Bill Thorpe Walking Bridge, Fredericton, New Brunswick
So couldn’t ride the bike to work today because, reasons, but did end up getting to work super early so decided to roll a Breakfast Loop. First one ever, I believe.
Fate does silly things. Came across this block on the sidewalk crossing the Westmorland Street bridge:
Sidewalk Psychology 101.
“Expose a truth about yourself…Vulnerability is Healthy!”
Ok then. Here goes: “I know there are aspects of parenting I’m failing at.”
Whoah. Pretty heavy for this early in the morning. Instead, here’s a bonus truth to lighten the mood:
“I have no known natural defenses against Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups”
Ok, session’s over. Make your next appointment with the secretary on the way out.
“Implements, tools, equipment. If they do what they were designed for, then they work. Even if the person who designed them is miles away.
But with naturally occurring things, the force that designed them is present within them and remains there. Which is why we owe it special reverence, with the recognition that if you live and act as it dictates, then everything in you is intelligently ordered. Just as everything in the world is.”
-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (Gregory Hayes translation, 2002)
I ‘met’ Bill Loundy on the internet in a weird convoluted way that I won’t bother going into. I found his website and then emailed him – because that’s what I do now. No social media – I just cold-email people. We’ve exchanged a bunch of long emails. This is my new philosophy. I’ll email anyone if the mood strikes – I really don’t care if they respond or not. It’s going fantastic.
He’s a twisted paradox – he is CEO of a smartphone app company, ReadUp, that he’s currently running while traveling around the United States in a camper he calls Sputnik with no fixed address and a flip-phone, only accessing the internet predominately at public libraries. We have some similar viewpoints and values – we are probably ‘kindred sprits’ – depending on your definition of the term. I have been enthralled with his tales from the road both out of envy and a sense of discovery. His recent post, ‘Slow and Steady Wins the Race’, did not fail to deliver the goods. A few nuggets:
Slow is like patience, gratitude, maybe even love. Slow is the mindset behind so much of what makes life better: intentionality, mindfulness, focus, calm. Anything that can be done can be done just a little bit slower, and that makes it better. Slow means more time. If you can drink a coffee in eight minutes instead of three, that’s five bonus coffee-drinking minutes. When time extends, awareness extends.
What I’m learning is that attention is the mack-daddy of all skills because it’s the path to all other skills. And the best part is that it only has two ingredients: time and focus.
Universally, I think that people are careless with their attention. They give it away without thinking – to other people and increasingly, tragically, to corporations and tech gadgets. To reclaim your attention for yourself is to reclaim yourself for yourself. Think about that.
That last one – bam.
Some of the best parts of Bill’s posts revolve around people he meets on the road.
I instantly hit it off with J. Born and raised on the Keweenaw Peninsula, he’s a 72-year-old with drifter vibes, but he never really drifted, geographically at least. He’s a bonafide free-thinker, who described himself, first and foremost, as a draft-dodger. He was a high school physics and English teacher (of course) who hated high school himself (also of course) but ended up finding his way to college (you get the point). I latch onto the fact that he doesn’t have a cell phone; to him, this fact is barely worth note. He looks like Jack Nicholson, but balder, with a pristine dome of shiny nothingness on the top of his head and long, grey hair cascading down the sides. He wears a Hawaiian shirt and bucket hat.
Bill says on his About page, that one of his two life-long goals is to write a novel. I look forward to that, but in the meantime his non-fiction blog posts are both compelling and fascinating. Check ’em out.
