this rain's gentleness
flowing over the blossoms
before the sun's grace
Tonight’s Haiku: May 31, 2025
Tag: life
An evening haiku
memories of dusk
treetops hidden by the night
silent memories
“Be myself? I’d rather die.”
Substack has a feature where they serve up posts that I might like. Not all of them have been been hits, much less home runs (wait…why the hell am I serving up sports analogies?). But this one was good! “Be myself? I’d rather die“, a post by psychologist Adam Mastroianni, and it looks at many things, but the focus that spoke to me was on the evolutionary value of conformity.
TLDR: social norms are one way we communicate our learnings about survival. He references cassava, which is edible ONLY when prepared correctly. Otherwise, it’s potentially lethal. Makes me think of the Hebrew proscription about pork, as an other example.
It’s rather eye opening to consider that social norms are often survival mechanisms. And, thus, that feeling of “needing to obey them”, even when they don’t seem to match make much more sense.
I want to remind folks, though, that as valuable as those learnings are, it’s the people willing to push through the norms and challenge are the ones that change things. I’m sure, at one point, no one ate cassava as it’s rather problematic until “treated”. Yet someone, somewhere, said, “I think I can eat this”, and, for whatever reason, we stumbled through it and the world was changed.
I appreciate the insights, especially on why the urge to conform is so damn powerful. However, I intend to live my somewhat contrarian life. I’ve enjoyed most of it so far.
Mind-Full vs Mindful
Found this gem on Pinterest today:
I expect that, in today’s culture in the US, this is an easy post to connect with. Well, at least I do! There’s always so much bumping around in my mind. For several years I practiced focused mediation, and I got more aligned with the horse here. I still work on that, but not with as much dedication.
I’ve found that I miss out on so much when lost in the flurry of modern life. Which makes me think of the classic Thoreau quote: “…I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”
So, take a reminder early in the year to budget time to step out of the busyness of life and, well, just embrace living.
Today’s Haiku: November 8, 2024
Yesterday was the Longest Night
Some random stats as I think about the apex of our night-life for my community just north of Seattle. Your mileage may vary.
- Sunrise was at 7:55am
- Sunset at 4:18 pm
- Therefore we had 8.38 hours of sunlight
- That’s 35% of the day with daylight
- And, therefore 65% of the day was night
- 15.62 hours of darkness!
Fortunately, slowly, slowly, the days will start lengthening. And another year begins.
A Momentary Pause
feasting on sunlight
brief bits of joyful color
momentary pauseÂ
A few days ago I was walking along the nearby waterfront. This burst of color captured my attention, both at the moment and then yesterday, which I spent resting, recovering from my second dose of Moderna. I got a fair amount done in spite of my day of rest, but I didn’t get a haiku posted.
An update on education
This is from one of my assignments this week, and it seemed like a great blog post. So, enjoy!
Tuesday Evening Haiku
seeking signs of spring
renewed life begins to bud
with rain less bitter
On today’s walk I focused on searching for signs of spring. Not many yet, but I found these. I expect that the signs will grow via each passing day. C
A Walk Along The Waterfront
through fading sunlight
walk along the waterfront
filled with memories
Most of my life orbited the Edmonds waterfront, just north of Seattle. My grandparents lived here. So many memories of walking with my grandfather here, sometimes riding the ferry. He loved talking with everyone, hearing their stories. His gift of listening appreciated.