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A Musical Metaphor

posted at 8:55 pm
on May. 27, 2009

Comments: 1 so far

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Tiredness saps the curiosity from your eyes, and makes each approaching corner seem daunting, not promising. Anger wicks imagination from your thoughts.  Sadness ties itself to your dreams and like concrete kite strings pulls them down into the dirt.

These are the things I’m thinking about tonight: the effects that negative emotions can have on the very things that counteract them; like how having an upset stomach can make you stop eating well, which keeps you from getting the food you need to be healthy and cure your stomach trouble.

As I fight with mono, and with worry about being away from Hop Studios and from decisions that are piling up in Vancouver about where to live and what to do about how I work, I realize how easy it has become for me to start vibrating in synch with the emotions around me, and in turn to influence those emotions with my own worries and concerns.

It doesn’t take much to set a group of people in tune—I think we’re prone to self-tune to each other’s moods and sounds and rhythms.  And if that tune is a minor chord, if it’s a funeral dirge, or if it’s simply discordant—the tune can be hard to change.

That’s why a break, a period of silence, can be so useful and important.  Returning fresh, with a deep breath and a renewed sense of harmony, I hope I can take this opportunity for quiet contemplation to create a resonant environment of emotion, to hum a happy chord, and to have that be the sound that fills the space in which I live and influence the people with whom I interact.

I hope that, returning from this vacation, that I’m able to—to start things off on the right note, and to have that be the music with which I face some of the things I’ve got on my list to do this summer.

So if you see me humming when I get back, you’ll know why.

Overheard

“Oh boy! Another great opportunity for personal growth!”

...who said it?

“I’m not bitter about what happened to me as a child, and my mother was instrumental in keeping me from being so. ... She taught me to be grateful for my life regardless of what that entailed, and that’s directly related to the image of Christ on the cross and the example of sacrifice that he gave us. What she taught me is that the deliverance God offers you from pain is not no pain—it’s that the pain is actually a gift. What’s the option? God doesn’t really give you another choice.”

...who said it?

After over a decade of user testing, it is clear that the way we search the web is similar to the way we would search our home for valuables as it was burning to the ground. Frantically.

...who said it?

“We must shift the focus of companies back to the customer and away from shareholder value ... The shift necessitates a fundamental change in our prevailing theory of the firm… The current theory holds that the singular goal of the corporation should be shareholder value maximization. Instead, companies should place customers at the center of the firm and focus on delighting them, while earning an acceptable return for shareholders.”

...who said it?

“We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”

...who said it?

Comments

 

 

 

 

 

Hey Travis!

It's nice to read that you are in this contemplative and positive frame of mind. Perhaps we should all catch mono? wink

Enjoy the rest of your trip and be well!

(Dear Universe, I'm only joking - please don't give me mono. wink

 

Posted by Zak Greant
  at 10:45 am on Jun. 3, 2009

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