Thoughts & Essays
Easter Rocked… and Swayed…
I’ve been woken up by two earthquakes before. They were so light I practically fell asleep within seconds, only to realise the morning after what exactly had transpired. Today I experienced my first ‘daytime’ earthquake in LA. No more than five minutes had passed since I had spoken to family, thousands of miles and a continent away, who were already preparing for a good night’s rest by then after their Easter dinner.
While the floor shifted and the chandelier swayed, and a dog wiffled wondering what was going on, I stood where it seemed safest, and waited for things that should not be moving like this to stop moving as they were. I sent a simple text message to my closest friend (ironically, two hours’ drive away, and for whom I was dog sitting) saying, “Earthquake…” following up a few minutes later with, “It’s all good.”
I’ve finally been ‘inducted’ into the LA Quake Hall of Existence. Needless to say, I am grateful nothing more came of this one.
It did, however, shake up my already sensitive self. As the afternoon progressed, so did my reflections on what it means to be so far away from people you care about (both in distance and time differences), when those within your more immediate vicinity have already assimilated such things and passed them off as ‘just another one,’ and don’t think to check in on how you might have felt since you’re still new to it all. Everyone is so wrapped up in their own lives these days, it’s hard to feel connected.
So, admittedly, I felt very alone, and very uncomfortable.
It is not always easy to understand why sometimes we are in a strange place, with few people to call upon, feeling overwhelmingly isolated, and asking ourselves why and what for? What brought us here in the first place, and where is it taking us? What did we tell ourselves that landed us where we are, if it’s not quite where we thought we’d be?
As a friend of mine in Richmond just reminded me while I was writing this, “Better to have tried and failed than never tried at all.” Cliché, yes. True 99.99% of the time though.
And to this may I add, that ‘failure’ is really nothing more than an indicator for us to go in a different direction in order to fulfil our dreams and aspirations. Perhaps a painful indicator at times.
As we go along our way, we will do things others won’t approve of, and feel very detached as a result. Yet real approval has to come from within.
We will do things others will point fingers at us for, because they don’t care to lend a hand and try to understand us better in the process.
We will be judged by people who forget to ask themselves what it really is that bothers them about what we do. Are we challenging a part of them that desires the courage to try something different, step outside the societal box of how things have always been?
We will be written off by some who deem themselves so important they need never take a chance to find a deeper connection.
The truth is, what does it really matter what they think, as long as we know that we are healthy, doing what we do with honesty, integrity, and hopefully, we are happy? If, beyond that, we have touched others and they share this with us, it is something more to be thankful for.
Ultimately, whatever you feel or do has to matter to you above all, even if nobody else is there, because when you’re all alone and the ground beneath you is shaking, and you don’t know what is going to happen next… this is when you hope to be at peace with yourself.
Yes, these words come from feelings of isolation, although that can be changed.
To those of you who know me and are reading this, I miss you.
A Search Result You Never Want to See
Generally, when we conduct an online search for a person – whether we are researching someone of world renown, a specialist in our industry, or a friend we haven’t spoken to in a long time and whose numbers don’t work anymore – we are used to seeing LinkedIn, Wikipedia or Facebook page references to them as our first results. Perhaps articles they have written, or their own site that we didn’t know they’d published.
It’s also my job to place clients’ sites at the top of search engine rankings.
Today I found an old friend’s obituary there.
I then proceeded to spend the next 2 hours trying to prove that little excerpt wrong until I found a news item relating to her passing, and I was forced to accept the painful reality. She was 32.
‘Gutted’ and ‘shocked’ would be a good start to describe my initial spine-chilled reactions.
This is not going to be a long-winded discussion on how short life is, and what we make of it. It’s simply a reflection on how sometimes we find things we would never expect (or like) on what we have come to take for granted as a primary source of instant information gratification, and the horrifying news it can provide on such a personal level.
Panta rei, amiga mia. Descansa en paz.
Wanted: i-Balance
It feels as though humanity is going through a rather confusing phase. Watching several video parodies of the latest Apple iPad has prompted me to look back on some of our achievements.
Back in the 4th millennium B.C., our ancestors wrote on clay tablets, making greater use of their brains to retain what was being instructed. Eventually we upgraded to quills and pens and leather-bound notebooks. Now we have magically come ‘full circle’ with cute touch-screen offspring that allow us to wirelessly access vast sources of information, without having to write anything down; worst of all, without having to memorise it. This has become our latest human development in brain function – coordinating our interactions on screen to conjure up a ludicrous amount of data we are hardly capacitated to remember these days. We are left wanting for more and dangerously retaining less.
Unfortunately, Generation Y seems to be in truth a Generation ADD or even ADHD, considering the constant bombardment of news, information, and distractions that seem so important to us now. Many people wouldn’t even realise how limited their attention span is as they are too busy skimming from one thing to the next – in fact, this trait seems to be a given these days.
Likewise, few of those living in the developed countries would know to tell which phase the moon is in to understand their heightened sensitivities, or find their bearings at night based on the stars. We are so married to our gadgets and internet that we have forgotten the most basic elements of survival. It is frightening, to say the least, given the geographical turmoil we are all experiencing in different parts of the world. Not to put apocalyptic fears into anyone’s heads, yet the reality is such that so many people are ill-prepared for even reading their location in a new city, without some artefact to show them colourful lines on a virtual map to get from point to point (“Turn left at the next corner. Drive a hundred meters. Turn right. Turn right. You missed it…”).
We think we have reduced the clutter by putting all our books and music into a little pocketsize hard drive with a fancy screen, and yet we panic if that expensive toy gets broken. The stress levels can be more dramatic than losing a shipment of boxes containing the same items in their original format. Just like squirrels, we have a deeply rooted habit of hoarding.
Cut.
Pan to the right side of the brain…
Picture a lush garden with waterfalls and a soft breeze tickling the tree branches. There might be squirrels.
Cue the Zen approach to life…
Whilst it seems we are increasingly drawn towards subliminal slavery to technology, we are also learning to make great use of it. Now you can sit on a bus and read up on the latest nutritional benefits of quinoa, or listen to podcasts of your preferred spiritual mentor.
A lot of us crave a more meaningful existence. Daring to explore our inner callings, decompose anxieties, break destructive patterns, understand what it really means to be human.
Not everyone is going to take off on a weekend yoga retreat, where you can make a more concentrated effort on healing body, mind and soul. I have tried this and quite enjoyed it… admittedly being yoga’d out by the third and final day (hey, it was my first time). I even took my iPod and laptop so I could get some quality writing done between sessions, and found that I never touched one or the other, choosing instead to pull out a book and read it in charming outdoor silence, with hints of a few birds possibly discussing lunch plans.
It would seem these attitudes are at opposite ends of our existential spectrum, yet there is a growing number of people who are sitting somewhere in the middle… technological advances on one hand, determination to maintain all-round balance in their lives on the other.
So, whilst I am hopeful of our natural instinct to nourish spiritual endeavours, embrace deeper relationships with one another, and harbour a more holistic approach towards our personal development… I do of course love a cute gadget that will give me a friendly reminder to step away from the computer, pick up my fountain pen to go write in the sun, and call to wish you a happy birthday. Not to mention play my favourite tunes as I’m walking towards the coffee shop.
The technology around us is advancing at the speed of procreating rabbits, and yet humankind itself can get lazy and lost in this myriad of gadgetry, thinking we are evolving through it as a species.
Therefore, I would encourage you to ask yourself if all those fancy little toys are truly enabling a more relaxed, meaningful, clutter-free lifestyle, or if they are inadvertently causing more stress than you originally anticipated. Are they truly helping you enhance as a person, or stupefying you? True balance comes from internal focus, not from shiny little objects…
