Category: Flawsophy

  • If it makes me happy…

    In a workshop I attended recently, the trainer made an interesting point that being a little selfish and taking care of our own needs first will actually enable us to help others better. Around the same time, I also read this very interesting post on the conversational gambit. Extremely helpful for those of us who aren’t good at going from zero to conversations quickly. Put simply, ask a question. The one that stuck with me was “When were you happiest?” I directed the question inwards and got some answers. Then I upped it to “What will make me happy?” That was complex, but something I heard recently gave me some direction.

    People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. … I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

    Joseph Campbell
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  • Image and identity

    “You can either be judged because you created something or ignored because you left your greatness inside of you. Your call.”

    James Clear

    In an earlier post – An impulsive path to freedom – I had identified my own self image as a barrier to the freedom I desire. I wonder if it’s because it’s something I constantly think about, but I saw interpretations of it across a couple of pop culture phenomena I consumed recently.

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  • An impulsive path to freedom

    One of the things that I have been very interested in recently is the abundance mindset. The internet offers many definitions, but at this point, “I know it when I see it”. It is also something I don’t have. Yet. Or at least, it is sporadic. And that’s something I want to remedy.

    I know at least a couple of people who display it in most circumstances. They are calm like Stoics, but I think they embrace life and its flavours much more. And I have seen that this mindset makes their lives better – both professionally and personally. This is reason enough, but something I read recently also gave me an a-ha moment – George Saunders’ convocation speech at Syracuse University for the class of 2013. 1

    What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

    Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

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  • An efficient existence

    The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem is a book I recently read, and loved. It was written in Polish in 1965, and translated to English in 1974. Lem wasn’t an author I had heard of, despite having read many science fiction anthologies. An online post that extolled him at the cost of my favourites like Asimov was what led me to this book. (I would have linked it, but I’ve forgotten how I found it!) Lem has been translated into 41 languages and has sold 30 million copies. But he was rebuffed by quite a few American writers including Philip K. Dick, multiple times, because he was perceived as being annoying, and had commented that American writing was “ill thought out, poorly written…” Also, his belief was that the only true motive for writing was to contribute to literature.1

    It made me think of a post in one of the newsletters I often recommend to folks – Taylor Pearson‘s The Interesting Times. As I tweeted sometime back, his writing is centrifugal – pointing to books, posts and ideas, and centripetal – goes deep into an idea and provides food for thought (the latter is different from what Austin Kleon meant in the original framing 2). The specific post I am referring to – 4 minute songs, which was about certain rules that a creators need to follow if they want their work to be consumed and appreciated, was the latter, and made me reflect. I wondered whether, even at an individual level, we are increasingly optimising for others’ consumption over our own expression.

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  • Front tier journeys

    Remember the early days of the pandemic, when we played alphabet soup with economic recovery? One has to be extremely optimistic to consider the much-touted “V” now, and there’s increasing consensus around “K”. There’s something subliminal about the former sounding like “we”, and the latter sounding like, well, K, signalling that we don’t care. And that’s why I began thinking of how those in the upper part of “K” are utilising their wealth. In addition to using it to create more wealth, that is.

    I think there are at least two expansion narratives at play. One is seeking new “real” frontiers. This is a centuries-old pattern – the Americas, Silicon Valley – until geography has been tamed. We’re now on to “colonising” Mars. The metaphor is clear. The other is digital frontiers, where our time and mind space is being increasingly spent. Both are about escaping the confines of reality as we know it now.

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