life

simulating life

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

image
I got to sit in a simulator last week. A flight simulator for a 747.

The complex software can mimic situations the pilot might find themselves in. It looks and feels like the real thing. Climbing, banking, landing, shuddering in turbulence. The flight crew can test handling the plane in any emergency, as well as practising routines like take off and landing.

Every year they return to the simulator to effectively take their driving test again. Useful. Reassuring.

Where are the life simulators?

Why can’t we practice?
Test out possible life situations?
Run the routine ones, over and over, to ensure we get them right?
Where is the life test?
And where is the re-test?

the folding bike of life

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

folding_bikes
If you commute at all, you will have come across travellers with the folding bike.

If you have ever watched the BBC spoof W1A, the folding bike was an ever present star.

I have never owned one. I have never folded or unfolded one.  Yet they seem to me to be a marvel of engineering. Collapsing wheels, pedals, frame, chain and saddle into a compact , small suitcase sized, ‘luggable’ package.

Ideal for the linking parts of the journey; fitting easily into the boot of the car, compact for the limited space on a train, portable for the walk to the office or ascending in the lift before you hand it to your office assistant, as in W1A.

Wouldn’t it be great if life was engineered like that? Expandable for the journey itself, practical, functional, expansive, whole, readily facilitating movement and progression as we go about our business of living and growing.

Yet collapsible too. Taking on a compact form for the linking moments of change and transition on life’s journey. Periods perhaps where being expanded can bruise us, or strain us, as we attempt to move through life. Where parts of our own self catch us out, banging against our shins of resilience? Periods when bits of our life maybe stick out, knock against someone else, physically or emotionally? Periods when being expanded, our natural whole self, simply gets us stuck in a doorway, challenges our manoeuverability through a narrow gap and makes change from what was, to what will be, somewhat cumbersome?

If only life were as well engineered and flexible as the folding bike.

when the solution we seek stops us seeing

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

image

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

This seems relevant in the context of recent world events. Our desire, and that of our leaders, to fix the current situation seems to blind us to the true nature of the problem. We must take action. Seek a solution. Find an answer.

What if we sought understanding? What if we employed curiosity? What if we questioned to heighten awareness, rather than to judge?

It seems this is a reflection of our society. The pace of change. The need to know, and to know now.

Contemplation. Reflection. Awareness. Stillness. Compassion. Humanity. These might be everyone’s ally.

#prayforParis

the emergency kit

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

emergency kit of life
Travelling on the train the other day, I noticed a little green handle, secreted behind a glass pane, set into a grey nondescript panel. The panel was adjacent to the toilet. Next to the little glass pane was a sticker describing how to access and turn said handle after breaking the glass.

Further exploration, via a set of miniature icons next to the text instruction, showed the contents, presumably stowed behind the panel, to be the emergency kit. This kit apparently comprised a ladder, a rope, a crowbar and a saw.

Having briefly visited the notion, admittedly with some alacrity, that a secret game of Cluedo might be underway, wherein the murderer carried out the deadly act with the saw in First Class or with the crowbar in the luggage rack, I was curious about the selected equipment.

If the train was in difficulty, had broken down or worse become derailed or crashed, I struggled to understand how I, or anyone, might be minded to locate the toilet and its neighbourly panel, break the glass, turn the handle and access a saw and a rope … to what end I wondered?

My thoughts then strayed to the whole idea of an emergency kit. What might my emergency kit for life be?

My first thought was chocolate, but then I embraced the question with more serious intent. I would want a hug to be in my emergency kit – a reassuring squeeze. I would want a reminder of my sense of purpose; something to draw me back to the ‘for whom or for what’ I am here – a re-grounding in something bigger than myself. I would want a companion; someone to confide in, to share with. I would want a way to distract myself, to lose myself in my own imagination; maybe some music?

What would be in your emergency kit, behind the innocuous panel?

the asterisked correlation

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

communication pace of life correction text
*correction

The growth of text talk has seen the rise of another phenomenon. That of the second text. The text that follows, moments later, containing an asterisk and a single word.

The *correction text

The sender has realised after hitting SEND that they have made a typo, or that predictive text… hasn’t.

Since when did we start communicating in a manner where, checking what we were saying after we had said it, was the norm?

Perhaps it is a reflection of the speed of our lives that we are so keen to press send, to move on, to get to the next thing that we just accept the need to be brief, to rush, the need for pace in everything. Taking our time seems unfashionable.

It has been said that as much as 90% of our communication is non verbal. Yet we have embraced the hurried text, the garbled few words typed whilst walking down the street; the hastily thrown response, punched out with a single thumb whilst holding on to the handle on the swaying bus; the abbreviated language, peppered with emoticons, which seeks to communicate fully to another human being.

Maybe we would do well to slow down here? To reflect on the emotion we are trying to convey. To stand in the shoes of the recipient, interpreting this stream of characters and letters without the advantage of seeing our faces, hearing the tone of our voice, seeing our smile…

Walk along any busy street these days and we are all nose deep in our phones, communicating constantly. I was told recently that more people in the world have access to a mobile phone than have access to a toilet. More communication than ever before. Always on. Global.

Yet perhaps the quality of that communication has suffered at the hands of the quantity?

Time perhaps to reflux?

*reflect?

LOL

life as a pot of numbered balls

~ steve.ridgley ~ Leave a comment

random happenstance life
I’ve just watched the FA Cup first round draw.

Clubs matched randomly. Balls with numbers on, drawn blind from a perspex receptacle.

Imagine if our lives were determined this way. Our relationships determined by the number on the drawn ball. Our life longevity similarly. Our quality of life. Our ails and illnesses drawn randomly from the pot.

What if there were no choice? If this random selective ‘fate’ determined every twist and turn. The grabbing of a numbered ball swirling around in the pot of life deciding our future. The school we went to. The friends we made. The job we secured. Our performance and pay in that job. What if the balls determined our future, our choices at every stage? What if there was in fact no free will?

Ironically much is in fact determined by happenstance. Either because certain life choices determine subsequent choices, or because we are ‘run automatically’ by our beliefs, our values, our early life experiences coding all our subsequent behaviour.

Maybe we are more like the first round draw than we think?

the perspective from the top deck

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journey view metaphor life
I journeyed the other evening on the top deck of the 436 bus. In the front seat.

The view was a panorama of life. Lights, noise, people, machines, movement. London at its liveliest.

Yet I noticed how journeying this way seems somewhat removed from reality. The bus sways in a slightly disconcerting manner. It rounds corners in a less than natural movement. An almost crab like sideways slide, conjoined with a floating sway. Perhaps delivered through a combination of where the front axle is and the height and flex of the bus carcass? The sensation in my seat is one of disconnect from the road. Not grounded. A little in conflict with the laws of motion; arguing against gravity.

My journey moved to train. A rhythmic sway, merged with sleepy hum as the world rushes past. Not the panorama of the bus front seat, but a sideways glance at a speeding blend of nature and manmade construct. More grounded in one sense, definitely more urgent, more purposeful, but a perspective on life and the world that sped past without detail, without richness.

My final leg was by car. In control, driving. Close to the ground, direct response between feet, hands and movement. Yet my attention focused solely on the road – the journey ahead, the vehicles, the junctions, the risks. No time for sideways glances, no time to really notice people, activity, beauty.

I wonder how much time we spend in our lives travelling in one of these metaphors?

Either stood back, with a wider perspective, but somehow floating above reality? A little disoriented. Observing, but not involved?

Or speeding forward, intent on reaching our goal quickly but with little opportunity to notice the world around us other than an oblique awareness of the blur of movement?

Or deciding our own path, in control of our destiny, our own speed, but necessarily focused on the journey ahead. One lens, one angle of view with little capacity for enjoying our surroundings?

the gift of light, the tune of life

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light gets in

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That is how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen

We only see, because light enters our eyes.
Light illuminates everything.

Yet so often we try and keep light out. If we aren’t perfect, we attempt to conceal our weaknesses, our failings. Our judgement of self means we often wrap up our gifts, our truth, our own light. All sealed up like a neatly wrapped Christmas gift, with tape on every edge. Our gifts wrapped safe, but hidden from view.

We do this, not just in our work, our projects, our outputs, our external offerings to the world. So too with parts of our internal self, our humanity. We attempt to neatly package away our mistakes, our unwelcome behaviours, our memories, our judgements, our fears and our dreams.

Often we wrap them badly. So that despite our efforts, when shaken, the contents leak out.

Still we persist, as if boxing them neatly away is the best thing. The safe option. Yet as the lyric suggests, we simply give ourselves fewer bells. Our melody is simplified. Our music reduced to a few chords or notes. We are less.

Maybe we should embrace the cracks? Enjoy the light? Peek in through the partly open corner, remove a small piece of tape and see what the dim light illuminates?

Seek to play our tune with all of our musicality?
Percussion adding brightness to woodwind,
strings showing dexterity to booming brass,
baritone adding depth to our tenor?

stuck in the tunnel of life

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stuck tunnel life
My tube train stopped today at Edgware Road. The driver informed us that we would be held there for a while. There was a problem with the train in front.

It got me thinking. If a train becomes completely immovable, what happens then? The tunnel, the only route forward, is blocked. I guess we would all decamp and be forced to exit the platform, leave the station and find another way to our destination. Or I guess we could wait. Wait for life, for someone else to remove the blockage so that we can continue on our chosen path.

It struck me that in the event that this happened, we would just cope. Sure we might moan that we’ll be late, gripe about the cost of tickets and the poor service, worry that we don’t know how to get to our destination, but we would find a way. We would move on. Yet in life we often get stuck and stay stuck. Unable to see another path, we become disabled.

Of course London Underground would probably have staff available. Advice would be on hand. Guidance about how to get to our destination. Failing that, we would simply surface and surf. The Internet would tell us what to do.

Life isn’t like that. Even if people are around to listen or to give advice, our life situation is more complex, more individual, more unique, than the tube journey. The Internet doesn’t offer solutions to complicated life problems, riddled with feelings, entwined with complexities of relationship, weighed down with challenges of expectation, paralysed with the fear of coming up short in some way.

As fellow human beings, we seem hopelessly ill equipped to support each other, even if we were minded to.

Maybe this is the Internet we really need?

important safety information

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safety
Monday morning and the train journey.

I find myself gazing at a notice. Important safety information.

The notice tells me ‘These instructions are provided for your safety in the event of an emergency’. It continues by reassuring me that if there is no immediate danger, I should await instructions from onboard staff.

Where are my safety instructions for life? For living?

When I feel unsafe, there is no handy information guide. When I feel uncertain, no useful diagrams and pictures. No advice on what to do. No step by step instruction. When I feel threatened, no arrows to show me escape routes. When I need help, no emergency equipment provided and no colour coded symbols to help me decide.

And at times of emergency, my onboard staff tend to have done a runner. I’m not thinking clearly. Not resourced to help myself.

Often in life there is more risk, more fear, more danger from our way of being, our patterns of thought, our interactions with self, than from the trains we travel on. Maybe we need to pay as much attention to the important safety information for our humanity?