Month: January 2018

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Curated Content(ment)

When you really think about it, life is almost always a front. How often are we not hiding, shielding, shadowing, skewing, or shading the reality we face, the reality we project, and the reality we live in? How rare and beautiful an occurrence it is when we can actually let go of our vulnerabilities, our insecurities and come clean to anyone, to ourselves, about the struggles and triumphs of our hidden lives. How often do we share something real, raw and boring? How often is what we share curated to be the most likeable, the least threatening? Can we handle the reality of our own mediocrity? Does the chaos of the world at large have an effect on the self image we promote? Media’s influence is powerful, subtle, invasive and widespread, I’m taking a moment to dive in and see how it settles, or more accurately, to dive out.

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Resolve

I’d like to think I’ve never been one for manufactured resolve, but I think the truth is, I just don’t want to be told what to do.

The dial turns, a New Year begins, and we’re made to believe that we’ve got a new chance, a fresh start. But isn’t this the truth every day? Don’t we begin anew each morning with a blank slate, a fresh start? In fact, every moment is an opportunity to let go, to relent, to acknowledge we’ve drifted off course, to realign, reaffirm, and start again.

How hard it is to say we’ve been wrong. We can become so entrenched, so stuck that we find ourselves forced to argue a point we no longer believe in. Life opens a door, gives you an opportunity to relent, but so often our pride prohibits us from moving forward. The New Year is like a get out of jail free card. An opportunity to find resolve without focusing on the lack, on the void that we’re hoping to fill. It’s pure optimism, looking ahead, looking up, looking within.

In reality, I’m all about resolve. I’m an Aries, I love to start. I have a head full of steam, inspiration strikes and I want to set out in search of it. But the New Year always seems like such a poor time to capitalize on this momentum. Winter is a time of reflection, of rumination and hibernation. Ideas gestate and creativity simmers like a mulled wine.

I want to play along. I want to find resolve, to be resolute, to take action in a new direction, but that’s just not the energy I feel. I feel like it’s time to listen. Time to be still and absorb. Time to do what you’re told and wait patiently. To compile your resolutions as they crystallize, to write them down, fold them up and stick them in your pocket. To wait till the time is right to take action.

But there’s something to be said for rising to the challenge, to answering the call. You can put off your resolutions till you’re ready but that day might never come. The time is now, what are you going to do?

Slow down.

Help.

Be patient.

Look hard at the things that make you squirm – what’s making you uncomfortable has something to teach you.

Embrace what makes you feel good – don’t be afraid of giving yourself up to love and laughter, life is short.

Happy New Year,

Love,

Tim

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Reflections

Time is fluid, cyclical, and relentless. It’s everywhere and unstoppable, yet we work so hard to compartmentalize it. Days, weeks, hours, minutes, we work to break time into fragments that we can cope with. Unaware and unaffected, time moves on. Perhaps there is no other way, maybe our minds are just not suited to flow with time in its ever expanding and contracting nature. We want time to move in one direction, we want ourselves to move in only one direction with it. Growth, ascension, forward movement. If time is not bringing us somewhere better we easily lose touch with our own direction. We wish to command time and bend it to our will, to believe we are capitalizing one this one element in a way that will deliver us to our goals, our hopes and dreams.

But I’ve come to believe that time has its own will. That we are as much a product of time’s fate as any other. Today’s political climate proves this to a degree, that time has its own weight, its own momentum, a pressure that sometimes binds, folds, and back up upon itself, slowing and stopping until so much weight accumulates that it bursts forth in a flood, rushing past us or carrying us along. But even this fits into the narrative of a flow of time, one that has direction, current, and inevitability.

Regardless of our view of time, and our place in it, it does seem advantageous to break it into pieces we can more easily digest, pieces of time we can hold and weigh and use to plan for our own future. A life, after all, is only one small piece of time, an amalgamation of moments we stitch together into a narrative. Simpler times have come and gone, and today’s time often seems complex, confusing, challenging and even cruel. There’s work to be done, within and without. We’re encouraged to find ourselves, to become our best selves and contribute to the solution, to the repair and replacement of flawed systems. At the same time, we’re groping for meaning, purpose, connection and love. These are the metrics we use to judge time, and our passage through it.

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