January, especially January in California, is a month that has grown on me. In the past, when I lived in New York City, it meant colder days to come. Before that, the beginning of the New Year symbolized another session of being back in school. So, it's been only in the past few years that I have come to appreciate January as a time of renewal, resolution and intention. This January has been particularly pretty due to the sunny days and spectacular sunsets. Just last week, the night was bright with a whole moon, and, at last, the daylight seems to be outlasting 5pm.
In the beginning of the month, I was a bit reluctant to take down the holiday decorations. Josh asked me, "How long is it going to be Christmas in here?" That was just the kick in the rear I needed to get out the ornament boxes and take down the vintage silver trees, which neatly go back in there boxes after making their annual curtsy. I knew the holidays were over and that a bit of cleaning up was in order; however, the task of taking down the tree doesn't have the same appeal as putting it up. Christmas had to come down sooner or later and because these daytime hours seem better suited for gazpacho than mugs of hot tea, heavy soups and butter cookies, I willingly "undecked" the halls.
January is a time for resolutions. Rather than making rigid resolution, I set the intention to "be more patient" in all areas. Mostly, I feel that I could be more patient while driving and while I am at work. I like the idea of being a very patient person, especially since I know a baby is on her way, and she will test my patience like no other.
Along with trying to be patient, I have been craving more "downtime." Maybe the need for more downtime is a side effect of yoga, long walks on the beach and hiking. Regardless, I have been less interested in Grey's Anatomy and ER (Season 14, thank you very much!). For some reason, I have been looking to books, blogs, photos, music and recipes for inspiration. When I discovered "The Joy of Quiet," an article by Pico Iver in The New York Times, I was thrilled. Iver touches on an upcoming trend - silence! Can you believe it? In the article Iver writes:
"About a year ago, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell, the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on “Marketing to the Child of Tomorrow.” Soon after I arrived, the chief executive of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most interested in, he began — I braced myself for mention of some next-generation stealth campaign — was stillness."
It seems hard to believe that the "child of tomorrow" would want stillness. Adults seem to crave it, but in the same breath, they enroll their children in a sample platter of sports, camps, and scholastic clubs. Iver wrote:
"I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms."
Babies are placed next to noise makers and in vibrating swings and chairs. From infancy on, a child can easily be enveloped in the constant churn of stimulation. It is shocking to think that the next generation is going to carve out time to be still.
Iver states:
"In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight."
As much as I agree with this statement and absolutely love it on so many levels, I also have to admit that carrying my i Phone around brings me relaxation and freedom. I think it allows me to be patient. For example: If I am forced to wait in line or for a friend to arrive, I simply pull out my phone and within minutes, I can "make good use" of my waiting time. Gone are the days of thumb-twiddling. Instead, I too, can text, send emails, read the paper, or create a virtual "to-do" list. With my phone, I have the ability to take care of my personal business from a remote location, like the beach or from the break room in the hospital. On vacation, I am at ease because I know that I am not missing calls or opportunities. Everything and everyone I need to talk to, can be reached quickly with a few strokes of my keypad. If we did not have such devices, I know Josh would not leave his desk for fear of missing a business call or an opportunistic email. The technology we so desire to unplug from, can also free us on many levels.
When I traveled in the 1990s, I remember carrying a backpack full of mixed tapes, magazines, and a Walkman. Technology has basically consolidated all of these goodies into a single capsule that one can easily slip into her back pocket or purse. This is nice, I think. But, as a society, we need to be smart about when and where we use our devices. When I see people texting and driving, I get anxious. It's scary to think of just how many people cannot unplug to do things of greater importance - like drive.
According to Iver:
"The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, Nicholas Carr notes in his eye-opening book “The Shallows,” in part because the number of hours American adults spent online doubled between 2005 and 2009 (and the number of hours spent in front of a TV screen, often simultaneously, is also steadily increasing). The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month. Since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow, I heard myself tell the marketers in Singapore, will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once."
Imagine! "The children of tomorrow will crave nothing more than freedom from blinking, streaming, and scrolling ... from feeling empty and too full all at once." I adore this phrase. The amount of information I have at my fingertips is thrilling and then, somehow, boring. I can get lost in tangents while surfing the web, and suddenly, it's noon, and I am in my sweats. The yoga class I meant to take is long over and I begin to feel frantic to "begin my day" - meaning the real things in real life that I plan to do. There I am, so FULL of information, yet EMPTY - longing for a hike, a run, a swim, an exchange with a friend.
The article continues:
"The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. ... We barely have enough time to see how little time we have (most Web pages, researchers find, are visited for 10 seconds or less). And the more that floods in on us (the Kardashians, Obamacare, “Dancing with the Stars”), the less of ourselves we have to give to every snippet. All we notice is that the distinctions that used to guide and steady us — between Sunday and Monday, public and private, here and there — are gone ... We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines."
Reading this makes me wonder if this blog blurs the lines of public and private. However, I find that having a place to write, that is not intendeed for publication, but perhaps a peak or two from someone I know, makes me more fulfilled than if I was just writing for myself. When I blur the private and public sphere or, at least, engage in it, I care more about my form and word choice. Rather than spill my guts, I enter words with patience, intention and care. I can liken this process to cooking a dinner for someone else verses myself. I find that if I make a dinner for Josh and me, I set the table, and take care to put olives and pickles in a nice bowl, rather than pull them out of the jar. I try to chew my food more slowly, listen to music and have engaging conversation. And, on those nights when he is away, I pick at cold pasta from the fridge and eat too many crackers or drink the rest of the morning's smoothie. Then, feeling full, but strangely empty, I eat my "second" little dinner, sitting down alone. This is the meal that I eat too quickly, barely finishing a magazine article before clearing my plate and starting dishes. Somehow there needs to be balance. Yes, over communicating is exhausting. We all hate (but love) the frequent status update on Facebook, telling use what he or she had for lunch.
Iver writes:
"So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen. MAYBE that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi; these aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. Two journalist friends of mine observe an “Internet sabbath” every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation. Finding myself at breakfast with a group of lawyers in Oxford four months ago, I noticed that all their talk was of sailing — or riding or bridge: anything that would allow them to get out of radio contact for a few hours. Other friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” ... Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” ... The child of tomorrow, I realized, may actually be ahead of us, in terms of sensing not what’s new, but what’s essential."
In the process of writing this blog entry, I have read this article 3-4 times. There's so much to take from it. It weaves nicely with my intentions for the new year. My best days off are my days with no plans. I like have an open schedule. Mostly, I like it because it affords me time to work at an "inherently slow pace." It's not like I am actually moving slow, but I am not rushed either. If I want to hike for two hours and then cook for the next two, I am so happy because I am not rushed - I am not pressured to fulfill my resolution "to be more patient." These free days (days without structure and plans) act as an intersection between my intention for patine and my desire to feel calm, clearer and happier.
It seems hard to believe that the "child of tomorrow" would want stillness. Adults seem to crave it, but in the same breath, they enroll their children in a sample platter of sports, camps, and scholastic clubs. Iver wrote:
"I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the future of travel, I’m reliably told, lies in “black-hole resorts,” which charge high prices precisely because you can’t get online in their rooms."
Babies are placed next to noise makers and in vibrating swings and chairs. From infancy on, a child can easily be enveloped in the constant churn of stimulation. It is shocking to think that the next generation is going to carve out time to be still.
Iver states:
"In barely one generation we’ve moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them — often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the world to knowing too much all but overnight."
As much as I agree with this statement and absolutely love it on so many levels, I also have to admit that carrying my i Phone around brings me relaxation and freedom. I think it allows me to be patient. For example: If I am forced to wait in line or for a friend to arrive, I simply pull out my phone and within minutes, I can "make good use" of my waiting time. Gone are the days of thumb-twiddling. Instead, I too, can text, send emails, read the paper, or create a virtual "to-do" list. With my phone, I have the ability to take care of my personal business from a remote location, like the beach or from the break room in the hospital. On vacation, I am at ease because I know that I am not missing calls or opportunities. Everything and everyone I need to talk to, can be reached quickly with a few strokes of my keypad. If we did not have such devices, I know Josh would not leave his desk for fear of missing a business call or an opportunistic email. The technology we so desire to unplug from, can also free us on many levels.
When I traveled in the 1990s, I remember carrying a backpack full of mixed tapes, magazines, and a Walkman. Technology has basically consolidated all of these goodies into a single capsule that one can easily slip into her back pocket or purse. This is nice, I think. But, as a society, we need to be smart about when and where we use our devices. When I see people texting and driving, I get anxious. It's scary to think of just how many people cannot unplug to do things of greater importance - like drive.
According to Iver:
"The average American spends at least eight and a half hours a day in front of a screen, Nicholas Carr notes in his eye-opening book “The Shallows,” in part because the number of hours American adults spent online doubled between 2005 and 2009 (and the number of hours spent in front of a TV screen, often simultaneously, is also steadily increasing). The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month. Since luxury, as any economist will tell you, is a function of scarcity, the children of tomorrow, I heard myself tell the marketers in Singapore, will crave nothing more than freedom, if only for a short while, from all the blinking machines, streaming videos and scrolling headlines that leave them feeling empty and too full all at once."
Imagine! "The children of tomorrow will crave nothing more than freedom from blinking, streaming, and scrolling ... from feeling empty and too full all at once." I adore this phrase. The amount of information I have at my fingertips is thrilling and then, somehow, boring. I can get lost in tangents while surfing the web, and suddenly, it's noon, and I am in my sweats. The yoga class I meant to take is long over and I begin to feel frantic to "begin my day" - meaning the real things in real life that I plan to do. There I am, so FULL of information, yet EMPTY - longing for a hike, a run, a swim, an exchange with a friend.
The article continues:
"The urgency of slowing down — to find the time and space to think — is nothing new, of course, and wiser souls have always reminded us that the more attention we pay to the moment, the less time and energy we have to place it in some larger context. “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries,” the French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th century, “and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.” He also famously remarked that all of man’s problems come from his inability to sit quietly in a room alone. ... We barely have enough time to see how little time we have (most Web pages, researchers find, are visited for 10 seconds or less). And the more that floods in on us (the Kardashians, Obamacare, “Dancing with the Stars”), the less of ourselves we have to give to every snippet. All we notice is that the distinctions that used to guide and steady us — between Sunday and Monday, public and private, here and there — are gone ... We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say. Partly because we’re so busy communicating. And — as he might also have said — we’re rushing to meet so many deadlines that we hardly register that what we need most are lifelines."
Reading this makes me wonder if this blog blurs the lines of public and private. However, I find that having a place to write, that is not intendeed for publication, but perhaps a peak or two from someone I know, makes me more fulfilled than if I was just writing for myself. When I blur the private and public sphere or, at least, engage in it, I care more about my form and word choice. Rather than spill my guts, I enter words with patience, intention and care. I can liken this process to cooking a dinner for someone else verses myself. I find that if I make a dinner for Josh and me, I set the table, and take care to put olives and pickles in a nice bowl, rather than pull them out of the jar. I try to chew my food more slowly, listen to music and have engaging conversation. And, on those nights when he is away, I pick at cold pasta from the fridge and eat too many crackers or drink the rest of the morning's smoothie. Then, feeling full, but strangely empty, I eat my "second" little dinner, sitting down alone. This is the meal that I eat too quickly, barely finishing a magazine article before clearing my plate and starting dishes. Somehow there needs to be balance. Yes, over communicating is exhausting. We all hate (but love) the frequent status update on Facebook, telling use what he or she had for lunch.
Iver writes:
"So what to do? The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual. All the data in the world cannot teach us how to sift through data; images don’t show us how to process images. The only way to do justice to our onscreen lives is by summoning exactly the emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen. MAYBE that’s why more and more people I know, even if they have no religious commitment, seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi; these aren’t New Age fads so much as ways to connect with what could be called the wisdom of old age. Two journalist friends of mine observe an “Internet sabbath” every week, turning off their online connections from Friday night to Monday morning, so as to try to revive those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation. Finding myself at breakfast with a group of lawyers in Oxford four months ago, I noticed that all their talk was of sailing — or riding or bridge: anything that would allow them to get out of radio contact for a few hours. Other friends try to go on long walks every Sunday, or to “forget” their cellphones at home. A series of tests in recent years has shown, Mr. Carr points out, that after spending time in quiet rural settings, subjects “exhibit greater attentiveness, stronger memory and generally improved cognition. Their brains become both calmer and sharper.” More than that, empathy, as well as deep thought, depends (as neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio have found) on neural processes that are “inherently slow.” ... Nothing makes me feel better — calmer, clearer and happier — than being in one place, absorbed in a book, a conversation, a piece of music. It’s actually something deeper than mere happiness: it’s joy, which the monk David Steindl-Rast describes as “that kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.” ... The child of tomorrow, I realized, may actually be ahead of us, in terms of sensing not what’s new, but what’s essential."
In the process of writing this blog entry, I have read this article 3-4 times. There's so much to take from it. It weaves nicely with my intentions for the new year. My best days off are my days with no plans. I like have an open schedule. Mostly, I like it because it affords me time to work at an "inherently slow pace." It's not like I am actually moving slow, but I am not rushed either. If I want to hike for two hours and then cook for the next two, I am so happy because I am not rushed - I am not pressured to fulfill my resolution "to be more patient." These free days (days without structure and plans) act as an intersection between my intention for patine and my desire to feel calm, clearer and happier.
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