Prefer practices to rules.
Prefer practices to rules.
Take decisions and write them down.
[It’s hard to see how funny-shaped the box is from inside.]
I like people who can take pleasure in ordinary experience.
[The ‘diamond model’ describes expanding to generate lots of ideas without judgement, followed by the convergence towards making choices about what is pertinent.’]
Information wants to be free but rent isn’t.
[I don’t apologize.]
If you’re feeling intimidated, let them stretch you.
Composition as a way to remember musical ideas by putting them in mental structures.
[Don’t ask what’s their favourite X or most important Y.]
I love you today.
[The accountant is accountable and therefore can get emotional about numbers not lining up.]
You remove the clothes of your soul when traveling.
[I love seeing someone living their extraness.]
Writing down your thoughts requires you to observe them.
Interesting when things are impeccably organized and everything has an ID number, yet its impossible to count.
[The COVID pandemic has given the current generation a perpetual example of how we’re all connected across the planet, which makes it worthwhile to address our problems: there is no longer an African problem or ‘so-and-so’ problem because our interdependence makes it necessary to fight for each other.]
Realizer.
Precisely at the moment distraction begins, take a huge slow breath, feeling the air in your lungs, and continue with awareness, observing as much as possible.
Did anyone tell you how awesome you are for doing what you’re doing right now?
Beau of the Fifth Column doesn’t have an ending tag, doesn’t ask to like/share/subscribe, doesn’t ask for anything and only gives.
We’re accustomed to carry out activities with some kind of objective. Normalizing this makes it uncomfortable when nothing is being accomplished. Finishing something early and confronting stillness and silence invokes a reflex to fill space by checking your phone or notifications, distracting yourself for fear of a void. It feels wrong to simply breathe, stretch, exercise, practice capoeira movements outside the context of a structured activity: “can’t just sit and breathe for the rest of my life, gotta actually do something”. Nothing is possible without breathing: mental and physical health is necessary for accomplishing anything, so it’s strange that we’re afraid to connect with it in an unstructured context.
Each moment of stillness is actually a gift: we can celebrate an opportunity to focus on the gaps. We’re always breathing in the background, so stopping gives us a chance to pay attention to the whitespace, or darkspace. Enjoy connecting with it like meeting an old friend. The tendency to ask “I did my breath, now what?” might be an anxiety about the activity not having a well-defined start and end time, so we can practice being there without expectations, and when something compels us into action, we are free to move on.
[We like people in so many ways (physically, or as a friend, or socially, or intellectually) and when we break up, we need to break each of those aspects before leaving.]