Do you know why you change?

We all love to change for the better. Whether we do it is another story but let’s just go with the idea that we all would like things to be better, whatever that means.

To that end, we focus on the outcome of the change (the what) for it offers us the end state and hence the motivation, and the methods of inducing the change (the how). We sort of go with the notion that the reasons for the change (the why) will take care of itself as long as we know the what, or that the simple desire for a better change constitutes the answer for the why. But that is not to be, for unless we clearly know the why, we’d never be satisfied with change. 

In other words, we need to know the purpose for change. 

Yet that is the most common thing people forget when they embark on a journey of change.

And I don’t mean superficial reasons like ‘I exercise because I want to look good’. No. I am talking about deeper reasons which goes into the heart of the matter. In other words, can you answer why you’d want to look good?

—————

For the longest time I’ve contemplated switching to a different work environment but have always struggled with the whys. Many people thought I was being overly dramatic and that the decision was as simple as ‘apply’, or ‘don’t apply’. Yet I struggled because the intended move reflected deeply on my internal psychology, values and ideals, and I for the life of me, couldn’t make sense of them at all. 

A wise person then told me this: if you should move, be sure to move only because the pull factors outweigh the push factors. 

The meaning of these words warrant a discussion for another time, but for now, he was asking me to focus on the why, and at the same time offered me a context to frame them. The what and the how didn’t matter that much; it’s the why that will either bless me, or haunt me for days to come.

————— 

Sometimes the why is obvious, often not. But neglect it, and you might end up with a change that is deeply unsatisfying. 

What’s your reason for change today?

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As an afterthought, I thought I should clarify that I’m referring to changes that are obviously controllable by us; discussion on changes like growing older physically is moot. For now.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Nicolas Cage: To steal the Declaration of Independence.
Plato: For the greater good.
Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.
Hippocrates: Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
Thomas de Torquemada: Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
Douglas Adams: Forty-two.
Nietzsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.
Oliver North: National Security was at stake.
Carl Jung: The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
Jean-Paul Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
Ludwig Wittgenstein: The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
Aristotle: To actualize its potential.
Buddha: If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
Howard Cosell: It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a remarkable occurence.
Salvador Dali: The Fish.
Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
Emily Dickinson: Because it could not stop for death.
Epicurus: For fun.
Ralph Waldo Emerson: It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
Johann von Goethe: The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.
Werner Heisenberg: We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it was moving very fast.
David Hume: Out of custom and habit.
Jack Nicholson: 'Cause it [censored] wanted to. That's the [censored] reason.
Pyrrho the Skeptic: What road?
Ronald Reagan: I forget.
John Sununu: The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation, so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the opportunity.
The Sphinx: You tell me.
Mr. T.: If you saw me coming you'd cross the road too!
Henry David Thoreau: To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
Mark Twain: The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
Molly Yard: It was a hen!
Zeno of Elea: To prove it could never reach the other side.
Chaucer: So priketh hem nature in hir corages.
Wordsworth: To wander lonely as a cloud.
The Godfather: I didn't want its mother to see it like that.
Keats: Philosophy will clip a chicken's wings.
Blake: To see heaven in a wild fowl.
Othello: Jealousy.
Dr. Johnson: Sir, had you known the Chicken for as long as I have, you would not so readily enquire, but feel rather the Need to resist such a public Display of your own lamentable and incorrigible Ignorance.
Mrs. Thatcher: This chicken's not for turning.
Supreme Soviet: There has never been a chicken in this photograph.
Oscar Wilde: Why, indeed? One's social engagements whilst in town ought never expose one to such barbarous inconvenience - although, perhaps, if one must cross a road, one may do far worse than to cross it as the chicken in question.
Kafka: Hardly the most urgent enquiry to make of a low-grade insurance clerk who woke up that morning as a hen.
Swift: It is, of course, inevitable that such a loathsome, filth-ridden and degraded creature as Man should assume to question the actions of one in all respects his superior.
Macbeth: To have turned back were as tedious as to go o'er.
Whitehead: Clearly, having fallen victim to the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.
Freud: An die andere Seite zu kommen. (Much laughter.)
Hamlet: That is not the question.
Donne: It crosseth for thee.
Pope: It was mimicking my Lord Hervey.
Constable: To get a better view.
Yeats: She was following the Faeries that sang to her to come away with them from the dull, bucolic comfort of the farmyard to the waters and the wild.
Shelley: 'Tis a metaphor for the pursuits of man: though 'twas deemed an extraordinary occurrence at the time, still it brought little to bear on the great scheme of time and history, and was ultimately fruitless and forgotten.
Tolkien: Chickens are respectable folk, and well thought of. They never go on any adventures or do anything unexpected. One fine spring day, as the chicken wandered contentedly around the farmyard, clucking and pecking and enjoying herself immensely, there appeared a Wizard and thirteen Dwarves who were in need of a chicken to share in their adventure. Reluctantly she joined their party, and with them crossed the road into the great Unknown, muttering about how rude the Dwarves were to take her away on such short notice, without even giving her time to brush her feathers or fetch her hat.

Are you a macro or a micro person?

I used to think that there were generally two kinds of people: macro, and micro people. 

Macro people always looked at the big picture and sometimes neglect the minor details, or disregard them in the name of well, the big picture. Micro people focused on the details, and are sometimes blind to the larger impact of the details they fawn over. 

I was wrong. 

There is no such thing as a macro person or a micro person.

There is only the people who care and the people who don’t. 

The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.

—How true! - G.K. Chesterton  (via tterzek)

The Lytro Camera

alesserphotographer:

The talk of the web today was the new Lytro Camera:

By substituting powerful software for many of the internal parts of regular cameras, light field processing introduces new capabilities that were never before possible. Sophisticated algorithms use the full light field to unleash new ways to make and view pictures.

It’s great design. It’s revolutionary tech. It’s the most exciting camera in years.

It will do nothing to make you a better photographer.

You can’t help but smile at this guy’s conviction that gear and ability (or skill, vision; whatever you call it) are independent of each other when it comes to taking great photos.

And I totally agree with him.

Don’t mind the fact that I would like to play with the Lytro though.

NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY