Full Circles

Reflections on Living

Month: December 2019

Intentions and Effects

December 27, 2019 / / 0 Comments

Some of the best photos taken are when there’s good natural light.

It makes a huge difference from a good versus a great photo.

There’s a catch. Though you should avoid pointing your lens towards the sun, try getting the people you want in your photo to face the sun instead. That’s what an amateur like me would put my parents, wife and young kids to do. Excellent lighting condition, but one of the most contorted facial expression you can get for a family shot at the picnic.

And it’s not like it wouldn’t be apparent. The feedback is immediate. No matter how many things you ask your loved ones to “open your eyes… smile!” isn’t going to work.

What I believe, the Pros would do instead, is focus on the result that they are after. That means, using the best available lighting, and, more importantly, making sure the subject of the photography is at their best (or the very least, able to open their eyes and able to say “chesse,” not “gesh.”)

Imagine two overlapping circles. One is our intentions, the other is the effects.

So easy to get stuck with our intentions and forget to see the effects of our intentions.

Our job as parents, managers, partners, family members, carers, and therapists is to bring the circle of intention and effects closer to each other.

One crucial step is not to get stuck on your intentions. Check the effects.

Make sure the other person is smiling.

(And Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones)

Time Management vs. Attention Management

December 20, 2019 / / 1 Comment

We are in desperate need of attention management. Not of others, but of our own. Corporate society thrives at captivating our attention. In many sense, your attention has more currency that money.

Maybe it’s not time that we have to manage directly. Time moves at a constant, regardless of our approval. Time is experienced differently depending on how you navigate this moving terrain.

It’s not time management that we need, but attention management.

Mindfulness has been all the rage in this period of writing. This has been associated with the notion of “being present.” Yet, intention precludes attention. We can only enter the cracks of mindfulness through the seeds of our intention. In another way of putting it, our intentions can only take shape when we do a bit of “time travel” into our future, so that paradoxically, we can eb more present.

The closer we live our lives based on our intentions, the better well spent our time is, the better our wellbeing.

This calls for a form of intentional living. Not going through life “by default,” but “by design.” A design that is shaped by your choices, within the constraints of givens and circumstances.

Design is not just for aesthetic, “beautification or prettification” reasons. Designing something is to cultivate an environment that is conducive for our intentions to flourish.

Our experience of life is truly where our attention is. If left to a default mode, our attention is compelled to act like a suspectible scatter-brain, easily sucked into the cesspool of clickbaits, autoplay videos, and algorithmic “recommendations.”

We need to take the steering wheel. We need to craft, redirect and steer our senses towards where we want to go.

Why bother with such deliberation? Because that is where you will be. Our attention leads us moment by moment into a personal future, and you are the only one who will experience this one life.

The Invisible Essentials

December 13, 2019 / / 2 Comments

“Everywhere a greater joy is preceded by a greater suffering.”

~ St. Augustine

Yes, we all have invisible wounds. At the same time, what’s truly essential is also invisible to the eye. And in some sense, we wake up to joy after the ordeal of trials and tribulations.

The impulse of desire, knowing what we want, is the seed of vitality. It’s a powerful life-force inside each of us exist, if we learn to tune in, adjust and calibrate the frequencies like an old transistor radio.

This life-force within us is a creative force. Not just in an aesthetic or artistic sense, but a potent energy waiting to be nurtured and shared generously with others.

Others people would often fail to see this seed of desire within you. Only those who know you in a deep way are able to sense this providence, and only a fewer selected people—mentor, teacher, wise friend—can help unearth this with you. If you know such individuals, stay close to them. If you don’t have such individuals in your life, seek them out. Everyone on this journey needs a guide, especially in two particular phases of life:

  1. Periods of struggles and ordeal, and
  2. Periods of renewal. 

One way to begin tapping into this creative force is to sit with this one question, “What do you want to create in this life,” [1] and refrain from settling with familiar and norm-based responses. Because each of us, given the matrix of our unique burdens and blessings, have something remarkable to give.

Footnotes:
[1] Robert Fritz, The Path of Least Resistance.

The Invisible Wounds

December 5, 2019 / / 3 Comments

Some of our most painful wounds are invisible.

Many of us not only carry them throughout our lives, but we bag them up and lug them like dirty laundry. We walk around as if one shouldn’t have clothes to wash, and silently seeking a place to find solace and relief from these painful and intense emotions.

These difficult emotions often manifest from

Traumatic experiences

Chronic pain

Experiences of violence

Imposition by others on how you should lead your life

Loneliness

Abandonment

Rejection

Unspoken fears…

If you live long enough, you are bound to have these happen to you. 

It is also our rejection of these emotional experiences “I shouldn’t feel this way,” that causes more suffering. 

We need to find a way to soothe and heal from these invisible painful emotions. Not in solitude, but with companions. As Thomas Merton would say, “Suffering is wasted when we suffer entirely alone.” (No Man is An Island, p. 85).

We must learn to not “harden our hearts” but to find a quality of grace and tenderness for those who suffer in way that our eyes can’t see—and that includes ourselves.

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