Euan Semple's Blog, page 43

Weather

It fascinates me how some people get bent out of shape when the weather isn’t what they expect it to be. Especially as weather forecasting gets better there is now this feeling of being let down when the weather isn’t what “They said it would be…”.

But there is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing. Sure we all love it when there are blue skies, and endless grey days get us down, but the weather will be what the weather will be whatever “they” say or we feel. Getting bent out of shape about it just adds to our suffering.

Bit like life really…

Our handsome little friend.

Spiders’ webs rippling in the evening sunlight.

We are the world

“Nothing is so much food, drink, and sleep for you as the return to your beginnings. The wave roars around you, and you are wave; the forest rustles, and you are forest. There is no more outside and inside. You fly, a bird in the air; you swim, a fish in the sea; you absorb light, and you are light; you taste darkness and are darkness. We wander, soul, we swim and fly, and smile and tie the torn threads and with ghostly fingers and blissfully drown out the destroyed pinions. We no longer seek God. We are God. We are the World.”

~ Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse (via David Kanigan)

Don’t feed your inner troll.

We all have one, even me! Ready to pounce at a moment’s notice on any internet ignoramus. “How on earth can you think that?” “You clearly haven’t read the thousands of books that I have that prove incontrovertibly that you are wrong.” “Can’t you see that I have just proved how intellectually superior I am?”
“How dare you…[insert here your favourite flavour of righteous indignation]?”

Especially that last one is hard to resist. It’s what social media is designed to trigger. I call Facebook and Twitter indignation engines and it is why I spend much less time on them these days.

But indignation is a bit like people who are vehemently homophobic of whom I always think ” Have you never stopped to wonder why it bothers you so much what other people do in their beds?” Similarly why does it bother you so much that someone sees the world differently from you? Are your views so fragile? Is your inner troll a sensitive little soul who is easily hurt?

Don’t be fooled. Your inner troll is out to make you and everyone else miserable. If you don’t feed him he will eventually die. And then we can all live happily ever after.

Clueless

I increasingly notice the things that I think I understand but really have no clue about.

Science has done so much for us but the biggest downside is thinking that it explains everything. I often talk about this with the kids, that we are fooled into thinking that because we have words like conception, and gestation, and cells, and DNA and on and on that we “understand” where new life comes from. Looking at them and falling into the trap of thinking that it had anything to do with it I realise that I have literally NO CLUE as to how things really work. I have all the words but no real understanding.

The same is true as I look out of my, rather grubby, window this morning at the sun rising over the horizon. I know about photons, and energy, and molecules and on and on… but I have NO CLUE as to what is really happening before my very eyes as life awakens under the gentle blush of that remote star.

I am coming to the conclusion that the greatest casualty of the scientific world view is wonder, the ability to be truly humbled by the wonderfulness of this planet and our life on it. Wonder is not some reverence for an imaginary beardy guy in the sky but it is a celebration of not knowing, of being part of something so much bigger than our small self, and of allowing what is to be simply bloody amazing.

Getting nowhere faster

I was going to do a post with some photos from my walk this morning about how lucky we are to have such beautiful countryside around our house. Literally out of the front door. And we are.

But then it started…

If you turn up the volume as you watch the video at the end of this post the racket you can hear is the sound of an HS2 piledriver knocking holes in our beautiful landscape. All in the name of getting nowhere faster.

Goals and targets

Talking about goals and targets may seem at odds with yesterday’s post about idling but far from it. Idling is less about doing nothing and more about being really choosy about what you do. One of the things I choose to do is walk, and I want to do more of it.

I know I want to walk more. I want to walk further and in more places. But this doesn’t just happen, I need to plan and I need to build habits.

Country Walking magazine has an annual challenge of walking 1,000 miles and I was on the brink of signing up for it. 1,000 miles is equivalent to walking from Land’s End to John O’Groats and works out at just over two miles a day. Two miles a day is nothing, but miss a day and it becomes five, more of a challenge. Miss a couple days and even with longer walks, say fifteen miles as I did the other day, and you are still struggling to catch up. So all of a sudden this challenge, that is a good thing in that it gets you out and walking, can easily turn into a grind.

When on my abortive Munro bagging trip before Christmas the thought occurred to me that life is too short to spend it driving up and down the M6 and grinding up another 230 or so hills. But then if I don’t I miss all those fabulous hills!

My friend Dave Snowden amazes me in many ways and his ability to set himself walking challenges (like all round the Welsh border, all of the Wainwrights, the South West Coast Path and on and on) in spite of a busy work schedule is the one that most impresses me. He is going to die having done more amazing walks than me, and that gets to me.

So back to goals and targets. Does having them make us more likely to get off our arses and achieve things – or does it turn life into mindless tick lists, grinding obligation, and a fear of not having ticked enough boxes?

I’m not sure, what do you think?

Idling

One of my favourite books is How To Be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson. As one reviewer says “It’s not really about being idle per se, but simply allowing yourself to slow down, enjoy life and family, and resist the relentless pressures of consumerism, social conformity, fear of financial failure, and so on”

Through a combination of circumstances, good fortune, and choice I am currently mostly idling. I have been for some time. I may continue for some more time.

I have written often about the cultural pressure to be busy, to be making an impact, and how this pressure is overheating our lives, our societies, and (literally) the planet.

I am convinced that the next wave of automation will hit knowledge workers in much the same way as mechanical automation hit the factory production line. For those of you who are currently very busy, and perhaps outraged by my flagrant time wasting, consider it research undertaken on your behalf.

On the other hand I like the idea of an engine idling shortly before it bursts into life and roars off in a new direction. This may happen to me – or it may not.

After all these years…

… it is still a buzz when Whiskey River links to one of my posts.