unfoldingmoments

[unfoldingmoments]

My Easter Week

During this Easter week, I've been grappling with some challenges. Persistent insomnia stemming from ongoing body imbalances and back pain has taken a toll on me. Last year, fatigue led to a serious knee injury, and now my eyes feel almost constantly strained and dry whenever I glance at a screen. Despite this discomfort, I find myself unable to tear away from my tasks. Lately, my left leg has been particularly stiff and prone to cramping, despite my attempts to alleviate it. This week, I've decided to tackle these issues through self-myofascial release (SMR) and sitting on a gym ball.

Despite feeling exhausted, I pushed myself to draw today to meet looming deadlines. However, my efforts felt futile as drowsiness clouded my concentration. The complexities of theory often make application challenging for me to grasp. Interestingly, I sometimes find that I can draw better when I'm not bogged down by theory. One piece of advice I always keep in mind is to infuse fun into the creative process – something that I tried to do by playing Bob Ross in the background as I drew, finding solace in his soothing voice.

In addition to these challenges, I've been diligently preparing for an upcoming trip to Bamboo country with my family. I find myself feeling unusually anxious about aspects beyond my control, such as the language barrier, unfamiliar toilets, my health, and the dynamics of traveling with new companions. Despite my worries, I'm hopeful that everything will fall into place smoothly. I'm eagerly anticipating the end of this stressful period.

Each day brings a mix of good and bad news, despite my best efforts. Recently, I completed my third reading of the Bible in the past 20 years, yet I still feel a sense of uncertainty. However, I remain hopeful that with each reading, I'll gain new insights and revelations to deepen my understanding.

[unfoldingmoments]

Forget Work-Life Balance : How are you spending your choices?

DR. SAMANTHA BOARDMAN, MAR 28

Have you ever met someone who has actually achieved work-life balance? I haven’t. As Oliver Burkeman wrote in the best-selling book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals:

“Nobody in the history of humanity has ever achieved ‘work-life balance,’ whatever that might be and you certainly won’t get there by copying the ‘six things successful people do before 7 a.m.’”

Rather than striving for optimal time management, he advises us to make peace with the reality that there will never be enough time to do all the things we would like to do. Put simply, he argues, it’s time (pun intended) to give up the fight against time because it’s a lost cause:

“No finite human being has ever won a fight against time. We just get the limited time we get, and the limited control over it that we get. And if you spend your life fighting the truth of this situation, all that happens is that you feel more rushed and overwhelmed and impatient – until one day time decisively wins the fight, as it was always destined to do. (In other words: you die.)”

In a world filled with productivity porn, Burkeman’s perspective is refreshing. Instead of trying in vain to cram more tasks into each day and get more done, perhaps making better use of the limited time that we have is a better strategy. Here are 7 ways to feel less frazzled: Be a Reductionist Whenever we encounter a problem, we almost always tend to add something. This is known as subtraction neglect. We add meetings to address issues at work, we add homework to improve academic performance, we add apps to boost efficiency, we add products to enhance skin, but rarely consider how the alternative could be transformative. What can you do less of?

Be Wherever Your Feet Are I heard this excellent advice a few months ago. It’s a wonderful reminder to give your full attention to the moment you are in and to the person you are with.

Be Still Press pause regularly. Rather than packing more work into a given day, take some time to reflect on the lessons of the day.

Be Helpful A counterintuitive way to feel less pressed for time is to give it away. Volunteering and doing things for others, rather than focusing on ourselves, expands our sense of time and meaning.

Be Selective Say no to things that don’t align with your values. Guilt and obligation are not reasons to give your time away.

Be Honest Many people say they wish they could spend more time with their family but end up on their phones whenever they are with them. Quality face time with loved ones is a vital contributor to wellbeing. Nobody on their deathbed ever said, “I wish I had spent more time on social media.”

Be a Sleep Enthusiast Lack of sleep is a vampire of vitality. Mental and physical energy are a fundamental currency of wellbeing. Quality time is enhanced by quality sleep.

Bottom Line Let go of striving for that elusive ideal of work-life balance and spend your precious time doing things that matter. Sometimes that will throw you off balance and that’s okay. As Alain de Botton observed, “Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”

#worklifebalance #drsamanthaboardman

[unfoldingmoments]

Control Stress

Stress is the button that the brain presses which acts as a default mechanism to adapt to the worst-case scenario. The moment we become acutely stressed, glucose spikes in our blood. You also get a spike in inflammatory markers.

We know the evolutionary reason for it. So if you're running away from an animal and you have an open wound, being in a state of inflammation protects you. When we're stressed. It's a benefit as long as it's short term.

The problem is as soon as you keep the button pressed for very long, these effects become negative.

Constant/ Chronic stress can cause cardiovascular disease and promote illness. It's not that these shepherds here don't have any stress. They just seem to have not a lot of chronic stress. In a global survey of daily stress country by country, American report the opposite. American exceed the global average by 20%. One of the ways in which stress is beneficial is if we overcome it by active coping. Today, in our urban world, through social media, news media, we are brought all the problems of the whole world. These are the problems you can't physically control. But you can control how you treat your goat to make sure your flock is healthy. And this sense of active coping where you can resolve the problems that you are given is a very important part of mental health, cognitive longevity, and stress resilience. So in most of the world, we are driven to get ahead by working hard, day in and day out. In Sardinia, it's not so much what they do, it's how they do it. Ref:

Mithu Storoni, MD, Phd (Neuro-Orphtalmologist & Author) Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones

#controlstress #bluezones #health #healthylife #life #mentalhealth

[unfoldingmoments]

Ain't Got No, I Got Life

Ain't got no home, ain't got no shoes Ain't got no money, ain't got no class Ain't got no friends, ain't got no schooling Ain't got no wear, ain't got no job Ain't got no money, no place to stay

Ain't got no father, ain't got no mother Ain't got no children, ain't got no sisters above Ain't got no earth, ain't got no faith Ain't got no touch, ain't got no god Ain't got no love

Ain't got no wine, no cigarettes Ain't got no clothes, no country No class, no schooling No friends, no nothing Ain't got no god Ain't got one more

Ain't got no earth, no ? No food, no home I said I ain't got no clothes No job, no nothing Ain't got long to live And I ain't got no love

But what have I got? Let me tell ya what I've got That nobody's gonna take away

I got my hair on my head I got my brains, I got my ears I got my eyes, I got my nose I dot my mouth, I got my smile

I got my tongue, I got my chin I got my neck, I got my boobies I got my heart, I got my soul I got my back, I got my sex

I got my arms, I got my hands I got my fingers, got my legs I got my feet, I got my toes I got my liver, got my blood

Got life, I got my life - Nina Simone

#ninasimone #lyrics #music #aintgotno #igotlife

[unfoldingmoments]

Emotional Invalidation

“Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought to be deemed true and solid wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.” - John Calvin Unmet primary needs dating back to childhood can have lasting effects into adulthood. The special and personal relationships between parents and children, based on trust, acceptance, and unconditional love, can unintentionally be influenced by parental weaknesses, mistakes, lifestyle, and societal roles.

These unintentional impacts occur because parents often face similar challenges. The lack of emotional validation can lead to significant consequences, including isolation, irrational anger, a critical spirit, a need for control, rigid rule-setting, spiritual numbness, and conditional love.

Negative emotions often govern negative thinking, with a constant need to release pent-up emotions. This continuous and immediate expression of negative moods may be unreasonable and critical, turning others into objects of subjective fulfillment.

Loving others involves understanding and meeting their needs, yet emotionally invalidated individuals often force others to conform to their own emotions and needs, creating a sense of submission or obedience.

Distinguishing responsibility from demands is crucial. Responsibility arises from willpower and right motivation, while demands involve being forceful, controlling, and entitled. An inability to accept blame or criticism may stem from childhood experiences where the blame was unfairly placed on the child. Sibling rivalry, favoritism, an inability to recognize a child's uniqueness, and a lack of appreciation can strain parent-child relationships.

Negative emotions, often rooted in instinct and the unconscious, can be triggered by criticism or mockery, leading to feelings of unacceptance. Self-awareness and understanding, coupled with a reliance on Christ, are proposed solutions. Social challenges, such as overthinking, repressed emotions, preoccupation, awkwardness, and isolation, may result from feeling unappreciated. Difficulty accepting kindness and interpreting it as suspicious or insulting can be traced back to negative parenting experiences. Seeking professional help is advised for individuals trapped in negative mindsets. Therapy from genuine, accepting counselors is crucial, as awareness alone may not suffice due to the psychological damage resulting from invalidated emotions.

In matters of faith, a distorted concept of God may arise from invalidation, making it difficult for some Christians to fully believe in God's love and goodness. Betrayal, unbelief, unpredictability, and a failure to demonstrate love by parents can impact a child's ability to trust and believe in God. Distinguishing between psychological and spiritual realities is essential. While psychological realities may seem impossible, spiritual reality, grounded in salvation and grace, can be the foundation for rebuilding life. Embracing this spiritual reality can lead to a more optimistic outlook, with a firm belief that nothing is impossible with God. My summary above derives from "Emotional Invalidation" Youtube Series" by Ps. Yakub B. Susabda, Ph.D. & Dr. Esther Subsada, Ph.D.

#emotionalinvalidation #psychology #christianity #emotion #counseling

[unfoldingmoments]

A Thing I Have Learned

(Written By A Nobody Who Has Been Everybody) It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga. It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out. But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy. We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on. Of course, we can’t visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we’d feel in any life is still available. We don’t have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don’t have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don’t have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. We only need to be one person. We only need to feel one existence. We don’t have to do everything in order to be everything, because we are already infinite. While we are alive we always contain a future of multifarious possibility. So let’s be kind to the people in our own existence. Let’s occasionally look up from the spot in which we are because, wherever we happen to be standing, the sky above goes on for ever. Yesterday I knew I had no future, and that it was impossible for me to accept my life as it is now. And yet today, that same messy life seems full of hope. Potential. The impossible, I suppose, happens via living. Will my life be miraculously free from pain, despair, grief, heartbreak, hardship, loneliness, depression? No.

“But do I want to live? Yes. Yes. A thousand times, yes.” ----

“ It was interesting, she mused to herself, how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.”

“She remembered the anti-philosophy of Mrs Elm in the Midnight Library. ‘You don’t have to understand life. You just have to live it.”

--- The Volcano

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective. And the most peculiar discovery Nora made was that, of all the extremely divergent variations of herself she had experienced, the most radical sense of change happened within the exact same life. The one she began and ended with. This biggest and most profound shift happened not by becoming richer or more successful or more famous or by being amid the glaciers and polar bears of Svalbard. It happened by waking up in the exact same bed, in the same grotty damp apartment with its dilapidated sofa and yucca plant and tiny potted cacti and bookshelves and untried yoga manuals. There was the same electric piano and books. There was the same sad absence of a feline and lack of a job. There was still the same unknowability about her life ahead. And yet, everything was different. And it was different because she no longer felt she was there simply to serve the dreams of other people. She no longer felt like she had to find sole fulfilment as some imaginary perfect daughter or sister or partner or wife or mother or employee or anything other than a human being, orbiting her own purpose, and answerable to herself. And it was different because she was alive, when she had so nearly been dead. And because that had been her choice. A choice to live. Because she had touched the vastness of life and within that vastness she had seen the possibility not only of what she could do, but also feel. There were other scales and other tunes. There was more to her than a flat line of mild to moderate depression, spiced up with occasional flourishes of despair. And that gave her hope, and even the sheer sentimental gratitude of being able to be here, knowing she had the potential to enjoy watching radiant skies and mediocre Ryan Bailey comedies and be happy listening to music and conversation and the beat of her own heart. And it was different because, above all other things, that heavy and painful Book of Regrets had been successfully burnt to dust.

And the moment Nora came off the phone she sat at the piano and played a tune that had never been played before. She liked what she was playing, and vowed to remember it and put some words to it. Maybe she could turn it into a proper song and put it out there online. Maybe she would write more songs. Or maybe she would save up and apply for a Master’s. Or maybe she would do both. Who knew? As she played, she glanced over and saw her magazine – the one Joe had bought her – open at a picture of the Krakatoa volcano in Indonesia. The paradox of volcanoes was that they were symbols of destruction but also life. Once the lava slows and cools, it solidifies and then breaks down over time to become soil – rich, fertile soil. She wasn’t a black hole, she decided. She was a volcano. And like a volcano she couldn’t run away from herself. She’d have to stay there and tend to that wasteland. She could plant a forest inside herself.

Excerpt From: Matt Haig. “The Midnight Library.”

#matthaig #themidnightlibrary #book #quotes

[unfoldingmoments]

Alive

Nora felt something inside her all at once. A kind of fear, as real as the fear she had felt on the Arctic skerry, face to face with the polar bear. A fear of what she was feeling. Love. You could eat in the finest restaurants, you could partake in every sensual pleasure, you could sing on stage in São Paulo to twenty thousand people, you could soak up whole thunderstorms of applause, you could travel to the ends of the Earth, you could be followed by millions on the internet, you could win Olympic medals, but this was all meaningless without love.

And when she thought of her root life, the fundamental problem with it, the thing that had left her vulnerable, really, was the absence of love. Even her brother hadn’t wanted her in that life. There had been no one, once Volts had died. She had loved no one, and no one had loved her back. She had been empty, her life had been empty, walking around, faking some kind of human normality like a sentient mannequin of despair. Just the bare bones of getting through. Yet there, right there in that garden in Cambridge, under that dull grey sky, she felt the power of it, the terrifying power of caring deeply and being cared for deeply. Okay, her parents were still dead in this life but here there was Molly, there was Ash, there was Joe. There was a net of love to break her fall. Yet there, right there in that garden in Cambridge, under that dull grey sky, she felt the power of it, the terrifying power of caring deeply and being cared for deeply. Okay, her parents were still dead in this life but here there was Molly, there was Ash, there was Joe. There was a net of love to break her fall. And yet she sensed deep down that it would all come to an end, soon. She sensed that, for all the perfection here, there was something wrong amid the rightness. And the thing that was wrong couldn’t be fixed because the flaw was the rightness itself. Everything was right, and yet she hadn’t earned this. She had joined the movie halfway. She had taken the book from the library, but truthfully, she didn’t own it. She was watching her life as if from behind a window. She was, she began to feel, a fraud. She wanted this to be her life. As in her real life. And it wasn’t and she just wished she could forget that fact. She really did.

---

“Every life contains many millions of decisions. Some big, some small. But every time one decision is taken over another, the outcomes differ. An irreversible variation occurs, which in turn leads to further variations . . .”

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

---

I don’t want to die. She had to try harder. She had to want the life she always thought she didn’t. Because just as this library was a part of her, so too were all the other lives. She might not have felt everything she had felt in those lives, but she had the capability. She might have missed those particular opportunities that led her to become an Olympic swimmer, or a traveller, or a vineyard owner, or a rock star, or a planet-saving glaciologist, or a Cambridge graduate, or a mother, or the million other things, but she was still in some way all those people. They were all her. She could have been all those amazing things, and that wasn’t depressing, as she had once thought. Not at all. It was inspiring. Because now she saw the kinds of things she could do when she put herself to work. And that, actually, the life she had been living had its own logic to it. Her brother was alive. Izzy was alive. And she had helped a young boy stay out of trouble. What sometimes feels like a trap is actually just a trick of the mind. She didn’t need a vineyard or a Californian sunset to be happy. She didn’t even need a large house and the perfect family. She just needed potential. And she was nothing if not potential. She wondered why she had never seen it before.

The only book not burning. Still there, perfectly green. Flinching at the heat, and with a careful index finger, she hooked the top of the spine and pulled the book from the shelf. She then did what she always did. She opened the book and tried to find the first page. But the only difficulty was that there was no first page. There were no words in the entire book. It was completely blank. Like the other books, this was the book of her future. But unlike the others, in this one that future was unwritten. So, this was it. This was her life. Her root life. And it was a blank page. Want is an interesting word. It means lack. So, she crossed that out and tried again. Nora decided to live. Nothing. She tried again. Nora was ready to live. So she stopped trying to think about what to write and, in sheer exasperation, just put down the first thing that came to her, the thing that she felt inside her like a defiant silent roar that could overpower any external destruction. The one truth she had, a truth she was now proud of and pleased with, a truth she had not only come to terms with but welcomed openly, with every fiery molecule of her being. A truth that she scribbled hastily but firmly, pressing deep into the paper with the nib, in capital letters, in the first-person present tense. A truth that was the beginning and seed of everything possible. A former curse and a present blessing. Three simple words containing the power and potential of a multiverse.

The sky grows dark The black over blue Yet the stars still dare To shine for you

“Life begins,’ Sartre once wrote, ‘on the other side of despair.”

Ref: Matt Haig. “The Midnight Library.”

#matthaig #themidnightlibrary #quotes #book

[unfoldingmoments]

As Mark Twain once said, ‘Life is just one [darn] thing after another.’ God doesn’t seem to take the difficulties away, but he does help us come through them.

#marktwain #quote #life #christianity

[unfoldingmoments]

Things Happen When Women Pray

My maternal grandmother was a sharecropper. She and my grandfather raised 15 children through the Great Depression. They faced every imaginable disadvantage associated with the times and the racial complexities of our country’s dysfunctional past. My earliest memory of her was during my preschool years. It’s when we made the annual pilgrimage to the South just to reacquaint ourselves with our culture, share our family stories, and touch base with our Southern relatives.

We met at the intersection of my beginning and her ending. I was too young to fully grasp the value of those moments, but I value the memories today. I remember the ornate, old-fashioned quilt that covered her lap and the feeling of the knotted fabric where fragments of curtains, old dresses, and slacks had been cut and carefully sewn together to form a beautiful, but simply done, covering for her aching knees.

Like my grandmother’s quilt, women are varied pieces of fabric, neither monolithic nor monochromatic. Each woman comes with her own history and to rob them of their unique stories for the sake of conformity would ruin the authenticity of their shared narratives. Each woman has different ethnic intersections, unique experiences, and various ranges of influence. The thread that binds this quilt and warms the heart is the thread of faith and prayer.

Every woman in Scripture is your grandmother of faith. Their DNA exists in you. Their courage runs through your veins like blood. When life gets tough and the nights seem cold, you can look back at them--and always look up at God--and believe that He who has begun a good work in you shall guide you through as He did them!

Always remember...When women pray, God brings about new life. When women pray, He brings redemption and reconciliation into darkness. When women pray, we find hope and joy in unexpected places. When women pray, victory is gained over injustices and the “issues” of life. When women pray, curses are turned into blessings and people are set free from bondage. When women pray, salvation comes and even what is dead can find life again! The world will turn upside-down when women get together and pray!

#TDJakes #pray

[unfoldingmoments]

Milky Way

Human beings when there’s enough of them together acting in total unison become something else. The collective roar made her think of another kind of animal entirely. It was at first kind of threatening, as if she was Hercules facing the many-headed Hydra who wanted to kill him, but this was a roar of total support, and the power of it gave her a kind of strength. She realised, in that moment, that she was capable of a lot more than she had known.

- Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

#matthaig #themidnightlibrary #book #quotes

[unfoldingmoments]

Life and Death and the Quantum Wave Function

I have met others like us,’ Hugo said. ‘You see, I have been in the in-between state for a long time. I have encountered a few other sliders. That’s what I call them. Us. We are sliders. We have a root life in which we are lying somewhere, unconscious, suspended between life and death, and then we arrive in a place. And it is always something different. A library, a video store, an art gallery, a casino, a restaurant . . . What does that tell you?’ Nora shrugged. And thought. Listening to the hum of the central heating. ‘That it’s all bullshit? That none of this is real?’ ‘No. Because the template is always the same. For instance: there is always someone else there – a guide. Only ever one person. They are always someone who has helped the person at a significant time in their life. The setting is always somewhere with emotional significance. And there is usually talk of root lives or branches.”

And there is always an infinite range of choices,’ Hugo went on. ‘An infinite number of video tapes, or books, or paintings, or meals . . . Now, I am a scientist. And I have lived many scientific lives. In my original root life, I have a degree in Biology. I have also, in another life, been a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. I have been a marine biologist trying to protect the Great Barrier Reef. But my weakness was always physics. At first I had no idea of how to find out what was happening to me. Until I met a woman in one life who was going through what we are going through, and in her root life she was a quantum physicist. Professor Dominique Bisset at Montpellier University. She explained it all to me. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics.

Erwin Schrödinger . . .’ ‘He of the cat.’ ‘Yes. The cat guy. He said that in quantum physics every alternative possibility happens simultaneously. All at once. In the same place. Quantum superposition. The cat in the box is both alive and dead. You could open the box and see that it was alive or dead, that’s how it goes, but in one sense, even after the box is open, the cat is still both alive and dead. Every universe exists over every other universe. Like a million pictures on tracing paper, all with slight variations within the same frame. The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics suggests there are an infinite number of divergent parallel universes. Every moment of your life you enter a new universe. With every decision you make. And traditionally it was thought that there could be no communication or transference between those worlds, even though they happen in the same space, even though they happen literally millimetres away from us.

But the point is, there are others like us. I have lived so many lives, I have come across a few of them. Sometimes just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you.’ ‘It’s crazy to think that there are other people who could be . . . what did you call us? ‘Sliders?’ ‘Yep. That.’ ‘Well, it’s possible of course, but I think we’re rare. One thing I’ve noticed is that the other people I’ve met – the dozen or so – have all been around our age. All thirties or forties or fifties. One was twenty-nine, en fait. All have had a deep desire to have done things differently. They had regrets. Some contemplated that they may be better off dead but also had a desire to live as another version of themselves.’ ‘Schrödinger’s life. Both dead and alive in your own mind.’ ‘Exactement! And whatever those regrets did to our brain, whatever – how would you say? – neurochemical event happened, that confused yearning for death-and-life was somehow just enough to send us into this state of total in-between.’ Why is it always just one person that we see? In the place. The library. Whatever.’ Hugo shrugged. ‘If I was religious, I’d say it was God. And as God is probably someone we can’t see or comprehend then He – or She – or whichever pronoun God is – becomes an image of someone good we have known in our lives. And if I wasn’t religious – which I’m not – I would think that the human brain can’t handle the complexity of an open quantum wave function and so it organises or translates this complexity into something it understands. A librarian in a library. A friendly uncle in a video store. Et cetera.”

“So,’ Nora said, ‘whatever exists between universes is most likely not a library, but that is the easiest way for me to understand it. That would be my hypothesis. I see a simplified version of the truth. The librarian is just a kind of mental metaphor. The whole thing is.”

“But what if one day there is no video store?’ Nora thought about Mrs Elm, panicking at the computer, and the flickering lights in the library. ‘What if one day you disappear for good? Before you have found a life to settle in?’ He shrugged. ‘Then I will die. And it means I would have died anyway. In the life I lived before. I kind of like being a slider. I like imperfection. I like keeping death as an option. I like never having to settle.’ ‘I think my situation is different. I think my death is more imminent. If I don’t find a life to live in pretty soon, I think I’ll be gone for good.’

She explained the problem she’d had last time, with transferring back.

Oh. Yeah, well, that might be bad. But it might not be. You do realise there are infinite possibilities here? I mean, the multiverse isn’t about just some universes. It’s not about a handful of universes. It’s not even about a lot of universes. It’s not about a million or a billion or a trillion universes. It’s about an infinite number of universes. Even with you in them. You could be you in any version of the world, however unlikely that world would be. You are only limited by your imagination. You can be very creative with the regrets you want to undo. I once undid a regret about not doing something I’d contemplated as a teenager – doing aerospace engineering and becoming an astronaut – and so in one life I became an astronaut. I haven’t been to space. But I became someone who had been there, for a little while. The thing you have to remember is that this is an opportunity and it is rare and we can undo any mistake we made, live any life we want. Any life. Dream big . . . You can be anything you want to be. Because in one life, you are.

'But you will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life,’ he said, wisely. ‘You’re quoting Camus.

Excerpt From: Matt Haig. “The Midnight Library.”

#matthaig #themidnightlibrary #book #quotes #camus #sliders #quantumphysics #metaverse #SchrödingerCat #ErwinSchrödinger #multiverse #infinite

[unfoldingmoments]

Walking in Circles

If one advances confidently,’ Thoreau had written in Walden, ‘in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’ He’d also observed that part of this success was the product of being alone. ‘I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.

He believed that the more people were connected on social media, the lonelier society became. ‘That’s why everyone hates each other nowadays,’ he reckoned. ‘Because they are overloaded with non-friend friends. Ever heard about Dunbar’s number?”

And then he had told her about a man called Roger Dunbar at Oxford University, who had discovered that human beings were wired to know only a hundred and fifty people, as that was the average size of hunter-gatherer communities. ‘And the Domesday Book,’ Ash had told her, under the stark lighting of the hospital canteen, ‘if you look at the Domesday Book, the average size of an English community at that time was a hundred and fifty people. Except in Kent. Where it was a hundred people. I’m from Kent. We have anti-social DNA.’ I’ve been to Kent,’ Nora had countered. ‘I noticed that. But I like that theory. I can meet that many people on Instagram in an hour.’ ‘Exactly. Not healthy! Our brains can’t handle it. Which is why we crave face-to-face communication more than ever. And . . . which is why I would never buy my Simon & Garfunkel guitar chord songbooks online!” The quiet made her realise how much noise there was elsewhere in the world. Here, noise had meaning. You heard something and you had to pay attention. Ref: Matt Haig. “The Midnight Library.” ---

Dunbar’s Number

In a 1993 study, Robin Dunbar, a British anthropologist, theorized that humans could have no more than about 150 meaningful relationships, a measure that became known as Dunbar's number

The most intimate circle is just five loved ones, reaching a maximum of 1500 people you can recognise.

Even online, it’s easier to have stronger relationships when you have fewer of them.

Ref: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships

Domesday Book by Britain Express There were only 18 towns of over 2,000 inhabitants in the Domesday England of 1086. Of these towns, the two largest, London and Winchester, were left out of the Domesday Book entirely.

The population of the entire country was probably between 1.2 and 1.5 million, most of them in the south and east, as you can plainly see by the distribution of major towns.

It is interesting that several of the Domesday towns, like Oxford and York, continued to grow during the medieval period, while others like Wallingford, Thetford, and Dunwich became quiet backwaters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesday_Book

#matt haig #themidnightlibrary #book #quotes #dunbarnumber #walden #solitude #socialmedia

[unfoldingmoments]

The Tree that is Our Life

Hello. My name is Nora Seed. She hadn’t meant it to be funny but the whole room laughed at this. There had clearly been no need to introduce herself. ‘Life is strange,’ she said. ‘How we live it all at once. In a straight line. But really that’s not the whole picture. Because life isn’t simply made of the things we do, but the things we don’t do too. And every moment of our life is a . . . kind of turning.’ Still nothing. ‘Think about it. Think about how we start off . . . as this set thing. Like the seed of a tree planted in the ground. And then we . . . we grow . . . we grow . . . and at first we are a trunk . . .’ Absolutely nothing. ‘But then the tree – the tree that is our life – develops branches. And think of all those branches, departing from the trunk at different heights. And think of all those branches, branching off again, heading in often opposing directions. Think of those branches becoming other branches, and those becoming twigs. And think of the end of each of those twigs, all in different places, having started from the same one.

“A life is like that, but on a bigger scale. New branches are formed every second of every day. And from our perspective – from everyone’s perspective – it feels like a . . . like a continuum. Each twig has travelled only one journey. But there are still other twigs. And there are also other todays. Other lives that would have been different if you’d taken different directions earlier in your life. This is a tree of life. Lots of religions and mythologies have talked about the tree of life. It’s there in Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity. Lots of philosophers and writers have talked about tree metaphors too. For Sylvia Plath, existence was a fig tree and each possible life she could live – the happily-married one, the successful-poet one – was this sweet juicy fig, but she couldn’t get to taste the sweet juicy figs and so they just rotted right in front of her. It can drive you insane, thinking of all the other lives we don’t live.

“For instance, in most of my lives I am not standing at this podium talking to you about success . . . In most lives I am not an Olympic gold medallist.’ She remembered something Mrs Elm had told her in the Midnight Library. ‘You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently. Actions can’t be reversed within a lifetime, however much we try . . .’

People were listening now. They clearly needed a Mrs Elm in their lives. ‘The only way to learn is to live.’ And she went on in this manner for another twenty minutes, remembering as much as possible of what Mrs Elm had told her, and then she looked down at her hands, glowing white from the light of the lectern. As she absorbed the sight of a raised, thin pink line of flesh, she knew the scar was self-inflicted, and it put her off her flow. Or rather, put her into a new one. ‘And . . . and the thing is . . . the thing is . . . what we consider to be the most successful route for us to take, actually isn’t. Because too often our view of success is about some external bullshit idea of achievement – an Olympic medal, the ideal husband, a good salary. And we have all these metrics that we try and reach. When really success isn’t something you measure, and life isn’t a race you can win. It’s all . . . bollocks, actually . . .'

The audience definitely looked uncomfortable now. Clearly this was not the speech they were expecting. She scanned the crowd and saw a single face smiling up at her. It took a second, given the fact that he was smartly dressed in a blue cotton shirt and with hair far shorter than it was in his Bedford life, for her to realise it was Ravi. This Ravi looked friendly, but she couldn’t shake the knowledge of the other Ravi, the one who had stormed out of the newsagent’s, sulking about not being able to afford a magazine and blaming her for it. ‘You see, I know that you were expecting my TED talk on the path to success. But the truth is that success is a delusion. It’s all a delusion. I mean, yes, there are things we can overcome. For instance, I am someone who gets stage fright and yet, here I am, on a stage. Look at me . . . on a stage! And someone told me recently, they told me that my problem isn’t actually stage fright. My problem is life fright. And you know what? They’re fucking right. Because life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesn’t matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree. I wanted to be many things in my life. All kinds of things. But if your life is rotten, it will be rotten no matter what you do. The damp rots the whole useless thing . . .’ Joe was desperately slicing his hand in the air around his neck, making a ‘cut it’ gesture. ‘Anyway, just be kind and . . . Just be kind. I have a feeling I am about to go, so I would just like to say I love my brother Joe. I love you, brother, and I love everyone in this room, and it was very nice to be here.’ And the moment she had said it was nice to be there, was also the moment she wasn’t there at all.

Ref: Matt Haig. “The Midnight Library.”

#matthaig #themidnightlibrary #book #quotes

[unfoldingmoments]

[unfoldingmoments]

Death's Game

“You are guilty of coming to find me before I came to find you.” – Death

“I am the only being that never dies. I am the thing you mocked. Death.” – Death

“Do you still think death is the end of it all? This is only the beginning.” – Death

“Each day felt like hell while I was alive. Now I have to go to hell even after I die.” – Choi Yee Jae

“Humans are really amazing. They say their life is like hell, but they bear with it and carry on living in their so-called hell.” – Death

“What’s your impression of the real hell? Do you think you can even last a minute in there?” – Death

“Isn’t that what you humans do? You care more about the thorn in your own finger than the knife inside someone else’s body.” – Death

“You can’t really say you’re living when you live in constant fear.” – Ji Su

“People are happiest when they can truly be themselves. In the end, life would be meaningless if you can never really be yourself.” – Ji Su

“Humans always struggle to life only after they die, not while they are still alive.” – Death

“The punished becomes the punisher? That will only make you pay a greater price.” – Death

“When will you realize that death never goes as planned?” – Death

“The death that caused me the most pain wasn’t when I burned to death or when my limbs were severed. It was the death of someone that I loved dearly.” – Choi Yee Jae

“You can’t really say you’re living when you live in constant fear. But since I was a coward, I always lived in constant fear. Afraid that the world wouldn’t recognize my worth, that I would fall behind my peers, and that I would be rejected. I ended up taking my own life due to this fear before my life could even blossom.” – Choi Yee Jae

“I only realized after dying that life in itself was an opportunity. And the pain that I thought engulfed my whole life was only a small part of it.” – Choi Yee Jae

“A clear day. A rainy day. A windy day. I learned that life was made up of these different days. And that it was okay to fail as long as I kept going.” – Choi Yee Jae Ref: Quotes https://korean-binge.com/2023/12/28/60-quotes-deaths-game-2023/ Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBrgWouBob8 OST Though There's no Miracle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMuNnhP-vJo Webtoon (unfinished) https://www.webtoons.com/en/drama/deaths-game/episode-1/viewer?title_no=1265&episode_no=1

#deathsgame #deathgame #kdrama #quotes #moviequotes

[unfoldingmoments]

What I really need

I've seen mountains move, I've seen giants fall I've watched oceans part in front of me Every battle won, every miracle Couldn't stop my heart from questioning

Oh Lord, help my unbelief Through all this, You're showing me

That I need truth instead of answers I need faith instead of sight I need trust when I can't find the reasons why I need presence over blessings I need promise over proof I need hope instead of healing, in my life What I really need is You

I've seen gardens grow from the desert place I've seen purpose drawn from my pain There's no tear that falls that isn't met with grace And there's no suffering here that goes to waste

Set my heart on fire And let it burn away the fear of what I don't know I don't need the answers 'Cause I trust the one who's watching over my soul He won't let go Set my heart on fire And let it burn away the fear of what I don't know No, I don't need the answers Because I trust the one who's watching over my soul

Song by Bryan Fowler

#bryanfowler #God #answer #need #faith #trust #promise #hope

[unfoldingmoments]

Worry about Worry

When someone—a teacher, a spouse, a child—keeps saying the same thing over and over, you have to wonder why. At first you think that the person is being a nag. Then you get upset because you feel like you are being treated like a little kid: “I heard you the first time!” But if you have a smidgeon of humility you begin to understand that what is being repeated must be very important, and the person speaking must see that you are not responding appropriately.

Worry is focused inward. It prefers self-protection over trust. It can hear many encouraging words—even God’s words—and stay unmoved. It can be life-dominating. It is connected to your money and desires in that it reveals the things that are valuable to you. It can reveal that you love something more than Jesus. It crowds Jesus out of your life.

Excerpt From: Edward T. Welch. “Running Scared: Fear, Worry, and the God of Rest.”

#worry #christianity