Can I accept the premise that things are neither one thing or another -- they just are? I don't know...but I do want to be more accepting of myself and others. I am very self critical, for example, about this blog -- it's not topical enough, it's not funny enough, it's not interesting enough, who cares what I think about streetcars, who cares what Lindsay did last week. So I talk myself into not writing, when I should just be writing to write, to enjoy the process of finding my voice and finding my own comfort and satisfaction with keeping a blog that is largely for personal consumption and archiving anyway.
More pondering to come.
// posted by Bill @ 11:17 AM 
