“There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so.
We see the world not as it is, but as we are”
William Shakespeare
Sunday, May 2, 2010
What we know, we perceive!
A fitting quote:
"Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come, joys, delights, laughter, and sports, and sorrows, grief’s, despondency, and lamentations, And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see, and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet and what are unsavory, and by the same organ, we become mad and delirious , and fears and terrors assail us, … All these thing’s we endure from the brain."
"Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come, joys, delights, laughter, and sports, and sorrows, grief’s, despondency, and lamentations, And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see, and hear, and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet and what are unsavory, and by the same organ, we become mad and delirious , and fears and terrors assail us, … All these thing’s we endure from the brain."
From "On the Sacred Disease" By Hippocrates, 5th Century B.C.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Too smart and not nearly smart enough!
Without question we are a far too smart and not nearly smart enough for our own good - as we flail about helplessly as Mother Earth gently reminds us of our place in the grander scheme of things.
Read this from The Observer newspaper ...
Humbled by a volcano, we can only sit in wonder!
The eruption in Iceland and the ash cloud that has brought our airlines to a standstill give us a true picture of our standing in nature
For those whose plans have been disrupted and whose holidays have been aborted – or expensively prolonged – by the volcanic eruption in Iceland, the seismic spectacle is nothing to celebrate. There will be some travellers whose inability to get airborne is the source of real misery. They deserve the utmost compassion.
For most of us, however, the plume of ash and smoke rising from the beneath the Earth's crust, 30,000-feet tall, is cause only for awe, mixed perhaps with linguistic discomfort in trying to grapple with the volcano's name: Eyjafjallajökull. We are doubly humbled by Iceland's natural wonders and its orthography.
By colonising the space above our heads and above much of our continent, the eruption provides a reminder of our status in relation to our planet and over which we have arrogantly seized stewardship. We imagine ourselves its master and yet with one modest belch it hems us into our little island, sweeping instantly from the skies the aeroplane, which we consider to be an example of the irrepressible genius of our species.
When Eyjafjallajökull last erupted in 1822, man-made flight was a distant dream. We think so much has happened since then, so many lifetimes have been spent, and yet, in tectonic terms, the interval is nothing, a minuscule fraction of a blink to the volcano.
It would be crippling to retain that kind of perspective on a daily basis – anyone who set their watch by geological time would never get out of bed – but a glance at ourselves in proportion to the universe is salutary on occasion. It is worth imagining, for example, how exercised we would all be if the equivalent disruption had been caused by some human agency. If the threat of terror attack, industrial action or government ineptitude meant no planes could fly, a dense cloud of rebuke and indignation would fill the ether. But we cannot blame the volcano, only observe how liberating it is sometimes to be powerless before nature.
The Observer Editorials
Sun 18 Apr 2010
Read this from The Observer newspaper ...
Humbled by a volcano, we can only sit in wonder!
The eruption in Iceland and the ash cloud that has brought our airlines to a standstill give us a true picture of our standing in nature
For those whose plans have been disrupted and whose holidays have been aborted – or expensively prolonged – by the volcanic eruption in Iceland, the seismic spectacle is nothing to celebrate. There will be some travellers whose inability to get airborne is the source of real misery. They deserve the utmost compassion.
For most of us, however, the plume of ash and smoke rising from the beneath the Earth's crust, 30,000-feet tall, is cause only for awe, mixed perhaps with linguistic discomfort in trying to grapple with the volcano's name: Eyjafjallajökull. We are doubly humbled by Iceland's natural wonders and its orthography.
By colonising the space above our heads and above much of our continent, the eruption provides a reminder of our status in relation to our planet and over which we have arrogantly seized stewardship. We imagine ourselves its master and yet with one modest belch it hems us into our little island, sweeping instantly from the skies the aeroplane, which we consider to be an example of the irrepressible genius of our species.
When Eyjafjallajökull last erupted in 1822, man-made flight was a distant dream. We think so much has happened since then, so many lifetimes have been spent, and yet, in tectonic terms, the interval is nothing, a minuscule fraction of a blink to the volcano.
It would be crippling to retain that kind of perspective on a daily basis – anyone who set their watch by geological time would never get out of bed – but a glance at ourselves in proportion to the universe is salutary on occasion. It is worth imagining, for example, how exercised we would all be if the equivalent disruption had been caused by some human agency. If the threat of terror attack, industrial action or government ineptitude meant no planes could fly, a dense cloud of rebuke and indignation would fill the ether. But we cannot blame the volcano, only observe how liberating it is sometimes to be powerless before nature.
The Observer Editorials
Sun 18 Apr 2010
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Saturday, November 14, 2009
A thought worth pondering:
Nothing has meaning but the meaning we give to it!
This implies that if we have un-resourceful thoughts around a particular situation, it is because we have given meaning to it that does not serve us. To move forward and to find a more positive resolution we must 'simply' give the situation a new and more powerful meaning that will serve us better.
Music this morning - Going up the Country, Canned Heat, from the Woodstock soundtrack - echoes of a simpler time!
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