Saturday, January 28, 2006

Saturday Night Again...

OK, it's Saturday night again, and I'm sitting home again.
Thank god!
When I was much younger, I used to be a tiny bit envious of two kinds of people: those who have a formal education, and those who go out in the weekend.
Now, I am not at all.
On the first one: I know more and I earn far more than most of those people, so what's to worry.
On the second one: going to a smelly pub and getting my ears ruined with noise and my brains cells murdered with booze and coke? I don't think so.
I mean, even if you limit it to an economical viewpoint: look at the cost! Even in the cheap end of town, that is easily a few hundred dollars per month. If you save that up, you'll be a millionaire in a couple of decades, even doing nothing more. Not to mention you will have retained much more brain power, and you might even have used the time saved to educate yourself a little, no? Or just get your sleep, too little sleep is rampant these days, and it is not healthy.
Me, I'm really happy with my "unglamorous" life. :)

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Passion is overrated

[UPDATE to this post: OK, probably passion is good. If you aren't killed by your own emotions. Actually I am making great progress in handling mine, with a process called EFT. Warmly recommended if you ever feel over-emotional.]

All the world admires passion. We love the passionate revolutionary, the passionate artist, the passionate lover.

Lemme tell you, I've had passion out the wazoo all my life, and I am getting rid of it as fast as I can. It has given me nothing but ulcer, headaches, and high blood pressure. Not to mention insomnia.

Passion is not your drive. Passion is a parasite. Passion is interference on your radio. Passion makes you upset over all kinds of things that you can't change, not to mention all kinds of things that don't matter. Passion makes you hurt inside if something fails. Passion is just turbulence in the river of your progress.

What I want is serenity. That I know what I do, and I just do it, no bullshit. I have no use for getting all riled up about it.

Sorry if that got a little passionate, I am working on that. :)
(And making good progress, actually. More later.)

UPDATE: I am getting some protests on this one. Perhaps I am mixing up two different definitions of passion:
1: Strong enthusiasm and interest for something.
2: A powerful emotion, such as grief, joy, hatred, or anger.

The first one is obviously helpful, the second one I believe is not. At least not when it is not under control.
I think though that the two are related. You'll notice that top sports stars often have terrible tempers, for instance.
Maybe the ideal is to have a lot of the first kind, and moderate amounts of the second kind.

The Serenity Prayer

One of the most famous prayers in the world is also one of the wisest:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

... if I were to add one thing to that, it might be: and wisdom to see where my efforts are best spent.

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Airplane photos

Even though I consider warfare a ridiculous waste* of human imagination, sweat, and money, I nevertheless have to admire these cool photos by Joe McNally.
Here is the story of how they were made. The frontier of digital photography. (The camera was a Nikon D1x. That is now replaced with the D2x which has over twice the resolution.)

*Most people think so. Or do they? If they really did, would we still have war? I notice that most boys play war with relish, and most men love war movies, and a good fight. Is there a connection?