Month: May 2010

why i search for meaning

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“Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.”

So said neurologist and psychiatist Victor Frankl. This sentiment touches the flickering core of me.  The search for meaning is pivotal to my human experience. It’s what drives me forward. It’s what drives the human experience forward. This search for a visceral POINT to life is what dragged us from the primordial soup to the top of the food chain. We’d be amoeba without it. Or cud-chewing cows. I love this clip from 1972 of Frankl discussing the importance of this search. I found it on TED this morning.

Frankl’s raw enthusiasm makes me smile. And get a bit teary. He’s all love and is so light.

And I like his flight analogy, and this idea of crabbing…whereby a plane has to head north of it’s destination when there’s a side-wind pushing it south. Extrapolated out: to land where your truth is, you have to aim high, as winds will send you backwards. You have to be an idealist to wind up a realist. If we take humans as they should be, they can then become what they can be.

So often I’ve tried to water down my search, fearful that I’m penetrating too far.

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tony abbott in true flight, as pursued by Kerry

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I really think everyone should watch this: Tony Abbott being called to account by the sublime Kerry O’Brien on the 7:30 Report. If you haven’t already. We have an election coming up. This performance is important to reflect on:

For a blow by blow account, Dave Penberthy at The Punch did  a neat job.

There are a few things about Tony Abbott that concern me. His thinking on climate change (he thinks it’s crap), abortion, RU486, industrial relations and the rest are closed-minded and limiting to the human spirit. He also strikes me as the affable Dad at the school fete turning sausages, rather than a politician.

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ernie and bert: who are you in the tryst?

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When I was a kid I used to feel dead sorry for Bert. He had to be the sensible anchor to Ernie’s silliness. Ernie got to have fun. Bert had to uphold standards and sensibility. Someone had to, right? Everyone loved Ernie. Everyone found Bert a stick-in-the-mud. But, really, Bert, always did the right thing. On behalf of both of them. At least, ostensibly. His only outlet was to do that ” Wa-Wa-Wa-Waaaaaah” collapse backwards!!

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I always identified with Bert. I was the sensible big sister, while my four brothers and sister got to be silly. This dynamic played out in my relationships over the years, too. I kept going out with blokes who played the Ernie role. Which, I now realise, was all about keeping me in my comfortable Bert role. I resented them for it. And observed myself becoming the dour nag who said things like, “You can’t get drunk tonight because it’s your mum’s birthday tomorrow!”.

At some point, though, we have to acknowledge that we choose the people we hang around with. And often because they keep us in roles we’re cosy with, even if they don’t make us happy.

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Bombarded with work e-mail? Try this top Gmail tip

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emailI’ve come to accept very recently that it is our personal responsibility to be our own information gatekeepers. Everyone around me is constantly complaining how they’re overloaded. They can’t keep up with email. Their iphone is driving them mental. Blah blah blah. It’s time, I think, we realised that the greatest challenge our generation faces is controlling how we receive information. This much we know: we WILL continue to be flooded. Unless we install our own boundaries. No one else will do it for us.

The new wisdom is knowing this. The new status is being in control of it.  The new power is having firm boundaries. Like, for instance, standing tall and proud and declaring you only check email twice a day. Or boldly deciding you work a four-day week. Or not taking your phone out with you when you have dinner with someone you wish to explore intimacy with. I’ve experimented with all this. And more.

To this end another nifty little tip for stemming the tide of group work emails onto one’s phone, from timesonline.

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sunday life: in which i get told what my future husband and book look like

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This week I see a psychic.

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Actually, in the past two weeks I’ve seen a sum total of five psychics: Mitchell Coombes, the guy from TV series The One and author of Sensing Spirit (which made it to the top of the self-help bestseller list a few weeks back), Colette Baron-Reid, a prolific American “psychic to the stars” who’s conducted more than 50,000 readings over 22 years, this sweet woman up the road with a sandwich board out front offering 15 minute readings for 20 bucks (perfectly, she works from a card table draped in purple crushed velvet), Kristine Fry, the psychic all my friends’ friends seem to have on speed dial, and “Hope”, the 1800 soothsayer who said my career will either, um, stay the same or – wait for it – change direction in July. And that if I get pregnant next year, the baby will most likely “appear “at the end of the year, not the beginning. Um, Hope, that would be called a gestation period.

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healing auto immune disease #8 (a guest post by Claire Hooper!!)

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Many of you who read this blog have auto-immune disease. Or know someone who has one of its gnarly manifestations (arthritis, Crohn’s, Lyme’s)…but as I’ve said since I posted my experience with hashimotos, the advice shared on this blog applies to everyone. Kids with AI are the canary down the mineshaft. We’re here to show you what happens if you don’t slow the fork down and look after yourself…

Anyway. Very excited. Comedian Claire Hooper has kindly written about her dalliance with her thyroid.

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I love Claire. She has grace and elan and holds her own in a very male domain. Without being all “I’m a rare female around here” about it. I watch Good News Week mostly to see her do her breezy thing. I ESPECIALLY like it when Josh Thomas is on with her and they do the Big Sister/Little Brother shtick. Magic. So, Claire’s story:

I never experienced anything except very mild symptoms with my thyroid disease.

What happened to me was that I woke up one morning and noticed a lump in my neck.  I thought it had come up overnight but the endocrinologist I was referred to said it would have been developing over many years.

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i like: Merry-go-round reusable greeting cards

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A great idea: Australian company Merry-go-round make reusable greeting cards. Regifting…from the card up! The cards have little slits inside that hold a message on a separate slip of paper. Recipients can then replace the slip of paper with their own new message. And play it forward. Featuring the artwork of children’s book illustrators, they’re … Read more

people who irritate me

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“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
— Carl Jung

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I’ve been living and breathing this quote lately. I get irritated very easily. Slow walkers drive me mental. Men who grunt loudly at yoga. Talk-back listeners who get righteous about stuff they know little about…. What’s worse (for me) is  that these days I’m 100% aware of it as it happens. I’m at That Brink where I’m aware of my faults, but, like an old reptile, can’t stop acting out the bad behaviour. It’s like watching a movie where we know what calamity is about to befall the protaganist. DON’T DO IT, we scream. But we – the protaganist in our lives  – do it anyway, robotically. Or reptilianally.

It’s all so goddamn painful and tedious.

But, I ask you, what are other people other than a mirror to ourselves? Without other people we would have no idea who we were. Nothing to reflect off, to ricochet off.

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