Enjoy the rain

One day, several years ago, I went to the local snackbar in the evening to get some fries. It was raining rather heavily, like it does in the Netherlands... and I was quite wet and grumpy. I went into the snackbar and there was one guy waiting before me... I ordered my fries, and watched the owner give the food to the man before me... upon stepping out the door, the young man turned, smiled and said: "goodbye! enjoy the rain!"
These words struck me and made me smile... I still remember them, and often they help me to really enjoy the rain :-)

Rain isn't so bad at all, nature needs it, and I guess we need it too at times... When I am biking through the rain, and it takes long enough/it is heavy enough, there comes a moment when you stop minding it (usually this coincides with the moment you realise you are about totally soaked and can't possibly get more wet)... this is often a liberating feeling... Yes, you're totally wet, but hey, it's just rain, it will dry soon enough, and you don't die of getting wet.... It's somehow fun, racing though the rain, and the wetter you are, the nicer it is to get home and take off your wet stuff and change into dry stuff! Makes me feel very much alive altogether! and that is a great sensation, no matter where it comes from! :-) So.... enjoy the rain!

Trial and Error....

Can it be true that most plans fail because we don't even seriously try them?

I was thinking of this in the shower just now, when I had just hung the bathroom mirror on the wall....
I remembered my housemate complaining that it would be so much better if the mirror would be hanging on the wall, while it was, until now, standing on the shelf above the sink.... as, I assume, it has been for a long time before I moved in....
Now, I had a look at the wall and the mirror for about 2 minutes when brushing my teeth and I saw a screw sticking out the wall... turning over the mirror, I saw a hole (to put a screw or nail) for suspension.... I put the hole to the screw, tried if it was hanging securely and now it's hanging on the bathroom wall, safe and solid.... Not at all difficult... Now, this is not to boast that I am crafty, but merely to express my wonder at the fact that people often don't even seem to TRY ideas they have, or taking steps to achieve what they want.... this bathroom mirror is just a small and silly example, but if you take this line of thought, and copy-paste it to different (bigger, more important) areas of life, how many times do we get an idea, or a wish for something or some situation and do we not even get to trying how to get it/there because we kill the idea prematurely because we perceive it to be too difficult, too hard, too absurd, too scary, too different?  This is not even trial and error... we can learn from mistakes and errors made.... in my opinion, and this is perhaps just a personal wake-up call, (which does not mean I will always apply this knowledge from now on) the greatest error is not even trying....

I'm looking forward to your thoughts, if you wish to share them!

o_d

Of time, speed, efficiency and its gains and losses...

Rightnow I am reading a very interesting book: Tyranny of the Moment by prof. Thomas Hylland Eriksen. Here is a little part of the book I particularly like and would like to share with you.


Nothing personal with regard to Germans or Spaniards, but from a cultural perspective, it is interesting to me to consider the difference in "northern and "southern" cultures while I'm at it.... :-p

"The contagious nature of speed, and its intimate relationship to efficiency as a value in itself, is brought out clearly in a well-known story which exists in many versions. In the variant told by Heinrich Böll, a German tourist visits Spain and discovers, to his horror, a Spaniard dozing in the shade of a tree on the beach. The German approaches the man, a fisherman, and lectures him on the virtues of efficiency: 'If you had gone out fishing now in stead of wasting your time, he explains, you might have caught three times as much fish and bought yourself a better boat.' Eventually, he fantasises, the Spaniard might employ others and build a factory. He could become a rich man! 'What for?', asks the Spaniard. 'Well', says the German, 'you could have gone into early retirement, living off the profits and spend your days dozing on the beach.' 'That', says the Spaniard before turning over, 'is exactly what I'm doing.'

Something has run out of control. Time-saving technology has made time more scarce than ever. The wealth of available information has not made most of us more enlightened, but less enlightened." (Thomas Hylland Eriksen 2001, 77)

And I would like to add another quote and some of my own thoughts that relate to this:

"Speed is excellent where it belongs. But it is contagious, and it has possibly serious side-effects. Unless we understand how speed functions, what it adds and what it removes, we are deprived of the opportunity to retain slowness where necessary" (Thomas Hylland Eriksen 2001:59).

Now, I consider it among our tasks to 1) decide when speed and slowness are necessary and, 2) to consider what speed can add and remove from our lives and 3)take into account the consequences whenever we choose a fast or slow pace of life.