Photo of the Day, 10/29/09

Broad St buildings showing their support of the Phillies! (I have another PotD, but it's on my camera and I was too lazy to dowload it to my computer.)



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Words to Live By

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about - no, agonizing over - life, and where it's going, what it all means, what my place is in the universe, what does it mean to love and to be loved, and on and on and on... And no matter how much time I've spent obsessing over these things, I'm no closer to any sort of resolution than when I started. All I've ended up with are stress-induced migraines, shoulders stiff with anxiety, heartbreak, and an extra 15 pounds.

I found a link through the Happiness Project where someone started listing words and phrases to help them learn how to live in the present; to find happiness and joy in that particular moment, and not dwell on tomorrow or next week or next year. The author of the Happiness Project stresses that everyone's project is different, but I think one of the most valuable lessons revolves around learning to find peace in the way that things are right now. It's important to focus on growth in and the future, but not to the extent that that itself causes angst.

So here are a few thoughts on living in the present. I'm going to try really, really, really hard to live by these suggestions. And I'm hoping that some people out there have some suggestions to add.

First, the don'ts:

1. Don’t plan. Planning is an attempt to control the world around us, but it’s a futile attempt. Throw out your plans, for now at least until you’ve decided this method isn’t for you. What do you do instead? More on this below. For now, just stop planning.
2. Don’t worry about the future. Will something bad happen? Are there things coming up that we must anticipate and prepare for? Of course, if there’s a massive hurricane headed your way, you should probably get ready. But otherwise, just realize that the future is unpredictable, and worrying about it is a waste of time. Focus on right now, and you’ll always be able to handle what comes.
3. Don’t have expectations. If you expect people to act a certain way, or hope that things will turn out a certain way, you’ll always run into problems. Forget about outcomes for now. Go into things without expectations, and they will always turn out perfectly (if a bit messy).
4. Don’t get annoyed when others act a certain way. Don’t expect people to act any way other than how they actually act. They are exactly the way they should be — even if that’s selfish or weird or aggressive. Those are their problems. Your problem is figuring out how you should act. I’d also advise you to try to understand others — why do they act the way they do?
5. Don’t overreact. This is a major problem when people plan and things go wrong — they overreact, and get upset and emotional and blow things out of proportion. Stay calm, because if things “go wrong”, they didn’t actually go wrong — they just happened. More on how to react below.
6. Don’t try to be proactive. This is a common prescription (being proactive) in management and business literature. And while I think the general idea is fine — do something to prevent problems from recurring rather than just fixing them after they happen — one of the problems this creates is always worrying about what might happen. And creating solutions before there are problems — if there never is a problem, you’ve wasted a lot of time creating the solution, and a lot of energy worrying about the future.

And now for the dos:

1. Do be open. What would it be like to go into each day without a plan, but just to see what happens? A bit scary, because of the lack of security and control, a bit chaotic perhaps, a bit like we’re a piece of driftwood floating in the middle of a churning sea. But in truth, this is what it’s like to go into each day *with* a plan — it’s just that we normally fool ourselves about the amount of control we have. So start the day with no plan, and be open to what emerges in each moment.
2. Do what you love. So what should you do, now that you have no plan? Do what you’re passionate about, do what excites you right now. Create something amazing. Pour yourself energetically into a project. Build something new. And what you think you’re creating might turn out to be completely different from what emerges, but you’ll have fun doing it and something even better might be revealed.
3. Do act, in the moment. Giving yourself to the moment doesn’t mean being passive and just letting life happen. It means acting, but doing what is best at this moment, what you are excited about right now, what needs to be done, in the present.
4. Do respond appropriately. Life happens, and we must respond. But instead of overreacting, we can respond calmly and appropriately. We can take the action that’s required, fix the problem, do what’s necessary to prevent it from happening again, and move on without it ruining our day.
5. Do accept. Accept what happens. It might not be what you considered ideal, but it’s what life has given you, what has resulted from your actions in an unpredicatable world. Accept it, respond, act, move on. Don’t get caught up in things not going your way, but accept that’s what has happened.

P.S. Also check out this guy's "Happiness Commandments."

Constant Reminders

It's so difficult, painful, and frustrating that even the smallest things remind me of something that I'm trying desperately to forget. An innocent comment by a friend, a book on a desk. And these are the things that linger; it's impossible to shake them once they're in my head.

Musings On Photography

Today, I walked. I just set out without direction, without a plan, without any thought beyond "I have to keep moving." And I ended up here.

The Ben Frankin Bridge has always been one of my favorites - if not my absolute favorite - landmark in Philadelphia. I think that part of it stems from the project that I made in 12th grade physics, where we made models of bridges out of balsa wood, and competed to see how much weight they could hold before breaking apart (my bridge came in 3rd in the state).

Then there was the elective course that I took as a senior in college on the evolution of structural engineering and the relationship to how bridges are built. That's where I became familiar with and fascinated with the Golden Gate Bridge, the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and of course, the Ben Franklin Bridge. I learned about the architectural and aesthetic challenges that the architects designing those bridges faced. I also learned about the profound social and economic impacts that new bridges had on the communities that used them.

I honestly think that in another life, I was a civil engineer or something, because to this day, I let out a little gasp every time I see it, and my eyes are locked onto my bridge. The Ben Franklin. It reminds me of home. It reminds me of where I've been, and where I'm going next.

Climbing

Hahahahahaha!

Photo of the Day, 10/28/09

Time to have some fun!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

About those photos

I'm still working on the Photo of the Day project, but I might not have a photo for *every* day. But, everywhere I go, I I look at things differently now. There are a lot of pictures out there, just some that aren't worth looking at.

Detangling

I have taken for granted the way that this "digital age" makes it so easy for people to stay connected. Keeping up with friends through Facebook, Twitter, their blogs (via a feed reader, of course), Flickr and the like makes information about anyone available through a variety of sources. And then add the corresponding iPhone or Blackberry apps - the ever-present devices where one can text, check e-mail, or even call to keep in touch - and you can find out anything about anyone, anytime. That's great when you want to keep in touch with where people are and what they're doing, but when you don't necessarily want to, it becomes really hard to disentangle yourself from the constant stream of information about them (seriously, G, I don't need to know the minutiae of every single second of your day through Facebook, your Gmail chat status, and Twitter). It's sensory overload; it almost necessitates total radio silence so that you don't have to think about which feeds into what, or that this syncs with that... It's enough to make one long for pre-smartphone days, when you weren't linked to everything, and where you didn't have access to everything all of the time. So I think I'm going to go back to an earlier time. No more Tweeting. No more Facebook. No more Google Chat. No more following blogs on the sly. I'm going to go back to the tried and true phone call (and e-mail) to keep in touch with people.

Realization

Despite the difficulty of the last week or so, I'm sure that I've made the right decisions. I'm more confident that I did the right thing for all involved. There's still a sadness that I don't think will ever go away, but it's a deep, dull ache, rather than the sharp debilitating pain that I felt before.

Photo of the Day, 10/25/09

What can I say... I like the sky.