How might I characterize my posts on this site, compared to the entries in my notebooks and journals, or the linked notes in my “Zettelkasten”? How are they different from each other, both in my reasons for creating them and in their contents?
I write often, usually for brief stretches that result in relatively short artifacts of one sort or another, but even a single instance of writing can have multiple functions. For example, I could be documenting plans, using writing as a thinking partner, or trying to find a way to express something I have only a vague sense of.
I don’t usually start writing first, leaving until later to decide where the artifact should go. A post on this site generally starts as a draft post, and a new slip in the Zettelkasten generally starts as a draft note there. Notes in a notebook and entries in a journal usually start and remain in those respective books.
The posts here are one way I practice sharing. With ideas, formulations, and even questions being generally provisional, evolving over time, it can feel right to share these honest ephemera.
In refreshing a website design, artificial intelligence tools can both save and cost many hours of effort. The savings come from the AI’s outstanding coding and troubleshooting abilities.
The costs come from always wanting to try one more thing. It’s easy to get drawn into a pair programming effort.
How much effort is justified, to keep up-to-date?
If something was worth an effort once, does that mean it is worth continued efforts in perpetuity (or thereabouts)? Sometimes yes, especially if the actual value lies in the attention we give—in the doing itself.
Frequently no.
Sometimes, you may come across a quote attributed to a particular individual, but when you try to track down exactly where the individual said or wrote the comment, all you find are sites giving you the runaround. Multiple sites may attribute the quote to the individual without specifying which book or speech or poem contains those words. It may be disappointing, but more often than not, that no one seems to know where it came from indicates the quote was misattributed.
Other times, it doesn’t matter, or it may even provide a moment of joy to fail to find a source to hold onto. Borges enjoyed inventing imaginary sources, for example.
In a book I once owned about designing one’s way forward in life, one of the early pages featured a delightful quote. Online, I eventually found a mention of a source (“Shu-an’s preface to Wu-men’s Gateless Gate to Zen Experience“), but there the trail ran out for me. No matter:
“When one happens on a book of this kind, he is well advised to throw it away”
– Shū-an
None of us saw The Beginning (we weren’t around then), and none of us will see The End (because the universe will continue long after our own ends). Each of us dips into the larger flow just during our own lifetime.
Really, there are so many ways our perspectives are limited. Even when we are living, we miss most of what is going on.
Not a problem to be solved – a fountain of humility, levity, appreciation.
“Do we want to excite and encourage students? Or do we want to prepare them for their profession?”
Phrased this way, it’s clearly a false dichotomy. What we most likely want is for students to be excited, encouraged, and motivated by their own steps on the path as they prepare for their profession (or for their subsequent explorations when they graduate).
What does it mean, then, if that which excites students is not the “real” stuff of the work they will be doing later in their studies or after graduating? Alternatively, what does it mean, if the work they will be doing later might not require the preparatory tasks we are assigning them? The former seems like a “bait and switch,” and the latter seems like inappropriate rigor.
Even in the absence of an answer that makes sense for everyone, we ought to notice the mismatch of fire and function when we see it in individual students. When we do, perhaps we create an opportunity for fruitful, generative conversation.
Where we have a blind spot, our perception fails us, and our imagination or habit dutifully fills in gaps.
Sometimes, a friend points out what we have not been seeing, and we can learn to look and see differently. But this won’t work, if listening is another one of our blind spots.
The list below is a collection of “guidelines for participation” that has proven very useful with groups, both as a starting point and as an aspiration for a healthy, collaborative culture.
The individual elements are just some of many possible guidelines (sometimes called ground rules). Aside from use in a group, though, they can also be deployed for personal reflection. Which of these do you do well? Do naturally? Find yourself forgetting to do?
To be read to, as a child… We can think reverently about the act of reading to a child and of being read to ourselves as children. We don’t think at all the same way about the act of lecturing a child or the experience of being lectured.
Singing to a child and reading to one are very close. One of the things the child discovers is how one phrase balances or responds to another, how the world can rhyme.
Looking at a paint chip on its own isn’t nearly as informative as looking at it next to another paint chip.
Openness, receptivity, a relaxed and welcoming face,
Readiness to learn, fearlessness in a moment of change,
Like all that we value, these are invited, not forced.
Walking can be a meditation, a practice of just walking. But thoughts bubble up when walking, and if we try to hold onto those thoughts “for later,” we may find we’re not doing a good job of either walking or holding onto thoughts. Jotting down a note can allow us to let a thought go, comfortable we can revisit it later if we choose. We can return to open, non-fixatedness, back to just walking.
Sitting down and writing is different, because writing is a mode of thinking. The additional time it takes—for most of us—to put words down in sequence is a slowing down, reflecting process, and we find that our drafted and redrafted words think with us. We are treated to an expansion of our own mind: a simple, complex adaptive system with our mind influencing the words we put down and the words we put down influencing our mind.
So versatile! Writing to let go of thinking, and writing as thinking.
Can great courage be built from little?
As a small instance of courage—a “little courage”—I imagine inserting just a thin sliver of time between a stimulus and what comes next. This allows what was an immediate, habitual reaction to be replaced by a response, now mediated by the narrow wedge of a moment’s pause.
Many times, our responses may well not rise above our worn, habitual reactions. I may quickly reach a judgement that is indistinguishable from my usual, mindless categorization. But the wedge of thoughtfulness may allow me, just occasionally, to choose differently.
Maybe, by practicing freedom this way, I can build a great courage.
When everything is off-kilter, with too much going on (cf. troppo), we don’t want to just manage the conflicting and excessive forces; we want to change the situation. We’d rather be on the wave than managing our intake of sand and saltwater.
Once upright, it’s lots of little adjustments that keep up upright, whether we’re standing or surfing (or unicycling). The balance we seek in our lives is not something to be achieved, but something we want an opportunity to do.
Once we’re up, balance is a verb, not a noun.
Admitting you are not the teacher, you allow learning
When you cannot be heard correctly, you listen and arouse clarity
Neither ordered nor ordering about, you participate
Without being sure, you act