The idea that life should be one third learn, one third earn, one third return is appealing, even if not necessarily complete (where is the time for playing, for reflecting, for relaxing etc?), and provides a neat encapsulation of Charles Handy's advice that we should carefully "chunk" our time in order to lead a "portfolio life".
Others are trying to scale this idea to the societal level, advocating living in intentional communities.
Acceptance of dying is perhaps one of the keys to the acceptance of living.
Dylan wrote, in To Ramona, that "there's not use in trying to deal with the dying, though I cannot explain that in lights", although ironically, the earlier Dylan from whom he took his name told us to "rage, rage against the dying of the light".
...as outlined by J.K. Rowling in a thought-provoking speech.
J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.
"The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned."
New academic research comes to similar conclusions after examining different facets of whether suffering can be part of well-being.
Both examples seem to chime well with the growing interest in resilience - on the personal level, of course, but also increasingly, in terms of organisational resilience and (ever-mindful of Ozymandias, as we witness the pillars of climate and finance and other resources totter around us) societal resilience too.
Social stories are narratives that teach expected behaviours in specified situations.
"Nobody foresaw the world shortage of respect"1, so compassion and empathy are perhaps our best responses to the growing realisation that even as we watch each other post and connect and feed and comment and tweet, what goes on in other people's heads is becoming ever more puzzling.
So let's find and honour and reward meaning-makers and empathisers. Welcome as they are, charters of compassion are just the start - perhaps we need open-source universities of the intimate, "where all generations can exchange experience, culture and hope".2
1. Theodore Zeldin, Intimate History of Humanity, p28; 2. Intimate History of Humanity, p31
...as argued in this thoughtful piece? The idea that we are often very wrong in the assumptions we make about what other people are thinking and feeling strikes a chord. Is there a word for "false empathy" - i.e. for trying to put ourself into the other's shoes, but coming to completely wrong conclusions? Maybe we'd benefit from "cognitive reframing".
So often we seem to impute to others far worse feelings and motives than we subsequently learn were really there, and often isn't the truth that the other person was focused on his/her own problems and, far than condemning us, was probably not thinking about us at all? Even if/when they were, what harm does it really do us?
As the article concludes, "when we become strong enough to accept and live with any response we might get from people, our need to know how others will react to us, and our tendency to project our thoughts and feelings onto them, naturally begin fading away".
This article also makes reference to the Lost Art of Compassion, which argues that the Western practice of psychology has taught us to work with damaging emotions and patterns, but "has not offered even one clear, practical, well-researched method for people to use to develop compassion".
In contrast, through the practice and "steady cultivation of positive emotions and mental states such as affection, even-mindedness, empathy, gratitude, and especially compassion...we not only free ourselves from negative emotions, but are moved to ease the human suffering around us that is fed by such emotions".
We only have to think about compassionate people that we know or witness to sense that this is true, so at a time when it is becoming ever clearer that so much education is irrelevant or unfit for purpose, should we make space for training courses and exercises in compassion - in schools, at work and in wider society? If so, who would be best qualified to deliver such training in an integrating, secular manner - i.e. free from any particular tradition or belief system, from any of the "-isms" or categories that currently divide us?
Halcyon would like to explore this further with like-minded partners...
Clay Shirky, in Edge and at Demos talk about our surplus, unused brainpower, and what we might be able to do with it if we turn off our TVs.
"How big is that surplus? If you take Wikipedia...the whole project -- every page, every edit, every line of code, in every language Wikipedia exists in -- that represents something like the cumulation of 98 million hours of human thought...And television watching? Two hundred billion hours, in the U.S. alone, every year. Put another way, now that we have a unit, that's 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year spent watching television."
Prima facie, this is chastening and if it makes us think harder about when/when not to veg out in front of the box, that can only be good. However, on another level, Shirky's argument seems much less convincing, as it fails to take into account how people really "feel" day-to-day. Often, when we slump down in front of the TV with a glass of wine (or other anaesthetic), we do so as a deliberate choice, as a response to tiredness and/or stress: switching off our brains for a while can feel like a well-earned gift to ourselves. Also, of course, so many of us now spend so much of our working days in front of computer screens that passive consumption can often feel like a better bet than conscious creation when our eyes are already glazed over.
More fundamentally still, where is the evidence that all this online creation is really adding value in the offline world? Yes, there are many inspirational examples of social entrepreneurship out there and Halcyon will unashamedly adopt and adapt the best available but, increasingly, so many blog entries and links and twitters and feeds betray little imagination, social or otherwise, and just feel like - to put it politely - narcissistic noise pollution.
...self-interest and caring for others." If true, then:
(1) What is the approximate balance between the two today - in individuals, organisations and societies? How much time do we really spend thinking about and then acting on other people's needs?
(2) How can we start an open and ongoing debate about what the balance should be - next year, in 2015, in 2030 etc? I f we don't do this, then how can individuals really know how to lead a "good" life, can organisations know what their wider responsibilities really are and can societies really know how to develop fair policies for all?
(3) How can we then best collaborate with one other, sharing our good practices and our ideas and reaching out for a consensus on the most effective actions, projects and policies to get us ever closer to that optimum balance between self-interest and active compassion?
What will be the best fora and media for involving as many people as possible in both the debate and the sharing?
Halcyon intends to play a key role in starting to answer such questions.
...won by a particular nation being an accurate proxy of the way it looks after its disabled. Or is it merely that investment is concentrated in high-profile events like the Paralympics to the detriment of day-to-day care? Or, less cynically, is it just that a particular crop of athletes all happen to come good at the same time?
Whatever the answer, (a) watching paralympians perform in Beijing and then (b) listening to many of them being interviewed afterwards has been truly awe-inspiring and humbling; not in the conventional, sometimes patronising ("gosh, haven't they done well, in spite of everything!") sense, but in realising that with regard to (a), just how motivated and exceptional these individuals are in so many ways while, with regard to (b), just how much we are all the same in so many other ways.
So how do we keep these heroines and heroes in the headlines? Personally, I'd like to read more about Ellie and David and their teammates' journey ahead than about many of their "able-bodied' counterparts who actually fill our backpages and bulletins...
"All you need to do to be ‘ethical’ in today’s world is to stand against things."
This is a criticism often aimed at e.g. environmentalists, and while it constitutes too broadbrush a dismissal of well-intentioned activists, perhaps it should nonetheless serve as a wake-up call to those who wish to champion the intrinsic values that seem to make people happier and more fulfilled.
