Month: December 2007

compassion, empathy, trust and happiness: a work-life balance

Bear with me here, these are all random unstructured thoughts.

Do you love what you do? In work or in life?

Why is it important to love the work you do? At least, why is it important for me to love the work I do? The work I do is a part of my life, it is a part of who I am. The general structure of our society dictates that we are at work at least 8 hours a day, for a lot of us it’s more than that. This means that we spend more time in a day working and getting to work then we do other things, like spending time with family and loved ones or sleeping. So is it not important that for our own well being that we love what we do? Or that we do what we love?

Does money buy happiness? If time = money, and money buys you happiness, I would argue that time (not buys but) brings you happiness. Hah, the need for money vs the need for time. I would choose time every time around. Time allows you to do (or think) a lot more than money does. Money is a lame substitute for time. And those that are attracted by the lure of money are also lame. Money does not, cannot and will not buy you peace of mind. Time is not equal to money, time is far more valuable than that.

So then, why are we not happy? At work or in life? No one can be happy all the time, so why aren’t we as happy as we should be. I think it has a lot to do with a lack of compassion, empathy and trust. Think of all the conflicts you find yourself a part of, now imagine that those involved in the conflict trusted each other more, empathized with each other and were more compassionate, what would be that state of the conflict then?

I’m sure there are more concepts apart of those three that I’m missing, but in my mind those three suffice. It’s sad because we are not conditioned to trust or empathize or be as compassionate as we should be. But then, when we are, it’s often misconstrued, people start thinking things, questioning your motives. Now think of how difficult it is for someone to empathize or be compassionate when all you are doing is questioning their motives. Meh, but don’t let that phase you.

If you’re doing something good for someone and are looking for something back in return, you might as well be dealing in money instead. I’m not saying that knowing that you helped someone is a reward in and of itself (it might be though), but I’m saying, stop looking for rewards.

Clear your mind, think of nothing. If you think about nothing, then you have nothing to worry about. In our lives these nothing moments are very short and they come in different forms. A chuckle, a laugh perhaps a gasp (there are so many more), but they don’t last long. Think about what we can do to maximize those moments, think about what we can do to maximize those moments for others!

Let moments of nothingness be your motive, let them be your reward.

Pushing Daisies

The facts are these: if you love food and colour, you will love Pushing Daisies.

Pushing Daisies is about a pie maker who has an unusual gift. If he touches the dead, the dead come back to life. But if he touches them again, they are dead forever. If he leaves the dead living for over a minute, then someone else must die (randomly chosen by a proximity thing).

Due to certain events, Ned, the pie maker, teams up with a private detective and they use Ned’s gift to determine to conditions under which certain homicides occured, then collect the rewards. One such reward collection venture sees Ned bringing back to life his childhood sweetheart, Charlotte. She lives past the minute, interestingness ensues.

They can’t touch.

Pushing Daisies is awesome because it has a very unique style of presentation. All the episodes are full of colours and (ironically) life. I totally love the long-winded conversations between Ned and Chuck, their words wander, confuse, then come full circle to make sense. And then it hits you, this is a very very good show.

If you’re not watching it, you’re missing out.

Life

I love Life.

Life is about a police officer who is framed for multiple murders he didn’t commit. After being imprisoned for 11 or so years Charlie is released based on DNA evidence. Although his settlement $$ is more than enough for him to continue his life, He re-joins the police force as a detective.

I love Life because it’s intelligent and witty. Charlie’s adoptation of Zen is awesome because it spawns beautiful dialogue between him and his partner (who has her own issues).

I think if I could realign myself after television characters, I’d try and be a cross between Gregory House and Charlie Crews.

Absolutely brilliant!

Serendipity to WordPress

I converted the blog from serendipity to WordPress.

I used the S9y to WordPress Importer, although I had to modify the code a little to make the conversion go on without major errors. There was still a glitch however, the importer didn’t map a lot of the posts to the correct categories. Instead of actually fixing the code, I found it easier to just go through the posts and remap them to the correct categories. Luckily I wasn’t dealing with a whole lot of posts.

The main reason I converted is because WordPress with Akismet has much better spam blocking features. I was too lazy to look up how to make spam blocking work in s9y.

I’m going to take a little look at how plugins exactly work in WordPress. See if I can hack something together.

It’s interesting because I wouldn’t have even thought about bothering to do anything with the blog if I was working right now. Only because of the break did I bother, makes one wonder.

EDIT – I forgot to add, I totally love this wordpress theme. Courtesy of wptp. Best of all it’s valid XHTML and CSS.

Single train on a single track

“Single train on a single track”, this is loosely translated from Hindi and is something my grandfather said while describing me (when I was in India many months ago).

What I take from that is how one-dimensional I am. There’s nothing better than a dose of reality based on how you communicate and interact with new people. You realize how multi-dimensional people really are and how that holes you back into your single dimension.

This comes from a self-retrospective based on the Toronto Newunion 2007.

  • I’m only funny 81% of the time.
  • When you are around people who have the capacity to think, articulate and engage better than you do, just shut up and listen. (you might even learn something).

These are general notes from the day:

  • Get glasses or contacts that don’t make thing blurry. I’m wearing a trial pair of contacts and anything two feet away or more blurs out after a few seconds of viewing. This is annoying and headachy.
  • Make meaning, not money. change the world (or certain sub-sections)
  • speak in a way that you are heard, even by lurkers.
  • people on the internet are humans too
  • time passes quickly when you’re sitting down and doing nothing
  • we’re not chuckling with you, we’re chuckling at you
  • network through exchanging sharing ideas
  • Godfather and Beauty and the Beast are in the same category of movies
  • You can still get a real job if you studied English in school
  • You can have your cardboard at Future bakery, and eat it too
  • Plans are nice, but please assess risk as well