“Making 2018 Meaningful”: Part 1: Articles

“Why we fell for cleaning eating”, The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/11/why-we-fell-for-clean-eating

What it was about:

How #cleaneating is becoming more and more like a cult movement, because it is stubborn/tenacious, emotionally divisive, irrationally absolute, “facts-adverse” and guilt tripping.

How it schooled me?

I fell victim of this #cleaneating cult. I was obsessed with clean eating. I found so much satisfaction following reading liking sharing content about clean eating, and imposed a very strict diet onto myself.

I then started to be overwhelmed by the never ending guilt and anger whenever my views were not supported. This was especially bad with my family. Yes, for more than 5 years, my body fat % was less than 8. I was sick.

This article brought me back out and now I am less of that annoying self righteous asshole who wouldn’t eat anything at a dinner gathering.

“Last Longer”, Horace Dediu

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/11/why-we-fell-for-clean-eating

What it was about:

Horace Dediu expanded on what Lisa Jackson and Apple meant, when she proclaimed on stage, during the biggest Apple event of the year, that Apple’s approach to sustainability and environmental responsibility, would be to make devices “Last Longer”. Horace tried to make a point that this was a watershed moment for Apple and the tech world. He also talked about how this would be misunderstood by most, and how most would laugh at this notion that no planned obsolescence.

How it schooled me?

Fundamentally, this is a paradox. What it pushed me to ponder, was the importance of having such paradox, or audacity, in life. I live this paradox everyday, and allowing myself to explore the extreme ends of this paradox, led me to interesting places. It made me go after much tougher scenarios, such as pitching the importance of services, instead of the benefits of a better screen.

“The Study of Men, Chapter 14”, Rudolf Steiner

https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA293/English/RSP1966/19190905a01.html

What it was about:

Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian philosopher at the turn of the 20th century, wrote a lot of stuff around many things, including education. He was the force behind the Waldorf education philosophy, which our school is based on. In this particular piece, he went on and on about how education was similar to the ecosystem of the human body. In the end, he brought out the significance of the three forces as the very “nerves” of pedagogy:

1. The need for imagination
2. A sense of truth
3. A feeling of responsibility

How it schooled me?

I like finding philosophical or obscure things and then trying to apply them in real life. The more “out there” they are, the more fun the journey tends to be. Particularly, the statement “have courage for the truth”, was defeating. The word courage, now apparent to me, was carefully chosen. When faced with things that threatened my truth, fear came out. It exposed how I was mostly lip servicing terms such as open minded, diversity, people centric, empathy, everything else I liked and forwarded on social media …

Of course, it also helped me gain much better clarity on how we might need to nurture the ecosystem of our school, and that the mission will be very different, likely difficult, and lengthy.

In short, I am trying to not say things like “I want to write more in 2018”.
I started writing this a few weeks ago. I wanted to get through this, because I learned that it was easier for me to think through resolutions, but much harder to just hone in on the feelings.

I know some of the things I want to do more (or less) in 2018: Play the violin more regularly, write more, spend more time with mom, etc. Then when I tried to expand on the why behind this actions, I struggled. Why do I want to play the violin more? I am not planning to perform again. It is not really about showing my kids this skill of mine. It’s actually far less calming than I expected. So why?

So here we go, after weeks of tinkering and ingesting drugs and many failed attempts at getting into a lotus position, 3 ways I want to feel more in 2018.

(1) Feeling more “in the middle”
(2) Feeling “the kind of happiness from looking at anything Nintendo in Japanese brings me.”
(3) Feeling more “useful more consistently”

“In the middle”

Perhaps this means I want to feel fewer ups and downs. I am not entirely sure yet. I have learned that ups could make me delusional. Ups could make me lose perspective. Ups also encourage me to do more, to repeat, to continue, and that could be dangerous when I am less aware of my blind spots. That urge to keep doing could take me further away from other perspectives/the realities. Downs limit. They make me question myself. They linger and drag. So how do I feel more in the middle? I don’t want to be numb either. Therefore I think this will be a good journey to start in 2018.

“The kind of happiness from looking at anything Nintendo in Japanese brings me.”

This is a bit strange. Every time when I see things like Nintendo’s tweets in Japanese, I feel this simple happiness + positive nostalgia. It’s great to feel happy so instantly and easily, and so what I am trying to achieve is to hack and replicate this feeling. I think I know where this stems from, but I have also learned that buying and playing the Switch won’t cut it (An excessive amount of retro shoes old Star Wars toys and 80s music have taught me this). Therefore it will be a meaningful journey to try to get a handle on this very particular feeling.

“Useful more consistently”

As I was going through the list of things I want to do more (or less) in 2018, I realized many of them all pointed to this feeling of being more useful: Useful to the world, to others, to my wife/kids, etc. Or, just less useless. There were days I really didn’t think I was that useful to anything, anyone. At the same time, I also know there were days where the conversations I had was meaningful to others, or the work I got to do was purposeful.
This journey has been very annoying so far because to me it is hard. It’s also very annoying because feelings are so fragile and elusive. Oh well, if this doesn’t really work out the way I imagine, I still have the good old list of “2018 New Year Resolutions” to fall back on.