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I feel like society is much more directive and controlling of choice.

1978

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run harder

Leaders at the highest level lose heart and nerve as the pandemic grinds on.

"Now is the time to run harder & make sure we cross the line and reap the rewards of all our hard work.

If we don’t take this opportunity now, we run the risk of more variants, more deaths, more disruption, and more uncertainty. So let’s seize this opportunity." ~@DrTedros

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How's that pandemic going?

One of the greatest challenges we have ever faced . . .

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A Cloud Never Dies

I found Being Peace and Peace is Every Step, and one or more other books by him that I cant remember now, at the local library sometime around 1985. They blew my mind. I was raised Catholic and Thay's teachings were like a 'how to' for actually practicing Christ's gospel teachings. Jesus says what and Buddha says how.

So many changes, so many years, and so many more books and lectures later, here we are. He is a real life Bodhisattva. I've been rereading and re-listening to his stuff over the past few days since I heard of his passing. I know that his big continuation will teach me much more. Now that I've read and heard all those teachings over the years, his passing over to the other shore is going to have lessons beyond words.

He is so humble that I hadn't realized how much he had pervaded my life over the years. His passing has profoundly affected me.

Thank you dear teacher.

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I'm flattening the curve.

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2022 on track to continue with very similar habits. Deepening the things that remain.

I began 2020 early,

Planning habit changes in November that I'd use New Year momentum to institute.

People gave me cool planners for my birthday and I finally got around to planning out a 2020 bullet journal.

I decided to focus on not doing stuff, minimizing, and simplifying.

Via negativa.

Focus on the essentials,

The important things in life.

COVID Forced Resolutions

"Nobody gets out of here alive."

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The health care system. Anxiety. Access. Exclusion.

Internal locus of control. Self-agency. Empowerment.

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Did we do it? Have we succeeded?

One of the greatest challenges we have ever faced . . .

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Offerings and gratitude.

At these thin times

Conscious of those who went before me

Those who made my time here possible

Wishing to honor those healers

Honor those who made life better for those around them

And for those to come after

I would do my part to continue the work

Send Medicine

Wisdom

Seeing

Knowing

Prayer

Healing

Being

Walk with us

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A routine checkup is a breeze. It's when you are actually concerned about persistent symptoms that you become uneasy. I am both looking forward to the visit and terrified that something serious may be found.

How many people go in with a three page list of symptoms and how their concerns unfolded over the pandemic? I can't delay care any longer, as much as I'd like to just blow it off.

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Failed Systems

Is it just me or is healthcare a system that has failed to come through since way back? The topic comes to mind due to the circumstances I currently find myself.

Scrolling through old blog posts I see this one from last year about an email I received from my health insurance company telling me to build a relationship with my doctor. I get 10 to 20 minutes a year. What kind of relationship can be built and thrive on 10 to 20 minutes a year?

Needless to say 10 minutes a visit doesn't add up to much of a therapeutic relationship. Add a pandemic on top and here I am with disturbing and mysterious symptoms compounding by the day.

In a different direction you have systems failing this group of kids that were tortured in their home for years. The Turpin kids finally get freed only to find the system continues to fail them:

Despite overcoming a life many could not even begin to imagine, the Turpin children aren't completely safe yet.

ABC reported that a few of the Turpin children were placed with a foster family that was arrested and charged with abusing multiple children in their care, including at least one Turpin child.

Another Turpin child who is now an adult was placed in a home where her foster parent told her she understood why her parents would chain her up.

"They felt betrayed," Melissa Donaldson, the Director of Victim Services in Riverside County, told the show. "Did we see kids having to not have a safe place to live or stay at times? Yes. Did they have enough food at times? They did not."

"We have to fix it. You would think that this is the time to really get it together and do everything we can, and we didn't do it that way," she continued. https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/20/us/turpin-sisters-interview-abc-diane-sawyer/index.html

I'm seeing failed systems patterns all around right now.

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Do you work in a studio or factory?

The boss in a factory relies on compliance. More compliance leads to more profits. Do what you’re told, faster and cheaper, repeat.

The studio, on the other hand, is about initiative. Creativity, sure, but mostly the initiative to make a new thing, a better thing, a process that leads to better.

https://seths.blog/2018/12/working-in-a-studio/

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When does the productivity cult become colonization?

“If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live” ― Lin Yutang

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When do we achieve less by doing more, constantly, all the time, nonstop, and always being connected?

We live in a culture of more. Not just more stuff, although surely the accumulation of things hovers above us ready to land on us with a suffocating crash. What I mean is a culture of more activity. Most of us are seeking ways to do more. To find more hours in the day. To diversify, multi-task, and branch out. We go from operating systems to operating systems that operate systems. – Matthew Gindin, http://thewisdomdaily.com/a-lesson-from-laozi-on-using-absence-to-decrease-anger/

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cyberpunk

Popular Culture hinted strongly at nuclear holocaust, dystopia, environmental degradation, and societal collapse. There was a sense that catastrophe was immanent and that I and/or society itself would not be around long.

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transient and fleeting

summer grasses - all that remains of warriors' dreams

- Basho Matsuo

I had to slow the daily/frequency aspect of this daily haiku reflection way down. Attempts at daily reading and posting was killing the "haiku mind." The mindset this reading seeks to foster is too rich to gloss over. 

Some entries will elicit deeper thought and reflection than others. This one has struck a chord. Phrases from the day’s reading that stand out:

War

the human condition

the truth of reality, which is by nature transient and fleeting

mono no aware (the poignancy of transient things)

We are the warriors, we are the dreams, we are the grasses: we are transient

The mono no aware entry on wikipedia suggests: 

Mono no aware (物の哀れ, もののあはれ[1]), literally "the pathos of things", and also translated as "an empathy toward things", or "a sensitivity to ephemera", is a Japanese term for the awareness of impermanence (無常, mujō), or transience of things, and both a transient gentle sadness (or wistfulness) at their passing as well as a longer, deeper gentle sadness about this state being the reality of life. "Mono-no aware: the ephemeral nature of beauty – the quietly elated, bittersweet feeling of having been witness to the dazzling circus of life – knowing that none of it can last. It’s basically about being both saddened by and appreciative of transience – and also about the relationship between life and death. In Japan, there are four very distinct seasons, and you really become aware of life and mortality and transience. You become aware of how significant those moments are.”[2]

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everything is connected

don’t hit the fly -  he prays with his hands  and with his feet  - Issa Kobayashi

Start small. 

Phrases from the day’s reading that stand out:

“teach them to like and respect insects”

Haiku is a way to remember how everything is connected in our world, and if we feel connected we will not harm things, but rather care for them

Haiku is often about noticing and caring for the small