Endings and Beginnings

Today my daughter will complete her first trip around our Sun while breathing this Earth's air. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed. There are days I wonder why I'm spending so much of that time working on my computer, but I'm reminded that my need to provide for her is as much a part of life as the unrelenting forward momentum of time.

My life has changed a lot over the past year and with it has seen a change in the way I write, create, and share my thoughts and experiences. Its been hard to set aside time to write, time outside of what I already put in to making a regular income as a computer programmer. Its been even more difficult to find the energy to edit my intimate thoughts into a format that I feel comfortable sharing with the world.

The logical work of writing computer code has largely been the only thing that I've found the desire to write, as writing anything else feels so energetically taxing that it seems all but impossible.

I often wonder if my exhaustion is only the result of not getting enough sleep and programming all day, or if it has more to do with the energy that goes into soaking up each and every moment I spend with my daughter, an activity which has grown inexpressibly joyous with the passage of time.

Writing in my private, offline journal has itself been a challenge, but I knew that I would greatly regret not doing so if I stopped altogether, especially in these first months of being a father, so I push myself to write, sometimes in multi-hour marathons dumping the events and half-recalled thoughts from the prior few weeks where, despite having so many moments that I wanted to put into words, I found no energy or motivation to write.

Maybe living in the moment is just too enticing at times. And worth being enticed.

I started the paid journal subscription in November 2011, two years prior to the birth of my daughter. That was three years ago. At that time my life was quite different and a subscription-type offering felt like the perfect fit for me. However, that format no longer seems to fit my writing style nor my lifestyle and it feels like I've been ignoring that reality for far too long, a fact which itself has impeded my ability to publish anything at all.

As of today, I'm ending the paid journal and will instead focus on publishing free work on my site and putting together books that I can offer for sale.

All paid subscriptions have been canceled and, as promised, if you wish to request a full refund from the start of your subscription, you can do that. In any case, everyone who has paid for a subscription will be added to a special list and you will receive a free copy of everything that I release going forward, forever (unless you choose not to, of course).

I don't know how to express my gratitude to all of you who have showed me support since I started the paid journal. Thank you.

A year ago my daughter was about to be born. She was a week late and her parents had no idea what they were getting themselves into, nor how many sleepless nights lie ahead. I had no idea how my writing would evolve or change or how that event might change my goals as a writer.

I can say now, with certainty, that despite my relative quietude over the past year, my writing ambitions are as alive as ever. I hope that you stick around to see what's next, but, most of all, I hope that you hit reply on this email and just say hello. I would love to hear what's going on in your world.

The Big Picture

Its been a while since my last update to this journal. The monthly payment notifications that I receive from subscribers like you feel to me like little nudges, reminders that I haven't published anything in some time. I apologize for not keeping you as updated as I should be.

My life priorities have shifted a lot since the birth of my daughter, who, at three months old yesterday, is at this moment bundled in a soft pink blanket sound asleep in my left arm, my iPhone in my right hand typing this in between glancing out the airplane window at the Earth far below. We're somewhere over Delaware right now, en route back to Boston after spending two weeks in Florida. She has done amazingly well with flying and hasn’t cried at all. In fact, she does better flying than she does driving. Maybe it has something to do with how she flew fourteen times before she was born.

I say that my priorities have shifted, but maybe that's not true. I feel the weight of responsibility in my life has shifted dramatically, yes--suddenly it's no longer just me that I need to think about--but I still have the same personal goals and ambitions as I did before Ananda was born. I still want to write and publish. I still want to find a way to contribute to humanity. I still want to travel. I still want go to Mars.

Sure, I have family responsibilities now--father and spousal responsibilities--but everything else is still there, everything else is pretty much the same. None of it is number one of course, but it's not all irrelevant or unimportant either.

In many ways what has been the biggest challenge for me is finding a way to continue pursuing my personal goals--or for that matter, just finding the focus to work on something--while having someone else in my life to whom I am a father, someone who depends on me and who will, over the course of her life, look to me for wisdom, support, attention, and love.

I'm a big picture thinker. I’m always considering the long-term implications of a decision or an action, but since the day I learned that I was going to be a dad I've felt the need to stay away from the big picture, to not worry so much about the future. It feels too big now, too complex and blurry.

Yes, my decisions and choices will directly affect Ananda as she grows into her own person, but she will be her own person, someone who will make her own choices and blaze a path through life that is uniquely her own. I feel the best thing that I can do for her as a father is to provide her with what I feel are the best tools for trail blazing and to be there for her when she needs me, to be present when I’m present.

It's her future, not mine. It's her big picture and I'm just the lucky dad who gets to make sure that she has the best tools with which to create her life.

Raam and Ananda

On My Feet

"Now that I have a baby on the way, maybe a bicycle would be a good thing to have..."

"Maybe instead of walking slowly it would make sense to be able to get home more quickly on a bicycle... maybe spending less time commuting would give me more time with my daughter..."

I've been walking 10,000 steps every day on average for the past few months. It's a 0.7-mile walk from the house to the train station and from there I commute 20 minutes on the train to Central Square, Cambridge where I work from my favorite cafe.

I make the commute back home for lunch around noon, then back to Central Square around two o'clock before finally heading home for the evening around six. In total, I spend over an hour walking outside every day, rain or shine.

We have a car, but we try to use it as little as possible, and I love not needing to drive everywhere. I've grown to despise driving. It's hectic and incredibly stressful on our bodies. (If you're not stressed while driving, you're either not paying enough attention to driving or you're not paying enough attention to your body.)

Fifteen years of driving and more than half a million miles have also taught me how incredibly unnatural the seated position is for our bodies, especially when we're stressed. I don't need more unnatural things stressing my body; I spend enough time sitting at a computer.

I was talking to my friend Cristian about how I commute by walking and riding the train when he suggested that riding a bicycle everywhere would be more exercise, and probably more convenient. After thinking about it for a few minutes I realized that he was right.

If I had a bike, I would have more options. I'd save time. I would be able to get home more quickly from the train station and that would mean I'd be able to spend more time with my daughter (once she's born... any day now!).

I proceeded to search CraigsList for used bikes in this area. I found one right here in Central Square. It was a black, fixed-gear bicycle in nearly new condition, exactly what I was looking for! I emailed the seller and set up a time to look at the bike the next morning. That was yesterday.

As I got ready for work this morning, I imagined myself riding a bike to the train station, or even directly to Central Square.

That's when I began to realize what I love about walking.

A bike would speed up the pace of my life, bringing me closer to driving a car. I'd need to constantly be alert, watching where I'm going and looking out for people, other bikers, cars, etc., just like I'd be doing in a car.

The world would fly by. My attention would be focused on one thing. I wouldn't be able to look up at the sky and watch the clouds, or stop to literally smell the roses.

I could, yes, but I probably wouldn't.

The motion would be more mechanical and less human. I wouldn't be able to feel the muscles in my legs, and my feet, and my hips and think to myself "those muscles are designed for this motion," because they're not designed for a bicycle, or a car; they're designed for walking.

I love my daily walks. They're not an inconvenience at all, but a refresher. I love getting a whiff of air that smells of flowers and closing my eyes to smile inside, or smiling at a baby as he rolls by in a stroller.

I love the way the world bobbles up and down in slow motion with each step I take.

I love that I can instantly pause and capture a photo of the Earth.

I love being able to read, or not, when I'm riding on the train.

I love smiling at the dogs and following the butterflies with my eyes until they disappear behind a wall of green leaves.

But really, I love being able to take a deep breath of air and smell the earth, to be able to take my huaraches off and walk barefoot and feel the damp earth under my feet.

On a bike, I'm not connected to the earth in the same way. On a bike, my body is just the engine to a machine; I'm only half the equation. But on my feet, I am the machine and the engine. I'm the complete package. It's all natural, as nature designed it.

Would using a bicycle save me time and let me spend more of it with my daughter? Sure, but what good would that extra time be if acquiring it meant she would spend time with a more stressed out daddy?

What good would teaching her present-mindedness be if my mind was always focused on something else, always hurrying here and there as if right now wasn't good enough?

It's so easy to go astray, to make choices with the best intentions in mind only to have those choices take us in a direction that leaves us worse off than when we started.

When it comes to time, the choice that contributes to mindfulness is always the best choice. Mindfulness slows time and gives us more of it. I feel most mindful on my feet.

Your Anniversary

A few days ago a friend emailed me with some bad news: his friend and his friend's daughter recently died in a plane crash in Kenya along with the pilot. The plane went missing in bad weather and the wreckage and remains were found shortly thereafter.

We never know when it will be our time, which is, ironically, much the same as for our birth.

My daughter is due any day now (officially on the 19th, but it could be any day) and it feels like a waiting game. Will today be the day? I just don't know.

In the same way I could wonder, will tomorrow be the day I die? I don't know that either. We never really know until it happens.

I heard something once that really stuck with me: Every year we pass over the anniversary of our death.

We may not know which day--will it be a Friday? or a Wednesday? or the 20th of July?--but we do know that it will happen, and every year that day silently passes through our lives unannounced.

While walking outside yesterday and thinking about this I realized that the opposite is also true: Every year we pass over the anniversary of our birth. Right now, I don't know when that date will be for my daughter, just as I don't know when the opposite date will be true and settled for me.

In some ways this sounds depressing, but to me it feels freeing. If I don't know, and I have no way of knowing with certainty, then how can I let it worry me? And if there's nothing to worry me, then only now remains to be enjoyed.

We know that life comes and goes. This is fact. What we don't know is how much we'll get to enjoy it.

Discontent with Contentedness

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. In between thoughts of becoming a father (only a few weeks away...!) and supporting my newly forming family (is my income stable enough? are we spending too much?), I'm also thinking about health and longevity (am I taking care of my health? are we eating healthy? is our environment healthy for raising a baby?).

On what seems like the opposite end of the spectrum, I find myself thinking about the emerging and constantly evolving world of digital publishing, WordPress, the Internet, and social media.

How can I design things better? What technical skills or programming languages should I acquire next? How can I use my writing and knowledge to share what I'm doing with the world in a way that makes the world a better place?

How these two tracks of thought can even live side-by-side, inside the same brain, I don't know. It almost seems wrong to be thinking about one when the other feels astronomically more important.

But there must be more to life than just survival and living good, more to life than just... happiness, right?

I've never been content with contentedness.

Every now and then I'll recall a moment on Cocoa Beach, in Florida, sometime in early 2012. It was during one of my many twice-daily walks.

I've lived in Florida several times over the past few years, usually for a few months at a time. Whenever I lived there I would have a routine of walking on the beach in the morning and then driving to Starbucks to spend the day working on my laptop. In the evening, I'd take another solo hour-plus walk before sundown, sometimes walking until the stars came out and the darkness made it too difficult to see in front of my face.

These twice-daily walks helped me learn how important regular walking and fresh air is for my health and spiritual wellbeing; the activity seems to cleanse my soul in ways that I cannot describe.

One sunny day on the beach I stopped walking, looked out at the flat ocean, took in a deep breath of fresh ocean air, and felt an absolute sense of calmness flood my body, a sense of contentment so strong that even to this day recalling the memory floods my body with a sliver of that peace.

I had the freedom to go anywhere in the world and yet I felt content right where I was.

But it wasn't enough. That refresher was great, but it wasn't enough. Something inside me wanted to do something, to grow, to move, and to continue evolving. (I wrote a bit about this last year in Travel Notes: Thoughts on Florida1.)

This desire to do something, to grow and evolve--to question--, seems fundamental to who I am.

For example, when I'm tweaking my website and thinking about web design and user interaction--which I've been doing a lot lately--I always find myself thrown into deep thoughts about the future of the web, the future of human connectivity, the future of communication and knowledge-transfer, and the future of... well, the future of everything.

For the first few years of publishing to raamdev.com, I had a message that said "Under Construction". One day I realized that my entire life is constantly "under construction" and as a result so would my 'personal' website. It's been more than 12 years since I began publishing to raamdev.com and it's still "under construction", just like me. The only difference is that I'm not constantly announcing it.

**

I feel a sense of responsibility to re-think the status quo, to question everything, whether that be the status quo of how we educate and raise our children or the status quo of how digital authors should publish their work and connect with their audience.

The driving force behind this re-thinking of the status quo stems, I believe, from a recognition that our world is changing. It stems from a deeply felt understanding that we're at the cusp of a new era.

The thread that seems to weave through everything my life, whether it's thinking about how I'm going to home school my daughter or thinking about the design of a commenting form on a website, is simplicity. I'm constantly asking myself, "how can this be made more simple? what things that are assumed can be taken away? how can we reduce this to its essence?"

As a digital writer and publisher, I want to publish thoughts and essays online and communicate with my audience through the comments on those thoughts and essays.

But what if I want to spend the day away from my computer, playing with my daughter, for example?

I don't want to be looking around for a WiFi connection or waiting for my website to load and then logging into the WordPress dashboard to publish essays or reply to comments. That's archaic.

Before writing and publishing went digital, writers could simply look up from their notebook and then look back down. That was it. That's all there was to the physical act of switching modes.

Sure, they didn't publish things regularly like we can and do today, but when publishing today really just involves pressing a button on a web page, why does the entire task have to be more complicated than looking up or down from a notebook?

Why can't digital writing, publishing, and communication with readers be as simple as, let's say, sending an email from my phone (which is generally always connected to the Internet and always on me, like an old-fashioned notebook)?

Yes, I could just pick up an old-fashioned notebook and use that, but why should I have to create more work for myself transcribing those paper entries into digital entries? Besides, my handwriting skills are nonexistent so a paper notebook isn't an option.

There are certain tasks that are basic and fundamental to digital writers and publishers, but the tools and the processes don't yet exist to allow them to really live offline, the way pre-digital writers could.

Is it possible right now? Absolutely. But the processes we follow are largely dictated by the capabilities of the tools we use. Those tools are largely incomplete, designed with the online-world in mind instead of the offline world.

I'm going to start changing that by building tools and sharing systems that make sense for people who don't want to always be tied to a computer but still want to remain connected in a way that lets them communicate and share with the world.

I'm in a unique position to help bridge this gap because I understand how the technology works deeply enough to create new systems and build (or enhance, as is the case with open-source software like WordPress) tools to augment our offline life in a way that makes sense.

[I realize that there's an iPhone WordPress app that allows me to publish and reply to comments from my phone, but the app and the workflow has many flaws. Besides, I already use email for writing and communication; why should I need anything else?]

**

The status quo has never been more broken than it is today and that's a direct result of the fact that technology is changing our world faster than ever before. Part of what I feel responsible for is reflecting on those changes, challenging the status quo, and coming up with alternative solutions that make sense given the opportunities that technology makes possible.

Home schooling, for example, was far more difficult for parents just 30 years ago. If parents weren't already school teachers, they had limited resources and know-how to school their kids with. Their options were limited to the local library or paying for pre-designed courses that included all the books for schooling their kids at home (which is what my parents did).

Parents were lucky if they could even afford to home school their kids. If they didn't already have money set aside, or if one of the parents wasn't making enough income for the whole family, then finding the time to home school was nearly impossible, or at the very least extremely challenging: it meant that one or both of the parents spent the majority of their time working.

But today parents living in a modern society have almost unlimited access and opportunity by way of the Internet. They can learn new skills and put those skills to use by working online from home, or by building a business that allows them to work for themselves (as my parents did, except they did it without the Internet, the old-fashioned work-your-ass-off kind of way).

We now have amazing things like Google, Wikipedia, and KhanAcademy2. We have access to an international marketplace (eBay) from our bedroom. Every modern house has access to more knowledge than all humans of the past thousand years combined.

It's a home schooling dream-come-true. As a parent, you can sit in your house, make money at home, and you have access to everything. If your kid asks you a question and you don't know the answer, you can look it up on your phone and tell them. If you don't know Algebra, you can learn it yourself, for free, from home, and then help your kid learn.

The world is a different place today than it was yesterday, and it will be an even more different place tomorrow. The status quo today represents not just yesterday's old world, but that of hundreds of years of stagnation.

Conscious change is paramount to our evolution. If it's happiness that we seek, conscious evolution is the only way we'll attain happiness in a sustainable way.

The best tool for the job

While attempting to find a purpose for my photography, I began looking for patterns in the things that I took photos of. I asked myself, "why did I want to capture this?" After several weeks of doing this, the only all-encompassing thing I found was beauty.

When I see something that I moves me--be it an interesting bug on the ground or the way the sun reflects off the bottom of low-hanging clouds during a sunset--it's always beauty that triggers something within me to take action.

But if it's beauty that turns on the photographer in me, why is there a photographer in me in the first place? Why take a photo of something that I find beautiful? Why not just enjoy it for myself?

I think the answer to that is sharing.

I have an innate desire to share things that move me, be it an interesting idea, a thought, or a beautiful flower. When it comes to thoughts and ideas, writing is my capture tool of choice. When it comes to visual experiences, a camera is usually my capture tool of choice.

But why should I have separate tools for capture? Why not just use writing to capture all experiences and describe in vivid detail what I have witnessed?

I think it's because I'm always seeking to use the best tool for the job.

Sometimes writing is the best tool and sometimes it's a camera. When I hear a dozen birds chirping in a tree and I want to capture that, I don't start writing down in a notebook or hauling out an expensive video camera. I use the mic on my iPhone to make an audio recording and share it via SoundCloud 1.

The best tool to share the thoughts that I'm sharing here right now would not be a camera or an audio recorder, so that's not what I use. (The exception would be an audio recording of this text for readers with a hearing impairment.)

I wonder why I do this, why I'm always seeking to use the best tool for job.

Emerson wasn't able to take out his iPhone and capture things that caught his attention. Some may argue this was good and that modern technology ruining us, that things were better off back then. I disagree. Technology may certainly be changing what once was, but what's wrong with that?

Perhaps the reason I'm always seeking the best tool for the job is that I embrace the fact that technology changes what it means to interact with reality, that what's always been the best tool for the job might not be the best tool today.

We need to experiment, adapt, and evolve like never before. We need to do these things not so that we can keep up, but rather so that we can slow down, so that we can embrace now instead of holding onto the past.

We're living in a time of extreme technological evolution. 'Now' is constantly changing. If we want to remain present we need to be constantly changing. We need to be dynamic.

As you go throughout your day, ask yourself: "Is this the best tool for the job?"

Lifestyle Support

A few years ago, on a hot summer day outside a cafe in Los Angeles, California, I met Lynn Fang1 in person for the first time and, after a stream of increasingly existential questions and cautious probes into each others thoughts on the existence of extraterrestrials (a stream dotted with moments of awkward silence), we found ourselves coining the term, and discussing the concept of, lifestyle support, the idea that people should be so transparent in their lives (online and offline) that their lifestyle would be an incentive for others to support their work.

By being honest and open about how we live, we can give the people who gravitate towards us (or who work with us by matter of happenstance) the ability to make a conscious decision about whether or not they want to support our lifestyle by paying for our work and doing business with us.

I had mostly forgotten about this discussion with Lynn until a few weeks ago when my friend Ali Dark2 recommended that I read Breaking the Time Barrier3, a free ebook for anyone recognizing that selling your time--one hour for X dollars--eventually creates a barrier to earning more income.

I’m not a collection of hours,” Karen said. “I’m the accumulation of all my skills and talents. I’m wisdom and creativity. I’ve stopped seeing myself as a punch card. My clients don’t see me that way either. Yes, sometimes, I’ve had to change my client’s mind-set. But it starts with me, first, just as it starts with you. You have to forget selling time. The best thing you could do for yourself is to get the concept of time out of your head.”

[...]

a value-based approach to pricing your services is a powerful way to break through the time barrier.

The book shares an empowering perspective and I highly recommend it. It's a quick and fun read that uses storytelling to convey knowledge.

While I found myself nodding in agreement to most the book, there was something on page 27 that caught my attention and reminded me of the meeting with Lynn a few years earlier:

"Should a client be asked which lifestyle they want to support?”

“No.”

I believe the answer should be 'yes'. I believe that people should ask themselves what kinds of lifestyles they want to support. They should buy products and work with people who are in alignment with the values that lead to the lifestyles they agree with.

I don't believe in the lifestyles of "the rich and famous", the owning of multiple mansions, yachts, and private airplanes. I wouldn't want to work with people who follow those lifestyles or even seek them out. I wouldn't want to pay them money or buy products or services from them because doing so would be a vote for their lifestyle, a vote that says I agree to help support such a lifestyle (or the pursuit of such a lifestyle).

I realize, as I type this on my MacBook Air, that in today's world of monolithic corporations it's hard to know what lifestyles you may be supporting by buying certain products or services.

But corporations are nothing more than a big collection of people, so we can start there. If we start with the people first, then we have to start with ourselves.

Is the lifestyle of the people you do business with important? Absolutely.

Your act of doing business with someone else helps to support whatever lifestyle they lead. If they're not leading a lifestyle that you agree with--if your values and their values are not at least somewhat in alignment--then supporting their lifestyle will violate your own values by supporting opposing ones.

If someone else believes in the lifestyle you lead--if someone believes in the values that drive your lifestyle and the values that influence the choices you make both personally and professionally--then they will want to see more of those choices made in the world and that will be a big incentive for them to support you.

**

The more I think about this, the more I realize that lifestyle support goes way beyond business transactions. The emotional support you give others--spending time with them, meeting them for lunch, agreeing to attend parties, etc.--supports their lifestyle too. And perhaps that's why I'm so selective with my time and so careful about who I relate with.

The term "guilty by association" is usually used in the context of a criminal act, but when it comes to your lifestyle, you really are guilty by association. Your actions say a lot about your lifestyle and that in turn says a lot about what you believe and what you value, which in turn says a lot about you.

I met up with Lynn Fang after connecting with her online because I felt that we held a lot of the same values. I stayed with my friend Ali in Australia for a few weeks last year for the same reason.

The Internet opens the world up to us and lets us find people with similar values and similar belief systems, but we need to be transparent and open about who we really are for them to find us. Connecting with such people and openly sharing ideas and thoughts leads to discussions like the one I had with Lynn, which in turn leads to the development and sharing of more ideas and more discussions, thereby making the world a better place.

If you believe something--if you hold certain values close to your heart--then ask yourself if you're associating with and supporting people who hold similar beliefs. Ask yourself if you're leading a lifestyle that reflects what you truly believe.

An Inner Conflict: Writer vs. Photographer

I wrote the following a few weeks ago while I was living in Ulcinj, Montenegro. It was my attempt to capture in words what I experienced from the balcony of the place where I was staying:

The ocean stood before me like a glistening blue tidal wave at peace with not proceeding. The South Adriatic engulfed nearly a third of my vision as steep hills littered with trees and orange roofs met the sea somewhere below me.

It was like an ocean sandwich, the whitish blue sky motionless on top and the noisy, earthy crust covering the bottom.

For some reason I find myself constantly needing to remember where I am, to remind myself that I'm still on Earth. Sometimes I'll open Google Maps on my laptop just to find Montenegro, that tiny squarish country nestled between Croatia and Albania across the ocean from the backside of Italy's boot. "That's where I am," I'll tell myself, feeling as though I need convincing. "That part of the world is real and it looks like this."

A butterfly breezes past, and then a bird. The birds are everywhere, the slow noisy roof-loving ones chattering away while aerial masters of the sky swoop down and past you in an instant, dogfighting invisible enemies with their black boomerang-shaped wings and their tiny sleek bodies that bulge out underneath, an agile dive-bomber perfectly designed by nature.

Somewhere in the distance to the left, across the valley of orange-tiled roofs where a few tall apartments stand looking out of place, over the tall slender coniferous trees nearer to the ocean, a chained machine whirrs to its master. And then the echo of a hammer, and then a skill saw.

The view was extremely photogenic. As the weather over the South Adriatic changed, the scenery would change with it, offering a new world for my eyes to feast on every day. I watched as entire weather systems developed before they rolled in and engulfed the town of Ulcinj. I watched cargo ships and sailboats make the trek to and from Italy and up and down the coast.

I had a birds-eye view of the whole region, like a watchmen in a tower on the lookout for what was to come. The photographer in me couldn't help but take photo after photo. There was no end to it, but that bothered the writer in me.

The endlessly amazing view made me think back to a time when there were no cameras. Who were the photographers then? Who captured the beauty of nature? Who captured the historic moments? Who captured the memory of those that mattered to them?

Writers. That's who. They captured everything through their writing. Using their mastery of language they painted images and conveyed feelings and emotions so that we could relive what mattered to them.

I realized then that if a photo is worth a thousand words, a writers' every snapshot is a wasted opportunity, one-thousand words of practice thrown away.

For thousands of years, writers and poets have spent hours, days, weeks, and months writing and rewriting in attempt to capture or recreate the most vivid and real depiction of what they were experiencing, all so that they could share it.

They spent decades honing their craft so that others could not only relive what they experienced but also learn from it and be inspired by it, so that they could be inspired to share their own dreams and stories. 

Defying death, they are still to this day influencing present-day writers and poets, encouraging them to push boundaries, serving as the human proof that language has power to reach far beyond its ability to assist with communication.

Capturing moments of time as it reflected on their minds, they achieved the seemingly impossible by recording something that our minds could easily translate with our imaginations. To this day, writers and poets are still reaching through time and touching us, talking to us, giving us an opportunity to taste the fruits of their hard-earned labor.

Click.

Now we press a button on a machine and be done with it. 

Click.

That's how long it takes for us to throw away thousands of years of effort.

What a tragedy. Not because we've lost appreciation for the power of language. No, it's a tragedy because of what we've so readily accepted as its replacement, such a flat and lifeless thing that pales in comparison to the depth and life-giving ability of language, its power to unlock our imagination and create worlds that can outdo even our dreams.

Click.

Photographs may capture our imagination, yes, but they don't give us a sky to fly.

But unfortunately the click is easy. It offers us a cheap and quick way to feel that we have captured something uniquely ours, a moment of time that we feel belongs to us but which in reality is stolen, not earned.

Human laziness knows no bounds. We will sacrifice almost anything for the opportunity to do less work.

How many of us will now experience a beautiful sunset, or the birth of our child, and spend just a few hours that evening trying to put that experience into words? "Eh, who has time for that."

Instead of painting beautiful stories with our imagination, we relinquish that command to an electronic box in the bedroom that has been programmed by a stranger with the worst intentions in mind.

We plop our kids down in front of animated drawings or ask them to play with machine-manufactured plastic toys instead of letting them chase real birds, play with real frogs, and pretend they can really fly.

There are many old cultures who shy away from the camera. They believe the photograph steals the soul. And maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. At the very least, it steals our imagination.

However, given the opportunity to uninvent the camera, I would not choose to do so. I know it's just another evolutionary step on our journey, an evolutionary step towards our species realizing that no camera, no matter how many pixels or dimensions it captures, will be able to overtake the human imagination.

The camera may assist the imagination, yes, but it cannot replace it. The human imagination has the power to imagine something better. It has the power to dream.

But does that mean we should all just throw away our cameras and become writers instead? I don't think so. My intuition tells me that there's something special about photography. If the eyes are the window to the soul, then surely a photograph offers its viewer a key to that window.

The camera may have the power to steal our imagination, but it also has the power to show us the truth. Writing and language have the power to manipulate and spread propaganda but does that make them worth abandoning?

The camera, like language and music, is one more tool for humanity to express itself. Photography offers a way for others to see the world through our eyes, through the eyes of one unique individual, as he or she saw it. Writing has that ability too, but writing gives the reader more freedom to involve him or herself in the story; there's more room for individual interpretation.

This is perhaps why I'm such an fan of untainted, unmodified, unedited photographs and why I feel that the story behind each photograph is as important as the photograph itself. Without the story, a photograph has no soul. It's the story that brings the photograph to life.

I'm not sure why this is such a revelation for me. Perhaps it's because until now the art of photography was always enough for me to pursue it. Now I'm realizing that if I'm going to continue pursuing photography, I need to start exploring photojournalism. 

Maybe through photojournalism I can learn to bridge the gap between writing and photography and find a balance between the two that doesn't leave me feeling as though I'm betraying one or the other.

Photography As Art

Why do so many people spend so much time photographing things? We take photos of ourselves, our babies, our friends, and our pets. We photograph the things that make us feel, those moments that appear to give our life meaning, to make it worth having lived.

We witness the beauty of nature but quickly separate ourselves from it, sacrificing the purity of that moment, for what? With such haste we dutifully capture as if witnessing some alien landscape, as if we were alien explorers sent to an unknown world to document for a future generation the fleetingly precious moments that make up our transient existence.

We make baseless uneducated assumptions about what importance future generations will place on the interestingness of our lives, while the truth is they'll likely be just as preoccupied with their own existence as we are with ours, doing whatever activity helps them avoid the unbearable thought of their own impending doom.

The self-portrait speaks the loudest to me. It's as if the soul inside turned the camera on itself and cried out, "I am here! I exist! My life has meaning!"

What is it about human nature that attracts so many of us to capturing moments of time? Is there something in our subconscious, something that remains aware of the limit on our lifespan, something that feels driven by a sense of self-preservation to seek out anything that might help slow or preserve time?

And where is all of this heading? For how much longer will the human race be obsessed with this newfound ability to capture reflections of time, to create something that appears to be uniquely ours but in reality whose value and meaning fades as quickly as the memory of its creators' existence?

When I was a teenager I came across a nature calendar that contained the exact same photo I had taken of a particular waterfall in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The photographer must have taken it from the exact same spot that I stood to take mine. But there was one difference: he used a slower shutter speed and that made the waterfall look misty as it came down the rocks. It was more beautiful and aesthetically appealing than mine, which, having been taken with a faster shutter speed, showed the water frozen in its tracks.

At first, the photo in the calendar filled me with a sense of pride. It was proof that I probably had an intuitive eye for composing 'good photos'. But that's where the story ends. I never again looked at that photo in the calendar. I didn't keep a copy of it and I never saw it again. Instead I enlarged my photo of the waterfall, along with several other photos that I deemed 'frame worthy', added it to a cheap frame, and hung it on the wall.

It didn't matter to me that someone else had taken the exact same photo, of the exact same waterfall, at around the exact same time of the year. It didn't matter to me that the other photo was better than mine. My photo meant more to me because I took it, because it was my photo, a frozen moment of my time captured by me.

But is there really any difference between my time and your time? If ten thousand people take a photo of the Taj Mahal, is there really any reason for me to take a photo of it? And then why take any photos in the first place? What happens in the distant future when everything has been photographed? When every single angle that could be captured, has been captured?

These thoughts lead me back to photography as art.

We create art as a way of expressing ourselves, as a way of capturing and communicating to others what we feel, but true art is not created because the artists' feelings have great importance, but rather because what the artist expresses -- the expression itself -- allows others to experience more of life.

If we focus our time and effort on creating art, then that is time well spent. But what is art? Art is not capture (what the camera does) but rather expression (what is done with the camera). The difference is subtle but important. One requires thinking about what you're doing, understanding why you're doing it, and constantly seeking to improve, while the other lets you get away with laziness and ignorance, pointing a device in the direction of your feelings and pressing a button.

After decades of taking photos, I can see that I have the skills to pursue photography as art, but is that what I want to do? Is my time better spent pursuing writing as art? Or is there some intersection of the two that will allow me to create better art?

And with a newborn on the way, I can't help but wonder: How much of my daughter's life will I be a photographer-dad and how much will I be a dad-dad?

Finding Your Why

I was sitting on the balcony of my apartment in Ulcinj, Montenegro, overlooking the Adriatic Sea. The sound of small construction echoed through the valley as men worked on roofs and inside houses preparing for the big tourist season that was just around the corner. 

I looked over at one of the workers on a neighboring roof and wondered, what's his 'why'? Why is he doing what he's doing right now? He likely wants to earn money to feed himself or his family or to provide himself or his family shelter. 

What are his 'whats'? What does he do that backs up and reinforces his why?

Well, he spends large amounts of his time doing work that is laborious and difficult. He travels whatever distance is necessary to get to that work and he acquires the tools necessary to complete the work.

I've been listening to the audio version of Simeon Sinek's book, Start With Why, and the insights are fantastic. I highly recommend it. The premise of the book is that everything starts with why and that "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." But this principle extends much further than just business. In fact, it applies to everything in life. 

Everything starts with why. 

This got me thinking about my own 'why'. Why do I do what I do? At first, the answer seemed obvious. But in reality, this is exactly the trap that nearly all businesses in the world fall into: they confuse their why with their what and their how. (Simeon gives many real-world examples in his book, all of which are quite eye-opening.)

I decided to make two small lists in a text file on my laptop, a list of my whys and a list of my whats. I didn't bother with the hows immediately but instead focused on making sure that only real whys were put on the why list. Here are my raw, unedited lists:

WHY'S (Why do I do it?)

  • I believe in living deeply
  • I believe in thinking beyond myself
  • I believe that technology will unite humanity
  • I believe in living and thinking deeply beyond myself
  • I believe technology empowers human evolution
  • I believe that technology is a catalyst for human progress

WHAT'S (What do I do?)

  • Write
  • Publish and share things online
  • Value quality, strength, durability, thoroughness, thoughtfulness
  • Seek other perspectives
  • Remain realistically optimistic
  • Dig deeper
  • Ask Why
  • Helpful
  • Think deeply 
  • Think deeply about what matters most in life
  • Question the status quo
  • Seek change
  • Learn new things and share what I learn
  • Live minimally, while maximizing the potential of available tools
  • Think sustainably
  • Ponder the future
  • Ask what role technology plays in human evolution

The whats list came surprisingly easy, but the whys list was hard! I started adding things to my what list and it kept growing. Every time I thought that I had a why to add to the why list, I realized after a bit of thought that it was actually a what, not a why. It was something that reinforced my why, not the why itself.

Eventually the real whys began to emerge and I was easily able to cross-check them. From Simeon's book, I knew that whats should always reenforce whys, so I was able to take any of the whys and ask myself, "do my whats reenforce this?" If the answer was no, then I knew immediately that it wasn't really my why. (Asking myself that question assumes that what I do is already in alignment with my why, which I feel that it is, or at least that it's pretty close.)

If you're interested in trying this exercise, take a few minutes and follow these steps:

  1. Make a list with two headers: "WHAT'S" and "WHY'S"
  2. Start with listing what you do, the things that you love doing in your spare time and that you see yourself always doing in the future.
  3. After you have 10-15 items on the list, start looking for patterns and overarching themes. Start asking yourself, "why do I do these things? Why do they matter to me?"
  4. Now slowly, but cautiously (remember, whats are easy to confuse for whys) add things to the whats list. If you come up with something that seems like a why but ends up being a what, simply transfer it to the what list.

(If you try this exercise and you're willing to share the results with me, I've love to see them.)

I certainly haven't figured out all of my whys or all of my whats, but I do feel a lot closer. I will continue with this exercise and add a third list of hows. Then I'll keep revisiting this and checking if what I'm doing in my life properly reflects my core why

Exercises like these can be helpful for everyone in many ways. They help clarify why we wake up in the morning, why we do the work we do, and why we make the choices we make. But it's easy to miss the why. If you go back and re-analyze the construction worker that I mentioned earlier, you'll discover that even his whys go much deeper than food and shelter.

If we get more clear about our why, then we can make better decisions and better choices and live more productive, happy, and harmonious lives.

For some additional reading on this topic, check out How to Find Your Purpose and Do What You Love.

An Explosion of Gratitude

I was standing by the open window with a mug of freshly brewed Pu-erh tea in my hands, enjoying the colder than expected breeze blowing in over the sweet sound of chirping birds, underneath a crisp sky with hints of orange beginning to paint the evening with firey colors of the setting sun, when I realized that I needed to run.

It wasn't because I hadn't run in six months, or because the weather was nice. It wasn't because I was finally living in a neighborhood where there were nice running paths or because I had been feeling my fitness level deteriorate ever so slowly.

No, I needed to run because I was so damn lucky to have legs that allowed me to run, to actually still have my feet attached to my body.

A few hours earlier, while I was walking home from the Alewife subway station, I heard a number of sirens in the distance. There was nothing particularly unusal about that, but intuition told me that something big had just happened.

As I walked home, I opened Twitter on my phone and searched for "Cambridge". Someone else had tweeted that something big must have happened because they heard lots of sirens. I then searched Twitter for "Boston" and immediately started seeing photos of what at taken place just minutes earlier.

Two explosions, presumably bombs, exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing several people and injuring dozens, horrifically dismembering people. I was on the subway when it happened, just a few miles away.

When I got home, I began following what was unfolding in Boston. I found a video clip and photos of the blasts online, showing in graphic detail what had just happened (warning: some of these photos are extremely graphic).

It was horrible, but what caught my attention in the videos was the incredible way in which the majority of people rushed, not away from the blasts as you might expect, but towards them. Within seconds of realizing what had happened, people converged on the areas that were affected.

People ripped the shirts off their backs to use them as makeshift tourniquets on those who had just had their legs blown off. Several marathoners who had been running for more than four hours and 26.2-miles continued running straight to the hospital so they could donate blood.

On Twitter, I found a link to something that comedian Patton Oswalt wrote on his Facebook page shortly after the explosions. His words articulate my thoughts quite well:

I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."

But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.

But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

So as I stood there at home by the open window, with a mug of freshly brewed Pu-erh tea in my hands, enjoying the colder than expected breeze blowing in over the sweet sound of chirping birds, underneath a crisp sky with hints of orange beginning to paint the evening with firey colors of the setting sun, I couldn't help but feel an absolute sense of gratitude.

There were humans, only a few miles from where I was, whose lives had been ripped apart today, some quite literally. Others had awoken this morning just as I had, but with the intention of running or watching others run a marathon, who now were lying in a hospital bed somewhere with the knowledge that they will never again wiggle their toes or feel the earth beneath their bare feet.

I needed to run. I needed to run for them.

Expect the Unexpected

How did I get here? I don't know. It's hard to say. Sometimes my life moves so fast that I can't keep up and when I look back at the past six months that's exactly how I feel: unable to keep up. I feel unable to find the words to describe the journey, that same journey that I need to describe to fulfill my commitment to sharing it with you.

As a writer, I try to understand not just the world around me, but also the world within me. But how can I explain to you what to me feels unexplainable?

How can I describe the landscape outside the window when my ship is going a thousand miles an hour?

Perhaps that's the challenge of all writers, to keep up with the endless flow when it arrives, to master the skill of deduction, deciding what gets shared and what gets left out, like a detective removing all possible suspects until only the best candidates remain.

This writing is evidence of my attempt to put aside for just a moment the amazingness of what has happened, to pull the emergency brake on my life and slow down just enough to get this message across to you so that I can stop looking backward for answers around how to best convey this.

I don't want to be looking backward, especially not when this thousand-mile-per-hour ship is about to get upgraded to warp-speed. I need to be looking forward, and I want to be looking forward, and sharing that forward journey with you.

All the best journeys in life are lifelong journeys, those adventures that don't really have a clear beginning and whose ending appears as a climax that does not lead to an ending but instead undergoes a metamorphosis that by some play of magic recreates a beginning where there was no ending.

This is my attempt to explain that magical recreation of a beginning without an end.

***

Six months ago I was a solo-traveler, not really sure of where my life was going. Today, I'm a husband to a wife, with a daughter on the way.

Yes, you heard that right. If that sounds hard to believe, trust me when I say that it's just as strange for me to write.

I met my wife Anna, also a solo-traveler, and we connected as unexpectedly as we started a family. Both of us believe the universe has a reason for everything. But that belief is equally matched, perhaps paradoxically, with a shared belief that our destinies are not pre-written, that we decide and choose our reality.

We're now learning to embrace roles that neither of us ever thought or imagined we'd need to embrace at any point in our lives. We had both accepted that such roles were simply not in the cards for us. How wrong we were. But that's okay. We're both adaptable, a trait that any solo traveler will tell you is an essential skill.

So how do two solo travelers, whose love for travel is only matched by a respect and reverence for family, start a family of their own? How do two people who feel uncomfortable using the terms 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' find a way to embrace each other as 'husband' and 'wife' and prepare themselves for spending a lifetime together? How do two independent individuals who love doing things on their own come together to share the responsibility of bringing a new life into this world?

I haven't been writing or publishing very much for the past few months because I don't like skirting around issues or hiding things. I don't like writing for the sake of writing. If I'm going to write and share something with you, it needs to be real and true, an actual representation of what I'm going through. I knew that I could not honestly do that until I announced this because nearly everything I've been thinking about over the past four months, as you might imagine, has been thought about against the backdrop of this new and incredible shift in my life.

One thing that I'm struggling with right now is figuring out where my boundaries are when it comes to writing and publishing. I don't yet know when I will announce all of this to the rest of the world (i.e., outside of this journal). In addition to you, I've only told family and a few close friends.

How much of my private life -- how much of my family life -- am I willing to put out there? On one hand I've always been very transparent about almost everything: my finances, my travel schedule, my thoughts and feelings on life. However, at the same time I'm also a very private person and I value my privacy, even if that privacy is only confined to a few thoughts in my brain.

Until now, its been easy to determine what I want to share and what I don't. But now I have two other people to think about. I'm grateful that Anna is carefree, perhaps even more so than me, so I have no doubt that whatever I choose to share she'll be okay with me sharing. However that doesn't help me figure out what, if anything, should remain private.

I'm a writer who writes about things that are close to his heart and it's important to me that I continue to write that way. I intentionally created this journal so that I would have a place to share the very things that I might not otherwise want to share, at least not immediately, with the public, and this journal was created as a place to share those things with a smaller group of people who wanted to support my work.

So, at least initially, I will start sharing a lot more here with you through the journal.

Anna and I intend to keep traveling once our daughter is a year old. We want to spend 6-8 months every year living in a different country, picking up the culture, learning a bit of the local language, and perhaps finding ways that we can contribute to the local economy. (Anna has aspirations of starting an orphanage in southeast Asia and she's finishing up her Master's degree in Non-Profit Management.)

We're both aspiring minimalists with a distaste for consumerism. We believe strongly in reusing and maintaining things over throwing out and replacing them and these are values we want to pass on to our child.

I might make it sound like we've got this all figured out, but I know that there will be many challenges along the way. We've already faced several. But like any solo-traveler, and with someone else in the middle now for whom we need to drop our stubborn individuality and think beyond ourselves, we remain adaptable.

Am I any more sure where my life is going? No, not really. But it's sure about to get a lot more real.

***

I'm convinced that nature has a way of signaling big changes and that if you pay attention you can read those signs and see things coming. I certainly didn't see any of this coming, but I do see the signs now when I look back. It all began when I was in Darwin, Australia, almost ten months ago.

But let me stop there. This journal entry is already getting a bit long and I need to add more wood to the fire. I'm camping with my dad in the White Mountains of New Hampshire for the weekend; this was, I think, the emergency brake that I needed to articulate all these thoughts in a coherent manner and get them out into a format that I can share with you.

My dad is already asleep. The fire is getting low and the cold is creeping in. My fingers are getting stiff on the keyboard.

Now that I've made this announcement you can expect a stream of journal entries to follow. There are a few other things I've been getting interested in that I've wanted to share here but haven't because I felt a responsibility to share this first. One of those things is my growing interest in Bitcoin, a decentralized digital currency that I realized is exactly what was missing back when I wrote my Income Ethics series two years ago.

Life is an adventure, and just as I was starting to feel that perhaps my adventure was missing a little something, it got a lot more interesting. I want to start sharing this journey with you and I hope that you'll join me for the ride.

##

Not Judging is a Judgment

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I've long maintained the position that remaining open-minded and not judging others was the best route to take in life. I've avoided forming opinions out of fear that doing so would cut me off from seeing other perspectives and therefore prevent me from gaining a new understanding of something that was otherwise alien to me. But as I've gotten older I've found that a lack of opinions greatly limits my personal growth.

If someone asked me for my thoughts on a big topic--God, religion, politics, money, sexuality, ethics--my response was always watered down so that I didn't have to take a firm stance in any direction. I might say that I feel one way or another, but I would always end it by saying that I'm still exploring and that I choose to remain open-minded.

That's not to say that I don't have a strong sense of personal ethics and moral values. I've always felt a strong sense of right and wrong, but I've never explored the why of those feelings. So when I'm presented with a situation that requires using my sense of right and wrong to judge someone else's actions, I've always taken the stance of not judging at all. Instead of deciding that someone's actions are right or wrong, I choose to tell myself that I don't fully understand where that person is coming from and therefore I cannot rightly judge their actions.

However, I'm beginning to see that I do this not to protect the other person but to protect myself. I do it because I'm afraid of what others might conclude those judgements mean about me. I'm afraid of being defined, of being put in a box and labeled as 'person who believes X'.

But the older I get the more I realize this is not only wrong but dangerously influential to those who may be watching my example. Our life is a walking billboard and the examples that we set are the messages that are broadcasted to the world. Our ethics define who we are. Choosing not to take a stance on a particular subject is taking a stance in itself, a stance that says it's OK not take a stance, that it's OK to let things slip by simply because you've chosen not to decide.

All of these thoughts on judgement and ethics came about after reading the following bit from a post written by Shawn Coyne on Steven Pressfield's blog.

The other day I overhead this conversation:

Man #1: “I ran into Frank Smith (not his real name) at the beach yesterday…”

Man #2: “Isn’t that the guy who cheated on his wife, got a DWI, and said all of those nasty things about Jill’s daughter in law?”

Man #1: “…Well…yes…but I try not to judge.”

I run into this “I don’t judge” stuff a lot and it infuriates me on many levels. But as this is a blog about what it takes to create art, I’ll just address why this “moral position” is at best hypocritical and at worst a force as undermining and dark as Resistance.

If you want to create art, you need to make judgments about human behavior and take a side. How well you convey and support your point of view is a measure of your skill.

[...]

If you don’t call people on their shit, you’re placing yourself above them, as if their actions are so inconsequential to you that they need not be considered. You’re above it all, some kind of Ayn Randian ubermensch behaving only out of self-interest. The same goes for not giving a standing ovation for great work because others remain seated. If you admire a work, let the artist know. They can use all the attaboys they can get. It’s Hell in that studio.

Despite the initially convincing argument that to “not judge” is an expression of empathy—who knows, if I faced those same circumstances maybe I’d do something like that too? —It’s not. It’s an excuse for not standing up for what’s right.

Not saying something is uncaring. Not saying something means that you do not want to put your ass on the line and take the risk that you’ll be shunned for your opinion. It has everything to do with you. Nothing to do with the other person.

I’m aware that the world is not black and white. There are shades of gray between the two poles of every value. On the spectrum of “Truth and Deceit,” telling a white lie when your cousin asks if she looks good in her bathing suit is not the same as running a billion dollar Ponzi scheme. I get it.

And yes, most of the time, keeping our big mouths shut is the right thing to do. We’re all guilty of misdemeanors and don’t need Earnest Ernies pointing out our shortcomings. And when we do confront someone about their actions, we need to do it with tact and care. That’s empathy.

But this “non-judgment, I tow the middle line” attitude is dangerous. There is no middle line. Not judging is a judgment. And it pushes people away from each other—I best not make a mistake and judge anyone or no one will like me…best to keep quiet and be agreeable—instead of bringing them together—I thought I was the only one who thought Animal House was genius…

The man I overheard who doesn’t “judge” the adulterous, alcoholic driving, rumormonger sends a message to the world that destructive actions are excusable. It is what it is… There is no right and wrong. Nonsense.

But it is his passive aggressive dressing down of the other guy for “judging” someone guilty of antisocial behavior that is even worse. It masks his cowardice as virtue. And to not judge whether something is right or wrong is the furthest thing from a virtue.

You must choose a position in this world on innumerable moral questions and stand by your judgments. Woody Allen made this point in six lines of dialogue. Ken Kesey riffed on it for an entire novel. It’s important.

If you are an aspiring artist and you wish to avoid “judgments,” you’ll find that you have nothing to say.

So even if it means risking shutting yourself off to other possibilities, choosing a position on moral questions is important. It's important because the alternative--not choosing a position--means that you're setting an example even worse than choosing the wrong position.

By not choosing to make moral judgements you're setting an example that says it's OK to not stand for what you believe, that it's OK to not believe in anything. It's not OK. As human beings we grow and evolve through what we believe, not through what we don't believe.

Equally as important to being human is the formation of new opinions and ideas, that process of discovering, learning, and then accepting that previously held beliefs may have have been wrong. But if you don't take a stand in the first place, how can you prove yourself wrong?

How a Modern Nomad Finds a Place to Sleep

I pulled into the dark driveway and parked. There was so little lighting around the house that when I turned off the car I couldn't see the ground between me and the front door, wherever the front door was. I was fairly certain this was the right place. The address matched, but that didn't make me feel any more sure. My host said she would leave the door unlocked if I was going to arrive while she was out, but she never got back to confirm that's what she was doing. I grabbed my backpack, locked the car, and then used the light from my phone to illuminate the ground. It didn't help much and I stepped cautiously, not sure if I was walking on a path or a badly neglected garden. It didn't feel like a path. I remember thinking for a brief moment that I hope there are no dangerous Floridian snakes on the ground because I'm wearing sandals and I can't see anything. I walked up to the front door. A dim light illuminated a dark wooden door. Was this the right house? What would I ask if someone answered the door? I'd probably say, "Hi, is there a Kathleen here? No? Is this..." wait, what was the address supposed to be again? I took my iPhone out of my pocket and looked for the email that contained the address. Ah, 2990. OK, if there's no Kathleen here I'll ask them if this is #2990. I rang the bell. It rang loud enough to hear it from outside so if there was someone inside they surely would've heard it. I could see through a few windows that there were some lights on inside, but otherwise the house was mostly dark. There was no indication of movement. I rang the bell again. Still no answer. I tried knocking. Still no answer. Do I just walk in? That feels kinda weird. What if this isn't the right house? What if the door is unlocked and I just walk into a strangers house? I checked the door to see if it was unlocked. The door opened easily. "Hello?" No answer. "Hello, anyone here?" Still no answer. I remember the description on the house listing mentioning that two German Shepard dogs lived with her. Surely they would've heard me by now. Why weren't they barking? Was this the wrong house? I stepped into the hallway. "Hello?" Still no answer. I look to the right down a hall. There's what looks like a fence to keep babies out. But it was a high fence. I tell myself that's probably for the dogs. I look left and there's what looks like a living room. There's only one light on. I look around the front door for a note that my host may have left, anything to indicate that this was the house that was expecting me. There's nothing, just an empty old-fashioned table. I walk quietly through the living room and imagine for a moment that this is the wrong house. I'm wearing a black jacket and carrying a black bag. I could easily be mistaken for a robber. I continue cautiously exploring the living room and find old photos on a table. There's lots of pictures of a young girl and what looks like her younger brother. There's also lots of black and white photos on the wall. They look like old family photos. Are these pictures of my host as a little girl? Is this her family? I can't tell. I don't even know what my host looks like. She used a photo of her dog on the listing. I continue towards what looks like the kitchen. There's a light on inside. As I approach, I imagine someone standing in there with their back toward me. What if it's an elderly person and I scare them so much that I give them a heart attack? How horrible would that be? I turn the corner to see if there's anyone standing in the kitchen. It's empty. Pieces of paper hang from the cabinets. I can't read them in the dim light so I look closer. They're all recipes for organic dishes. That reminds me that the listing description mentioned my host was into organic food. That makes me feel a little better. It's the first clue that I'm in the right house. I open a few of the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator. More organic stuff. If this is the right house, I should also find a bedroom that looks empty or at least one that looks like the guest room. I walk back through the living room to explore the hallway, the one that didn't have a fence blocking it. It's dark, but there's an open door at the end of the hallway with a lamp on inside. I walk towards the light, looking for any indication of movement inside. It's empty. There's a nicely made bed and a lonely chair pushed up against the wall with an acoustic guitar sitting on it. The lamp that guided me into the room is sitting on a big table and next to the lamp are a set of keys. Two single keys on a keyring with a green carabiner attached. Those are probably the keys for the house that my host was going to give me when I arrived. That was my second clue that this was the right house. I don't yet feel comfortable settling in, so I take my backpack with me back to the living room and put it down next to the couch. I guess I'll just wait here until she comes back. I go into the kitchen to get a glass of water and then return to the living room and plug in my laptop. I think about what a strange experience this has been, walking into what feels like a total strangers house and trying to feel OK with it. I decide that I should write down this story while it's still fresh in my mind, but just as I start typing I hear a door open from the far corner of the house. A woman's voice calls out, "hello?" I reply, "Hello!", feeling a sense of relief that someone else was expecting a stranger here. My host appears through the other side of the kitchen and enters the living room to introduce herself and her boyfriend. Two white German Shepard's follow on their heels. We chat for a while in the kitchen over hummus, chips, and homemade Kombucha. After showing me where things are and explaining how to use the washing machine, they invite me to join them for some live music at a local bar. I respectfully decline. As they head back out, I retire to my bedroom to write this journal entry about my fourth experience using AirBNB, just one of the tools I use to put a roof over my nomadic existence.

Seeking Simplicity

In all areas of our life, we should be seeking ways to simplify. Simplicity, as Leonardo Da Vinci said, is the ultimate sophistication. When we simplify, we recognize what is non-essential and remove it, leaving behind only what is essential.

The act of simplifying is not easy, but it yields incredible power. When things are simple, we are not distracted by the non-essential. There is nothing getting in the way of what we're trying to achieve. This distraction-free environment empowers us to think and grow toward our goals more quickly, to feel clarity and ease where before there was always a subtle, seemingly unidentifiable resistance.

When we experience something powerfully simple, it's usually not obvious what makes it so powerful. Simple things exude a quiet confidence that seems to ooze from some distant magical world, giving it unexpected strength.

Think about the various famous quotes you've heard repeated over and over: "Be the change you wish to see in the world", "Love conquers all" "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." All of these exemplify simplicity because the non-essential has been removed. The statements have been reduced to clear, universal truths that we can all identify with.

Simplifying requires clear understanding of purpose. If the purpose is clear, the non-essential becomes obvious and can be removed. If the purpose is ambiguous or unclear, the non-essential mixes with the essential and a pool of chaotic confusion is created.

If I wanted to express that health is very important, more important than say money or treasures or fame or status, I could achieve that by saying, "there are lots of things in the world that are valuable but in the end it's health that is the most valuable."

However, if I identify the purpose of what I'm trying to say — that is to express that health is the most valuable thing — I can remove all the non-essential and arrive at the statement, "health is wealth". So simple, yet so powerful! All of the non-essential has been removed and what remains is a vehicle for fulfilling the purpose of the statement.

In all simple things you will discover this removal of the non-essential, this cutting to the core of what is intended. In powerful writing and communication you will see less ambiguity and more certainty. 'I think there's something powerful about simplicity' becomes 'simplicity is powerful'. 'I think you're very pretty' becomes 'you're beautiful'.

I arrived at my current website layout after thousands of iterations over the past ten years. I'm constantly seeking to remove the non-essential by clarifying the purpose of the website, which is to present my writing online and allow others to share the writing and leave comments.

I'll never be 'done' simplifying because the quest for simplicity evolves alongside the one universal constant in the universe: change.

In the emails that my subscribers receive, I'm constantly searching for ways to simplify. If you compare this Journal email to that of a previous one, you'll find that the footer and signature content have been greatly simplified. When I recognized that the singular purpose of these emails was to share newly published writing, it became obvious that providing lots of links to send people to various social media platforms was non-essential.

Again, removing the non-essential by identifying the ultimate purpose of a thing.

When I decided to make a lifestyle transition in 2010, I began by identifying my long-term lifestyle goal and revising it until it was crystal clear: to travel the world with all my possessions on my back. That clarity instantly identified the non-essential things in my life: my own apartment, a pickup truck, a snowboard, a mountain bike, extra clothes, extra shoes, extra bags, a big digital camera… the list goes on.

With all that non-essential removed, my life feels far more simple than it did before, but it also feels more sophisticated and full of potential. A simple lifestyle does not need to be primitive.

Remember, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and identifying and removing the non-essential from your life will increase your ability to achieve your goals and free you to experience more of life.

What is your ultimate purpose? If that's too big a question, then what's your primary goal right now? What exactly are you working toward? Meditate on that for a few moments. Zero in on it. When you feel clarity, ask yourself what non-essential things surround that goal. What's getting in the way? What's not necessary?

Seek ways to simplify by clarifying purpose and identifying and removing the non-essential.

On the Importance of Daily Practice – A Passage from my Free-Writing Journal

I have a folder called 'Free-Writing' that I created almost a year ago with the intention of developing a daily free-writing habit (a technique where you attempt to write non-stop until you reach a certain number of words, writing about whatever comes to your head; it's a form of thought-streaming). The folder currently contains about 17,000 words of writing, but that only represents 32 days in the past 10 months that I've actually sat down to write something in there.

Suffice to say, I haven't formed a daily free-writing habit.

I was adding to the folder again today, jotting down a few thoughts I've had recently on how the lack of silence and solitude in our lives is likely having a negative impact on our personal development, when I became curious about what I had written as my first entry in this free-writing folder (the writing distractions never end). I'm including that first entry below. Ironically enough, I'm writing this entry from the same Starbucks mentioned in the entry below.

I'm sharing this free-writing passage with you because I'd like to hear what you think about me sharing more stuff like this. From my perspective, this free-writing often borders on gibberish-- it's usually just me emptying my head and remarking on things while I go off on different tangents. But it feels wrong to assume what you would think about it.

I've learned that what seems obvious and worthless to us can often be valuable and insight for others. Maybe my gibberish is your gold.

If you find something valuable in the entry below, please let me know and I will start sharing more bits from my free-writing. Perhaps sharing my free-writing will even help with developing a daily free-writing habit.

2012-01-12 13:00:00

It's snowing outside and I'm here sitting in Starbucks drinking a large latte as it snows outside. Every glance out the window I'm reminded how alien and different the world seems, so white, wet, cold, beautiful. It's as if something is erasing the landscape, slathering on a fresh coat of paint.

Perhaps I'm staring a little too much, waiting for something to happen, delaying my writing, using the snow as an excuse not to write. How silly that sounds. But is it really so silly? How many excuses do we come up with on an almost daily basis? Excuses not to exercise, not to wake up early in the morning, not to start that next project or begin working on that idea that's been bugging us for the past few weeks or months.

There I go, I was doing it again, staring out the window contemplating nothing. That would normally be fine on any other occasion, but this time I'm committed to writing at least 500 words here, thought-streaming even if it means emptying gibberish from my head. That's an interesting thought: emptying gibberish from my head. If that's what is there, then emptying it should be a good thing. It will give the good stuff room to breathe, room to grow.

I have the urge to check how many words I've written so far because I want to stop. I feel the pressure to "do something productive" and that's pulling me away from this thing I've committed to. I really should commit to doing this more often, to taking my thoughts and simply emptying them to words, pouring them out through my fingers.

I have no doubt that regular emptying of my thoughts will result in a better flow for the thoughts I want to share with others. Anything worth doing requires practice to perfect. If I want to get better at expressing and sharing my thoughts, then I need to practice expressing and sharing my thoughts.

If I want to improve my ability to express and share my thoughts, then the mechanism of turning thoughts into words needs to be practiced. I need to get used to turning thought into word, into taking ideas and concepts in their thought-form and shaping them into ideas and concepts in word-form.

It's almost silly to think that one's ability to express ideas and concepts in word form will somehow magically improve over time, that simply having the desire to improve will make us improve.

Practice will help us improve, not the passage of time. We need to be practicing the art of expressing thoughts and concepts if we wish to improve that skill.

If I want to improve my writing, I need to write. Regularly. Daily if possible. (Of course it's possible.)

If I want to improve my speaking, I need to speak. Regularly. I need to practice conveying concepts by speech, of turning ideas and messages in their thought-form and converting them to ideas and messages in their speech form.

If I want to improve my physical body, the ability for it to stretch and grow and function properly, then I need to exercise my body daily. I need to stretch daily. Simply doing it once in awhile isn't enough. It needs to be regular practice.

Without regular practice, how can we expect to improve? The absence of regular practice creates a plateau where progress stalls. To ensure forward-movement, we must create a habit of regular practice.

Has fear replaced purpose?

Can fear replace purpose? Is it possible that in place of purpose, many are living in a perpetual state of fear, going about their daily tasks with the driving force behind all action being fear? Do they smile out of fear and love out of fear?

Am I being driven by fear? Is fear driving me to write this right now? Am I afraid that if I don't write regularly I will lose whatever gains I've made, that my skill will begin to deteriorate and that my readers will begin to lose interest? Am I afraid if I don't start writing right now that I will lose these thoughts I want to share?

What about all these people in their cars, driving here and there. Are they going places because they're afraid of something? Are they afraid of being scolded at work, or of being fired, or of not having enough money, or missing the due date on their bills, or running out of gas, or not having a refrigerator full of food in case the grocery stores are overrun and they're trapped in a hurricane with no means of survival?

Are they afraid of not getting to their next appointment on time, or running out of fuel for their generator in case they lose electricity and can't watch TV to see what else they should be afraid of?

Do they put on jackets because they're afraid to get wet, adorn unique layers of clothing because they're afraid to look like everybody else, lock their cars and lock their houses because they're afraid of being taken advantage of? Do they conform in life because they're afraid to stand out, to break the patterns, and to be different?

For most of my life I've marveled at the flow of automobile traffic, a seemingly endless stream of people going somewhere, headed toward a destination whose description was only limited by my imagination. But where were all these people really going? What was it that instigated them to take action? What pushed them to get in their car, choose a destination, and then do something about getting there?

What was their purpose?

I've tried to imagine all the different scenarios, to find a common thing that seemed to describe all the movement in a modern society. I looked at love as the primary motivator, but tossed that out when I saw hate, jealousy, anger, and selfishness far more prevalent than kindness, compassion, honesty, and generosity. I looked at survival, but I tossed that out too when I realized how overly abundant people were already living.

In fact, I looked at as many positive reasons as I could find, but nothing added up.

If our motivation and inspiration was something positive — if it was something that made us feel good — then why were we doing everything with such reluctance? Why were we so reactionary, so easy to anger, and so quick to blame?

I remember thinking a few years ago, while sitting in traffic on the way home from a 10-hour day at the office, if my motivations for living were positive, why was I doing things on a day-to-day basis that made me feel negative? Why was I wishing I was somewhere else? Why were my choices reflecting a fear of the future? Why was I acting and reacting to fears instead of doing things that moved me towards happiness and freedom?

If societies were motivated by positive goals and people were motivated by positive purposes, then why was everybody under so much stress? Why were societies and people so slow to change? Why were those in power more interested in correcting accusations made towards themselves than debating real issues that affected the people they've chosen to serve?

If you throw fear into the mix, suddenly everything makes sense.

We are so afraid. We're terrified of breaking rules, suspicious of change, and paranoid of the unexpected. We seek direction in authority and give our power to the status quo, no matter how dangerous and untrustworthy that status quo may be.

And it's killing us. It's killing us because it's holding us back. It's killing us because it's preventing us from growing and embracing our full potential. It's killing us because we're being suffocated by fear and choked off from the from the flow of life.

Fear has a purpose, but its purpose has no place in our motivation for living.

Edit: Moments after finalizing this journal entry, I came across a project called Humans of New York and I began to wonder if maybe we ultimately find whatever it is we're truly looking for, whether that be love or fear. But then I realized what each of the photos and stories in that project captured: presence. If we live in the moment, we cannot live in fear.

Flow, Commitment, and Why I Run

I’ve always known that I wasn’t very interested in “showing off”, or doing things just to impress others, but the recent discovery of why I push my limits has been an interesting and unexpected journey and it has led me to question several previously held commitments.

It all began when I started breaking my personal distance records for running. At first it was 11 miles (18 km), and then 17 miles (28 km). I set these personal records alone, barefoot, and with nobody watching and nobody except my iPhone keeping track.

And that was enough for me. I didn’t need anything more. It was enough that I knew I had broken my previous records. It was enough because the record-breaking itself was only pursued because I wanted to explore that unknown, to run further than I had ever run before and to discover how my body would respond.

I wanted to feel those new muscles hurt, to know what it felt like to become delirious when my energy stores ran low, and to observe the strange thoughts of doubt surfacing when my feet were so tired that I could barely feel them. It was that exploration into the unknown, that feeling of passing 11-miles and knowing that with each stride I was experiencing something new, something that my body had never experienced before. It was that potential for discovery and that pursuit of the unknown that inspired me to keep going.

I have no desire to prove to others that I can do something. In fact, I don’t even need to prove it to myself. For me, it’s about the exploration, pure and simple. It’s about the journey. And I share my journey with others because the only thing more powerful than taking a journey is sharing it with others.

But if nobody witnesses my exploration — if nobody sees or records me setting a new world record — I’m absolutely fine with that. If I die with my name unknown to the world, that’s OK with me. What matters to me is that I’ve lived well and that I’ve lived in pursuit of the unknown. What matters to me is that I’ve never stopped learning and growing and that I’ve done my best to help others by sharing the uniqueness of my potential.

*

I’ve become fairly good at turning things down when I recognize that they won’t contribute to my overall vision or direction, or when I realize that I won’t be excited and enthusiastic about doing it when the time comes to follow through.

But what about those things that I’ve already committed to, those things that I was working towards but that now no longer hold any interest? What should I do with them when I discover they no longer inspire or motivate me or when I learn something new about why I chose to do them in the first place?

It seems rather wasteful and brainless to push through stubbornly, to ignore the fact that I’m no longer motivated and do something just because I’ve previously committed to it. Life is fluid, it’s not ridged. Life does not exist as a defined waterway set into stone that we must follow religiously. Life flows, and so should we.

I’ve become so weary of pushing through stale commitments and goals because doing so always creates a toxic feeling, a physical sensation that I can only describe as stress hormones spewing themselves throughout my body. When I feel it, I become hyper-focused on ignoring those feelings and then I need to expend enormous amounts of energy stubbornly pushing through whatever it is that’s generating them.

This stress generates a huge creative block, a resistance that prevents creativity of any type. As I put more and more importance on my creative work, I find myself increasingly weary of pushing through things just for the sake of ‘pushing through and sticking to the plan’. The plan now needs to have a clear purpose and it needs to make me feel alive.

In the past few years, I’ve given up and said no to many things in the pursuit of happiness, peace, flow, and simplicity. Facing negative energy, whether from myself or from those around me, immediately reminds me of just how far I’ve come and how much I’ve learned about releasing things that do not feel life-enriching.

But is it necessary to occasionally sacrifice some of that peace in the name of pushing myself beyond limits and stepping outside of my comfort zone?

*

A few months ago I registered for my first marathon, and then few weeks later I registered for my first ultramarathon. I registered for them because I thought I wanted an official record to show that I had run a specific distance, to see my name on a list of official runners and to be able to tell people that “I ran the Baystate Marathon”, or that “I ran the Chicago Lakeside 50-mile Ultramarathon.”

But as the two events approached, I found my motivation for both of them evaporating.

My focus in the past month has taken an unexpected turn, instigated, I believe, by the creative energy I felt in Tasmania. Up until that point, I was maintaining a regular training schedule and I was on target for the marathons. But when I arrived in Tasmania, I became more reflective and more internally creative. My training took a backseat and I started to reflect on why I had registered for the marathons in the first place.

Setting those new personal records and discovering my true motivations for running and pushing myself made me realize that I have absolutely no desire to see my name on an official record. If I run an ultramarathon all by myself, with nobody watching, I’d feel the same sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that I would feel if hundreds saw me do it.

I’ve learned that running is about the journey for me, it’s not about the destination. Completing an official marathon was a destination, not a journey (a journey would be pushing my body to run a marathon distance, which is something that I could do anywhere, at any time).

And so this is where I need to decide whether or not to push through and uphold a previously held commitment: Do I ignore all these new things that I’ve learned and move forward with pushing myself through the marathons just for the sake of completing them? Or do I allow myself to adapt and flow, to embrace this new knowledge of why I run and then adjust my focus and my goals accordingly?

At this point in writing, my thoughts shifted to what Bruce Lee might tell me. His words about flow came to mind: “Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow, or it can crash. Be water my friend.”

I stopped writing for a moment and looked outside to reflect on Bruce’s words. My eyes landed on a seagull perched high on a light pole, just moments before he leapt off and spread his wings. Did the bird commit to flying? Yes. But did he commit to a destination?

When a bird jumps from a tree branch, he makes a commitment to take flight. He may have the intention of flying to a neighboring tree, but he doesn’t make a commitment to do so; a gust of wind may alter his course and force him to land somewhere else. Instead, he commits to the intention of the journey and then adjusts course as needed, flowing and adapting, like water.

Traveling by Intuition

A big part of how I create and travel involves tapping into energies, these invisible and hard to describe forces that seem to connect my physical self with another realm, a realm that, if I could see it, I imagine would look like strings of energy crisscrossing each other and linking together other, highly focused endpoints, all changing in response to the location, the environment, and the energies of the people who were present.

Trying to describe these invisible forces always conjures up images similar to those neuron maps of the brain and the maps of the Internet, only instead of being fixed and static, they’re alive and moving, constantly changing, like a universe inhaling and exhaling, birthing new galaxies with each breath.

I believe that we all have the ability to feel and sense these energies, to receive their signals and tune into them, to redirect and focus them like a magnifying glass focusing otherwise weak beams of sunlight.

When I travel, I feel the different energies and forces present in each place. But there seems to be a catch: I usually can’t feel or tap into them until I’ve settled down for a few weeks.

When I’m moving from one place to another — flying in an airplane, riding on a train, or doing a road trip — the energy generated by the motion is itself extremely powerful and chaotic. This chaotic energy seems to obscure the more stable energy that I can feel when I stop moving, the energy that I feel when I begin creating within a framework of daily routines.

Whenever someone asks me how I decide where I’m traveling to next, my response is always the same: I travel by intuition. I don’t travel to check off a list of places, or to experience a set of cultures, or to taste different foods. I travel by intuition. But what does that mean? What does it mean to ‘travel by intuition’?

It means that when I connect with the energy of a particular place, I allow myself to linger, to tap into the creative energies and allow them to change me, to give me fuel for creating and contemplating and growing until something (usually my intuition) tells me it’s time to move on. In traveling for the past three years, I’ve recognized that the “time to move on” feeling usually occurs within three months.

I’m convinced that I’m not the only one who taps into these energies and I suspect that various places around the world known for attracting artistic and intellectual types are that way because they’re actually strong sources of this invisible energy, sources that most of these people are unknowingly tapping into by living and working there. I suspect that cities appear where they do for the same reasons.

When I arrived in Tasmania a little over a month ago, I could tell within the first few hours that the energy here was strong. I wasn’t at all surprised when I learned that Tasmania is fast becoming known for attracting artistic types.

However, I was caught off guard when, within the first week of arriving, I felt an unrelenting desire to cancel the rest of my travel plans — a week in Perth and a month in Thailand — to spend more time here in Tasmania.

Now, after spending six months in Australia, I’m preparing to leave to visit family in the United States. I’m thinking about where I’ll go next in January and the only place that keeps calling back to me is Tasmania... and I haven’t even left yet.

Why Tasmania? I’m really not sure. All I can say is that my intuition tells me that I should return, that something says this is where I should be and that this is where I will find the creative energy that I need. Creative energy that I need for what? I’m not sure of that either. That too feels like an invisible force present in my future but undefinable to the present.

The Park of Skeletons and Giant Trees

There’s a park here in Hobart that I’ve walked through maybe a dozen times since arriving in Tasmania a few weeks ago. It’s a beautiful park with manicured gardens and strips of black pavement that crisscross bright green grass that always seems to be freshly cut.

But there’s also something quirky about this park. Stone structures that look like giant gravestones are occasionally thrown about and there are different types of trees growing in seemingly random locations.

I walked through the park today and stopped to read a small metal placard that was embedded into a stone at the base of one of the smaller trees. It said the tree was planted in 1932. That’s eighty years. I put my hand on the tree and looked up at it with a new sense of respect and admiration. Eighty years old and still young and strong.

I continued my walk and looked around at the other elderly giants surrounding me. Some of these trees must be hundreds of years old.

The park is a common route used by both commuters and students traveling to and from work and school. My host, who often walks through the park on her way to and from work, mentioned to me once that it would be a fun project to take photos of the trees while looking up at the sky from underneath them, and then trying to identify where in the park each photo was taken.

I find myself always looking up when I pass through a park now.

Perspective has a strange way of changing how we think about the most obvious things, those things that we take for granted and pass over, or under, without thought or pause for reflection.

At the other end of the park I came across a sign with more information and some historical background about the area. In 1804, the park began as Tasmania’s first cemetery, but became badly neglected within a few years and fell apart. Escaped convicts would occasionally vandalize the graves and sometimes they would even climb into coffins to hide from pursuing police.

The city of Hobart continued to grow and expand around the cemetery and before it was turned into a recreation area in 1925, nearly 900 people had been buried there. A few of the prominent gravestones were repaired and now they share the landscape with several giant trees, including American Redwood, Elm, Spruce, and Tasmania’s native, and giant, Blue Gum tree.

Nine hundred people. I tried to imagine that number of skeletons resting underneath the beautiful green grass, the roots of these giant trees weaving in and out of them, slowly converting what was once a living breathing human back into the basic elements. I’ll never walk through St. David’s park the same way again, as my perspective has been permanently shifted by the few words on that deteriorating sign.

It doesn’t take much to alter our view of the world, to shift our reality in such a great way that what we see and feel changes so dramatically that we become a different person, making different choices and thinking different thoughts. But a change in our perspective always starts with present-minded observation, with understanding where we are right now in relation to something else.

I walked though that park many times, but it wasn’t until I slowed down to understand and observe my surroundings that I acquired a new perspective and a new appreciation for the park.

In the same way, unless I remain curious and present to the activities in my day-to-day life, I may end up walking through unaware and oblivious to the great depth and richness that exists all around me and within my life.