A Note of Love & the Traveler’s Castle : Chronicle 58

Opening up your lunch finding a note of love inside.

oOo

oOo

Nasreddin Hodja was a Sufi in the old times of muslim countries. He is well known today as an Archetype of the Wise and Silly.

He appears in thousands of stories (you’ll find entire books of them, and a few on his Wiki).

oOo

There are so many ways to be a tourist. You can follow orders and fall in every tourist-trap, travel in groups like sheeps, or you can be an explorer, a samurai, or you can be the philosopher, drifting in the world, the nose in the wind.

But one traveler is always in his castle: his mind.

oOo

When someone wants to hurt you, he will define you, that’s a rule of non “nonviolent communication”. Someone defines you and you’re angry for two reasons :

1. It simplifies you, putting you in a box
2. It places you “under”, like you’re not enough this, or that

“You’re lazy!”, or “you’re like your mother!” are good example. It’s a great way to be mean!

Always answer with “It’s your opinion”. Nobody can “define” me.

oOo

Do you prefer movies which tell or movies which show?

oOo

In the infinite game of separating human beings in two parts (Sugar or salt? Introvert or extrovert? Tea or coffee? Cat or dog?), there’s one I love :

Do you focus on details or on the “big picture”?

This simple question tells a lot about someone. Do you like textures, or a landscape? A gesture, or a project? Do you watch what happens know, or within a whole life?

oOo

What is a year ending like this :

oOo

Are there some disapproving glances in your life? How to shield?

oOo

I can begin with a game : I Google “Find Happiness”, and read a bunch of plywood advice from smartasses like :

“Find happiness inside of you, not with others”

Awww!! Inside of me? Where?

But also we read that the real wisdom is :

“Real happiness is found in action and absorption in the Now, rather than endlessly worrying how to be happy”

Hmmm, sounds good too. Okay.

oOo

“Be free, a way”. OK, but which way is it?

The rhythm changes at 1’36”, comes sayin’ : go walking, watch around, try. No?

This is the same music played by Flaming Lips (thanks to YouTube) :

Hmmm lyrics :

Did good, baby
So we can go
The time right now
Thing is

The sun shines now
But we’re so alone
It’s not, tis not
The light
That shines

The way, away
My heart can beat
Be free and go
Our days
Are empty

Is the love the god
That we control?
To try to trust
The pain

The sun shines now
But we can’t…

Thanks for reading!

Scratch and the New Pleasure

I’m a bookseller and yesterday an old lady (who was a mathematics teacher years ago, she told me) asked me about Scratch (“a block-based visual programming language and online community targeted primarily at children”).

Her granddaughter was studying it and she wanted to learn it, being curious. I was amazed, because… it’s not very common.

As she was a bit doubtful, I explained her it was easy to learn, and told her about my pleasure learning HTML and, a long time ago, programming for days in the BASIC language.

But then, I could hear myself telling her about pleasure.

Because I do remember very well the pleasure of programming!

It’s not like writing an article. Maybe more like composing music! It’s something you build (or you weave) and you constantly check if it works properly. You have to develop other ways of thinking, imagine processes. It’s invention!

So it puts you in the state of “flow“. But more important : programming puts your brain in another state, maybe similar to kids’ when they play Lego.

I felt this when I learned English too.

So what I realized is : it’s good sometimes to learn how to do something you don’t know at all. I wonder where it comes from (probably because your brain connects new things)…

What would you choose?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Basic :

Scratch : 

Complementary Partner?

When you’re young, you like simple, you like big statements. “Life is sad”, or “I’ll find my prince”, or “I wanna be an actor”.

Some people stay there, it’s why they love categories. They REALLY think they are INTJ – and if you say that sometimes you are also an INFJ, they say you don’t understand the concept. They use boxes and labels. For themselves.

Big question I had when I was in my twenties : “What’s better, to find a complementary partner or a same as you partner?”.

With easily guessed consequences :

1. If you marry someone like you, it’s easier, you party together, you love the same movies and musics, and your sex life is paradise.
2. If you marry someone not like you, it’s a mess : quiet vs loud, classical music and hardcore rap, reading in bed and motorbiking in the mud.

After all : BooksTeaCat, SportsBeerDog & their Social Interactions Necessities

Then you grow up and you live and the constant rain of complexities, disillusions and surprises end up to your upgrade : it’s A Matter of Levers – simplicity is senseless.

As we are moving forward in our days, we change, we plug to possibilities, we have many speeds, many joys, many powers and weaknesses, we have many intensities, and feelings.

(And it’s the same for your partner, silly!)

Whoever your partner is, the result is a mess, right? So what? That’s life! Amor Fati!

Oh snap : When you hate someone and 3 mn later you deeply love this person

1. When your other is a lot like you, it’s great : my lover is a cat person, a book lover, a quiet person, and she has no car (oh this is perfect!) – we evolve in the same aquarium. And I can write or take photos as much as I want!
2. When your other is a lot NOT like you, good. Why did you choose this person? How do you dance? Isn’t complementary perfect? Don’t you like to read alone when your spouse kills ducks in mudfens? Don’t you have a friend to talk to when your lover is a man of zero words? And also don’t we all need to be disturbed?

What’s the secret here? To stay yourself, of course. Not to bend too much, at the risk of losing your inner light…

Mmhhhhh…

“Opposites attract, but similarities bind”. Is that true?

The “Let’s make it a dance” tool says this : “When it’s difficult somewhere but you have to insist and you have to stay in the system, just accept and absorb the difficulties – and invent a dance. Your dance. It’s a mess, but you can dance it, smile, and climb the stairs”. And ignore the others. Nobody can understand your own dance. It’s a secret.

Sorry, this article is a mess, tant pis. I don’t even know where it went. Hence, I found a picture of my Eliette playing watergunning (or squirtpistoling) with a friend, voilà.

Bonne journée ! Thanks for reading!

Everything that goes wrong goes right

Are our Fears camouflaged Desires?

Why are these Ladies Thoughtful?

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Bertrand Russell

 

Moments & Epiphanies

ONE

As a bookseller I just ordered the French version of Dan & Chip Heath‘s “The Power of Moments” :

“In this book, we explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work”.

You’re probably like me feeling confusedly that there’s something true here, hmm?

 

TWO

Today I opened a book about Andrew Wyeth, one of the three Wyeth painters (Andrew is the father, Jamie the son, N.C. the grand-father), and I found this quote (in French, I try to re-English it) :

I know nothing more enthralling than to be simply sit in a corn field on a windy day, listening to the dry rustle.

 

THREE

Yeah, “moments”…

I admit I’ve been obsessed for years, as a young man, with the idea of “Perfect Moments”. I ask Wiki about Epiphany (I bolded the bold) :

An epiphany is an experience of sudden and striking realization. Generally the term is used to describe scientific breakthrough, religious or philosophical discoveries, but it can apply in any situation in which an enlightening realization allows a problem or situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective. Epiphanies are studied by psychologists and other scholars, particularly those attempting to study the process of innovation.

 

Where do I go with you here? We all know that we remember intense moments (good or bad). The first time you took your lover’s hand. A haunting place, a new city. Meeting a new person and becoming like close friends in a few minutes. A life changing idea. A religious ecstasy. An harmonic moment in family, a summer evening…

I think we all know this, in a way or another!

 

FOUR

I think we sometimes “need” a moment like that, in the deepest of ourselves.

Therefore, I believe we sometimes have a strong tendancy to get “out of the railroad” (for example : doing unusual thing, traveling in new places), just to find more chances to dive into these kind of “moments”. We push ourselves… unthinkingly.

So OK, there’s a book about the “usefulness” of these, but in the end, you and me know that we can’t really trigger them. Being ready for ecstasy is a great way to never meet it!

• Maybe one can place oneself on positions where it “could” happen.
• Maybe to have our eyes opened for little moments, or more precisely to be ready to catch spoons, minutes and modest sparkles, like remembering that a new day could be the beginning of some experience. The happy, hidden hope to discover a new point of view, maybe just that.
• Possibilities.
• Including intoxicating ones, marvellous ones, overturning ones!

 

But we can’t program epiphanies, right?

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Paths of Iron & Supple Escapes

“Biases to Pieces” – when life goes wrong, do something unusual

Inventing Ecstasy? Inventer l’extase…

 

Instagram : bodylanguage

 

 

 

Toltecking a crying colleague

Many people smile when they open this book, the Toltec Agreements. One does not understand why it’s such a hit, constantly and in many countries. “Always do your best, hahaha I don’t need a book to know this, right?”.

Well, they are printed and pinned on the wall in my apartement. Little by little they probably impregnate the guy…

A few months ago I toltecked a colleague, a young woman bawling her eyes out walking out a meeting with a rude manager. She needed to talk, obviously. What I told her followed the book by the book… but unthinkingly.

Of course there are many ways to deal with managers who manage nothing and then yell once in a while. You can fight back (man to man or with union), you can protect-mute, you can don’t-give-a-shit or quit, choose your way). My way is to deal with these like with the weather (I wrote about it here : Marcus Aurelius VS bad management).

 

1. It’s useless to comment, you can’t fix anybody. Let go and inner erase what bothers you. Focus on good people.
2. People deal with their strange patterns, their dispositions (from culture, childhood, etc). It’s interesting.
3. Trying to guess what’s happening and “why is this” is losing time. Sometimes it rains.
4. Focus on what’s important in your job, and do it well for colleagues or clients.

 

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

The Four Agreements are:

1. Be Impeccable with your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

 

What is Happiness really? – The Flow & Autotelic persons – #Csikszentmihalyi

This little article is just made of things I found on the web. It’s made for people who never heard about the “Flow”. I added a little complement with Autotelism…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

 

Mister Csikszentmihalyi is an Hungarian psychologist. He was interested in happiness, and found out a very curious thing : one is happy when one is… busy.

The components of this happiness are :

1. challenge-skill balance
2. merging of action and awareness
3. clarity of goals
4. immediate and unambiguous feedback
5. concentration on the task at hand
6. paradox of control
7. transformation of time
8. loss of self-consciousness
9. autotelic experience

 

For this last word, I copy paste wiki :

The autotelic personality is one in which a person performs acts because they are intrinsically rewarding, rather than to achieve external goals. Csikszentmihalyi describes the autotelic personality as a trait possessed by individuals who can learn to enjoy situations that most other people would find miserable. Research has shown that aspects associated with the autotelic personality include curiosity, persistence, and humility.

 

People who have experienced flow, describe the following feelings:

1. Completely involved in what we are doing – focused, concentrated.
2. A sense of ecstasy – of being outside everyday reality.
3. Great inner clarity – knowing what needs to be done, and how well we are doing.
4. Knowing that the activity is doable – that our skills are adequate to the task.
5. A sense of serenity – no worries about oneself, and a feeling of growing beyond the boundaries of the ego.
6. Timelessness – thoroughly focused on the present, hours seem to pass by the minute.
7. Intrinsic motivation – whatever produces flow becomes it own reward.

 

You can find this when you flirt, when you blog, when you videogame, when you… work. Sometimes you have to think back about it when you ask yourself about happiness. It’s a way to show that it can be reached with(in) yourself…

 

Have a nice day!

 

“I stopped using Facebook to be happier”, gnagna, etc

Every 6 month I read an erudite article about this : “Facebook makes people unhappy“.

Globally it’s for one reason. It’s because you watch people-you-know’s lives and you notice than they seem happier. At least, happier than you!

Okey.

So in a way it’d bring jealousy and sadness : “People swim in happiness and here I am, swimming in nothing at all”. Booooo. And sob sob.

In fact, Facebook knows better : when people are happy (for example when they fall in love), they… disappear from Facebook!

So the first thing you learn with experience, indeed, it this :

The more people post about their “big happiness” on social medias, the less happy they are in reality. It’s almost embarrassing, at times.

But I wrote about his already :

• What happens off screen on Instagram
• #happybutter #hashtags are #terrible

 

But well…

I know that our disease, all of us, is that we want to be loved. Therefore I’m amazed by the genius of the button “Like” on FB. It’s genius! We all want to be “liked”!

I use Facebook in another way. I follow people who like to share. Not their “life” (travels, barbecues, babies, love bliss), which is INDEED really boring, but what they found : Art, Movies, Lectures, YouTubes, Exhibitions, Paintings…

Thus, most of people I follow on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest are… unknown. I, most of the time, don’t even know their face! They are photographers or Italian Art fans, or American Paintings Finders… They dig and they share : that’s GREAT!

If you use Facebook this way, you’re not “sad”. You’re happy because you find great things everyday! Or, OK, lolcats…

Thanks for reading!

JP

 

 

Flying Colors, New Year’s Stars & Norwegian Angels : Chronicle 30

What if happiness was the sum of the best memories?

“With flying colors”. It’s a new idiom for me. We say “Avec brio” (with brio), or “haut la main” (up the hand). I love your “handsomely”, too.

I once more propose this :

“To overcome one’s talents. My skills unplease me. My easy bores me. My difficult drives me”.

Paul Valéry

It’s not “my easiness”, but “mon facile” (my easy), grammatically incorrect but everybody here will understand what he means, right?

Escape into work works. For some. It doesn’t for me.

Sometimes we remember things we’ve never seen. Because we remember what we’ve been told. An image has been formed.

I remember the image of a firework, from a beach in the Pacific ocean, linked to sadness, choices and blocking feelings with logic. Just one picture of flowers in the night sky… and tears.

When you are too much for somebody. Even for a spouse…

I heard a U2 bad song, but they recover it with a splendid strange break. It could be an article (“What do you do with a bad song?”), but I forgot the song, so…

When you make a choice, you live your choice and you think the other one.

Can we lose our colors? Why? How?

Sometimes people change, and they just lose themselves.

 

There’s a big storm coming tomorrow in France. Name’s Carmen.

Thus I found this translation of Ze song from Bizet’s opera Carmen, “l’amour est un enfant de Bohême” :

Love is a gypsy’s child,
it has never, ever, known a law;
love me not, then I love you;
if I love you, you’d best beware!

The bird you thought you had caught
beat its wings and flew away …
love stays away, you wait and wait;
when least expected, there it is!

Many persons here tweet about this storm – “Si je t’aime prends garde à toi” : if I love you, beware!

Brrr…

 

At the end of this year I have 174 real followers. Hello everybody! One day I reached 30 readers and someone told me “Hey, that’s a class!”. Today it’s a little more… I would like to thank everyone, and especially those who like or comment my little tools here. Thank you! Merci !

Have a nice last day of 2017!

Jean-Pascal

 

 

The gap between the real and the hoped

“L’écart entre le réel et l’espéré” : The gap between the real and the hoped…

When the gap is too wide, what happens? We drift.

Drifting is boat vocabulary. You can say you’re out of gas. Or you’re stuck. Parked. You’re powerless. Whatever.

Drifting means you have no steam and you let go. Maybe you watch. Maybe you wait. Maybe you think. Drifting is interesting. Be angry. Or zen. You could get lost… That’s maybe cool!

If you know the 4 laws of action when you have a problem, when you have a gap between the real and the hoped :

1. You can go away. No gap any more, because the hope has gone.
2. You can change the way things are. New boat. New rivers…
3. You can change your hopes. Invent new ones.
4. You can just shut up – and accept the gap.

 

Meantime, drift. Wait. Quarrel. Drown. Insist. Watch. Endure. Actualize.

You have the right to say no to “Don’t forget to smile”. Drifting people who fakesmile on their boat look like lunatics!

Stand up, though. The horizons could signal.

 

OK. There’s always hope : Remember to smile back, one day!

Have a nice day!

 

From Wrong Promises to Constellations Seeking

Be afraid of your own big statements! They are often linked & enchained to Big Promises. And promises are promises, it’s forbidden to be casual with these, right?

That leads to a funny assessment : what do we do with wrong promises? MMhh, double-bind, right? Whatever I choose, I’m done.

I shouldn’t have promised, because…

• It’s unreachable
• I was drunk
• It was stupid
• I put other people in it
• I changed my mind
• I have new elements
• It’s boring
• It’s a cage
• Haecceity (I’m dancing, I’m alive, I’m changing all the time)
• I forgot life is complex
• I’ve changed
• I held it for long enough
• I lied
• It’s not true to my ideas
• Adaptation
• Someone told me to think
• I got a proposition
• I want to undergrade my promise
• Assuagement
• Fuck it

 

Voilà. Fine. Now what?

Inspiration. Try to stay a creative thinker, find new ideas (and people who think like you), have good conversations around them, peel off clothes (after you’re done with the ideas). Connect to radioactivities. Ask questions. Twinkle. Be a firefly.

Have a nice day!

 

Instagram : teget

 

 

“He said this I said that” are conversation thieves, but well…

At work. Lunch time. You hear people telling things…

“He said this, then I answered that, and then he said…”. Etc.

The interlocutor nods in agreement – she/he HAS TO, right?

Because the “He said this I said that” person is a little excited by her/his report.

I don’t know exactly why, but it’s not a good sign. “He said this I said that” guys and girls are a bit boring, right? They are like… conversation thieves.

They blow their own trumpet, they’re all that.

Interlocutor? Nod please, because they need to blow it. I mean : the trumpet. They say :

– I’m great, right? I’m strong! I don’t let myself pushed around, right?

Yes! Say yes! Because… they really don’t expect you to say “No, because”!

Therefore, it’s like a game. A play. One is making as if he’s strong. Two is making as if he agrees. And we all know why people play this game : because after a moment, it’s the other’s turn. Other way round. “As for me” time.

In a way, it’s like liking someone’s happiness selfie, right?

…wounded egos has to say it…

 

A long time ago I read in a forum a woman contribution, she was angry, saying that us guys were talking about things (my guns, my knife, my car), and girls were talking about people (she said, he said). She was obviously craving conversations about ideas. But found no one. It’s a slightly very little spoonish schematic, but, well, it said something…

 

Have a nice day!

 

“Love at first sight” wisdoms…

For “Love at first sight“, we French say “Un coup de foudre” (a lightning strike), a clear metaphor? Bzam!! Like it?

We’ve all been there, I suppose : you walk your life seriously, and in a second you are suddenly, completely amazed by a face, a smile, someone. Look at you, now!…

If a love story ensues, well, you know… it doesn’t work “that” often. And many grown adults are very cautious with this love-at-first-sight thing. “Beware!”, says the 40 to the 20…

In a way, that’s pretty logical. Love at first sight means – and implies – you fell in love with… graphic proportions. You fell in love with some eyes, a mouth, a face… right?

And, well, graphic proportions are NOT a person.

OK. Yes. Right. But…

First of all, you can’t do nothing against a loveatfirstsightcrush. Just shut up and notice how stupid you become, haha.

So…

There’s a place where you’re a grown adult. You’ve been hurt by failures and break ups, blah blah blah, and you tend to think :

“As it ought to be, love at first sight is bullshite, therefore I should choose my lover with a good dose of reason”.

A person you appreciate “reasonably“, right?

Good!

But you grow more up. You gain experience. You’ve known many more people. Your brain is, like, trained to guess who is a person you meet. Watch her/him walk, talk, smile…

Voilà.

My theory here is : I am pretty sure that “Love at first sight”, when you’re 40 or 50, is more… accurate. You don’t fall in love in a second because of a smile, a winking eye, a silver voice. You DO, but because you guessfelt – much more : the rest of the person, the way (s)he talks, the way (s)he walks, stands up, questions you, looks at you. Energy.

And yes, you’re a sapiosexual, right? Thus…

Whatever.

You silly poor little brother, sister, you can’t resist (you will never be able to resist) to this “BAM!” feeling. Your whole personality seems to be ready to fall on your ass because of. That’s how we’re built, probably. There’s maybe an agent in our mind, doing this, keeping an eye out for…

Crush. Let go. Try to be smart, though. Hold on your wheel. Be happy. And if you’re not, you know, you have these “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” quotes, etc…

After all, maybe a good part of REASON is now incrusted, embedded into your loveatfirstsightness? It would be a strange effective braid, right?

Maybe you’ve found your sidekick, I mean your REAL one. You’re good now! Marry her! Him! C’est la vie !

 

Thanks for reading! Have a nice day!

 

 

 

Indecipherable Harlekeen & Quick-Eyed Happy Centaur

Je porte un manteau d’Arlequin : I wear a coat of Harlequin.

“…is characterized by his chequered costume. His role is that of a light-hearted, nimble and astute servant, often acting to thwart the plans of his master, and pursuing his own love interest, Columbina, with wit and resourcefulness”, says Wikipedia.

Yes it’s about facets, but I do think this pattern is effective to describe different levels of some personalities, from the deep to the surface.

Harlequin, Harlekeen on :

• Changing
• Never being sure of
• Aware that things change all the time
• And that people evolve and change along the day
• Being curious
• Being unsteady (which is “to be alive”)
• Fast, Slow : Changing speed/gear in a second
• Indecipherable at times
• Masked. Disguised.
• Being two things at the same time
• Complexity as a skill
• Positive
• Keensharp, vivacious
• Backhanded if necessery

 

It’s Sunday! Fall! Then pick yourself up…

Don’t be that serious, Harlequin is in you. And you know it, quick-eyed happy you!

 

Feeling the air of Waterloo & other oblique explorations…

Hey, explorer…

Choose a knowledge-field you don’t know at all, and begin to dig to find your gold. This is what you like to do, right?

Japanese cinema, French classical music, British painters of 19th Century, US Civil War – what else?

Voilà : you have your unknown territory ready. Your hungriness will do the rest. Yum!

You need help, right? A compass, a guide, a book, a web site, friends, a lecture… It’s easy to find some. Find a map. Draw your map.

What we often do is to see what’s essential. Kurosawa and Ozu for Japanese cinema. Ravel and Debussy for French musicians, etc. You read the most important books, and that’s OK. An afternoon on the web will help to find the list…

Here I propose some more oblique ways to do that.

• Find documents against. People who dislike, or say the contrary of what it’s commonly said. I once read about the French Revolution : next to the great books I piled on my table, I put a book written by a Royalist, an historian whose motto was “Revolution : a wrong mess!”. He was a good writer, though, and I learned a lot from him – though it’s pretty rare to find this “music” in our times.
• –
• Explore little branches of the tree. After decades of exploration, I knew the great composers and their important works : Brahms, Bartok, Prokofiev and more. Then I spent years to explore the same field, but under the stars : Roussel, Martinu, Walton and Sibelius. And thanks to the previous “normal” exploration, I had so much pleasure!
• –
• Find other ways to explore :

• Instead of reading history books about an era, try to read books written by witnesses. Instead of trying to find the big picture, choose one person, a detail. One painter’s life. Instead of reading, go to lectures, watch them on YouTube. Find the minor things, what’s considered failures, and study hows and whys…

• Explore what’s difficult : Mahler instead of Beethoven. Avant-garde photography.
• –
• Explore what’s hard because documents are rare, or the field very small.
• –
• Explore what you think you dislike : Consider other doors. Baroque music. Swedish movies. History of Prussia. Try to see if you find surprise-gold.
• –
• Go on site. This is totally different. Feeling the air of Waterloo. Find Vermeer’s city. Watch the sky…
• –
• In between two fields. Instead of studying Portugal or the new America, study the boats, the travels, the movements, agreements, trades. Learn what happened between two territories : producers and movie makers, Napoleo and United Kingdom…

 

What territory will you find? Butterflies? African masks? Dante? Religions in India? Story of the city of Philadelphia? Bridges of Budapest?

Do you have other ideas to find doors, bridges, territories and maps?

Then, what vein of gold will you find? What doors, what ways? Will you wake up in the morning with this delicious urge : dig more, know more, learn more?

Thanks for reading!

 

Instagram : genevievealicegarner

 

 

 

When your brain has pop-up windows…

– Focus, dear, where are you?
– I have pop-up windows, sorry…

To go blank. To zone out. I searched for English vocabulary, you see?

When do we have pop-up windows? Why? Someone? Somewhere? Is something in our brain capable of “taking the lead”, cutting us from reality to throw the whole package into dreamy states? Yeah, probably. Inattentive because faraway. Is it dangerous? What if it was a sign? Of what?

Let’s trigger a game :

Each time you have pop-up windows, you stop, you stand up, you stop everything, you take your car and you GO physically, exactly, where you were pop-up windowing. I mean really. NOW. What if? What will happen?

Will you, then, have other pop-up windows? Or will you be stopping your zoning-out to be just… there and happy?

Thanks for reading!

 

 

 

Counseling for couples : “Please become someone else”

Yes, yes, it’s a mess. It hurts. Toxicity and boredom alert! She wants to find the “second wind” of your marriage, le “second souffle”. “Counseling?”, she says? Your answer is YES. You’d better!

Then you have to “tell your story”, then listen to huge bullshbleep from a “professional”, many times.

Then, home, you try to do “as if” – at least for a few exhausting months. You know your flaws, right? You’ll “work” on them. Be ready. You’re on a mission now.

Let’s make it short :

“Please become someone else”

So here you are, with a list of “things to change” for your wife. “People can evolve!”, she says! You have four choices :

1. You obey. Beck and call. Do that, and this too. Bravo! Your flaws vanished into magic. You will get tears of joy from her eyes, great hashtags on her social medias (#bestmoment #happymarriage), and a little more hanky-twalala-panky, probably. Reward it is.
2. You really do “as if”. It’s about acting, now. It’s impossible to change really, because of course nobody changes, ever, but you can really do “as if”. You want to keep her, right? It’ll last the necessary length of time… until she sees it. Then you’re on you own.
3. You say firmly “no”, and you’re done. Conflict and drama. Hold the wheel, buddy! Maybe find another therapist, later. A better one, OK?
4. You run away and find an easier companion. Breathe. Life is made of dotted lines, after all. Next!
5. Alcohol, accident, heart attack (or other self-sabotage), or any other boring “I go out” : anything DIY in the garage, work-out, biking, duck hunting. Some people even have two bedrooms!

Your choice?

Tools :

This was of course a sarcastic text. There are good professionals. Most of them are good listeners. They take big money to do that and that’s normal. Then, they will probably try to make you understand this : Your spouse won’t change, you have to accept your couple-dynamics.

“But wait, this means I should change myself ? You just said it’s impossible!”

Well : welcome into marriage!

In French we say :

Chassez le naturel, il revient au galop – “Shoo away your nature, it comes back at full tilt”

Well, I think you say “The leopard can’t change its spots”.

Can he?

 

Have a nice day!

<< Please become what I want you to be >>

#happybutter #hashtags are #terrible

I read many times that the worst social media for some people’s happiness is Instagram. Many use this tool to share their work or their passion for photography, but some people use it to “show how great and happy they are”.

So, as a normal person, if you wander too long on your “friends”‘s Instagram (or Facebook, etc), you can have the impression than other people are constantly swimming into sugar : every single thing in their harmonious life is pretty cool. Happy at home, happy at the beach, happy in couple, happy new car, happy children, happy baking, happy health, #happytobeme.

 

 

Two paths, then : you can be jealous of all this happiness and find a corner to cry on your own mediocrity, or you are experienced enough to know that life is not like that.

You know what people feel when they see these kind of posts? Embarrassment.

Like fake smiles are a bit horrible to stare at, reading series of #happybutter hashtags make you uncomfortable. There is absolutely no reason to post shite like this, unless you really need to “show”, unless you’re struggling like crazy, unless you need approval.

If I see a friend of mine, in couple since 20 years, posting things like #lovemylife, #happyhusband, #romance or #bestmoment, I know there’s a problem, and I feel like I’m in Twin Peaks, with a dark sound under the ground : arguments, disrespect, boredom, or this terrible feeling of incompleteness.

Something’s lacking, let show to the world that nothing’s lacking.

 

In reality, the more happy you are, the less you’re on social medias, right?

Thanks for reading!

#sohappy #goodmood #bestmomentever #healwaysunderstands

 

 

Readiness & Availability VS Habits & Goals

Just seeds, ideas. Fight them. Or dance.

The habit pulls apart : you know something so much that you’re cut from it. The force of habit separates you from things.

The goal you’re staring at… can cut you from what’s happening now, next to you. Each time you say “I must”, maybe you lose something.

Whitehead says : “We think in generalities, but we live in detail”

Readiness & Availability, these are two English words I love together. Habits, Goals and Rules, they tend to kill me. French casualness? What happens NOW?

You can read : The Propensity of Things

Thanks!

Working with what you have… today

When I was 25 I complained to a friend of mine who was 40, a painter. I was composing music slowly and in a bitter way because I was missing instruments, equipment, etc. I had a Macintosh, a mic, a synth, a reverb and a flute.

In art or life, sometimes we feel stuck, therefore we don’t do anything, because we “miss something”, we don’t have enough of this or that : we just wait, bored like a lonely koala in the taiga.

So we just “watch a goal”, a state or a line where, at last, we will be able to begin.

THEN we will have enough time, enough money, enough energy to do it!

I will… paint, compose, be happy, invent, write, blog, learn, the day I will have this or that, blah blah blah…

This is procrastination, laziness & threnody. Sometimes it’s useful to wait, though…

My friend told me I was silly, and, as a painter, that if she only had a pen and paper she would work. “Do something with your flute and your keyboard, instead of complaining, silly!”.

Okey. Watch around. Pick up a tool. Begin. To begin : begin, as they say. Now. That’s true!

…unless you don’t work for another reason, using this syndrome to do nothing. Rhoooo this is baaaad!

Bonne journée!

Instagram : taranewton1