Laughing with the Buddha

Living a balanced life is allways a good thing. But it’s not allways easy. Some (most?) of us tend to get stuck in the never-ending rat-race that (especially in Western society?) seems to drive life. I am no exception to this. I also tend to get distracted by people in my environment that try to convince me to become better than I was, become more agile, handle and act faster and more efficient, go only for short-term results and ignore all the rest, produce more, consume more, travel more and so on. To me it sometimes seems we have lost contact with a pace that is more natural: the pace of nature.

So what can we do to change this? Start laughing with the Buddha. Accept that we can’t change everyting. Accept your own value. You are already beautiful and perfect the way you are here and now. Accept your self as the most important person in the World. Ignore others that want to make you feel less important. It’s their inability to view the beauty that is already inside you.

Accept that this can only start from within a personal transition, not a collective one. That will never happen. Any transition allways starts from one person. But identical transitions can happen simultaneously of become synchronized in one way or another. The beauty comes then when these people start discovering each other. They tend to form tribes or communities because they share some common vision. That is when personal transition can transcend into collective transition.

So what’s next? Sit back and enjoy here and now. Accept the World as it is. There is no need to hurry. Everything will come in it’s own time. Trust the universe to help you do the right things at the right time. Don’t try to force it or speed it up. This only exaggerates the negative energy. Don’t let others influence you to go faster than your own preferred pace. Don’t let others try to tell you you are not good enough. Don’t let others convince you to join the production/consumption rat-race. Don’t let others force you to accept their ideologies or dogma’s. Live you own life, be true to yourself. Practice patience and trust that everything will turn out just fine for you.

 

Trick or treat? About old dogs, new tricks, new dogs & old tricks

There’s a saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. This is used a lot by innovators, especially those that want to disrupt. It’s a polarising vision. It excludes old dogs. That is discriminating! It’s a ‘winners create loosers’ story. One wins at the cost of another. What a shame!

And then there is also another saying that you can teach a new dog old tricks. This is used many times by old dogs that are usually proud or very proud of there ‘best’ practices and don’t see any need to change those. But that is also polarising because it tries to change new dogs into doing old things. And try to stall innovation. Quite a dillema!

So we have to deal with two emotions here. The disruptors get a kick from disrupting. But it is only a temporary kick. Adrenaline when they have success. And then soon they fall back in wanting the next succes. Then the frustration kicks in as the main emotion. Negative energy. Not good.

The old boys get a kick from stability. Doing the same thing over and over again and doing it damn good. Routine. But also that is a temporary feeling. An adrenaline kick after having done the routine job. And then it sucks in again, waiting for the next kick. And also here, frustration kicks is as the main emotion if looked at the total over a larger timeframe.

The fun is in combining the two. Making them inclusive instead of exclusive. Build on those old tricks that can benefit new tricks. Build on those new tricks that help enforce some of the old tricks. Combine the best of both worlds. Let old dogs learn from new tricks. And let new dogs learn from old tricks.

Make mistakes you dogs: all of you. And learn, unlearn, relearn.

Happy unlearning!

From Tragedy of the Commons to Victory of the Uncommons

The late #Brexit has inspired a lot of criticism in the world. You can oppose to that or like it, fact is, it was definetely a kind of larger scale wake-up call for humanity. And I suspect this will not be the last call but it could be a trigger for more wake-up experiences.

It reminded me of a few blogs I wrote some time ago which adressed the ‘Commons’ theme. I refer to Wantamatics, Worldish And Abundology: Key Ingredients For The Next Era and also to If Anything Should Be Common, It Is Sense and Why You Should be Careful When Trying to Centralize Something.

The drive to go for some ‘Commons’ is a natural human drive. It is inspired by trying to reduce ‘waste’ because if two or more distinct things look almost the same, we tend to try to make them the same, thereby eliminating the sometimes subtle differences. This leads to centralization approaches.

These approaches are no more than disguised discrimination strategies because if I centralize something, I disregard the beauty of the diversity that was there before I centralized it. So be very careful in what you want to centralize. Because it might at first hand tend to be more efficient and create less ‘waste’ on the centralized topic but it indirectly always creates a new layer of ‘waste’ elsewhere. Because what was once diverse, always will want to regain it’s uniqueness in one way or another.

I am not saying I am against centralization or for decentralization, but I do think we humans still are not very good in overseeing the consequences of larger centralizations, like the EU as it currently is. So before we embark on such an immens complex journey, let’s try to do it with very small steps at a time, and take a lot of time to find out if it works before you add more discrimination to the already complicated integrated system. Autocratic approaches tend to survive not very long (max. 100 years!), so let’s be very careful with assuming we have the arrogance to let them work well now!

A rule of thumb might be: if things already work out fine on a local level, don’t disturb them, let them go. If things don’t work out fine on a local level, discuss them on a global level but implement changes again, preferably on the smallest, local level. Experiment a lot. Accept the World as perfect already in it’s current imperfection.

In this era of disruptions we don’t need more commons anymore, we need uncommons! So let’s step away from exclusive ‘divide and conquer’ style of efficiency thinking. Let’s move towards inclusive ‘diversity’ thinking. Let’s step away from exploiting the Earth in all kinds of ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ ways and find a new uncommon direction that works: Victory of the Uncommons!