'leans in and longs to be noticed'

Photo by Rudolf Getel, 'Lost in Field', creative commons Flickr

'And the other saying that has been very present to me for the last twelve months is Tim Winton - 'the natural world leans in to the human world and longs to be noticed' and I think for me sort of God or Other, there is something more if you like - I don't always use God language because it has a connotation about it that some people struggle with - leans in and longs to be noticed.

So the morning weight of things - God leaning in - I think the interruptions of life can often become the invitations.' 

Mary Nolan, mother of Chris, founder of Meredith Music Festival.
'A Day in the Life, pt 3'
Encounter, ABC Radio National, 21 November 2014
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/encounter/mary-nolan-faith-in-daily-life/5902360

'in order to shimmer on to this scene'

 https://flic.kr/p/pu37th

'As a member of the human species, I have a particular genetic identity. There are about 30,000 active genes in the human genome. Each of these genes has at least two variants, or 'alleles'. So the number of genetically distinct identities the genome can encode is at least 2 raised to the thirty-thousandth power which roughly equals the number 1 followed by 10,000 zeros. That's the number of potential people allowed by the structure of our DNA. And how many of those potential people have actually existed? It is estimated that about 40 billion humans have been born since the emergence of our species. Let's round the number up to 100 billion, just to be on the conservative side. This means that the fraction of genetically possible humans who have been born is less than 0.00000...000001 (insert about 9,979 extra zeroes in the gap). The overwhelming majority of the genetically possible humans are unborn specters. Such is the fantastic lottery that I - and you- had to win in order to shimmer on to this scene. This is contingency with a vengeance.'

Jim Holt, 2012, Why does the world exist? p. 254

Howard Thurman

 https://flic.kr/p/7i1b7J

'Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.'

Howard Thurman 

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/01/us/howard-thurman-mlk-gandhi/index.html 

'Still Life', Director Uberto Pasolini

 https://flic.kr/p/6qqkA7

It's this theme of wanting to discover how people come to be forgotten - whether they be a relative, a neighbour, or even a complete stranger - that led him to make Still Life. He hopes the film will change some viewers' attitudes: 'If even one in one thousand people who see the film rings the doorbell of the neighbour they never talk to ... if I have one hope, that's it.'

Glenn Dunks, 2014, "Only the lonely", The Big Issue, 18-31 July, p. 34.

Sweet Relaxation by Steven Halpern and David Darling

Play

 https://flic.kr/p/NQLp8

'The opposite of play is not work, it is depression.'

Brian Sutton-Smith

The formula for happiness

 https://flic.kr/p/4zRz6G

'Formula of my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal.'

Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols 

What is valuable

 https://flic.kr/p/51WCVS

'What's valuable is what gives us the potency to cultivate the best life we can within the circumstances we've inherited or created.'

 Damon Young 2009 Distraction Melbourne University Press

pain

 https://flic.kr/p/7sZEn

'There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.'

R. D. Laing

good news

https://flic.kr/p/n9RBsH

'Everyone has inside them a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!'

Anne Frank 

Beautiful Day- U2 Lyrics

Holy Fool

 https://flic.kr/p/cCz9Bm

'In the Russian Orthodox Church there is the concept of the Holy Fool. It means someone who is a fool to the ways of the world, but wise to the ways of God.'

Jennifer Worth, 2002, Call the Midwife

http://www.incommunion.org/2007/02/02/holy-fools-in-russian-literature/ 

Up On The Roof, The Drifters 1962

Confidence

https://flic.kr/p/8TDTAH 

A definition of confidence ... by Richard Petty, a psychology professor at Ohio State University, who has spent decades focused on the subject. 'Confidence ... is the stuff that turns thoughts into action ... If the action involves something scary, then what we call courage might also be needed ... Or if it’s difficult, a strong will to persist might also be needed. Anger, intelligence, creativity can play a role ... But confidence ... is essential, because it applies in more situations than these other traits do. It is the factor that turns thoughts into judgments about what we are capable of, and that then transforms those judgments into action.'

'The simplicity is compelling, and the notion that confidence and action are interrelated suggests a virtuous circle. Confidence is a belief in one’s ability to succeed, a belief that stimulates action. In turn, taking action bolsters one’s belief in one’s ability to succeed. So confidence accumulates—through hard work, through success, and even through failure.'

by Katty Kay and Claire Shipman, 'The Confidence Gap'
from The Atlantic, April 2014

http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/04/the-confidence-gap/359815/ 

Memoirs of Jennifer Worth

 https://flic.kr/p/9ami2w

"Next time there is a storm, leave open both doors. Don't let your misfortune find a home.

 History need not be a trap. We can escape its web and shake off its weight of pain.

 We can change our minds and open up our hearts.

 We can let forgiveness speak and allow it to be heard.

 Let friendship flourish and let love in so it may feed us and sustain us all our days."

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/06/jennifer-worth-obituary 

REM - Everybody hurts (with lyrics)

Read!

 https://flic.kr/p/a2FFGm

'Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.' Aldous Huxley

endurance

https://flic.kr/p/ndVWNN

'Suffering isn't always the mark of a life going badly. If the well-lived life involves quite a lot of distress, maybe we need to get brave and strong to live it.'

John Armstrong, 2013, Life lessons from Nietzsche, Macmillan, London.

Life Lessons from Nietzsche

https://flic.kr/p/94HWSD

'In essence, what Nietzsche is saying is this: the things we long to do and accomplish - the kind of person we might hope to become - are in fact within reach. But the path to each of those goals has this difficulty to it: it is a path that involves suffering, annoyance with oneself, disappointment, envy and frustration. He is saying that it is always through such pains that good things emerge. They do not occur as matters of spontaneous luck. Looking on from the outside at what we admire (a successful person) we see the effect. But we do not usually also get the chance to closely observe the evolutionary history. We don't see the nights of anguish, the fears, the insecurity. Such insight, however, is strangely heartening. It helps us to see that suffering is not a sign of failing to be the best version of oneself, but a necessary part of the process of becoming who we want to - and should - be.'

p. 18
John Armstrong, 2013, Life lessons from Nietzsche, Macmillan, London.

Alain de Botton's 'list for life'

kid to do list, list, Be happy and go home, a photo by Carissa GoodNCrazy on Flickr.

Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/life/the-10-commandments-for-atheists-20130205-2dw83.html#ixzz2LrPWqQgS

1. Resilience: Keeping going even when things are looking dark.
2. Empathy: The capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person.
3. Patience: We should grow calmer and more forgiving by being more realistic about how things actually happen.
4. Sacrifice: We won't ever manage to raise a family, love someone else or save the planet if we don't keep up with the art of sacrifice.
5. Politeness: Politeness is closely linked to tolerance, -the capacity to live alongside people whom one will never agree with, but at the same time, cannot avoid.
6. Humour: Like anger, humour springs from disappointment, but it is disappointment optimally channelled.
7. Self-awareness: To know oneself is to try not to blame others for one's troubles and moods; to have a sense of what's going on inside oneself, and what actually belongs to the world.
8. Forgiveness: It's recognising that living with others is not possible without excusing errors.
9. Hope: Pessimism is not necessarily deep, nor optimism shallow.
10. Confidence: Confidence is not arrogance - rather, it is based on a constant awareness of how short life is and how little we will ultimately lose from risking everything.

Spirit Wish

Spirit Wish, a photo by juliejordanscott on Flickr.

'We prescribe for one another remedies that will bring us peace of mind, and we are still devoured by anxiety. 

We evolve plans for disarmament and for the peace of nations, and our plans only change the manner and method of aggression. 

The rich have everything they want except happiness, and the poor are sacrificed to the unhappiness of the rich.

Dictatorships use their secret police to crush millions under an intolerable burden of lies, injustice and tyranny, and those who still live in democracies have forgotten how to make good use of their liberty. 

For liberty is a thing of the spirit, and we are no longer able to live for anything but our bodies. 

How can we find peace, true peace, if we forget that we are not machines for making and spending money, but spiritual beings ...  ?'

Thomas Merton, 2008, Choosing to love the world, Sounds True, Boulder, Co.


 

Calton Younger

Anthozoa, a photo by Joel Carnat on Flickr.

'A prisoner of war, historian, author, artist and trustee of charitable foundations, Calton died at the age of 92 [1.1.2014] with several projects still under way.'

'Despite his young life being brutally intruded upon, Calton Younger was defined by his generosity of spirit and his tireless labour  ... his commitment to freeing those oppressed by circumstance.'

'Though, with characteristic humility, Calton is almost a minor character in his memoir of his POW days, his observation in it that some prisoners triumphed 'if for no other reason because they were cheerful, unembittered men' after years in camps, could aptly be applied to him.'

'In hut 40 (of Stalag Luft III)', Calton wrote, 'camaraderie grew slowly, but with great certainty, as coral is built; men drew upon qualitites which were innate but never before needed to the same degree, and the tiny skeletons of ephemeral kindnesses created a structure of unyielding tolerance.'

Calton wrote in his memoir that 'from POW experiences, I learned much and I do not regret those years. Yet it was a very long time before I conquered a restless preoccupation with the past and found what I was searching for ... '

from Obituary by Karen Harbutt, 2014, 'Former prisoner of war who worked for the less fortunate', The Age, 5 February, p. 42
http://www.watoday.com.au/comment/obituaries/former-prisoner-of-war-who-worked-for-the-less-fortunate-20140204-31zfr.html 
 

 

meaning

catch 'er, a photo by jenny downing on Flickr.

'No matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning.

That, indeed, is one reason why man tends to rebel against himself. If he could without effort see what the meaning of life is, and if he could fulfill his ultimate purpose without trouble, he would never question the fact that life is well worth living. Or if he saw at once that life had no purpose and no meaning, the question would never arise. In either case, man would not be capable of finding himself so much of a problem.

Our life, as individual persons and as members of a perplexed and struggling race, provokes us with the evidence that it must have meaning. Part of the meaning still escapes us. Yet our purpose in life is to discover this meaning, and live according to it. We have, therefore, something to live for. The process of living, of growing up, and becoming a person, is precisely the gradually increasing awareness of what that something is. This is a difficult task, for many reasons.

First of all, although men have a common destiny, each individual also has to work out his own personal salvation for himself in fear and trembling. We can help one another to find out the meaning of life, no doubt. But in the last analysis the individual person is responsible for living his own life and for "finding himself". If he persists in shifting this responsibility to somebody else, he fails to find out the meaning of his own existence. You cannot tell me who I am, and I cannot tell you who you are. If you do not know your own identity, who is going to identify you? Others can give you a name or a number, but they can never tell you who you really are. That is something you yourself can only discover from within.'

Thomas Merton, 1955, No Man Is An Island, Hollis & Carter, London.  

Sorrow

'Fernando Pessoa'- Richard Serra Exhibition, Gagosian Gallery London, a photo by Loz Flowers on Flickr.

Serra Fernando Pessoa 

'One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is teach us how to suffer more successfully. Consider Richard Serra's Fernando Pessoa. It is encouraging a profound engagement with sadness. The outward chatter of society is typically cheerful and upbeat ... But Serra's work does not deny our troubles; it doesn't tell us to cheer up. It tells us that sorrow is written into the contract of life. The large scale and overtly monumental character of the work constitute a declaration of the normality of sorrow ...

More importantly, Serra's work presents sorrow in a dignified way ...

In effect, it says, "When you feel sad, you are participating in a venerable experience, to which I, this monument, am dedicated. Your sense of loss and disappointment, of frustrated hopes and grief at your own inadequacy, elevate you to serious company. Do not ignore or throw away your grief."

...

Many sad things become worse because we feel we are alone in suffering them. We experience our trouble as a curse, or as revealing our wicked, depraved character. So our suffering has no dignity; it seems due only to our freakish nature. We need help in finding honour in some of our worst experience, and art is there to lend them a social expression.'

p. 26

Alain de Botton, John Armstrong

Art as Therapy

The School of Life

http://alaindebotton.com/ 

 
 

Art as Therapy

'Cheerfulness is an achievement, and hope is something to celebrate. 

If optimism is important, it’s because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success.

This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope. 

Today’s problems are rarely created by people taking too sunny a view of things; it is because the troubles of the world are so continually brought to our attention that we need tools that can preserve our hopeful dispositions.'

p. 16

Alain de Botton, John Armstrong

Art as Therapy

The School of Life

http://alaindebotton.com/ 

 

The Frown

Turn that frown upside down.., a photo by [Duncan] on Flickr.

'the idea that we can build a financial utopia ...'

'that we can properly translate everything around us into a commodity that we can consume for our personal pleasure ... that if we have sufficient property we can reduce the world to our personal  pleasure dome that will create happiness is a fantasy ... '

'the capitalist dream ... that the world is a playground and we should have a life in which we are comfortable all the time ...'  

'sadly, happiness has come to mean a life that is comfortable ... free of discomfort ... avoiding pain, death, decay ...' 


from Radio National 360documentaries, 10 February 2013

 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/360/the-frown/4440548

Leonard Cohen

'Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama expecting victory after victory and you understand deeply that this is not Paradise - we somehow experience - the privileged ones - we somehow embrace the notion that this vale of tears is perfectible, that you can get it all straight. I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. You abandon your masterpiecing and you sing it to the real masterpiece.'

from I'm Your Man, a film by Lian Lunson, 2005
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478197/

little miracles

You are behind each miracle, a photo by Daquella manera on Flickr.

from My Week With Marilyn
by Colin Clark 2000
2011 Harper Press, London

p.247
Introduction
'All my life I have kept diaries, but this is not one of them. This is a fairy story, an interlude, an episode outside time and space which nevertheless was real. And why not? I believe in magic. My life and most people's lives are a series of little miracles - strange coincidences which spring from uncontrollable impulses and give rise to incomprehensible dreams. We spend a lot of time pretending that we are normal, but underneath the surface each one of us knows that he or she is unique.'

Pasternak

_bradley-manning-pride014_, a photo by savemanning on Flickr.

'The great majority of us are required to live a life of constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, if you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isn’t just a fiction, it’s a part of our physical body and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like the teeth in our mouth. It can’t be forever violated with impunity.'

Orchids, dandelions and an intriguing set of genes

White King Orchid, a photo by Brisbane City Council on Flickr.

'Science writer David Dobbs is intrigued by this notion that the genes and traits that underlie some of our greatest weaknesses like despair, difficult behaviour and mental illness could also underlie our more positive aspects like optimism, empathy and resilience.'

'So the conclusion that the researchers drew was that this gene is not really a gene that simply makes you vulnerable to bad behaviour and bad environments, it makes you more sensitive to your environment and your experience and the kind of parenting you have ...

So it's not a gene for vulnerability, it's  a gene for sensitivity to your environment and accordingly it can steer you on a lower darker path if you have a poor environment or a brighter sunnier happy more sociable path if you are luckier in your draw of parents and other things that affect your life.'

'The big change is that it sort of turns inside out the predominant genetic paradigm in psychiatry and much of behavioural genetics over the last 20 years or so ...
This plasticity hypothesis replaces vulnerability with overall responsiveness and it turns inside out the disease model ...
it's not a matter of resilience and vulnerability but how responsive you are to your experience in the environment.'

'And the idea there is to recognise that the patient, the person who is struggling, is not simply vulnerable and doomed through genetics and a history of bad environment to a life of depression or what not but the same responsiveness to environment can be an asset to them because to the extent that they can change their own environment they'll respond to those positive changes more.'

from Radio National, All In The Mind
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/orchids-dandelions-genes/4420952

breathing space

Different Strokes (re-edited), a photo by litratcher on Flickr.

from Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

Jeanette Winterson 1985

http://www.jeanettewinterson.com/

published by Vintage Books London 2011

p. 137

'... the principle of personal space is always the same whether you're fending off an elemental or someone's bad mood. It's a force field around yourself ... 

they push out their power bit by bit, first within their hearts, then within their bodies, then within their immediate circle. It is not possible to control the outside of yourself until you have mastered your breathing space. It's not possible to change anything until you understand the substance you wish to change ...'

'The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door'

Indigenous Transience, a photo by Kalyne Link on Flickr.


'Don't allow your inward being to be hurt by what
You have or have not. Be glad, because every 
Perfect thing is on its way to nonexistence.'

from The Guesthouse With Two Doors

The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door: Thirty Poems of Hafez
Translated by Rober Bly and Leonard Lewisohn
2008
Harper, NY
p. 59

'I am the happiest man alive ...'

Resilience, a photo by neekoh.fi on Flickr.

'I am the happiest man alive. I have that in me that can convert poverty to riches, adversity to prosperity, and I am more invulnerabale than Achilles: fortune hath not one place to hit me. '

Sir Thomas Browne 1642 Religio Medici
 

Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness

delight, a photo by mayeesherr. (in Sri Lanka!) on Flickr.

Dan Gilbert, author of "Stumbling on Happiness," challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.

Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong -- a premise he supports with intriguing research, and explains in his accessible and unexpectedly funny book, Stumbling on Happiness.

 
Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted. In our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind.

http://www.ted.com/speakers/dan_gilbert.html