Monthly Archives: September 2013

Symmetry and Comparison

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Thinking about symmetry. How, when you start a relationship with someone, the starting energy tends to dictate the ending energy.  Fast to come….Fast to go.  Not quite right….not quite right. Imbalance….imbalance. Easy and fun…easy and fun.

It’s been said that we are attracted to people who are just like us, but handle the same situations the opposite way we would. We admire and are drawn to each other’s differences, as they could be complimentary should our strategies not succeed. I think it would be really hard to love and support someone who uses the opposite strategy you do!

I’m also meditating on the way we put some people up on pedestals and some people lower than us, and what an illusion that really is. If we could read each other’s thoughts, or walk in their shoes, our illusions would fall to the ground easily I think. I see this as I go grocery shopping in Burlingame, then step around a homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk in Berkeley. The mind is always looking for clues that it is okay, or not okay, and its constant judgments can be really limiting if we buy them as reality and accept where that then places us in the scale/balance of those judgments. I prefer to live free–there is so much more potential/growth to be had instantly/now, in *not* placing yourself against others on a continuum of righteousness and judgement. We must never accept the limits of what our minds can imagine for us.

Magic and excellence

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I’m at a kind of magical junction in my life where I get to witness the grand orchestra at work behind the scenes again. When you let a desire flow through you and follow its consequences, it is astounding how narrow the path is and how many things line up to make the way simple and clear.

I did not work for most of the past 4 months, determined to not make the same mistakes again. After a hell of a last year, I realized that I badly needed a good mentor in my life again. I have had the good fortune of learning under the most amazing (mostly male) mentors along the way, in high school, college, internships, and through my first career, and beyond. I love being taken in under the wing of someone who has achieved something I have not, and learning as much as I can from them, even if I don’t end up following their path.

So it had been a couple years since I lost my last mentor, the person I used to be a personal/admin assistant for. Before him, it was the beloved Doc Harmon Brown who I credit for any success I achieved as a track and field coach. I only got to study under him for one year before he passed away, but he taught me the most important things I needed to know about coaching during that one short year.

So I waited and waited and waited all summer for the right opportunity to “work with someone awesome” again. And the stars aligned at the very last possible minute. I had taken the leaps of faith of leaving my apartment and its grievances, leaving my boyfriend with his complexities and energy sinks, and not taking on work that would pay the bills but make me unavailable for a greater opportunity. And my availability and flexibility got me the position I wanted in the end.

It’s interesting to look with hindsight and see how, if just one factor was different over this summer, how everything would have changed. If I had moved to East Oakland, for example. Or if I had started working as a valet again.

So now it’s go time, and I get to start a whole new chapter of my life. Things change a lot when you move to a new community, change your forms of transportation and place of residence and work schedule. Everything is changing.

No, I don’t have a 5-year plan. Forget a 10-year plan. I’ve never found them to be much useful. My plan is and has always been simple: Find excellent people. Help them do excellent things. Hope excellent rubs off on you.

Eye Experiments Update

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20/20 Vision Naturally

To summarize, in the past almost 3 years, I have tried: Going without glasses/contacts for over a year (no improvement, and some scary night-driving), eye exercises (no improvement), eye relaxation exercises (hints of improvement), and now eye-patch wearing (not enough data). I’ve learned:

(1) simply not-wearing glasses makes no changes to the vision. The eyes are “used” to being blurry and won’t “try” harder just because there’s no “crutch”.

(2) Eye exercises seem to stimulate tear production, balanced musculature, and cause relaxation in overworked muscles. These may be worth doing at least every other day

(3) Eye relaxation exercises are the most difficult but probably the most useful thing, Related:

(4) Focus exercises: Focused relaxation seems to be the most helpful. But it takes focused effort. It’s an actual step-change in trying to “see” better.

(5) Eye patch: I learned wearing it over the “bad” eye was more effective than wearing it over the “good” eye. Seems the “bad” eye may be straining more than the good eye, and benefits from relaxation. I suspect my right eye got pretty bad from inspecting my own hair of split ends from right around age 12, when my vision became so bad I had to start wearing glasses/contacts.

Things I haven’t tried (yet):

-Drastic diet changes (eliminate alcohol, eat more liver, etc.)

-Acid/base experimentation (though I did experiment with Iron/Calcium balance some last year

-long-term eye patch experiment (wearing it 3-4 hours/day)