Embrace diversity. Make friends with those of ethnic, geographic and socioeconomic backgrounds that are different from your own. Try to better understand life through the eyes of others. Open your heart. Cultivate empathy. Study culture. Read widely the books of authors from other parts of the world. Learn a second language. A third and fourth, if you are inclined. Travel. Wherever you go, greet people with a smile.
Category: Perspective
N.32 On Observation And The Recognition of Magic
Be aware of the things around us that bring about a feeling of magic. Be attentive. Observe keenly. Listen. As V.S. Naipaul wrote in The Enigma of Arrival, “see the way weather and light redesigns disregarded things.” During a summer road trip we listened to a reading of this passage by the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard. You can find it in The New Yorker’s Fiction podcast. To hear an excerpt of this book read by Knausgaard, in his quiet, monotone, Norwegian voice, is like listening to a meditation. I am pretty sure it put you all to sleep on that drive, but I do encourage you to return to it when you are older. Pay attention to the details of your surroundings. It is this level of observation which invites magic into our everyday lives.
N.31 A Dream About Purpose
Last week I had a dream that replayed vividly in my mind the moment I awoke. What I remembered of this dream was a scene that took place in a doctor’s office. The very doctor’s office I visit when I am sick, with my actual doctor, Dr. M__, looking just as she did the last time I saw her, more than five years ago. My memory of the dream picks up at the very moment a diagnosis was being delivered. Dr. M__ stated, very matter of factly, that I had two years to live. I reacted to this final verdict with the calmness and practicality of one who had long been prepared for such news. Somehow, I was okay with it. The comfort, I believe, was due in part to the knowledge that I would have time to finish this book. I had two full years. My focus was now singular. Complete this book. All else fell away. What a gift!
N.29 On Regaining A Child’s Perception of Time
As a child the passage of a single day seemed to last a lifetime. Time, as I perceived it in my youth, was a slow moving current that carried me through each day. When I entered my late teens and early twenties time began to speed up. After college, time accelerated even more and since then it has continued to gather speed with each passing year.
I think this holds true for most. That’s why the expressions “how time flies” and “seems like only yesterday” are so often used when discussing the past. I have read that our perception of this acceleration is due to the actual measurement of a unit of time over the whole of our lives. When we are young, an hour accounts for a far greater percentage of our total life. As we grow older, an hour becomes a smaller and smaller fraction of our total time on earth.
Whatever the cause, I have been working on ways to slow down my perception of time. One way is to simply sit still. Stillness, without distraction, slows time. Some days, when I get home before your mother and am excited for her return after another day of work, I stop all that I am doing and wait. I put away my phone, close my computer, I don’t even reach for a book. I just sit and breathe. I believe it is exacerbated by my anxiousness for her arrival, but in these moments time slows significantly.
As for how to slow time during other periods of the day, and do so routinely, so as to expand our conscious lifetime, I will be sure to let you know as soon as I figure it out.
N.27 Language
One lament of the digital era is the diminished value of the written word. The words of intellectuals and scientists have lost power in today’s culture. Most of us do not have the patience, nor the desire to think deeply enough on a topic to comprehend a well-reasoned position based on fact and logic.
Today, the power lies with those who best utilize juvenile language and overly simplistic catch phrases. Though these bullet pointed statements have little substance, they easily fuel anxiety and encourage the public’s most dangerous impulses. Had Edward Bulwer-Lytton lived today, he may have instead written, “The Tweet is mightier than the sword.” It will serve you well if you can avoid being swayed by such juvenile rhetoric.
Anything you find yourself scrolling through endlessly should be considered for deletion. Limit distractions. Keep open space in your mind for thought and reason. Strengthen your attention span. Read to expand your imagination. Read to seek truth. Read to better yourself. Read for the pure pleasure of it. Remember, the greatest minds that have ever lived have put their thoughts and ideas into books. Buy a bookshelf and fill it. Then buy another, and fill it…
N.26 On Art
In addition to spending ample time in nature, immerse yourself in the beauty of humanity’s creations. Read the great works of literature, the books of the most distinguished philosophical thinkers, the speeches, essays, and manifesto’s of the world’s most astute minds. Become well versed in the fine arts. Spend time in the world’s most cultured cities. Appreciate their architecture and monuments. Visit their museums. This practice will help hone a deep artistic sensibility that will bring immeasurable value to your life.
N.23 On Nature
I have never been one to learn the scientific name of every plant, flower, bird, cloud formation or the type of rock that makes up a mountain. Of course, the labeling and categorization of such things provides the entry point to a deeper understanding of nature, and I do admire those who pursue and delight in developing such expertise. It could be that my brain is not suited for such memorization, much less a rigorous scientific analysis of how things function and interact in the world.
Throughout my life I have been drawn to how a particular scene in nature — a forest, a mountain, a desert, a lake, a beach — makes me feel. Does this landscape stir my soul? If it does, I know right off because I can feel it pulsing inside of me. But why? What is it about a place that moves me? This is what I wish to explore. The surge I sometimes feel. What is it exactly? Where does it come from? The sense of wonder, the interconnectedness? Why is it that in certain places I sense a magic? Is it the beauty? The solitude? The sense of geological time? The earth’s energy?
This, I imagine, is a mystic’s approach to viewing nature. Some would probably say it’s also a lazy way to go about it, and it certainly is in contrast to the scientific approach, but simply being present and attuned to my feelings while in nature brings me immense joy. You, I hope, will continue to develop and strengthen your connection with nature over time. If you wish to know the rocks and the sky, know the rocks and the sky. If you wish to know the wildlife and the roll each animal plays in all of this, by all means, do it. If you simply wish to find the best places to sit and gaze in wonder, this I can assure you: only good will come of it. Regardless of how you decide to engage with nature, my hope is that you will always seek it, and care for it, and hold it forever in your heart as a fundamental piece of a well balanced and meaningful life.
N.19 Money vs. Experience
While you must be wise with your money and careful to limit excessive expenditures, you will never regret spending on a worthwhile experience. What I’ve found is that in time you will forget how much money was spent on an experience, leaving only the cherished memory of the experience itself.
N.18 Time of Your Own
The times I have felt most content and in the moment correlate almost perfectly with a peak level of freedom. In other words, I feel best when I am most free. Or when we, as a family, are most free. And by free, I mean unfastened to external ties. From the people and systems and the devices that impose varying levels of control over our lives.
I’ll give you some of my favorite examples. The day I drove from the coast to the summit of Mauna Kea to sit in the snow and stare out over the Pacific Ocean. An experience I had dreamt of for 25 years. During the entirety of this excursion the thought of an obligation to another never entered my mind. Or the time I went on a long walk in the desert near Uluru. The silence that morning was so complete the rest of world seemed not to exist. Or the time I sat for hours in the lobby of our hotel in Marfa while all of you busied yourselves with crafts at a nearby table. In this particular place, I had no cell service. A powerful storm thrashed the hotel’s floor to ceiling windows that afternoon. It was mesmerizing to watch. In those hours I was completely unburdened, untouchable, impervious even to the concern I would soon feel over how to pay for our road trip.
These are the rare pockets of time that have been wholly my own. And though only a temporary reprieve from life’s obligations, these moments are critically important to our well-being. I do love visiting with friends and family and meeting new people. I do love my work. But I long for undisturbed time with you. For undisturbed time with your mother. And for undisturbed time alone.
N.17 People and Cultures
Educate yourself on the ways of cultures different from your own. If not for any other reason than to understand others, and maybe yourself, a little better. The more of us who do this, the greater the benefit to humanity. Open your mind and even critique your own culture, modifying your beliefs and actions to achieve a more understanding, well rounded, and compassionate world view.
I am fortunate enough to have met people in many parts of the world. People of different races and cultures, people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, people with different religious beliefs. I have worked and conversed and traveled and shared meals with them, and what I can say with complete honestly is that I have found reasons to like them all.
Notes From A Father 