An idea must be brought outside the mind to have a chance – just a chance – to be of any use at all. Locked inside your mind an idea may as well not exist.
To bring an idea out of your brain it must be transformed. It can be transformed by being recorded or executed. Executed by following the instruction of the idea. Recorded by writing it, speaking it to others, or otherwise changing it to instruction for others.
Ideas are useless unless transformed.
Each of us live inside our own shell. It obscures our view.
We view other people from the outside. Only seeing what those others show us consciously or unconsciously.
In viewing ourselves our view is mostly of the inside and more is visible to us. Though what we see is so much, much more, the more is lost and hidden by the noise of the more. Every view of ourselves is skewed.
Other people we define by their successes and failures. The road they took to get there is invisible to our eye. We see none of the internal battles others fight.
For ourselves, we see life as a series of battles raging inside our heads. Some won, some lost. Often we see ourselves as frauds. Impostors pretending to be real people doing real things in the real world. We doubt ourselves but are blind to the self doubt of others. We engage in unending battle, we take the role of both victim and victor.
Our view is limited. We are unable to see inside others. Despite seeing only the struggle within ourselves know that every one of us has our own struggles. Don’t let the view from inside block out that knowledge.
We need nourishment.
Without it we can not survive. Without it we can not grow.
Each of us requires a unique blend of nourishment to achieve all we can achieve.
If we were plants we would need water, food and light to greater or lesser degrees. There are many factors which determine if a plant gets too much or too little of these three necessitates. A waterlily will not grow in the desert, nor a cactus in a pond.
We’re more complicated than that. And often more flexible. Unlike plants we can take control. We are not fixed in one location, we can move.
If what you do doesn’t nourish you, change what you do.
Receiving gifts is fun. But if I don’t like the gift it doesn’t bother me. Giving gifts is different though. I enjoy giving gifts more than receiving them. And it makes a big difference to me whether the person likes it or not. I don’t buy stuff thoughtlessly so it’s impact is important to me.
Is it normal to care less about the gifts I receive than the gifts I give?
We (the ‘we’ here being people, humans, our species) know stuff. Lots of stuff. We have worked hard to gather and create knowledge. Math and science and engineering. How to make music. How to get to the moon. Languages. Art.
Our surety of knowledge is so intense that we know how others should live, better than they do themselves. This religion is better. This politician is better. The moon landings never happened. We become very attached to what we know. There is no such thing as evidence against what we know, those people are just wrong.
This morning, I learnt two things I thought I already knew:
Earlier in the week our washing machine stopped working. We drained it manually and tried putting on a wash again. It stops again and we have to manually drain it again. Looking to find the problem we pulled the machine away from under the wall. In doing so discovering lots of little chips of concrete and stone dust. That doesn’t look right. Better call a repairman.
The repairman found the blockage in the machine very quickly. Nothing major. However, the bits of concrete were the indication that my wife and I weren’t using the washing machine correctly. It turns out there are concrete counter weights inside washing machines to stop the machine from moving and rattling while it’s doing a wash. If you put too heavy a load in the machine the counter weights get banged about. Concrete dust and chips under the machine being the result. The machine was a little worse for our misuse but didn’t need any repair.
I asked the repairman to have a look at our oven while he was there. The grill takes a long time to heat up. His verdict was that it would be more worthwhile to buy a new oven. Before he made his verdict though he asked some questions about how we used the oven and he ended up pointing out something we were doing wrong. This time nothing we did was causing damage. We were just using the wrong oven setting. We should have been using the setting the oven dial to the icon we thought was a cooling fan.
Both appliances have been in our home for ten years. I knew how to use them for ten years. Except it turns out I didn’t.
How much do you really know?
‘Save the Earth’ says the slogan. ‘The planet’s in danger. It’s not going to survive’, the message we’re to take away.
The Earth has been around for 4.6 billion years. Give or take a day. It was billion years later (3.6 billion years ago) that life on Earth began.
For most of that time life equalled nothing more than single-celled organisms. It wasn’t until 600 million years ago that the first animals emerged. Not elephants and giraffes and sh*t, or even dinosaurs, the first animals were much different. Since then life has adapted and changed. Splitting into separate species and subspecies. Many died out en masse along the way, killed off by some change in conditions or other. Survival isn’t easy.
Eventually, the right monkeys f*cked (so to speak) and we popped up. Our arrival was relatively recent. The oldest ‘us’ – homo sapiens – fossil found is around 200,000 years old. A mere blip on the history of the planet. But we’ve been busy in that time. We’ve come a long way to mastering the art of survival. Just watch Bear Grylls drink his own p*ss for no reason. Bad example. Instead look at our use of tools and technology to overcome disease. As a result our population has exploded. From where we stand, survival looks easy.
Despite becoming better and better at holding death at bay we are far from safe. We remain vulnerable. Our environment can kill us – earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, hurricanes, heat from the sun. If that wasn’t enough we have caused environmental changes that are a growing threat. We have created plenty other new dangers for ourselves. Humans have even developed weapons to kill each other and everything else on this rock with us.
Whatever we unleash, the rock itself would, of course, survive. It’s in no danger. Cries of ‘Save the Earth’ ignore that it’s us that need saving.
At the top of the food chain survival looks easy. Don’t take it for granted.