A Web of Obligations

by Antonio Dias

We tie ourselves within a web of obligations, forgetting that while these so-called acts of responsibility are meant to help us fulfill our lives, they actually keep us from it.

What struck me was the way we handle the mid-term. It’s not just in the short-term that we do everything twice. In the mid-term, in “projects” lasting weeks or months or years, we believe that without concocting an agenda and then serving its demands we are simply drifting without direction.

Sometimes, over the longest term, when we consider our life’s trajectory over decades, we do see the way, as John Lennon so aptly put it, “Life happens while we were busy making other plans.”

We do not consider the implications of this in how we deal with things as they are going on. We revert to believing that, “It’s the plan stupid!

Communication, driven by assumptions

by Antonio Dias

We cannot connect or communicate intentionally without some assurance of common assumptions to buoy us through the effort. I find that through subtle hints – the sort of unintended communication that takes place whenever there is one organism perceiving another and “making sense” of what they see. Through these hints, if I feel the gap is too great – whether this is true, or just a habitual expectation – I find that I limit my attempts to communicate anything beyond the typical pings and logistical filler of everyday conversation. There is a recognition of futility in attempting to do anything more challenging.

Now, this appears to be a mode of efficiency…. That never stands for me as reason to do anything, so I don’t necessarily trust this appearance. I have been surprised in both directions, misinterpreting the level of connection possible and just getting it wrong. Of the two ways to er here, one makes us seem eccentric and odd, the other introduces us to a serendipitous contact that may be highly significant. It’s a shame we fear the first more than we hunger for the second option.

All of our myths

by Antonio Dias

It strikes me that today all of our publicly accepted myths are propped up and support profit, for someone, some entity, institution or other. As we fear the commodification of everything, everything, as can be found in the stories we turn to to give our lives meaning, has already been commodified.

All the bluster that props up our illusions of freedom and agency – these are the ones we defend so stridently and want to kill whoever challenges our opinion on the matter – result from the brittleness of our beliefs, the doubts we have that perhaps there is nothing there to support our assumptions but the bluster promoted for somebody’s profit.

We are expected – and given every incentive, including violent disincentives to trying anything else – to stay where we are. We are given every opportunity to cash into our myth of choice – it is a wide array, the big-tent of options. One clue, whenever you are shown options, there really is no choice to make. All roads lead to Rome.

Love is Being

by Antonio Dias

“Who is free of myths knows love” – Krishnamurti

I just came across this quotation. It struck me. It made sense, immediately, but in a way that leads me to want to air it all out, to find and put down the connections this statement set reverberating within me.

Itching for a Fight!

by Antonio Dias

I keep returning to the centrality of the simple fact that all that we actually have is our attention.

The ramifications and repercussions of this realization are profound.

This continues to strike at our preoccupation with futures. Seen in this light these are just another set of behaviors that siphon our attention away from the only other thing we might be able to say we have, and that is this moment.