MLK Remembrance

It was serendipitous, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, that I read a news headline which read, “The world's 10 richest people have increased their wealth from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion since early 2020.”

MLK preached love and equality, and has shown us the way. It seems we must once again remember his words as we look upon a deeply unequal world. 

Like all the other greats, the message is the same: we are one people, living on this one wondrous planet. Together, we can make a glorious contribution to the universe. But it requires us to come together first. Remember the words of Martin Luther King. 

Monterey Serenity

Today I soaked in the transition zone where water becomes land. The Monterey area is truly magnificent, with red lichen and green growth and tan rocks all competing for prominence before the clear blue of the sea. Do we need further motivation to strive for harmony with our planet? 

Tribe Syncing

Nothing beats family time. I think the earlier you learn that in life, the more confident you can be about your life’s direction and purpose. We really do have it all, when we are in complete sync with our tribe. 

Generational Baton

We can build in our lifetimes yes, but truly what life is good at, what it’s designed for, is building over generations. Humans have the strongest ability known in the universe to pass down knowledge, to pass down progress. Consider what the average person’s life was like in 10,000 B.C. Death and danger were surely omnipresent. And while in 2022 we still have serious problems to address, let alone solve, we also have developed language and writing systems, we’ve created technology that makes life easier and maximizes our time. Far less people starve, far more die of old age. We have honed the methods for improvement over generations, over millennia. We inherited this progress, and enjoy its fruits because of the gifts of others. So: what shall we do with all this opportunity, this limited time we call a lifetime?

What We Leave Behind

“Begin with the end in mind” is a great chapter in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, a book I read many years ago. 

We want people to mourn us when we’re gone. I believe it’s not because we want to feel relevant or important.

It means we imparted something upon them, something valuable, something worthwhile. And that will get passed down, and evolve, as life continues to flourish after us.

It’s an acceptance of something greater than ourselves, and a desire to contribute to it. It’s a gift with no thought for reward. It’s what we leave behind.

Beginnings Reminiscence

I was shocked when I thought back to my time living abroad and realized it began more than a decade ago. I returned to the US toward the end of 2015, but I embarked on my transformative journey, first to South Africa, back in 2011.

I wouldn’t recognize myself, from either end of it. We change over time, as our relationships, residences, and environments change. Yet I can identify some values and principles I established some ten years ago that I still live by: respect, responsibility, resolve… time, health and love. I can still remember sitting down at my kitchen table in Cape Town and writing them down. The very early beginnings of TAV, although I didn’t know it at the time, started at that wooden table with paper and pencil.

We may evolve over time, but we can choose to hold ourselves accountable to what we believe, to what’s right. We have the complete freedom and power to choose how we want to live. And at a very high level, if we open up to it, we begin to see we all want the same things, that we are more similar than we are different…and that we’re all here together, on this wondrous planet Earth. We can build a prosperous global society, a thriving planetary ecosystem, if we reckon with these basic truths. We can, indeed, change the world. 

Beautiful Weather Differences

I was watching a movie the other day and a scene followed the main character driving in the snow on the way to work. It kind of floored me; I’ve definitely never done that before. It may have been bitterly cold and lightly snowing on my morning commute riding the Beijing subway once or twice, but it wasn’t the Chicago snow depicted in this film. 

California’s winter weather couldn’t be more different—I routinely wear a tank top in December and January. But sixty degrees Fahrenheit is also nothing to Australia’s January weather. It was routinely over a hundred when I was there just before the pandemic started. Through my extended stay there, and come to think of it also, while I lived in Cape Town a decade ago, I never got used to the southern hemisphere’s opposite seasons.

These musings demonstrate how magnificent our planet is. Without travel to vastly different places, our environment becomes normalized. The Earth offers so much to explore and experience; it’s easy to take it for granted in modern life. But the majesty is there, if we open our eyes to this big beautiful amazing world. 

New Year Health Wealth

As millions of people embark on their new year resolution journey, the importance of health becomes all too obvious. We take it for granted on a moment by moment basis, but it truly is one of the pillars of our existence (the others being time, and love/happiness). Would you trade confinement to a wheelchair for the rest of your life for a billion dollars?

My half year goals both revolve around my health. It’s so easy to forget what it’s like to feel good, or crappy for that matter. We adjust to the status quo, our recent health state. When we get injured or sick, we remember how much it sucks. Similarly, when we clean up our diet and increase our exercise, it can be hard to believe how we dealt with feeling so poorly, so stark is the contrast of feeling good.

Luckily the antidote to this complacency of sensation lies in the same practice that builds empathy: gratitude. Acknowledgement of the present. If we can reach presence together, the universe is ours to freely explore. 

Weekend Course

Even on a weekend in which I was active and productive, the stark discrepancy between a weekend day and week day is apparent. And the concept of a “weekend” is a social construct fought for and created, much as the our other preconceived notions of the workings of modern society.

It’s just a wild world. A result of choices and circumstance and luck, an evolved environment we inherit upon birth and have an opportunity to shape during our lives. Change the course of the universe we will, but how?

Simple 2022 Gratitude

I received a nice message today from acquaintances in Australia. We house sat for them while there; they went up to the northern part of the country, we took care of their cats, and it was a win-win. 

Full of well wishes, their note acknowledged that 2021 wasn’t the best year, as many hoped back in 2020 when the pandemic started (and when we were last in Australia).

That may well be true, but it’s also important to feel gratitude for the blessings we do enjoy. A simple cleanup of my living space has me thankful for my small home. While tidying up I reflected that I enjoy a life of supreme luxury compared to someone in the 1800’s. 

When we find that different perspective, we can feel this true gratitude, and it makes our lives that much better. Because we do enjoy a wonderful existence. We can strive for better, certainly, but we can also remember that it could also be a lot worse. 

Community Understanding

Did anyone understand the state of the world way back when? Were people in tune with the general consensus, the overall value system of society, in the past? Because it feels like now, with pandemic surges keeping us inside and away, we prowl the echo chambers of the internet with little sense of how a lot of us feel.

This inquiry and general comprehension and empathy is the key to progress. Changing the world requires work and sacrifice and insight, but that can only begin after willingness to understand. It’s how our tribes first formed larger communities. Now that we are one large global community, it’s time we recognize it. 

Anniversary Discourse

The discourse about the anniversary of January 6th lacks nuisance, much like the discourse regarding the pandemic. The riot, or insurrection, or whatever we call it, was a bad day, a dark mark on our country’s history. Most people seem to agree on that. But we’re still sorting out where it falls on the scale of disaster. Was it 9/11? The war on Afghanistan? 

In order for us to move forward, we need to have an open discussion, and to do that we must listen to each other. Today’s anniversary provides another opportunity.

The Good of Wrong

I’ve had this probably naive thought before, that it’s good to experience some negative emotions sometimes to help set the context for the positive and enable gratitude. A little rain makes the sunshine that much more appreciated, that sort of thing.

Through rapid technological improvements and slow institutional ones, our lives have become better over time. In the rich world, people’s lives are easier than ever before. It seems we’ve come to expect things to be easy, or painless, or simple.

So when things do go wrong, we can utilize that instance as a rallying point, a reminder of how far we’ve come, due to others’ sacrifices and hard work, and how comparatively good we have it. 

Because at the end of it all… we are alive. We inhabit the most wondrous planet ever discovered. We get to enjoy, in this brief spec of time we call life, the mysteries of the universe. 

Education Skills and Values

Coronavirus cases in schools have been spiking in the Bay Area, and the now age-old argument has resumed: how to handle it. I don’t know enough about our public school operations and management to have the answer, and it’s probably good to remind ourselves that that’s true for most of us. 

However, I do subscribe to the belief that our schools are one of the most important institutions in society. Education is the mechanism with which we improve the world across generations. It primarily teaches two skills: how to think, and how to communicate. It also should impart the values we hold to our youth; respect, responsibility, and resolve. If schooling accomplished nothing else, it would still be one of the most important elements of our civilization.

Let’s keep this in mind as we fight our way through the pandemic, and especially, beyond.

Organization Evolution

We all have opinions about the ongoing pandemic. We have different risk thresholds, different levels of comfortability, and different circumstances in our lives.

When’s the last time you had a discussion about the pandemic without someone with wildly different circumstances than your own? Mass media is designed to resemble an echo chamber, but we must fight devolving into such an environment in our daily lives.

The only way out of this, out of any of our problems, is to learn how to organize ourselves. We can overcome the most dire situations we face, such as climate change and inequality, by organizing. We’ve gotten better at it over the millennia, certainly, but the past few years have demonstrated we still have a long way to go.

Technology is merely a tool, not a solution. We are the solution. Our ability to organize more effectively will determine the fate of not just our species, but the fate of much of the planet, for centuries to come. The time is now: can we evolve?

Bye for now Maui

And I’m back immersed in the energy of the Bay Area. It can seem so quick, a vacation that blurs the days together. But the contrast between the sense of aloha in Hawaii and the urgency of the Bay is tangible.

Again I feel I learned a lot in visiting the islands. The people’s friendly smiles, the stubbornly beautiful weather, and the laid back atmosphere all compel you to slow down and reflect on what’s important in life. Time, health and love.. these are the things least replaceable and most precious. A tropical paradise can spark this realization, as comparably nothing else matters. I’m grateful Hawaii could show me that again.

The send off went the same this morning as it has before: one last visit to the beach in Paukukalo, a final wave to the mountains of ‘Iao, and a closing view of the island upon takeoff. Thank you again Maui, for showing me how to see. Bye for now, and back in the Bay. It’s 2022, and it’s time for us to get to work. 

Effecting Change in 2022

A year is such a long time. I think about how many ebbs and flows 2021 held, how much growth and change happened. 2022 will be the same: we will look back on our experiences, on ourselves, with bemused wonder. “I really felt that was important at the time? That’s how my hair looked? Remember how it felt when…?”

For some reason, “one one” holds a sway over me. There’s something about the date that imparts a freshness, a clean slate. It’s the only day of the year that contains such elegance and simplicity.

I have tried to reorient my “years” around my birthday, as that more accurately reflects my time and my life. But the allure of a New Year’s resolution beginning on 1-1 is too strong. I have set myself 2 simple goals easily measured, for the roughly first half of the year until my birthday. In July I’ll reevaluate their efficacy and adjust accordingly.

It seems ripe however, for us to not only consider ourselves in 2022, but our species and our planet, our place in the universe. The pandemic the past couple years has shown that our actions affect others. Our decisions ripple beyond humanity, and extend to the overall ecosystem of our planet. In 2022, can we capture this perspective, and keep it present as we move forward? Can we resolutely take collective action to better not just our own lives, but all life on this planet?

I cannot help but feel we are heading towards a reckoning, and 2022 may prove to be the year we most experience it. Let us inspire each other to remember: we can change the world. 

An end to 2021

What a year 2021 has been. It feels as we approach the very end, we’re all looking back in awe at what has transpired. 

I don’t have any hot takes to offer…but the end of the year seems to always bring plenty of perspective, to our own lives and society as a whole. What have we done this year as a group, how have we progressed?

Tonight serves as an opportunity to embrace our successes and learn from our failures. What can we not do in 2022?

Vacation Fluctuations

I almost feel the point of vacation is to occur a little internal turbulence in order to spur a reset. Not travel, but a “getaway” vacation seems to have this effect. 

We deviate from our normal routine for several days and thus evaluate it, seeing it from a different perspective. It makes it all the more stark when doing so in a serene setting, one completely different than our normal environment.

I can take many things for granted, including the privilege of “going on vacation,” but am grateful for the opportunity it affords. We have this one magical life experience given to us…what will we do with it?

Open Waves

Life is certainly never perfect, but I could feel the difference today when I was open versus when I was not. A warm tingling sensation deep within your chest exists when you accept all the universe offers. 

This means both the “good,” and the “bad,” as we so commonly view life through that lens. But when conscientiously exerting presence and openness, that dichotomy quickly fades. 

It dissolves into the most holistic reckoning of life I’ve ever experienced. Thank you Hawaii for making it easier for me to see this, and bringing it back to me.