While tweeting isn’t as evergreen as blogging, it’s useful in having a conversation with others in semi real-time. You’re more in touch with what people are doing and thinking about moment to moment. Some say it’s not representative of reality but my assumption is time is a commodity and you’re spending a portion of it tweeting so it must have some level of importance. In the sample of people I follow, I don’t see too many updates on what they had for lunch but rather hyperlinks to articles that pique my interest.

Twitter obviously has its place in both thinking and doing time for a lot of people. Though like most social media on the internet, it connects those already connected. Those with internet access, those who have time, those who accrue marketing and financial benefits from such an app. There’s definitely a set group of people who are also more likely to think Twitter is useful. It’s not the doctors slaving away all day in the OR, not the teachers in classrooms, not the construction workers fixing our highways.

I’m not sure how, like Facebook, it plays into our overall existence, but for now I’m enjoying the fact that it exists.

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February 21, 2010
All Life’s Pleasures

Your approach to life may be one of intense passion today. You may feel particularly sensual and thus driven to fully immerse yourself in the multitude of experiences life has to offer. This passionate temperament that has overtaken your soul can have a stimulating effect on your senses. Each nuance of every sensation you encounter—whether it is an image of indescribable beauty, a pleasing sound, a taste that makes your mouth sing, or a caress that sends waves of delight coursing through your soul—may be heightened. You can make the most of this intensified sensitivity by eating unfamiliar foods, trying new activities, surrounding yourself in beauty, and being openly sociable. If there is joy to be had today, you will likely have little trouble finding it.

When your passion for new and pleasurable experiences is your guide on your life’s journey, your awareness will become a finely tuned sensory instrument. You’ll imbibe the whole of every situation, setting, and interpersonal encounter in which you immerse yourself. Many of us move through life in a habitual manner, acknowledging only those elements of our existence that have a direct impact on our day-to-day lives. Your eagerness to broaden the boundaries of your everyday experience will motivate you to hone your senses so that you can avoid missing even a single joyful nuance of being alive. In time, your receptivity will ensure that you are aware of all life’s pleasures. The passion you feel today will sharpen your senses and help you appreciate all of the wondrous beauty in the world.

I was fortunate to actually feel this today. If only every day we were aware of the simple joys of life so strongly.

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Could it be that life works the same way? We try to understand it from the context of living it. Is it possible to be unbiased when examining our choices within an environment that creates (and limits) those choices?

Using the word conundrum is so tempting, but we’d be back in a box again. One where communication is only as good as the vocabulary we share. It’s like a Yogi Berra quote that leaves you hanging. One of my favorites:

“Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?”

A possible answer lies in quicksand, where escape is counterintuitive, demanding relaxation instead of panic, breathing deep instead of fast and thinking with a clear mind so you can be aware enough to take action:

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Understanding that people are driven by innumerable motivations can help you learn to see their actions as a product of their inner selves rather than taking their behavior personally. Not taking people’s words and actions personally frees you from the need to react to them. You no longer have to perceive any negativity on their part as ill treatment, nor do you have to see their responses to you as a reflection of whether or not you said or did something wrong. Other people’s behavior and reactions cease to be a benchmark of your worth. When you choose not to take the words and actions of others personally, you can feel positive today even when surrounded by negativity.

- DailyOM: Impersonal Understanding

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To be simple in the whole, total process of our consciousness is extremely arduous; because there must be no inward reservation, there must be an eagerness to find out, to inquire into the process of our being, which means to be awake to every intimation, to every hint; to be aware of our fears, of our hopes, and to investigate and to be free of them more and more and more. Only then, when the mind and the heart are really simple, not encrusted, are we able to solve the many problems that confront us.

Knowledge is not going to solve our problems. You may know, for example, that there is reincarnation, that there is a continuity after death. You may know, I don’t say you do; or you may be convinced of it. But that does not solve the problem. Death cannot be shelved by your theory, or by information, or by conviction. It is much more mysterious, much deeper, much more creative than that.

- J. Krishnamurti from The First and Last Freedom

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Zorba invoked a very specific feeling for me: FREEDOM. Reading it as I got situated into life again in New York, it provided me the sense of escape from reality I had on my trip to India. The feeling that life goes on without you. And how comfortable that is, because you’re free to do what you like and truly understand how your unique ripple affects the flow of things.

Apathy has become such a vice and the majority of time I believe it is. Occasionally though, you get a glimpse of the beauty within apathy, seeing in it not despair but rather a serene peace knowing that if nothing matters, then you can simply be yourself.

Zorba keeps at this theme with a nonchalant frivolity of letting things be and being one with them by letting yourself be. You get the feeling that you can’t understand something by controlling it. Instead you must set yourself free of the biases surrounding you and understand where you personally stand. Realize where your confidence comes from so when the storm comes you know if and how you’ll weather it. You can’t understand life so free yourself to the chaos it presents. Don’t try to find order. Try to find your internal meaning because reality may change and you have to be ready for it.

I got all of that from Zorba and much more. I purposefully didn’t finish it because I want to nakedly go back in to bathe in that feeling. To come out of the subway knowing my mind will breathe fresher air for having read it for 10 minutes.

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Does this acceleration of stress bother me? Over the years of medical training and leading large complex organizations I’ve learned to adapt to just about anything. For every issue there is a process to resolve it.

Is it sustainable for society? I don’t think so.

…Can we sit and enjoy a meal without thinking about work or checking email? Can we go to a movie or concert for an evening without needing to stay connected? Can we turn off our social networks for a week without suffering withdrawal?

The level of stress I see around me is leading humanity to increase consumption of pharmaceuticals (have a problem – take a pill), eat poorly, and reduce the baseline of human kindness (driven in Boston lately?).

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Our petty worries of “Why me?” when we don’t make the team or get pulled over lose their value in the face of such disasters. Eventually though we all go back to our daily routines and such menial things start once again taking on more value. I remember feeling this strongly a year after 9/11. Business as usual.

How can we learn to stay with that keen focus that results from realizing how ephemeral life is – how random fate can be? We can’t control for the unexpected. We can try preparing for it with sandbags and supplies and extra food, but to preserve what? To go back to live the way we’ve been living and prepare for the next big catastrophe?

It doesn’t add up. The preservation of life as it is seems banal. The trauma of loss can be an opportunity to evolve at an accelerated rate. To maintain the foresight of seeing life almost gone and suddenly saved at the last moment. To take advantage of a second chance that we so rarely get as adults unless we put ourselves through the minor trauma of moving, changing jobs, or leaving a loved one.

I like the way Viktor Frankl puts it in Man’s Search for Meaning:

Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.

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The Internet’s primary effect on how we think will only reveal itself when it affects the cultural milieu of thought, not just the behavior of individual users. The members of the Invisible College did not live to see the full flowering of the scientific method, and we will not live to see what use humanity makes of a medium for sharing that is cheap, instant, and global (both in the sense of ‘comes from everyone’ and ‘goes everywhere.’) We are, however, the people who are setting the earliest patterns for this medium. Our fate won’t matter much, but the norms we set will.

Full post by Clay Shirky here.

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