I highly recommend you read this book, to give you a taste here is a little story from it.
There were two temples, rivals. Both the masters – they must have been only so-called masters, must have really been priests – were so much against each other that they told their followers never to look at the other temple.
Each of the priest had a boy to seve him, to go fetch things for him, to go on errands. The priest of the pfirst temple told his boy servant, “Never talk to the other boy. Those people are dangerous.”
But boys are boys. One day they met on the road, and the boy from the first temple asked the other, “Where are you going?”
The other said, “Wherever the wind takes me.” He must have been listening to great Zen things in the temple; he said, “Wherever the wind takes me.” A great statement, pure Tao.
But the first boy was very much embarrassed, offended, and he could not find how to answer him. Frustrated, angry, and also feeling guilty… “My master said not to talk with these people. These people really are dangerous. Now, what kind of answer is this? He has humiliated me.”
He went to his master and told him what had happened: “I am sorry that I talked to him. You were right, those people are strange. What kind of answer is this? I asked him, ‘Where are you going?’ – a simple, formal question – and I knew he was going to the market, just as I was going to the market. But he said, ‘Wherever the wind takes me.’”
The master said, “I warned you but you didn’t listen. Now look, tomorrow you stand at the same place again. When he comes ask him, ‘Where are you going?’ and he will say ‘Wherever the wind takes me.’ Then you also be a little more philosophical. Say, ‘If you don’t have any legs then?’– because the soul is bodiless and the wind cannot take the soul anywhere–’What about that?’”
The boy wanted to be absolutely ready; the whole night he repeated it again and again and again. And next morning very early he he went there, stood on the right spot, and at the exact time the other boy came. He was very happy, now he was going to show him what real philosophy is. So he asked, “Where are you going?” And he was waiting…
But the boy said, “I am going to fetch some vegetables fromt he market.”
Now, what to do with the philosophy he has learned?
Life is like that. You cannot prepare for it, you cannot be ready for it. That’s its beauty, that’s its wonder, that it always takes you unawares, it always comes as surprise. If you have eyes you will see that each moment is a surprise and no ready-made answer is ever applicable.
Tomorrow the first stage of the parliamentary elections start, and some people who have the right to vote won’t be voting. Some of them out of apathy, disinterest, cynicism and some out of an active conscious decision to boycott the elections. In all cases I think you should vote and here is why.
The current situation in Egypt is very chaotic. No one has real legitimacy, but everybody claims they do. SCAF says they’ve taken over from Mubarak who was legit and that the people approved their vision in the referendum (although the referendum had nothing to do with that). Tahrir says we have legitimacy because we’re many, we’re in the street, we’re calling for what’s right and we are the ones who toppled the dictator. The Sofa party (silent masses) say they have legitimacy because they are the majority of the people and so no one else should be speaking for them. The presidential candidates, well they’re just popular and have some sort of social standing. The MB are apparently the biggest most organised group of people in the country and they claim street power. The political parties claim legitimacy, because god knows why. The list goes on.
Bottom line is all these people for one reason or another think they should be heard and want things to go their way, and they are the current actors in this huge theatre.
So far it looks like the elections are going ahead anyway, and after the elections we will have a new player: Parliament. No one really knows what power this parliament will have, especially after SCAF came out and said that it will be doing very little, and that SCAF will have many checks against its power.
What we have seen during the last 10 months is that things change every day. Each actor wants their own self interest, and they’re playing the game to get as much of it as possible. SCAF wants to retain as much power to protect its members and keep as much of the status quo as possible, the MB want as much political control as possible, the liberals want… and so on.
Each and every party has tried to make moves to turn their vision into reality. And each and every party has made moves to block the other parties from getting what they want. It’s been back and forth for so long and no one knows where it will end. SCAF can make an announcement today and take it away tomorrow. The MB change their stance every three seconds as they see fit for the moment. There is nothing that’s set in stone. And once parliament is formed there is no saying what its powers will be and what it will do, although this will be largely affected by its make-up.
Tomorrow you have a chance to change the future by helping decide what the make up of this new player will be. And this will change the whole game afterwards. What I can tell you is that the more people you are in favour of get into parliament, the more likely things will go your way. So go out there and vote for the people you want.
After parliament is set, the game continues, and we’ll have to use all other tools of political leverage, like protest, sit-ins, the media, etc.. to move the country towards the path we see best fit. The elections are but a small part of the chess board, and we shouldn’t leave it for others to use it against us.
This all reminds me of the winter sport curling, a sport many might not be familiar with. A player slides a rock on ice, and then lets it go. They aim for it to stop in the centre of a circle further down. Once you’ve thrown the rock, you have to rely to two team members with brooms, who scrub the ice infront of the sliding rock to affect its path. You see, you don’t just slide the rock and forget about it, you still have to actively guide it.
You don’t just cast your vote and wait for everything to fall in place, you have to actively guard the election process and then guide parliament to get the power it deserves and the power you want it to have. Elections and parliament are one tool in the box, let’s not give it up.
So you’re sensitive about something, what do you do about it?
Your first reaction is that you wish to avoid it. You wish that no one knows about it, no one notices it, no one brings it up and that nothing reminds you of it. It works for a while but then something happens. The tiniest thing happens that reminds you of that issue, and it makes you unhappy for a bit. This can keep on going for ages.
There is another scenario. You’re constantly reminded of it. For some reason or another you have to face it every day. It’s there and your instincts to run away and hide can’t help you. After the first stinging feeling, being human means you adjust, and you adjust much quicker than you think. It starts stinging less, and eventually it goes away. You have been desensitised from whatever it is and you stop caring as you realise that constantly being upset is just not going to work.
Sometimes it’s actually a bliss that a sensitive issue keeps coming back to you, otherwise it’d remain there forever. In fact I’d say go out and face your sensitivities until they’re gone and you’ve made peace with them. Unfortunately this is not always possible, so take advantage of it when you can.
Two possible strategies to cope with an imminent attack, you can either try to look much more powerful than you really are, or you can try to make yourself look weaker than you really are.
If you fake being stronger, this might deter your attacker from actually going ahead with the attack and then they’d back off and prefer not to take the risk of going in and losing the fight. If they attack and you lose the fight, well at least you tried and you still have some pride left.
If you fake being weaker, there are two scenarios. Either the attacker will sympathise with you, since there is no pride in attacking someone who’s much weaker or you’d encourage them to attack you. It is unlikely for any unfriendly person or institution to stop their attack because they are sympathetic towards you, this strategy works best with friendly attackers, someone who is attacking you for a reason but is actually your friend or cares for you.
The more likely situation is that the attacker will be encouraged, and so in that case you should only use this strategy when you are confident that your strength outweighs your opponent’s. Then you’d lure them to attack and take them out.
Bottom line is, 99% of the time you’re better off maintaing a facade of strength so look strong, act strong and most importantly of all be strong for when the time comes.
The morality of eating meat can get a lot of people going, but what’s the point behind eating it?
I was speaking to a bedouin man and he was telling me about their medicinal practices. He said that when someone gets ill and they’ve exhausted the doctors but still have no idea what to do, they have a magical solution. They slaughter a goat, and take its stomach to make soup out of. The person who’s ill then spends the next three days eating and drinking nothing but this soup. Soon enough they all start feeling better.
But there is a catch, the goat must be a free roaming goat that eats from the mountains. And that’s where all the value is.
A free roaming goat eats from all the herbs and plants in the mountain. These have grown naturally, truly organically, no harmful human interference and retain all their natural properties. Now when the goat eats out of all of this, whatever chemical content gets processed and some of it remains in the goat.
The goat is a sort of collection vessel, it takes from all the good stuff, process it and stores it for you, like a bee making honey from all the different flowers. Then you eat the goat and get all the benefit in one go.
When we started locking up the goats, and feeding them stuff that we’ve grown, using pesticides, herbicides, and fertilisers, not to mention any selective breeding we’ve done to get more crop, a lot of this benefit goes away. Whatever the goat eats, you’ll be eating. It’s that simple.
Not all meat is the same, we need to take a look one more step to find out what we’re really eating.
Switch on your TV and listen to it. Now take that remote control, dial down the volume a notch, then another and so on until you reach a point where you can just about hear what’s going on. Now take it down one more notch, what is the noise that’s covering it?
Whatever it is go switch it off. Keep doing this until there is no other source of noise. Now wait for 5-15 minutes, your ears got used to the new low volume, and dial the volume down a notch again. Repeat the exercise until you absolutely cannot hear it at a lower volume.
If you live in a quiet area, and especially if you’re doing this exercise at night when most people are sleeping and most machines are off, you just might find that you can hear a dialogue on TV at one notch above mute.
Two Egyptians and an Emarati sat at a table in an Abu Dhabi coffee shop. One of the Egyptians was introducing his Egyptian friend to his Emarati friend. The new comer, making conversation, asked the Emarati what he does as a job. The common friend gave him a hard nudge under the table. After they left he explained his mistake.
“How can you ask him what his job is? It’s insulting. This guy owns two large residential buildings and lives off the rent. He’s not poor, he doesn’t need a job.”
And so unemployment, which is generally associated with the poor, has become associated with the rich. Having a job means you need to work for money, poor you! It is both the very poor and the very rich who can afford to be unemployed.
In the film, office space, the main character, an IT man, says to his worker neighbour that if he ever had a million bucks, he’s do nothing. ” to which the response was “Well, you don’t need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin: he’s broke, don’t do shit.”
And it’s kind of the same thing with a busy schedule. Many people try to look busy. If someone has no time to call you, no time to meet you, and you can barely manage with them, they force you to shift your schedule around to accomodate them, then they must be important. Somehow this gives them social value. But on the other hand they are flexible, they’re free they automatically become of lower value.
Don’t be fooled. Someone could be busy because they have to do everything themselves, whereas other people have things done for them, and they can focus on what matters. An excessively busy schedule could mean you are not in control of your own time.
Being unemployed can mean one of two things, so can a flexible schedule.
A lot of “nice” people expect people to be nice to them back. They complain when someone passes their limit, they don’t take a stance and then they complain when things get way overboard, they take a huge stance and then people start acting right again. The next thing they say is, people only act properly when you get angry, agressive or give them a hard time.
I think this all happens due to a lack of elbows. You see an elbow is a very useful part of the arm. You can just nudge someone with an elbow, and if they don’t respond, nudge them harder.
It’s really difficult for everyone to be aware of the all the consequences of their actions all the time. So many of the things you see as people overstepping their boundaries are really things they do without noticing. They did not mean to overstep, they did not mean to attack you. If you let them get away with it, they will just not notice. But if you use your elbow, and you nudge them, they will realise what’s going on and get back on track.
That;s of course if they have good intentions to start with, which I believe most people have. If they turn out to be one of those people who intentionally are trying to push your limits and see how much they can get away with, or are just plain trying to use or abuse you, then smack that elbow right in their face.
Life is easier when you use your elbows. Nudge people and they will notice what’s going on. It’s actually a nice thing to do to someone, when you nudge them. But nudge them with a positive atitude, knowing that they just weren’t looking where they are going.
There is somehow a notion that children shouldn’t work. It’s a bit western, but apparently after the 18th birthday of a child, who is now an adult, it’s ok they can work. That despite many western parents are happy, and encourage their children to do paper rounds, work in the supermarkets in summer, or even set up a lemonade stand, to gain experience.
The line it seems, is that as long as the child is going to school, then all is fine. But why do we send children to school exactly? So they can learn about life, and how to live it. Needless to say that never really happens. You get some books, you learn sciences, arts, etc.. but life? I don’t know about that.
Why would I want to learn science if I am not going to use it? Why do I need to solve a second order differential equation when in reality I’ve never come across a situation where that was needed in my life. Is it really part of a basic toolkit that will guide me in being a better member in society.
Why can I not just learn the thing I need to learn when I need to learn them. So oops I need to solve that second order diferential equation and I don’t know how to do it. Off to an advanced calculus course.
But where exactly will I hit a situation like that? In life.
Animals who are born in the wild have a much better survival rate than those who are taken in, sheltered, and then released when they are older. This seems to be the kind of thing we are doing to our children. Take them out of whatever it is that’s happening in life, put them in a room for most of the day where different people take turns brainwashing them, then release them back home with an assignment. Give them exams and 18 years later, release them into the wild.
I say let them be, let their parents direct them in life, let them find a place where they fit and then learn the tools necessary to advance there. They’ll learn a lot about life much faster this way. The fact that when you’re 18 years old someone still has to teach you about what it’s like in the “real” world is very disturbing.
Bottom line is, I think this whole school concept is not really working very well. A heck of a lot of time is wasted learning stuff we never use. If we’re just left out there we can do amazing things. I’m not saying cancel schools, I’m just saying make them very modular and completely optional.
Let the children work!
*Do not confuse child labour with labour abuse. In many cases, the children who work are abused because they or their parents really need the money to survive, in which case the employers really do take advantage. Child labour in my sense is just working without being 18 and not being forced to go to school.
It really does make a difference. That’s my latest discovery. It is amazing how much you can do and how much energy you can have just by having 2 or 3 meals every day, especially breakfast.
You don’t really have t stuff yourself, you just have to eat, and suddenly the world is abuzz. It takes time, to start building up that energy. A couple of days with 3 meals will do, and then maintain 2 meals a day for some awesome results.
Soon your metabolism starts working, and nothing can stop you now. Just make sure you don’t do many start-stops. It’s not the easiest thing to maintain a healthy diet and eat many times a day, but once you have a routine set up it becomes easier.
You don’t really have to go super healthy, just avoid the really bad stuff, like junk food and stuff that’s too fatty, fried in low quality oil and the likes. And make sure you include some veggies and most importantly drink a lot of water.