Category: General Learning

I’m noticing I’m a bit full with words these last few days. I feel myself stretched externally into extroverted and am really needed the internal and introverted.

At times like this I need other mediums. Quiet. Nature. Music. Yah, there’s still words in the music, but it’s a different feeling.

The song that is looping in me lately is called Soulshine. I first heard my friend Roq play and sing it a few weeks ago. The version I’m listening to is Warren Haynes (of Allman Brothers, etc.) live at Bonnaroo. It’s got a good gritty, scratchy, folk feel to it. Not smaltzy or sappy. I notice I can’t help but close my eyes, tap my feet, and sway with it.

I’m trying to give myself permission to go inside. It feels good.

When you can’t find the light,
that guides you through a cloudy day.
When the stars ain’t shining bright,
it feels like you’ve lost your way.

When the candle light of home
burns so very far away
oh you go to let your soul shine
just like my daddy used to say.

Soulshine,
it’s better than sunshine,
it’s better than moonshine,
damn sure better than rain.

Well now people don’t mind,
we all feel this way sometimes,
you’ve got to let your soul shine,
shine ‘til the break of day.

I think I’m a sucker for “_____ is the new _____” statements. Sixty is the new fifty. Orange is the new black.

From this morning, perusing my iPhone music, waiting for my flight to take off, I ran across an album by Ben Lee entitled, Awake is the New Sleep.

Hmmm. When I think sleep, I think rest, rejuvenation, essential physical need, a natural response to fatigue.

Now transfer those qualities on to awake. Nice, right.

Feeling rested by being awake to the world. Feeling rejuvenated in awareness. Feeling invigorated by learning, making connections, creating new associations. The gist is leaning in, not out.

I think of awareness and awakeness as a key part of our job descriptions of being human. There are the things we do. And, it is important to do those well. That’s most likely what most of us spend most of our time on.

Then there’s the awake part. Oh ya, paying attention to surprise. Being capable of not freaking out in uncertainty. Daring to let go of the habitual numbing that many of us have.

The particular song from the album is called, We Are All In This Together. I got it a few years ago from a friend and colleague, Marty Kurtz, when co-hosting an event for forward thinking financial planners. The song is worth a listen too.

John Katz writes a blog on www.bedlamfarm.com that I check in on periodically. He often writes about his dogs, donkeys, and farm life. Most of those posts are connected to some important insights about human living. I feel calm when I read them.

I appreciated the post I read this morning on staying alive. In short, he writes about seeing the current movie Mad Max, which surprised the person he was sharing the story with. It surprised me too. I wouldn’t have guessed him to be a Mad Max guy.

John offers great description, appreciatively of “a chase movie, not a movie with chase scenes.” His description names some of the broad arc that is in many ways being lived in contemporary life. Disconnect. Power struggles. Corruption. Scarcity of resources. What scarcity and fear do in people.

I’m likely to make a point of seeing the movie now also. I saw some of the earlier versions staring young Mel Gibson, despite now feeling like “it is typically not my kind of movie.”

Here’s the line that I like from his post, about staying alive by being open, and I would say, curious.  “I didn’t go to those kinds of movies much myself, but that was the reason I wanted to go. I said the first death in my mind is when people close themselves off to new experience and stick only with what is familiar.”

John’s post is very alive to me. Reminds me of a few reasons that I like to see things that are out of the norm.

Frankly, I’m really impressed with what can happen virtually.

I use Skype and Google Hangout a lot. Conference calls also. Maestro meeting spaces. Email galore. I’m impressed with the kind of intimacy and clarity that can happen when well hosted, and when hosted with simplicity.

My experience is that most people long for connection and belonging together. Cheers for the virtual.

And, it’s good to poke fun every now and then. Here’s a four minute video / skit of a virtual conference call acted out live. What makes it funny is that it is close enough to a truth that many of us know.