Monday, November 16, 2009

Multitasking = Attention Deficit ? Learning Therapy

Okay, so I'm sad today ... I always get sad when I can't do something as well as I expect ... I let go and mindmap to relax ... free associate and come what will ... I stay with it until I learn something ... anything(?) new. I know I'm overextended, I let it happen ... things become disconnected ... brain cells die of loneliness ... so make some new connections, renew even as I disintegrate, evaporate ... I'm crazy for connections:

“To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is itself to succumb to the violence of our times. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.” -- Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

So stop, center, focus ... I can't center everything, and yet "Centering [is] that act which precedes all others on the potter's wheel. The bringing of the clay into a spinning, unwobbling pivot, which will then be free to take innumerable shapes as potter and clay press against each other. The firm, tender, sensitive pressure which yields as much as it asserts." --Mary Richards, Centering: In Pottery, Poetry, and the Person.

Okay, so learn something ... make connections: "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers by base minds. There is only one thing for it then - to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you." --Terence H. White, The Once and Future King

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