Life Projects

I was thinking a new thought.
Before, I believed that there were things that could be done by someone else if I don’t do them.

Now I see, years later, that there are many things that only I can do.
Not only that, the state of the universe in that moment is special to fit whatever it is I have conceived of. So if I don’t do it, quite possibly it could disappear into the fabrics of time and space, never to come to be.
I was thinking this about research into bird behavior and language, which I wanted to research as a child, but didn’t know I could and neither did anyone else. I wanted to be a bird watcher. Over the years, I have considered it again over and over, but it always seems like something less important than what I could do.

But I see also, now, that if I don’t do it, it will probably never be done, at least not the way I would have. Or what I would have studied.
My genius Grandpa once told me (after having live half a life of debauchery), “La vida no es un juego ni una diversión.” He was nearing his end, and he still wanted to do so much. I feel that way, too, though perhaps not quite as intensely since I’m still pretty young… Life goes by… It’s never long enough. We should do what we can while we can, before it’s too late.

So if you have a dream that you want to come to life, chase it. Don’t let it slip into oblivion. Give it life, breathe your soul into it.

SDGsのお話し

今日は、とても嬉しいです!私の地元紙に誇りを持ってます。SDGsのとても良い記事が載せてます。等々、日本にこういう大切な話しが普段の処で見つけて、日本にこの3年間ぐらいに段々SDGsのお話しが少しずつ普通の人達の日常生活で発見して、希望が上がります。
私達はこういう大切なお話が出来る日が来ると問題の解決も近づきます。

よく、平和を守る為に、問題持っている人間や喧しい状態に直面されると逃げるの選択をする人が多い。しかし、そうすると問題は解決しない。

こう思います。人で例えしましょう。もし人であれば、も話しし無いと決めたら、その人の中で色んな質問が浮かべるでしょう。まず、なぜ?そして、彼らにとって、どうやってその問題を解決出来るかと、未来の人間関係のやり方さらに分からなくなる。とても寂しくなるかもしれません。だから、勇気を持って、何か気にいらないならちゃんとその人と話して、起こっている理由教えて、そして、もしその人とを別れしたいなら教えるべきだと思います。それなら、彼らの未来の道もはっきりになります。

他の問題も含めてます。もし何か気にいらないとか心配なら、話さないとコミュニケーションが生まれない。もしかして、他の人も貴方と同じ考えてが有りますがその人を一人で言うのが怖い。だから自分の意見を出すべきと思います。得には環境問題に。だって、木や野鳥に声が無い。水にも。少数派にも。だから、みんな様、勇気を持って、彼らの為の場所を作って、声出しましょ。

How to move forward while grieving a Loss

When a loved-one passes away, there are so many emotions that it can be overwhelming. Coupled with work, it can seem like there is no option but to recover quickly and get on with life-as-usual. But doing so holds many negatives…

Some people turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with loss and pain. The problem with that is that, even though it might help in the moment, long-term it has severely debilitating effects on how you can move forward in life. Mood-altering substances produce confusion in the brain. Though used for the supposed purpose of healing, they hinder the ability of the mind to go through the motions of grief and then navigate back to how to deal with reality.

By numbing and denying, one not only loses the way, but also denies the pain and shuts down important aspects of the relationship, such as memories of the person, feelings for them, and urges thought why are gone. This denial buries these feelings in the subconscious where they affect the future of the griever through illness, stress, emotional instability, and other happenings that are opposite to real healing. In a way, the person who is gone can never find peace, and the person who is grieving can never really move on.

Rather than pushing through grief with resilience and control, Ossefort-Russel believes and I concur, that “the terms fortitude, bear-with-courage, transform, and humility underlie a story that honors the strength” of being honest to your feelings when someone passes away.

I hold the strong belief that without those feelings of acceptance, you deny the person their existence, pushing them away into the nether world so that you can get back to business-as-usual. It lacks integrity. One needs to accept their loss in order to honor them, and it can take a long time to recover when you aren’t denying it in your heart through resilience.

Silence, mindfulness meditation (feeling the pain in your body, thoughts, memories… and letting it go), journaling, sharing your feelings with someone close, therapy; these are all ways that you can honor your grief and also your loved-one. Feel it to the fullest and let it go; this will honor both your feelings and the person who was so very important in your life.

These methods are ways that one can truly move forward with integrity and become a deeper and more truly resilient person in the end, through acceptance and change.

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/resilience-a-new-grief-myth-that-can-hurt-you/

The real Lord of the Flies: what happened when six boys were shipwrecked for 15 months | Books | The Guardian

Perhaps there is truth in the magic of dates. On September 11, 1999 an unimaginable tragedy occurred in New York, as America woke up to the crumbling and enflamed Twin Towers.

On September 11, 1966 on the other hand, a story of warmth and humanity contradicting what has been taught in American High Schools for so long, was happening in Australia. This story reframes humanity and gives hope.

When I was in high school and junior high, almost all of the books we were forced to read were dark accounts of humanity, the evils of society and our world. The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and The Lord of the Flies are titles that everyone recognizes. My fellow students and I all wondered why we were subjected to a deluge of darkness at the dawn of life, and rightly so.

Now I see this wonderful story, the true story of the Lord of the Flies, not written by a bitter drunkard, but by the true history of six boys stranded on a deserted island and how they survived for a year and a half all alone by the goodwill of their hearts, comraderie, and their sheer determination.

I have often thought that literary education stands to change. I believe it is ridiculous that our youth should be subjected to suffer through these books, when much more optimistic ones abound. And clearly, as it is proven here, that dark view of society is simply not the only truth, and certainly not the only one we should be giving our next generation. I call for a cleansing of the shelves, a reevaluation of what is important so that we can envision and create a brighter and more human future.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/may/09/the-real-lord-of-the-flies-what-happened-when-six-boys-were-shipwrecked-for-15-months

Yuzu Seedlings

Today I tried to find places to plant my yuzu seedlings around my neighborhood. There was so much concrete, or weed-killed areas, that it was really difficult to find any places where they might survive. When they grow, some people might enjoy them, while others will tear them out of the ground, and that is their right. To me, it is a little gift that I can give back to the world. I hope that many years from now, if someone wants a yuzu fruit and can’t find one at the store, they can take a walk and pick one from a wild tree.

These past few weeks I have been enjoying picking some of my vegetables from forgotten corners in my neighborhood, and from my willing neighbor’s trees. Wolfberry shoots are bitter but taste so nutritious, and mulberry shoots are delicious and tender. I was told to pick some bamboo shoots… But they are two feet tall now!If we can make more space on our roadsides and unused spaces for wild edible plants, we can raise our resilience levels for times when food might be scarce.

It scares me to think that this could have been MERS instead of CoVid-19. If that had happened, the food system would have collapsed.

If everyone knew what plants are edible, that would be great, but after two weeks or even a few days they would be gone. We need to create a world with more kindness towards other species, plant and animal. Birds spread mulberry seeds. Mulberries can provide not only berries but a nutritious vegetable for your dinner plate. But mulberries often get wacked away. We don’t know the value of the species we are destroying by laying down concrete, either.

When I was doing research in a small town down south, the elderly residents said they hadn’t seen a valued ethnobotanical plant (Ashitaba) for a long time in their neighborhood. I asked them why they thought that was, and they answered that they thought it was because there is too much concrete everywhere.

It seems like it is okay to rip trees and plants out of the ground, destroying other species’ homes, but it isn’t okay for us to defend them. Ask the town office why they overprune the roadside and park trees; it is their right to do that but the tree has no rights. The river by my house, covered and sided up by concrete, also has no rights. It isn’t okay to plant trees where people don’t want them, either. It isn’t okay to try to create a viable world for our grandkids.

I think CoVID-19 is a wake-up call for us to realize that we cannot do ‘business-as-usual’ anymore. We HAVE TO change, or we will fail, big time. But how to change?

Today I found a plant I had never seen before. It had been cut down and was growing out of its stump with the most beautiful leaves. I’m sure whoever hurt it didn’t care, and just wanted to make more room in their unused parking lot. Changing is taking baby steps. Opening our minds to new ways of thinking. Refusing to follow those who tell us that “this is the way we have always done it” or “this is the way business will prosper,” because business will not prosper long term and neither will any of us if we don’t change, NOW. Small actions count!! Let’s begin doing little things, thinking about things differently, and the world will change, one person at a time, one community at a time, one city at a time, one country at a time…

So if I would like to make a little Earth Day Wish, it would be for you, the reader, to do something small this week for the natural world. Whether it be planting some edible tree seeds, making a nest box, labeling some wild plants, stop using weed-killer and weeding (cut them and do mulching, cover them with cardboard and compost and plant species you want instead), de-investing in bad companies, donating to a trusted natural cause, sharing an article, making a bird bath, planting a tree in a parking lot, or destroying some concrete and replacing it with something else, or another warm-hearted action. I hope you can do it for yourself, your children, and the world around you.

The Tower

I found this postcard lying on the floor today… it became today’s esoteric reading. In this painting by the surrealist Spanish painter Remedios Varo, she captured part of the essence of what I believe is appropriate to the moment.

I think this painting was a twist on the tarot card “The Tower.” In the original image, people jump from a burning tower in terror as their world crumbles around them. It is one of the more dreaded cards in the deck, with a meaning of the death of something or extreme changes. A falling apart of what is known.

This painting is done with he same perspective, but with the tower having crumbled, its pieces strewn upon the earth. A flutist is, with music, magically encouraging their piecing back into place in the tower, pulling the world back together.

The Coronavirus pulled many people out of their towers, where they thought they were safe and had their lives. They suddenly tumbled down, their known existence in shambles, the tower of their lives ruined. But I see many creative people pulling themselves up with a musical force from the heart, communicating about the true necessities of the world and our own lives.

The Tower card of the tarot also symbolizes new beginnings. With the end of something comes the beginning of something new. Thus, in my readings I always bring this point up. The Tower card need not be feared, more it is a call to courage and determination in the face of great change.

This painting by Varo also says that what is needed is creativity and listening to the heart. We can all heal but we need to get creative and listen to what is needed calling from the dark recesses of our silent souls and the silent voice of this beautiful Earth that we live upon. True healing will come when we can face what we truly need to heal: ourselves and our home.

Leading the CoVID-19 World

What an amazing, surprising world we live in. If only we always held such fresh viewpoints, like those in this article, we would not be in the environmental and strained political situations we tend to be in.

For us to find endless sustainability, I believe it behooves us to adopt a system that is changeable depending on necessity. Linear only in bite-size chunks. True Test-Driven Development.

We, as the leaders of our world, are doing a horrible job. It is time to reflect our realities in Wabi-sabi rather than the Western ideal of taking all at once. And CoVID-19 is giving us that opportunity.

Opportunity to breathe, take chances in ways we would never have, and begin afresh. Let’s do this and keep a curious puppy viewpoint!

https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1887745/dogs-being-trained-to-sniff-out-covid-19

Small Is Beautiful Revisited

Re-reading the classic Small Is Beautiful by the economist E.F. Schumacher, I found a little gem.

“What is it that we really require from scientists and technologists? I should answer: We need methods and equipment which are

Cheap enough so that they are accessible to virtually everyone;

Suitable for small-scale application; and

Compatible with man’s need for creativity.”

“Out of these three characteristics is born non-violence and a relationship of man to nature which guarantees permanence. If only one of these three is neglected, things are bound to go wrong…”