an increased valuing...............

 

People who depend too much upon the past have become almost useless in many professions.  We need a new kind of human being who can divorce himself from his past, who feels strong and courageous and trusting enough to trust himself in the present situation, to handle the problem well in an improvising way, without previous preparation, if need be.

     All of this adds up to an increased emphasis on psychological health and strength.  It means an increased valuing of the ability to pay fullest attention to the here-now situation, to be able to listen well, to be able to see well in the concrete, immediate moment before us.  It means that we need people who are different from the average kind of person who confronts the present as if it were a repetition of the past, and who uses the present simply as a period in which he prepares for future threats and dangers, which he doesn't trust himself enough to meet unprepared when the time comes.

-Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

activate our presence..................

 

Does it need to be said? We are not machines. Our lives are not data problems that can be quantitatively optimized. And the actual human ability to attend is something much more expansive and much more beautiful than a tool for filtering information or extending our time on task. True attention lies at the heart of personhood: reason, judgment, memory, curiosity, responsibility, the feeling of a summer day, the burying of our dead. All of these require and activate our presence. As for mental functions that can be measured and indexed — and ultimately bought and sold — they are precisely the kind of attention we need to escape.

-from the essay, “The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Battle for Your Attention Is Built on a Lie”

thanks Rob

Too present to imagine...................

 

Age saw two quiet children

Go loving by at twilight,

He knew not whether homeward,

On outward from the village,

Or (chimes were ringing) churchward.

He waited (they were strangers)

Till they were out of hearing

To bid them both be happy.

"Be happy, happy, happy,

And seize the day of pleasure."

The age-long theme is Age's.

'Twas age imposed on poems

Their gather-roses burden

To warn against the danger

That overtaken lovers

From being overflooded

With happiness should have it

And yet not know they have it.

But bid life seize the present?

It lives less in the present 

Then in the future always,

And less in both together

Than in the past.  The present

Is too much for the senses,

Too crowding, too confusing—

Too present to imagine.

-Robert Frost, Carpe Diem

on setting boundaries............

 

If you’re available and ready for everyone, you’re present for no one.

-Treyton DeVore

     via