When the staggering number of people on the planet leaves one feeling insignificant, it is useful to remember that we are insignificant in the big view—yet wholly significant in the small view.
Significantly Insignificant
Category: Inspiration
Brain Food—what do you feed yours?
There is no shortage of videos on the internet with which to entertain oneself.
It is but one of many things we can do with our brains.
I am not really sure whether doing frivolous things with our brains is any less important than doing “important” things with our brains, but I do think that sometimes we can have regrets about time spent. There is no shortage of opportunities for that and it is only us that determines what is a waste of time and what is not.
When we see someone that has lost control over their brain, it makes us consider how we use our own brain all the more.
One thing that happens when one loses control over the use of their brain is that they are no longer in a position to be part of solutions about anything that might come from the use of that brain. This is hugely unfortunate and yet we may do the same thing with belief systems that essentially help us close our brain. If we want to be part of solutions, we must not cling to that which prevents us from exploring, searching, and participating.
Videos can make us laugh, cry, get angry etc. They are often emotional sucker punches that appeal to us on levels that do not take much work on our part. We can be easily amused. We can be intellectually lazy.
The brain does not seem to care.
Every once in a while something comes along that not only entertains but informs on levels one could only consider “important.” One of the problems with “important videos” is that they are often long. People will watch 2 minute videos all day long, but to commit to one an hour long takes fortitude. I like to think that you will find this video (regardless your politics or philosophies) rewarding and worth the time spent.
The Moon, the Tides and why Neil DeGrasse Tyson is Colbert’s God
“God is an ever receding pocket of scientific ignorance that is growing smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on.”
——-Neil DeGrasse Tyson
Charles Buell
Understanding and Context
Some (perhaps all) understanding requires context, beauty may not.
White Elephants and Other Illusions
Being alive,
being aware of being alive is the gift.
Sooner or later we have to reconcile,
have to embrace,
that we cannot know where the gift comes from—
—even the white elephants.
That is the nature of real gifts.
We can sometimes spend our lives looking
for someone to worship for the gift,
or for someone to blame for the gift,
or even to somehow deny the gift.
The masks we wear can only hide the gift from ourselves.
The gift is how we can tell we are alive.
A live being.
By Charles Buell.
The Disconnect
At some point in our lives, we grow up enough to realize that some of the things (pick your poison) that we assumed that we would grow out of, just isn’t going to happen—there just won’t be enough time—even if we do live to be 100.
We even get to a place in our minds where that fact is either OK or just plain doesn’t matter enough. Add to that, the fact, that sometimes those things never needed changing to begin with. We were often, from infancy, given incorrect information and lived our lives as if it was correct information. That is the price we pay for not coming with proper operating instructions.
What was once important seems somehow irrelevant as we get older.
When I could press my own weight above my head, I could not imagine there would ever be a time when I could not. What is surprising to me is actually how little that seems to matter now. If someone had told me 40 years ago, that I would not care about lifting myself over my head when I was 67, I would have found it disturbingly absurd.
This is not so much about missing what I once could do, as it is with the enjoyment of what has replaced it. I now cannot imagine where I would find the time to do what it takes to be that strong. Instead I merely enjoy that I am still strong enough to do what I do want to do (for the most part), while doing some of those “old” things often enough to have my body bitch about it for weeks later.
There is a vast ocean between what the mind remembers doing and what the body can actually do. We are born with that disconnect and, if we live long enough, we die with that disconnect.
By Charles Buell