Current Status, building trust, and lesson from a Portuguese mother.
Current Status:
Los Alamos is a go. Cool project and our family will be well provided for. I can't think of a neater way to finish off this PhD.
Our home is clean and nice and we are all together.
Our oldest daughter started 1st grade and likes her new class and teacher a lot.
Our second daughter starts kindergarten tomorrow. She is excited.
Our garden is thriving with all this unexpected rain.
And we (Denis, Ryan, and I) began weekly teleconference meetings for SongPiper. It should be great. My main projects this week will be to improve distribution methods and to add a little color to the exisiting Java program. I plan on getting those things done.
Building Trust:
In fact I believe that it is vital that I do get them done. Because to a certain extent this whole endeavor will be a matter of coming to trust ourselves and each other to produce results. That trust can only be built if we actually produce those results. And I think that this whole thing will be fun, rewarding, sustainable, etc. only if that trust can be earned and maintained.
Lesson from a Portuguese woman:
I served an LDS mission in Paris France from July of 1996 to August of 1998. I say Paris but that was just the general area. In the suburbs of France was a town called Mantes-la-Jolie. It means Mantes the beautiful or Mantes the pleasant, and I'm sure that at one time it was pleasant and beautiful. Monet settled not far from there at Giverny to paint his own garden over and over. But it turned out in 1996 and 1997 to be a scary area because of a huge housing project called Val Foree that was there.
Anyway, our congregation actually met in a nearby bedroom community called Mantes-la-Ville. The congregation was small and close and consisted of a group of really dedicated, stellar families. Mostly young with children and mostly middle class. One of the families was from Portugal. The mother and father spoke French only moderately well and they didn't seem particularly well educated. When you went to their home, though, it was really neat. The home was well-crafted with an ample yard. There were birds and home-produced eggs and meat and there was great cooking. The husband was a mason and the wife was like a woman out of the 1800s with a million domestic skills. They both worked and worked and seemed to enjoy it and they made beauty around them.
Anyway as the woman was going through some of the many motions of keeping her home in order I asked her if she enjoyed all the work. She paused and gave me an answer that I remembered. "Mmm, I like the work so long as I am not thinking about other things that I have to do while I am doing it."
If she was cleaning the chicken she didn't want to be concerned about doing the laundry. The answer surprised me because I was expecting a no or a yes rather than a conditional. But I came to really like it.
If I am doing one thing but worried about another I can't enjoy it. If I am doing one thing but want to be doing something else then I can't enjoy it. But when I can forget other things and lose myself in the task at hand, almost any task becomes intrinsically interesting.
If I can manage that there are still two possibilities left. The first is that at the end I am completely happy with what I have spent my time doing. The second is that at the end I feel like I have tricked myself or betrayed myself. I get the first when I have managed to lose myself in something that is aligned with what I need to be doing. The second comes when I have managed to lose myself in a mere distraction to the neglect of more important things.
So that is a trick I think about fairly often. How do I combine Apollo and Dionysis? How do I align my actions with the most important things and yet, at the same time, allow myself to get lost in the moment? How to I keep moving toward the destination and at the same time fully partake of the journey?
Anyway, have a great week.
Doug
Los Alamos is a go. Cool project and our family will be well provided for. I can't think of a neater way to finish off this PhD.
Our home is clean and nice and we are all together.
Our oldest daughter started 1st grade and likes her new class and teacher a lot.
Our second daughter starts kindergarten tomorrow. She is excited.
Our garden is thriving with all this unexpected rain.
And we (Denis, Ryan, and I) began weekly teleconference meetings for SongPiper. It should be great. My main projects this week will be to improve distribution methods and to add a little color to the exisiting Java program. I plan on getting those things done.
Building Trust:
In fact I believe that it is vital that I do get them done. Because to a certain extent this whole endeavor will be a matter of coming to trust ourselves and each other to produce results. That trust can only be built if we actually produce those results. And I think that this whole thing will be fun, rewarding, sustainable, etc. only if that trust can be earned and maintained.
Lesson from a Portuguese woman:
I served an LDS mission in Paris France from July of 1996 to August of 1998. I say Paris but that was just the general area. In the suburbs of France was a town called Mantes-la-Jolie. It means Mantes the beautiful or Mantes the pleasant, and I'm sure that at one time it was pleasant and beautiful. Monet settled not far from there at Giverny to paint his own garden over and over. But it turned out in 1996 and 1997 to be a scary area because of a huge housing project called Val Foree that was there.
Anyway, our congregation actually met in a nearby bedroom community called Mantes-la-Ville. The congregation was small and close and consisted of a group of really dedicated, stellar families. Mostly young with children and mostly middle class. One of the families was from Portugal. The mother and father spoke French only moderately well and they didn't seem particularly well educated. When you went to their home, though, it was really neat. The home was well-crafted with an ample yard. There were birds and home-produced eggs and meat and there was great cooking. The husband was a mason and the wife was like a woman out of the 1800s with a million domestic skills. They both worked and worked and seemed to enjoy it and they made beauty around them.
Anyway as the woman was going through some of the many motions of keeping her home in order I asked her if she enjoyed all the work. She paused and gave me an answer that I remembered. "Mmm, I like the work so long as I am not thinking about other things that I have to do while I am doing it."
If she was cleaning the chicken she didn't want to be concerned about doing the laundry. The answer surprised me because I was expecting a no or a yes rather than a conditional. But I came to really like it.
If I am doing one thing but worried about another I can't enjoy it. If I am doing one thing but want to be doing something else then I can't enjoy it. But when I can forget other things and lose myself in the task at hand, almost any task becomes intrinsically interesting.
If I can manage that there are still two possibilities left. The first is that at the end I am completely happy with what I have spent my time doing. The second is that at the end I feel like I have tricked myself or betrayed myself. I get the first when I have managed to lose myself in something that is aligned with what I need to be doing. The second comes when I have managed to lose myself in a mere distraction to the neglect of more important things.
So that is a trick I think about fairly often. How do I combine Apollo and Dionysis? How do I align my actions with the most important things and yet, at the same time, allow myself to get lost in the moment? How to I keep moving toward the destination and at the same time fully partake of the journey?
Anyway, have a great week.
Doug
posted by Douglas H. at 9:04 AM
1 Comments:
This confirms my belief that life is richer for people who are able to think about it in Portuguese. I like your story and will try to apply it better in my own life
Post a Comment
<< Home