we need Third Metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder, and giving.
the same dilemmas we are all facing - the stress of overbusyness, overworking, overconnecting on social media, and underconnecting with ourselves and with one another.
Dr. Seuss summed it up beautifully; "How did it get so late so soon?"
For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.
-Fr. Alfred D'Souza-
"Often, the very first things we give up are those that nourish us the most but seem 'optional'," wirte Mark Williams and Danny Penman in Mindfulness:
The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
-William James -
the ease which the big crises can wipe out the small ones that seemed so critical just a moment before.
And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling. "This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!"
And each day, it's up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, "No. This is what's important."
what's good for us as individuals is also good for businesses and for countries.
"Health is Wealth,"
"Ideas are like fish," wrote director and longtime meditator David Lynch in his book Catching the Big Fish. "If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you've got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They're huge and abstract. And they're beautiful."
"The brain's alarm signals start to be triggered not only by the current scare, but by past threats and future worries...
"continuous partial attention" to describe the state of always being partly tuned into everything while never being completely tuned in to anything.
Given that we multitask now for most of our days, if now our lives,
So any tool that can increase our self-awareness and ability to listen and be in the moment is invaluable.
the better people are at taking care of themselves, the more effective they'll be in taking care of others, including their families, their coworkers, their communities, and their fellow citizens. When you're on an airplane you're told to "secure your own mask first before helping others," even your own child.
success is (skip) the quality of time we put in.
poor sleepers are seven times more likely to feel helpless and five times more likely to feel alone.
solvitur ambulando - "It is solved by walking." It refers to the fourth-century-BC greek philosopher Diogenes's response to the question of whether motion is real. To answer, he got up and walked. (skip)
In our culture of overwork, burnout, and exhaustion, how do we tap into our creativity, our wisdom, our capacity for wonder? Solvitur ambulando.
When I was growing up in Greece, my favorite poem was "Ithaka" by the Greek poet Constantine Cavafy.
Thomas Jefferson claimed the purpose of walking was to clear the mind of thoughts. (skip) For Henry David Thoreau, walking wasn't just a mean to an end; it was the end itself: "The walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise. . . but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day."
(skip)
"Methinks that the moment my legs being to move, my thoughts begin to flow,"
the children are usually the biggest casualties of a bad divorce.
Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
- Carrie Fisher -
The seventeenth-century French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal said that "all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
The third-centry philosopher Plotinus wrote that there are three kinds of knowledge: "opinion, science, illumination. (skip) The Internet has made that first two types of knowledge very easy to come by. But it has taken us further away from that illumination, or wisdom, that is essential to living a life that matters.
that inner center in us that Marcus Aurelius called our "inner citadel."
But nobody can run fast enough to escape their own worries.
(- Mark Williams -)
writes David Brooks. "When making decisions about social relationships, it's foolish to swap the amazing machine in your skull for the crude machine on your desk," (skip) ours is a generation bloated with information and starved for wisdom.
Call it an iParadox: Our smartphones are actually blocking our path to wisdom.
Italians have other great traditions to draw from in preventing burnout: the riposo, the period of rest in the afternoon; and the evening stroll, the passeggiata, a time to disconnect from the pressures of the day.
An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy. "It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego."
He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?" The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."
- Cherokee Legend
spend two hours in a museum in front of a painting (skip) I was finally seeing one.
But when museums forget their DNA and get their heads turned by every new tech hottie that shimmies by, they undercut the point of their existence. Too much of the wrong kind of connection can actually disconnect us from an aesthetic experience.
No matter where you go, there you are.
- Buckaroo Banzai -
the serendipity of coincidence.
Where are our culture's preparations for leaving life with gratitude and grace?
"memento mori" - remember death, MM for short
Facing death means facing the ultimate question of the meaning of life. If we really want to live we must have the courage to recognize that life is ultimately very short, and that everything we do counts."
a "good death" is more likely if you have had a good life.
Here I was thinking that I had this wonderful gift that was not being recognized by the world. And then it dawned on me how many conditions I had put on my gift.
Our devices might seem like they're connecting us, and they do to a degree, but they're also disconnecting us from the world around us. And without being connected to the people we encounter, it's hard to activate our hardwired instinct for empathy.
When you become involved in the lives of children for whom drive-by shootings are a regular occurrence, where on out of three fathers is in jail, and where there isn't enough to eat, it's much harder to worry about how you look, whether you're wearing the right clothes, whether you're pretty enough, and how thing you are.
- Huffington Post의 창립자이자 대표, 편집장인 Arianna Huffington 의 생각을 담은 책. 그녀 자신의 삶과 생각이라기 보다는 그녀의 삶에 대한 생각을 중심으로 자신의 경험의 일부와 다른 많은 글들을 체계적으로 엮어 현대에 간과하고 있는 핵심적인 삶의 가치를 우리에게 보여주고 있는 책이다.
성공의 가치를 돈과 권력 (money and power) 라는 단순한 외형적인 부분에서 진정한 성공을 위해 필요한 세번째 요건을 Well-Being, Wisdom, Wonder, Giving이라는 주제로 제시하고 있다. 이 4개의 주제를 떠나서 점점 불행해지는 현대인을 보면서 어떠한 부분이 이 불행의 원인이 되는지를 파헤쳐 볼 필요가 있다고 생각된다. 과학의 발전이 가져온 생활의 편의라는 부분이 동시간대에 지구 반대편의 사람과 얼굴을 보면서 대화하는 것, 그 전에 고칠 수 없었던 병을 고치는 신약 개발, 집안을 청소해주는 로봇의 개발, 인터넷의 발전으로 인한 정보의 공유 혹은 전달 등을 의미한다면, 그에 따른 부작용들, 즉, 인구 과잉, 노인 인구의 증가에 따른 경제적 부담, 게임에 중독된 아이들, 더 힘들어진 죽음, 가정된 재해나 잔인한 영상 등으로 익숙해진 학습된 미래 공포 혹은 무감각, 미디어의 막강해진 권력에 의한 폐해 등을 꺼내어 살펴보아야 할 것이다. 이것이 과연 발전인가? 그리스 시대의 사람들이 누렸던 사색과 평안과 비교한다면 어느 쪽이 더 우월한 문명인가?
종교와 이념이 희박해진 현대에 와서 '과학의 발전'과 '이윤 창출'이라는 거대한 두 개의 명목아래 왜 인간의 삶은 더 복잡해지고, 더 감시받으며, 더 경쟁적이고, 더 고립되어지며, 더 피폐해지는 것일까? Huffington이 제시하고 있는 몇 개의 해답, 잘 자고, 잘 먹고, 현명하게 제한적으로 필요에 의해 과학 기술을 이용하고, 죽음에 대한 생각을 가지고 삶을 더 소중하게 살고, 다른 이를 생각하며 사는 것. 이들이 궁극적 해답이라고 볼 수는 없으나 현대 사회에서 자신을 지켜나가는 좋은 방법 중에 하나라는 생각이 든다. 또한 그녀가 미디어를 통해 끊임없이 이러한 부분의 중요성을 사람들에게 제시하는 것, 비극적/자극적 뉴스만 난무하는 미디어의 세상에서 생각과 마음을 쉬어가고 충전할 수 있는 조그마한 미디어의 숲을 만들어 준 것 같아 감사한 마음이다.
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