Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody else has thought.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
feel
life will be violent, all will be lost
We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity; more than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
Charles Chaplin
(speech from the Jewish barber in The Great Dictator)
without sense, no sense
and those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.
Friedrich Nietzsche
We make sense of our world. With our senses. Same word.
When we remove a sense, the sense we make is different. Developing our ability to use them all in harmony is useful. Don’t just listen, when you can feel what is being said. Don’t just see, when you can hear with your heart.
Make all the sense you can.
unsticking stuck
There are many ways of moving forward, but only one way of standing still.
Franklin D Roosevelt
We notice stuck. When we experience it, stuck draws our attention. We can’t see past it. We feel it pinning us down. Stuck consumes us.
When we’re stuck we become blind to possibilities. Ways to move forward. Advancement. Growth. Movement. All seem out of reach when stuck grasps us.
Yet there are always more ways of moving forwards.
where does a smell take you?
There’s a man eating a pasty, maybe fifteen feet from me.
I can smell it. A slightly sweet aroma. I can feel the sensations of a bite of the piping hot food in my mouth. I can sense my slight open mouthed panting, as air is used to cool that bite to a temperature for swallow. I can taste the meaty, gooey mouthful, mixed with crumbly buttery pastry. I can taste the slightly peppery warmth.
There’s something strangely primal about holding your food in your hand.
I am instantly transported to my own specific memories of enjoying a pasty. Walking in the street with my family, grabbing lunch on a shopping trip. Numerous glorious holidays in Cornwall. A rushed snack on the way home from somewhere, late. In each memory, the smell of this man’s pasty takes me there. Fully.
Where does a smell take you and how vibrant is that place?
I’m off for a pasty…
separation
Watching Motorsport at Donington Park today.
I’m sitting on a hill in the infield looking at the old hairpin. Cars are weaving down the Craner Curves, jostling for track position into this all important corner.
Meanwhile, I’m listening to the race commentary on the circuit app on my phone. The commentary covers the action elsewhere on the circuit. So I can listen to the incident at Redgate where two cars have entered the gravel trap.
When we go racing we take a camping stove and I’m tucking in to a freshly made egg and bacon roll. The soft yoke has just exploded across my fingers. The smell and taste a sensory delight.
The sun is warming my right ear.
I’m struck by my ability to separate my senses. To see one set of action, hear another, feel the sun and direct my olfactory and gustatory senses to a stomach welcoming culinary classic.
Maybe separating our senses is easier than focusing them all on the same experience? We do it every day. I do wonder what I’m losing as a result though?
illuminated dandelion 