Inner and Outer Life

Tag: intention

Liquid Modernity: Your Coffee Needs a Cup

Something’s missing. 

Your coffee needs a cup.

The cup needs to withstand the heat. It has to hold what I am after. A handle, that’s a plus. 

If I have coffee, but no cup, I have nothing. 

Liquid Age

In this liquid age, where nothing seems to hold, and everything is a state of flux, we need to have “cups.”

Cups can be conceived as rituals. 

Rituals require of 3 things:

  1. Intention
  2. Attention
  3. Repetition.

Rituals play out in our every day lives. How we say hello, and how we say goodbye. How we welcome a newborn baby, and how we grief the loss of the ones we love. 

How we make transitions in our lives, moving from an old world to a new one.

Without the solid presence of rituals in the face of what sociologist calls “liquid modernity”, we are left hungry and thirsty. Not that there aren’t things to nourish us—too much in fact—but rather, we have no place to hold our intentions. 

When there isn’t a place to hold our intentions, our attention goes astray. And that gets repeated.

Rituals clearly exists in religious practices. We must also find our way to bring rituals into our everyday lives. 

Even if the word “ritual” doesn’t sit well with you, an obvious sign that we yearn for this the experiences of our children. They want you to read that baookbefore they go to bed. Yes, it’s the 15th time they have read that, but they want you to read it with them. Their intention seeks for your attention, and they desires the rhythm of repetition. 

Again, and again.

In this liquid times, we must protect our intentions. 

Stop, and ask yourself, do you want to drink this coffee?

If so, you’d need a cup.

Intentions and Effects

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)

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