I find I am struggling a little each day, and in the spirit of loving my life I am going to go back to writing something I am grateful for every day! Play along if you would like.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Burning Man or Davos?
I loved this paragraph in an article by Nick Paumgarten in the New Yorker on Davos. It feels to me like the advantages and distresses that arise in a Burning Man camp, and it is beautifully crafted "a minuet of subtle distinctions" except for "power, money and expertise, hopefully we substitute other qualities for those:
"The most essential variable may be one that Schwab introduced unwittingly, In Davos, he established a a setting for a perpetually subdividing game of status, a minuet of subtle distinctions. There is something almost Warholian in his apparent guilelessness. (Just substitute Tom Friedman, Shimon Peres, and Larry Summers for Edie Sedgwick, Nico, and Rotten Rita.) The anxiety of exclusion pervades. It is the natural complement to the euphoria of inclusion. The tension between self-celebration and self-doubt engenders a kind of social electricity. It is one of those places, like New Orleans, where you may find that you hardly need sleep. After twenty-four frantic hours, I felt as though I had unwittingly walked into an Ecstasy party—why did all these people keep touching each other? (Not literally: collegial as everyone may be, I saw one hug all week, and it was an ironic one.) It’s not the whisper of conspiracy as much as it is the thrum of mutual regard—of proximity to power, money, and expertise. But insecurity sets it all alight."
"The most essential variable may be one that Schwab introduced unwittingly, In Davos, he established a a setting for a perpetually subdividing game of status, a minuet of subtle distinctions. There is something almost Warholian in his apparent guilelessness. (Just substitute Tom Friedman, Shimon Peres, and Larry Summers for Edie Sedgwick, Nico, and Rotten Rita.) The anxiety of exclusion pervades. It is the natural complement to the euphoria of inclusion. The tension between self-celebration and self-doubt engenders a kind of social electricity. It is one of those places, like New Orleans, where you may find that you hardly need sleep. After twenty-four frantic hours, I felt as though I had unwittingly walked into an Ecstasy party—why did all these people keep touching each other? (Not literally: collegial as everyone may be, I saw one hug all week, and it was an ironic one.) It’s not the whisper of conspiracy as much as it is the thrum of mutual regard—of proximity to power, money, and expertise. But insecurity sets it all alight."
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Love One Another
At 63, pretty often I hear about a death in my circle. This month it happened to be a suicide by both a high school classmate and a Burning Man acquaintance. I know we live in a more immediate world of information, but even in a less plugged in world I would have heard of these deaths sometime.
A friend of mine blogged this week about the death of his brother eight years ago and his continued sadness and commitment to as I like to say "be here now" and love one another.
My mother and my niece of 29 both died in 1990 within a few months of one another, while I was at a new job and it was my first clear look at what someone's death meant in my life. With my mother, who was mentally ill, the question was whether I was living my life in a way that made me sane and that created who I wanted to be. My niece's death, on the other hand, was all about whether there was something I could do to help my sister survive the loss of the light of her life.
Over twenty years later those lessons have not changed very much. Am I living my life as fully and gracefully as I can, and in each moment does each person in my life know I love them, and do my actions reflect that.
A friend of mine blogged this week about the death of his brother eight years ago and his continued sadness and commitment to as I like to say "be here now" and love one another.
My mother and my niece of 29 both died in 1990 within a few months of one another, while I was at a new job and it was my first clear look at what someone's death meant in my life. With my mother, who was mentally ill, the question was whether I was living my life in a way that made me sane and that created who I wanted to be. My niece's death, on the other hand, was all about whether there was something I could do to help my sister survive the loss of the light of her life.
Over twenty years later those lessons have not changed very much. Am I living my life as fully and gracefully as I can, and in each moment does each person in my life know I love them, and do my actions reflect that.
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
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